Life In Blue Mars

Hey everyone! Its your friendly neighborhood blogger extraordinaire~ Zetsumei!

HUGE UPDATE TODAY!

-Biggest one ever released!-

This blog post is going to be massive and is only the first of several as I will be dedicating new blog posts to some of the new content as time goes on!

First of all, THE NEW BLUE MARS WEBPAGE IS AMAZING!!

I dont even know where to start there is so much to say! So heres a few screenshots, as we all know pictures say more than words do.

From Life In Blue Mars

From Life In Blue Mars

www.bluemars.com - New domain name for the website

www.bluemarsonline.com - The old domain name still works too though

The new Blue Mars website is absolutely amazing and such an improvement from the beta website only hours ago! Kudos out to the whole team at Avatar Reality for their amazing work!

User Interface Updates -

Wow! The new updates for the user interface absolutely awesome! Very sleek, modern and suiting for Blue Mars' style, below are some photos of the changes ^__^

From Life In Blue Mars

From Life In Blue Mars

From Life In Blue Mars

From Life In Blue Mars

City Updates -

With this update comes two brand new cities and an update from Gridrock City (full update details on GRC are detailed later in this article)

From Life In Blue Mars

- Caledonia!
With this release comes an amazing development from the people who bring you Caledon, a victorian steam punk continent in second life! Desmond Shang, the owner (of whom I will be interviewing at a later date, so expect that post!) has explained on his website ( http://sites.google.com/site/caledoniamars/home ) as well as on the Blue Mars Dev Forums, that he has actually been working on developing Caledonia quietly behind the scenes since April of this year. This would explain how he can basically come out of the blue with an amazing city just waiting to be enjoyed by all!

- Pavonis!
(Not much on this one yet, but from Glenn's News post)A lush tropical island archipelago where you can create and share your dreams. Pavonis is also created by the people who have brought you Caledonia

(Expect many pictures of these cities soon! I will be dedicating a blog post to each new city, as well as the interview with Desmond Shang)


Gridrock City Update -

From Life In Blue Mars

For starters, Gridrock City's upates in this new release ARE AMAZING! Let me spell that out for you A-MA-ZING. Aside from my joining the team and leading up these Author's Guild, all of the additions to city itself are absolutely beautiful. As I'm sure you will be able to tell form the snapshots I have provided below in my usual jam packed flickr slideshow!

Here is a list of just a few things that have been added to the city:

- A comprehensive set of teleporting orbs that whisk you away to a number of amazing destinations such as.
- Amazingly architectured caves.
- A beautifully rendered harbour with an irresistable vacation feel to it.
- Club Nebula West and a nice cafe area by the water(Author's Guild territory! Theres an easter egg here too, wonder who can find it?)
- An amazing biodome type area full of beautiful foliage such as trees, bushes and the dome itself which was rendered amazingly in the CryEngine.
- A big 'top of the mountain' view over the entirety of Gridrock City. (This one is especially amazing, be sure to enable the High graphics setting here if your computer can handle it)
- And some others you'll just have to find yourself!

Alot of improvements were added to the apartment areas as more have been added and they have been made to look absolutely amazing! I'm only scratching the surface here of all of the amazing things that have been added to the city. Another of the amazing updates is the beautiful architecture that has been added to the general entrance area, with the huge grid-arch towering over one of the nearby platforms.

I hope you all enjoy the city and know that the team has worked very hard to bring it to life for everyone!

Heres the update GRC slideshow!



Other City Updates:

-Beach City now has a new Golf Area

-Beach City now has a new Bowling Area


Real Estate -

According to a news post by Glenn, developers will soon be able to use a real estate page to find and rent blocks in Blue Mars with BLU$



Developer Tools / Developer MyPage Updates -

The Developer Tools are now all available for download through the Developer mypage! (Including the city editor!)

Big functionality addition to Blue Mars!

Flash 10 functionality within world!

- ARFlashEntity, a new entity that allows one to place Flash easily win world

A how to for this function is at the wiki: http://www.bluemarsdev.com/wiki/index.php/BlueMars_City_Developer_AR_Tools

Several updates have been made to the developer mypage!

City Developers now have the ability to :

Upload a City PAK file to the Avatar Reality servers through FTP.

Set their prices for block sale.

And

Upload block PAK files from Block Developers


Block Developers now have the ability to:

Upload their PAK files to their City Developer


Item Developers now have the ability to:

Upload their items and set their prices. (Items uploaded go through QA at AR only to make sure they function properly, AR does not judge content quality)



Member Mypage Update -

From Life In Blue Mars

Absolutely great news! The Member Mypage that the community has been hearing about for so long is finally released! The features that the Mypage has are as follows:

The ability to edit your name! (Finally!) I know alot of us will be happy to finally get this all straightened out since tehy switched to Usernames for the nametags.

Account Options: The ability to now change your password as well as your email address assigned to your account!

Create your personal Blue Mars Profile!: Martian's now have the ability to fill out their profile! And according to news from Glenn, in an upcoming MyPage update you'll also be able to upload a picture for your avatar!

User Inventory!: Through this you will have a list of everything you have purchased with Blue Mars!

Blue Mars Friends List: You will now have a list of your friends on this site, and according to news from Glenn you will be able to instant message from here in the future!

BLU$ Purchases: According to Glenn, this system is not done yet but once everything is straightened out you will be able to purchase BLU$ from here!.

This is all absolutely wonderful news!


Phew! What a big update! I believe thats all for tonight my fellow readers and followers, but expect more posts to come as more information is released as well as when i get the time to take a sufficient amount of photos for the new cities!