Second Life Event Presentation

My part in our event was coming up with the art work and clues for the Virtual Exhibit. I drew a few of the paintings specifically for this project, but many of them are drawings and paintings I did in the past because there simply wasn't enough time to draw every single piece from scratch.

Coming up with the clues for the event was sort of a difficult process. I had to find ways to connect various existing images in ways that wouldn't be too obvious to the participants. For some, it was a matter of slightly altering an image (like replacing a black cat with a white rabbit, while allowing the caption to still talk about the fat black cat), and others simply had captions that related to one another. Chris worked with me on the captions for many of the images, especially the ones that weren't a part of the clue chains. They served as a way to sort of throw participants off and made it so that the clued images weren't too obvious to spot. Zoe came up with the script that we used for the images, which whispered the image's caption to the participants when they touched the images.

 

Edited Image

 

Original Image

(in this case, there was never a cat, but the caption said there was for the purpose of our event.)

After the event started, it was evident that the way the clues were set up wasn't as clear to the participants as they should have been. Some thought that all the clues were inter-connected and led to a final piece of evidence. It was intended to be 3 different clues with their own, separate, chains leading to 3 different answers that would fit together to point out who the thief was. 

 

During the class event, it became apparent that the clues might have been a bit difficult to decipher. I didn't want to make it too difficult to solve the case, but I also didn't want make it too easy for everyone. In the end, I thought it would have been better off having the puzzle be too difficult and occupying our allotted time slot, than being too easy and ending up with a lot of people with nothing to do.

Back to Zoe

  

Experiment Review/Report

Our event was a very abstract art exhibit where participants had to run around looking for clues to solve the mystery of who stole a painting. It took place on an empty lot which we transformed into a sort of octopus structure with floating structures and glowing rings. There might have been issues with navigating the space in the beginning. I don't think everyone was aware that the clues could be on floating surfaces, or that some of the shapes were enterable.

More screenshots, info, and videos can be found at the blogs of the other members of our group:
http://627zoechang.blogspot.com/
http://627mattc.blogspot.com/
http://627christophert.blogspot.com/

I spent a lot of time making the individual pieces of the gallery. It was particularly challenging for me to find ways some of the images connected, or make clues that are obvious enough for people to figure out, yet still challenging enough for it to not be too obvious. Our team worked very well together, everyone helped everyone, and we met and worked together frequently.

Some examples of the paintings i did for this gallery:

Overall, I felt that our presentation went over well. Here are the results of the survey taken by Zoe.

And some of the Feedback for our event:

Gorgeous artwork!!!

11/4/2011 3:57 PM

I was not entirely aware who was which roles, and I also thought that the thief could be anyone in 627 rather than one of the four roles. It was fun exploring and Sam's art was very impressive!

11/4/2011 3:38 PM

Conclusion:

In the end, I felt that our event well rather well. The roles that we set out in the beginning weren't as apparent as we thought they would be, but it didn't make much of a difference. Many thought that it might have been a bit too difficult, but most of the participants spent more than 40 minutes on the event. I felt that the difficulty of the puzzle made was important for filling up the hour we had to fill. I was afraid that if we made it too easy, the participants might solve it too quick and have nothing to do for the remaining amount of time.  I also thought that the participants would have worked together more than they did, which is also why i made the clues so difficult to decipher, but it seems most of the players preferred to work on their own.

The Art Theft Event (Closing)

Now that the event is over, I can post this link to my google doc that outlines the exact chain for solving the puzzle. I only have the guide for the first and second clue, but Prof. Veeder solved and went through the third chain which led to the baseball cap.

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AX8QeUGvnZUnZGZ6bTlua2ZfMzNnNHA2NnR4bQ

I also have a video documenting a bit of the area that our project took place, with various people navigating around the area trying to solve the case.

 

The 3 Clues

The thief has left 3 clues for you, the detectives, to figure out who he or she may be. Why he or she would do such a thing is unknown. Maybe he does it for cheap thrills, or maybe pride. Either way, these clues are vital for figuring out who the culprit is.

Clue 1: "This key historical figure saw something different from what we were all led to believe."

Clue 2: "This girl likes her books and her fat black cat,
                All she needs now is a broom and a hat."

Clue 3: "This industrial city holds a very important piece of the puzzle."

Updated Second Life Event Plan

Our second life event has changed a bit from my last post. Everything can be found in this link to Zoe's blog, which also links to other members our our group's posts.

http://627zoechang.blogspot.com/2011/11/final-sl-event-plan.html

Event Project Plan

Experiment title: Digital Art Thief

Scenario: artwork was stolen in a gallery and participants are encouraged to help
investigating the event.

Experiment Mechanics: Clues might be found in the artwork or environment. This encourages
participants to look around, get interacted with others, and pay attention to what's going on in the
environment. Audience dynamics is the main focus in this experiment.
SL Location: To be announced.
Roles in the event: (Member names hidden to exclude bias)
(Suspect 1) Security guard: Answers questions, makes official announcements, etc.
(Suspect 2) Crazy person: Spreads rumors, tells people random clues (True/False).
(Suspect 3) Regular person: Among all visitors/participants.
(Suspect 4) Detective: Doing documentation and asking around.
(Non-suspect) Gallery owner: Taking people's report for whoever they thought might be the thief
in the last 20 minutes. Jane, could you be our gallery owner?
*Optional: All official roles in the event will have captions on top of their heads labeling what roles
they are and if they are suspects. This makes it easy for people to identify and report.
Roles in the project:
Sam: Gallery director who is mainly in charged with other artists and makes final art decisions.
Chris: Creative writer who is mainly in charged with the storyline/crime scene settings.
Matt: 3D architect who is mainly in charged with 3D models and layout of the environment.
Zoe: Event organizer who is mainly in charged with planning/communication/documentation/survey/scripting.

Assets provided: Shirts and Hats

Participant preparation: Participants will have to put on their assigned clothing and they will need to read the instructions before they investigate, which will be a notice, placing on the wall where the piece of artwork is missing.

Feedback survey: To be announced.

Standard detail feedback forms: OK!

Production plan: Brainstorm story/plot lines for this mystery and design the game. Design and
create survey. Decide on the style, theme, and branding of the gallery and all artwork. Decide on
location of the event. Design structure, construction of the environment. Building, Implementing,
and modeling. Test environment and potential problems that might encounter. Rehearsal. Finalize
survey and deliverables.

Experiment review report/presentation: OK!

End it: The gallery owner will come in to the gallery for the last 20 minuets, and people can
go tell the owner who they think is the thief. If someone gets it right, the show will end.

Ideas for Second Life Event

Our little group has decided to possibly make the focus of our Second Life event a virtual art exhibition.
I've decided to list a few ideas that we could possibly use for this upcoming event:

- It was planned that the building we will be creating for the exhibit is going to be structured vertically, and I think we can take advantage of that by having the work exhibited scaled really large, something u cant do in a typical art gallery.

-if the structure is going to be vertically oriented, perhaps we could have a spiral path that goes all the way up, giving patrons the option to slowly walk up and observer everything or simply flying up. 

- Possibly to display artwork in a more interesting way, we could have it floating outside of windows.

-SECRETS! secrets would be a fun addition to have scattered throughout the place. Something like the secret message on top of the fossil skull found in the second life introductory tutorial. There could be a prize for someone who finds all the secret messages.

    - We could also have scavenger hunts that invites viewers to look closer at artwork to find something specific, and maybe riddles.

   - If a painting could be set to phantom, where someone could walk through it, we could have a secret room for visitors to discover.

Wings 3D - Making Textures

If you start with one of the provided templates, you can use Wings in combination with any 2D paint program to texture your model. The steps to do this are:

1. From the Window menu on the Geometry window, select Outliner. The Outliner window shows you all the components of your model.
2. Left-click on the item "Default Sculpty Texture". Release the mouse button, left-click on the texture line again and then drag and drop it onto the "Sculpty Material" line. When prompted, choose "Diffuse". (There is a quirk in the Outline window that requires separate actions for first selecting an item and then doing something with it.) Your model should now be wrapped with a pattern of black lines and colored squares labeled with letters. This is the default texture, with the required Sculpty UV map. The pattern will guide you as you are painting your texture.

 3. Have Wings create a new file for the texture bitmap by right-clicking on the "Default Sculpty Texture" and choosing Make External. (Remember, when using the Outliner window, the context menu refers to the item that is selected, not the item your mouse is over. If the context menu doesn't contain the options you expect, it's probably because you forgot to first select the line with a left click.) Name the texture file whatever you want, but be sure to choose a name that distinguishes it from the sculpty bitmap file.

 4. Open the file you just created in your favorite paint program. You should see the texture that is wrapped around your model in the Wings window. To help orient yourself, select your whole model in Wings and open the UV Editor window from the Windows menu. You should see the same texture bitmap you see in your paint program.

5. Now put both the Wings Geometry and UV Editor windows in face selection mode. (That's the third icon of four in the middle of the icon bar at the top of the window.) Now, when you choose a face of your model in the geometry window, the corresponding area of the texture in the UV Editor Window will also be highlighted. Use this as a guide to where you should paint with your paint program.

 6. Proceed to paint your texture. Wings will not reflect your painting as you work, but when you want to update Wings' view, save your file in the paint program, right click on the texture line in Wings' Outliner window and choose Refresh.

7. When you are satisfied with the results, you export the sculpty bitmap file from Wings. The texture file you painted is ready for use; it is not processed by Wings.

I have also included a video of myself going through this entire process.

I painted the image quickly using photoshop. Its important to make a new layer and temporarily make it transparent enough for you to see through so you can see the grid as you paint. When I finished painting in the video, i forgot to un-transparent-ify the image and had to go back and fix it and resave the image.

Information on making textures for Wings 3D was found here:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D_Exporter

Second Life Navigation Event

Second Life is a virtual world filled with exotic and unique destinations. Some are based on actual locations in the real world, but most are created from the minds of the games users. Being able to navigate through these various worlds is a very enjoyable experience of the game. For our Navigation Event, we explored several locations and the various ways of traveling within the game.

Probably the easiest and most pleasurable experience of the game is flying. It gives you the freedom to fully explore all the various locations within the game. It's something you can't do in real life, and something you can rarely do in other games. 

My favorite part of exploring is finding little secrets that world creators put into the game that can only be found by the most thorough explorers. This image is of a secret cave that I found. The entrance to the cave was a small drain pipe under a major temple structure in the dragonfly world.

I also found this Weighted Companion Cube in the same world, an homage to the game Portal.

One of the most difficult and frustrating aspects of the game is the way the camera is set up. The camera controls are difficult to use and sometimes it makes navigating difficult. I often find myself zooming into the avatars point of view in order to make my way through the environment.

navigating in game is very different from navigating in the real world. Unaided flight is impossible for humans, and we also don't have the luxury of seeing the world around us from a third person perspective. We cant zoom out our field of vision to see more of what is around us, and we can't see whats happening immediately behind us. 

I think the type of technology used in games like second life could be put to use in making virtual maps. Maps of locations can be created in a virtual world where users can fly through and find exactly what they are looking for before they actually step out the door. A person will be able to really know a location before they actually step foot on the location. It would reduce the chance of someone getting lost because it allows the user to see the location from a first person perspective instead of the typical fixed aerial view. Someone could also plot out a scenic route or avoid shady neighborhoods.

Exploration Story

Location: Vernian Sea

SLurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Vernian%20Sea/105/130/18

After months of searching, i finally found someone willing to take me the Vernian depths where I can conduct my research on the unique species of endosymbiotic zooxanthellae found only in the coral of this remote region. Immediately upon arrival, doubts began to rise about the crew I so eagerly hired for the expedition. The vessel on which we would be traveling on seemed worn to the point of crumbling, but my eagerness and hunger for discovery kept me from turning back. Besides, the men had already been paid, and to take it back would be nothing short of cruel.

As our vessel made it's way closer to the desired location, I entered the pod and made preparations for the journey ahead. All of a sudden, there was a sharp snap, and my stomach lurched up into my chest. It was the feeling one experiences in a fast moving elevator. There was no doubt about it, I was falling. I tried the radio, but there was no response. What's worse was the fact that the pod was letting in water. When the pod hit the sea floor, the hatch sprung open. Not far from where I had landed, I found several other pods of the same design. I wonder how many others have been duped into paying for their own demise before me. Before I could die from drowning, or the sheer pressure of water at this depth, I climbed into my M1923 SeaSplunker and left the deathtrap of a pod.

 Before I could make my inevitable journey to the surface, something caught my eye, and my sense of adventure kept me from simply leaving. The closer I got to chromatic object, the more it revealed itself to me. It was clearly manmade, something large and metallic. The object was immense. As I got closer, I came to the surprising realization that what I had discovered wasn't simply a relic or exploratory vehicle, but an entire city hidden to the rest of the world!


The structures were clearly made for human inhabitants. Luxury chairs, spiral staircases, and expansive dining halls were  all visible through the thick glass walls , but I could not find a single soul in or around the structures.

Not only couldn't I find a single person or evidence of human inhabitants, I also couldn't find an entrance to the structure before me. It was clear that the structure was filled with oxygen. There was a cozy fire burning in the fireplace within. I don't believe the fire would even be burning without the presence of oxygen. I knew I had a better chance of survival within the structure, than on the surface of the water in the middle of nowhere. My vehicle wouldn't have gotten me far before running out of fuel, and I could not have survived more than two days without any food or fresh water.

When I finally came across what appeared to be an entrance, I was attacked by a massive octopus! The creature was far larger than any I had previously encountered, and filled with a fury I had no idea a mollusk could possess! The creature jostled and slammed my vehicle with a force comparable to the heaviest of storms. I must have struck my head, because what happened next is beyond me.

The next thing I could remember was waking up in my vehicle floating by the dock of Clockhaven with no evidence of the ordeal I had just survived, or the mysterious city located at the bottom of a sea.

Second Life: Virtual Persona

The persona that I've decided to give my avatar, Nello, is that of a refined explorer. He enjoys taking in what the world has to offer. He wishes to learn about the various cultures all around the world and has a particular fascination with nautical exploration. He is aloof and a bit claustrophobic which means he will tend to stay out of small closed spaces and centers of large crowds.

In this image, my character is sitting in on a spanish class. Learning another language seemed like something that would fit my explorer persona. The class was much smaller than I expected. It was only me, a student, and the teacher. Other than the fact that we were in an ancient Aztec ruin, it wasn't too different from my high school spanish class. Everyone communicated via voicechat, and the instructor had a board which she used to cycle through slides. The instructor told us a bit about the class, lectured, and asked questions. It felt a lot like being in an actual classroom environment, despite the fact that the instructor was teaching the class all the way in Mexico.

The scheduled event that I decided to attend was a live piano show by Tip Corbett. The show took place on the roof of a shop and about ten people showed up. Everyone just hung out around the place, listening to the pianist play. Some stood, some sat, others danced, and a couple of people were flying in circles in the air. The audience commented on the music, and the artist thanked the people who gave tips via voicechat between sessions. It felt very much like sitting in on a radio show.

Toontown Research Questions

1.  List the components of the HUD (Head Up Display = every informational, status, ID, or tool): 

The HUD consists of a chat and speed chat button, your laugh-meter, which is essentially a health bar, a friend list button, a subscribe button, and a journal button. There are also various labels with arrows that 
indicate nearby players, non-player characters, buildings, and any other points of interest.

9.  Which features break that immersive feeling?

 

The simple and visible boundaries, like the picket fence surrounding town, take me out of the immersive feeling. Anytime you can see your limitations and boundaries is a real issue for me. It takes you out of the believable reality and makes you realize that you are just playing a game.

10.  Attempt some collaborative actions such as Chat and teaming up to fight Cogs.  Describe the basics of what you did and the results.  What were the limitations you experienced?

I introduced myself to some of the other players, played some trolley games, and defeated some cogs with them. I communicated with them through the speedchat system, which was unpleasant and not at all speedy. It took forever to look up a proper phrase to say and the time spent looking for phrases interrupted the focus needed for many of the trolley games.