I found a new store I love: Madame Noir. The Faire is mostly all about bright and shiny stuff, but you can have shiny Black too! The dress is called Lux, so why “Dark Star” in the title of the post? Simply because that’s what sprang into my mind when I saw the way the light reflected off it, it looked like a sparkling star in the darkness. Of course I needed an appropriate setting to show you it, so Nox Sanctum seemed appropriate as the Faire slowly begins to drift into the Mists for another year.
Upper closeupThe Boots!
To Know the Dark by Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
THE FAIRELANDS WILL CLOSE TUESDAY 6TH APRIL MIDNIGHT SLT
(Then you’ll have to track down all the creators mainstores yourself, so better go grab the stuff at the Faire?!)
Credits:
Outfit:Lux Dress (Black) & Lux Panties (Black) by Madame Noir
Darkness… penetrated only by a few torches, the glow of the lava well and the reflection off the hoard. The hoard, and a few fragile eggs that couldn’t be moved, they’re why she’s here, guard duty.
Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t even be an issue, the Dragons do it instinctively. However when the time comes that Mortals can enter the Faire, that doesn’t really work; since the Dragon instinctive response is to just to breathe intruders to cinders. So after a few unfortunate incidents, the Dragon Council agreed to keep away from the paths the Mortals trod during this period. Obviously that meant someone had to guard this stuff, if a Mortal were to take an extra souvenir from the chamber… it wouldn’t go well for the mortal race after that. At least it’s quiet and warm down here, blissful when you’re cold-blooded, but that’s why her race got the job; she won’t pass out from the heat of the lava well. The draconis are also the only humanoid race the Dragon Council will trust, due to their distant genetic history that no-one seems to know the origins of, but accepts because fireproof scales for skin counts for something.
At that point one of the gates opens and interrupts her thoughts, a mortal comes down the steps into a pool of light and sees her standing there. She points with her staff at the opposite gateway “Greetings Fairelander, do not dally here, on your way, please.”
On the 29th of March (not 1st of April) the list of creators involved in something called “Project Mesh Revolution” was revealed via a post on Flickr, it’s quite a list.
I’m now wondering how many of them are still glad they joined in on the prank. Since it would seem that not all of them read the application form thoroughly.
I spoke to a couple of fellow bloggers before the release, who had varying opinions:
I can’t help but think it’s an April fools joke.
With another having the counter view
If it’s an elaborate April fool they’re gonna lose a lot of customers
I had my suspicions though, which I voiced in the discussion with one of the bloggers:
Seems I wasn’t totally off the mark
So at Midnight SLT on April Fools day, the group notice goes out and everyone piles into the various stores to get their free bodies, heads and apparel. I would guess some were laughing and some were crying when they unpacked their haul.
What actually got released was basically a pair of paper doll avatars, which have been around for years, just with changeable outfits and apparel from the listed creators. This is a key difference, the avatar genre has evolved to include easy modification, with this set of bodies.
There seemed to be a divide in opinion as to whether this was a totally upsetting letdown or an amusing prank that they were cute(ish) dolls.
Reading the group chat on the day, you’d have thought this was a totally new concept and Salt Peppermint was a genius for coming up with it, but it’s not. Paper doll avatars have been around for quite some time. Some examples would be those made by Paper Friends, whose store parcel was claimed in 2014 and a range of paper avatars by MOoh!.
The PMR avatars however do bring easy customisation back to Second Life, akin to the early 2000s when people made perfectly acceptable avatars for the time on the default system body using clothing layers, now known as Bakes-on-Mesh (BoM) layers.
Writing this a week after the release, the interest in these avatars doesn’t seem to have slowed down, based on the activity in the dedicated Discord server and the amount of search results now showing on Markerplace.
There was a claim made on Facebook that new users had signed up specifically because of these avatars availability. While anything that brings new residents into SL is good, when I asked Linden Lab if there were stats that support this claim, I was told: “We’ve seen a slight up-tick in returning residents”. I’d say that’s still a positive.
Standing at the inland end of the pier,Ava glances at the ominous black doorway at the far end and ignores it, focussing her attention on the bright light in the fog.
Slowly as she walks through the mist,a stone circle becomes visible, the light she had seen was at its centre. Carefully she circles the stones, you never know what, who, where or even when might be on the inside.
Part way around she notices that one of the stones has fallen or been laid down deliberately, a sigh of relief escapes her, the circle is broken; so relatively safe.
When Ava entered the circle however, there appeared to be a woman next to the light. She whispers a few words that start Ava pondering, then in the blink of an eye, she is gone.
Continuing on her way she notes the entrance to a cave in the nearby cliff as she comes to the shore of the sea, leading to a small harbour and a cosy hut for a rest from wandering.
This is a beautiful place to wander around if you want some quiet peace. The firelit cave is particularly charming, a nice place to chat with a friend.
For anyone wondering where the ominous black door on the pier leads..have a look. Be warned however there’s not a Teleporter to get you back, so maybe go there last.
I’ve been in the Second Life Discord server for some time now, since I was granted access as an Alpha tester for the mobile app. I was very pleased when they finally made the server public recently. To be able to post any messages in the server you now have to link your Discord account with a Second Life avatar account. I’d say that’s fair enough, it provides a layer of accountability that is reasonable.
That is of course until yesterday someone posted:
I verified with an alt
Which reveals a big flaw in that idea.
So what was the Labs solution? They added the requirement to “Verify Phone”, which is what I was presented with this morning if I wished to post in any Channel in the Discord mobile app.
While I understand they want to protect the server and themselves from misbehaving members, I think the mobile requirement is a step too far. I think this step may put people off participating. Including myself.
Of course the Lab knows my real life identity, but I don’t think people should have to hand over a phone number to be able to use a Discord server. A well known blogger has the same requirement on their server and I just didn’t join on the grounds of that.
What makes this more of a joke is that today getting a phone number is almost as easy as creating an alt avatar account. Unfortunately Google Voice that offer free numbers aren’t available in the UK and equivalent services are paid for. Adding another security layer, that’s easily bypassed, seems unnecessarily futile and could negatively impact Resident engagement.
Addition:
First reader comment received directly minutes after publishing:
they tell how much they value being anonymous and then they did that. Pissed me off big time
Second reader comment via Bluesky:
Great… I just joined the server a couple of days ago and now this happens – and I feel like leaving the server again. I honestly don’t want to add my phone number for verification
Third response received directly:
Just saw this – and just left the server. lol
From Bluesky:
I was able to chat 4 hours ;D – than they activated phone verification…. SOOORRYYYYY
Another comment via Bluesky puts a slightly different spin on the topic:
It’s more of a moderation used in and by big server all over discord.
This is to verify the account holder is human and not a throw away account used for trolling/spamming sure the system is not perfect but stops 97%-99% of unwanted behaviour.
Anyway discord doesn’t share this number with third parties
While this might explain things a little, the Lab should make this detail clear in the server description or rules text.
But the discussion continues some time later:
The official Second Life Discord server is so great that I quickly left it. I have no desire to talk to uneducated people who comment on topics they know nothing about. I don’t usually dehumanize, but what’s there is a zoo.
Tomorrow the 14th of March there’s going ot be a Roundtable about Project Zero (accessing Second Live via a web browser) and it’s roadmap going forward.
Last night there was a Zoom call with Philip Rosedale,Sntax Linden and the Firestorm Viewer development team along with a collection of bloggers.
We will be getting browser access to the Firestorm Viewer.
They hadn’t actually given it a name, because the name “Firestorm” technically belongs to the developers, so Linden Lab can’t call it that. However since both Linden Lab employees and the Firestorm developers have been referring to the project as “Firestorm Zero”, that’s likely what it’ll be.
There is however a catch…250L$ for 5 hours of viewer time. To clarify that’s a “bundle” of time, like mobile phone minutes. The 5 hours can be spread over multiple sessions over a period of time.
So why are they charging, while offering Project Zero access for free? It’s fairly straightforward, they’re matching demand with the Firestorm sessions. There is a capped number of sessions for Project Zero, so you basically have to wait in line for a session to be available. With the paid Firestorm sessions you get a virtual Windows PC, running in the Amazon Cloud, to yourself. Although obviously they may limit the number of passes sold initially to manage load. It will however be operating at a financial loss to begin with. Pricing is being based on what they expect costs to fall to as GPU market costs come down.
I thought the easiest way to demonstrate how well it works, I made a few gyazo video clips:
The blue loading screen took about a minute, the Firestorm progress bar took about 2 seconds.
My Homested, a mainland parcel and a CDS venue:
Cyber Fair:
Warehouse 21 Club:
In a crowded place like that, I’d normally bump at least one or two people on the way out, but that was so smooth, it was frankly better than my hardware. However what happened at the end of that clip was evidently the equivalent of a crash, you’re presented with a download page for the desktop viewer. (Edit 15/3/25: If you get kicked out, your browser will redirect to your Account Dashboard).
It wasn’t all smooth sailing to start with though, this was a visit to the same venue about 12 hours earlier and the login process showed more Firestorm loading dialog:
I described it as “like using SL on my old i5 laptop with 16GB of RAM” in an email at that time, I guess they took the hint and turned up the virtual host PC’s specs!
Tech bits we were told:
1920 x 1080 Resolution video
Frame rate 30-60fps
Local chat logs won’t be saved, but IM logs will
Preferences will not sync from your desktop, (that might not be preferrable anyway on a different system) but any settings you customise on the virtual host viewer will stay for your future sessions. (I didn’t find this to be the case)
Login, teleport and loading times are expected to be much faster, but busy locations may still be..well…normal for SL.
Snapshots to Disk won’t function because the viewer is running on a remote virtual PC, so people taking photos will have to use “Send to Email” option or other methods instead. (Send to Flickr or Primfeed were mentioned.)
You will buy the bundles of time from your Account dashboard on the Second Life website and will have a link to where to log in from wherever you want. The passes are expected to go on sale on Friday 14th.
The question of whether access bundles may be included as perks with paid subscription plans was raised, it might be possible in the future. A question that I thought of and have emailed to Philip, is whether the bundles will have an expiry period in which they must be used. It’ll be interesting to see what gets announced at the Roundtable.
I mentioned in passing in my last post that a friend of mine had been ejected and banned from a store group (and from store region) because of a misbehaving bot. This post isn’t about any flaws in the AI Characters that Linden Lab are trialling, it’s in Alpha testing. You’d expect glitches, but perhaps not such consequences. This is about the reaction of the merchant in question.
I thought I would try to contact the store owner on my friends behalf (with her consent) and try to find out what happened from the store owners perspective. So I sent a notecard:
Hello (Store Owner)
I'm a member of the Second Life Blogger Network and I'm researching into the recent AI Characters currently on test, and believe you recently had an incident where you had to eject+ban a bot from your store group. The bot avatar was named (redacted from post for account holder privacy). I'm wondering if you can tell me what happened from your perspective? Do you have any conversation logs? I don't know if you are aware, but the bots were logging themselves in and out without their owners interaction or knowledge. The account owners have had to change the accounts passwords to stop it it doing so. I'd be grateful for any insight you have, because bot owners currently have no way of knowing what their bots have said to anyone, there's no available logs.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Ava
I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t what I got:
[12:54:47] Store Owner: Ava hello, where how do you know may I ask please, since you are not in my group but telling me : and believe you recently had an incident where you had to eject+ban a bot from your store group. The bot avatar was named (redacted from post for account holder privacy). I'm wondering if you can tell me what happened from your perspective? [12:55:27] Store Owner: and even if I had, for what should I share any interaction info with someone I do not know? [12:58:16] Ava Bloodrose: I'm aware because I know the account holder, who was surprised to find themselves ejected being unaware of the bots actions. Why is to share the circumstances with my contact at the Lab to try and work out how incidents like this have happened. [12:58:51] Ava Bloodrose: and probably blog about it [12:59:36] Store Owner: why do this people need bots and then say they unaware? [13:00:25] Store Owner: anyway the bot was typing me stupid things and I muted and ejected both owner and bot [13:05:05] Ava Bloodrose: People have been trying them out just out of curiosity. The bots are controlled by a web interface, which basically has an on/off button and that's it, you interact with the bot by IM msg. The problem is the AI behind it can't tell the difference between an IM and group chat. So the bot receives a message from the group, and replies with it's nonesnse to everyone. Banning and ejecting the bot was obviously the sensible thing to do. But why the owner as well, I believe she has tried to contact you to talk about it. [13:11:00] Store Owner: Ava listen please, I am obliged to protect everyone in my group and myself. Since the owner was that girl and I didn't know her intentions, what I did was the right thing. I'm sorry, I don't trust anyone in this regard and unfortunately I'm prejudiced against people who buy boots. Why would an ordinary SL citizen need a boat? but I do not wan't to argue about my thoughts ofc [13:11:25] Store Owner: If you allow me please I have to be in RL for a while [13:34:31] Ava Bloodrose: Yes, I understand you had to protect your group from the misbehaving bot. Thankyou for your time.
Hostile is the politest description I can come up with for this person, although it certainly wasn’t the first word that came to mind.
As is clear the store owner has no concept or awareness of what’s currently going on at the Lab and is highly suspicious, bordering on paranoid. It would have been a waste of time to try and explain. Obviously, as I said to them, banning the bot was the thing to do. Although perhaps contacting the declared owner (on the bots profile) might have been the more rational response than banning them as well.
As for “knowing her intentions” a glance at their profile would clearly show they weren’t a troublemaker, being a DJ (therefore a reputation to protect) and is a member of several long-established communities such as CDS (Confederation of Democratic Simulators) and Non-profit Commons in their Groups list, as well as a number of educational ones.
What stood out most for me though was this section of the conversation:
I don’t trust anyone in this regard and unfortunately I’m prejudiced against people who buy boots. Why would an ordinary SL citizen need a boat”
(I wasn’t inclined to correct their obvious typos for this post.)
My intent had been as I stated to them; try and get some information about what had happened and maybe some logs to share with the AI Character Alpha development team, to diagnose and prevent such incidents in the future. Getting my friend un-bannned from their favourite store would have been a bonus too.
This sadly demonstrates the lack of knowledge amongst certain sections of the community, believing that bots only have negative uses (thank you Bonnie Bots for that,readers may want to read the article by SLHamlet on this) and that all bots had to be paid for (SmartBots).
I am so very tempted to name the store and owner, but that would just cause needless drama. What I will say however is that it’s not a store I’ve ever mentioned or credited on this blog. Of course if the Lab would like names, I’d be happy to provide them, the owner of the bot has already submitted a support ticket.
As icing on the metaphorical cake..it seems I’m now banned from joining the store group too.
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.
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!
