Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Melissa


Just a head's up, in case anyone didn't know (and since this is a blog that features mesh avatars from Utilizator), the Melissa avatar is currently free as a Halloween(?) gift up at Annie May Heaven! Go grab this cutie for yourself~

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Kemono Freebies


Something a little different this time! I've always done things for the Avatar 2.0, but now here's some freebies for the Kemono, since I have a little boy avatar using the Kemono with M3 Venus head. 

FREE group gifts from =^HARO^= (free to join) 
 Button Eyes || Fangs || Bloodied Finger || Bloodied Shirt 
Bubbles Pose: Free gift from Icons of Style 
Horns: Trick-o-Treat outfit Free at [GIFTS HOME] 
Photo taken at Night Crawl
--
Not Free
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 Mesh Avatar: Kemono by Utilizator $900L
Mesh Head: M3 System Venus Head by Utilizator $500L
Skin: Tor Shade Skin Mod by =^HARO^= $300L
Hair: Unisex 32 from Dura in black $120L

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Halloween around the corner!


So normally I have lots of posts of Halloween, and this year is no exception! The only thing is that I seem to have posted everything on other sites (tumblr, flickr), so I'm going to move them over-- expect a barrage!

What I'd also like to focus on is just how beautiful Second Life can be when people dedicate a little more time to it: I've had family sigh and tell me that they'd play Second Life if only the game was prettier... and I don't understand that sentiment at all. Sure, there's a great number of sims that seem to be stuck in the 2004-2007 era in terms of graphics, but that's actually not the majority of places I see. Most other areas are incredibly proud of how beautiful Second Life can be, and they show it!

 The pictures in this post were taken at a sim called The Trace, and yes it IS this beautiful there. I've even gif'ed the area to show that it really is as beautiful as it looks, and that it's the perfect place to go for some autumn relaxation and explorations!

Pumpkin Staff: Free group gift at COCO Designs
 Hat + Hair: Free Subscriber gift from Magika
 Morrow Gothic Dress: PAST free gift from Evie's Closet
 Hecate's Broom: Free at NeverWish
 Penta Harness: $1 Halloween gift at T&S
 OW leather boots: $1L from ATOMIC Marketplace

NOT FREE
 Pose: !bang group gift ($100L to join)
 WitchCraft Garters: PROMO $25L @ Apple May Designs (now $100L)
 
Mesh Avatar: Avatar 2.0 from Utilizator ($500L)
 Skin Mod: Ombre from !free (discontinued)
 Gloves/Socks: Utilizator ($100L each)

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

!gO!


 Since I promised a fashion post (2 posts ago), this one is going to be a little thing to talk about the free mesh clothing you can get at !gO! that they have lined up outside the stores ($1L per outfit), and a little bit just practicing my photography now that I've actually updated my Firestorm Viewer.

The sim that I practised taking these pictures on is HERE, and I'm sad to say that I haven't yet played through the game available (which does sound really cool, in a LOST sort of manner) mostly because I'm doing this (for some reason) at 2am in the morning, and a little because I was trying to take and then edit the pictures immediately... which didn't work out all that well when Firestorm and Photoshop both tried to compete for the most amount of RAM on my computer.

A reminder that: yes, I am still using the Avatar 2.0 body, and this cute turquoise summer outfits fits just about perfectly-- sparing an inch or two around the waist for the skirt (and thus I put on a bikini underneath).

I'll leave this post at just this outfit (there are plenty of other mesh outfits outside the !gO! store, but be aware that most of them will not fit as perfectly as this outfit, although thanks to the latest Avatar 2.0 updates most of those outfits will fit with a little bit of tweaking), as while the hair and sandals were both free, they're expired items (unless you collected free things from the Hair Faire this year and just haven't opened all the boxes, this is one of the hairs we got!) and I'll try to do a few more outfits in my next post!

Thursday, July 23, 2015

UNIA


 As everyone probably already knows, this post has been long overdue. UNIA is the latest game by MadPea, and MadPea is one of the greatest game/content creators on Second Life. Now I've been following the development of this game for well over a year before it's release (I think?), or at the very least, ever since they first announced it in their group. The original disclaimer is that this would be the biggest thing they've every done, and... well, now that I've finally found the time to go through it, they weren't wrong!

I remember going through the original Devil's Labyrinth back in the days when I was still doing Hogwarts roleplay, and figuring out their Firefly interactive story. MadPea did escape rooms and glorious sims, and lately they've been doing-- well, hunts with stories behind them. I like stories, I like hunts... win/win, right?

But I think it wasn't until I was running through UNIA that I realised just how much I missed something purely... story. While the hunts were always fantastic and MadPea did a spectacular job creating sims and HUDs that allowed for more immersive game-play, there was just something about hunting in outside stores that tears you away from the game. Of course there were some great stores that actually redecorated just to suit the hunt! And wow, those were the stores that really got my approval, but there's something that detracts when you see a store that's clearly not in the storyline but has been written into the storyline because of the hunt and then also realise that there are other people in the store actually trying to shop or do something else that's not in the same mindset as you... well.

Let's just say: UNIA gets rid of all that. It is still a hunting game. You still have to search for items, and a lot of times those items will be hard to find. But everything is moved so that when you play UNIA, you will only see other people who play UNIA. You are not traversing outside stores, but rather, the outside stores have come to the UNIA sim to sell their goods, tucked away in a corner where it doesn't interfere with the storyline.

Now the pictures that I have up will have a bit of spoilers to UNIA, but since I want to gush a little about how amazing it is, the post itself will have slight spoilers for UNIA.

 MadPea has done a fantastic job of giving away absolutely nothing of this game in advance, so when I first started playing, I honestly had no clue as to what I was supposed to do. Wander around a desert sim looking for things while wearing a HUD with my vital signs on it? And yes, just so you know: you can die in this game. I'd be very surprised if anyone makes it through without dying once, because... well, I know I died a few times entirely from curiosity!

 The story goes that your car breaks down in the middle of the desert right next to the town of Molimo, a tiny place with missing persons posters all over. In fact, speaking with the residents will have a man searching for his wife and a police officer who warns you to stay safe because Molimo is rather famous for disappearances. I didn't know what to do, so I went around a lot talking to people until I was eventually 'kidnapped'.

I say 'kidnapped' because I honestly only heard some noises behind me, started running, and then blacked out to find myself awake again in a farm that looked nowhere close to Molimo! In fact, the entire area is surrounded by an energy shield so that's where the puzzles truly start. How do you get out??

UNIA is a survival game, and that means there are things in this game out to kill you and you can choose either to run away or fight back. Now, as someone who could only afford the Bronze Pass of the game (which is the basic pass to play and costs 400L, as opposed to the Gold Pass which is 1000L and will provide you will amazing weapons for you to defend yourself with), my only real choice was to run away since I attempted to fight back once and... well, if it helps, I died slightly after I managed to kill the monster.

Expect intrigue! Horror! Jump scares! And honestly, several moments when you feel like you need to start stabbing at your monitor because I for one could not figure out for the life of me how to solve two of the puzzles without some helpful clues from people in the chat. (If anyone wants to know, it was the cow and centipede ones.)

But yes! Definitely, definitely, take some time out of your day to play UNIA. It is beautiful, it is daring, and as my SO has asked, "Why don't they just make a real game out of it and put it up on Steam to make more money?" (Trust me, that's a real compliment coming from him.)

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

"Why does it all have to be so creepy?!"

...Okay, so the title comes directly from my roommate, who gave me to teleport over to Origami because she knows I like pretty places... and apparently, most of those pretty places are extremely creepy as well!

The sim is a scenery mall filled with handfuls of tiny stores with a Japanese slanted theme, most of them with a slight horror element. Not too much, though! Just... a store that sells bleeding dolls, or kimonos (but the advert will feature a headless mannequin with a large flower for a head to display it), or masks. 

What I didn't notice while panning around and taking pictures (I go around far faster than my computer can load areas) is that it's soon to host the summer festival come July! I'm going to guess it's going to be in a fantastically creepy theme (and I definitely have to start looking at kimonos and accessories to put together for the festival soon...) which is something I desperately miss throughout the year... well, except during October, when all the sims decide that being creepy and scary is in the 'in' thing due to Halloween (guys, guys, creepy is always 'in').

So I'll do a proper post about this place once the festival comes along (wow, it really is going to be summer soon! Time really flies... even the summer night market is already open...), but for now enjoy the landmark because I know that the creepy/cute event only comes around once a year and what's better than having a few permanent destinations when you're feeling the urge to scare a roommate?

The next entry will actually be a fashion update, I promise! (Or perhaps the new Attack on Titan sim that Utilizator has created...? I still have to visit that!)

Thursday, January 8, 2015

50LI experiment

Welcome back to this blog! Well, perhaps I should be telling myself that seeing as I haven't been updating when I really should be.... Massive apologies for skipping Halloween and Christmas, two of the biggest events on Second Life (with plenty of hunts, mazes, games, and so forth). But as a first post for 2015, I've created a challenge to myself for low-prim living! 

Readers might recall that in a previous post I spoke of how it wasn't hard to maintain a nice cozy area on Second Life so long as you were willing to put in a little effort when it comes to furniture hunting. It doesn't always means buying the most expensive furniture, either! I have a few items down that I've gotten from hunts, although most I accumulated through sales and the such. SO, the experiment was what I could do with 50 land impact of space within 100 square feet.

 I like to think I did alright. Of course, most people on Second Life tend to go straight for a bedroom and living room, probably with a wall separating them. On my part, I like having a kitchen and bathroom as well (although I'm sure some people might sigh at the idea of having a bathroom on the game... why bother when you can finally forego that?). And I've found that places for rent, or even houses that you buy, don't have many rooms. Or at least, that's how the story goes: the more rooms created, the higher amount of land impact (LI) space needed and so many renters don't offer multiple rooms, and neither do many houses. A lot of times they'll just segway into a second story rather than build more walls.

 I didn't change up the floor or walls or ceiling (and you might notice the floating blue box that was a rent sign -- I was very dedicated to this experiment!), since I took a week rent at the Flamingo Court Motel, which is a nice little place I used to stay at many years ago before mesh ever came out. And if you stay there, you'll notice that everything there seems very old, even if it's spacious and comfortable. But it was a perfect location for my little experiment (and if you want to go see it within the next week, I rented out room 9).

I guess you could say I have a habit of trying to fit as many things in the room as possible, and while I wasn't entirely satisfied with the amount of items I have here, it doesn't seem too bad to me. I've got a living room, sewing area, kitchen with dining, and a partition for the bathroom area which is connected to a bedroom area... all in a single studio apartment using bookshelves and such to change up the area so that I don't leave too much blank space around. 


I haven't even put in any photographs or the sort, just threw out as many pieces of furniture as I was able. Everything you see in the room excluding the rental box, the floors and the actual walls... that's what I threw out. All of that amounts of 50LI, including wall stuffs and rugs. Not too shabby, I think. I could have probably cut down a lot on the LI if I hadn't included the sewing room, but I have a fascination for things like that (I have a sewing area in real life, see, but don't have bolts of fabric like that).

The item with the highest LI here is actually the bed, topping it all off at 6LI. The sofa is 3LI, and each of the seats only take a single land impact. The dining set and bathtub took 3LI as well, but surprisingly, nothing else amounted that high after that. And when you break down 50 into little numbers like that... well, you end up being able to fit a lot of things in!

If anyone is trying to recreate a low land impact room like this, all the furniture used here came from  Dysfunctional Designs, LAQ, Sway's, BAZAARNIJI-YA, Zigana, Trompe Loeil, Cheeky Pea, XED Deisgn, Chapo Factory, and Apple Fall.