Giving Freely to the Jousting Community

PIONEERS IN SL JOUSTING

An occasional series of profiles featuring those who were first to create signature products and programs that advanced the SL Sport of Jousting.

VAL KISH ~ Kish Enterprises

Photo caption: Val Kish profile picture.

Val Kish joined Second Life in 2007. Today she is best known for her full funcitoned Lance which she distributes free to the public.

After rambling around for half a year she was incidentally introduced to medieval realms when looking for a place to settle. This world turned out to be more appealing to her than any other place. Primary for social reasons, but horses and horseback riding had been a part of her real life for 17 years already, so this was something she was very familiar with.

In the medieval realms she realized how important competitions, battle events and training was to the social fellowship.

When she started to learn about scripting and Second Life physics she kept the social part in mind, and made it the key stone in every Kish creation, that there should be an element of socializing in it, so that it could help bringing people together. Forester Lowenhart recalls:

"I first met Val in the Realm of Eternity where she was the best jouster on the list. Over the years I have come to respect her generosity and deep knowledge of the physics behind jousting. Now I know why she was so good ~ she knew how it all worked! After Eternity closed, I was anxious to place a kiosk of her lances at the Academy so anyone could join in the joust. Now they are resident in most jousts, available to the community of new jousters."

Curiosity is the reason why Val has deep researched so many things in Second Life, and she never stops investigating before she gets to the bottom of case. In real life this takes Val to the bottom of the ocean, where she scuba dives to explore some of the 70% of the earth that remains hidden under the water surface. And in the daytime curiosity helps her at her accounting job splitting the income and costs apart. At the moment she works on building up her own accounting business.

Sword fighting, archery and jousting was frequent events in the medieval realms in Second Life, and as she improved her scripting skills she started making various training games for sword fighters, rangers, racing people and other citizens. Despite she had no royal blood in her veins people started to refer to her as the Script Queen.

Sword fighting and archery was something everyone could participate in. Jousting however was only for wealthy avatars, since the startup costs for a horse and a lance reached beyond L$3000, and many people could only afford to watch the sport from the sideline, which did not contribute to socializing.

As a few horses became freebies, Val decided to do something about the lances and began to develop a freebie lance that should be more accurate, faster and less laggy, than the ones she already knew. The goal was accomplished with only 3 prims in 2009.

Today the lance has become such a success that she is primary known as lance maker.

She helps give Master Classes at the Double Dragon Academy sharing her knowledge on the physics of SL and scripting and as an advisor to the SL Tournament Association.

A recent creation "Joust Tracker" allows a jouster to compare the bullet patterns and horse movements fro a greater understanding of the Joust.

#history