And The Next Step…..

So, the core of my new poseball rezzing system is complete!

Uber easy to set up, menu driven, and incredibly solid….. it can just about handle any number of poseballs one would need, and with built-in LockGuard support, you can chain up any number of AVs in any number of positions with any amount of chains you can conjure. First, I should say, one wonderful thing to note about LockGuard that no other chaining system supports is the ability to attach as many chains as you like to a single prim, and this can make for some very interesting suspension and chaining setups, like single and double suspension points without duplicating or wasting prims on the device itself! Of course, the big challenge with setting up a chaining system for multiple avatars is that it *could* have been a lot of link messages to pass back and forth….. but, not so! Another wonderful and unique feature about LockGuard is its ability to be commanded to join point A and B from point C in a single call without having to negotiate the connection. This allows for some quick and easy processing of chain data!

Of course, what does this mean to you…… the user? Or the potential creator who will use this system?

This means, the poseball rezzing system is uber efficient. Three link messages is all it takes to rez a pose and rez any number of chains from the avatar to the device. The 1st link message is the pose selected from the menu, the 2nd is a description of the pose and its data based on your menu choice, and the 3rd is what LockGuard attachments it will use (and its chain setup) if required (entirely optional). And yes, that one single link message can contain chaining data for a dozen LockGuard attachments and its associated options if you choose! The processing of the data is minimal, and the poseball system is able to do what it needs to do very quickly and very efficiently….. best of all, this system does not need regular resetting, or in the case of heavy use like in Free Sex Areas, it will not need near-daily resetting. This system is fast and solid, even under heavy usage.

So, how do I know this system can hold up to the challenge?

Well, it has been! The first draft of this system was released on the market in my Capture RP Cargo Van several months ago….. while the Cargo Van didn’t contain the LockGuard Chaining system or the extra databases needed for higher pose volumes, the principles remain the same….. and the Cargo Van’s pose system has been a remarkable success under heavy use in various Free Sex Areas. Even the demo….. which has been on display in the Dictatorshop for several months…. has never been reset or re-rezzed. Imagine that!

Like LockGuard changed the way we deal with particle chains….. this system just may change the way we deal with furniture.

Of course, since this is a new iteration…. a new generation, it does need to be judged for itself on the market. So, in the next few weeks I will be releasing a few furniture items using this pose system to be sure that this draft, like the previous, can stand up to the rigors of good, solid, hard use.

Love, Romance, Ballroom Dancing

So, I’ve been getting in the habit of bouncing around Second Life and seeing what’s out there…..

Late last night, during one of my random exploration moments, I happened into a little place called Intimate Moments in the Dolce Vita sim. Intimate Moments is a lovely little sim where couples can visit, dance the night away, and toward the end….. rent a sky box for a few L$, then get their love on.

Normally, a place based on love and romance would never get more than a passing glance from me, but what I noticed….. incredibly….. about this place, was that it had over 43,000 in traffic. 43,000 in traffic! That’s nothing you say! There are places which have a ton more traffic! Well, the difference here, is….. this place had no campers, no gimmicks like giving away money from sploders, no free sex areas, there were no events that I could see, the sim wasn’t packed, and there only 5-15 people there at any given time, with a constant stream of visitors……

And you know, as I looked around I had one of those deep spiritual moments where you start to think there might be more to Second Life than just BDSM and weapons. Okay, maybe that’s over-exaggerating a little, but……

How sweet!

Second Life & Second Death / Illnesses

I think I’ve seen the biggest boom this summer of people in Second Life saying they have cancer or have someone else come on and post that’s said, “OMG! So and so has died by [insert some form of tragic death]…..”

I’m pretty sure, that at least twice a month….. or more…. I’ve heard this about someone, somewhere, in Second Life. I’m not going to go out on a rant here, because well….. someone who would fake a major illness or a death doesn’t really deserve one. However….. I will post two very relevant pieces of information for people to view.

Munchausen by Internet (use the references at the bottom of the page):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_by_internet

And finally, the definitive YouTube guide about faking your own death or illness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUHy8vrVY0

10Linden and Business

So, I’ve been following the whole slexchange.com and Anshe Chung’s “10 L furniture factory to devalue the economy” threads since they more or less started. Anshe (in her lack of infinite wisdom) has decided that the quality of content in Second Life is sub par and thinks she can increase the quality of content by reducing the price of content to 10 L. I knew the woman was a little off kilter, but now she’s proven herself to a complete whack job. And it just goes to show how “uninvolved” Anshe actually is in Second Life, because she actually has no clue what’s on the market, what its quality is, or what its worth….. and mostly because she actually *thinks* she has that sort of influence, which is nothing short of a joke.

And now, here’s just a few things to keep in mind:

(1) 100 people pumping out furniture will make absolutely no dent in the furniture market. There’s *already* 1000s of people in Second Life selling basic furniture, gadgets, and scripts for 10 L and less. Anshe’s 100 people will be no different than the 100 people who will start doing it this month independently, and the new 100 which will start doing it next month, and the 100 people after that the following month, so on and so forth. It’s no different than the dozens of Business In A Boxes with dozens or hundreds of items being resold on a daily basis….. 100 people, while it may sound a lot compared to 1, is insignificant when you compare it to the number of people actually in Second Life who are creating and selling or reselling content.

(2) It might have a minor impact on SL Exchange, but let’s face the reality here. How many people actually *know* about SL Exchange? Often, very often, I’ll get an IM asking if I carry or make such-and-such a product and I will usually say, “No, search SL Exchange for someone who sells one.” The response almost every time is, “What’s SL Exchange?” Also, very few of my sales come from SL Exchange….. it *might* count for maybe 5% of my sale numbers on a good day. Other people I know who use SL Exchange pretty much say the same thing. So, the thinking that dumping *anything* on SL Exchange can damage the economy is a farce in itself because SL Exchange is insignificant when compared to the vastness of the market as a whole. And do you think Anshe is going “pay” big money to advertise products for 10 L along with paying employees? I think not, because that’s a sinkhole where Anshe will *lose* an incredible amount of money….. and while Anshe is a little self-deluded, she’s not stupid.

(3) The 10Linden category? Big deal! How many people actually look through the categories on the left of SL Exchange? Sure, there maybe a few, but I am willing to bet *most* people use the Search function or look through featured items for what they want. Scrolling through a category of 100s of items is just tedious, and people have a habit of avoiding anything tedious. It’s just in our nature. Personally, I’ve never touched the categories on the left…… if I can’t find it in search or it’s not listed as a featured item, then it’s not worth me hunting for it.

(4) If *anything* is going to devalue the market, it’s not Anshe, it’s people’s response to Anshe. If you lower your prices to match or if you quit because you don’t want to compete….. Anshe didn’t destroy your market, you did. When content creators start to devalue their products en mass, then the market *will* devalue. But again, this isn’t Anshe’s doing…… this would be a hysteria response. So, do the smart thing and just ignore it, do what you do best….. build and create.

(5) Business is war. Make no mistake, while you may love your business, business *is* war. If you complain about the competition, you probably shouldn’t have gotten into business to begin with, it’s not for you. Second Life is a capitalist economy, which means someone who can provide a product cheaper and faster…… can and will, and there’s nothing you can do about that. That’s the core nature of business, competition, on all levels. Instead of complaining, spend that time improving your own product line. Focus on your own products instead of on hers….. because once you start focusing on someone else, you’ve already lost the battle, you might as well pack it in and go home.

(6) People love brands. No matter how much generic you flood the market with, people *will* buy a higher quality brand name for a much higher price, particularly if you provide quality customer support for these products….. which I can pretty much assure you, Anshe’s people are incapable of. They can barely get a land deal straight, and people are worried they’ll take over the content market? Seriously, who are they kidding?

(7) People think Anshe Chung was responsible for the land price craze last fall/this spring (and hence can affect the furniture market in the same way)….. and this is entirely inaccurate. Land prices increased because (a) Estate Listings and Mainland listings were not separated, so it was difficult to find good land to start with, (b) The major land barons collaborated with each other and set a bottom line price for parcels of land and then slowly started increasing that price to raise the price of land artificially, and most of all (c) There was a shortage of servers added to the colo-facilities by Linden Lab, so the number of people coming into Second Life was much higher than the amount of land being added to Second Life. And when demand is higher than supply, the prices goes up. When Linden Lab started adding land regularly, and the supply met the demand, the price dropped again. Economies 101.

( The economy is *not* fragile….. in the last year it has taken one screw after another, it’s been literally gang banged by a near continuous chain of events and grid blunders week after week, and it’s still ticking with not so much as a scratch to show for it. The economy in Second Life has proven time and time again that it is highly resilient to whatever is thrown at it…… so, seriously, people, take a deep breath and then let out a sigh of relief.

Anshe can’t hurt you.

Anshe can’t influence the market.

Now, once you’ve relaxed, go and have a coffee or a glass of your favorite soda, sit back at your keyboard, and keep doing what you’ve done even before you heard about this 10Linden thing…… because it’s like everything else with Second Life. It’ll be forgotten in a week or two and it’ll just be another piece of history everyone has forgotten about.

Cheers!

- Lillani

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….. 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.