Ever wonder what the backend of creating video games, and video game programming looks like? Enter Alice.

It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

Alice is free and open source. It is a stand alone application, and is available on many platforms. It uses much of the technology that was used in the making of The Sims2.

It’s used at many schools and colleges as a teaching tool. Instructions are similar to that of C++ and C# But includes a neat drag and drop interface for the actions, methods and properties. I made a short sequence myself in about 10 minutes.

Exporting to the web is a bit difficult because it requires the end user to have a lot of Java framework installed on their unit. Exporting as video isn’t functioning yet as the video’s are just too big.  You can view a bunch of Alice works on YouTube.

Here’s some more info direct from Carnegie Mellon:

Ze Frank is best known in the podcast world for his strange, witty and clever videoblog that he produced daily for a year, but did you know he had a snowflake creator that can be rotated in 2D or 3D?

Not terribly useful because you can’t export your creation to a website or do anything, but it’s kind of cool to look at, especially as the weather gets cooler. Ze labels it as a toy.

While staring at these images, do you see them as 3D? How about checking out the Tiltviewer which offers images from the Flickr photo service from Yahoo in a 3D rotating grid.

Here’s a challenge: try writing your name or drawing something a rotating 3D canvas. Trippy. Too Van Goghesq? Maybe drawing using the 3D Stereogram will be easier.

Written by Walter Simonson; Art by Ludo Lullabi and Sandra Hope; Cover by Jim Lee with 12 issues costing $23.99 interested parties can subscribe here.

What comic books have you enjoyed? I’ve always been more fond of Marvel comics over DC Comics. DC had Batman and Superman but Marvel had Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Spider-man and The Fantastic Four.

Is this the first MMORPG to get its own comic book? Some brief Googling lead me to Jeriah an Everquest 2 comic book, so the answer appears to be no.

Blizzard also announced on their website that they’ve reached nine million subscribers.

As I traveled around this morning to check out what type of animated beds are now available in Second life. I was able to find several that in one way or another was infringing on the Sex Gen Brand.

On Tuesday he (in the name of his company — Eros) filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court claiming the avatar known as Volkov Catteneo has violated the trademark on one of his devices called a Sex Gen. Stroker is claiming Volkov had copied the Sex Gen scripts and selling it for profit.

Stroker has filed a suit and is asking the judge to order subpoenas for Linden Lab and PayPal to force them to turn over records showing Volkov’s real life identity.

I am all for protecting your intellectual property rights, but I was wondering if Stroker is reaching outside the box– I have tried to conduct a small bit of business with Stroker and found him to be an unreasonable grouchy individual who seemed rather full of himself. Full of himself or not, if someone is “stealing” from him — he should be able to protect his property. I met with Stroker for a few minutes this morning and found him in a helpful and concerned mood…. I am leaving the Strike thru area, because early last year in a very short conversation that was the way I felt about him… Maybe it was just a bad day for him that day.

In a statement to “The Tampa Tribune” Stroker stated:

Volkov Catteneo is not the only avatar who has done him wrong. “A lot of people copy me, copy my work, copy my ideas.

Because it’s an anonymous platform where you’re an avatar cartoon character, as opposed to a real-life person, people think they can operate with impunity.

This brings us to the point of asking, is what Stroker is seeking relief for actually an infringement on his intellectual property or simply someone that is “bottling another cola?”

Upon speaking with Stroker this morning I mentioned to him that I just looked around and found there are a lot of “sex gen” knock off in Second Life now a days… Why is he picking this particular person?

Blatant disregard–basically said “Try and stop me”. It wasn’t an easy decision, I hate lawsuits. You spend enormous hours pouring over Poser/Photoshop just to have someone copy it and profit [from it]. This has been a long time coming…the majority of Merchants here are fed up with being ripped off.

Stroker is hoping to make an example with this lawsuit. “We’re doing the best we can to protect our product, our income, our intellectual property,” he stated to the Tampa Tribune’s Elaine Silvestrini. “We’re hoping that this is going to send a message to quote unquote hackers and anti-establishment types that just because it’s a virtual platform, we’re not going to sit idly by and let you rip us off.”

I would like to call to Stroker’s attention that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. If this Guy/Girl has actually copied your animations and scripts, I hope you are able to hang his/her ass out to dry.

This, to the best of my knowledge, is the first attempt at a real world lawsuit attempting to protect virtual intellectual property, and it probably won’t be cheap. I asked Stroker about the expense:

Those that know me…know my motivation is not primarily profit….I probably give away more than I sell, and many [merchants] that I know are single Mom’s and stay at home parents who can truly benefit from the ability to create an income here [Second Life]. I have 3 very close friends who depend on SL…its the perfect scenario…they can stay at home with their elderly parents and/or disabled children and STILL earn a living… that [lack of concern for others work] is what pisses me off most…no consideration for the livelihood of others.

Stroker and his attorney, Frank Taney or Thunderclap Merlin in Second Life, are working on a tutorial-esqe blog that will give step by step instructions on how to protect your IP and do it cheaply. (Should go live in the next couple weeks… I will post about it when it does)

“Did you know that you must have a copyright registered to file in federal court? asks Stroker… “it only costs $45 to file and soon it will be $35 for an online registration. Registered copyrights entitle you to triple damages and recoup of attorney’s fees.”
“All the precedents to acquire personal info are out there–set by RIAA and others,”
Stroker Serpentine tells me. “You really are not as anonymous as you make think.”

How do you think it will go? What is your opinion?

According to their press release CyberExtruder states:

Avatar Island will be the only avatar skinning facility in-world that can automatically produce photo-realistic avatars from a single photograph.

All a resident needs to do is take a reasonably good photograph, submit it to the system for processing and wait a few minutes for the results to be delivered to the resident’s email address. The new texture file is an impressive blending of photographic detail and animation magic.

Also in the press release CybeExtruder is announced it will be searching for symbiotic partner- tenants to receive free real estate on Avatar Island.

We’re actively looking for tenant-partners that have relevant offerings for Second Life residents,” says Jack Ives, Chief Operating Officer of CyberExtruder. Our plan is to build the focal point for avatar customization within Second Life. We want to attract the best avatar skinners and designers and bring them all together in one place. To that end, we’re supporting Avatar Island and will give space at no charge to others that bring relevant value to the group.

The plans by CyberExtruder call for a 3D animation studio that will provide regular classes and seminars in the use of Second Life’s tools and scripting as well as a 3D printing company that will be able to provide 3D replicas of resident’s avatars.

Avatar Island is scheduled to open up on June 14. For more information on becoming a tenant-partner, please call Jack Ives between 9am and 5pm EDT or email him. (the press release gave no telephone number nor email address)

Fellow author TD Goodliffe’s avatar has a remarkable resemblance to his real life self… Or would you rather “role-play”? The question is how many of you will want to have your avatar look like you?

The next thing we started to talk about is stuff that are harder to make money from. Selling houses is one of these cause you need land to show off your homes which would cost more money if you want to show all your houses. Also you need to make unique houses which means a lot of work for you to do and you must have a crative mind. Another business that would be hard to get into is scripting. The important thing here is you need to have a product to sell with the script. Selling just the script won’t sell as much. Building a lamp with a lamp script would sell more than trying to sell the lamp script for example.

I will continue this in another post for the second part of businesses in second life.