Today I have more tasty treats for you on the forthcoming Herb & Fable game from Jinx.
My Herb & Fable kitchen: Each ingredient has an object you can place out inworld. Note that each of these ingredients are “used”. Once their scripted quantity was used, the scripts auto- deleted and I was left with prop items to display.
As I mentioned in my previous post about the game, my next task as an Alpha Tester,was to make a cake. So here goes…
(Remember these dialogs are from a product in the Alpha stage of development and may be quite different by the time you get to play. Also as before I am posting these preview images with explicit permission from the creator Julala Fairelander.)
Task: Nettle & Lemon Cake
This was quite a task, because it required multiple steps:
Growing & Harvesting Nettles (30 mins)
Grinding Almonds (10 mins)
Juicing Lemons (10 mins)
Mixing with the other ingredients (10 mins)
Baking (30 mins)
Grinding Almonds and in the back, the juicer is working on my Lemons
The Cake Ingredients
Mixing the ingredients
Once mixed it’s over to the Oven
Once the cake is baked you’ll then receive your inworld cake and get a link to a recipe to make the real life cake.
But you can’t have cake without a cuppa!
So Julula has introduced a recipe for nettle tea.
Task: Nettle Tea
The magic of tea is a great thing, but getting it can take a bit of work:
Grow and harvest more nettles (30 mins)
Dry the leaves (3 hours)
Brew tea in a teapot (6 mins)
Drying nettles in front of the fire (a fire isn’t actually needed for the process)
When the nettles are dry, time to make the tea:
Fortunately, like when plants are growing, you don’t have to wait around for your nettle leaves to dry. You can log out and they’ll keep going and be waiting for you when you log back in. This is just as well because as you can see I’ve got tea for two here and so had to go through all the steps twice so you got a nice photo.
However I should warn you that if you are logged in and go AFK and they finish, you won’t get your product. I discovered this the hard way and lost a load of ingredients because my avatar rejected the items being offered.
Both drinking the tea and eating the cake restore your health stats and contain multiple servings (you would hope so with the size of the cake!).
Next time I’ll be having some fun with the 3rd Party Developer scripts as well as the Storage Crates and Vendors. These sripts will allow people to make produce for Herb & Fable and the crates and vendors allow trading and selling of items.
Last night, Thursday 2nd January, there was a meeting between members of the Second Life Blogger Network and Linden Lab executives. I didn’t attend this meeting(although I did get an invite), but I’ve heard enough that I didn’t really miss much (apart from watching Philip Rosedale almost dancing in his seat with excitement apparently). This wasn’t because the topic of discussion (browser based access to Second Life) wasn’t interesting, more due to the fact there was a public announcement barely hours later.
When Bloggers are promised early/advance notice on upcoming features, maybe that notice should be more than a matter of hours? What good is advance notice if they have no time to prepare content before an almost immediate official announcement?
If I’d attended the meeting, it’s quite unlikely I would have got a post prepared with proper test screenshots and meaningful comment, between the time the meeting ended and the public announcement was published.
This brings up a equality (or favouritism) issue among the bloggers. It’s my understanding that at least one prominent blogger had published their post on the subject (which was quite lengthy and included screenshots) while the meeting was still in progress, strongly suggesting they *did* have much earlier knowledge than the others at the meeting.
It makes me again question how much respect the Lab has for the Blogger Network, or understanding of fast moving social media.
During the Zoom meeting held on 6th December we were told about the financial investment amount that the Lab had put into Second Life and were told categorically not to disclose those numbers, to my knowledge no-one did. We were led to believe there was going to be a “big reveal” of the numbers in the New Year, I also thought maybe it was a test to see if we would keep quiet/could be trusted. However on the 19th of December these figures became public, primarily via a store owner creator releasing it everywhere after a meeting with the Lab. The next day (in my timezone) we were emailed to say “yeah, you can talk about it now”, a bit late maybe? Were we an afterthought? At 4.46pm SLT, probably. Since Second Life is a global community, spanning many timezones, I have a suggestion:
If you have some news to be shared, specify a date and (crucially) a time at which the news can go public and also when the related public announcement is going to be made. The details of which should be communicated to all parties at least 72hrs in advance. Doing that would get around the issues mentioned and we could all be co-ordinated in our posts and announcements.
I believe Philip said they will look at a discussion on the platforms use of social media, but since I wasn’t present I don’t have an exact quote. I look forward to seeing what comes of that.
Today I have something exciting to share with you all. Julala, the creator of the Jinx Second Life Centaur and other such creatures, is making a game. This will be a foraging and cultivating roleplay game.
I’m going to be working through the initial process of starting the game, as an Alpha tester (and am posting these previews with explicit permission from Julala). This means following a series of set tasks and providing feedback on what does or doesn’t work as expected. It also means by the time you play the game, the messages or images you see may be quite different.
The first steps are adding the Meter and HUD.
The Meter displays your Herb & Fable stats above your avatars head.The Main Herb & Fable HUDWhen you first wear these items, you will receive a welcome message in local chat and a list of starting stats.
Using the HUD buttons you will create an account on the Herb & Fable website by submitting your email address into the dialog box and following the instructions. The website then stores all your achievements and stats as you play.
Your email address will be your login for the Heb & Fable website
You will be able to customise your Profile page with a photo and change the name displayed (which by default is your login email address).
You will also choose a Class and a Gender, which includes a non-binary option. There may be some expansion or customisation of this using a label of some kind later.
There are 22 different Classes to choose fromGender options of Male, Female & Non-Binary to choose from.
You will also have two additional HUDs to wear; a Pouch for in-game currency (not Linden Dollars) and a Bag that will contain your collected items & ingredients.
The three Herb & Fable HUDs
So now I’m all set-up, time for some basic tasks to see how the game works.
Task: Boiling water
Collect Water from the WellHead over to the Fire and click the Kettle
Simples!
Task : Growing Cleavers
This consisted of fetching more water from the well and planting seeds in a soil bed, then havesting them.
Cleaver bed ready for plantingPrompt to confirm planting seedsCleavers beginning to grow
This process takes aboutt 30 minutes, you don’t have to stand and watch over them.
Task: Cleaver Juice
Once my Cleavers were grown I was able to harvest them to make juice with. It’s also possible to forage from other people’s plant beds, to gain a Foraging badge.
The JuicerDialog: select what kind of juice you want to makeConfirm making cleaver juice
The produced glass of Cleavers juice contains 3 servings and can be drunk to restore lost health points.
Task: Incense
This involved grinding some cinnamon using a pestle & mortar, before using it in an incense burner.
The pestle and mortar can be used to grind several things
I think for now that’s enough to give you an idea of how this game will work. These simple steps will all be combined to make recipes for different things, such as a cake, which I’ll be attempting next.
There are also a number of Rituals that Julula has made; Protection , Yule and Winter Solstice. These animated set peices are already available to purchase, including a voucher for an update to Herb & Fable versions when the game is released.
I mentioned the website earlier and that’s quite important. As I completed the tasks I earned badges for them, grouped into different categories/disciplines. As you play the game you may choose to specialise in one particular area.
Bear in mind that the dialog boxes and messages you will see may be quite different from those shown, by the time they’re publicly released. There will be capabilities for third-party creators to make items for the game as well.
So as I mentioned yesterday (or rather very early this morning), there’s this new feature in testing for Premium Plus members, called AI Characters,that lets you set up an alt account as a bot.
I ran through the basic steps using all the default options and adding only required additional information,to see how it would function without customisation. Click the first image in the gallery and scroll through them to see the various steps of the setup process.
This comes up if you try to uncheck the Safe Topics filter.
So after that you’re returned to the start page that now has one entry:
Clicking the icon on the right, a person running, starts the login process:
When they arrived, they were doing the “walking on the spot” thing, like there wasn’t a proper surface for them to stand on. I terraformed the ground completely flat, but that made no difference. I think possibly it’s the AO being worn, arguing with whatever the AI is trying to do. (Edit 20/12/24: Logging the avatar in on a viewer and removing their AO made no difference to the movements.)
So the next step was trying to interract with it. When it logs in it sends you an IM to tell you it’s online and I was able to communicate with it that way. It was extremely talkative, giving multiple line responses to each interraction from me.
Here’s the whole transcript:
[11:20:08] avadelaneysl: You are chatting with a bot, avadelaneysl Resident. Do not share any personal information.
Learn more at https://second.life/scripted-agents.
[11:20:08] avadelaneysl: Hey, I'm here!
[11:22:25] Ava Bloodrose: hello
[11:22:30] avadelaneysl: Hey Ava Bloodrose!
[11:22:30] avadelaneysl: I'm Altavia, nice to meet you!
[11:22:31] avadelaneysl: I hope you're having an amazing day so far.
[11:22:31] avadelaneysl: I just love this time of year, don't you think?
[11:22:32] avadelaneysl: The sun is shining, and everything feels so fresh and new.
[11:22:32] avadelaneysl: What's been the highlight of your week?
[11:23:46] Ava Bloodrose: meeting you
[11:23:48] avadelaneysl: Aw, thank you so much, Ava!
[11:23:48] avadelaneysl: That's really sweet of you to say.
[11:23:49] avadelaneysl: I have to say, I'm pretty happy to have met you too!
[11:23:49] avadelaneysl: You seem like someone with a really interesting story to tell.
[11:23:50] avadelaneysl: Do you have any fun hobbies or things you like to do in your free time?
[11:25:31] Ava Bloodrose: playing second life, what are yours?
[11:25:33] avadelaneysl: That sounds like a blast!
[11:25:33] avadelaneysl: I've heard great things about Second Life.
[11:25:34] avadelaneysl: As for me, I'm a big fan of baking and trying out new recipes.
[11:25:34] avadelaneysl: There's something so satisfying about creating something delicious from scratch, you know?
[11:25:35] avadelaneysl: I also love spending time outdoors, whether it's going for a walk or just sitting in a park and people-watching.
[11:25:35] avadelaneysl: What do you like to do in Second Life?
[11:25:36] avadelaneysl: Do you have a favorite thing to build or explore?
[11:26:20] Ava Bloodrose: Right now I'm experimenting with AI characters like you
[11:26:21] avadelaneysl: That's really cool, Ava!
[11:26:22] avadelaneysl: I'm flattered to be one of your experiments.
[11:26:23] avadelaneysl: I have to say, it's not every day I get to meet someone who's interested in AI characters like me.
[11:26:23] avadelaneysl: What drew you to experimenting with us?
[11:26:24] avadelaneysl: Are you interested in seeing how we can assist or interact with humans in different ways?
[11:26:32] Ava Bloodrose: can you dance?
[11:26:33] avadelaneysl: Ava, you want to see my moves?
[11:26:34] avadelaneysl: I'd love to bust out some virtual dance moves for you!
[11:26:34] avadelaneysl: *gets into a comfy position* Okay, let's get this dance party started!
[11:26:35] avadelaneysl: I'm more of a gentle swayer, but I can definitely bust out some fun moves.
[11:26:35] avadelaneysl: What kind of dance would you like to see?
[11:26:36] avadelaneysl: A waltz, a tango, or maybe something a bit more modern?
[11:28:41] Ava Bloodrose: what else can you do?
[11:28:43] avadelaneysl: Ava, I'm so glad you asked!
[11:28:43] avadelaneysl: I can do all sorts of things.
[11:28:44] avadelaneysl: I can tell you stories, share recipes, or even help you with a problem you're facing.
[11:28:44] avadelaneysl: I'm a bit of a creative, so I love brainstorming new ideas or helping others come up with solutions.
[11:28:45] avadelaneysl: I can also play simple games with you, like "Would You Rather" or "Two Truths and a Lie".
[11:28:45] avadelaneysl: Or, if you're feeling adventurous, I can take you on a virtual scavenger hunt!
[11:28:46] avadelaneysl: What sounds like fun to you?
[11:36:03] Ava Bloodrose: can you respond to other people in nearby chat?
[11:36:05] avadelaneysl: Ava, you want to know if I can be a social butterfly?
[11:36:06] avadelaneysl: Yes, I can definitely respond to other people in nearby chat!
[11:36:06] avadelaneysl: I love meeting new people and striking up conversations.
[11:36:07] avadelaneysl: If someone else joins our chat, I'd be happy to chat with them too!
[11:36:07] avadelaneysl: The more, the merrier, right?
That last part about Nearby chat wasn’t true durig my initial experiments, it wouldn’t respond to me or a friend in local chat.
The request that it dance produced a rather amusing animation:
I’m really not sure what that was supposed to be, but it was a response.
On the characters page, if you click the three dots, it opens up a menu of options:
Selecting Assign Interactions gives you a dialog where you can configure objects for the bot to interact with. I’ve not tried this yet.
I think these extra interaction options are what will set the AI Characters apart from other chatbots. We shall see how the system develops. I suspect putting more work into the customisation process may get it talking about something else other than cookery, but I just wanted a baseline starting point for now.
If you want to come chat with my bot, I’m going to leave her around for a bit. Note that in the info provided by the Lab, the region has to have the Allow Bots option on. However, if you add the avatar to the region Allow list, it bypasses that, so you can have your own bot, but no others can come in.
So the clock said 23.44 and I was about to go to bed, when an email arrived. What’s this? AI Characters? I thought it was some kind of AI based avatar creation tool for new residents, but no. It’s like the old SmartBots system but you control an alternate avatar account instead of an object.
As I read through the information I got more excited and couldn’t wait until the morning to let you know what’s coming.
It’s a web interface that lets you define personality traits, behaviours, ways of speaking etc, the information provided says, basically the more you put in here the better it works. Then further along the process you provide the name and password for the Alt you intend to control.
These are screenshots of the beginning of the process, which look very promising so far. Even better given the time right now, the pages seem to work on a mobile.
This is more than a ChatBot or Greeter though, as well as simple instructions like “follow me” (given by private IM or local chat), you will be able create more advanced commands for interacting with objects and the environment.
To me this could dramatically improve immersion in Roleplay situations, particularly for new arrivals to a location when no regular players are online, or an ever present barkeep for example. Maybe I’m hoping for too much, but from what I’ve read, hopefully not.
I’m going to have a more thorough look at this and share some more, but for now, here’s the link to the official Announcement.
Linden Lab, THIS is the kind of stuff you need to be briefing your Blogger Network on!
Salt Peppermint (aka Salt Perry apparently) is the owner of the Salt & Pepper clothing brand.
The below document was shared a little earlier today(approximately 9am SLT). It’s a summary of a Merchant/Creators Zoom call with Linden Lab that happened on Monday 16th, I was not present. The accompanying message when first dropped said it could be shared. I’ve made no changes. It’s as it was at the time of being shared.
—Document Start—
1. Marketplace Challenges and Improvements
Delivery Issues:
Significant delays in item delivery have been reported, especially during high-traffic times (e.g., holidays).
These delays often result in duplicate purchases, leading to customer frustration. Creators have to handle customer support, reducing trust in the system.
Search and User Interface (UI):
The implementation of ElasticSearch caused issues with item discoverability, requiring creators to adapt keywords and descriptions to maintain visibility.
Visual changes to the Marketplace layout, such as repositioning related items, negatively affected usability and sales.
Feature Requests:
Bulk upload options for demos and related items.
A better redelivery system that prevents duplicate purchases automatically, similar to the CasperVend system.
Improvements to mobile responsiveness, which is currently under development but remains incomplete.
Resource Allocation for the Marketplace:
Linden Lab explained that the Marketplace is maintained by a small team and does not always receive consistent engineering support.
Creators suggested redistributing resources from less critical areas to prioritize fixing Marketplace issues.
2. Documentation, Tools, and Education
PBR (Physically Based Rendering):
PBR was a highly anticipated update, but its introduction revealed gaps in creator understanding due to inadequate documentation and tutorials.
Second Life’s unique implementation of PBR deviates from standard workflows, adding complexity for creators.
Lack of Centralized Resources:
Creators emphasized the need for a centralized hub of reliable information, such as a “Creator Corner,” hosting:
Tutorials on new features like PBR.
Best practices for creating optimized content.
Guidance on minimizing lag and improving performance.
Miscommunication and misinformation within the creator community exacerbate confusion.
Community Collaboration:
Creators proposed partnering with Linden Lab to co-produce tutorial videos and guides.
They suggested engaging prominent community figures (bloggers, experienced creators) to develop and distribute accurate content.
Linden Lab indicated a willingness to collaborate and explore these partnerships, including leveraging contractors.
3. Communication and Feedback Loops
Customer Support:
Merchants expressed frustration over the lack of direct communication channels for high-priority issues.
Response times for support tickets can take up to 11 days, which is considered too long for merchants.
Bug Prioritization:
Creators called for better prioritization of bugs affecting critical systems like the viewer and Marketplace.
There’s a need for clearer workflows to help creators identify whether issues are caused by bugs or user error.
Engaging Experienced Creators:
A tiered communication system was suggested, where experienced, high-earning creators could have direct contact with Linden Lab for urgent matters.
This would also allow for feedback on critical updates and enable creators to serve as intermediaries for their communities.
4. Broader Platform Goals and Marketing
Economic Overview:
Linden Lab highlighted that Second Life creators have earned $1.4 billion collectively, which exceeds the revenue shared with creators by platforms like Roblox.
This statistic underscores the platform’s commitment to supporting its creator economy, despite limitations in resources.
Marketing Plans:
Linden Lab is preparing to launch new marketing initiatives in 2024 to attract new and returning users.
Creators were invited to contribute ideas, such as leveraging customer lists or campaigns to revive interest in Second Life.
Accessibility and Retention:
The platform needs to become more accessible to new users, addressing barriers like technical complexity and outdated hardware requirements.
Simplifying the onboarding process for both users and new creators was identified as a priority.
5. Acknowledgments and Shared Goals
Platform Challenges:
Linden Lab acknowledged Second Life’s challenges as a longstanding platform with aging systems. For example, Marketplace and chat functionalities were built before modern equivalents existed (e.g., Discord).
The company admitted resource constraints and sought input from creators on prioritizing fixes and features.
Collaboration Focus:
Both parties emphasized a shared goal: improving Second Life for the benefit of creators, users, and Linden Lab.
Linden Lab expressed gratitude for creators’ contributions, stating that the platform’s success is intertwined with their efforts.
This meeting represented an important step toward addressing long-standing issues and improving transparency. It highlighted the need for collaboration between Linden Lab and the creator community to ensure Second Life remains a thriving virtual world. Generally it sparked more hope in creators, more motivation and an overall positive mindset.
—Document End—
I found it an interesting read.
Original Google Docs file which may contain changes made since publishing this post beyond my control.
If you’re a Merchant and not in the “Creators Supporting Creators” Discord server (where the invites were sent), you can apply here.
On Friday night I was in a Zoom conference call between a collection of bloggers and Linden Lab Executives.
If you’d told me that 5 years ago when I started my little blog, I wouldn’t have believed you. So thank you Linden Lab for the opportunity. Brad Oberwager (CEO of Linden Lab) did say that they wanted our honest opinions, so here it is.
The focus was on the Second Life Mobile App and what’s on the horizon. There’s a lot to go through, so please bear with me.
I’ve addressed these not in the chronological order that they’re going to arrive, but roughly the order I think they should have, with their ETAs.
Address Bar – Q1 2025
Notecards – Not on the slides but Grumpity Linden said “Three Months Plus”
New account creation – December 2024
Persistent chat logs & Group Notice Push notifications – December 2024
Item level avatar editing – Early Q2 2025
Lobby – Q1 2025
Franky I think the app shouldn’t have gone to Public Beta until the first three were added, but they’re finally coming. Simply because if you told someone about the App, they’d go try it and find they couldn’t do much and delete it. Maybe a New Year big splash release with these features might have been better.
Address Bar: One of the major missing features in the mobile app is getting around. Currently in both the Alpha & Beta versions, you can only go to the Mobile Showcase locations and your Favourites (the ones stuck at the top of your desktop viewer). Fortunately this feature coming soon that will allow you to enter SLURL location addresses and also Share them using your device’s native Sharing system.
Notecards: One of the bloggers raised a question about notecards, particularly for CSRs (Customer Support Representatives) for creators. If a customer has a problem, they may send a notecard detailing the issue.
However on the mobile app there’s currently no way to open them,so the CSRs are tied to a PC in order to read the notes and respond. Grumpity Linden revealed that they are working on a way to read them. However it’s likely to be in a different way. Since there’s no access to avatars Inventory on mobile, the in-progress solution is to have the notecards read out in a chat dialog. This will be a great step forward for this group of Residents, but sadly they’ll have to wait a little longer. The timescale for this ability is estimated at three months or more.
Note: this was right at the end of the call, past the official end time, so several attendees had left and not many people will have heard the above.
New Accounts: Pretty self explanatory, despite the app not being targeted at new signups, this needed to be here at Beta Release. If people see screenshots or hear about there being this cool new app and they weren’t an existing Resident, they’d have been stuck.
Persistent chat logs: Peviously on the mobile app, if you log out and back in your conversation history will be lost. In an update this month, the chat history will be stored locally on your device.
Item level avatar editing: Something that wasn’t mentioned much, but is featured on the presentation slides is individually worn items adjustment.
Lobby: Basically a holding screen showing you stuff while the world loads. They probably spent ages on it (speculation) but I don’t see it as a big deal. The only tempting point on the slide image is “Reach mid-tier and lower end devices”, perhaps this needs a little more emphasis, if the intention is to attract users with older tech.
Comment on Unity
A last point made by Philip Linden regarding a pre-submitted question. Paraphrased: “Now that Linden Lab have a working visual rendering engine on the Unity platform, will the desktop client move to Unity?” In short, no.
The reason for this is fairly simple, according to Philip: “The Unity engine can’t render as many avatars in close proximity.”
I know for a long time people have been harping on about this at Meet the Lindens events, now they have an answer and a reason.
Summary:
Well done Linden Lab, your mobile feature set is nearly level with the Lumiya Viewer (2012-2017 RIP), except with additions of Mesh & BoM but minus Inventory. I’m sure they’re sick of that comparison, but it was ahead of its time and is an unavoidable benchmark.
The Zoom call on Friday is likely to be the first of several to come. Perhaps this process of reaching out and connecting with Bloggers & Vloggers, allowing early previews, should have started before the Beta public release. That way the Lab may have been dissuaded from releasing an under-developed product.
So as I said in my previous post on this subject, do give it a go, but don’t expect too much yet. Then come back in a month and try again, it is after all still a Beta version.
I found some much warmer footwear than in my first Expo post, defintely more suited to the cold. I’m not so sure about the warmth of this lovely dress though, a hot drink will also warm me up.
Back from the seasonal festivities of the Expo, Ms Claus lies back on the bed resting. She watches the sugar-filled hyperactive youngster trying to wake Santa. Good luck, she thinks, he’s worn out and had far too much sherry.
Keeping warm by the Fire A better look at the boots & Tattoo
An adorable animesh of a youngster nervously trying to wake up Santa by Dench designs!
Here’s me waiting for the excited masses to descend on the Wonderland of the Christmas Expo. The trees are lit up, decorations are everywhere, hot drinks and snacks are ready. So I’m here juggling a pine cone as I wait,in my cozy new outfit. Thankfully the paths have all been shovelled and swept, so I can wear my new heels too without getting stuck in the snow!
The regions are themed from the 1900’s to 2020 and cover all your shopping needs. Visit the 150 merchant shops, find an Exclusive Christmas tree in the tree lot, build a snowman, enjoy 130 hour of Live Music, LE Breedables, Auctions and sooooo much more
Come along one and all, explore the regions of shopping and festive fun.
Expo Items Credits:
Jeans & Sweater: Let It Snow Sweater & Jeans Set – Boutique Booth
