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BattleBeast Breedables

 Entertainment, Second Life, Virtual Worlds  3 Responses »
Feb 032012
 
BBB Count down to launch

Countdown To Launch Press

Celebrating 2012 as the Chinese Year of the Dragon, BattleBeast Breedables introduces a revolutionary concept in SL: combining a breedable animal with gaming. The BattleBeast Breedables Dragon is the first SL project to unify the fun of breedables, gaming, and role play (RP).  Our very exciting “Countdown to Launch” project started last week, with a Closed Beta. “This testing is an instrumental part of our program”, said BattleBeast Resident,  “I might add that Closed Beta has gone quite smoothly and the group of people who’ve been testing the dragon have been happy with the project and are very enjoyable to work with.”

What’s so revolutionary about a breeding dragon, one might ask?  Well, the BattleBeast Breedables dragons don’t JUST produce off-spring, eat, interact, and look amazing in accessories… (although they DO look amazing in accessories),  the Beasts battle!  Gamers will appreciate that XP, Levels are earned through battle. Stamina, strength and speed are a blend of Nature and Nuture: Breeding and Battle. As you breed your dragon traits to produce the best possible (“Nature”), the dragon also gains through battle (“Nurture”).

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 Posted by Jezebel Bailey at 12:27 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

LL Should Consider Group And Event Pages

 Entertainment, Second Life, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds  6 Responses »
Feb 022012
 

There has been a bit of a hoo-ha going on about Linden Lab throttling llGiveInventory to 5K per hour per owner, per sim. as explained in Jira-SVC-7631. This sounds like a reasonable limit at first glance, it sounds like an even more reasonable limit on second glance when you consider that a single script couldn’t do this before the throttle anyway. However the ever inventive users of Second Life have got around this limit to allow subscribers to send out announcements quickly. This has unfortunately exposed a security flaw that had to be urgently addressed.

A few things stand out here, one being why the hell do we need to send thousands of notecards and textures to people in the first place. Another, the issue of communications, in this case I’m with Linden Lab, they needed to address a security issue but there remain communication issues. This change will break content.

Reading the Jira, most of the concerns are from people who run mailing lists, there is one major exception in the shape and form of 7Seas Fishing creator Seven Shikami whose game uses llGiveInventory. However it’s mostly about mailing lists, with people concerned that if they use a large mailing list that hits the throttle, all items in a sim owned by them that use llGiveInventory will not work for a while, that includes any scripted vendors that use the function. I don’t know what would happen if the vendors used llGiveInventorylist instead, I’d imagine they’d still be throttled.

However this really highlights a flaw in the group announcement system, delivering inventory to so many users for an announcement, when really we should be just pointing people in the direction of the notice. Google + and Facebook both allow people to create pages for their business or communities, it’s time really to move group notices to the Second Life profiles website and implement this into the viewer. This would mean that instead of people having to have yet another landmark, notecard and texture in their inventory, they’d just follow the link to see the texture, be able to teleport from the link and see detailed information about any new product launch or event.

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 Posted by Ciaran Laval at 8:53 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Second Life Is Alive And Well

 Second Life, Virtual Worlds  2 Responses »
Feb 012012
 

Hamlet has a post with quotes from Stat Goddess Tyche Shepherd, showing that private estates are being shed from the grid. Tyche reported these losses on her excellent grid survey thread over at SLUniverse, the particular post in question has details of Tyche’s private estate survey, you can read the post here.

Tyche’s comment that raises eyebrows, or causes gasps is:

“ Taking these figures a good estimate of private estate tier due each month is US$4,920,000 +/- US$58,000 . (Calculated using known grandfathering rates but excludes any academic reductions and is rounded to the closest US$1000), this figure is down on last month’s estimate of US$5,006,000 by $86,000 , a significant fall of about 1.8%. This is the first time the monthly tier figure has fallen below US$5 Million since I began the private estate surveys and the margin of error indicates this is a significant finding. ”

I’m not going to say Linden Lab shouldn’t worry about this, they absolutely should, but it’s certainly not time to man the lifeboats, just under USD$5 million per month in tier for private estates, is still a healthy figure, especially in these tough economic times. I do think tier is too expensive these days, but to lower it Linden Lab need to boost other income streams, slashing tier now would more than likely give a short term boost, but Linden Lab need to play the long game.

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 Posted by Ciaran Laval at 6:29 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

Duran Duran Take Away Building Blues

 Entertainment, Second Life, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds  No Responses »
Jan 312012
 

So there I was swearing about texture offsets, when I decided I’d check out The Ivory Tower Of Prims and see if they had any advice on how to set texture offsets on prims the size of 0.200, 13.600 and 0.200 to make them play nicely. I still don’t know if they do as I couldn’t teleport there. Therefore I decided to sod that for a game of soldiers and go and have a quick peek at The Duran Duran sims (The DDU). This was largely due to Duran Duran having their own Destination Guide section.

 


Duran Duran — The UFO Club

Hidden beneath the seas of the Duran Duran Universe is the super secret UFO Club, an adventurous club and bar where anything can happen. Rumor has it that members of the band have played a spontaneous deejay gig or two here…

Visit in Second Life

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 Posted by Ciaran Laval at 11:36 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

SL is still amazing

 General, Second Life, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds  No Responses »
Jan 292012
 

I know I haven’t blogged in awhile, but today a note card was passed my way that I want to share with you.
First I want to explain why this note card hit me the way it did. Last night I was reading a chat window of fellow bloggers and one person went on to say how SL has become a pit. That it has lost its shine.  “This place is rapidly turning into a shit hole of a has been.”  His summation of SL, obviously, was not good. I just closed the window as I didn’t want to listen or read the negativity anymore.
So, today a dear friend of mine passed out a note card which follows:

Phoenix McGann
One of the things I loved about performing online in Second Life was the opportunity to touch the lives of people all over the world. SL is a godsend to some…particularly those with disability or disease that confine their world. In SL they could run, dance, and soar through their imagination…doing things the weight of real life would not permit. One of these wonderful, joyful spirits, Phoenix McGann, passed on recently. For several years Phoe battled courageously with late stage Parkinson’s Disease. But nothing could stop her. SL allowed an outlet for her indomitable love of life. She was an amazing, crazy woman. Funny how people you’ve never met can sometimes touch your heart so. She was a Shantu fan from the very beginning…over 5 years ago. She was a wonderful human being. I’ll miss her.

This Thursday, Feb 2 at 7pm SLT I’ll be singing in SL for a tribute for her being put on by people who loved her. I hope all of you will find the time to stop by and celebrate here life. A landmark and further details will follow.

Shantu

So next time you want to “rag” about SL and what it DOESN’T do, remember what it does do too.

Till next time,
Your friend, Jez

 Posted by Jezebel Bailey at 9:16 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Avatar Draw Weight

 Second Life, Virtual Worlds  4 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

I’m a big fan of Linden Lab engaging in a go green campaign to try and encourage people to create and build more efficiently. However these things are often misunderstood, lead to finger pointing and can spoil people’s fun, so can overly complex avatars with lots of attachments but we should be encouraging freedom of expression.

However, it’s always good to have measures to look at, which brings us to the replacement for Avatar Rendering Cost, now it’s Avatar Draw Weight. This will display a score for your avatar, and other avatars around you. I’ve never been a fan of this score displaying the scores of other avatars as it can lead to finger pointing … wait I already covered that! To check your own draw weight, go to preferences, enable the advanced menu and then from the advanced menu, go to performance tools and select “Show Draw Weight For Avatars“.

Avatar Draw Weight Menu

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 Posted by Ciaran Laval at 6:34 pm  Tagged with: , ,

What’s In A Name Yet Again!

 Second Life, Social Networking, Virtual Worlds  No Responses »
Jan 242012
 

“Lastly, I really do regret I that spoiled ‘Ciaran Laval’ s night away from the pub. The way this election is going he may find me there before long.” – Sir Norman Tebbit, April 19th 2010.

The above quote is relevant in the name stakes because it demonstrates I have a persistent online identity outside Second Life circles, although what I was ever doing on The Torygraph blogs whilst sober still remains a mystery, what Sir Norman was referring to is that I’d stated on another blog post of his that I was stone cold sober and agreeing with him, it was a scary evening.

Which brings us to the latest episode of the nym wars and Google +, which rears its head in the shape of form of Google’s Bradley Horowitz suggesting a new and more inclusive naming policy is being r0lled out. Now before you get too excited you need to tread carefully here, Violet Blue, who was very involved in the nym wars because her name was considered to be fake (it isn’t) has posted over at Zdnet suggesting that pseudonyms still aren’t welcome. However Violet seems to be getting a tad confused, Bradley Horowitz is talking of one name nyms, rather than normal looking nyms and this is where it all gets confusing.

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 Posted by Ciaran Laval at 9:16 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Flags, Inventories, Mesh Deformer and Direct Delivery

 Second Life, Virtual Worlds  3 Responses »
Jan 232012
 

There are a couple of  items that Linden Lab could do with a little help on and the Adult Community on Zindra are talking of holding a flag competition, although rules on communication make this a little tricky. First of all the Linden Lab help wanted. Linden Lab have now, for a couple of weeks, been seeking feedback on the upcoming direct delivery system for the Second Life Marketplace, details of the direct delivery beta can be found here…. that post really should be a sticky, anyway, Linden Lab need some feedback.

I appreciate that merchants are human too and have time constraints but this is a big change with regards to how people list items on the marketplace and feedback, good and bad, really will help …. ok it should help! There’s a project viewer download and some instructions to read, but if you find the time, try and provide some feedback.

Moving on, both Inara Pey and Tateru Nino, who is poorly and I hope gets well soon, point to a request from Linden Lab regarding a new project viewer that has a simple inventory, the forum post is here….another post that should probably be a sticky. Simple Inventory, as the name suggest, is a simplified inventory, it’s a feature that never quite made it into the basic viewer that was doing the rounds, so if you do get a chance to look at it and post feedback, remember that it was done with new participants in mind.

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 Posted by Ciaran Laval at 8:10 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Scouts To The Rescue Over Billing Confusion

 Second Life, Virtual Worlds  2 Responses »
Jan 212012
 

Back on December 14th I pointed out that Local Payments were coming to an end. Local Payments, were a billing method for people outside the USA, which allowed people to pay tier and fees in a local currency. The information in the email advised people to update their payment information.

However there was a missing step, which seems to have caused confusion, it did for me anyway. The issue was that when I went to update my information, the information was already there on my account. I left it there, I didn’t see the point in adding it again when it already existed. D-Day passed, billing went fine and then came the second email, with a title of Final Reminder (which is always worrying):

“Dear Ciaran  

This email contains important information that affects your Second Life account and requires action in order to continue any payment transactions with Second Life.

Due to the conclusion of the Second Life local payments beta program, it is required that you add a new credit card or PayPal account by going to your billing information page on Secondlife.com:

Although our local payments beta program ended  for a small group, we have extended the deadline to update payments information to another date.

If your payment information has not been updated, your next automatic payment will fail, and you will receive automatic delinquent account messages notifying you of this failure. You may update your payment information at any point, but to prevent this failure, you must do so by a certain date.

If you have any questions or concerns, please visit our Knowledge Base.

Best Wishes,

Linden Lab and the Second Life Team”

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 Posted by Ciaran Laval at 10:15 pm  Tagged with: , ,
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