Dolce Vita is an international shopping centre chain in Europe with a strong presence in Portugal. They’re launching a contest for the “Best Fashionable Avatar” in the Second Life® virtual world.
To register, you only need to go to a Dolce Vita kiosk and touch it to get an unique registration code. With that code you can now send postcards with pictures of your avatar and have them displayed on a voting site. The 10 most voted avatars until May 15th will be invited to a fashion show (with live music) on May 16th, where a jury will pick their choice among the best. Contestants can pick up free clothes (up to a limit) from the Portuguese fashion designer Maria Gherardi on her MG Fashion shops in Second Life.
The winner will get a voucher to spend €500 on any Dolce Vita Shopping Centre in Portugal. There will be a second round of voting on May 23rd with another €500 to be won.
All design and programming were developed by Beta Technologies.
Knowing how daunting any new user’s experience can be, Language Lab opted out of Linden Lab’s orientation island and help islands, relying instead on their own area, which was developed with the guidance of Beta Technologies’ expert for pedagogical content working in tandem with our creative director, Moon Adamant, who conceived an environment based on the “World Fair” theme, as per a recommendation of TheGuild, a consultancy company who also worked for Linden Lab.
The above image shows the work in progress, with several of the “orientation stations” nearing completion. The “university building” on the background did already exist when we started.
A major achievement in Second Life in-world game development, the “Lost and Found” game presents students of LanguageLab with a way to learn how to distinguish items inside a virtual Lost & Found office. “Robots” walk in asking (with voice) for the players if an item was found and returned to the office. Players, in turn, have to listen to the recording, understand what object is being asked for, and need to select those from the shelves, coat hangers, racks, or the ground, and place them “inside” the robot. The whole system allows for multiple players, multiple levels, and scoring which is recorded web-side.
Taking an extraordinary amount of programming, this game is totally configurable — there is no limit to the number of objects, where these are placed, how many robots appear, what sounds/messages are displayed, etc. In spite of its complexity, it was designed to allow full user-based configuration — more questions, more/different objects, different levels, different scenarios, etc. The only limitations are tied to Second Life’s own memory limits.
Beta Technologies has been contracted to build a large office building in the Business sim. Building is now being done according to the project below.
View to the main building and plaza
Main facade, seen from plaza
Overall view of the main building
View from grounds
