Safari Goes to the End of the Line

 For our final stop in this season's regular trips, we went for a first time visit to a fairly new grid, Holoneon. Run by Fiona and Niki Sweet, they suggested  a great region for us to explore, called Haven City. It's themed around the movie Tron, a classic bit of scifi and just perfect for our group.  'End of the Line' is a movie reference and a track by Daft Punk - the Safari tours will be back in January! (and some Specials before that, too.)

On Holoneon, we  were lucky enough to have as our guides the builders of the sim, Angel and Jade Madison. HG Address is (and you knew this was coming) at the end of the post, so you remember to go visit!

Bit of an unrezzed start to our tour, but as you all know, it takes us a while to get our act together. Luckily, the girls of the grid were pretty patient with us.

~Ąиցєℓ~: Welcome everyone. Its an honor to have you all here. I have never done anything like this on these scales. I like to create. So does Jade my partner.

Niki Sweet: yay hi  Forest, hi  anyone i missed, and most  are  clothed  too... /me giggles

Jade Madison: welcome everyone it honor to have you all here

Thirza Ember: thanks Angel, Jade, Niki and Fiona!...  it just takes a while for our faces to find us across the hypergrid

Ayla Alvarez: I'm gray...does that matter

Thirza Ember: how old is Holoneon grid?

Niki Sweet: over  a year but only open to the  public  9  months or  less

Forest Azure: /me pictures Thirza with a notebook and a secretary... not necessarily on her knee

Thirza Ember: a puppy and a wineglass is more accurate

Ayla Alvarez: and a partridge and a pear tree

The Welcoming committee, from left to right:
Niki, Angel, Jade, and Fiona

Forest Azure: so nice to visit your grid, Niki and Fiona :)

Fiona Sweet: thanks Forest we are glad you came

Thirza Ember: and before you were Niki and Fiona Sweet, you were Starks? is that right? people remember Stark as a place for parties

Fiona Sweet: yes, we used to be on Zetaworlds. I guess I wasn't technically a Stark hehe

Niki Sweet: i was  a  stark, Fiona  was  a  Sweet  always

Fiona Sweet: we have asset storage on s3 bucket but use squid cache in front of it to speed things up... this grid has 135 active regions with stuff on them there are a total of 650,578 prims

~Ąиցєℓ~: giggles, and I have 12 of those.

Fiona Sweet: but 3,053,886 assets. We've been officially online about 1 year

Thirza Ember: how do you like having a grid of your own? Is it more work than you thought it would be?

Fiona Sweet: well the challenging thing has been responding to attacks hehe. I have found several vulnerabilities in opensim and i send my patches and updates upstream, and they've used the patches in dev... not sure when a new release will come though

James Atlloud: that's great Fiona.  do you know who is attacking?

Tina Bey: That's what I wanted to know too. [EN]

Niki Sweet: and  there may be a  certain ... red  connection

Fiona Sweet: sometimes, but we don't block grids. I find it better to fix the problem rather than to worry about stomping out attackers

Tina Bey: And why they would do it, it's not very clear. [EN]

Cherry Manga: Yes, why on earth attacking grids?

Chatting (and rezzing) outside Flynn's arcade.

Fiona Sweet: the first attack I remember is what I call 'asset bombing'...

Niki Sweet: why attacking a new grid especially, so  weird

George Equus: Collateral damage probably...

Fiona Sweet: ... you know the AO feature in firestorm? That just sends a list of assets to the server, they are supposed to be your uuids of animations so everyone can see you move. but the opensim server code doesn't care how many assets are in the list, so a person could send like 1000 a second or something and the server would just go fetch all the assets without care. That bug lets anyone do it, doesn't have to be a local user, that's a real issue but fixed here.

Niki Sweet: Fiona has fixed so many errors in os code

Petlove Petshop: that's awesome... isn't there an overall thing that can be set up to protect nascent grids?

Fiona Sweet: well we limit the number of assets requested and also per use, there's also another issue where a person can food the system with empty 0 byte assets and the asset server eaves them there forever in the queue thinking maybe one day bytes will appear i guess, but that causes a big problem if a gadzillion 0-byte assets flood your system... so that's fixed here. but what worries me is it seems alot of grids don't update

James Atlloud: oh wow, hackers can find just about anything

Fiona Sweet: yes. and i see these bugs because people are exploiting them already

~Ąиցєℓ~: I have never done one of these tours. Shall we start and proceed to "the Grid"? (just didn't want you all to think I'm afk. was waiting for a cue). hehe

Thirza Ember: yes Angel, this was so interesting though I'm glad we could learn all this info

James Atlloud: ty for sharing the insights

~Ąиցєℓ~: Welcome. As folks come and visit either by word of mouth, folks profiles, listing on OSW and such they will come to the Welcome Center which is behind you and that blue building. The idea is folks will follow those arrows into this building we are currently in front of.

~Ąиցєℓ~: ok, as you follow me, we shall get all inside... 

Thirza Ember: nice gaming lounge !

~Ąиցєℓ~: This is most as you know it "Flynns' like in the real movie. One at a time click on the laser and TP to the Grid

James Atlloud: So I've been lookin' for Space Paranoids....

Niki Sweet: you  click on the  blue  light to  go in

Tina Bey: You go and we'll follow you on the map, too. 

James the first to crash and burn on the Grid

And just like that, we were on the Grid! Angel had organized our tour very well - not easy in such a disorienting environment as the world of Tron

~Ąиցєℓ~: where we stand isnt the track. hehe... It is now, lol

Thirza Ember: I should have mentioned, not everyone has their drivers permit yet (James)

James Atlloud: yes, and my permit was expired!

Forest Azure: lol i'm better on a horse

James Atlloud: Tron should'a had horses.

Thirza Ember: oh the Giant Head!

~Ąиցєℓ~: this strip we are on now isn't the track. It is just a place to walk around to see things. We have bikes that are on a track I built, we have tanks on a grid I built. Follow me please. Thank you

~Ąиցєℓ~: ride around for a couple of mins and maybe we gather back here. I made this track from scratch. that was fun. lol. I did it so the bikes wouldn't find themselves all over... not lying, you are all making me smile. I worked so hard on this, and its like a dream. it looks so Tron looking.

Ayla Alvarez: Tron was a cool movie

Cherry Manga: the light beam effect is perfect

Jade Madison: angel worked so hard with Tron using all the different colours to get the effect of Tron

Thirza Ember: I fell off the glass floor I think LOL ...how unusual. This is a lot of fun and it's easy to see you have put a lot of heart and soul into making it - not to mention talent

~Ąиցєℓ~: ok, shall we walk to the overlook area of the tanks?

~Ąиցєℓ~: some day I will get the train back up here and working. The code changed so haven't had time to redo it.

James Atlloud: Ohhhhh - scary!!

The 'grabby gates' or recognizers

Niki Sweet: the grabby gates look cool

James Atlloud: recognizers?

 ~Ąиցєℓ~: the recognizers, yeah. Tron 2.0 will be an entire region in the future

Niki Sweet: not my  fault i wasnt born when it  was made

 James Atlloud: Will Tron 2.0 reflect the sequel movies?

~Ąиցєℓ~: down below is the derezzer monument when folks have fallen and derezzed

Monument to the fallen

We kept walking along the track until we reached an overlook area, organized like a lounge. Pete and Naomi immediately got comfy! You can look below at the tanks, and at the maze-like battleground they operate in, the cubes neatly outlines with neon colors. Angel made the layout in Excel, from scratch, and you can drive the tanks, trying not to end up in a pileup, or just kind of pushing your way through.

~Ąиցєℓ~: sadly, I just discovered an error.. Forgot to add a TP to the tanks. So, lets fall below. haha

Ayla Alvarez: an error! no never...we hardly ever!

Niki Sweet: /me giggles

 James Atlloud: urmagurd

Thirza Ember: I love builds inspired by movies, it makes me want to go back and watch the movie again

The tanks are hard to photograph because there's a lot of black on black, but when you're on the sim, especially if you're driving, you can see where you're going and it's really fun to dodge around corners... this is me driving and Cherry sitting on the side, while we try to do battle with James in another tank up ahead.

Tron Tank (Black): Right click me and choose 'Sit Here' to sit down

Forest Azure: can i shoot? 

~Ąиցєℓ~: sadly no. I don't know how to do that coding. Its just the driving and visual experience.

Cherry.Manga: nope, pretend you do! piiiioooou piouuuuu

~Ąиցєℓ~: wish I recorded this. this is amazing to watch above.

Cherry Manga: paddle paddle

Thirza Ember: LOL who says I can't drive?

Cherry Manga: you are marvellous

Thirza Ember: I'm not sure hand to hand combat is how you are supposed to fight with a tank

Tron Tank (Black): Right click me and choose 'Sit Here' to sit down

Cherry.Manga: lol it may squash our flesh indeed

Tina.Bey: This is great!! 

James Atlloud: Very effective experience with the tanks.  Seems like almost a bumper-car script.

James channeling Clu as he shows off his tank skills

Thirza Ember: wow this has been such a fun Safari! I love your creativity here, I hope you'll invite us back

Niki Sweet: heheh that was cool

Fiona Sweet: I'm glad you came to see our grid

James Atlloud: the visuals are spot - on

Tina Bey: Thanks to you, this was fantastic!!

George Equus: Thanks for an interesting evening

Petlove Petshop: your build is great!

Forest Azure: thank you so much! I really need to see that movie!

Ayla Alvarez: tks for the tour, Angel, Fiona, Niki

~Ąиցєℓ~: I have some amazing things in my head for the future.

Niki Sweet: well, we have more amazing regions, so you are welcome back when you can fit us in

~Ąиցєℓ~: We also have a Fantasy Forrest (2) of them, and Asylum. Soon Santas Grotto. Come look in the future anytime.

Thirza Ember: this was the final big trip Safari of the year, what a great way to end it!

James Atlloud: Wow, the season went fast!

Ayla Alvarez: when do the Safaris start again?

Thirza Ember: but we do have 2 special Safaris, one of them on Nov 25 to see Cherry Manga's new big build The Path, I hope you'll all join us for that, and then the regular tours start again in January

Fiona Sweet: is there a group for notices

Thirza Ember: if you want to know about Safari tours, we have a group on Facebook, and Discord, and those are the best ways to see what's coming up. If you visit the Clubhouse, there is a HG Safari group joiner in the waiting area, right by the Landmark giver - I send HG friendly Notices about events from that group.

George Equus: Thanks again, cu in 2 weeks then if I can make it.

James Atlloud: Thank you Hosts - always loved Tron (and the soundtracks - Wendy Carlos and Daft Punk).

HG Address: hg.holoneon.com:80:Haven City