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.)

"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!)

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, BAZAAR,  NIJI-YA, Zigana, Trompe Loeil, Cheeky Pea, XED Deisgn, Chapo Factory, and Apple Fall.

Kagami

 

I think that what most people don't know is that I don't edit any of the images I put here in any way other than to crop it if I feel I really have to or if there's a lot of blank space on one side. What you see on this blog is exactly what everything looks like to be on Second Life, no editing or tweaking involved. 

That being sad, I'd like for people to understand just why some of these pictures here are so dark -- because this sim is supposed to be dark and spooky! Welcome to Kagami, the August Japanese Horror Event that is beautiful and entirely free to play. 

Teleport to the sim, gets your free HUD, select your language, and then prepare yourself for a brilliant storytelling experience as you set out to save a friend who was spirited away into another realm. Filled with little trinkets and goodies, Kagami is a classical Japanese tale of spirits and lost family, sending you into another world filled with a different set of rules. You follow the clues to find your classmate Kasumi, and find out the truth behind her family. 

 So what can I say about this one without spoiling it? Not much, I suppose. I'll let you follow the storyline to figure out what's going on, as there are a lot of people to speak with and items to be found. It's a surprisingly simplistic story with more love than there is fright, but the sounds incorporated are rather brilliant. I do suggest turning up the sound on your computer for these areas, and not being afraid to click on everything. Thanks to the HUD, camera control is sometimes taken from you in order to either progress the story or to add to the drama, and it's a feature I actually approve of. Often times, it's far too easy to complete a story just because we can break the rules of reality and start looking through walls and far beyond where our avatars can actually reach.

Having our characters' control wrested away from them is quite brilliant, and certainly adds a flair to the story despite knowing that you're in absolutely no danger at all. It's somewhat startling to realise your point of view has been taken from you, or that you can't move immediately as you would like to.

On another point, I'd like to point out that this event was beautifully translated. Was the wording at its absolute best? As a writer, I can't exactly give them that much credit. But was it more than comprehensive and written in a way we understood the emotions of the story? Yes. Yes, it absolutely was. 

You can immediately tell that a lot of time and love went into this event, from the places that you go to the immaculate scripting for not only a free HUD, but dozens of NPC characters and interactive objects. For a horror event, it's not too scary. But then again, it might be on the scarier side of Second Life. Either way, it can still be enjoyed as a wonderful Japanese summer festival.

Shamera is wearing (in the first picture) an entirely free (outside of hair) mesh head and outfit from *COCO*BDJ.

Sustainable Second Life Living

So this post is going to be a slight deviation from the norm, since it's not so much about places and outfits as your own place and what you can do with it. To me, a great deal of what to do on Second Life isn't just to do with shopping or stepping about willy-nilly, but also creating my own virtual space to relax in. Sometimes you just want to invite people over, after all, or have a nice place to hang out and talk that's completely your own. So today I'm going to talk about having your own place on Second Life: or in specific, my place. That's right, welcome to Shamera's skybox.

This place is, basically, a one room studio apartment on land that a friend was kind enough to spare for me (knowing my obsession with having a place of my own). She has the generic 117prim land that comes with SL premium members on the mainland, and has a tiny place of her own down on the ground for a landing area and changing station.  The rest, as it goes, ended up being my own little playpen.

To start off with, let's talk prims and land impact and just how much space you can play with. If you're willing to pay the big bucks... well, you're probably on an island somewhere with your own castle or manor hosting grand parties and leasing out places. But if you're trying to find a nice place with just enough space and prim allowance for you to not look like a college student who just moved out... well, sometimes it's a fine line. Just how much space do you need in order to make a virtual space look like a space you'd actually want to be in?

That all depends on your preferences. On my part, I like a place to look -- cluttered. Lived in. That makes it hard because I used to rent areas in the game, and I never wanted to pay for more than 200prims of space, since that would be $200l a week or more (and that certainly adds up!). Of course, years and years ago, this amounted to very little prim space so I would make do with basic furniture, some rugs, and some paintings on the wall. All in all, still a decent living space in my mind. Nowadays, though, I find myself much more picky with the improvement of graphics and mesh have taking the majority of the market in furniture designs. Suddenly, instead of one circle being one prim, you can have an entire bed with multiple pillows, shapes, contours, nicely carved wooden posts, blankets, and shelves underneath amount to 6 land impact. (1 prim = 1 land impact, but mesh aren't actually prims, so they count by land impact.)


Not only were they much more beautiful graphics-wise, containing better details and allowing for better textures, but it manages to condense the land impact enough that suddenly people could fit a lot more items in a smaller space. Suddenly, I could rent a place with 50 prims and actually have a decent room! Of course, without the clutter, but I'd be able to fit all the basic furniture.

Let's not to say that owning a home in Second Life isn't an investment. There's not only rent but picking out furniture and what you'd have lying around as well. I have a very large inventory under my 'Homes' folder, ranging from folders of collected and bought houses, skyboxes, outdoor items, and then furniture all according to what rooms they would belong in. I regularly visit major gachas and interior decor stores for sales. I comb through Collab88, Fifty Linden Fridays, Neighborhood, etc... It's a lot of collecting.

In the end, it's always worth it to me. Clutter and personalized touches are what I do best: pictures everywhere, typewriters, video games spread around, books and papers scattered all over the ground... I feel very at home in my tiny skybox. While most people only have a bedroom and perhaps a living room for entertaining guests, I managed to convert this one room studio skybox into something I felt more fitting with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, dining area, living area, and even a spot for sewing (as I actually have half the living room in my real life home carved out for a sewing room). Some areas are cluttered and cramped, while others are spacious and allow for interaction (such as the kitchen and living area).

This allows for people to come over and chat as well as dine, just like friends would in real life. Pretty neat, huh? I also liked the idea of mismatched furniture -- if I'm to have a tiny studio apartment, the common consensus would probably be that I won't have enough for too much high-brow furniture. Yes, I might have bought the entire set on Second Life, but the mismatch is what makes it fun... not to mention, a lot of my mismatched furnitures when up free since they might be from hunts or gifts.

Everything I have in this skybox, including the skybox itself, comes down to 87 land impact. That includes every detail -- the rice cooker, the drumsticks in the shelf, the video games, the record player, the books and bottles on the ground... everything. Five years ago, 100 prim limit wouldn't have gotten you any details at all... maybe some couches and a bed, maybe a table with some chairs if you're sparing with the prims on those pieces of furniture. But that was before the days of sculpies, and before the days of mesh.

Now we're a bit spoiled, and finding your dream home on Second Life won't cost you an arm and a leg on prim space, which makes things nice and sustainable. Want to have your own farm? Easy enough. Your own tavern? That's a piece of cake! Perhaps an apartment complex, or a cafe? You might need a bit more than just 117LI of space for that, but I can guarantee that you can definitely do so now much easier than it would have been five years ago.

Look at your prim allowance. If you're renting like I usually did, then think about how much you want to spend per week on your own space. Is what you're willing to spend going to afford you 100LI of space? 200? Or maybe just 50? I've done 50 many, many times and it's usually worked out just fine. Now look at how much you're willing to spend on mesh furniture... they don't come cheap, but it's going to be worth it in the end for all the land space that you save week after week. Maybe all you need, like my friend, is a small and private space for changing and winding down. Maybe you'd like to have people over all the time. Maybe you just want your own place to call your own. Either way, it's all possible on Second Life. Your dream home really is waiting for you to build it.

The oldest and most complex strategy game, now on Second Life

 I think I just found heaven on Earth in Second Life!

...If that's not enough of a catch-phrase to spark your attention, I really wouldn't know what is. But being honest now, I'm fairly certain that other people may not agree with my idea of heaven on earth, but as an avid iGo/Baduk/Weiqi fan, this place is certainly hitting everything I love centre stage. Which isn't hard, you know, when I really do adore Go that much. Not that I can play well, mind you, but I find it a masterful game far more challenging than chess. Strategy? That's a sense my brain is missing in spades (I should regale my readers on the first time I played chess and my uncle held me in check for twenty moves before he grew sick of me trying to figure out what was going on and checkmated me just to end the game), and I'm not in any way good at Go...

But I can certainly admire the game. I have a set at home, even, although the wooden board is thin and the stones are actually plastic.

Anyone who knows me will understand that when I tend to get bored (usually when I'm attempting to procrastinate for something else), I'll start surfing destination guides. There's a reason I have a blog for beautiful places in Second Life, and that's because I enjoy beautiful places immensely -- but usually my love of beautiful places on Second Life and my love for other things... oh, say, video games and board games and general fandom, don't tend to coincide. So imagine my (extremely pleasant) surprise when I saw a quick ad for the Kido Go Club on Second Life. 

I have never, never imagined that I would find a Go Club on Second Life. I don't even know why! The concept just never jumped into my mind before, so when I read about Kido being (straight from the ad) "a place to play, learn and teach the game of Go. With many boards, monthly organized tournaments, prizes and more", I couldn't believe my eyes!

 And not only that -- this sim is genuinely beautiful. The Japanese architecture is stunning, actually, creating a landscape of peace and tranquility for people to ease their minds into challenging battles and training your brain to utilize its full potential. Maybe it's a bit melodramatic of me to put it that way, but I know that I certainly have a hard time writing if the environment is being distracting, and I'm going to assume that it's ten times worse when trying to learn a game as challenging as Go.

Maybe I'll actually try to join the club... speak with some people about it. What I can say is that I'm certainly impressed by this place, and if it really does have lessons, I'll definitely make time to join in!

Now that I've waxed poetic about this, some people may ask... so what's Go? iGo (in Japanese), known as Baduk in Korean and Weiqi in Chinese, is a strategy board game pre-dating chess. Akin to chess in that it is extremely intelligence-driven, Go does not have the amount of restrictions chess puts on all its pieces... instead, it is a game of divide and conquer -- you place your pieces in any manner to surround and kill off groups of your enemy, and is infinitely complex because of its lack of restrictions. There is no one king for you to take out, there is no easy way to win -- you have to win not just a battle, but an entire war in order to win this game.

Your board is a 19 by 19 grid, and you place your stones (either black or white) on the crosshairs of the grid to claim territory. What you want to do is claim as much territory as possible while battling back your opponent and attempting to claim their territory while defending your own. Go is a game that employs great foresight and recollection: you must remember your plans with every move, attempt to delve into your opponent's thoughts, pre-plan various strategies to employ 5, 10, or even 20 moves in the future, and also understand that your focus can not be on one sole target... in a battle for one corner of the board, you may lose the entire game if you don't pay attention to your opponent's strategy on distracting you and claiming more territory than you can afford to give up.

But then, I'm rather terrible at explaining partially do to how bad I am at this game and due to my overwhelming enthusiasm, so I'll just link anyone who wishes to know more to the wikipedia page for it.

In the name of the Moon, I will punish you!

 

  ...Yeah, okay, cheesy. But come on -- when you think of super cheesy, don't the old and classic childhood stories come to mind? Admit it, you were the Sailor Moon generation. The Pokemon, the Harry Potter... it's so ingrained in our childhoods that we don't even really have to talk about it. The moment something from those series is mentioned, we just know!

Well, Cutie Moon Fair is currently holding tribute to Sailor Moon! Admittedly, I don't often frequent and then talk about fairs in which they don't have an abundance of free items, but I'll make an exception for the classics (you hear that, Harry Potter sims? Get on it, chop chop!)

I wanted this to just be a short post, so I won't get into how, you know, Sailor Moon is getting a remake this year and everyone should watch it if only for nostalgia's sake, or lamenting over how I didn't have the proper shoes for Sailor Mars because, wow, apparently no one does heels with mesh feet unless it's Slink or something.

Let's instead talk about fitted mesh! Because I still boggle over the feature -- in a good way! I know there were many creators who expected more from Linden Labs, but I think it's still a step in the right direction... maybe sometime soon I might be able to rid myself of 4/5 of my inventory or something since I tend to have five of each mesh item (one of each size) plus alpha. Violent Seduction has created a beautiful line of Sailor Scout uniforms with fitted mesh, and this is the first item I've bought in which I can play around with the sizing! I've got to say, it's pretty amazing watching patches of skin that used to clip through... just stop clipping when you adjust your body size!

Of course, that might not work for everyone. I'm not entirely sure, but as someone with a mesh avatar, this is exceptionally convenient to just adjust the uniform to fit over my avatar rather than having to look for something three sizes too big!  Definitely looking forward to more fitted mesh, so I'm encouraging everyone to update either their Second Life Viewer or Firestorm... otherwise there may soon be a lot of naked avatars about since you can't see their clothes (and I would be one of them, which is a shameful thought, so please update those browsers!).

Shamera is wearing:

(TOP)

Violent Seduction - Eternal Uniform Mars @ Cutie Moon Fair (250L)

Moon Tiara @ Cutie Moon Fair (FREE)

[taketomi] Quele @ New Burley (FREE group gift)

*COCO* RuffleAnkleBoots (Red) @ COCO DESIGNS (FREE group gift)

(BOTTOM)

::{u.f.o}:: sailor chibi moon dress @ Cutie Moon Fair (250L)

.Atomic. Scout Bag {Gatcha} @ Cutie Moon Fair (75L a play)

Cutie Moon Fair Locket @ Cutie Moon Fair (FREE!)

~Tableau Vivant~ Cho Hair @ Beauty Avatar couture (50L a play)