[sldev] [humor] SL Competitor HOWTO

[Laurent Laborde]

SL COMPETITOR HOWTO

1) ABOUT

This guide describe the process to be the next SL competitor, earn
millions of worthless shares, look funny to a minority of meaningless
techno-nerdo-geeky (a.k.a : SL Developper), be famous in the press,
and fail.

2) UNDERTSANDING SECOND LIFE

Second Life is a huge virtual world full of animatd also pixel known
as avatar, plywood cube, and billboards. Second Life is also known to
be laggy and used by a majority of : gambler, ageplayer, gorean,
furry, politician (eventually, but not limited to, french's next
president), blingtard, anonymous griefers, terrorists.

2.1) The PRO of secondlife
- huge
- Prims hair, prims shoes, bling-bling.
- Virtual economy : Lot of money
- Shiny !
- Flexi !

2.2) The CON of secondlife
- Laggy
- Poor and laggy  physics engine.
- Region limited to 100 avatars
- The gambler, ageplayer, gorean, furry, politician (eventually, but
not limited to, french's next president), blingtard, anonymous
griefers and terrorists. (a.k.a : the residents)
- hard learning curve.

3) DEALING WITH THE PRO AND CON OF SECONDLIFE

What you really want is to remove the con and keep the pro, yeah. That
sound like a good innovative(c) business(r) plan(tm) (patent pending).

- Make it huge ! The bigger, the better.
- Provide a lot of shoes and hair. And if you can make bling-bling
hair, this is even better !
- People love money, and you too. Give them free credits when they
subscribe, they'll love that !
- Use the latest advanced cutting edge technology of our super
powerfull GPU and make everything shiny. Shiny should, definitivelly,
be set as a default parameters for your textured 3D item.
- For flexy, same as above.

- About the lag, it's well known than the physic engine is a huge
bottleneck. There is a way to deal with that : Client Side physic
engine. You don't want server side physics because it will lag and
you'll need an huge, really costly, server farm. point.
- Region limited to 100 avatars. This is because of the problem stated
above. With client side physics you won't have much problem to handle
more than 100 avatars on a single servers.
- About "The gambler, ageplayer, gorean, furry, politician
(eventually, but not limited to, french's next president), blingtard,
anonymous griefers and terrorists". The only way to deal with it is a
strong policy. But you're not sure that the resident will follow this
policy, so the best way is to control the content. BUT, it's also hard
to control the content, isn't it ? Well.... of course it is, your SL
COMPETITOR(c)(r)(tm) is huge. I suggest you do not allow in-world
building and resident owned content. You'll thanks me later, it's
really hard to implement those kind of feature and will make your
world laggy and all.
- Also, not allowing ingame building will make the learning curve A
LOT easier, definitivelly.

Exemple of content "SL COMPETITOR COMPLIANT" : Flexy-shiny-bling-bling
hair. You need a lot of them, flavoured in all color and size.


4) BUILDING YOUR OWN SL COMPETITOR

You don't want to build it. The world is full of failure. Just buy one
of thoses dead startup's MMORPG game engine and here you go !

4.1) SL COMPETITOR IS NOT A GAME

VERY VERY important. This is NOT a game !!!!!!111!1!!1111oneoneoneeleven
So what is it ? Whatever ... call that "metavarse" "virtual world"
"synthetic world" "Web3.1" or all of that : "synthetic virtual
metaverse world 3.1". The more complex, the better. you don't want
your next "SL COMPETITOR COMPETITOR" to understand what you made
exactly.

4.2) SL COMPETITOR IS NOT A GAME

So why buying a MMORPG Engine ? MMORPG ARE GAMES !
That's right. You'll have to code a little bit ! But buying a MMORPG
engine will avoid you to deal with tons of meaningless craps like
"network engine", "3D rendering", etc ...

4.3) HOW DO I CODE AND WHAT DO I CODE ?

How :
You don't have to code yourself, hire a trainee. That why they exist
and, funny, they'll thanks you for that.

What :
Step 1 : Take your MMORPG engine, remove all the code related to the
gameplay (SL COMPETITOR IS NOT A GAME), that should do it !
Step 2 : Compile. if it's too slow remove the coments and disable warning.
Step 3 : See step 1

4.4) THAT'S ALL ?

Yeah... mostly. That's exactly what all other SL COMPETITOR are doing.

5) DISTRIBUTING SL COMPETITOR.

5.1) Wait wait wait.

Before distributing your SL COMPETITOR :
- open a blog
- Do a closed beta. Invitation only and don't invite anybody.
- Publish some fake beta tester article.
- Whine for this fake NDA Break.

5.2) Get PRESS COVERAGE

Of course you need some press coverage. But it shouldn't be hard, the
press love that kind of stuff.
Just call your journalist friend about your SL COMPETITOR thingy and
surf the hype.

If you don't have journalist friends, then, my friend, i'm afraid you'll fail
Huuuuuuuhhhh just kidding :)
Pay them for the press coverage, that should do it !

Now you're famous... let's go to 6 !

6) FAIL

If you followed this howto step by step, there is no doubt you'll fail.
Who want to play to a MMORPG WITHOUT GAMEPLAY ? silly !!

7) CREDITS

No need to thanks me, really.

-- 
kerunix Flan