March 16, 2013
I have been reassessing what it is that I am doing with Excelsior Station. This has come about due to recent health diagnoses and the resulting need to do the same in my Real Life.
Although I have been writing about Excelsior Station for a couple of years now, it actually began almost three years before that. That was when I first began checking out OpenSim. I learned how to compile the code, add regions, import and export my builds, save and load OARs and IARs. Soon enough, I discovered AuroraSim and began testing its limits. It was while I was trying to figure out MySQL that I came across Sim-on-a-Stick and things began to come together for me. It was also around that time that I thought I should start sharing what I was learning. And so this site was born.
It was also during that time that Excelsior Station itself began as a specific world. A world where people can drive, fly, sail or any other type of travel using any sort of vehicle that they can dream of. It would be a world of role play, of combat and contest. It would be a destination for people to visit and enjoy themselves, a world that was connected to other worlds in a network of role playing virtual worlds, creating the ultimate in MMOs.
An MMO that is a network where the users, not a corporation, create the challenges and the things to be used to meet those challenges.
Excelsior Station began as a sixteen region OpenSim megaregion, but I soon found that AuroraSim was simply better suited. AuroraSim has physics, currency, no region borders, yet uses fewer system resources than the same land area, prims and scripts do in OpenSim. It also had its own system for intergrid travel called InterWorld Communication. Soon thereafter a hypergrid module was created.
That was the beginning of Excelsior Station. It has grown and changed over the last couple of years. As has AuroraSim and OpenSim. I have met many people that have met many people in that time and many have helped and there have been a few AuroraSim based grids that I have been involved in, as well. Nova Grid, Created Worlds, AuroraScape. Zarta, Nichodemous, Timothy, to name a few.
Most recently, Timothy and his Zetamex hosting company have been helping me to get Excelsior Station online and open to the public. The plan is to run it as a stand-alone with a community created Terms of Service. I have been focused on achieving this, too focused, I find.
AuroraSim no longer has a functioning HyperGrid capability. Changes in the coding has broken the module that allows intergrid travel. Furthermore, the primary developer of AuroraSim is against coding HG capability into the software. While he is not against someone creating a module for it, he is not going to do so himself.
This is a mistake.
When you write software for the general public to use, you must compromise. You may not want to include something, but when the people you are designing the software for want it, you have to compromise and include it. By not including HyperGrid capability in AuroraSim, it becomes limited in the eyes of the public.
It also means that I cannot achieve my goals for Excelsior Station.
Without the ability to travel to and from other grids, every AuroraSim based grid becomes a closed grid. Including Excelsior Station. While I am in favour of both open and closed grids, Excelsior Station was never intended to be closed. Any currency and economy it should develop was to be dependant on a secure HyperGrid. Its support of role play and vehicles are dependant on intergrid travel.
In short, I cannot achieve my goals for Excelsior Station if it were to remain based on AuroraSim.
I refuse to give up on my goals. However, without a functioning HyperGrid capability, I do not see how I have any other choice but to use OpenSim.
It is not the software that defines the world. It is the goals and the people of that world who do.
I look forward to the day when Excelsior Station and the people who come to it achieve their goals.
Yeah, things are not looking the greatest for Aurorasim with the closing of the AuroraScape grid and it's extremely small support. I do not blame you for switching to opensim. However, Savino from Aurorascape has decided to continue the idea of having a grid for AuroraSim development, and she is in full support of bringing the Aurora Hypergrid into existence, infact that is one of her primary goals. It may be worthwhile to monitor her efforts and if you have experience in that field see if you could assist.
I'm glad Savino is doing so, I'm part of the OpenSim Virtual Community on G+ and she posts updates there.
I was perfectly fine in using Excelsior Station for the same thing. But, that isn't the Station's main goal. I truly would prefer to use AuroraSim, but I cannot without intergrid travel, one that is compatible with HG. And to run it as a closed grid would mean having an inworld currency that can be cashed out, which has its own complications. Without one or the other, and preferably both, there is little to draw the general public in. My boyish good looks certainly cannot compete against InWorldz or Metropolis, after all. And without a "draw" a grid is doomed to fail.
I,m in to keep on testing aurora, i loved aurorascape experience, i wish it,d there be more ppl interested on its potential
I'm glad you are continuing.
When it comes to people being interested, its not just the refusal to include HG. Its the lack of public engagement. How long has it been since they updated the AuroraSim site? When was the last time there was a public release? Where are the user and developer mailing lists? Why the long delays in responding to forum posts? When will the wiki be fixed?
All of those are what people access for information and help. Without those, people feel uninvolved, left out. The result is that people will adopt the software that they are confident they will be able to use and to get help with if they have problems. That is where OpenSim surpasses AuroraSim. And to the point that the quality of the software takes second place.
Is the old aurora-sim code with HG no longer available or not permitted to be used ?
if you still have it or know where to get it , why not use that ?
I'm something of a digital hoarder and have past AuroraSim versions back to 0.4.0. Past versions did support HG as well as IWC, but those never worked properly. That was nine months ago and the current version no longer supports any inter-grid travel, so even if I did compile the old HG and IWC modules with the current version, they still would not work and would likely crash the compiling process.
The past version of the HG module is still available at https://github.com/RevolutionSmythe/Aurora-HG-Plugin
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