Gating

One of my favorite things to do in Second Life^® is exploring. SL has the benefit of having an expansive mainland, where you can sort of pick a point along a road and just drive in a random direction, sail on the water, and see what you find. But what about other ways to TP around? Well, if you read the title here, or looked at the big-ass image above this paragraph, you know where I'm headed: Stargates!

A brief aside, while I nerd out about WTF a Stargate is.

For those unfamiliar with what a "Stargate" is, well, they originate from a movie simply titled, Stargate. In the movie, a Stargate is found on earth, the military activates it (with the help of James Spader), and it opens a portal to another planet. Egyptian-inspired alien shenanigans ensue. Watch the movie, it's good.

The lore's expanded on in the show, Stargate SG-1, where the Stargate program continues. Earth humans learn to dial the gate to a lot more planets, and explore from there. There's two further spinoffs, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. They're both worth watching. The shows and stuff are all owned by Amazon now so you can go watch them on Prime Video and hope they don't fuck up their eventual reboot (sign the petition). I've been a fan of the franchise for a looong time!

Alright, so what's this have to do with Second Life?

Second Life has several unofficial, fan-run Stargate-inspired gate networks, the two largest are the Alteran Stargate Network (ASN) and the Novum Stargate Network (Novum). As of this writing, the ASN has 482 gates, while the Novum network has 86. These are not at all associated with Amazon/MGM Studios, who own the official "Stargate" trademark. It's a labor of love, and all free to set up and use.

Stargates have a long and storied history in Second Life. The first working gates likely appeared around 2005 as two gates that could just dial each other, created by Reyo Neutra and Mintopia Ambassador (according to Ash Qin, maintainer of the ASN). The first network was likely the Cleary Stargate Network, which is now defunct but viewable in the wayback machine. Other predecessors to the ASN include the Arcturus Stargate Network and Prometheus Stargate Network. I'm not the best person to talk about the full history since I haven't been in SL for that long, but if you're interested in reading more, Alpha-Fox has a great writeup on the early days!

These gates are almost as old as Second Life, and the ASN itself has been running since 2008. It's an amazing fan project. For the most part, it's a lot of the same people maintaining them as back then, as folks leave and come back to SL, and work on these projects in bursts of interest.

Anyway, by using a gate on the relevant network, you can dial any of the other gates on that network. This provides a great way to TP around in a way that feels more… contiguous? It's hard to explain. Like, in the end, a teleport's a teleport. But at the same time, the act of walking through a gate and ending up on the other side makes me feel more like I am traveling somewhere rather than just TPing, if that makes any sense.

To dial a gate (ASN or Novum), you can either use a DHD that lives next to the gate and dial a gate address manually, use a HUD like this one, or type /d <keyword> in chat near a gate. The keyword can be the region name, parcel name, gate name, or alias set to a gate.

Once the gate's dialed, the next step is to go through it. Well, not so fast. Right now, one does not simply walk into a gate, or at least not without some sort of attachment to teleport you. Second Life bullshit. Theoretically this should be possible to do using an experience on the gate itself, but not all gates have this set up. So, right now the best practice is to utilize an attachment that either takes advantage of experience-based teleports, or RLV.

There's a few attachment options. This one is free on the marketplace and works with ASN gates. Some gates also have a little hud giver next to them. My gates have this nearby, and you can grab a little ASN hud at my Satori outpost. The Vk Stargate HUD I linked earlier handles teleports too!

Attach the hud or attachment, give it teleport permissions, and then you're good to walk through ASN gates to your heart's content. Otherwise, without an attachment, you'll be stuck clicking the gate to see the destination on a map. Boring.

But Eris, where should I dial?

Well, that's where the whole "exploration" bit comes into play. You can dial randomly! Just type:

/d random

Some notes: by default (on ASN), this will dial gates of your current region maturity or lower. This means you'll probably end up in general regions after a few dials. If you want to dial all random-dial eligible gates, use:

/d random *

You can also target specific random gates, with filters like adult to only dial gates in adult regions: /d random adult

Wanna go to a specific continent? /d random satori will dial a gate on the Satori continent.

Wanna restrict yourself to mainland? /d random mainland will work for you.

Wanna go to sailing the Blake sea? /d random blake will take you to a random gate there.

If you set up an account on Alpha-Fox's website, you can set your default random settings here, save favorite gates, etc. It's pretty rad. Here's a list of aliases from that page:

My attitude for exploring usually works as follows:

I dial random. I end up where I end up. If I'm on mainland, I pick a direction and travel along a road or waterway until I find another gate. The free Stargate TP hud has a menu option to ping nearby gates – it works for any gates in the same region. So as I travel, I ping for a gate in each region I cross. If I find a gate, then I dial that gate randomly to my next location.

If I end up in a private region, I explore the surrounding area, then dial randomly out. If anyone's nearby, I chat with them, etc.

The nice thing about random dialing is you're always welcome. You never end up anywhere you shouldn't, because random dial points are required to be public.

If you choose to explore in this way, you're bound to find some cool shit. There are lots of neat places on mainland and private regions, lots of nice little transport hubs and the like. It's fascinating, and new gates come up and old gates go down often.

Okay so I dialed a bunch of ASN gates and now I wanna try Novum, what do?

There's a few points you can use if you want to go between ASN and Novum. The most obvious is Midway station (/d midway). I also run my outpost (/d GAG Satori) as a hub which links ASN, Novum, and Eternity gates (another teleporter network).

For Novum gates, they'll use RLV if you have that set up, or you can grab their teleport attachment in their stargate package (available via the posters next to some Novum gates)

Any other tips?

Yes! Read the manual if you really wanna get into ASN gates. You can also get your own gate by clicking the banners next to many gates or entering your name here. My gates at the outpost have the gate giver banners!

For ASN, the gates are pretty prim-heavy. The ASN gates are quite old, but the underlying network's undergone lots of backend updates, so they run great.

There are four ASN gate styles: Milkyway (based off the SG-1 and movie gates), Pegasus (based on Stargate Atlantis gates), Tollan (based on the gate used by the Tollans), and Forerunner (based on… Halo or something).

ASN Gate Land Impacts:

• Forerunner: 24 (46 with no physics)
• Tollan: 32 (46 with no physics)
• Milkyway: 125 (73 with no physics or mesh mod, 62 with no physics and mesh mod)
• Pegasus: 134 (78 with no physics, 82 with mesh mod)

You can reduce the land impact of the Milkyway gate from 125 to 73 by setting "Physics Shape Type" to "None". You can also grab a mesh mod for the Milkyway and Pegasus gates from VK Labs for free.

These gates are crazy moddable. Lots of folks replace them with their own custom gates. People also disassemble them and use just a few necessary pieces to trim their land impact down. In the past, I've reduced a Tollan gate to just the ring and the lights, stuck it in a tunnel, moved the chevron lights outside the tunnel to hide them a bit, and boom custom gate. But, these techniques are outside the scope of this post. Experiment!

If you run an ASN gate, consider setting up Darl's delightful Stargate Autocloser. This closes the gate when you're not near it anymore, after you go through, so you you don't have to wait for it to close automatically! He also has other fun gadgets like this region maturity display.

Novum Gate Land Impacts:

• Destiny: 28
• Milkyway: 32
• Pegasus: 32
• Movie: 35
• Infinity: 45

Novum's gates are mesh, lower LI, and include a couple different gate styles, but they tend to be less supported by the community.

Alright, alright already! I've heard enough and I wanna go exploring!

OKAY WAIT! Before you go, check the Gate Builders website for some nice starter gate destinations, and a link to their discord! This encompasses several gate networks, including both ASN and Novum, so it's all covered there.

I'm also working on revitalizing my explorer group, the Goblin Adventurers' Guild. We're basically a little community of goblins and other fantasy creatures who explore the grid, with the original intention of cataloging gate destinations and various communities linked by gates. That's who the outpost was originally for, and I'm building a whole region primarily for this group. Gates will remain central to the mission as I rework the group, but yeah. More on that muuuch later, but the Outpost will always remain open to all.

So yeah! Have fuuuuun! I hope this guide was useful. Don't get yourself into too much trouble! :3

Hit me up in-world, shoot me an email, or leave a comment to let me know what you think of this post. I'm on the gate builders discord as well, so you can hit me up there too!