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When I discovered Second Life in 2005, it was a different place to the bustling commercial and overblown emotional (shall I say) cesspit that exists today.
It was to a degree fulfilling its declared aim of providing an exciting 3D world for designers and players, with the potential to develop this somewhat new technology for pleasure or profit.
But it was the design element that excited me...
Worlds 3D - Building The Hard Way
Worlds 3D - Building The Hard Way
You see, I had previously joined a different 3D environment with the express intention of building a "church" for my friends and aquaintainces around the world - a church where we could "see" one another, talk and walk together and enjoy our chats outside of the text environment that we were used to.
I set about creating a church world (in that earlier program), and although the building was all command-line parameters and very difficult and limiting, it stretched me enough to know that my creative juices could handle this sort of project.
I even pushed the boundaries of the limited program to invent new textures and techniques that were beyond the scope of most other builders. Below is a screenshot of the interior of my "Words3D" church:
For some more early pictures of the church world and my snowy chalet please go to this page.
However, at the end of all my efforts, my friends (mostly wary internet users, without broadband connections, and terrified of the supposed "chatroom" risks) opted out of this new 3D church and disappointed me by their negative responses.
Second Try: Second Life
Second Try: Second Life
Having tried and failed to set up a virtual 3D Christian community, and restricted in scope by the nature of the Worlds building tools, I searched on Google for other programs that actually had Christian churches or fellowships already set up.
Discovering Second Life
I came up with a few. The easiest and cheapest was Second Life. I discovered that not only were Christians active there, but they had communities, churches and even whole islands to themselves. Their range of movement was so much greater. They could walk, fly, sit down, choose their clothing, respond in worship by raising hands or praying - and so on. And to build there was easy and free.
I joined, however I bought a premium account so that I could buy land and become a builder.
My husband soon followed me from Worlds, and we were declared as "partners" in Second Life. (In other words our profiles were linked to one another in a similar way to Facebook).
This is me as a newbie, in July 2005. How primitive it seems now!
In those early days, the program was basic, but flexible, and there were not too many users (thousands as opposed to millions today).
The bonus of having a premium account was a salary of 1,000 "Lindens" per week. (This was reduced to 500 lindens per week when the program was thrown open to all-comers and flooded with newbies. Now it's only 300 lindens for new premium accounts.)
Both I and my husband collected this salary and soon had enough to buy a small plot of land. MY, how proud we were!
A beachside plot, where I built our first house, with its deck overlooking the sea, and the sound of gulls soothing us as we sat watching the static sun and the rigid sea (no waves in those days!!).
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