Second Life Sketches: Night Tours
By Warren Ellis
The following is an independent opinion column, and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.
It amuses me, this week, to do a photojournal. I imagine it amuses the poor bugger who has to do the coding substantially less, but Second Life is hard. [Ed: Thanks a lot, Warren]
This is a quick tour of my weekly haunts in Second Life: the virtual world the way I habitually see it. I’ve written about most of these places before, but you’ve rarely had a good look at them. These are the places I travel through.
This is Winterstate, my current space in Second Life. I long ago grew bored with the lack of weather in Second Life, so, for my space, I purchased my own. I’d like it to be random, which it currently isn’t. But, nonetheless, driving rain, heavy snow or thick fog make a pleasant change from the usual environmental homogeneity of the virtual world.
I still visit Svarga regularly, just to try to understand the complexity of the build. It’s a static place, now — the designer’s moved on. As a writer, I build worlds for a living, but the intensive work required to create this environment from scratch still boggles me. So many of the objects in Svarga are stuffed with code that makes them reactive or interactive. Like Winterstate, Svarga has weather, rainclouds that spawn and drift in near-random patterns. The well-designed ambient music and the careful lighting make Svarga Second Life’s chillout zone.
Transylvania, which I’ve mentioned many times before, has a crowd at the wall no matter what time of day it is. With a base drawn from all over the world, it’s pretty much a 24/7 spot now.
Suffugium is a weekly necessity, because the place is just so complex. Riddled with tunnels and secret rooms, and featuring new additions and developments all the time. Plus, it’s put together with a sharply satirical sense of humour. It’s always worth a wander. That’s a floating police drone scanning me.
I also still look at The Wastelands regularly. This is a shot of the guts of Remnant Cathedral. The area still boasts some of the most intense and crazy designs in the world.
Toxian City has become a regular stop for me. Interesting avatars, atmospheric builds, and, as noted last week, people getting eaten by radioactive monsters. What’s not to love?
As morning comes up on the grid: Carnage Island remains my combat zone of choice. Other places are cheaper to use, but none are as well-designed, and the system and administration prevent people from just complaining it to death. (I recently tried another combat area where one person stopped everything dead every time someone dared to shoot her, claiming foul and forcing admins to step in.)
