All Around the Grid

 Ok, that blog topic is kind of lame.  Maybe it needs some more brainstorming.   Something I have become a bit aware of, the more I play through this game, its a lot larger than I expected.  I am actually not entirely sure how some people are so far along because I feel like I have been playing it a LOT and as near as I can tell, I am maybe 1/4th of the way through the current content.  Maybe I am way wrong, but I am on I think Chapter 2, and I want to say there are 8 chapters available currently.  I am not sure, if only there was some way to find put this information somewhere.   I am also only like, halfway through the Pass.  I didn't buy the Pass, I considered it but I am not real sure its worthwhile.  As near as I can tell, there are no cosmetics in the pass, which feels like an incredibly missed opportunity for a game entirely themed around cosmetics.  You don't even get any premium currency to by shop cosmetics.  You do get so...

  So, around a week or so ago, I got a random notification that my app, Infinity Nikki, had been installed on my phone.  I had not installed that app, but apparently at some point had pre-registered to play this game.  It's probably a good thing, because I had completely forgotten about it and probably would have never bothered trying it.  I then proceeded to discover that it's also available on PC, which is way better than playing on my phone for this sort of game, so I moved over there. But enough about that, I had forgot about this game, and had no idea what I was in for.  The looping video (with it's kind of annoying theme song on repeat) during the initial download made it look like a sort of 3D world of puzzles and mini games.  Sounds like something I would enjoy for sure.  The visuals all seemed very nice as well, very vibrant and lush.  There was also some sort of transforming between clothing that seemed to have abilities based on outfit...

Recently I've been branching out into other virtual worldish games.  Not straight out 3D chat rooms like Second Life is, but games that are a bit more than just "this game."  Games that are sort of a middle ground between being a game and being a VW.  Often they have creator tools and a lot of player generated content, but still have a lot of emphasis on "play" versus social.  One of these games is Roblox.  Another that probably falls into this category is Minecraft, though I've been playing that off and on for a long while now.  Fortnite seems to sort of fall into this category as well. One I recently came across an interesting platform called Core.  Or maybe it's core Games.  Honestly, the name is kind of a little too generic, which makes it hard to look into and search on.  I noticed it as "Coming soon" in the Epic Games store, but it's already available on the website, so I signed up and checked it out.  It's actually changed recent...

Better late than never I suppose.  Last post, like 2 years ago, I talked about how to set up a Google Form to track data in a Google Sheet for use in LSL scripts.  It's very similar to how you would make a GET call in a PHP web form.  Anyway, I'm here to post a Vendor Script that is designed to work with the Google set up to track sales.  The form values you want to create in the Google Form are: Avatar, Location, Price, and Item. The script is available below, you can also have one delivered through the Marketplace .  I have used this vendor script in world but I didn't build the base Vendor functionality, so I would test it out with a cheap price and a friend or an alt to make sure it's working properly.  I take no responsibility if this screws up and you lose L$.  This script should be placed in the root prim of a vendor along with an informational Notecard of some kind, and a single item to be distributed on payment.  You'll need to box ...

I'm using Google Docs now with Second Life for tracking a few different things, and the basic set up is the same, so I've decided to just make this it's own post, that I can reference later.  For this example, I'm using aspects of the sales tracker script, but it can be adapted for any script. Google Forms can be easily used to track various inworld activities in Second Life.  I am currently using it to track visitors to my store and for tracking sales in my store.  It's free, it doesn't require running or setting up a webserver or PHP or SQL.  I will say up front, I have no idea if there are API limits at all to this.  My use is extremely low traffic.  I suspect that, since it's Google, it's pretty robust. Firstly, go to your google drive, at drive.google.com .  Create a new form and name it something useful.  In this case, I used "Gique Sales Tracker". Change the default included field to "Short Answer" and give it a usef...

I've tried a pretty wide variety of MESH bodies, but I've not really stepped into the realm of MESH heads yet.  Partially because they all are pretty expensive.  Also, there's a pretty large variety of options and it's not quite as clear on which is "best for me".  The body part felt pretty easy, for the most part, they are a layer a MESH that lays over your standard avatar skeleton to sort of smooth things out.  There are nuances in there, but picking one and then adjusting it with the standard body sliders felt pretty straight forward. Heads feel different.  Like, it would be easy to end up spending 2000+ L$ on something that I couldn't possibly make work for my "preferred style".  It's not clear to me how much these heads can be adjusted using the standard sliders.  The head and face are kind of a big deal, at least to me, as part of the identity of my Avatar.  It's what I look like.  I use it in SL, I have all of my values written d...

I've been wanting to explore some other Virtual Worldy environments outside of Second Life and OpenSIM a bit, and recently went through a quick look at Spacial OS, using their tutorial which can be found here .  Spacial OS kind of feels more like a basic game engine/server than a real virtual world environment.  You don't really develop in world or anything, but it is something that can be used to develop and deploy a multiplayer online environment. I didn't get too detailed into developing anything, though it uses Unity, which is a pretty common platform these days.  I did run through and deploy a world that I could connect to, and somewhat more fun, I used a remote computer for the server and my laptop for the client.  I had to adapt the tutorial a bit, during the authorization phase by copying and pasting the URLs around and entering the IP of the server instead of "local host" but it worked out easily enough.  I deployed the server end on a Windows 7 VPS...