What difference "current tech" makes!

Well ... that's just lovely ... suddenly Eschatos is able to actually walk through doorways and stuff without bashing into the doorframes and having to back up and try again ... and everything in-world is so pretty (and I've not even installed WindLight yet)!

Yes, we got our new computers this week, and while I am insanely frustrated with the typical transitioning-between-computers headaches, I now have a box with a quad-core processor, 3 gigs of RAM, half a terabyte of HD storage, and an overclocked GeForce 8800 with 512meg of video memory!



I'm also hoping to have an upgrade finished on my home system by the end of the weekend ... I'd gotten a GeForce 7800 for that, and tried to install it last weekend, but I got nothing but a blank screen. It seems that the 350w power supply that was listed as a minimum requirement wasn't quite the whole story ... it turns out that the damn card needs a 20amp rail, which was way beyond what my system had (and was mentioned nowhere on the box). So, I had to throw more $$$ at it, but lucked out that TigerDirect had a 600w power supply with one 20amp and one 18amp rail on an insane sale (more than half off), so I ordered that and now have it sitting waiting for another expedition in amongst the wires.

What does this mean for you, my intrepid readers? Well, it could make for a lot more machinima showing up here! Stay tuned.

P.S.: If you click through to the full size image of that pic, it sure looks like Eschatos has had quite enough coffee this morning! heh ...

Drip, drip, drip ...

Oh, sure ... you try to look nonchalant, but I know you're burning with curiosity about our "big secret project"!

Well, over the weekend we finally ended up with both a logo and a web site ... not that there's a whole heck of a lot of info there yet (it's doing a bit of a "Burma Shave" tease as the weeks leading up to the Virtual Worlds Conference roll by), but you should probably go check it out ...



We're a Gold sponsor for the conference, and I hear tell that there's a whole lot of folks wondering who these SlippCat fellas are! Well, you, my so-far extremely anonymous readers, know that Slippcat is a project of your old pal Eschatos and the rest of the real bright folks at Simuality, so you've got a leg up on the head-scratching masses!

Lebensraum ...

Eschatos has a tendency of "playing things close to the vest" figuring that when it comes to potentially sensitive info, it's better to not say something than to try to "unsay" something (duh!) ... but here's a peek at "exciting upcoming stuff" that I figure is close enough to being real that it won't hurt to brag a bit ...



Here you see where the current Simuality and Simuality2 islands are, with Club Mannequin (LINK) in the latter. This particular project started because Mannequin has be so successful that we need more "server room" to allow us to have more Avatars in-house for the big events. So, we're going to be adding on 3 sims, and having the club at the center, allowing us to have 4x the party-goers than we can currently get in! We also have some Big Surprises coming for what's going to be happening with the rest of that real estate ... but I can't blab everything all at once!

Also, as anybody who has come over to Simuality to visit the Avatrait Gallery (LINK) or do business at the SLurrency Exchange (LINK) has noticed, things have been getting a bit crowded on our little island ... so we're going to be doing a similar expansion for that, adding on 3 sims, and shifting the amphitheater (yes, that's what the concrete pancake stack in the middle of the island is supposed to be) to the four-corner zone on the new bigger, better, badder island! You might ask, "Why does Simuality need a 400-person amphitheater?", but I'm not going to tell you, at least not yet ... but let's just say that all sorts of very interesting new things are percolating under the surface in Simuality land!

Oh, perhaps there is one cat I can let out of the bag ... at least as far as the "tease" site for SlippCat goes!

More later ...

Buzzsaw ...

Well, we finally got our "demo phase" funding in the door for our Big Secret Project, which means that Eschatos here is going to be logging a whole lot of hours in the office. However, if you happen to meander by the Simuality offices {LINK}, you might want to IM him instead of just trying to strike up a conversation, because He That Is On The Other Side Of The Keyboard is very likely not going to be having "eyes in-world" much as there are multitudinous projects which are demanding immediate and in-depth attention!

There's Eschatos trying to chill out in his Maxwell Street pad ... but he looks stressed, and is doing something twitchy with his non-coffee hand. Poor Eschatos ... he still runs into walls and doorframes and now he's got nervous tics on top of it!



As noted a few weeks back, this is all leading up to a "grand unveiling" at the Virtual Worlds Conference in New York the first week of April ... which, if you do the math, means we have six weeks before we get on a plane ... and some of the printing will take 2 weeks, meaning ... well, meaning there are a whole bunch of words which need to find their way into camera-ready form in the next 2-3 weeks!

Yeah, I'll try to keep posting here on a regular basis, but if I "go missing" again, you'll have a good guess as to why.

Strange Days ...

"Bad Eschatos!" ... really, I have been fully intending on updating this blog several times a week, but things have been such a roller-coaster over the past few weeks that I've been just not getting to it.

Eschatos has been wandering around in-world looking at various types of "bots", researching a project for which some sort of a "bot" might be an ideal solution for an on-going issue with some of the stuff we're developing.



One place I'd seen some "functional bots" (not "campers", but automated Avs performing some on-demand activity) was in Kalimero DeSantis' freaky subway underworld (which is VERY NAUGHTY - be forewarned!) under his Maxwell Street build (LINK), so I headed over there to see what info I could get about both the bots there and the "prim people" that he's been working on.

Things are always changing down there and I found this new hide-away bar, and figured I'd take a bit of a break and park Eschatos there for a while ... he looked so "natural" in that environment that I figured I just had to take a snapshot, and there he is!

Anyway, now that half the office's back from Las Vegas, I'm hoping that things will stabilize a bit around here and I can get back to more frequent posts.

Eschatos M.I.A.???

Well, not exactly, but the RL me was very ill the end of January (a viral infection in the ear had triggered a bad bout of Vertigo which was initially thought to have possibly been a stroke!), and I was so backed up on stuff that this past week was pretty much a blur, leaving me precious little time to do anything interesting in-world or to blog about anything else.

However, one of the projects that I just got done yesterday (yep, working all day on Saturday) was finally getting a bit of machinima edited. There were all sorts of issues about this, from sourcing to codecs, but I finally got everything pulled together by about noon on Saturday, so that we could embed this into a PowerPoint that's going out with the Club Mannequin team to the "MAGIC" (fashion industry) convention in Las Vegas next week. Simuality boss Hendry Goldkey liked the edit job on this so much that he wanted me to get it up on YouTube, etc., so I figured I'd share it here as well ...



I ended up doing the voice-over for Keen Marksman on the front of this, so that's what I sound like (I'm sure that will elicit some confusion at some point). This will be part of an introductory presentation for Club Mannequin (LINK) to various designers who will be the "fashion partners" in the club and the new showroom complex (Mannequin is soon to be expanding from one sim with the Club to four sims, centered on the club {which we'll then be able to get lots more people in} and with designer showrooms around the periphery!)

Anyway ... I didn't do the music video here, just the intro part (and a bit of editing). One of these days I'm going to have a more "machinima-friendly" computer at the office that will allow me to do stuff like get rid of the "screen capture" elements, and have tools for smoother zooms, etc., but this is pretty good for what I presently have to work with!