Get Together

It seems it's getting tougher for my friends and I to get together lately. That's probably my fault for shutting down the Tuesday and Friday night events at the Cherry Street Nightclub. Friday nights on a regular basis might work out for everyone, but I did promise those nights to Broxton's Krimson Moon. But because he has not held any other events there since last Friday, I'm doubting he will be able to keep the place open. In any case, Emi, Gefter, Darren, Zuri and I all got together Saturday night and had a great time!

First, Darren IMd me to show me a gadget he picked up which makes configurable weather over the entire sim. For a demonstration, he and Zuri chose flaming rain. I've seen these devices before and they sure are impressive, but they also create a great deal of lag. Darren offered to leave the control device on the land for me but I had to decline due to the lag considerations. It's important that I keep the lag at Cherry Street down to a minimum. But I did suggest that we have a party soon where we have bizarre weather while we party on the beach. It would still be very laggy, but it's only a temporary thing and it sounds like it would be fun.

About that time, I wanted to show them my new sim-border crossing boat. I warned them that it was not pretty but that it was elegantly scripted. Because my sim, Styll, does not border on any other sims, I was unable to demonstrate the boundary crossing feature of the boat. At first, Zuri took the helm but she did not understand the controls. She held down the accelerate button until we hit the edge of the sim. Then she turned it around and raced across the sim to the other edge, hitting it hard and placing us in limbo so to speak. I was stuck underwater but eventually made it out and was able to meet up with them at yet another corner of the sim. Hitting a sim border at high speed has unpredictable results. But it's never a good thing. So I thought I'd demonstrate a nice leisurely cruise to them. I took them on a short tour of the waterways on the sim.

All together now

About that time, Emi contacted me in IM and wanted to know "where's the party?" So I figured we should all get together and go boating out on Blake Sea where I could demonstrate the boat's awesome boundary crossing feature. I did not know at the time that Gefter was with Emi so that means there would be five of us and my boat only seats four. But I planned on rezzing a second boat for Gefter or Darren to pilot. As it turned out, we were able to get everyone on board but one person (Gef I think?) had to 'sit' on the boat and not in an animated pose. It seemed like this was going to work out just fine. We crossed one border and while it was a bit rough and laggy, we all made it across together. But it was the second border that turned out to be a real problem. We were all left behind and deep underwater. The boat was nowhere to be found. This is not unusual with the old scripted vehicles when crossing sim borders, but I had expected better out of this new scripting. But I reasoned that it must be due to the fact that the boat had one more person on it than it was intended for. So I suggested we head back to the marina (which had an area where you can rez things) and try two boats.

Sinking Yacht

Darren informed me that Zuri had a large yacht and that it seated 12. Well, I would imagine it did not have the new sim crossing scripting that my boat did but I thought, why not? At least we'd all stay together. But the yacht proved too large for Zuri to handle. Because she is the owner, she is the only person allowed to pilot it. With the new boat I have, they allow for multiple copies of it to be piloted by anyone with the same group membership that the boat was rezzed under. A very nice and handy feature. So if the yacht was not going to work out, I was going to rez a second boat under the Cherry Street group name. And as it turned out, when Zuri tried to move the yacht to a decent starting position, it sank. It didn't happen very fast though. It was a slow, torturous submersion. Oh, the humanity! But we all managed to survive and that's when I rezzed first one boat and started to rez a second when Darren informed us that Zuri had a small sailboat. Well, that will work too, but I had to wonder if it had these new updated sim-crossing scripts. As it turned out, it did not.

Zuri floating behind us

Darren and Zuri took off to the east so Gefter, Emi and I followed in the boat. We saw a couple of very cool islands and the border crossings were good. As I suspected, Darren and Zuri did not fare so well. On our third sim crossing, Gefter and I ended up in the sky. So that newly scripted boat of mine did not fare so well after all! But as Darren figured out, it was the same sim that we had trouble with earlier when we all ended up underwater, standing there bewildered, laughing as Gef donned his scuba gear. He's got a great sense of humor! Anyway, we decided to take off in the other direction, north and west. We regrouped and rezzed our boats again, took off on a slow cruise and this time, everything worked satisfactorily. Darren was able to impliment a 'follow' command with some sort of gadget he has so instead of sitting on the boat, Zuri floated behind us, but we were all together that way. So we explored for a little bit until we crossed an as yet uncrossed sim border. It went badly. I was so disappointed with my new boat after that. So we all decided it was time to play a game of hot tub Greedy. Gefter agreed to play too, but he was to be allowed to win this time. He had me in stitches all night

We all met back at Cherry Street and hopped into the hot tub Greedy game that Emi and Gefter got cat and I for our wedding gift. The game went very well because I won! But that sim crossing boat of mine was bothering me all the rest of the night. It should have performed better than it did. It always worked great for me!

So the next morning, I logged on and went out to the place we were at last night, rezzed a boat and started heading for the sim borders that we had issues with the night before. It was as smooth as ever, crossing those sims. So it must have had something to do with the number of people we were trying to force across the borders all at once. So with renewed confidence in my boat, I went out exploring, crossing countless sim borders without a hitch. I found a wonderful island to explore but I'll wait until cat or a friend can come along with me.