One of the key areas of Second Life, are the various ‘Sandboxes’. While the engine supports building and scripting just about anywhere, most land is owned by someone, who may or may not want 150ft battle robots suddenly sprouting in their carefully manicured lawns. So Linden Labs have set aside a number of publicly buildable areas to allow people to work unhampered on their projects, and very quickly my travels took me to the one just to the South-East of the newbie plaza.

The first thing that strikes you, is the sheer quantity of pine. New shapes (“Primitives”) created into the world seem to default to a light pine wood grain texture, and the first impression of the sandbox is one of a busy carpenter’s yard, with pinewood constructions of all shapes and size hanging in space, with attendant avatars hammering and sawing away on their pet projects. There are newbies like myself of course – awkwardly moving simple wooden geometric shapes about, mostly without plan or design; merely trying to get to grips with this alien new skill set. Little cubes of pine litter the landscape, along with cones, balls, cylinders and more – cast aside, their purpose served. The sandbox areas wipe themselves clean every 12 hours, so this isn’t a major hastle, but the obsessive in me grumbles at the litter.

There are more accomplished projects under way as well though. To my left, a chap with a wand, a parrot on his shoulder and the title ‘Pastafarian’ hovering over his head seems to be working with clouds – calling them into being from his personal library, and tweaking them. They seem a bit ovoid, but convey the impression well enough, drifting gently about the place. Later on, I see him actually riding one, magic carpet style.

Further along, a grim looking chap in paramilitary regalia is working on what looks suspiciously like an inter-continental ballistic missile, trying various nose-cones, clearly unsatisfied. I dread to think what scripts lurk in the heart of that beast, but then again, there are very few places in SL where one can actually ‘die’, in the normal MMO sense. Weapons seem popular, but a conversation with one veteran revealed that unlike Planetside or Quake, in SL there is a very real Arms Race, based in the technological elegance of the scripts powering them, and the complexity of the enemy’s defences, making combat a matter of coding skills, rather than reflexes or guts. An interesting idea I intend to explore more deeply.

Next we a see a winged demonish creature busy setting himself on fire. His immolation doesn’t meet his malevolent standards though, and the effect, generated by a surprisingly complex particle system, shifts and changes as we watch, eventually settling on a shroud of darkness, rather than flames.

Another young lady, about as new as I am, is experimenting with basic Primitives, creating large purple balls and seeing how they roll and bounce. The Physics engine can be toggled on and off, per object, and is surprisingly lifelike. After nearly flattening me in a moment that gives me Prisoner flashbacks, she then proceeds to get eaten by one, and goes running off – a pair of legs poking out of a large purple ball.

Any objects can be attached to any part of the avatar skeleton, and then tweaked in-situ. Indeed...across the way a perky punk-gothic looking girl is sat on a cushion (clearly for effect), and working on a surprisingly tiny object in the air in front of her. Zooming reveals it to be a bracelet of startling intricacy, with detailing down to 1cm and less, presumably intended for wrist attachment. Styled hair, piercings, complex clothes and the ever-popular fox-heads can all be created in this manner, and bolted on to the avatar at will, leading to a bewildering array of bodies.

Above, a winged pixie type of creature is creating large spinning rings, high in the air, apparently so she can practice the finer points of flying better. It is a skill that takes some practice if you want to appear at all elegant, and with the streaming lag, slamming into the side of tall buildings before they even appear is all too common. Rings in place, much swooping ensues. I think she even improves somewhat, although her particle effect trails have the side effect of crop-dusting pretty much everyone working at ground level.

Ahead another new chap is building a boat. Two carved shapes, about 20m long each sit on the grass. It seems he’s having trouble fitting them together. We chat a bit and I give him a hand – seems he didn’t realise that as well as dragging stuff about, you can also enter numerical values for x,y,z, rotation, etc. This allows for much more precision, and the two halves are soon one hull. Scripting for vehicles is quite complex, but many decent examples can be found on the official forums, or just by taking apart other people’s work to see what makes it tick – provided the various ‘Editable’, ‘Copyable’ and ‘Transfer’ tags allow it. There are a lot of free objects around though…more than enough to build up a decent resource library of your own, and this seems to be the standard way ‘in’…start by tweaking other people’s work until you understand how it works.

Behind him is a very complicated structure in progress. Buildings, just like anything else in SL, come from the little 0.5m Pine Cubes, but this one seems to have been worked on for quite some time – a large futuristic domed structure up on a long fluting pedestal, 100m tall or so. Mostly transparent, the interior is decked out with all sorts of furniture. Presumably, the entire thing can be packed up, and then redeployed on some rented land out in the world some place.

Further along, a couple are experimenting with what looks to be a large wooden board, 25m a side, covered in pairs of small balls. These placeholder objects seem a common feature around the places I’ve since visited – they hold scripts which animate the avatar using them. This was a (PG) rated area, and it turned out that the board was nothing more innocuous than a night-club dance-floor in progress, but one can imagine the other uses these pose balls get put to. Quite impressive to watch though, as they went through all the different dances, adjusting the positioning, lining things up so they were actually dancing with each other, instead of through each other. Avatar Animations are one of the few things SL can’t do, and these need to be imported from Poser or similar.

All in all, and inspirational stroll and I leave determined to put some of the techniques I’ve seen to good use soon…