A new patch has been issued for Blue Mars, 4910.5, which adds a floor and trees for the welcome area, and fixes a bug so new clothes are now displayed in the female avatar inventory, plus other bug fixes. There are also butterflies flying around now too, which gave me an idea for a bit of mischief, as the caption picture shows :)

A new Blue Mars platform and developer tools are being finalised right now, and Blue Martians are being advised to watch the Blue Mars Online website and keep an eye on the Blue Mars Twitter for the release date, which could be this week!

We also had some further clarifications this week from Glenn Sanders, on the BM Vision:

Cities will be places where the City dev set the overall design, then they lease space to a Block dev.

Block devs will lease space from City devs. Then the Block devs will lease space to shops, residences for members, gateways to game devs, buildings to clubs, gardens, museums, theatres for screening movies (making sure they have the rights to share the movie content), auditoriums for live or recorded music concerts, etc. Game levels will be a separate ‘instance’ from the City level. But a city could provide a portal to a game.

Here are some projects underway or being planned, based on discussions with developers in-world and via email, forums, chat, etc:

• Numerous themed cities, ranging from historic regions hundreds of years old, to cities set 1000 years in the future.
• Several types of racing games.
• Exhibits based on real life tombs, museums, historic cities.
• Interactive art exhibits.
• Various types of vehicles.
• Clothing of all sorts.
• Avatar skins.
• Avatar hair.
• Avatar shapes.
• A.I. bots for shops, tour guides, FAQs, and more.
• Houses, apartments, condominiums, hotels.
• Themed environments designed to provide a unique experience or mood.
• A building set on Phobos, one of the moons of Mars.
• A building made from clouds.
• An underwater building with a sea life attraction.
• Numerous avatar animations and interactions.
• Various local and international school projects.
• Simulations and lessons that will bring together students from several nations.

Are you starting to get the picture?

This, this is what we want to create… a platform and tool set that the developer and member communities want. One that will enable amazing projects that just aren’t possible today.

And to do so securely, with scalability and great visual fidelity, now and into the future.

I hope to get an interview with one these City Devs in the next few days.

Rock