Telling Tales on Nara's Nook

We began the 30th and final Safari of 2023 on Nara's Nook grid - although to many it looked awfully like another place - the Opensim Community conference keynote regions, and for good reason. We were there to help the Next Dimension group to road test their OSCC presentation. Siobhan Muir, Dorena Bree, and Nara 'Nara Nook' Malone, have been developing their unique storytelling system where you become a 3D component in the plot. They plan to show off their progress so far at the December conference.

The usual mulitlingial crowd assembled on Nara's Nook grid!

The set for New Dimension Tales presentation

Yara Eild: Hello @  all

Victoria Logan: abrazos

Nara Nook: so is everyone hopping from the clubhouse already?

Kelso Uxlay: Hola Victoria! Could not get to the club house today, Nara. Bonsoir Ange. Hello Tosha.

Thirza Ember: yes the Clubhouse just came back online only about 5 minutes ago

Ange Menges: Bonsoir à tous

Siobhan Muir: Hi Ange

Nara Nook: bon soir Ange... can't spell in French yet

Thirza Ember: a few people still on their way

Kelso Uxlay: Patience required when travelling

Nara Nook: we're not in a hurry, let us know when to start. 

Tosha Tyran: Der Weg ist das Ziel :D

John Sheppard: Hello Neo, LTNS

Mal Burns: this place looks familiar!

Thirza Ember: this is good practice for the 09 and 10 of december!

Forest Azure: what's on those dates?

Tosha Tyran: nikolaustag :D

Forest Azure: nope, that is the 6th :) ...or the 5th

Tosha Tyran: you are right, Forest

Nara Nook: We present at OSCC

Thirza Ember: It's the Opensim Community Conference, Forest

Nara Nook: ok we will get started. I need to explain some navigation details that will help you follow our story.  Please sit and stay seated to help reduce lag.  The chair scripts give a warning when you stand up. It's nothing to worry about. Just don't stand up while we are performing. You’ll want to turn off nametags in your quick preferences to reduce screen clutter. We have put the entire story in as text that will be delivered to local chat as the story unfolds.

Siobhan and Nara at the podium

The idea of this project is that you 'enter' the story as an avatar and experience the story a little bit at a time, making choices that affect the way the plot unfolds. It's a very fun idea, and the group has been floating various iterations of it over on Story Island for some time. This presentation presents some not inconsiderable challenges - the audience is experiencing the story from the outside, and all together, rather than having a personal interaction with the plotline. That's what made having our group visit (about 21 of us were present) a useful load test and feedback session. 

Because there was a lot of text appearing on screen to tell the story (something that wouldn't happen in the usual setup of this project where you are 'in the book') nara set up a separate voice stream link, with the narration available in audio, but we being old-skool safaristas, we mostly just ended up reading/writing in Chat. 

Nara Nook: We will operate this as a load test.  So when I say a scene is starting, don’t get out of your seat or type in chat until I say it has ended.  Then we will ask you for feedback about things that didn’t work properly for you. Please respond in local chat. The first scene takes place in the morning if you want to pick an appropriate windlight. This project grew out of our continuing research into ways to tell stories in Opensimulator. In the 11 years we’ve been doing this, most of our efforts have centered around NPCS. This year we decided to level up with a full visual 1-act play. And so, given this setting and the season, we thought we’d share our retelling of The Holly King and The Oak King, a visual representation of creating a world, like we do in OpenSim, with the same decisions needed for environment, length of day, colors, textures, and location. This tale illustrates the kings’ struggles to make those same sorts of decisions at the beginning of a much bigger simulation some of us call real life.  We’ve entitled it the Yule Tale because it used to be told over the Yule log at the end of the year. Siobhan and I will give the characters voices.  Everything you will see here, animate and inanimate, is an NPC.

Obviously, not going to give away the story here, you have to come to see the show at the OSCC to get the full effect of it, but the story revolves around two Kings and a goddess called Rhiannon. As you can see, the public were right in the action - in the form of extreme weather! The snow gradually became thicker and thicker, drawing the spectators right into the plot. 

James.atLLOUD: it's snowing

lifted pixel: nice snow

Tosha Tyran: oh shucks... I forgot my snow suit at home

Forest Azure: /me wished she brought a jacket

Whirli Placebo: bravo

Victoria Logan: BRAVOOOOOOOOO

Siobhan Muir: Can you see the snow rising on the ground?

Beth Ghostraven: yes, really cool to have it pile up

Star Ravenhurst: I can see the snow. This is awesome!

Kelso Uxlay: yes on the ground, but the flakes are not visible for me; you should cache them somewhere before the show

Ange Menges: Too much snow for me, I can't see through

Mal Burns: i see serious flakes a-falling

James atLLOUD: I see the snow particles well Kelso

Star Ravenhurst: A lot will depend on one's computer, graphic card, settings, etc.

Thirza Ember: Melted! I wish snow would go away like that in rl

Beth Ghostraven: I couldn't find my cursor with all that snow

Nara Nook: we did not play the full final scene because we don't want to give ending away before the conference

Forest Azure: this tor night 'Moony' setting did not work

Nara Nook: yes you can use whatever night scene works for you, and had things gone smoothly I would have mentioned that,just things got crazy with the lag and I am not sure why yet

Tina Bey: es/en It seems to me that the sound should come out locally... a lot is lost

Dorena Bree: This was a useful test

Forest Azure: was there sound? the instructions before were so fast and so many, i really could not follow them

Nara Nook: we were working on telling animated stories in Unity 3D, and I realized we could use our NPC script like a game engine inside opensim, so we did a test project very small cyber cities - it worked. When everything is an npc we can precisely control when and where each story element appears

Victoria Logan: I really liked what they interpreted, the work is valuable.

Nara Nook: so this obviously is still a rough beta test,but as you saw you can do somethings here it was not possible to do before, like the horse is an NPC acting without a human driver

Thirza Ember: speaking from the audience, the snow was very ...cool. It involved us in the story

Nara Nook: yeah that was part of the vision, to be able to make the drifts rise up over you

Tosha Tyran: the idea to use the npc machine to animate is fabulous!

John Sheppard: Some one should come up with a way to change environment... as things happen

Nara Nook: we thought of using a sky dome but things are laggy enough

Siobhan Muir: They're really suggestions rather than requirements. You can watch it all in the same lighting without changing it

Nara Nook: yeah but the storm is cool in the dark

Siobhan Muir: It is that

Nara Nook: we really, really appreciate all the suggestions. We're only using one script and we had all the elements out backstage so all the things would get cached.

John Sheppard: turning down draw distance might help too, less rendering... avatars+sims=Lag

Siobhan Muir: It might work better at OSCC because they're used to large groups of people

Nara Nook: I did think if I turned of the adjoining sims that might help but I wanted worst case

Mal Burns: yes

Tosha Tyran: I had no lag at all... but I do have a couple of suggestions

Siobhan Muir: Yes, Tosha?

Tosha Tyran: well, to make the single scenes longer, so everybody could appreciate them, just make some pauses between the different actors. And maybe find some way to make it more clear for the audience just who is speaking

Nara Nook: thanks Tosha

Whirli Placebo: would doing another run through be helpful? I love sword scenes

Tosha Tyran: also - yes - that lovely sword scene has to be longer

We watched it again. It was exciting! The default chair system at the OSCC which may well date back to the very first conference has those built in scripts that take control of your camera, pointing you at a general view of the stage. If you are a total newbie in virtual worlds, and do not have any idea how to move your camera, this is probably a nice thing. For the 99.9% of OSCC attendees, it's probably the most unpleasant thing about the conference, since even though you can disable it by pressing Esc,  Opensim people find being controlled by default both offensive and officious.

Neo Cortex: This time I zoomed in on the kings and the animations started running smooth. But as soon as I went back to the default view they were slowed

Lucy Afarensis: I turned off the seat camera and have been camming around. I wonder if  that causes lag ?

Siobhan Muir: Did you see the kings dancing and fighting? There was too much lag for me

James atLLOUD: the fighting seemed to work well for me

Tosha Tyran: I loved the sword scene... like Johnny Depp in that pirate movie :D

Nara Nook: that you were too far away?

John Sheppard: it ran better this time, but I cammed in too

The Yule Tale is full of drama and action!

Nara Nook: me too... so they really need to know to cam in

lifted pixel: yes you'll want to tell people to cam in if the chairs grab camera control

Siobhan Muir: That might help yeah. But you miss the trees sunflowers and the horse

Neo Cortex: The default perspective that the seats give us. Sit down and hit escape...That is a total view of the stage

Nara Nook: yes that view doesn't work great as you are too far away

Mal Burns: tech question - when sit have option to get viewing position - could that viewing position be scripted to change with scenes?

Nara Nook: we have an addon to actually put camera where we want that Neo made for us, but we can't do that there

Whirli. Placebo: could it be made into a theater in the round?

Nara Nook: not at OSCC, we could do that here but we were trying to replicate them

thirza.ember: you definitely convey your concept to the audience, we can all totally understand what you're getting at.

Siobhan Muir: Thank you, Thirza! Scene 3 brings it all together

Nara Nook: I should say this little story is vastly different from the clssic Yule Tale. We diverge quite a bit from that story. It's our little stab at daylight savings time but you will have to see the end to get that part

James atLLOUD: Oh I'm interested in that!  do not like the time changes

We all stormed the stage at the end of the performance

Thirza Ember: so what vote does everyone give them - out of five stars????

snowbody Cortes: 5 stars!

Star Ravenhurst: 5 Stars

Nara Nook: we don't have bow anims but thanks... Dorena will have to make us some

Tosha Tyran: 6

Kelso Uxlay: Supernova star

Siobhan Muir: Thank you Tosha!

Nara Nook: thanks :)

Thirza Ember: this is going to be one of the highlights of the conference

Star Ravenhurst: I agree ... I can't wait to see it all!

The Opensim Community Conference is on 9 and 10 December, check the schedule here for times of the various presentations - and see you there!