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Scripting Second Life with Rational Application Developer

Create a mini game in Second Life

Jesse Dailey (jesse.dailey@gmail.com), Developer, Freelance writer
Author photo
Jesse Dailey graduated with a degree in computer science from University of Chicago in 2003, where he specialized in Artificial Intelligence in games. He's worked as an application developer for 3 years on a large scale Web application built on Coldfusion and Java.

Summary:  The virtual world of Second Life is special in that much of it is made up of content created (and owned) by users. Not only can you create lush 3-D objects (and sell them for the equivalent of real money!), but you can also create both simple and complex scripts to control their behavior and appearance. This tutorial explains the basics (and not so basics) behind Second Life scripts and shows you how to ease development by using Rational Application Developer as you build a small game users can carry around and play.

Date:  05 Jun 2007
Level:  Intermediate
PDF:  A4 and Letter (992 KB | 42 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity:  9037 views
Comments:  

Before you start

This tutorial is for Rational® Application Developer users that would like to use their favorite development suite to create new content on the Second Life grid. You will be setting up Rational Application Developer to use Linden Script Language (LSL) and then developing a small game in the Second Life world.

About this tutorial

Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) have been around since 1996 with the release of Meridian 59, and until now every offering has been either set in space or in the land of fantasy, and all have been well within the bounds of standard role playing fare. But that changed in 2003 with the release of Second Life. The game carries with it a sparse but very daring premise: challenge the users creatively on a scale never before attempted, and allow them to build or create anything the game is possible of representing.

Second Life brings a suite of game editing tools into the game interface itself, and provides rich, event-driven scripting in the form of Linden Script Language (LSL). To aid development, you will take advantage of Rational Application Developer, an Eclipse-based IDE. To demonstrate some of the features of Second Life, and how Rational can help, you will be developing a simple game, a sort of mash-up of Sumo, Go, and Marbles. This game will fit inside a single item, a totem, that the player's avatar can carry in their inventory, or wield. They can then use the game totem to initiate a new game.

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Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of programming in some language is required. Experience with events and vector algebra will definitely help, but isn't necessary.

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System requirements

To complete the steps in this tutorial, you'll need the following tools:

  • Rational Application Developer -- If you don't already have this, you can download a trial version. More detail about setting this up is provided later.
  • Second Life. -- available for free after you register an account.
  • ByronStar SL plugin -- provides an eclipse based integrated development environment for SecondLife.
  • Windows XP SP2 or Windows 2000 SP4 (Vista is not supported). 800Mhz, 256MB, Geforce 2 or ATI Radeon 8500 or better.

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SITE_ID=1
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TutorialTitle=Scripting Second Life with Rational Application Developer
publish-date=06052007
author1-email=jesse.dailey@gmail.com
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