Okay, I am new to GiANT BOMB but I am not new to building my own role play worlds, not that I have built that many. Well, only one really but I did start out in Second Life where I learnt the tricks of making content and building. I learnt to script some too! Anyway, I am a big user of Open Simulator which some would call a clone of Second Life. However, there are many differences and OpenSim is more like the free wild frontier of the Metaverse. Second Life costs way too much for most people and I am talking $1000 setup and $295 a month per 256X256 region with max of 15,000 primitives (or building blocks you can transform rather like Gary's mod perhaps) to work with. With OpenSim I can have 16 regions the size of one SL region and a 100,000 primitives to work with for the $100 a month cost of virtual dedicated server. What's more I can enable Hypergrid and grid hop or teleport to other people's grids and they can visit mine. OpenSim is the nearest thing yet to a truly open and connected Metaverse or 3D web. I added an OpenSim attachment to the Second Life Overview, see here

So, What am I doing with my OpenSim world?

Well, I am building an interactive role play game based on pirates of the Barbary coast. Basically, the game explores the romantic age of sailing back when nation states held little sway over renegade seamen who, either with the blessing of their governments of without, turned to various forms of piracy on the high seas. In my little story however, their is a twist for it follows a slightly alternative history and fits neatly within the genre of Steampunk - yeah, we make good use of airships and our airships carry the deadly Greek Fire cannons that can shoot explosive cannon balls at other airships. And, of course, this has lead to a bunch of guys, and gals, doing a little air piracy too and they became known as the Steam Corsairs for want of a better name.

Okay, I still have a lot of work to do and things to build so only one region of my world is currently open to the public. To find it you have to register an avatar name at OSgrid and then download a viewer. I use the Teapot viewer which has a list of worlds to visit which makes it easier to find my public region. All you do is click the New Grids button on the footer and a popup list shows, scroll down to find OSgrid and click it. The background splash screen will then turn to OSgrid. Type in your exact avatar name and password then, where is says; "Start At" type "Farworldz" in the drop-down menu and click Login. You should then arrive at the port of Moresh which is my portal region in OSgrid. See picture above with is a wide view of the port of Moresh.

Here on the right is a view looking along the dock to the tavern so when you arrive you can spend some time getting to know your viewer as you wont find too much activity in the port just yet. It is still a work in progress but take a look round and learn more. I have stocked a freebie store at the port too so you can change clothes and appearance as it suits you. Use your inventory button to figure this all out but I will add some tutorials here if there is interest.

Now, for a little information. You see the ship at the dock, right? Well, that ships is actually a portal to my closed Farworldz grid. It works by clicking a notice on the ship that offers a dialogue menu with destinations to sail to (that is, when I am ready to activate it fully). What happens is you choose a port to sail to and the portal opens so you just walk through and arrive at the Farworldz grid which is actually on another server completely. Yes, this is Hypergrid or the 3D web you are experiencing!

There are currently (at Sept 2012) over 200 grids on the open Metaverse and they range across all types of venue from games to education and commercial hangouts and clubs. See next my general attachment I added to the Second Life Overview on GiANT BOMB...

Open Simulator

In 2007 a group of open source developers got together and coded their own virtual world's platform, Open Simulator(or OpenSim) which is based on Second Life protocols and has a very similar look and feel. It is also possible to download content you made in Second Life to an Opensim grid to use, sell or give away. The most significant difference is that OpenSim is available to anyone to download and set up their own world free of charge other than the cost of server hosting but it can be run on a home computer and linked to one of the established grids like OSgrid.

OpenSim was made possible because Linden Labs released their viewer code to the open source community when, at that time in 2007, the Lab was keen to explore shared interoperability between virtual worlds. This lead to avatars being able to grid hop or teleport between Second Life and OpenSim worlds. However, Linden Labs had a change of mind and shut down the project but the OpenSim community continued to grow and develop. The experiments with grid hopping lead to more advanced processes enabling what became known as Hypergrid which allowed avatars to continue teleporting with their full appearance and inventory. Today, Hypergrid forms an important part of the OpenSim Metaverse enabling many content makers and game builders to express their creativity and flair at a fraction of the cost of Second Life.

Today their are over 200 OpenSim grids both small and large.OSgrid is the biggest and the original developer's grid which is run on donations but there are many more including commercial grids with their own economies and token currencies.