DAI627 Instructor's Blog

The goal here is to get everyone into building to some degree (it's not difficult) and to expand our group-knowledge base to support the Project Experiments.

1. SL Cool Places - Find 3 cool places in SL to profile in your class blog. For each, include an image, the SLURL, and a concise description of WHY this place is interesting/useful to you. Ideally, the 3 places should be cool for different reasons.

Your Inventory > Landmarks is a feature that supports storing your current location as a landmark (see main menu for the Landmark action). You can use the in-world Map > Search feature to find things you are interested by keyword.
Another resource (scroll the Travel Guide panel for SLURLS):
http://www.mermaiddiaries.com/2006/11/siteseeing-and-exploring.html

2. SL Cool Features - SL abounds in features/capabilities, things to do in the world, to do to your avatar, etc. Develop at least basic competence in 3 and profile in your class blog. For each, include an image, at least one link to How-To information (or explain it yourself concisely), and a concise description of WHY this feature is interesting/useful to you.

3. Building Exercise - Build 3 objects (if possible, use some of your preliminary ideas of what you might need for your experiment) as follows:
a. One Sculpty Prim using Wings3D or other 3D modeling program (see earlier post on this)
b. One In-World-Built object made up of multiple, linked Prims.
c. One In-World-Built object using either Flexi Path (in object editor), Particle Systems (Mermaid Girl has a link to a wizard), animated texture, lights (beyond just making some simple object light up), or some other higher level capability, etc.
NOTE: You can build these in a sandbox area and be sure to Take them to your inventory as you build them. Sandboxes clear themselves of objects at regular intervals, so Take-ing to your inventory is the SL form of SAVE.
BUILDING LINKS:
(general and more links) http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Creation_Portal
Good Building Tutorials: http://www.mermaiddiaries.com/2006/11/build.html
Video Tutorials (and more topics)
http://secondlife.com/showcase/tutorials/
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Creation_Portal > Building
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Torley_Linden/Snapshot_tips
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims

4. Scripting Exercise - Build 2 simple objects and attach a different script to each one. Note that objects can be made up of multiple objects that are linked together. The scripts can be obtained from copying from any source, the two external scripting tool sites (Ann Enigma and Scratch). YOU MUST CUSTOMIZE THE SCRIPT SOMEHOW, e.g. if it turns an object red, you need to change the color to something else, if it plays a sound, you need to make it work with a different sound you have obtained or generated, etc. Set the object to be copied and modified by anyone. Keep the objects in your inventory. Create a blog entry with at least one image and concise description of the scripting development, etc.
FOR SCRIPTING INPUT, click here to download my .pdf on Scripting Notes

Labels: assignments

Granted we are working on the more generalized topic of online virtual worlds, but this can be an interesting input to determining the TARGET world member you might want to design for. Here's where you can take the test yourself:

http://www.gamerdna.com/quizzes/bartle-test-of-gamer-psychology
Richard Bartle, author of the book, "Designing Virtual Worlds", and co-designer of the first MUD in 1978, did not devise this test himself, but rather it was named after him.

Labels: audience, bartle, player, research, target