It's no exaggeration to say that without the legendary Second Life surfing wave and board developer known variously as The Big Kahuna, the mother of Second Life surfing and sometimes just as Heather Goodliffe, Second Life surfing simply wouldn't exist in its current form. SurfWatch got to talk Heather about the impact of the Havok4 server update, the surfboard exchange program and the current state of Second Life surfing.
SurfWatch: When did you create the first surfable wave in Second Life?Heather: Lets see, I think it wasn't too long after I came to Second Life, probably February or March 2006. I spent a little bit of time exploring and learning about scripting and building. From the start there were certain things I just felt were off in Second Life. Not having waves was one of them. I think it was Sebastian Saramago who actually bought the first set of waves. He's definitely the one who really motivated me to make them surfable, working together we made the very first set of surfboards that actually interacted with the waves.
SurfWatch: You've done all this in that short amount of time. Incredible...
Heather: Thanks. I've had a lot of help and collaboration from a lot of talented people. [smiles] Seb, Keala, and Poid, just to mention a few, as well as a lot of great customers who've pretty much funded the development with the waves and boards they've bought. There have been a few in particular who have really invested in our work and really helped to drive it that way.
SurfWatch: Any feeling for how Second Life surfing has faired since Havok4?
Heather: It's an on-going pain, but it has been settling down. I'm now bracing myself for the upcoming Mono release which I'm sure will be just as fun. But as far as the surfing goes, we haven't really done a whole lot on the boards themselves. The effort is more in following up with Linden Lab to make sure they're fixing problems relevant to surfing and setting up a system by which we could efficiently exchange boards for people. I've also made rounds to all the Epic and pipeline wave sites to make adjustments to the waves.
SurfWatch: So the current upgrades fix the old board floatation issues?
Heather: Well, I also did some other minor changes I'd been working on for a while based on feedback from surfers: such as setting the camera to be zoomed in or out via the dialog. And the automatic sit target adjustments so that people aren't floating over the boards or have their feet through the boards so much.
SurfWatch: So are there any issues with maneuvers and riding on waves after the upgrades?
Heather: Well, they may ride differently. Some people have reported that the short boards go a bit nutty when people do flips. I did mess around with making some adjustments to how the boards ride, but the experience is that people like how they ride pretty well already, and it's pretty hard to improve on. Or at least not many want it to change much.
SurfWatch: So are you getting good input from surfers on the new beta boards that are being tested?
Heather: Yeah, I've gotten some great feedback on some experimental things, but we probably won't be touching the way the boards surf for a while. The experimental boards are a bit more realistic in some ways, but it kind of trades off on the fun in some other ways. So, we're going to opt for more fun!
Surfwatch: WOOOT!!! So any updates on how the current board exchange program is going?
Heather: Well, just a big thanks to Abel Halderman! [smiles] He's done many many board exchanges and made a lot of people very happy.
SurfWatch: Any updates to future board upgrades? You mentioned last time that you were working on a more efficient way to upgrade old boards...
Heather: Yeah, I put together a script that I think will do the job but it relies somewhat on a backend server. I still need to test it to make sure it works reliably and intuitively.
SurfWatch: Any insight on how boards sales have been effected? Have they picked up post Havok4?
Heather: I'd say they're doing very good. [smiles] Poid's also put out some new windsurfers which people have really liked as well. Earlier in the month was pretty bad for board sales and just for Second Life in general, I think. We still have daily asset server problems and various other issues, but there were a couple weeks there where I think a lot of people pretty much just lost faith in Second Life transactions working at all.
SurfWatch: We heard from Linden Lab that the waves have a high impact on sim performance. What can you tell us about that?
Heather: Yes, with the foam waves in the open water sims and not the pipelines waves, the sim stats would look fine in the void sims, but according to the Lindens they were dragging down all the sims hosted on the same machine in some special Linden Lab stats only they could see. Unfortunately, it looks like we're pretty dependent on Linden Lab to fix this one. Meanwhile, Maggie Linden has been visiting sims and 'helpfully' returning waves, which understandably upset a few people. I've done an alternative work-around version of the waves until the underlying problem is resolved, but haven't heard from the Lindens what effect it has on their Linden accessible stats.
SurfWatch: So Linden Lab is working on that issue currently?
Heather: Yeah, it sounded like Simon Linden was working on improving the rezzing of objects under Havok4 which I suspect is the bigger problem. Maggie seemed to think it had to do with H4's handling the movement of the specific the shape.
SurfWatch: Any updates that you know about that Linden Lab is working on?
Heather: Well, I believe they're in the process of rolling out an updated sim version. I'm not entirely sure what all they got into this update, but I believe it's supposed to have improved the issue with the foam waves.
SurfWatch: Anything else you'd like to add that maybe we didn't ask?
Heather: Poid probably wouldn't mind me mentioning the phosphorescent waves. I think you did a piece on the ones she set up not too long ago (see SurfWatch 9 May 08). You can see we've incorporated a script into the pipelines running here at the SSi beach. She's a creative one. They do make for a very cool effect. [smiles]
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment