The Legend Of Dragoon

Well currently I am playing a great game called the legend of dragoon. this awsome game was made in 2000 and has really good graphics for the time. It follows the story of a young man by the name of dart and his adventures throughout the world Endiness. The game is four discs long and if your dedicated and play until 2:00 in the morning you can beat this game in about three days. any way this game is really good because of the unique story line, the plot devices and most importantly the four discs for the playstation one consol. That was never done before on the playstation consol and I guess never will be because the playstation has evolved since then. lol.........I Godzilla is playing the game right now in my room with me...our friend Allison is watching him play and he is on the forth disc and almost at the end of the game so now I am going to watch him.

Weekly Blogg: Spore

Spore is a game that I just purchased and is made by the creators of the Sims. It takes what was the original aspect of the game and advances it way beyond that. In this game, the player is allowed to create a creature and evolve it through Five time periods. The periods start with the Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilized, then lastly Space. The First two stages allow for the player to evolve his or her creation and the last three are about creating alliances with others or creating the ultimate empire. The player has nearly endless options for costomizing the creation the player makes. Once the player enters the more advanced stages, Creation of buildings, cars, planes, boats, and even space ships is allowed. The last stage even allows for the player to explore the Milky Way and colonize planets and even destroy them. There are endless ways to play this game and I see it lasting for a long time into the future.

Second Life video

The movie that we watched in class was kinda dull in my point of view. But, Will try hard to not focus on the negative in this post but rather what was good. I think the way the game designers set up the game was very creative and unique. The ability for game players to do what they want with the land they have is very interesting. This allows for player to be creative and do what they want with their creations. This is what I believe to be the key aspect of Second Life. With out this feature, Second Life would be another online game that attempts to mimic real life Socialization.

Reaction to video

I was really surprised by the space that Second Life would take up on an actual CD/DVD. The fact that it would take up multiple terabytes amazes me. The reason that I am so amazed by this is because most of those multiple terabytes of information are all user created objects, buildings, and land. It is mind blowing that the game started out very simply and grew exponentially in terms of byte usage, all because of the users that play Second Life. Adding to the mind blowing-ness, all of the objects that are created, can be extremely detailed, and the process that one has to go through to create such objects, I find, is extremely difficult and time consuming. The fact that an online game like Second Life could grow to the size that it is now in such a short time is almost too much to comprehend. This is what I found most interesting about the video.

the video from class

the video wasn't very intresting but I did find the part about how they turned the atoms into prims. That was pretty sweet but I am not really in to all of that technical talk. I also liked the part about how they left second life totally in the hands of the players and didnt create all of the buildings for the players. I also liked how they talked about making the world's sky move continuously. Which makes the world feel more realistic then worlds like WoW.

Internet = A new creative outlet?

In middle school I discovered something: I could express myself creatively through the internet. No longer was I limited to email and IM, it was then that I discovered forums. Through this I was able to learn how to post pictures of my own creation. And now I've had a lot of practice with creating graphics directly through the computer. The internet allows us to express ourselves in a variety of ways, whether it be through music or art. There are tons of art and music sites that focus on the everyday person, rather then a celebrity or someone who is famous. For example, one of my friends has a guild on GaiaOnline that is entirely dedicated to art. All aspects of art! From drawing to music, and design to writing. Along with this new talent is discovered, a long with a realization that some of us lack talent. -_- But instead of looking down at this I believe we should use it to improve ourselves. I think that posting our creations on the internet allows use to get instant feedback from people who otherwise might be biased because of their like or dislike of us. These people, who don't know us, are able to look at our art from a less biased viewpoint. Unfortunately with posting your works on the internet comes a major risk: stolen art. I always find someway to mark my art but hows that supposed to stop a person from claiming it as their own? If you can accept this risk then posting your creative work on the internet will have and does have a lot of benefit.

The picture is something I created on a whim one day in a program called Gimp. The gif animation is something I created for said friend's art guild.

Always Growing...

One of the concepts of the video that I found the most interesting was the idea of Second Life always growing. In the video he mentioned Second Life started out looking like a ‘shanty town’, this I find hard to see. There are so many different sims, and I haven’t stumbled across one that looks the same. Along with these areas there are items created by the users and put together by them too to create a believable environment for your avatar to explore. The possibilities when it comes to creating are almost endless as you manipulate prims to your liking. I enjoy making something entirely abstract from what started out as a simple geometric shape. However, there is some limitations. Many of the areas having building disallowed to prevent griefers from littering up their sim and causing them to put a lot of work in keeping it tidy. If you want to build I suggest looking for a place that offers building like a sandbox or group land. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as you build: First, respect the land and the people in it. If you don’t then you might just get booted from it and second, clean up when your finished unless you have permission to leave your creation in the land or you own the land yourself. This helps the sim look clean and tidy for other users, and frees up prim space.

The pictures are from land owned by Trilegy Corporation, that allows its members to build in it's provided free land.

Bucketheadness

A long time ago, in the summer of 1969, there was a preacher man. This preacher stumbled upon a helpless infant. He named him brian, and cared for him as his own son. He read his son many books, and once, while reciting lines from the bible to brian, he noticed that brians eyes were like that of a demon form the abyss. This scared the preacher so much that he cast him out of his house and condemned him to live in the preachers chicken coop with his chickens. He would toss KFC buckets filled with chicken bones that brian would eat and make grotesque sculptures with. Around the age of ten, the preacher tossed a very old and abused acoustic guitar into the coop. Brian picked up the guitar and instantly was making very beautiful music with it. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the preacher only heard evil sounds coming from the instrument. Brian soon discovered cinema, and by lloking through the gaps in the chicken coop walls, he could make out the screen of a drive-in theater. This was no ordinary drive-in theater. This drive-in only played movies of terror and horror. Brian could not hear any of the audio coming from the theater, so he made his own soundtracks to the movies with his guitar. His favorite movie was the texas chainsaw massacre. Many times he saw this movie, and was so influenced by it that he made a mask for himself out of the chicken bones and a hat out of the KFC bucket. This is the fateful day that buckethead was born. It was on this day that Buckethead broke out of the coop, and was discovered by the world to be the greatest guitarist on the face of the earth. Many years passed, and although fairly unknown by most of the world, he still had a fair amount of followers. And then, on the night of September 25, 2008, he came to minneapolis, MN. It was a fairly average show for buckethead, a mosh pit here and there, people gaping in awe at his tremendous ability. Near the end of the show he decided to do the unthinkable. He came to the front of the stage, and, while soloing with his left hand, shook the hands of three young men in the front row. These three lucky guys were Brett Hiemenz, Luke Schwanke, and Tyler Kapus. It was glorious. His hands were like that of an angel.

Excited

Ok Today I am excited because I have some more pictures.  These pictures are of my new avatar.  I really do like him.  Ok I am meditating in these first two pages and in the last one I am in a spacestation that I found that is about 860 feet in the air the spaceship is called Space Station Alpha. I am having a lot of fun exploring Second life I have made some new friends and I am really liking my classmates.  It seems like two of them need me  to explain how this world works. But we are learning to use it togeather and it is cool. I guess that sometimes peeople just need other people to help them pass a class or something. lol

  Anyway I am having fun and I will show you more pictures from my adventures in SL. I will be back with more.  

I am back and better then ever. Man it isnt every day that I get to become a full metal dragon. lol Any way I have been finding more and more freebie lands because thats how I got my character to the way it is now. My dragon can breath fire and apperantly shoot out laser beams  but I cant figure out how to do it. I am keeping at it though so when I figure it out I will let you know about it. but from what I have read about it, its mainly for show and thats about it. Any way I beleive that despite every thing my classmates say about this world isn't true. if you can get into WOW then this should be a piece of cake. Any way that is all for today.

The Big WoW or the small Acclaim games

BEFORE I START COMPARING THESE: THIS IS NOT A "WoW is better than anything" post
This is a comparison of a widely populated server versus a smaller populated game/server.
For example, a lot of you know about WoW... I should say all of you actually, but I know something like Maplestory or one of Acclaim's games are less known than WoW. We'll say your a typical MMO player and have no clue about any MMO other than WoW. I play in a cworded server, no matter where I go there are people,and I myself am not a social soul online. So I must deal with gankers, Kill stealers and other idiots online. I would just have to suck it up or get on out of my schedule to be alone.
Now, think about a less populated game, such as Maplestory ( I know it has a lot of people to and not the best choice but it still doesn't have as many people as WoW does.) I get to choose between seven servers versus WoW's 20-30 something servers, but there are less people and since Maplestory isn't big main steam here, it doesn't attract the morons and fools you would be forced to play with on a big population server. There are enough people that you can meet and interact with others but you can't get too picky, and yet, someone who you can befriend and have fun with online.
The economy is another thing that is directly affected by this in more ways than one. If it's a big game, farmers will go to the trouble of gathering money/items of value to overflow and overthrow the market so that you have to pay through the nose to get what you want. Also, more people=more competition and more selling audience. So, it's a double-edged sword, low cheap economy or high priced awesome items. I personally, would love the former of the two, so that required or necessary items are easy to get to advance but the pretty items that most of the class values are very high priced or not even there. If you follow my posts (if your reading this, you better, or your just a fool all together for only looking at a page in a book) you'd know I'm a bit of a treasure hunter and I search out for valuable items rather than having them delivered to me on a silver platter.

Prim=atom? Ruh?

From the video that we observed in class, I can't stop thinking about how he classifies a prim in the game to an atom in the real life. To me, I can't fathom that comparison however anyone tells me. Something we can't see or feel that makes up the world compared to something we can easily shape, change color, twist, and make our own. From what I just said, it sounds like we get to play God, not until we go to scripting where we can actually make this object we create into something that can reply from touch or time ( all depends on the creator/scripter).
But, think back to what else he said, he mentioned he was supposed to be a physics man, and yet this breaks all laws of physics we can attempt in this world and yet he says this is a "sufficient" second world. I guess from the eyes of someone who knows coding languages, designing programs, and real world chemistry,physics, and then try to combine them is illogical.
I also understand that it's not our world and I should suspend my disbelief while in the game but this is just a copy of the what my disbelief is! I can't just say this is realistic and make up my own version of realistic like he says, it the definition and true form of Chaos, where so many mind come together and are not limited. So instead of challenging what he said about atoms and prims being the same, I think I more challenge his thought of Second Life being a virtual equivalent of our world. Because it's impossible to have stuff in Second Life in the real world until we realize two more dimensions and have the power to create stuff that can even hope to rival what the human mind can think of.

Inside Second Life

As i watched the clip, i was taught that the basic concept of the worlds physics was based on a simple atom. Not atoms that create our world but the create Second Life's world. Its a simple box. A box that you take and create an environment with. Second Life is based on simulation.

Most of the objects created in second life where created by second life users. An investor that posted a blog about second life commented on how he thought that second life was not mainstream enough for our society, unlike World of Warcraft.

Second life is all interconnected. You can walk from one place to an other or fly. Second life is based on the concept of "One World" that everyone can be a part of. Allowing anyone to created and add to the world of Second Life. There is a "magical" interaction between users. Because you can create yourself to look as you want and you have chat communication option, people in real life create friendships through this game. Its as if your right next to the person but your not. That's what attracts so many people in this world.

second life video

Well watching the second life video was pretty interesting. I was interested by the atomic system that they talked about.  using the cubes they created the whole world of second life. that since they couldn't make atoms they made digital atoms. they were mainly talking about how it would become physical due to the physic's engine. then they used a scripting language to it so anyone can use it. I found it very interesting because I could never do anything like that. But the techniques that he showed us I find are fascinating.  they made the clouds out of a fluid system. the whole second life uses 1 million mega volts. Its interesting but very complex. I liked how they made it like a lego land. where they lay down the land and then let everyone else create everything in the land. 

   I really  like how they made second life sort of like the real world. And not so much like world of warcraft. I think that they did make a good choice about making the world like that. Because It really allows for interactivity between players and it allows for more friends. I must say though It was funny to see how the former C.E.O of second life had to say about his the game that he had helped to create.

Friday Afternoon (McCain\Palin

It was on the 19Th of September, this last Friday, that i carpooled with two of my friends to see the McCain and Palin rally at the Blaine airport. Now that is an experience that I recommend to anyone. To see the potential President and Vice President of the United States is a very cool experience.

As we walked in, the airport was full of security, including the secret service and a few different city police officials. Have you ever seen the secret service in real life? They look and act like how "Hollywood" portrays them. They have the black suits with the earpieces and they are all huge men.

Outside of the airport about .5 miles away, a huge group of protesters where gathered together protesting issues on "peace," and "The War in Iraq and Middle East." The protesters took school buses for transportation. They where shouting out certain profanities and other such things.

It was quite the experience and I'm really glad i went. I will leave you with this.. I went for the experience and to gain some sort of knowledge behind McCain and Palin's beliefs.

Halo: MLG

Back in the days of Halo 2, Several friends and I decided to start our own Halo team. Our goal was to attend the local tournaments and try to win some money or other prizes. The team consisted of four friends that have know each other for years and know each others play style. The first tournament we went to we dident win but did very well for our first time ever playing against people at or above our own skill level. We ended up replaceing one of our team members after the first tournament, but that was only a minor setback. Our second time was our best. We placed third. We should have placed second, but lost the game by one kill. (I had the kill but my friend took a sniper shot to the face for the final kill.) We got free entry to the next tournament and placed third aswell. Even though we never made it to the major league, we still had alot of fun and I wouldent mind going back to some tournamets for halo 3.

If I had 1000 Lindins.

If I had 1000 lindins what would I do? Most of you would assume that I would purchase enough weapons to take out a group of Graboids (if you dont get this joke, for the love of God, watch Tremors.) you would be incorrect. I would also not choose to purchase a large spacecraft or fast car. I would purchase my own building. I would want a nice and tall building from which I start my own company in Second Life to make a pathetic attempt to generate real money. If this wasent an option, I would but my own island and become its ruler.

Zombies Attack!!!

If the apocalypse rolled across the earth and people started becoming zombies, there would be shotgun in hand. As we ran screaming  saw the blood soaked sidewalks. We wondered what the hell was going on. I grabbed my shotgun and as many rounds as I could carry. I led my friends out the back door of the next door neighbors house and went one by one. Everyone had the most random weapons such as: forks, knives, pool sticks, and much more. We secretly snuck from tree to tree to try and see what type of monster could rip peoples limbs off. We decided to go to the pub across town. That was one of the safest places we could think of. Running into danger is what we were ready for. We ran into zombie after zombie cutting off their heads and shooting them in between the eyes. As we gave into knowing we probably wouldn't survive we all decided to get completely belligerent and do a target practice from the roof of the bar. As we shot the local heroes and everyone we despised in the processed we saw Woopie Goldburg moaning and walking in a slow and unbalanced way. As we put down bets to see who could kill her first we took back a couple of beers and said, "Take it up the. . " BANG! And thats what would happen.

If I Had A Million Dollars

If I were to have any amount of money it Second Life I would have one million lindens. I know its a lot but seriously if i had a choice why not? Once I had all that money I would just gamble it away. Then once I made a bunch of money from gambling I would buy all the coolest things I could.

If I had a large amoung of lindens....=O

Well, there are two main things. *Tangy smiles* Heh. I would upload and shop! I love to create things so by learning how to create clothes I have found a way to express myself in the world of SL. I'm even tempeted to sell items, which I'm trying to do with my shirt right now, not working out so well. D= I want to learn how to make prim things....Anyways I would go out and buy the stuff I've had my eye on, like making my avatar a vampire with the Bloodlines system. I'm going to by their hud and wormwood potion, because I want to be able to choose my sire. Dx You know how I said I wanted to upload? I don't want to do this to create clothes but I want to upload all of my Hushy songs!!!! Why? Simply because I love the band. I also kind of want to start a group for them....the problem is finding fellow fans! Then we could have our own land dedicated to the group and it would be awesome. I've got a picture of the female lead in my textures that I plan on using to make a wall in my home dedicated to the band. =) Basically if I got a good amount of lindens, it would dissapear quickly.

What have learned so far?

I didn't know what to expect from the class this semester - especially teaching inside a virtual world. I knew that the normal issues (crowd control, focus, etc) would be important, but there was also the technological side to overcome. What happens when only some of the class can access the technology? What if there is an issue with the computers in the lab where we're teaching?

There have been some big technical issues, to be sure. Second Life certainly has more than its fair share of problems, and their servers tend to get overloaded when there are a lot of logins - which happens to be right when class meets. When I first began exploring SL, a high usage was about 20,000 at once. There was a lot of talk about the 30,000 barrier. Would the technology even allow such a thing? Today it is not unusual to see 70,000 logged onto the grid when class starts!

What does it mean if there are server issues on the Linden Lab side? Well, everything is effected: inventory, clothing, appearance, building and editing...it makes the experience quite frustrating, especially for new residents (like our class!).

On SCSU's side, we've had to deal with an odd bug in the cache that causes our computers to think that SL is already running. SL is limited to running in only one window (although there are methods of getting around this) and so we've had to learn how to delete our caches before we logon. The downside to this is that it takes a lot longer for everything to download.

In the classroom we've had some rocky moments. I've been very close to banning laptops in class - far too often it isn't a technical issue with SL that has caused a student to be unable to logon, it's been Spore, or some other application. I'm hopeful that those issues won't rear their ugly head again, but I'm on the lookout!

Once everyone gets logged on, it's utter chaos...wonderful and disturbing! In any learning situation it's difficult to manage 12 different personalities who learn at different rates (and in different ways) but for the most part we've managed to get most of the tasks completed. As I expected, some enjoy the social aspects, some enjoy the building, some creating clothing...

I could go on and on - but the bottom line is that I've loved every minute of it and I hope that the students have too! Now I'm headed back online...SL keeps crashing as I try to return the hundreds of objects that have been left all over my land :)