Sandbox Bellisseria

 

Just off the western coast of Bellisseria, north of the new Ridgewood area is a Linden-owned sandbox. It's appropriately named Sandbox Bellisseria. 

Dropping by there, besides being about to rezz items such as containers to unpack, you can also get a look at various Linden Homes. You can use the house controller to change the model of houses. 

Besides the Linden Home models, there's a small social area you can chat with others, or just park your avatar. There's also a list of the rules, such as no griefing or crashing the sim. You can also get a list of other sandboxes.

 

There's an automatic return of items after four hours should you end up disconnected, get yanked away in a hurry, or just forget. 

 

To the north is a second sim with a similar name, but it's off limits to residents it seems.

 

Once again, the name of the sim is Sandbox Bellisseria.

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

Firestorm Gacha Fundraiser

Although Team Firestorm works for free, they do have a number of expenses. They recently pointed out two, one being "our main server, which hosts our Jira, web site, wiki, code repository, etc." The second expense are the sims for their community gateway, subsidized by Linden Lab, but still costing them money. Their server has been having some troubles, "it is long past its prime, and we’ve had plenty of outages over the past year as a result. We also continue to provide the Kakadu codec to the Firestorm viewer to bring you superior rendering, but this comes at a hefty annual licensing cost."

So Team Firestorm is having a fundraiser to cover these costs. While people can donate to the big tip jar, the intent is for most of the money raised to be from gacha items donated to Firestorm, "For months now we’ve been collecting and categorizing hundreds of unusual and interesting gachas from around SL in hopes some of you may be interested in buying them. Prices are as varied as the selection!" The event takes place on a platform high above the Firestorm Sandbox

As there are no machines that give you items at random, this isn't a true gacha. Instead, individual items are available up for sale on stands or from displays. The event has been going on for a while, so many of the items originally up for grabs are gone. Besides the items at the gacha area, one can also get Firestorm jackets on Marketplace.

If anyone wants to help out by donating items, contact Klo Fella inworld. How long the fundraiser will be going on hasn't been stated.

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Firestorm%20Sandbox/30/193/2702

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Labs Ceases Development of "Patterns"

On a press release yesterday, Linden Lab announced that it was stopping all work on it's sandbox game "Patterns." There will be no further development and the game will no longer be for sale. Linden Lab will no longer be keeping multiplayer functions operating, though those who bought the game will still be able to play it in single player mode okay.

Recently, Linden Lab announced that we are working on an ambitious project to create the next-generation virtual world, while we continue to improve Second Life and grow Blocksworld. As we focus on these priorities, we have ceased development for Patterns, and we will be no longer offering the game for sale.

We at Linden Lab are extremely grateful for the adventurous early players who explored the Patterns genesis release. Those who purchased the Patterns genesis release will still be able to play their copies of the game, but features relying on server connections, such as world-sharing, will not be functional.

Patterns had early promise, and while Linden Lab focuses our efforts on our other offerings, we are still evaluating the future of the Patterns technology. Interested parties are welcome to contact us with proposals.

Patterns was announced by Linden Lab in September 2012. People quickly noticed it's strong similarity to "Minecraft," though gravity played a role in the game. Linden Lab was appealing to gamers with this product in their strategy at the time to diversify it's product line. But it failed to generate much of a following or an income for Second Life.

The cancellation of Patterns by Linden Lab leaves just three operational products in it's line,"Blocksworld," "Desura," and of course Second Life.

Source: Linden Lab 

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

An older picture from 2007, taken at a sandbox. Note the "MISSING" pattern on the guy's shirt and pants, which would simply be gray today.

by Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

This scene happened about six years ago in 2007, when some friends were messing around at a sandbox area, and one whom was a bit depressed at the time put this up in a bit of self-depreciating humor.

Ah those lazy days of earlier in Second Life.

Bixyl Shuftan