Reader Submitted: Game Review - No Man's Sky

About a year and a half ago, the computer game "No Man's Sky" made news. Initially getting attention for it's unbelievably huge universe of planets, it was found to have fallen so short of it's claims, it was under investigation for misleading advertising. But that wasn't the end of the game. Development continued, bugs were fixed (some of them), and the game improved. Former Newser writer Xymber Slade (known as Aegis Hyena on the Internet), got the game, and played it for a while. So what does he think?

Read Xymber's article in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games. 

Xymbers Slade's "From The Primordial Soup" Interactive Story/Game

Xymbers Slade, whom in the Newser's earlier days was a contributor of both stories, horoscopes based on his inworld tarot card deck, and some occasional cartoons, has been making himself busy lately. In the "Reddit forums under the pseudonym "TheDiscordedSnarl," he's set up a kind of interactive story/game that fans of "Spore" and from years ago "Sim Earth" might be interested in: "From The Primordial Soup." Here, people can guide the evolutionary development of an organism by discussion and voting.

So far, about 1.3 billion years in story time have progressed. The single-cell organism that the readers started out with has evolved into a multicellular organism. It shares the ocean with several other organisms, some it feeds upon, some that try to feed upon it.

As of now, the interactive story has 186 participants, a few of whom have contributed some artwork. It should be interesting to see how Xymbers/Discorded's game progresses as the reader-guided creature continues to evolve.

Bixyl Shuftan

Xymber Slade's "Civilization of the Internet" Interactive Story/Game

Longtime readers may remember Xymbers Slade, known in the past for his game and avatar reviews, as well as occasional screenshot cartoons. Under the pseudonym "Dr. Hervis Jasper," he's doing an interactive story/game about the evolution of a single cell lifeform to a multicellular organism, and on to more complex organisms to presumably something intelligent, which then developed a civilization.

 

It's a game where a bacteria arises from the depths to become first an animal, then a somewhat-intelligent animal, then an intelligent creature, onward and upward from a prehistoric group to a tribal (or not so tribal?) creature, and so on and so forth until you reach space... to infinity and beyond! Or something, at any rate.

Every day at the game's webpage, there will be an update, "For the first week and few days, you will be prompted to tweet suggestions for evolutions to the bacterium. Things such as color, how it moves, how it eats, what it eats, ANYTHING that you can think of that would make it beneficial. Feel free to suggest prey species, predators, anything to enrich this bacterium's environment." At first, the turns will represent 100 million years. Once one billion years have passed, options will open as to the organism's evolution, with "you will all vote and the one with the highest votes goes through."

So how will it end? In Xymber's words, "That's for the Internet to decide... and for me to find out!" So if you're curious to see what evolves from his interactive story/game, keep an eye on it, and tweet some suggestions how it goes.


The page can be found at: http://riseoftheinternet.wix.com/oneszeroesandtwos

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

From Xymbers Slade

The Last Word From Electrobit City

It was last month in which Electrobit City, which we wrote about four years ago, announced it would soon be closing. On Saturday September 19, co-owner Jei Desoto gave one final message.

As we know, today is the day the sim shuts down... So though my work has been as of now, completely picked up, it's not the end! I've taken my project back to it's smaller state for now, and I'm continuing tests when I can on aditi. Any questions regarding my work should be directed to me Jei.  Also, if any reason the sim rolls back as to 'retain' my build, is not authorized by me, and should be reported. Anyhoo, happy adventures, all! I will update in my work's original intended group. Stay tuned, kids!!!

And so another area fades into the virtual nether.

Electrobit City to Close

In August 2011, Xymbers Slade wrote about the Electrobit City sim, the home of builds done by the creators of the "8 Bit Theater," Jei Desoto and Kris Spade. Four years later, there is still a place there, but not for much longer. Xymbers informs the Newser that the people behind the sim will be closing down.

It is with deep regret, that we must suspend development on this project soon. This doesn't mean the project is dead, this project will continue! It may be in SL in the future, or something more ambitious like Sansar, or a different platform. Will continue to inform on updates in the group.  At present it is non-sustainable here. For now, we project the closure date to be 09/18/2015.  Feel free to photograph and blog during this time.  TYVM all for your support and intere.

Presumably "non-sustainable" means the creators no longer have the money to pay the tier. The build has about a month left before it fades away.

Bixyl Shuftan

Two Newser Contributors in the Hospital

It hasn't been the best of times for two people connected with the Second Life Newser team, as different circumstances have rendered both of them requiring medical attention.

Xymbers Slade, whom while no longer a filling the position of a full time reporter still sends occasional material. He had the misfortune of being mugged a couple blocks from his home, " I was 50% to unconsciousness, I twist out, and try to throw myself into the street to make a scene. That is when I hear something go POP and I scream. The animals shambled off, but the cops never showed (It's a terrible neighborhood) despite a bystander calling 911 (and people driving by just kept driving)."

"Friend brings me to the hospital, I sit it out a day, then surgery. As basically a skeleton, I can feel the plates. NOT comfortable. Total damage: Fractured humerus bone. Fractured ulna bone, dislocated elbow joint. My guess on recovery: 9-18 weeks with therapy thereafter. No sling, huge cast from above elbow to wrist."

"Looking back, this could have gone much worse. If they had gotten my wallet out of my pocket only to see no cash, I would have been beaten to a pulp at the very least. I got a bad break (literally) but it takes more than a shattered arm to take me out."

* * * * *

Ranchan Weidman isn't often seen in Second Life outside the HV Community sim, usually in her space carrier or the places linked to it in the Robotech roleplay it's a part of. But she has gotten a reputation as a creative builder. While usually quiet, she has occasionally found herself the focus of attention. She is best known as the builder of the Second Life Newser's office, both the old one and the new one. She also did the "space news truck" for our Second Life Twelfth Birthday exhibit.

Unfortunately, Ran has had a little bit of bad luck, or good depending on your point of view. When getting a checkup from her doctor, he found something wrong with her heart that she had to have taken care of very soon. So she's been in the hospital. She recently passed on a message for those in HV Community.

"Nods and kisses. I'm basically a guest right now on involuntary vacation. At least till Sunday night when they will do labs for Monday. After that I'll probably be unconscious for Monday after procedure till late Tuesday. And then conscious again after and home by Saturday give our take a day."

We at the Second Life Newser wish them a speedy recovery.

Xymbers' Avatar Reviews: The DreamCrawler Dragon

Would you spend nearly five thousand Lindens, close to twenty US dollars, for an avatar? For his final avatar review this year, Xymbers posed the question as he came across a huge mesh dragon by DreamCrawler with a price that was even more huge by Second Life standards. So was the avatar worth spending a hoard of gold for, or were the creators just blowing smoke?

Read Xymbers' review in Design.

Xymbers' Avatar Reviews

Xymbers Slade is back with a few avatar reviews.In his most recent article, he writes about three that caught his attention: 5th Wolf's Wolf and Minotaur avatars, and KOT's centaur. So did he give them his five out of five, or did he think they needed some work.

Read Xymber's review in Design.

Prehistorica: The Dawn Kingdoms

Earlier this year, Second Life Newser went to the dinosuar-themed Prehistoria area. Several months later, Xymbers Slade found an LM and decided to give his own report on the place. Xymbers own report focuses less on the land and more on the avatars. So what did he have to say about them?

Read Xymber's article in Design.

TS Creations

When it comes to avatars and avatar design, Xymbers Slade isn't an easy one to impress. But recently he came across a place that got his attention: TS Creations. The place had a number of knight avatars that he felt were well done. He met up with the owner, Topa Adamski, and they had a talk about designing the avatars, and other subjects.

Read more in Design.

Game Review: Robocraft

Xymbers Slade recently came aross a game called "Robocraft." In the game, one builds armed robots and sends them against those of other players. So what was Xymbers' view of the game?

Read Xymbers' article in Other Grids and MMOs.

A Letter From Pete Linden (Peter Gray) About SL 2.0

Xymbers Slade's old mentor group recieved the following message from  Pete Linden (Peter Gray)  in regards to the new virtual world Ebbe Linden (Ebbe Altberg) announced Linden Lab has been working on. He then forwarded the message to the Newser.

*  *  *  *  *

Here's what we've said:

Linden Lab is working on a next generation virtual world that will be in the spirit of Second Life, an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they can imagine and content creators are king. This is a significant focus for Linden Lab, and we are actively hiring to help with this ambitious effort. We believe that there is a massive opportunity ahead to carry on the spirit of Second Life while leveraging the significant technological advancements that have occurred since its creation, as well as our unparalleled experience as the provider of the most successful user-created virtual world ever.

The next generation virtual world will go far beyond what is possible with Second Life, and we don't want to constrain our development by setting backward compatibility with Second Life as an absolute requirement from the start. That doesn’t mean you necessarily won’t be able to bring parts of your Second Life over, just that our priority in building the next generation platform is to create an incredible experience and enable stunningly high-quality creativity, rather than ensuring that everything could work seamlessly with everything created over Second Life’s 11 year history.

Does this mean we're giving up on Second Life? Absolutely not. It is thanks to the Second Life community that our virtual world today is without question the best there is, and after 11 years we certainly have no intention of abandoning our users nor the virtual world they continually fill with their astounding creativity. Second Life has many years ahead of it, and in addition to improvements and new developments specifically for Second Life, we think that much of the work we do for the next generation project will also be beneficial for Second Life.

It's still very early days for this new project, and as we forge ahead in creating the next generation virtual world, we'll share as much as we can.

If we had one message to share with Second Life users about this new project at this point, it would be: don’t panic, get excited! Again, Second Life isn’t going away, nor are we ceasing our work to improve it. But, we’re also working on something that we think will truly fulfill the promise of virtual worlds that few people understand as well as Second Life users.

Best,
Peter

--
Peter Gray | Director of Global Communications

Linden Lab | Makers of Shared Creative Spaces

Check out what we're working on!

*Correction* I had the impression at first that Xymbers had contacted Pete Linden before getting the message. That wasn't the case. Pardon the error.

"Journey On A Pixelated Road"

About four months ago I came across a website for Minecraft called Far Lands or Bust, where a man named Kurt began to walk across the length of one Minecraft world. For the record, that's roughly 32 *billion* meters (where one block is a meter). Technically, that would only take about 820 straight hours of nonstop walking, but I learned that Kurt has been doing this since 2011 and has only gone about 700,000 meters from spawn. Because the "Far Lands" (a place where the graphics get screwed up due to variables being overwritten) were removed a few versions ago, he's continuing to use an "outdated" version of Minecraft (Beta 1.7.3 where the current version is Minecraft "official version" 1.7.4 --- quite far apart in developments)

He is doing it for the charity Child's Play as he explains on his website (farlandsorbust.com) and in his youtubing of the episodes (currently at 327 episodes and counting). He's raised over $170,000 for it. I thought to myself "Y'know, that looks really fun. But they're episodes, they're taped, edited, and a far out of date version of Minecraft. No pyramids, no jungle temples, no trading with villagers, no nothing." So I thought I'd try and do the same, only I'd do my episodes live.

Thus was born "Journey On A Pixelated Road."

Come join me (Xymbers Slade) and give me something to talk about whether it is SL related or not as I attempt to waltz across the length of one (up to date) Minecraft world, updating snapshots and release versions as they happen. I'll be livestreaming from 9 PM to midnight my time (6 PM to 9 PM SLT) and continue to do so every monday, wednesday and friday if the idea takes off. I tried to do something similiar a weekend or two ago and got no visitors (when you advertise to 4chan and not even THEY show up to troll, something's not right)

www.twitch.tv/vladvenom --- there's a 20 second delay in the streaming, but I'll pay attention to the chat as best I can.

Xymbers Slade

Crew Meeting Pics

 A couple pictures of last week's crew meet-up. Grey and Becky/Joshua couldn't make it, and Gemma was held up until later in the day. So that left DrFran (the dark catgirl in pink to the right), Xymbers Slade whom has been writing again,  the paper's friend Nydia Tungsten, whom was interested in writing regularly for the paper, and myself.

Talking about the Relay for Life, talk turned to "Stinky the Skunk" and joking around with skunk avatars. Xymbers did a change with a wave of a magic gesture. But then the outfit suddenly felt a bit tight around the chest and hips. Guess magic comes with unintended consequences (grin).

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

If the wyrm was trying to do some easy flying, he forgot to take into account something. ;-)

From Xymbers Slade

Avatar Review: 1st Act Mesh Werewolf

After finding a fancy mesh avatar, Xymbers Slade decided to look to see what else was out there. Already thinking of replacing his old werewolf avatar, he came across a company that had recently replaced it's were made of prims with a mesh model. So was the new av worthy of a few visits by Little Red Riding Hood, or was it fit only to be the omega in the pack?

Read Xymber's review in Design.

Avatar Review: Spider Productions Dragon Guardian

Xymbers Slade is something of a dragon fan. So when he found out about a new mesh dragon avatar design by a company he was familiar with, he went to check it out. So was the new av worthy of guarding his stash at his cave, or was it a diet of wyrms?

Read Xymbers review in Design.

Review of Cube World

Xymbers Slade is back. After taking a hiatus, he's back with a few stories to share. Today he starts off with a review of "Cube World." Described as "a voxel-based exploration RPG," this game made by a team of two people at first looks like a Minecraft clone. But after playing it for a bit, Xymbers soon found it was quite different.

So what's Xymber's take on the game? Read his review in Other Grids and MMOs.

Reporter Grease Coakes Temporarily Out of Action

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a number in the area hit by the storm are still unable to access the Internet, sometimes from lack of power. Among them, Grease Coakes, who emailed us from a library, saying he still didn't have Internet at his house.

On another note, Xymbers Slade, whom has been taking a break, recently informed SL Newser that some real life problems have come up that will demand his full attention for some time. So he has been given an indefinite leave of absence.

Hopefully both will be able to write again soon.

Both Grease and Xymbers (and others) had tangles with a hurricane last year with Irene.