One of the things I enjoy most about the game Second Life is the ability to design objects in 3-D and then interact with them. I’ve built theatres (of course) and held events. I’ve built pianos. Jets. Weapons. Even penguins.
My latest obsession is to design hovering vehicles that speed over the land and “turbo jump” to insane heights. Over the last few weeks, I’ve sold or given away dozens of these “Hover Pods” to other Second Life players. I always get a kick out of seeing another player speed past me in one of my pods. I even built a shop from which to sell these things.
This, I think, is part of the appeal of the new breed of MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Oline Games)… anything you create can be shared with other players. It’s a socially-oriented environment, rather than an insular environment like offline games. Sure, I could get a copy of a 3-D design program and build vehicles and buildings, and it would probably render better quality images than Second Life can. But I wouldn’t be able to walk around inside those buildings with other people, and actually use them. When you design offline, a 3-D model of a car is just a 3-D picture. In the game, it’s actually used and enjoyed as a car.
I never thought that playing this game would turn me into a car salesman. I’d rather just give these things away, but the economics of the game demand that I pay taxes on the land that I own.
I’ll get tired of it soon and do something else, but until then, have a look at some of my designs.
I should mention that, to make a functioning vehicle, the 3-D model has to build with fewer than 31 primitives. A primitive is the basic building block of 3-D models and come in these shapes: cube (pyramid), sphere, cone (cylinder), tetrahedron, and torus. Click the links to view the images, then click Back in your browser to return here.
Next big project: stop playing this bloody game.