Showing posts with label dinosaur. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dinosaur. Show all posts

Thursday, August 14, 2014

The Dawn Kingdoms : Walking with the Dinosaurs in Second Life


By Wesley Regenbogen 


The Dawn Kingdoms ( located in the Fort Nowhere sim) is the place where you can walk around aside the dinosaurs. The name comes from dawn, which means the early ages of Earth and kingdoms reflects on the empire that was owned by the dinosaurs.
 
This sim was created in the year 2007 and the Dinosaur Shop was opened in 2008, and is a full-sized sim. The owner hopes to expand the sim, when the funding allows it. The creator/owner of this all is Wanders Nowhere, but he gets assistance from two trustworthy friends of him (Alevan and Kaitlyn ), who are also sim admins of the place.
 
Wanders Nowhere created this sim all by himself and he also created the dinosaur mesh bots. Those dinosaur mesh bots are scripted bots that can react when an avatar is nearby, by roaring at them. The owner says it was difficult to create those dinosaur mesh bots in the beginning, but now he can create one in 1 or 2 weeks’ time. He is experimenting with new scripts and new methods of moving of the dinosaur mesh bots. Some dinosaur mesh bots are difficult to create, because they have unusual features, feathers and other things that all need to be animated and put into place. I have also seen a T-Rex in the Dawn Kingdoms, that was quite a scare, because it really is huge.
Wanders Nowhere also says that it has been hard work to create it all, but he says it challenging and rewarding to make it all. In the future he will create so-called “guests rides” where they follow a path or even fight with avatars who wear combat HUDs on them. There is also a group where you can get updates from this place, but I haven’t joined it yet.
 
Before you get in the actual dinosaur adventure, you arrive at the dinosaur shop and the entering area. To “time warp” into the sim, you need to follow the arrow , which takes you to a glowing orb and you need to touch it ( right-click and select “Touch” ). You then need to “sit” on the glowing orb and wait until the teleport system transwarps you to the era. Before entering it asks which era you want to teleport to. But there is only one option, at the moment of writing this article, so, you click it and it takes you to the sim itself.
 
The landscape of the sim is beautifully rendered and the dinosaur mesh bots are awaiting you. When you get a bit closer towards the dinosaur, it will roar once you near it very closely. This is the reaction that the owner put in place to allow the dinosaurs to “react” to avatars. When you wander around the place you encounter a few dinosaurs, like a T-Rex, and raptors and other dinos.
 
This place is one of the coolest places that I have ever visited in my lifetime on Second Life. In my personal opinion, this place is awesome and I hope he can continue to create further here.
It’s worth a visit, trust me.
You can find it at :

Wesley Regenbogen 

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Prehistorica


By Becky Shamen

For several weeks, our attention has been captured by RL and we even went a week without going on line. Now, ready to explore and report on virtual adventures, we have found a sim that is even more primitive than having no internet. We found a sim that goes back to when dinosaurs ruled the earth, 190 million years ago.

After viewing the shop, we returned to the time machine and entered the virtual Jurassic Park. As we wait for the scene to rez, we think the main adventure will be staying off the menu. In the distance, there is something red, moving about and, zooming in, it is a T-rex. Always quick to make new friends, we walk right up and greet it with, "Hi Mr. T, mind if I pose for a picture with you?" He was happy to do so and even did his best, toothy smile, when I said, "say cheese". With the picture taken, I wished him happy hunting and wandered off to see what else there was to do here.

Arriving at the sim, we are facing a time machine portal, flanked by two free avatars, a velociraptor and a time traveler. Turning around, we find a shop that sells dinosaur avatars. Not wanting to look too out of place, we wore a fur outfit that we had made.

Knowing that I could still be a between meal snack for such large creatures, it was a good Idea to turn the radar on, to keep a watch on the locals. Most of the yellow blips were at a safe distance away, but one was clearly in the air and seemed to be circling for a better look. It turned out, as expected, to be a pterodactyl, which opted to land near the T-rex, for a share of it's dinner, a freshly killed herbavore.

Having explored the whole sim and knowing an upcoming theme party involved space suits, we returned home to open the new, free time traveler avatar. We may be going back soon, to test run the free velocirapter avatar. This sim was the first and possibly only location in SL, where the only residents are sentient prehistoric reptiles. By all means, put this location on your bucket list.


Fort Nowhere (128/166/1107)

Becky "Sha" Shamen