The Alphaville Herald

GREAT BUILDERS OF SL: PART 2: GURGON GRUMBY, A MAN AND HIS DOG

by Alphaville Herald on 12/09/05 at 7:39 am

GURGON AND BETA

In this article, the Herald continues its series of interviews with great builders of SL (actually we didn’t know there was a series, but what the hey — I guess there is now!). In the last interview we talked to Yadni Monde, in this interview Monsterrat Snakeankle speaks with his protege Gurgon Grumby.

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: I am here today with Gurgon Grumby, the man who has been described by YadNi Monde as “my greatest apprentice”. Thanks for coming, Gurgon, how you doing today?

Gurgon Grumby: I’m very well thank you.

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: Tell us about your pal, here. what’s his name?

Gurgon Grumby: the dog? Well I call him Beta, which is not to be confused with a Beta version, but rather meaning second, not Alpha.

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: yes. tell us about Beta, please.

Gurgon Grumby: but people who buy him call him whatever they want. You can Rename Beta by just telling him his name is something else. Well… I started Beta sometime early this year. Yadni Monde asked me to attempt some of the scripting I had been doing with a pet, I was skeptical it could be done when I started, but it ended up turning out fairly well. When I first saw most followers in second life I was really disappointed, nothing more than floating statues that could take only very specific basic commands. Beta is animated, his legs, tail head and ears move using a variety of plotted movements. I’ve had a handful of people comment on the price being too much, it’s actually been a small minority, usually people who are new to SL, or have not seen him perform. Beta represents weeks or months of work

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: Beta is very expressive

Gurgon Grumby: he has a complex chat parsing and dialog script for control that allows you to give him a wide variety of basic dog like commands

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: does Beta chase cats?

Gurgon Grumby: Beta could chase a cat if a scripted cat was in range and moving and you told him to follow it

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: LOL I guess maybe you could make one of those next?

Gurgon Grumby: but he doesn’t have his own behaviors aside from some basic movements. An early version I did and decided the bench had its own behaviors, another task that made him check the are around him for targets and then he would interact based on a bunch of integers, based on his mood, what the object was doing etc — but I decided to put of selling the version that version

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: what I find interesting about Beta is that it is easy to develop an emotional relationship based on his responses. it is easy to respond to him as if he were an actual pet.

Gurgon Grumby: That may have something to do with his head and tail movements…

Gurgon Grumby: I based his general responses on my own dog

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: well you did a great job, I have to say. if a person wants to buy a dog, where would they go?

Gurgon Grumby: Well Yadni Monde, Nani Nino, and myself currently own 75% of Leda, I have a shop there, but we are about to remodel the simulator. Another good friend and great creator Ferran Brodsky has given me shop space at Phobos Design in Chaos.

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: kk so they could go to phobos?

Gurgon Grumby: Yes I have a spot at Phobos Design in Chaos but mostly I sell things from Leda near the junk yard

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: ah ok. now here you seem to have a very complicated set up. what is this desk for?

Gurgon Grumby: Well behind me here is what I’m currently working on, it’s a few weeks from being ready to sell. It’s basically a Simulator control interface, I call it Sim Sim Simulated Simulator, but that may just be a working name. basically it’s a tool set for island owners to give them better control over their islands. Basically it deploys 4 communications and sensor posts which feed information back to this device, it then produces a 3d 1/100 scale representation of all the avatars or active objects in the sim, depending on what it is scanning for

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: does it record what it sees?

Gurgon Grumby: You can teleport to any prim representing any avatar or object. You can also grant security access, or teleport home any icon. Additionally there is a variable detail topographical display, visitor counter, terraforming and multi security level access list and a few other features. it will record the last 250 avatars it has tracked currently that may increase — I’m planning on waiting for 1.7 to be released before I release this, I want to include a HUD interface.

GURGON AT THE SIM SIM DECK

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: now the question I am asking all builders: what is your opinion of the situation with the GOM tellers and Linden attempted takeover?

Gurgon Grumby: I haven’t been following it as closely as I should/could. I have mixed feelings on it, on one hand I see this as a small step forward for Linden labs making second life use real money, on the other hand it may in the short term hurt the economy

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: how does it feel for a builder, though? does the idea that lindens could leverage your work affect your desire to build in SL

Gurgon Grumby: Not too much really, I’m not really a professional content builder, SL represents a small amount of my RL income, perhaps $300-$500 a month. I usually build and script to learn and to test the limits, to see what I can get do, somewhat like someone would do needle point or something I imagine. I’m here for the long hall anyways, I do believe that SL has a huge potential to become the new interface for the future internet. I feel in a sense we are pioneers of Neil Stephenson’s snow crash metavers

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: say more about that please

Gurgon Grumby: I think a lot of people in SL see the potential use of this for a tool Well. It’s the 3d avatar based interface imagined by visionaries since the late 80′s. I dreamed of this when I owned my first commodore 64

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: what is your reaction to the idea that people have experiences here that are both psychologically and emotionally “real” to them?

Gurgon Grumby: Uh, duh. heheh Of course they have experience that are real to them. There is no doubt at all the what happens in second life is real. You and I are having a text conversation which we will both have mental record of, and it will then be placed on the internet for thousands to read. That makes it real

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: well there is that argument made by some scholars that it is “screen life”

Gurgon Grumby: is this outside in the real world, with wind and rain and sun? No but experience had here are very real — and the argument about what is in fact real is a very long and pointless debate. The point is that people are actually interacting here, maybe not in the way many people normally do.

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: that’s true. sometimes feels like a lucid dream to me. now tell me: how did you come to SL?

Gurgon Grumby: Lets see. A good friend of mine told me I just had to check it out, and I did. At first I had a tough time seeing what the point of second life as a game is. There is no real objectives, no real games in the traditional sense at all.

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: yes that’s something that people say about SL. how do you think it works, as a game?

Gurgon Grumby: I wondered around trying to figure out what the point was. I asked maybe a hundred people what they thought it was, and why the played. Some said it’s a building game, some said it’s avatar based chat, but then it just hit me it’s a data interface, the data payload that is carried is really up to the users, it’s a user designed world, a dynamic environment, and I just had a gut feeling that in 10 years this would replace Internet Explorer. I would much rather run around in second life than “search the web” and to me it’s very much the same sort of thing

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: what about system requirements though? right now the machines that can do SL are expensive.

Gurgon Grumby: ya but 10 years ago they didn’t exist. In 10 years they will be cheaper than an old Nintendo if the world doesn’t blow itself to hell before then

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: LOL

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: kk any last thoughts for the trusty readers of the Herald, anything you’d like them to know?

Gurgon Grumby: heheh not really

Montserrat Snakeankle {RdS}: I’ve been talking this morning with Gurgon Grumby and his dog, Beta. I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to talk with me, Gurgon, thanks!

Gurgon Grumby: Thank you have a good day.