Huge textures

I do know that you shouldn’t use too many textures, honest I do.

I know that using textures that are 1024 by 1024 pixels (the maximum size in SL) take for ever to load for people with old computers and slow connections.

But unfortunately textures start degrading so badly as soon as you make them smaller.

And in a historical sim like 1920s Berlin where people expect and love to see lots of little authentic details, it is just very important to have sharp textures that look good.

And when I create the facade of a building, with writing on the wall, old tattered advertisement posters, cracks in the plaster and lots of other tiny details, you just have to use a big texture or somehow cut the picture in smaller bits and make sure they all connect perfectly.

I remember hearing about some plan that allowed textures in SL to be downloaded to our personal computer cache.

This would make them load almost instantly regardless of your internet speed.

I would LOVE that, especially as I spend 99% of my SL time in the same sim.

And in todays world, space on a hard drive is a lot cheaper and easier to get then a faster computer or better internet connection.

Software now available on steam

Soon SL will become available trough Steam, the online game shop/community and will thus reach millions of people who may not have heard about SL or may have thought it died long time ago.

Some people are worried because they feel that the gamers community might not be interested in the virtual online world or because they feel it is not a game, it does not belong anywhere near steam.

But Steam won’t be ‘selling’ SL as a game, they will be offering it to their members as software, or at least, that is the idea.

Today Steam has added a new section to its website where they are offering Software.

Quite interesting and it already offers some nice goodies such as free Machinima software.

I expect Second Life to be offered there shortly.

Personally I am quite excited about this.

After all I am an avid gamer, I am active on steam but also on SL and think the two mix together very well.

And even if Steam won’t bring millions of new users to SL, this move has at least let the gamer community and press know we’re still here.

Noob experience revisited

I thought it was time to find out if the experience of new visitors to SL had improved a little since last time.

Unfortunately it had not.

I tried to recreate the new experience and wiped as much SL knowledge from my brain as possible before I signed up.

Things go wrong from the very beginning, if I had not known what SL has to offer, I would have given up many times already.

I need to think of a name for my avatar, the one I want has already been taken, of course.

I end up with an avatar who’s name has a number in it, I hate that.
It makes me feel like an email address, not a virtual person.

And of course I have no idea that if I discover the full potential of SL, become hooked and decide to stay, that I will be known by this name for years.
A problem I have with my regular account, I named myself Jo Yardley, later I learned that very short names (like Jo) sometimes cause issues when you’re searching for them and I got very much involved with a German roleplay sim, so my rather English last name is not one I would have picked.

I get to pick an avatar, I don’t like any of them but luckily I am informed that I can change my appearance at a later stage.

After joining up I stare at a blank screen for several minutes, no idea if anything is loading, if my account was created, nothing.
I decide to cheat and just go ahead and sign in with my new avatar in the viewer, the ‘select an account’ screen finally loads when I’m already in SL… but the buttons don’t work.
I assume this was some sort of temporary glitch…
The entire SL site is laggy, things don’t load, pages take for ever, etc.

Finally I end up in SL.
If I was really new, I still would have no idea what on earth is going on.
I find myself in a portal, some sort of Roman arches show me a few hints of the things going on in SL.
But because I am sort of new, I have no idea what to do.
I am yet to find out how to move around, nobody tells me that.
And because the standard settings of the SL viewer are so odd, I get a screen full of buttons and options and a rather slow experience with low graphical settings.

It is expected of me to randomly try out all the buttons in my viewer and learn as I go along?
Fine by me but many users will not like this and will not have the patience.
Compare it with almost every game out there, they all have tutorials, they all are easier to navigate.

So here I am, no idea what to do or where to go next.
I decide to click on a portal that says ‘Roleplay’ and woosh, I get teleported to some sort of Science Fiction roleplay sim.
Not my cup of tea but now I am stuck.

As nobody has bothered to explain to me that I need to use ‘Search’ to explore SL, I have no idea what to do next.
I take a few steps, fall into this roleplay sim in my noob clothes, not fitting in.
If this sim has security or managers online I may find myself in trouble.
Especially because if they decide to confront me in IM… I have no idea how IM’s work, I don’t know someone is talking to me and I may find myself banned before I even know what is happening.
Or worse, I may end up surrounded by angry roleplayers who start being mean and rude to me for ignoring the sims rules.
Not a good start…

I pretend I have found the search button… the search system is horrendous.
It is extremely slow, if your computer isn’t super duper, the loading of the search screen takes a while.
More patience needed.

Finally I’ve made it to a sim I want to see, but I am stuck with a bad viewer, bad camera settings, etc.
I need to open the ‘move avatar’ button and ‘camera’ button all the time, just to be able to walk and look around properly.

Mouselook does not work either because you lose all your buttons and options.

As a noob I am already very tired and frustrated and my SL adventure has only just begun.

I want to change my avatar, wear clothes I’ve been told to wear at the sim I found.

I look around and after clicking the tab ‘avatar’ and choose ‘appearance’, I get stuck.
I see a window with “my outfits” and “wearing”.
Basics for veteran SL users, confusing for new users.
What am I supposed to do next?

I ‘buy’ some freebie clothes, they get send to me but I forget to click ‘wear now’ and they are lost somewhere in my inventory.
I look at my appearance window again, the new clothes don’t show up.
With some luck (!) I find my inventory button.
The library folder is opened so it is easy to make the mistake that the library is my actual inventory, I could spend hours there looking for the clothes I just got.
I then try my inventory folder, I check clothes but there is nothing there.
The new freebie clothes have been send to the general folder and I am lucky to find it at all.
Again, it is all about luck!

Not to mention that thanks to my basic settings, lots of mesh does not rezz or suddenly disappears after a while.
Try and explain a noob that they have to open the debug menu and temper with the MeshMaxConcurrentRequests, just so they see things properly…

So few things in SL come natural, even to a seasoned gamer like myself.

If you don’t find the right sim or the right people to get you excited about SL, it is quite understandable that you give up soon.

By this time, I’ve sort of given up.
Pretending not to know how everything works makes it all just too frustrating.
I surrender.

Time for solutions.

I’ve brainstormed about improving the SL noob experience before on this blog but want to try and summarize it all here again, simply because I feel that this is such an important part of the SL experience.

If you can’t get people excited and running around SL in a easy way shortly after they arrive, they will not return.
It is as simple as that.

In short;
Most people NEED instructions.
Most people NEED some help finding their way.

My suggestions;

Create an online game on the SL website that allows new users to learn the basics before they even enter the virtual world.
For instance, you are an avatar on an small island and need to get off.
Walk, explore, use stuff, wear stuff and finally use ‘search’ to not only start SL but to teleport to a place you choose.
This can be a very basic, simple flash game that rewards you with knowledge and perhaps even a few freebies.
No more need for inworld portals, instructions, etc.
New players will be ready when they enter SL and understand the basics they need to know to get around and start their adventure.

Let new players create and tweak their avatar also on the website.
Look at games like ‘The Sims’ for inspiration, there it is very easy (and fun) to make your avatar and dress them.
This way you’re not only ready to go once you teleport into SL, but you have already bonded with your avatar and other people won’t immediately spot you as a noob.

And finally…. create a web page that helps people tweak their settings…
Right now you don’t know about raising your mesh and sculpt settings till you buy something that comes with that famous sculpt setting notecard!
New people are not seeing mesh and sculpts the way they should, simply because they don’t know that they can tweak this.

Or even better, set the basic settings in viewers high enough for mesh and sculpts to properly work…
I know that most of this topic is almost the same as my previous topic on the matter, but having just tried signing up as a new avatar again I felt so frustrated, I wanted to write my idea down again.

I’d love to hear what you think, what Lindens think and most importantly; what do noobs think?

Mesh addiction

When mesh first came to Second Life, I got excited.

When I tried my hand at Blender and Zbrush, I got depressed.

I have build and managed a sim for over 3 years, I have been messing with computers since the 1980s, but mesh software makes my brain implode.

I knew I had to one day master mesh but I was not looking forward to it at all.

Then I found ‘Mesh Studio’, some SL gadget that allowed you to build mesh inworld, no need for crazy software.

I tried it and was blown away, it works perfectly and fast.

But now I am addicted.

I have been rebuilding everything, yes everything, into a mesh object.

As I have created an entire city neighbourhood, that is a lot.

I finally have the feeling I can build stuff to look the way I want it to look without it costing a trillion prims.

80 prim houses are turned into 14 prim palaces!

I am crazy about details, so I am excited that now I can add tiny architectural ‘sticky out bits’ to my houses, making them a little more realistic.

Loving it!

Mind you, I know I still don’t understand mesh completely and half the time I am guessing things and now and then I make big mistakes.

I might still have to redo everything at a later time, but that is just how I work, I am annoying and stubborn like that.

I don’t pay attention in class, I don’t understand instructions and won’t learn till I’ve tried it myself.

Not the most practical way of learning…

Anyway, mesh is awesome, it makes things look better, uses less prims and if I’m not mistaken it even makes the servers work less hard.

The only scary thing is that I use a pretty good computer for SL and I fear that those who visit Berlin with a less able computer may see things differently, so I have to keep checking if other people see the buildings the way I want them to?

Sometimes mesh doesn’t rezz at all, that is bad if your city is made with mesh!

And building a physic model can be a pain… not to mention that SL very very very often gets stuck while trying to upload mesh.

On the other hand, the good things outweigh the bad and it feels like we’re still at the pioneering phase.

And I am amazed that simply by getting this inworld mesh builder, I can now start making and selling mesh stuff that nobody else has made yet.
The most basic items that are easy to make with mesh are still unavailable .
So even some mesh noob like me can conquer marketplace by making something simple from mesh and still be one of the first to offer it.

I don’t know about everyone else, but every time I look for something on marketplace these days, I use mesh as part of the search and only buy sculpt if it is no longer available as mesh.

I guess I am now a real mesh addict.

Different kinds of viewers

People come to SL for all sorts of reasons but we all use the same viewer.

If you are someone just curious to come take a look or if you are here to build a city and make complicated machinima with fancy light settings, we all have to first figure out the rather complicated viewer and struggle trough the very steep learning curve.

One of the reasons new visitors don’t stay is that they find SL too difficult to figure out.

The viewer has a lot of buttons and no matter what LL tries, the viewer will always remain too complicated for new people because they give us so many options.

The only option you have is to show the “advanced” tab or not.

I think it might be a good idea to make a really really basic viewer.

New people only want a few things; change their look, explore, interact and chat.

It is only after a while that they want to tweak some of the countless settings, try building and creating and make some stunning snapshots.

And countless don’t even need that, they are quite happy using SL just for chatting, shopping and exploring.

I’ve been in SL for over 3 years and still find the countless settings, different viewers and general usability of SL far from easy and smooth.

I think that it might be a good idea to create 3 different viewers or give the current viewer 3 different settings;

• Basic
• Advanced
• Expert

The Basic viewer is perfect for the first time visitor to SL, it allows you to modify your avatar, walk around, chat, shop, etc.

Nothing fancy, very few options, just the things you really need to get around in SL.

For most people this will be more then enough during their first explorations of SL and to many it will more then they’ll ever need anyway.

No building tools, no dozens of tabs, no millions of options.

All wrapped in a simple, game like package that is easy to figure out.

 

When you have been in SL for a while and decide that you are ready for more settings, play with windlight, add gestures, tweak your camera settings, of just explore the countless options, you ‘upgrade’ to the Advanced viewer.

Perhaps it is just a button in the basic viewer that simply adds some of the many buttons.

 

Finally, when you are ready to become creative and want to start building something, you move on to the Advanced viewer, this adds the building tools.

 

Because remember, all these things are now available to people who enter SL for the very first time, who have no idea where they are or what they are doing.

They need to find out how to just go from A to B but are confronted with lag analyzing tools, prim builders, rez permissions, etc.

One of the main problems SL has had since the early days is keeping new visitors.

Most people who try SL do not come back, I think the complicated viewer is one of the reasons.

Have a look at some of the games out there that also use virtual surroundings such as GTA, Mafia, Assasin’s Creed, etc.

They have a very simple ‘viewer’ that enables you to walk around, use a car, shoot someone, etc.

If SL’s first experience is more like that, people would be less intimidated.

Look at “the Sims”, lots of complicated options (including building and creating) but all compacted in a nice easy to understand navigation bar with big shiny buttons.

SL does not want to be a game, but to keep those new visitors staying a bit longer, it may be a good idea to make it feel more like a game.

If you want more, the viewer can be upgraded and you can join the rest, if just the basics will do, you don’t want to be showered with options you’ll never use.

Improving groups

As I run a roleplay community SL groups are very important to me, but it isn’t always easy to use them.

Let’s start with the titles.

Every group has roles besides being able to wear a nice title like “1920s Berlin rules” under the name floating above your head they also give people certain powers and identify them as being someone with a certain role.
For instance, in our community we have people who maintain order who we call Polizei (police) and we have people who live in the many apartments, they are called Tenants.

The police need their title so people can see they are official sim police and not some joker pretending to be.
These officers also need the title because it comes with very important and special powers that include ejecting and banning someone.

Our tenants want the title so they can show they are part of the community, they need the title so they can rez objects and decorate their homes.

But because we are a roleplay community, we sometimes also need or just want more titles, just to show what group of people someone belongs to or so that we can communicate with just a certain section of our people in stead of everyone.
We sometimes want to remind all the children that school is about to begin without having to tell all the 1000+ other members of our main group.

For our 1920s Berlin group alone we use about 13 groups in total, out of the maximum of 42 we are allowed to have.
You can imagine what will happen if I create another sim like Berlin or if I join a roleplay sim as diverse as ours…
I would soon run out of groups I could join.

So, SL groups could do with some improvements.

One of the first things is that groups need more space for roles, at the moment a group can have just 10 roles, a few of those don’t count because those go to owners, everyone, etc.
That is not a lot of roles for a roleplay sim.
If we had more, we wouldn’t need to create more groups… except for communication.

We even have to use a pay per month service from Hippo to create another 20 groups just to be sure we can communicate with them as well.

So the next improvement would be a very simple one; let us send messages to members inside a group who have a certain role.
For instance, our group could have tenants and police as a role, all within our main group.
When we want to announce a rent decrease we can use the very same main group and send the message or note to JUST the people with the tenant role.
Or when some criminal is wandering around town clearly being planning some evil deed, we could send a note JUST to the people with a police role… to make things even nicer, we could perhaps even start a chat with JUST these people.

A little dropdown menu next to the “chat” or “send notice” buttons is always set to “everyone” but by clicking it you can choose the people who have the role you want to talk to.

All this would cut back on the amount of groups dramatically, it would would make search a lot easier and would give people less groups to manage.

Most of all it would allow people who manage large communities to keep things a little clearer and also save some money by quitting those paid services.

 

Group lag has been reduced a bit a while back but it is still rather bad at times.
Another important thing that groups REALLY need is the option to ban someone from joining the group.
Right now it is a bit of a hassle, you need to take away someones ability to take part in a group chat if you want to chat them up.
A manual and complicated task.
And even if you remove their group chat ability they will still receive group notices and be able to listen in.
It is odd that as a sim owner and group owner I do not have the power to simply ban someone from a group!

I also think many of our SL group options should be useable trough the SL website so we can send messages and even start a group chat without having to go into SL.
More about that in this other blog post.

 

Improving out-world possibilities for in-world situations

As someone who manages a sim with a decent amount of traffic I often have to pop into SL just to tweak a few small things, send a few messages, etc.

But unfortunately I also have a rather busy RL and don’t always have the time to do these things.

Also simply communicating with people in SL from RL is not always easy, it has to go trough IM to email, their online profile, etc.

LL could make all this a lot easier for us by creating more fluent interaction between SL and RL.

Let’s start with communication.

Someone send me an IM in SL, if I have “send IM to email” set, I get the IM as an email, reply to it and thus am able to sort of chat with someone inworld.
That is very handy but it would be even better if we could just “open a chat window” via the SL site, just like we would if we were in SL.
Same look, same options, same chat log, option to see profile, etc, etc… except you don’t have to visit SL for it.
If your friend is online you should be able to chat with them trough the SL site.

But there are more options.

I would LOVE to manage my groups and some of the region settings via the SL website.

Imagine the situation, an event is cancelled, a griefer has struck or the sim is suffering from some extreme lag.
People start sending me IM’s about it, I have to log into SL, open the group window and start sending a message.
This may not always be possible.
Because SL does not give us enough group options we, like many sims, use the Hippogroups services, they DO allow us to send messages to inworld from the Hippo site.
Great, but not perfect and it costs money.
It would be awesome if I could simply visit the SL site, open the group window (again with the exact same look as the group windows inworld) and use it just like I would if I was inside SL.
Change permissions (need to remove that rez permission from a griefer fast or don’t want a new tenant to have to wait till I get out of work!), send messages to the group so they know what is going on or to announce a new event, etc, etc.
All the group options accessible from the SL website.

Another great option for sim owners would be the possibility to manage their regions from the SL website.
Again I have to use a third party (paid) service just to see who is visiting my region without me actually going into the region myself.
I would love to be able to do this from the SL site but also manage some of the other options like quickly closing the region when there is trouble, sending a message to the region, restarting it or something as simple as turning the sim to day or night (as LL won’t let us set a 24 hour light schedule).

All those pesky little things that just need a few moments to take care off, jobs that you could do in seconds trough the SL website… now take minutes (especially if your computer takes a while to start SL up and fight the lag) or even hours if you have to wait till you get home.

Little things that you could even take care off with mobile devices because you just need to be able to load the SL website.

But even if you do not own a region, it can be useful to have more interaction trough the SL website with people inside SL.
Imagine being able to start and take part in a group chat from that site, a fun communication tool but also important when you quickly need to know if that event is starting at 2 or 3 and if evening dress is required.

LL promises huge improvements to SL

LL has announced that they will be making some major changes to their systems to fight lag.

At least that is how this old fashioned person who thinks a gramophone is still a mechanical wonder and the bee’s knees, read this following message on the SL site;

This year, Linden Lab is making the single largest capital investment in new server hardware upgrades in the history of the company.
This new hardware will give residents better performance and more reliability.
Additionally, we are converting from three co-locations to two co-locations. This will significantly reduce our inter-co-location latency and further enhance simulator performance.

Sounds good doesn’t it?
You can read more details here; Link to blog.

I don’t know enough about all this stuff to make any useful observations but I do know that improvements to our sims and anything that makes lag a little less is good!

3rd anniversary of 1920s Berlin sim

Tags

The 1920s Berlin Project

Next week it has been 3 years ago since this Dutch noob began the 1920s Berlin Project.

Time to look back.

I had fist visited SL in 2007, had a little look around and like many before and after me realised that SL was a place where weird people walked around dressed like tacky tarts or porn actors or not dressed at all, where they spend all their time chatting bout uninteresting things, pretending they were having virtual hanky panky or spending real money on virtual rubbish.

Most sims looked horrendous and you continuously ran the risk of being griefed or having odd objects following you around.

Needless to say, I did not stay long.

But when I was given a new laptop I wanted to test it to its limits and remembered Second Life and its demands on my computer.
I discovered to my surprise that Second Life was still around, downloaded it and ran around a bit.

Sadly SL had not changed much, it looked a little better but was still just a paradise for those interested in doing all the things I so did not want to be doing.

But… literally minutes before I decide to leave Second Life for good… I decided to try the search option and see if I could find something I did like.
As someone who is obsessed with history and especially the 20th century, I of course started looking for sims with that theme.
I found Flashmans.

Not much later I was sitting at a bar, listening to vintage tunes, talking to like minded people.
No avatars looking like Barbie or Ken, no huge fancy flashy nightclub with loud music, no griefers, no hanky panky, it was great!

That single moment kept me from leaving and it also made me return.
I had long chats with people there about historical sims and decided there were not enough.
In my head the seed was planted, my imagination started working and I discovered the real secret formula of Second Life; If you can’t find it, make it. 

So there I was, a total noob (not even 2 months old) talking to the good people around me about building my own club, something else, something I could not find in SL but something I badly wanted to visit; Berlin in the 1920s.

I rented a tiny parcel of land and started building… before I had even properly figured out how to walk.
I was messing around with prims, learning as I went along.
Discovering what happens when you drag one texture onto a pile of prims and suddenly see your buildings windows turn to brick.
Learning building the hard way as I had no patience to follow classes or read instructions.

I got lucky, before the sim even opened people started flocking to the sim.
The theme attracted people, they would come and look at plywood buildings and get all excited just because they too wanted to see Berlin in the 1920s.
Still, I had doubts and was really worried about spending real money in SL, so I literally had to be talked into building shops and apartments for people to rent.
I just  could not imagine people spending real money living in tiny damp smelly dirty apartments with almost no prims.
But they did and more than that, they helped me figure stuff out and supported the project in many ways.

On may 30th 2009 we opened our club.
It cost me blood sweat and tears to figure out how to get a music stream, how to host a live singer, how to eject people, etc.
I had not even understood the basics of SL when I started running a sim.
But we had a lot of fun and it seemed like people were really excited about the place, even if it was build by a noob who couldn’t even rotate a prim.

There was one final obstacle that almost killed the project.
One day the landlord of my sim said she was quitting and I had to vacate within 24 hours.
My sim was not that big but I had no idea how to link prims, made a big mess of putting everything in my inventory, lost some of the items I had and that I spend real money on and ended up without a sim, not knowing what to do.

I was thinking about giving up but the friends I had made and the people who loved the project wouldn’t let me.
Friends like Sonatta Morales, Klopstick Sandalwood and Fraulein Edelmann kept pushing me to start over.
To avoid being kicked off my land again I had to actually buy land, get a premium account, two things I did not want to do.
But I did anyway and started work all over again.

And now the 1920s Berlin Project really took off, slowly my building skills improved (I’m still learning), the sim got bigger and bigger (till we eventually got our own region) and most importantly; the community grew.

I had no idea how amazing our project was doing till I started looking at other sims and learned that it was not very common for a historical roleplay sim to have all its apartments almost permanently occupied, have people in your sim eager to organise events, maintain security, manage shops, run clubs.
It is not common to be able to pay your tier without problems almost every month for years.
It is not common for people in such sims to love the place so much that they consider it like a real home.
And it seems to become even rarer these days, so many sims fall apart, disappear, just can’t manage.

But we are doing well, very well.
I often blush and sometimes get a tiny bit emotional when I hear and see how much people care about this pile of prims I stuck together, because yes, I now know how to link prims.

People do want to live in tiny dirty apartments with lots of lags and almost no prims.
They love the 1920s Berlin theme or, even better, they don’t know much about it but learn a lot about it and fall in love with it because of the sim.

That to me is why I do all this, to share my passion for history, to educate.

And here we are, 3 years later.
Berlin is a full region, we have several events every week, a vibrant community, great people, superb shops, best clubs in the world 🙂
Life is good.

Getting ready to organise 5 days of fun in our sim to celebrate this, looking at the thousands of snapshots made over the years, laughing at how it all used to look, smiling at the snapshots other people made in ‘their city’.

And the future?
Well as long as there is a Second Life, there will be a 1920s Berlin.
We have set up a structure that will make sure the city remains even if I die or find a RL time machine and can’t resist using it.

But my imagination is also looking into other dreams.
There are so many things from the early 20th century I want to share with the people in the virtual world.
This year will be the year when I pick one of the 3473289475693 ideas I have for other sims and start thinking about how I can realise that.
Time to create another historical roleplaying sim!

See you at the 3rd anniversary!

No 9th birthday celebrations in Second Life for us

A year ago my sim (the 1920s Berlin Project) took part in Second Life’s 8th birthday celebrations.

It was a lot of fun, chaotic but worth it.

We rebuild a tiny 1920s Berlin street in our plot, including a cinema, common working class apartment, a gallery and of course our world famous bar ‘Der Keller’.

Every day for about a week we moved our daily ‘happy hour’ to this replica bar and had lots of fun meeting new people who would not normally visit our sim because of the theme, the strict dress code or perhaps because they don’t like roleplay.

SL8 gave them a chance to get a little taste of a sim they never heard about or never visited before, it also gave them an idea of how we use SL for something they might not know about.

This year SL is asking us to have the celebrations in our own sims, they will not organise something big and fun like the previous years.
Not a good idea.

People don’t like the idea and many won’t be interested in doing this at all.
Some may not be able to.
I know that we can’t just find a spot in our sim for something like this, we don’t have the room or prims.

Right now the only thing I can think of is organising an ‘open day’ to celebrate SL9.
Not sure how much fun that would be.

Either way, I will not be looking forward to it as much as SL8, one of the few, if not the only gridwide event our sim took part in.

What a shame.