The second part of the extended “Overcast” interview is now available.
In this part, Hugh and Johnnie gradually sober up with the aid of strong coffee, and talk about MovieStorm, copyright, AMAS, and more. At one point Hugh remembers channeling the spirit of a famous dead comedian, but hopes he was imagining that.
(No, we haven’t listened to it yet. Tomorrow.)
It’s half-two in the morning, and neither Hugh nor I are capable or abstract thought, but it’s done.
Hey, look Mum - I just wrote a book!
We’ve worked so late tonight that, even here in Scotland, all the pubs are closed. Celebration will have to wait until tomorrow.
You’d better all buy this book when it’s released, as well as buying two or three spare copies to give to friends. We’ve put in some serious effort for you people.
And now … bed.
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 It’s also one of the reasons why writing a book like this is such a nightmare in some ways - you’re out of date five minutes after you write - and why this blog exists, to act as the ever-growing errata sheet for the book.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.
I just heard something astonishingly cool about some Machinima stuff coming up in the latter part of this year.
Can’t go into details, but let’s just say that Machinima for Dummies might be a really complete one-stop shop for Machinima…
I’m not talking about phrases in the book here. I’m talking about phrases we used around it…
10. “That’s not a euphemism” Far too many things sound like euphemisms. That’s just an observation there.
9. “I think we might have gone a little over our page-count here.” Inaugurated in the very first draft of the first Sims 2 chapter, which at 17,000 words was maybe a little bit over our 5,000 word budget.
8. “We should really update the blog.” Sorry.
7. “Quick, look in another ‘Dummies’ book and see how they did it!” House styles are a good thing. And the Dummies house style is particularly fine.
6. “F—-ing Google Documents! Work!” It’s fantastic for collaboration, but it’s still … a little … buggle. Buggle! Swear-thump-thump-restart Buggy.
5. “Do you think we should have a chapter on insert engine here?” So many engines, so little time. And new ones keep coming out, the bastards.
4. “We need to write that as late as possible to ensure it’s still current.” So far, it appears we’re writing about half the book in the last week.
3. “Our editors rock.” No, we’re not sucking up here – they really do.
2. “Goddamnit, there are too many good example films for this chapter!” OK, here’s a proposition. You’ve got to choose one WoW film for the WoW chapter. Do you choose The Return, Edge of Remorse, Billy Maclure, Converse Ad, Hardware Store...
and the winner and still champion…
1. “OK, we’ll play a bit of World of Warcraft, then get back to writing.”
