The Alphaville Herald

Giant Snail Races Leave Trails of Tears and Slime

by Alphaville Herald on 23/03/05 at 10:52 pm

by Alex Fitzsimmons

The competition in RacerX Gullwing’s Giant Snail Races may not be the fastest in the world of Second Life, but it may well be the biggest and slimiest.

Giant racing snails at the gate.

Snorting and heaving against the gate, the snails can’t wait to get going!

At about 35 meters from the ground to the tips of their antennae, the cartoonish giant snails easily dwarf ordinary avatars. Mr. Gullwing said he originally designed the snail for a giant avatar contest, then later adapted it for racing. “I was thinking about it for months,” he said. “(Isle de) Montmartre needed traffic, so I started it there.”

With a little help from his neighbor Catfart Grayson, who handles the artificial intelligence coding, and Mae Best, the owner of Montmartre, Mr. Gullwing started the first races in late November 2004. They weren’t without their challenges.

“I had a lot of people show at the early races — so many that the scoreboard couldn’t handle it,” he explained. “Eventually, I hit on the idea of checkpoints and limited races to four snails at a time.”

At the turn, it’s Thirty in the lead!

If more than four snails want to race at a given event, he added, they race in separate heats, with the first- and second-place finishers in each heat going on to compete against one another in one final race.

“But half of the time, one race is it,” he said.

Thiry crosses the finish line first and macks for the review stand while fireworks go off.

Mr. Gullwing currently hosts races Tuesdays at 8 p.m. SL time at Hawthorne in Chase’s Manhattan and Saturdays at 11 a.m. SL time at Montmartre.

Since he founded the event, Mr. Gullwing has made several other improvements, including scripting the snail avatars not to fly so that he doesn’t have to get the land owners to turn off that ability for the races. Two weeks ago, he hosted the first Grand National Championship, wherein he invited previous winners to return and race for more than 10,000 Lindens in prize money.

Two of Mr. Gullwing’s most recent improvements to the event include an automated announcer that broadcasts a racer’s best laps for the day and moving bleachers that actually detach and float into the air to give audience members a bird’s-eye view of the action.

“I think it’ll keep getting better as we think of more ways to improve it,” he said.

Proprietor RacerX in his bigg-ass avi, entertains the crowd post-race.

Sidebar

Thirty slides to victory in 2:24
by Alex Fitzsimmons

Leaving a shiny trail as he streaked across the finish line well ahead of the competition, Johntron Thirty won Tuesday’s Giant Snail Race at Hawthorne in Chase’s Manhattan with a total time of 2 minutes, 24 seconds and a best-lap time of 1 minute, 9 seconds.
Describing his technique after the race, Thirty said, “I just faced towards the checkpoints and slid as fast as I could, being sure to avoid any fellow racers.”
Dodger Alexander took second place. Citing “shell problems,” Wayfinder Wishbrin started late and came in third.
Finally, Ell Pollack slipped into the water and was forced to settle for a waterlogged dead last.
“I sympathized because the same thing happened to me twice in the previous race,” Thirty admitted.