We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes at Mesa 5, things have been very quiet on the news front mainly due to us having our heads down and working away. No we’re not dead, we haven’t been abducted and sorry once again for the radio silence. As regular visitors may have noticed, there have been a lot of changes to the sim… Continue reading The Big Sim Progress Report
From today our products will be available both in-world and via the Second Life Marketplace™
outlook indiaThis re-listing also brings about the return of Ifrit Skytower’s Sculpt Packs now updated with new textures, ambient occlusion maps and handy reference trays for discerning map names.
I’m in the process of redoing Poseidon as a mesh build.
Why? Long story short, LL are changing the physics handling, and I didn’t like the increase in land impact this would cause.
Right now I’ve got most of the interior mesh stuff done, and I’ve finished texturing much of the new hull. I’m getting some pretty serious reduction in land impact – but I’m going to keep the new land impact a secret until I’ve got it finalized.
Suffice it to say, I think you’ll be both impressed and pleasantly surprised.
For the specifics, keep reading…
Since Panopticon 2 has been a bit outdated for a while now, and we already had some work done on Panopticon 3, we decided to bump Panopticon 3 into the Poseidon 1.0 release! Do you know what this means?
No more probes!
As some of you may remember, when asked about the portability of Artemis’ turrets we’ve mentioned they’re rather complex to migrate. This was primarily due to the calculations required to generate the firing arcs, we now however have a tool we can use to generate said arcs more easily and have begun porting the turret scripts onto other ships in waiting. This should help speed several ships along towards release rather soon!
Ifrit Skytower’s starship component sculpts are used far and wide in Second Life sci-fi builds. While the parts demonstrate the potential of the humble sculpty, he always felt the textures included in the packs to be inconsistent, for example: some of the packs have included Ambient Occlusion (AO) maps, some have textures baked onto said AO maps and others don’t have any real texture at all.
In light of this, he’s decided to rebake AO maps for all the sculpt packs including ones that didn’t originally have any as well as baking a new standard texture set for them. This should bring all the packs up to a consistent quality level worthy of modern builds.
Here’s some pictures of the mesh for the new elevator. You’ll notice there aren’t any poseballs – that’s because the new elevator requires no sitting! Still needs the console. The shell itself is only one land impact. I’m expecting to go from a 10 land impact elevator to a 5 impact one, depending on how SL’s physics engine feels like behaving.
The HUD weapons designator has also been updated to use new technology! You can now use it in mouselook (as before) to target the location or avatar you’re looking at, or type a command from 3rd-person view to target whatever your camera’s looking at!
What’s left?
Work continues on the Battlecarrier Poseidon 1.0 upgrade, with more work on the flight script.
For non-modders: The biggest difference you’ll notice is that you don’t have to sit on the elevator to ride it anymore! We’re using some new SL functionality so that it pushes you as if it were a physical object.
After months of work, we’re very excited to announce the opening of the Mesa 5 sim! This is a labor of love for us, and we’re pleased to bring you this fresh, new sci-fi destination. We’ll be opening up the sim in sections, and we’re starting with the store, where you can get access to some of the best science fiction gear in Second Life.
Today at 2pm SLT, we’ll be opening up with an exciting dual launch event for both the store and our new signature product, the Artemis Support Frigate, a collaboration by all of the Greeblers. Feel free to show up any time during the event – you’ll be in good company. We’ll be inviting groups of Second Life merchants, science fiction creators, militaries, and roleplay enthusiasts.
We have been working on Artemis, carefully refining for quite some time, polishing and testing. Why so long? Because we wanted to make sure you have a great experience, and to that end it has been thoroughly, extensively tested, and includes exciting new features not present in other non-physical starships.
We will start the event with a flight show to demonstrate the industry-leading features of Artemis, including our new flight core and weapons systems. After the flight show, you will be given the chance to climb into the cockpit and test drive Artemis for yourself. There will be a special 15% exclusive discount just for the event.
Following the test drive session, you’ll get a chance to meet and talk with the Greeblers. We will be holding a Question & Answer panel about the Artemis, the future of the sim, and future technologies.
During the event, feel free to wander our concept art galleries in the main store to see what we’ve been working on, and what might be coming next.
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