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Latest
News:
12/7 Happy Holidays!:
As Xmas & New Years approach I just wanted to check in with a short
post. I have a handful of new animals I'm working on, as usual I have
more ideas than time. I'm trying to focus on one or two animals so I'll
have something new in the near future. All of my current projects have
some cool new features so I'm looking forward to writing more about
them soon.
I suppose now would also be as good a time as any to ask everyone to visit the marketplace link (or home location link)
and take home some pets today and to share our critters with friends
and family :) Between the relocation and new marketplace changes
I'm working to get critter sales back to sustainable levels. Since I
rely on the animal sales to continue development, every animal you buy
helps to get more new ones out. I appreciate all of the wonderful
customers that have supported Aeryglow Wildlife™ over the past few
years and hope to keep surprising all of you with great content for
years to come. Thanks for a wonderful year everyone, here's wishing you
all a happy holiday season!
11/5 Fall Foliage:
It does appear as though the smaller shop area is helping me to cycle
through some old projects faster these days. At the old location I had
fall ground cover that I'd scripted to drop out of the way during
summer months. There were versions for sale that came with fixed
textures and sizes and no automatic seasonal functions. For the new
shop I've revisited the ground cover and have just put up the new
version for sale.
The new ground cover includes adjustable
sizing (up to 10m) and volume control, as well as selectable textures.
You can now choose between various amounts of fall leaf amounts or pine
needle amounts (or invisible.) I've also added an automatic mode that
will swap out the textures through the season automatically. Leaves
turn invisible at the end of fall and pine needles switch to the light
cover mode - all automatically - if you choose this mode. I've also
added new sound clips to add further variety to the ground cover object.
Since
all textures come available in one object and it can be sized to 10m x
10m I've changed these to transfer instead of copy and cut the price in
half from the old versions. Considering the seasonal functionality and
new flexibility these are still a great deal, I'll have some out in the
Garden Area so people can test out the sound on walk-through. The sales
panel for this ground cover is inside the Garden Building, near the
other Garden area props. Enjoy!
11/3 Gobble Gobble:
Many of you may remember the female turkey I released early this year.
I had intended to get her finished for November of last year. However
the behavioral scripting and 3D model became far more demanding than I
had expected, so she was not ready until January of this year. This
fall I had hoped to be able to get a male version done in time for
November... and here he is!
Male turkeys are the ones known for
the characteristic gobble call and oversize plumage. This release
includes all of the functions the female turkey is known for.
Free-roaming behaviors, flight, birdseed food seeking, unique
personalities, multi-lingual menus and the male & female turkeys
form families if left in close proximity together. There are many more
small touches to discover as well.
So Happy Thanksgiving, these new large birds can be found in the Garden area of the Aeryglow Wildlife™ shop in Phasmogoria, along with the female versions and Fresh Birdseed.
11/1 Multi-lingual Squirrels:
Big news for all you squirrel and chipmunk lovers out there! These
critters are among the oldest in the Aeryglow™ lineup. I recently had a
customer asking for help with the menu system because of a language
barrier. Newer animals have included language support in the menu
system and it seemed like this was a good time to add this useful
feature to the squirrels and bring them up-to-date.
So,
the squirrels now use the latest menu system. This will bring some
commonality with the newer menu systems to these critters, and adds the
English/French/German/Spanish language options to these widely loved
animals. In addition to the new menu system I've added upgrade support
to this version. This will allow future updates to be obtained by
visiting the Garden Wildlife
location, rezzing your v4.40 or newer squirrel and clicking the
squirrel icon on the ground to initiate the script upgrade process. The
upgrade system will be activated once the next squirrel update occurs.
Another
major behavior change for the squirrels is the removal of the rezzed
acorns - including the acorn the squirrels hold while standing. While a
unique behavior, it was causing issues with some users and instead I've
replaced the 3-prim rezzed hand-held acorn with a 1-prim attached
acorn. While the food option no longer drops acorns, it does allow the
squirrels to seek out Fresh Acorns
which are now available with other Garden animal foods! This food is
similar to the Fresh Cheese the mice eat and v4.40 Squirrels and
Chipmunks will seek out this food if their food option is set to 'On'.
Additionally,
I've gone through the script code and worked on improving the code
efficiency and fixing some minor bugs (such as the squirrel rotation on
recovery from capture if standing up.) The large squirrels (Gray, Black
& White) get prim reductions by replacing leg pieces with sculpted
shapes. All of these improvements add up to make these long term SL
residents more sim friendly and more enjoyable than ever before.
In
other news, I'm still working on setting up the Phasmogoria shop
location and getting notecard landmarks updated on all the animals. It
feels great to have a fresh critter update done, perhaps I'll try to
get some other new things out or updates made while the shop setup
continues.
10/19 Phasmogoria Move & Other Things:
Sorry all for the delayed update. Between 2 family emergencies, a huge
software project outside of Aeryglow™, the Aeryglow™ relocation and all
of the normal RL obligations there has been very little extra time for
updates. Fortunately, RL seems to be getting back to normal, family is
doing better and my software work is winding down for a time.
I
spent this week cleaning up the Aeryglow™ Island, and finished picking
up the last of my items (or deleting them) this morning. The island
should close up and be removed from the grid by LL at any time now.
Over at Phasmogoria
I've continued working on getting the new shop buildings set up, and
still have more work to do, especially with updating landmarks in
existing product.
Also of note is that I've given Maggie Morgan
some space to set up a small shopping strip for her sea life on the
north western side of my land. It's good to have her back in-world and
set up nearby. If you happen to pop into Phasmogoria definitely pay a
visit to her dock down by the water. She's still just getting set up as
well so check back often to see the changes.
In
any case it's sad to see the island close, it's been a wonderful 3+
years there, but the new place is coming along nicely and I'm looking
forward to making new memories here. I'll post more soon, in the
meantime, come see the new place and take home some new wildlife pets
too!
8/11 Phasmogoria Garden:
Well, the move is continuing and I've finished relocating the Garden
animals and Jungle animals. I'm focusing mostly on getting the correct
new landmarks into animals & instructions and getting the critters
placed out for sale in the sales buildings.
Landscaping will
come with time although I'm doing a little here and there as I move
along. I've set up the touch-to-win contest at the new location and
improved the building greeters to announce the current music title and
artist as the playlist progresses. The automatic updaters have been
placed and inactive update icons are grayed out vs the bright white for
the active icons. The new layout already feels easier to shop so those
of you that want to pop in, shop, and out quickly will like the new
location much better.
Currently
I'm getting the Seaside sales building put together and all the sea
creatures instruction pages updated. I should post an announcement
in-group soon as well now that I'm about half done getting things moved
over.
7/27 Moving News:
The last few weeks have been incredibly busy in one form or another but
nothing has taken as much time as recent work to relocate Aeryglow
Wildlife to Mainland. It's sad news but yes the Aeryglow Wildlife
Island will likely close in a month or so and be replaced by the new location.
The Garden Wildlife building has been duplicated and set up, and the Jungle Wildlife building is nearly complete. I've put
up signs on the island with new landmarks (they deliver on touch) in the
Garden center. Xstreet Garden Animal deliveries also include the new
landmarks as do all the sales boxes in the Phasmogoria sim where the
new home will be. I'll go through all the animals on this web
site to update the location info as well.
So, it's been 3 years
since the island was first opened - why the move now? Well, the Island
Estate was always a partnership with Maggs over at Something Fishy. She
did a lot to keep up the islands and was a constant force behind the
scenes at Aeryglow. With her departure from SL this year and the
closure of her sim next door I just don't have the time to put into the
island while keeping up animal releases. As much as I love the parks, I
need to focus more on the critters. The new location will be more
shopper friendly but with fewer hidden park jewels. Hopefully it will
allow me to spend more time on the critters you all love so much.
At
the same time it would be nice to have neighbors again, and the new
location is just a couple hops away from Hodgie and Hodgey's Nature
Stand. I've always missed that about Mainland sims - there is just so
much more going on, it's more of a community feeling and honestly it's
something I've really missed since Maggs closed shop. Perhaps we'll do
some special things to encourage exploration between the sims, but for
now I'll focus on the move and the critters.
5/29 Happy Memorial Day - Spring in Bloom!:
I've been hard at work with a new model but for this post I'd like to
announce a follow up to the new butterfly news in the last post. I was
doing some yard work this month and some of the beautiful spring
flowers made me wonder if I could make use of them to texture some
flower-inspired butterflies. The pic to the left is of some Houstonia
flowers and a Buttercup I came across outdoors. I used these textures
to create the Houstonia, Buttercup and I created a Red Tulip inspired
butterfly for the Garden area (finally some red to choose from!) The
results can be seen in the pic from the 5/4 which I've updated. It's an
interesting way of coming up with unique butterfly types and I may do
more like them down the road. Spring is in full bloom now, if you are
looking for some butterflies to bring life to your flower garden there
are now more color choices than ever to choose from!
5/4 Aeryglow Wildlife - New Spring Butterflies:
While updating behavior code for the butterflies last month I was
thinking I'd like to add some more color choices. The Garden butterfly
collection gets two new butterflies. I happened across a photo of a
bright yellow Dogface butterfly that I thought would brighten up a
garden area, especially if you place a nectar feeder within a row of
red rose bushes. The dogface is native to California and is actually
the designated state insect. I also wanted to add something... well,
not yellow or orange, seeing as I have a lot of orange to pick from. I
figured I'd pick a color I hadn't seen often during research and photo
trips. Why not pink? Well as it turns out real life pink butterflies
are hard to come by. I didn't actually find any references after doing
some research, so I went ahead and invented one! The Aeryglow
Garden butterfly was the end result. It's bright, it's pink, it
definitely stands out fluttering around the sim.
Over
at the Jungle Wildlife area I've added a new White Barred Charaxes
butterfly. From above it's wings are shades of black & white, from
below it's deep red with white & gray markings. These butterflies
are native to Africa, and the coloring really stood out to me.
I'd like to add more colors when I have time, the butterflies are beautiful to watch and variety is always a good thing.
4/29 Aeryglow Wildlife - Website Improvements:
As you may have noticed I've been working to clean up the web site a
bit. I'm trying to replace some of the text with pics to provide a
cleaner look to the site. The Garden and Jungle pages get the refresh
as well as the home page, other pages will get brought up to date as
time allows.
In
other good news I've been able to create textures for the Chinchilla
Wildgrass. This food item lasts for 28 days and functions much like
other food available from Aeryglow Wildlife™. Simply rez a copy near
any Chinchillas, all of them will feed on the nearby food. Wildgrass
will also lend sculptie support to Chinchillas to help reduce the SL
balloons some people may see. I've added a free copy to the Chinchilla
boxes as well.
So, if your pet Chinchilla has been begging for a snack you can now pick up a treat!
4/27 Aeryglow Wildlife - Spring Insect Updates:
This month always seems to feel overwhelming. I've been able to take
some time however to update the Garden & Jungle Butterflies. I felt
the previous versions spent too much time resting and often had a
tendency to land and not take off again for long periods of time. With
the update the flying behaviors seem to be much improved. I've also
added the update code so that this new version (v0.04) and future
versions can be automatically updated near their sales panels. Going
forward you can rez a v0.04 or newer butterfly near its sales panel and
click the insect icon on the ground. If a new version is available it
will replace your old version butterfly.
Also,
some of you have asked about food for the Chinchillas. I tested the
eating behaviors with a temp food item, but I want to create a good
Wildgrass model, so there isn't yet a food item ready. I have located
an ideal patch near home to photograph & use as a texture base for
the model. Now if only the spring rains will stop so I can get a clean
photo! I do hope to have food out in the jungle sales building soon,
I'll post another entry here when it's out.
4/15 Jungle Wildlife - Mountain Squirrels Anyone?:
Whew, tax day is here and all of last years data was handed over to the
accountant with (very little) time to spare. Spring cleanup has kept me
quite busy outside as well, though to be honest I love the time spent
outdoors. I often get some fun ideas while listening & watching the
wildlife around me.
I've had a great deal of work going on
for SL these days as well. I've updated the Jungle Wildlife page on
this site to match the new format I implemented for the Garden Wildlife
page. I've also been working on getting the Jungle Wildlife building
more fully completed. Somehow I think it'll take some time to get that
building where I want it - it's precarious perch atop Jungle Wildlife
Mountain doesn't leave much room for construction. As I add to it I'm
hoping it will offer a fun spot to walk through while providing
enough wall space for sales panels and a beautiful view of the island
below. Given it's prominent location I am working to bring it up to the
level the Garden area is at today.
As
I promised in my last entry I've been working on a new critter and it's
finally out for sale in the Jungle Wildlife sales building!! The Wild
Turkey I created this fall & winter took a lot of work and I was
looking for something new but easier to implement for my next release.
At about the time I was considering what to do next a customer asked if
I'd do a Chinchilla like their friend's pet - the gray one you see here
was actually textured from a photo of their friends Chinchilla.
For
those of you not familiar with Chinchillas they are a mountan rodent
from South America. They're about the size of a rabbit and (when they
aren't sleeping) are quite active running around and cleaning
themselves by taking dust baths. They are absolutely adorable and I
hope that the end result remains true to the behaviors of people's pet
Chinchillas out there in RL. The scripting is based on the squirrel
& bunny scripts I've done previously with some improvements in the
menu system such as multi-lingual support (French & German at
current).
Behavioral scripting has been improved for this
critter with a larger spectrum that I hope will result in wider
differences between individual Chinchillas. There are more animations
for this animal than any I've done so far including blinking eyes, the
dust bath cleaning, sleeping, standing, hopping, etc. All of this
animation is non-physical to minimize sim impact and of course these
cute critters are just a single prim to minimize the impact on your
land prim allotment. You'll want to rez a Jungle Rock v0.02 nearby
(included in the sales box) to keep SL Balloons at bay, though a single
rock will support all the other jungle animals you have nearby as well.
There
are tons of other small details to these critters such as the varied
sounds they emit, etc. but I'll leave it to all of you to discover on
your own :) I'll make an announcement in group tomorrow hopefully...
I'm just about spent today what with all the hard work I've done for
this release. Enjoy the new critter, I'm going to think on what the
next one will be and I have some updates I'd like to get out later this
month as well.
4/2 Aeryglow Wildlife - Happy Easter!:
I hope everyone had a wonderful March, the month seemed to slip by
quickly. Warm wishes as well to those celebrating Easter this weekend.
I've been hard at work on a new critter which I will announce here
& in group after some more final touches. April is going to be a
busy month as I have to get taxes done and do some island
maintenance around the new animal's spot. I'll have more to post in a
few days time, I'm looking forward to the rebirth that spring brings
myself!
3/7 Garden Wildlife - Looking for Gold?:
Well March is finally here and you know what that means... Aeryglow
Shamrocks are in full bloom for the month and touch Pots of Gold are
appearing all over the Garden area! I'm looking forward to Spring in RL
as well, something about being either stuck indoors or bundled up for
outdoor activities gets old after a few months. Anyhow, keep your eyes
open for the contest pots & if you see one give it a click to see
what prize you are awarded!
In other news, I've completed a
trial upgrade system for the turkeys and bunnies. Bunnies & Rabbits
v0.45 and up as well as Wild Turkeys v0.06 and up can be upgraded at
the island from now on. When qualified upgrades are released, you'll be
able to bring these animals to the Garden shop location, rez them near
the sales panels and click on the animal icon that is on the ground
(the large bird icon for the Turkey or the bunny icon for Rabbits) for
an automatic update.
The
new turkey also includes some functionality I didn't have the time to
implement before release. They can now be used as food for larger
animals (such as lions) in the same way rabbits are. If caught, the
turkey will disappear for a few minutes and will return to life shortly
after as good as new to continue the cycle.
There
is also good news with the bunny update as well. I've taken the newborn
chakra bunnies and boxed them as singles for anyone that would like one
of a particular color. The new colors get new names - Strawberry,
Orange, Turquoise, Blueberry and Indigo - and they can be found with
the other newborn bunny sales panels in the Garden Area of the island.
That
should about cover the news for now. Enjoy the new updates and the
spring contest activity, and don't forget that bunnies make excellent
Easter gifts! (they are all transferable and will even wait to create a
unique personality if not rezzed before you give as a gift)
3/2 Aeryglow Wildlife - Lights Out Part III:
It was only a little over a year ago (Dec 2008) when a bad ice storm
left us without power and (gasp!!) Internet for 8 days. We had a big
storm come through this past Friday that took our power once again. As
the weekend progressed I was beginning to have nightmares of that week
a year ago. Fortunately the power did come back on Monday almost
exactly 3 days after the lights went out. Things are beginning to get
back to normal in RL but as would be expected I have a backlog of IM's
etc. to get through. I apologize to everyone that's awaiting a response
from me, I'll try to get through the list quickly, things at Aeryglow
should be back to normal in a few days hopefully.
2/11 Aeryglow Wildlife - Feel the Love!:
Valentines Day is once again nearly upon us. The Touch-to-Win contest
Golden Bunnies have been replaced with Touch Hearts for the rest of
this month.
Prize Hearts have also been added to the contest
prize list. I've given these prize hearts out as winnings in the past
as well, for those that have yet to see them they bind themselves to
their owner on first rez. Based on the owner and the location in which
they're first rezzed they take on unique characteristics. After first
rez is complete you can give away your heart to a loved one. The prize
hearts can then be used as followers (so long as the new owner is in an
area where their scripts are enabled.) The following heart will
occasionally chat sweet nothings to your loved one as well.
In all it's a wonderful gift to give and is only available from the Touch-to-Win hearts while they are active.
1/28 Garden Wildlife - Turkey's Done!:
Back in the summer of 2008 we had a female Wild Turkey nest in the
neighbor's woods. She spent much of the summer afternoons wandering the
neighborhood. It was fun to watch her behavior, take some pics and I
had planned at some point to do a model of her, so she went onto my
to-do list. Soon after I'd finished the butterflies the Hodgies had a
turkey they had done and I asked if they'd like me to take a look at
animating it. Unfortunately, as is often the case even with my own
first models (see the butterfly entry last October), their model just
wouldn't provide the proper animation base I needed. So, it was back to
the drawing board to create a model from scratch and my expected
November release date was going to have to be pushed back by some
weeks. The end result after 3D modeling work and texturing is shown
here. This Wild Turkey is another *single prim* animal and I've worked
very hard to squeeze as much detail out of SL(tm) prims as I could.
But
it's been a few months and the new model isn't the biggest news for
this release. This female turkey release includes a ton of new script
enhancements. First there's the large bird behaviors that are all new -
this is the first bird I've done with complex walking and complex
flying behaviors. There's the unique personality creation on first rez
as always, as well as some custom animations I've added for fun.
Turkeys feed on Fresh Birdseed which I've also just released. The
standard "Freeze", "Stay", "Follow Me" and "Roam" modes apply.
She
also comes with the first multi-lingual menu system I've implemented.
Currently I've translated French & German (and my foreign language
skills are not the greatest so I apologize in advance for my poor
translations) and I hope to add more languages in the future. I hope
the language options will at least help make the menu system easier to
use for those not accustomed to English as a first language. I've been trying to find the best layout for the menu system as
well, the "Range" menu has been moved to the "Options" selections for
instance. I'm still not sure I'm happy with this iteration of the menu
system but I'll give it some time before I make any more big changes.
And
last, but not least, I've implemented an upgrade system for this
release. On the ground near the sales panel is a Large Bird icon. When
new versions become available you simply rez your Turkey on the ground
near the icon and then click the icon. Your Turkey will be replaced
with a new revision automatically! Over time I'll add this
functionality to older releases as well, plus of course all new
releases will be updateable.
I'm sure I've forgotten some
details, but I've been working on this critter from months, modeling
and scripting everything from scratch, and then testing it all. I've
also improved the Garden Wildlife page here to make looking up info a
bit easier. Gone are the long stretches of text (such as seen here lol)
replaced by icons that lead to individualized pages. As I have the time
I'll do the same for other sections of this site as well. Anyhow, I've
gone on long enough here, go adopt some turkeys today! Meanwhile, I've
got to think on my next project!
1/14 Aeryglow Wildlife Friends - Failed Energy:
I've been busy with a handful of projects in recent months and one of
my side projects is officially starting up. My friend Failed Inventor
came up with the idea to create some Green Energy building blocks
for people to simulate renewable systems on their own property. I
thought it sounded like a great idea and took on the energy system
scripting.
As
many of you may remember from December 2008, I live way out in the
sticks and power loss is more common than I'd like. During an ice storm
that month we actually went without power here for over a week :P To
prepare for such events I'd looked into solar panels to run some basic
necessities (specifically I'd be happy to just run the wood furnace
blower and the well pump.) I've been very surprised at just how much
power generation it takes to cover the minimum needs in a home, and I
think Inventor's system will be good at teaching just that kind of
experience.
His
component design is also pretty sweet and priced reasonably, the
appliances are free for the taking with only the charging components
costing $L's. The power system scripting is the same tight, solid code
you've come to expect from me. The power generators react to the
environment - wind generators spin faster & generate higher power
levels when the wind increases, solar generators generate more power
during SL mid-day. Generators automatically charge nearby battery packs
placed by the same owner, battery packs automatically power the same
owner's nearby appliances. The system automatically detects new
component additions & removal and can cover sim-sized areas with
transmission repeaters (each component has a 20m operational radius).
In short the power components are all rez-and-play.
Inventor is
building up a library of appliance objects now that the system
scripting is complete, so although the available selection is on the
light side right now he should have a good selection of components
& freebies in the next few weeks, he should be fully up and running
in early February. Stop by his shop here to check out this unique idea and see this talented builder's work!
And
not to worry, some of this hard work has made it's way back to Aeryglow
to improve the wildlife sim, but I'll share that in a post to come soon!
1/12 Seaside Wildlife - A sad goodbye to Something Fishy(tm):
As many of you have noticed, Something Fishy(tm) has closed up the sim
next door. I'm never sure how much to blog about other business
owners, there is always more to each persons story than any of us are
aware of at any given time. However, I will say that Maggie has run
Something Fishy(tm) for years had has been both a wonderful business
partner and a dear, dear friend. It's been a difficult business climate
for everyone over the past 2 years, it's unfortunate such a wonderful
person has had to make this decision.
As for what the future
holds for Maggie & Something Fishy(tm) only she can say. I've
offered to host her on my island for the time being and she plans to
maintain a presence in SL. All of our joint creations are still
available at the Seaside Wildlife hut on Aeryglow Wildlife(tm) island
and will continue to be available with sales amounts split to Maggs.
I'll post any news from Maggie concerning future in-world
locations, in the meantime much of her work is available on xstreetsl here if you're looking for her sea life creations.
1/5 Aeryglow Wildlife - Welcome to a New Decade!!!:
So a New Year has begun! 2009 was a year that kept me on the road a
great deal for family needs. So much so that I've come to miss my
creative time in SL, although I've made use of travel time by learning
a host of new tricks I'm looking forward to putting into practice this
year.
In the near future I'll have some new announcements to
make. I have a new critter I'm putting some finishing touches on. Also,
I've been writing some scripts for some friends projects that I'll
write about when the projects go live. There is also a good deal of
island improvements I'd like to get to when I can. The Garden area
improvements have been good, I hope to add easier shopping to other
sections of the Wildlife park as well. I'd also like to make some
changes to this web site to improve readability.
And
of course I have a ton of new critters I want to get out of my mind and
into SL. The butterflies this past fall came out just as I'd pictured
them, the sculpted cabbage exceeded my expectations in terms of level
of detail and my current project is coming together in a very
satisfying way as well. In all there is much to look forward to in the
coming year, I hope all of the hard work and care shines through in the
critters to come.
Happy New Year, may yours be a wonderful year as well and be sure to visit Aeryglow Wildlife from time to time to see the changes and additions throughout the year!
As one
can imagine, scripting & building new
critters, landscaping our new home and keeping up a Website is
a
daunting task. There's always something new
being worked on, and I hope you will check back from time to time to
see
what's new and exciting at Aeryglow Wildlife(tm)!
- Cloud Insoo
Aeryglow Wildlife (tm), Virtual Wildlife Creator
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Phasmogoria/229/130/54/
