The Photography Studio of Grignano

By Osprey Therian

Photography Contest 29: ORIGAMI

SLurl: The Photography Studio’s Upstairs Gallery

Playing with Mouse-Moves-Sun

By Osprey Therian

Last chance – once WindLight takes over mms is gone.

Don’t Believe Ondore’s Lies

by Onder Skall

I’m getting ready for a major ramp-up of activity here on Second Life Games, and a refocusing on actual… you know… games from SL. Before that though I thought you should see this Mega64 awesomeness.

That’s Ondore, not Onder.

Hat tip: Broken Toys

Treasure Island

by Onder Skall

Sherpa Voyager posted another great writeup & pictorial, this one about “Treasure Island”. Click here to go to their incredible blog, or click here for a SLurl to just go there and take my word for it that the place looks pretty cool. Alternately you can click here for no reason at all. It’s a free country. Probably. Depending on where you are.

This blog entry should have ended four sentences ago. I need to eat lunch now.

Anti-U.S.A. Shooter

by Onder Skall

Below is a clip from The Special Operation (Rescue Nuke Scientist), a video game released in Iran by a bunch of students. It’s a first-person shooter where you have to save a captured scientist from those evil Americans who have an obsession with global military dominance. I guess.

As you can imagine people are pretty upset about it. Patriotism is Religion 2.0 these days. If you can put that on hold for a moment, though, this game suddenly becomes inconsequential considering the number of games out there involving killing people in other countries (including Iran). Turnabout is fair play.

Yeah I know I’m supporting “evil” or something blah blah blah here come the religious fanatics… guys. It’s a game. Pixels. Students made it. Nobody dies when people play it. If it’s used for “training” the soldiers will all figure they have “damage meters” in real life and just need to touch “health packs” to heal. It’s ok, really. I mean, far be it from me to prevent you from getting your hate on but…

(via GamePolitics)

Really, really cool build

by Onder Skall

Everybody in the world discovered Greenies yesterday, but if you haven’t, check out the epic pictorial over at CalebBooker.com.

Combat Cards Movie

By Osprey Therian

Weapons of Choice

[Originally published by me in New World Notes - small intro by Hamlet]

Unleashing the power of CCS high above the City of Lost Angels

Way back in its earliest beginnings, Second Life was conceived in part as a platform for game development. But as SL designers will eagerly tell you, hacking the code to support a playable system is a massive challenge. Accepting it are CCS and DSC, two robust gameplay engines already in use by many gamers in SL. NWN game correspondent Onder Skall breaks down the pros and cons of both in a compare and contrast accompanied by uniformly kickass screenshots. Whether you’re a gamer or game developer, it’s mandatory reading. Join Onder after the break.

Combat Cards 1st Birthday Movie Premiere

By Osprey Therian
Doc Boffin and I have decided to hold the Combat Cards movie premiere on Sunday as it’s Combat Cards 1st Birthday! Come over for a look, trade a few cards, and have a couple of games. Watch the movie carefully just in case you spot someone you know in a fight scene!

Sunday, 15 July at 2 pm
at
Spangle Aerial Arenas

We’ll premiere the movie once everyone has arrived, then explain the rules for the tournaments to run until Hallowe’en using the newish leagues system (and spiffy new scoring). The big prize is in the constructed decks league, so if you haven’t built one yet give it a try. It takes some thought to balance them, and looking at the cards webpage or the mini cards webtab in my profile can be helpful.

Word has it Doc may be moved to give out cards to everyone who turns up. After that we’ll have some slashy fun. Bring your coolest weaponry and wear your meanest-looking av!

Tiny SUMO Tournament

This post is an official event announcement from Zayn Till.

Raglan Shire is a tiny friendly sim featuring a tree city and other areas of interest where many tinies and avatars of kind disposition shapes and sizes gather to relax and enjoy themselves.

This sunday at 1pm SLT Raglan shire is hosting the 2nd annual Tiny Sumo tournament!

Many tinies will enter but only one tiny will emerge victorious to taste Tiny sumo glory as the grand Champion of Raglan Shire!

Tinies may be small, but they’re large of heart as well and very competitive by nature. You’re all invited to see Tinys competing in one of the oldest and most honorable of sports, Tiny Sumo Wrestling at the Raglan Shire Sumo Arena (SLurl)!

Tiny Sumo 2 – The Quest for Tiny Sumo Glory!

*** Theres also an Artwalk going on all weekend on Raglan Shire featuring real life paintings, photographs and inworld sculptures from 20 artists on display for people to enjoy ***

Again with the weirdness…

Watching my incoming links I noticed that somebody named “Joey” put this blog down as his in the comments at some VWN article. It’s not the first time this has happened… I see it every once in awhile coming from the Herald and scattered blogs all over the place.

Do people do this on purpose? Am I logged into Typepad on some computer somewhere without knowing it? Any ideas on what’s going on here?

***UPDATE: A friend of mine fessed up. I had about a dozen pages up when I got up and took a break, and he went through them while I was gone and admitted he left the comment. He claims he didn’t link the blog when he did it but, dude, you just said you left the comment and there’s the link. Man… I need new friends…

Playin’ Half-Life For Cash

by Onder Skall

An official press release (see below) announces the launching of Tournament.com where players can wager real money on their skills playing popular first person shooter games. You can wager up to $10 per match and you’re limited to depositing $150 per month into the system, but that doesn’t mean that people won’t figure out how to cheat the system. I’d be shocked if there wasn’t somebody out there making a living playing FPS through this site within six months.

Even without cheating it’s still better than gold farming.

Pro gamers, of course, join the pro leagues. If you’re curious about that sort of thing, check out Major League Gaming (MLG), the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL),  or the Global Gaming League (GGL). You can make a pretty good, honest living at it if you’re good enough.

Full press release after the jump.

Tiny Empires

by Onder Skall

I was sent this by Ultralite Design and haven’t been able to take it off my HUD since. It’s genius.

The basic premise of Tiny Empires is that you’re climbing the social hierarchy. To do that you need to buy land, get subjects, and grow your empire. The subjects are other, newbie players… which means that at the beginning YOU will be somebody’s subject.

That takes a bit because another player of a particular rank has to be logged on and playing in order to see that there are new subjects available. I had to wait about five minutes… and it didn’t really benefit me directly.

Indirectly the benefit is huge, though. My liege earns money on every acre of land I own, and I get occasional offers to leave him and become somebody else’s subject. That means that my liege is SUPER helpful, sending me friendly IMs and offering advice. Good guy. I’ll keep him around. For now.

You’ll get offers from “the king” to buy land occasionally, which is great because land means money. You’ll also get offers from other players to buy your land. If they’re offering you above fair market value, it might be worth it so you can buy more later at the regular price. More often than not though they’re offering you much less, so make SURE to turn them down!

It’s time-based gameplay so what you’ll end up doing is hitting the little minimize button on it and quickly opening it whenever the indicator flashes to see what the latest offers are. I’ve enjoyed having it there while waiting for IMs to come in.

You can pick up a free trial at Ultralite Design and get the full version when you’re ready. When you get the full version you can even hand out trial versions to your friends!

Fists Of Discomfort

by Onder Skall

Seven Shikami sent me a copy of his latest game for review: Fist Of Discomfort. I have it set up at the Games Park for testing. (Clicka da link) It rocks, as usual.

The standard Shikami arcade functions are here. You can turn on/off the “attract” noise, change the cost (mine is set at L$1), flip “hardcore mode” on to make it super-tough, and use the optional ticket system plugin to offer visitors a prize. It’s a nice well-rounded package making active use of the OpenArcade system. (Find out more about that here.)

Gameplay is pretty straightforward: click all the ninjas before the time runs out! Click! Go! Now! Click ‘em!

Got it? Good. Now here’s where things get a little tricky: as each wave of ninjas comes you want to click them in the shortest path from left to right possible in order to score higher. This is something to keep in mind especially when you’re playing multi-player. You can click fewer ninjas and get even higher scores if they are bunched together. Here, let me give you some screenies to illustrate:

You have to love the C64 style here!

If you’re interested in your own copy or the OpenArcade system, swing by the Insert Coin Arcade.

Games Market Is Just A Tiny Bit Competetive

Gamasutra carried a series of projections about sales in 2007, and 30% of the ENTIRE projected sales for the year were from just three games: Halo 3, Madden 08, and GTA IV.

3 games. 30% of the entire market. Man… better off making your game in Second Life.