Happy Holidays from all of us at the development team. :)

In case you wonder what we've been working on the past little while, let me share a secret with you. We're not planning to keep all of the virtual worlds network for ourselves. We want to share it - with you, with other developers, and with the whole world!

To accomplish that, we're building on the new OAuth system we put in place with UVDeviant. It basically lets us use a system much like Facebook's permissions to grant access to third party developers safely and give you (the users) the ability to revoke that permission from them at any time, easily.

The idea then is to let many different tools tap into this information through the same pipeline. Then it also becomes easy to let a third-party provider build a new tool for you and you can decide if, when and how you want to use it. There can then be new social centers, new user-driven markets, new chat program, or new tools we can't even imagine right now!

If that's not enough, there'll even be avenues for new worlds to open up to people - hosted by another world provider that you can move between as comfortably as you move between pages on different websites.

Won't that be awesome? ;)

Hey there folks,

As I talked about in my previous post, one of the things we're implementing will be a JavaScript engine that will run both client-side and server-side. And we're really excited for what it's going to let us do. For those of you not really in the know of what a "scripting engine" means or why we're excited, let me take a little bit to explain what sorts of interesting things it will let you do.

Right now, any time you as a user want a new way to interact with a room (let's say a door that swings open), you need to rely on the world creator to make it available to you. Not only does that mean it might be shelved for a while, but even when finally make it has to go through a whole patch cycle (which means even more waiting time). Worse, many of the scripts don't really line up right between different users (I'm looking at you "Move Within Bounded Box").

So let's put the tools to make these scripts in the hands of the people who want to see it happen the most. Let's give you the tools to make a door that swings open, a pet that follows people around the room, a maze with moving walls, or a bot that can greet people when they come into the room. And if you want to make something complicated, you should be able to benefit from it by having it available on the marketplace for others to use - at the price you set.

But it's bigger than just moving objects in a room. Sure, those are a few nice simple ways you can make your regions more lively than they are right now. We want to give you more tools than just that. You walk into a room and the room has the ability to give you new pieces of interface to fiddle with. It might show you a listing of the DJ's library or it might show you a chess board. Scripts in rooms will be able to give the people who visit the room the interfaces they need to interact. Let's take a quick example:

As a user, you might run a matchmaking room where people can come and hook up. When someone arrives in the room, they get a small survey to fill out about their taste in other people. They complete it, click a button to send it back to the room, and now the server's script can compare their results to who else is in the room and suggest matches for them. It could even remember who else has been there today and let you know about possible missed connections. It could soon be the sexiest little hookup spot online - and it'd be all in the hands of the users to create it, maintain it, and (ahem) service it.

Share your ideas for what you think would be great ideas you'd like to see ...

Hey Everyone,

The Client Development team has been hard at work planning and working on a whole ton of new technology and ideas that we're going to use to make our virtual worlds more interesting and interactive. The biggest change is going to be putting the power of building in your hands in ways we've never done before. Driving all of it will be a scripting engine known the world over as being reliable, fast, and a game-changer when it comes to what you'll be able to do with the whole experience, from game world to your screen. We're using Google's JavaScript V8 engine to give everyone the tools to change the world in new and interesting ways.

JavaScript was an obvious choice for us because it is proven technology and a well-known language used by millions of developers worldwide. Rather than forcing everyone to use the same user interface and the same scripts on props, users will be able to customize rooms, props and the tools they use to access the world in ways that we never would have been able to do before. Scripters will have access to a wide range of functionality through easy-to-use functions that will let them develop AIs for bots, game systems that spawn one or more rooms, and custom user interface that could show anything from a scoreboard to a map of their game world.

Oh, and please forgive the developer art.