Designing Really, Creating? Virtually!

Hello everyone! :)
I recently took up the task of designing something to build in OpenSim to gain skills in building, to have a potential place for friends to visit one day that would be fun, and to see what I could come up with and to have fun building it myself!!

I cannot wait until Linden Labs pathfinding tools are released, for game-related thingers so I can add monsters to the thing that I am making :D
It is supposed to be a giant rectangular box, that is actually a maze that when you enter it you wander around and fall through the floor to the next stage in the maze.
There are only three floors in this beta model that I designed, but eventually I will design one with many more floors and secrets, one that will be super massive and awesome!!
(and take up a whole sim!! @O@)
For right now my meager beginnings with building and with this project will suffice ;}

Here are some pictures basically sketching out the project:



These are the basic sketches I did to get a general idea of what I wanted to accomplish with my project.
The pictures go as follows: sketch of entrance, sketch of top floor, second floor, third floor, and sketch of final destination (which you teleport to).

I have also drawn out blueprints on graph paper, which I will include in a blog post tomorrow hopefully. (wait today is tomorrow, it’s 12:58 at night xD so… later today then I suppose lol. Though I am sleep deprived (of own choice) and can’t guarantee quality lol ;p)

Here, I’ll boot up OpenSim real quick to grab a screenshot of what the project looks like thus far (which isn’t much):

Here’s OpenSim running (yes, it runs in command prompt! lol)


Here is the humble project thus far!!
What you see is going to be part of the top floor, with the left cylinder being a secret room.



As you can see, my current level of expertise requires me to make a giant triangular prism in order to allow people to get in and out of the secret room. Interesting huh?


As you can see in the above picture, there is a hidden ramp to go up through the phantom roof and out across into the secret room!!
(originally I had planned for the roof to be phantom and if you jumped right you’d go through it, but without providing a custom avatar to allow me to make the maze height smaller (and thus allow a jump to actually go through a phantom ceiling, instead of popping up and falling back in).
Actually, giving a custom avatar at the start of the maze would be a wonderful idea!
It would make the space needed for the maze much smaller! lol
And would make interesting features and obstacles in the maze easier to construct.
The idea is that as you progress there are more enemies and more chests, and the chests you open have weapons made by me in them (or treasure/freebies).
The weapons allow you to defeat enemies, and the weapons you get-get stronger as you progress through the floors.
(but so do the enemies you face, so there is a balance.)
Only weapons created by me will damage the mobs (mobile objects xD),  and thus you cannot cheat by bringing in your own weapons.

I found out that in OpenSim it is really easy to create a user, but hard to delete them!
You have to edit the database files or something, .db in the bin folder, and manually modify whatever is needed!
I thought I needed it to set the owner of my land, when really I just needed to click “request admin priveleges” or whatever it is in-world, so I downloaded a few programs and tested them out.
The one you want is called SQLite Manager, and it is an add-on for firefox.
When I load it it takes a while, firefox seems to be not responding for a few secs, and then it loads.
Then I click the .db file I want, and then I edit what I want!! XD
(you can change the name of your land and whatever too)

So I am not sure if that is useful, but there you go! \(^u^)/
I really hope to learn Linden Scripting Language and become proficient in it!
It would be a great skill to know and have, and would allow me to create absolutely whatever I wanted in Second Life or OpenSim.
I am curious as to how textures are made for objects with weird shapes, such as cars and bikes and other weird complex things, for things with curved surfaces, etc..
It has to be hard I’d think!
Unless there is a program that can take your model and take your image and take your input and directions to make it look how you want it to.
Like… you it knows which parts of the texture image to distort, enlarge, and shrink in order for it to show up properly.

Idk, I need to figure out sculpty prims and whatnot lol.
Apparently to make doors work you have to cut  a cube in half so you can trick the physics engine into thinking the center of your object is where the doors hinges are, so when it rotates 90 degrees it opens like a door!
(cuz objects in second life do not rotate on a hinge, rather they rotate about the center of themselves. (so a door would “open”, but right in the middle of the doorframe | \ | <—type of deal))

I would like to create replicas of virtual items I have seen in other games so I can enjoy them in Second Life and OpenSim, as I would love to have all my virtual items with me no matter what game I am playing, (so I suppose that would be cross-virtual-universe item compatibility, idk), and I think it would be interesting to do so.
I would like to create a replica of Tom Nooks Pic, from ACWW.
I can rip the sprite from the game, import it into Second Life, design a frame, and be happy with that.
But that image is probably copyrighted, and if I ever sold it I probably would get in trouble.
(I don’t even know if I am allowed to even distribute that image, it’s probably the property of Nintendo or something. Maybe they’ll let me get away with it when I tell them I am a huge and loyal fan, and when I tell them I bought 3 acww game cartridges, two of which I still have.)

Or… I can make a work of art based on Tom Nooks Pic, and import that into Second Life or OpenSim to enjoy or sell for whatever reason I wish to do so.
I just don’t know if using Tom Nooks Pic as a reference for my work, thereby making it a derivative work I suppose, would still violate copyright laws because it would be considered a derivative work building off of and dependent on the original Tom Nooks Pic.

Woah, my brain is like shutting down! (probably literally lol)
I am super tired and it’s becoming harder to focus…
Maybe I should go do Linden Realms to try and earn some free Lindens xD
Well, that’s all I have to discuss for now!! :D
I hope to see you in-world one day!

’Til next time! (prob later today )

~James Dodon


(P.s. mehh kinda lame bonus pic!!
birds-eye view of project aMaze so far!!

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