We interrupt your regularly-scheduled roadtrip posts...

20
Apr
3
nomad

To bring you this announcement. Linden Labs have announced that they are going to open-source the Second Life server code.

Well, damn. It’s been in the rumour mill for a while, but this confirmation is big news. It’s also one of the reasons why writing a book like this is such a nightmare in some ways - you’re out of date five minutes after you write - and why this blog exists, to act as the ever-growing errata sheet for the book.

(Of course, this change we’ve caught in time to add it to the book. But you just know that ten minutes after we submit final-final-final edits, Microsoft will announce that Halo 3 will come with a built-in Stephen Speilburg and Lawrence Kazdan to help you make your Machinima, or some such. )

In the book, we’ve fairly skeptical about Second Life as a Machinima platform, but this announcement means we’re going to have to do a fairly major re-think, as it eliminates a good half of the problems we perceived. For starters, the ability to run your own private Second Life island means that we’d no longer need to set aside $20,000 for a couple of years’ island rental if we wanted to make something BloodSpell-scale in Second Life. An open server means that AI-controlled NPCs are a possibility. And so on.

Now all we need is for someone to release a fairly major graphics upgrade to the client, and Second Life could be seriously cooking with Machinima gas.

…

OK, that last metaphor gave rise to a bit of an unpleasant image. Sorry about that. We’ll try not to talk about “Machinima gas” any more.

Comments

  1. Avatar Johnnie Ingram said about 3 hours later:

    Drat, darn and blast. More work for me.

    Aside from the fact that it means re-writing a whole load of stuff, this is fantastic news. I want the code right now. I’m going to run a SL server on my house network, which only I will ever see, just because I can.

    There will also, I’m sure, be a Strange Company SL server very soon, the potential contents of which terrify me to my very bones.

  2. Avatar Ross said 3 days later:

    @Johnnie’s home SL server - oh dear, is this dreams of a time when it’s only you left to rule the world?

    @Strangeco server - I may even get SL if that happens as long as you promise to censor everything that Steve Wallace puts in there.

  3. Avatar atle said 4 days later:

    …and as for the Halo 3 comment, at least Chris Anderson seems to think it will be good for movies;

    “the ability to record a game and play it back on Xbox Live, freezing the action at any point and flying around the scene, Matrix style. It may sound just like a standard replay function, but take my word for it, it’s not. I think it’s revolutionary, and I predict that Halo 3 will take machinima to a whole new level.” full post

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