Party Tomorrow At Darkgate!

The Darkgate opens again tomorrow! DJ Darwin will play again a fine rock and metal selection! There will also be a contest for the best rock outfit! And of course some people might turn topless again ;-)

Where: Darkgate Rock/Metal/BDSM Club

When: Saturday, March 1st, 1 PM SLT (10 PM CET, 9 PM GMT)

Why: Becuase nowhere in SL will be more fun and better music!

See you there!

Factsheet-Poster-Diagram-And-New-Releases-Time!

Airship Factsheet: Something to learn by heart and pin it over your bed!

Instead of making a long list of features and design-details of the soon-released Airship Daedalus, I found it a much nicer way to provide you with a kind of poster-something, telling you the same in a more entertaining way - enjoy!

And because change is good I was making a few other things too. You might sense a slight wasteland-bias here:

Wastelands Floor Clock: Oh, its already past apocalypse!

It flies nicer than it looks: Wastelands 2-Seater Biplane.

Emma designed these lovely amps - she is quite a rock chick! :-)

Wastelands Mesh Guitar Amps: They might have seen a tour or two already - and the occasional nuclear attack of course!

Steampunk Mesh Guitar Amps: Steam up your sound!

My personal favorite: Mesh Guitar Amps in classy red leather :-)

As usual you can find these items at the Drow Science Store on the Marketplace!

One More Step To World Domination - A New Drow Science Store!

Sometimes nice things just happen out of the blue. I had a very friendly encounter with Destany Laval, the owner of Unzipped (selling lovely roleplay- and steampunk-related items) and her husband Barnabas. We were chatting about all sorts of things, when she suddenly offered me to take a plot at her mainstore - for a price I couldn't refuse ;-)

Doesn't it looks great? Many thanks to Destany and Barnabas - you are cool! :-)

And here is your taxi to my new store. Take the elevator in the main lobby to go to the underground level, then turn left and follow the corridor.

Happy Birthday Z & A

Almost 4 years ago Zardia (a Drow too, isn't that nice?) and Antony (a human and brat) did start their brand Z&A productions, selling neat and very reasonably priced RLV toys and furniture. And the best of all: they are very friendly and fun people!

So today is not only the "usual" Z&A dance, but also its their official birthday party! Congratulations!

It will be held at 4 PM SLT time at their mainstore and will surely be epic ;-)


Oh and the full story can be read at the Z&A blog!


See you there!

A Quick Absinthic Update...

Since the recent additions (nicer seats and romantic lanterns) did so well, I added also a tray of exclusive (and very yummy) Drow Absinthe for the enjoyment of the passengers.

The tray includes everything you need for the classical french absinthe ritual, as it was performed in the 19th century: A keg of cool water, sugar cubes and perforated-absinthe spoons.

Passengers of the Daedalus will certainly enjoy this lovely sight!

The tray - which of course gives a glass of Absinthe on click - is already available on the Marketplace and will of course be included with the Daedalus.

If you like to drink it at home and your living room is too small for an airship, the Absinthe is also available as stand-alone ;-)

More news about the Daedalus are coming soon - I have one or two things still up my sleeve!

Linden Lab's New CEO Introduces Himself

Shortly after taking the job as LL's new CEO, Ebbe Altberg (aka Ebbe Linden) had a meeting with some representants of the SL press yesterday.

So far he makes a good impression on me. Especially since he knew SL before from the user-perspective before joining LL. He explicitly pointed out its "high learning curve" for newbies. Something he definitely needs to address to meet his long term goal of making it more attractive to broader masses.

A pretty welcome - and frankly quite necessary - approach if you ask me. The big challenge for LL will be to keep the balance between being too simple and overly complex. On one hand, the complexicty of SL allows content creators to play with a wide range of possiblities but on the other hand, the complexity is also what is overwhelming new users.
After all its not facebook where 90% of the interaction is limited on hitting that poor "like" button and I certainly won't like a "Facebook 3D".

Ebbe also talked enthusiastically about the richness of user-generated content, new groundbreaking VR technologies like Oculus Rift, neccessary changes in LL's internal structures to make it work more efficiently - all in all pretty good points he made. He seems to be aware of SL's possibilities and its shortcomings.

I think the former CEO, Rodvik Linden, did a good job in addressing the technical issues SL's had. Making the grid faster, more stable and introducing interesting new technologies (just mentioning meshes here). Very important improvements which were simply overdue. Sadly they didnt increase the number of users and the amount of sims on the grid did even decline. And I think these will be the figures LL's new CEO will be judged for.

Fingers crossed that Ebbe can reach the goals he set. Its certainly an ambitious project leading SL from the niche where it is now into reaching the masses. But if you ask me - the potential is there.


Sources (in alphabetic order):

Daniel Voyager's Blog

Echt Virtuell (German)

Living in a Modem World

New World Notes

Yo Jardley's Second Life

Heaven And Hell - Welcome To The Dark Gate!

A few weeks ago, Cyhtleen came up with the idea for a music club, merging metal (the music genre) and BDSM (btw a quite familiar concept).

If you ask me cages, st. andrew's crosses, pillories, leather and powerful guitar riffs just suit perfectly together and when seeing the club taking shape (and the dungeon underneath getting filled with equipment) I knew this is going to be something really cool.

Here are a few impressions from Sunday's party. More (both parties and pictures) are going to follow:

Despite the mist on the ground it was pretty hot on the dancefloor ;-)

Pretty hot!

Mr. Ebbage proudly adding some 1940's chic - or was he just too lazy to change?

Thats the advantage of being friends with the venue-owner: no dresscode :D

A decent degree of nudity is encouraged though.

Oio "volunteering" as pole-dancer.

And handcuff-model.

Sooner or later I end up on the stage too. Really volunteering though ;-) Oh, and Zen is showing serious side-effects of metal listening.

The Dark Gate has events on a pretty regular base. Feel free to come by - if you dare. To stay informed about the essential question of who will play when - join the Group :-)

And here is your ticket: Dark Gate - BDSM + Metal Club

Because There Can Never Be Enough Airship Pictures

I was in a bit of a hurry yesterday. Cyhtleen threw a party at her club Dark Gate (I will blog about it soon, promised!) and of course I didn't wanted to miss it. Today - after some tinkering with the poses and scripts for the sofa suite - I went to New Babbage for a more proper and extensive photo shooting. As usual the place turned out to be a time-machine: Minutes turned to hours before I even noticed ;-)
It was great fun and since its been a while since I was there last time, I did spot many new and interesting things there.

I think there isn't a more suiting (and cool) way of approaching the city than with an Airship.

Yes, definitely!

Over the rooftops of New Babbage

Seems the winter still holds the city in its grip.

Floating over New Babbage's Harbour.

Passing one of the many Lighthouses.

The view from the stern.

The Airship making friends with some other "biggies" ;-)

The shooting today felt a bit like rediscovering the ship after spending most of the time on it spotting errors before ;-)
Its just lovely to see it floating majestically and gracile through the landscape. A feeling I will be able to share very soon!

Almost Done!

The Steampunk Airship - informally called the Daedalus (yes, I haven't made up my mind about its name yet!) - saw a considerable refinement after my last post.
As announced in my previous post I replaced the old wooden benches (yes, I got some complaints about splinters stuck in delicate places) with a classy, venetian-inspired sofa suite.
After I was happy with the sofas I also added the lanterns - as promised :-)
And it looks sooo much better now - I'm really delighted!

View from the front - yes I turned a romantic skysetting on ;-)

The Steampunk Airship as seen from the skipper's place.

View towards the rear.

Nice backside, isn't it?

And this is how it looks in daylight :-)

Now I just need to add scripts for the seats and lanterns, do a few testflights and it can be relased - Yay! I'm happy :-)


P.S.

The Steam Hunt is starting soon - I might have a special treat for you there...

Steampunk Airship - Work In Progress

Since uploading the mesh and doing the maiden flight I had lots of opportunity to spot little things here and there which need to be fixed (mostly mapping issues really) and to consider further improvements.
The first really obvious change you can see in the picture below. A much more detailled - and steampunky - envelope hull with netting, shading and curlicues - because... I can! (well, because I learned how to do it, actually).
Anyway, it adds definitely to the ships overall look, doesn't it?

The Zeppelin's new netting! Did you know that the word "nett" means "nice" in German?
Well, it certainly is nice!

Veronica sugested adding a more posh set of seatings to point out the ships venetian  gondola look instead of the rather profane benches I use so far, so I'm working on a nice suite of sofas now. It surely will fit well to the new texture and the passengers will surely apprechiate the new seats too :-)

Zen, who came up with the netting and curlicues also suggested adding lanterns at the sterns and other strategic places. A very good idea I will pursue further. Also planned is a freight-version with lots of clutter... ermm goods instead of the sofas (well, plausible, isn'it it?). But the benches will see a revival on this one - much more suiting!

The next update will (hopefully) either show the new lanterns or the suite - stay tunes :-)


P.S.
I like the name "Daedalus" for it more and more - let's say its at least its "unofficial" designation now!

Maiden Flight!

One certain project was keeping me busy over the last weeks - well with some interruptions due to lack of motivation, changes in design and ideas for other things which were much faster to realize keeping popping up.
It's always a special moment for me when a larger construction is completed. Well "completed" - let's say when you finally see results. There is still some work to do at it but its down to some minor tweaking and experimenting with things and playing with design details really.
A build is never actually completed. You just give up at some point ;-) However, the closer you get to this perfect idea you have in your head, the better - and I'm am very pleased with...

The first Drow Science Steampunk Zeppelin!

There is always this level of uncertainity you feel when uploading the mesh the first time. Are your estimations about its land impact correct? (A crucial point to me. Especially with bigger objects: I want to avoid cluttering places with unnecessary large primcounts) Are there any things  I have missed? Any design flaws? Or does the cool and beautiful model in blender looks just ugly and disproportioned when putting your av in it?

Luckily I could answer all these questions to my satisfaction. It has a decently low land impact of 48 prims (at an overall length of more than 50 meters), it looks light and elegant and simply - right :-)

I wanted to make this ship for a long time already. A whimsical, sleek design. Totally fictional of course, but still: its quite believable that a construction like this would actually work!
It is a piece of alternate history, where steam engines learned to fly - even if you had to hang them from large gas balloons!

Friday evening saw its maiden flight. I invited some friends over and took off from the airfield at Foliage.
It was a lovely and quite extensive tour: We did head west to Crow's Nest, had a trip down south to the St. Diabloux Airport, went to Grand Manan Island and Sailor's Cove and even had a trip to Second Norway in the far east before landing at Honah Lee Surf.

Low-level cruising over a calm Blake Sea (Courtesy of Cyhtleen)

Stopping by at Crow's Nest

Drow skipper Somehow steering into the Sunset (Courtesy of Cyhtleen)

Most ships in Second Norway float in the water - some(s) fly!

The next days will see further test-runs, some tweakings and trying one or two ideas to make it even better (hard to believe, I know!), before it will be available at my store.

Oh, and before I forget: there is one thing I definitely need to fix before it goes into serial-production:

It still has no name!

I will fix this flaw - promised! Deadalus sounds not bad for example... feel free to give me feedback :-)