Thursday, January 29, 2009

Entertainment Thesis Statement - Kyle Hughley

Activities in 2nd Life range from all sports, combat games, shopping music, and etc. so when it comes to having fun in 2nd Life it's not too hard.


-Kyle Hughley





Sunday, January 25, 2009

Chalkryn Forest: When I first teleported there, not much was going on. There was one avatar standing next to the river near the spawn point but she ouldnt talk to me. This sim world was nice. It had a lot of cool stuff to look at and it was a good place to chill. It was definitely a wooded area. There were a couple of huge statues, around the area, in fact i think you can see the feet of one in my 2nd life pic below. I would say the object of this sim is just for a place for avatars to hang out. This sim was focused on nature much more than most of the other civilized sims.




The next world that I explored was called the Animated Canvas. Once again there was no one around. This sim's objective is to clearly get the person who's playing the avatar more in to painting or drawing. It's objective is to get people interested in that type of fine arts stuff. There were many cool things to look at in this sim. I took the picture in front of the coolest thing that I thought was in the sim. It was a rectangle box with orange and red colors swirling in a circle.
INFO ISLAND: Info Island is a good place to find out more stuff about second life. When I first spawned there all I saw were pine trees. I started searching around and found a couple of buildings which were pretty interesting. I spawned at Info Island pretty early in the morning so not very many people were around to talk to. By the way my picture of me with the librarian is right below this text. He's the guy dressed in all black. The Library had tons of things to do and look. There was one room that was stacked to the cieling with books. I actually thought that the librarian was going to be a computer animated person but he was actually real. He was having a conversation with another avatar before I went up and talked to him. He told me about all some of the rooms and what the were for.The classmate (Louie/Murrel) that I chose to do this assignment was not in the picture above for some reason but I can assure you that he's to the left from where I'm standing.








Next thing that Louie and I did was walk over to this snowman cause it looked cool. To find out, it gave you a free copy of itself if you clicked on it. I think that Info Island may have some seasonal problems, winter, or summer? There were many parts to info island. It was very inconsistent.

The only reason Murrel and I visited this part of info island was becasue of these crazy looking pictures. There sure is some neat artwork in this videogame to look at. These pictures were on the outside of a building which I thought was kinda weird but at least it gave the gamer something to look at. I now have a copy of that snowman. I don't really know what I'm going to do with a statue snowman but it's all good.



Yet again there is no reason for the object below but to look at. I'm still trying to see all the things there are in second life. It might be a while before I try messing with everything. The picture below must be some kind of Indian art or something. I have no idea, it looks cool though.




Hey, finally a picture with an object in it that does something! This War of Worlds poster gives anyone who clicks on it a free summery of story by H.G. Wells. Never read the book but it made a good movie. And yet again the reason I picked this object to take a picture with is because it looks cool. There were many other movie and book summaries but I thought that this book cover looked the most exciting compared to the other ones.





THEMISKYRA

When I first got to Themiskyra I thought "Wow, what a scenery change." I would say that the theme of the sim was egyptian. The room was a big rectangle supported by stone pillers with blue tops at the top. There were feathers that constantly moved which I thought was pretty cool. Your avatar spawns right behing an embalming table. In front of the embalming table is a throne. Altogether it was an interesting room or sim. There is a neat stone fort up on a hill from the spawn point with some lounge chairs in it. I've noticed that in many of these sim worlds there will be a spot thats hard to find that turns out to be really cool.


Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Let Me Introduce My Second Self


My Avatar in Second Life is still pretty bland. He has a grey long sleeve shirt, white undershirt, grey pants, and no shoes. He has a couple of objects attached to him. For example a backpack along the spine, a cigarette in his right ear, and a cigarette in his hand. He is slightly tanned from the same skin he came with, and has brown hair. So far I haven't modified much to my character when it comes to physical features except for clothes and different items attached to him.


When I first saw the avatar I didn't like the shirt with the stripe that you start out with so I just switched that clothing I found with some free stuff from the freebies store which I have forgotten the name. When it comes to facial features and other physical features I didn't mind what 2nd life started you out with but the clothes had to go.


I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be changing my characters appearance constantly. With as many clothing and object options to put on your character I think it would be crazy not to switch it up every now and then.


The motivation behind changing my appearance was that I didn't want to look the same as every other male when you get on that first island. I would say in general the avatar looks like me in real life. I have brown hair and it's very possible to see me wearing grey clothes so yes I would say I based it off of my real appearance. I did not ask others what they thought about my avatar's appearance.


So far I have spent cero dinero a.k.a. linden $ on my avatar's appearance. I just went to the links that Dr. Carter gave us about freebies and they had some awesome stuff there. I'm really fine with whatever my character looks like in 2nd life just as long as I get to make it up. There is one thing that I would like to buy but can't because of my lack of linden $. I would like to buy the rasta dreadlocks for my character but they cost like 75 linden $ or something around that figure.
I haven't messed with many of the sounds or gestures yet, I'm still amased at the amount of objects you can carry around. I've been having some real fun with 2nd life. The program is great, and it's really accessible. I would describe it as a better version of the Sims computer game.
-Kyle Hughley