Location 1:

The settlers needed rest and recreation

to get acquainted with their reincarnation

So a gaggle of clones from the first generation

Built a night club with no hesitation

Location 2:

One explorer was a total anime fan

He was UV sensitive so to darkness he ran

Dwelt down there, scribbling the note to his great plan

But threw them away in a garbage can

Location 3:

Newton says that water falls down

But if you head up the creek that flows by the town

Round the bend and where it comes up from the ground

You may find that Newton is really a clown

Location 4:

In Tesla's tower the teleport sits

Beam you way up high when you click on it

At the top of the mountain give a push on a stone

Watch out below or you might crush a clone

Location 5:

One Clone was terraforming, made a path on the side

But didn't quite finish before he died

The structure incomplete after his best he tried

He couldn't hold back the mighty landslide

Location 6:

When the first generation settled this rock

They found ancient ruins mostly by luck

No idea who built them these ruins they discovered

They built a giant Dome to keep them covered

Location 7:

When the mothership was still in its Dock

A small community grew to manage the stock

But when the ancient clone vessel took off and left

The town sat desolate and in the sand swept

Location 8:

A modern marvel of clone transportation

The force tunnel hummed and beeped in anticipation

The travelers projected to a deep water destination

To the harbor, a brand new water vehicle station

Location 9:

Like the ancient Gods of Earth, relics of the past

Carved In symmetry, built to last

Atop the highest level shines the golden eye,

A silent spectator of ages and passers by

Location 10:

Testament to an earlier glorious time

the statue was erected in stone of lime

Toppled by tremors or tipped by travelers wine

The great face of progress planted in the shoreline

Once you find the locations, you will need to solve a web-based puzzle and let Josie know you have completed the quest.

-Coreye

In other news we have nailed down an issue we were having that was causing some lag and crashing, happy to report that its fixed now and lag appears to be very low, especially since we have done so much optimization chasing this 'bug' that the cause of performance issues. It turns out a couple of our shop interiors were causing an infinite loop or rezzing shop entities. These were actually some of the first user created shops ever in blue mars and somewhere between early editor and QA failing to catch these problems we had some entities that were seriously dragging down the city.. Now fixed, thanks to AR QA for their help in tracking down the problem!

Hope you enjoy!

-C

http://dev.bluemars.com/land/shopblock/search_shops.php

We are shifting our focus slightly to slow down on land rentals for GRC. This will allow us to focus on developing new scripts and storyline to make the experience in GRC more interactive and entertaining with a focus on activities, plot and fun. It was never really our intention to have many shops and blocks available as we are committed to breaking new ground with this wonderful platform in terms of art, expression and technology. It is natural progression now that we move on to new things and breaking new trails.

I feel it is very important for us as developers to group together and work with a common goal of making environments that are compelling and with replay - value.

We are toying with the idea of copy/pasting our content at GRC to Capitalantis in an effort to band together to prove a point, that the success of Blue mars depends on having large, busy cities. We have been in close communication with the team at Capitalantis anyway since the very start behind the scenes and it would be a natural transition. Rest assured any current renters would be supported and brought with us if this were to happen.

Oh and to clarify about our team here at GRC, when I say 'we' although we have had several contributors at one time or another, at the core of development it's just Romsey and I. I've read some posts that seem to think we are this big shop or such. but alas we are just a couple of hacks from Second Life, just like most of you folks ;)

-C

Also we have a streaming music channel now so you can enjoy tunes while you are exploring the city, and this will permit us to have DJ hosted events in the very near future!! stay tuned pun intended :)

We have a batch of shops that will be on the market very soon for rent, these are premium shelves right beside out spawn point for maximum visibility. If you are interested, please send an email to info@gridrock.com to reserve.

Here are some statues that I made for Second Life, now trying to get them uploaded into Blue mars. It may be easier just to make new ones :) Is it worth it? let me know what you think of these statues..

The snow is melting here outside of Toronto Canada, and spring is in the air!! I hope this message find you and yours well and full of optimism as I am about this shiny new virtual worlds platform.

Some remarkable progress at Avatar Reality in the past month!!! Shops are opened and clothing sales are now implemented with several designers; digital goods selling well in this environment of scarcity.

Are you interested in merchandising your digital wares in our city? Later this month we will be releasing our first clothing shop in Gridrock City, 'Elysium'. This is a high fashion shop for futuristic avatar dress and accessories. At this time we are making several shelves available for you to sell your Sci Fi or modern themed creations.

In April we will be opening 10 more shops in our main landing area for lease, for around 4000 BLU (approx 15us/mo). These will include full support for getting your creations game ready and implemented into the commerce system.

Initially the sale-able goods will be fashion and avatar related, to be moving into shapes, animations, and furniture later in the year.

If you would like a spot in "Elysium" let me know ASAP, we already have shelves filling up. Ideally this would be for 1-6 shelves of clothing items, sci-fi or modern styles, that you could change out via your developer MyPage interface.

Here we go folks!! This year is going to be big for Blue Mars, join us now and be part of the pioneering group of innovators.

As always I am open and available for questions and comments, either here or email to info@gridrock.com

-regards

We have been ever-so-hard at work the last month with Blue Mars development, installing shops, making clothes, scripting vehicles and the list goes on.

In developing virtual spaces (like all art) there comes a point when you can add too much and mess it up. IE the primary school teacher who takes the painting away from 6 year olds before they mess it up resulting in works of genius from the tots.

Is GridRock city development done? Not by any means, but as it stands we are at a comfortable milestone and looking forward to more releases from Avatar Reality before we can proceed in several key areas.

On a personal note, I will be returning with family to Toronto from our expat adventure in France from the last 4 years. I will likely not be able to support a land rental market in the foreseeable future, I have contacted you individually who have arrangements with GRC in most cases will go forward with limited support. Some of the side projects I may have discussed with you, please speak up now if you might like to get some content into the city with the next release. (I may be gone before this happens I hope not we have some neat stuff ready to show off :))

Starting now and over the spring after I have landed in Toronto I will setting up shop again, with a focus on content and city services. I know several of you have purchased outposts.. if you need help please do let me know. Our corporate rate is 65us/hr this is for both Romsey and I for large projects.

In light of my move, I would like to offer a GRC special member rate of 25us/hr for content services, with a 4hr minimum.

I can personally help you in these areas:

-City Level design
-Game ready 3d Models and assets
-Flash 2d/3d integration
-Lua Scripting

As a special thank you to all members I would like to present a gift, I have hacked together a working boat script. It has some bugs in current the BM client that Tim is aware of, but its a blast bouncing around in the City Editor. I would like to release it for members on the site, it needs a bit of commenting and whitespace cleanup so expect to see a link in a few days. If you want it now pls send email whyroc@in2orbit.net

I would like to release it open-source so we can all benefit from improvements, there are tons that can be made right off the bat..

-Corey Evans

Here's how it works:

-This is a free service we are providing to our members at grcguilds.com. Register and you can load our 'Gateway' block into your local block editor and build in sandbox/mod like environment to your heart's content!

-When you have made something you would like to share let us know, you will need to send us the .b2c file and we can upload it to the city for you..

That's it! simple .. effective... thats the way we like things at GRC.

For more information and to download our gateway block for free, please register and then follow this link:

http://grcguilds.com/tiki-index.php?page=Gateway%20blocks%20free%20download%20for%20members

Virtual Land in Gridrock City (*****NOTE!!! DECEMBER 24 — prospector blocks have all been spoken for sorry folks..****)

Prospector blocks ~22500sqm for $35usd(in BLU$)/mo
-Big homestead in our science fiction themed city
-A Single family residence (can sublease)
-Prospectors can choose from a pre-cut block or explore and claim a new area
-Access to our content in GRC(vegetation, buildings, scripts, prefabs), drag and drop to rez it in your block editor
-Shop space: Upload and sell anything you like!
-Exterior builds: You can have as much disk space as you need to import your 3d models and media, but we need to approve your builds for theme and basic performance issues.
-Full terra forming rights in your block
-Support and encouragement through our community of guilds.

More land offerings coming soon! contact us for information.

This is a hu-uuuuge parcel of land for you to build on in GRC, its geared towards a mostly residential use, and can be very private or closer to our central areas depending on your desires. Any Prospector Block renters get a GRC guilds membership so you can sell you wares in our shops, or manage a shop of your own if you choose. The neat thing about Prospecting is that you can explore our city and find a place you love in terms of view, waterside, underground.. claim it, then we will create a block for you. It will be delivered through the Blue Mars interface. Once you get the block then you can open it up in the block editor, where you will have access terraforming tools, all the common city content (most of what you see in the city), everything you need start building your dream home!

It may take a little while to get used to how open and flexible the land system is in Blue Mars. We have priced out this Prospector block introductory package to get the ball rolling, and we have about 50 available in the city.

We can really accommodate just about anything you need, our next products will be the guilds memberships (apartment and shop space) and individual shop rentals for merchants.

-Stay warm folks, it gonna be a great xmass on Blue mars!

-C