Emma is <3

Who is Emma? Emma is a funny, smart, sarcastic, witty, beautiful, sensual, caring, brazen, moody, naughty, bitchy bondage chick I met in the second week of my Big Brother experience. Her visits brightened my days while in the blue, glass prison for nearly a month….. and then when I finally escaped from Big Brother, Emma became my submissive. Since then, she’s loyally and unwaveringly kept me company in Second Life day after day….. for about nine months now.

And….. I’ll be honest, if it wasn’t for Emma I would be quite lonely in Second Life.

Yes, I have a lot of great friends in Second Life, but at the same time, I do like to keep my distance from people in general. It’s not that I don’t like them or don’t want to be near them….. it’s just that I’m a naturally, anti-social person who really prefers staying in the dark corners away from everyone else and minding my own business.

Emma is <3.

Am I great wordsmith or what? lol.

Silence of the Dictatorshop

No, not much has been released at the Dictatorshop recently. I’ve been a little distracted with some higher end projects I’m trying to finish up; such as a hover bike with some quality vehicle physics (easier said than done in SL); and an inter-network vendor for the Shop which allows for some serious network maintenance.

The hover bike project….. while I can’t say it’s a *serious* endeavor, I’m building my own hover bike in order to better my understanding of vehicles in Second Life. For me, vehicles is the last frontier to be conquered. So far, the few people who have tried my prototype have said it has some of the smoothest and most controllable vehicle physics they’ve ever encountered in a flying machine….. which was a good boost to moral on completing the project. I’m not sure if I’ll end up selling it when its finished or not, it depends on whether or not I *really* like it. Aside from that, it’s more or less a project for me to learn from…… not necessarily to sell. But well, if the people who try it like it, maybe it’s a contender.

I did update the flamethrower though….. which has a few positive improvements to the design. If you’ve purchased one of these, contact me for an upgrade.

Laser Eyes Released

The latest product released from the Dictatorshop is a pair of laser eyes which allow you to shoot laser beams from your eyes…… and let you set just about anything on fire! Objects, people…… and they are damage enabled for combat sims. Well, not much else to say right now!

I know, I really need to do a more substantial update here!

Animation, Scripting, Building, etc

So, the last few days I haven’t been able to focus on any one thing…… the whole grid being down knocked me out of my productive streak, and my whole 30 animations in 30 days thing was not likely to be reached since 4 or 5 days were more or less unavailable. However, I’ve been spending some time creating silly animations, just practicing various tricks of the trade….. timing, smooth motion, etc. I’ve made a few sillies ranging from a spinning head to a forward flip, to a cartwheel ending with a round house kick to just floating in the air. Each one, helping hone my animation skill down even further. Sometimes, just playing around and trying to achieve nothing at all will help further skills along than attempting a goal……

Although, I do have a goal.

I want to have a complete set of marketable skills.

Right now, my top skill is scripting (by far)…… followed by animation. Once I’m done refreshing and skilling up in animation, I’ll tackle building which is probably my least capable skill. If Second Life were more like 3D Studio, I could do a fair bit better because I could shape and texture anything I can imagine, but with additive 3D, I can’t picture how to get the prim shapes I have into the prim shapes I want. With true 3D software, it’s easy…… I can directly manipulative vertices to the shape I want, no matter what the form. In this aspect, Second Life is very….. limiting.

I don’t know why SL doesn’t allow actual mesh objects….. they say it would be “bigger”, larger to download data…… but then I have to ask. Is one mesh larger to download than say 250+ prims twisted tortured to form one specific object you *could* build with one mesh (especially considering the number of hidden faces and vertices often included in this type of complex object). You could also directly UV map the whole object in one TGA file, which means less textures to download as well. Sculpties are nice, but really….. I don’t think an actual mesh would increase the load on Second Life. One mesh is certainly far more efficient than 250 prims. If they were worried about people uploading huge objects to grief…… well, add a L$ X fee upload for Y # of vertices. Anyway, enough ranting about that!

So building….. yes, it’s the one skill in Second Life that I really am not proud of. Generally, I hire trusted, high quality builders to do builds for me while I concentrate on either scripting or animation. The time it would take me to build something significant….. it’s just far more efficient for me to hire someone and get it done 20x faster. Mind you, I don’t hire builders for *everything*…… just the really complex or detailed stuff. Even if I have uber building skill, chances are, I’d still out-source so I could achieve my goals faster and more efficiently. Sometimes, it’s not a matter “If I can do it, I should do it” but a matter of, “I can do it, but someone else can do it faster”.

Anyway, I’m skilling up! Releasing products and animation sets along the way…..

Matriarch Online, Grid Wonky

Matriarch was brought back online yesterday by Ethan, so a lovely thank you goes out to him for responding as quick as her could to the ticket request, despite the plethora of grid issues.

However, with that said, it seems the grid is still having some serious issues….. even deleting basic, unscripted prims has been failing at times. So, I don’t think we’re anywhere near the end of this virtual natural disaster for Second Life. While it is displeasing that the grid is down so often, or so much…… I look at them akin to natural disasters, acts of virtual gods. There’s little that can be done to stop them except wait for the government (Linden Lab) to clean up after the disaster strikes.

While occasionally, my patience does run thin, I do understand one thing…… Second Life will never be a perfect, smoothly running entity. That would be impossible. How do you make software capable of creating almost everything and anything….. run smoothly?

Matriarch….. like Atlantis….. Sank!

Well, it’s been 24 hours since Matriarch has vanished from the map…… completely…… as in crashed a half dozen times, went offline for several hours, and then popped off the map.

While I appreciate there are grid issues…… I don’t appreciate I’ll be billed full tier for an island which I have no access to nor seems to even exist.

Released……

Two wonderful new combat weapons have been released in the last couple days. The rocket launcher and the grenade launcher. The Rocket Launcher is by far my favorite. It’s a lot of fun, and it has AV seeking rockets while can make launching them a little entertaining. Both are wonderful for combat sims, and have been designed to be powerful, but fair.

Sex Rez Animations

I’ve decided to jump into the animation business….. in an attempt to produce 60 sex animations (in 30 sets) in 30 days. Today is day six, and I’ve released the 6th animation pair today. I’m trying to add a little variation into my animations and once again diversify the Dictatorshop’s product line. I’m creating 10 second animation loops with subtle variations throughout the animation, instead of just 2-3 seconds with one single loop. The animations are coming out slowly, and I can see myself significantly improving my animation skill by the end of the 30 days. I’m learning the one necessary attribute for animating….. patience.

Anyway, by the end of the month….. the Dictatorshop will have a vast new product line.