Evil Genius in Second Life
by Pixeleen Mistral on 21/02/07 at 1:35 am
Trebuchets, Plant Express, and Rube Goldberg
by Curious Rousselot, Evil Correspondent
The Evil Genius Organization of Second Life are settling into Saphira sim with the requisite dark, ominous castle and a nearby town to suppress already in place. They defend the new foreboding castle with extremely large and working trebuchets. Did I mention the Trebuchet doubles as a great ride?
A little further down in their land you can find the classic cartoon city. Inspiration definitely comes from Matt Groening and friends as you will find Moe’s bar right across the street from Planet Express and not far from the Simpson’s family home. We have been promised that, “yes.. Duff brews are on their way 
” by Celsia Lameth. If the Simpsons and Futurama aren’t your thing, there are also building from Invader Zim, Spongebob Squarepants, and Disney’s Duck Tails to be seen.
When you tire of the cute cartoon town, wander down the street into the Resident Evil inspired high-rise cityscape. They are clearly still working on the finer details of this section of town but I strongly suspect we are going to see a pretty ominous part of their sim soon. When the plans for scripted zombies and other nastiness come to fruition, this could become an actual shoot-em-up game. Who know, these evil genius’ might even figure out a way to make a goal based MMORPG out of SL.
I asked Celsia Lameth about Evil Genius Organization or EGO and she told me, “We strive to exercise our creativity by any means necessary! We like building for the ‘wow’ factor really.. plus… I’m easily amused by shiny things.”
mousetrapped
I was also offered a tour of the EGO region and my surprise and delight started with, of all things, the car we took the tour in. The Dominus flying car created with new scripts written by Francis Chung appears to handle far better than any road based vehicle I’ve seen to date. The Dominus has a convertible top and flies with jets in the wheels. maneuvering seams remarkably accurate as our driver was able to fly through openings not much wider than the car itself without slowing down significantly.
The tour covered most, if not all, of the EGO works. Two really stand out for me. The unimaginatively named ‘Kitchen’ and an incredible Rube Goldberg inspired ride.
The kitchen is much more than an ordinary kitchen – it is an entire house built on a huge scale. An incredible amount of detail is going into it. There are mouse holes which lead through the walls and connect to each-other. Watch out for the working mouse trap!
There are plans to have the drains in the various sinks connect to each other. These are built on a scale that will allow a normal sized avatar to wander through the drains and mouse holes. It isn’t even complete and already the toaster, and a number of other appliances, in the kitchen work.
There are rumors floating around that the Kitchen may be used for a game of laser tag sometime in the near future. Let’s hope so. If these geniuses are as good at planning events as they are at building, we are in for some fantastic virtual fun.
Hey Rube!
The Rube Goldberg machine must be seen to be believed. It is absolutely massive. It works entirely within the rules of SL physics and it is the brain child of Psychodire Tokhes. You step in to a ‘marble’ to take the ride and are launched up a tube to the fall through this contraption entirely based on SL gravity and deflection. The machine still has a few kinks to be worked out, as I found out when I got stuck part way through the ride. When it is ready I will go back during a low-lag time and bounce around. Mouse-look should be a bit dizzying but quite exciting.
In a world of floating, spinning, obnoxious ‘Land for Sale’ signs, it is refreshing to see a coherent sim being assembled. All hail the Evil Genius’. I wonder if they need any evil underlings?
Prokofy Neva
Feb 21st, 2007
This is a great and unique sim, it’s great to see something different, with people not afraid to make something wacky and cartoonish instead of sticking to the usual “Myst MMORPG School of Building”.
>In a world of floating, spinning, obnoxious ‘Land for Sale’ signs
However…Maybe if SL worked better, people wouldn’t be so desperate to sell their land? And maybe if there was a bit more common decency and consideration of one’s neighbour, it wouldn’t be necessary to sell to move?
I don’t see why the praise of an interesting sim by people who have time and money to buy a whole sim and build it out has to be conditioned on dumping on the mainland and calling it a morass of Babbitts.
The same freedom that these people wish to have for their Evil Geniuses — and you wish them to have — is the freedom you have to concede to others who might merely want suburban ranch homes or even a spinning sign (under the ethos of SL — which I don’t share).
I look forward to checking out this sim, but I have to say from long experimentation that rides in SL just never work out right. There’s something about the way your avatar can’t find a fixed center to keep his eye on or something…
Rock Ramona
Feb 21st, 2007
What id like to know is when is someone gonna tell all these new people that sl is a 4 year old pile of junk and that dreams of mmo s that really really work well cannot happen.I really feel sorry for all of these people that are dumping tons of money here,including the big corps,only to find out that this place is barely a fair place to chat and have bizarre sex and maybe have a dance.
dannyboy lightfoot
Feb 21st, 2007
I will, refer you, if I may, to my comment on BMW’s No-Drive Zone. To precis, a quick glimpse into the tragic past of the aforecommenting Rock Ramona uncovers the bittersweet tale of a man made and broken in the metaverse, affording us a valuable insight into his motives for pouring scorn upon everything bold, foolish, aspirational and imaginative about Second Life.
Imagine if we’d written off the web because in 1996 it was 90% porn and the websites we designed didn’t seem to render correctly in Netscape Navigator. The EGO are just one of many organisations experimenting with a new medium; from my own experiences I imagine they find the creative process as fulfilling as the end product.
Onder Skall
Feb 21st, 2007
RPGs reviewed so far at Second Life Games: DarkLife, Toxia, Midian City. At the very least DarkLife qualifies as an MMO simply for the NPCs, but I wouldn’t discount the role-playing environments of Midian or Toxia either.
Of course, then you have Samurai Island which offers great real-time combat (although no story or NPCs, but after playing the game I’m sure you’ll agree that they’re not necessary in this instance!).
RPGs with functional combat systems that I haven’t gotten around to reviewing yet: there’s a western-themed one, a shooter that works well but is still in beta, and a monster-based game that’s being re-released in the next few months.
Rides in SL: I have a backlog of a half-dozen reviews of rides around SL that totally rule, but I did post a Megabux review where you can ride all sorts of crazy fun things that work PERFECTLY. Go-kart games work really well too (that Mario Kart Kit rules!) and I think… ok I’ll post later tonight about a great Kid’s Coaster Ride…
Well I could go on, but the point is this: gaming is alive and well in Second Life! There is a lot of balancing out of lag factors, scripts that don’t work the way we’re told they do, etc… but with a little time and patience you can make an awesome place to play.
*BLATANT PLUG* – tons of game reviews and direct tp’s can be found at slgames.wordpress.com
Prokofy Neva
Feb 21st, 2007
I went on the Rube Goldberg machine. It’s brilliantly constructed. My av got stuck somewhere too but it’s part of the fun. It’s all good and neat to zoom around with the camera (I personally loathe mouselook) but it does have that problem I mentioned with all SL rides — I don’t know how to describe it, but one of the things that makes a ride “work” in real life is that the human eye and body strive to find a balance, they locate a still point, or something, and that makes the contrast of the ride, the stomach drop on the rollercoaster or whatever, work as a ride. In SL, you’ve got a certain amount of consciousness “feel” invested in your avatar and you feel like “I am walking around, I’m building, I’m terraforming, I’m dancing” or whatever, but when it comes to a ride, something breaks, and you go, “Oh, my avatar is being whipped around on the screen” and you aren’t *on the ride*.
Still, it’s a cool thing and we need more people to push the envelope on game sites and attractions that aren’t just about sex and guns.
Psychodire Tokhes
Feb 23rd, 2007
Hey, First of all. I love all the encouragment and the positive attitudes towards SL’s evolution.
For starters; it has been great fun for Celsia and I, since we started about a year ago. We have always found ourselves haveing a desire to be on SL and just create. We are artist of the starving kind and in more ways than one we are Bohemian, “children of the revolution” -Moulin Rouge.
I personaly want to Thank Jthorn Whitehead, with out him EGO Terra would not be possible at this point. This is becuase Celsia and I barely have any money to our names. We build and have SL pay for our internet, as well as catch up on the remianing balance of our rent in RL due each month.
We in a sense sacrafice, what people fight for, to have their/Our lives feel secure. Just so we can create and expose people to our ideas and hopefuly allow, what can feel like a dull and senselss world, more fun.
Therefor we make time, and suffer in alot of ways, as well as finacialy, just to have this fun with out feeling trapped in this,”Rat race of an existance”, in which Society wishes to place on us. Maybe it’s an untintenional placement, but an ideal placement that’s now imposed upon people of free contructive expression.
Thanks to Jthorn Whitehead, he selflessy spent money on the sim, and the tier he currently pay’s. Just so he can help us expand our creativity, in the end hopeing to help us make something of it so we may eventualy own the sim our selves. So in lot of ways he’s an investor, but he’s now my friend cause of SL. I feel Jthorn is one of the poeple that makes SL.
Oddly enough it started with Jthorn falling out of the sky when I was building my trebuchets, just to say Hi and see what I was building. From there it was approx. five months till we all decided that a sim would be cool. It’s been a really cool and fun experience in SL…. with out the lag…. and it’s people like Jthorn that help it be, that much more, Other than an escape from RL.
Well, that’s my two cents
Talulah Bancroft
Mar 23rd, 2007
Perhaps a little late of a comment here (is a month… late? < (^,^)>)
Came across a link to this article from the location in Saphira. Amazing place. My initial reaction being “O,O Is this Nowall/Backstage?????” Sadly it wasn’t but just as amazing/amusing. Defiantly worth a look for all who appreciate detail and fun… especially fun.
Thanks to The Evil Genius Organization. Keep it up!!