Category: News-Opinion

November 15th Town Hall with Grumpity, Oz and Patch

Posted on by Inara Pey
Patch Linden, Grumpity Linden and Oz Linden

Linden Lab has announced the next in their series of Town Hall meetings, this one again featuring three of the decision-makers for Second Life’s ongoing development: Director of Product, Grumpity Linden, Technical Director Oz Linden, and Senior Director of Product Operations, Patch Linden.

Like the September 13th event, this will be a single session, the date and time being:

Thursday, November 15th 2018 from 10:00 SLT onwards.

The official blog post notes:

Collectively, these three have over 28 (!) years of experience working on Second Life and work closely with all the Second Life teams to continue to improve this platform that we’ve all come to love.

They are some of the biggest stakeholders in the direction of the product development roadmap each year, and know the product inside and out!

If you have a question that you would like to ask these Lindens, please take a moment to post it in the Community Forum thread “Town Hall Meeting with Grumpity, Oz, and Patch Linden – November 15” in advance of the Town Hall. Questions will be selected from all submissions made prior to November 9th, so be sure to get your question in before then.

The Town Hall meeting venue

For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with Patch, Oz and Grumpity, the following is a brief outline of their responsibilities which I hope may help when considering questions to submit for consideration at the meeting.

Oz Linden is the Technical Director for Second Life, having joined in 2010 with initial responsibility managing the viewer open-source project and rebuild what had become a fractious relationship with TPVs, with his role expanding over time to encompass more and more of the engineering side of Second Life.

As work on Sansar started to progress in earnest, he pro-actively campaigned within the Lab for the role of Technical Director of SL, building a team of people around him who specifically wanted to remain solely focused on Second Life and developing it. His team works closely with the product and operations team to ensure SL constantly evolves without (as far as is possible) breaking anything – a process he refers to as rebuilding the railway from a moving train.

Grumpity Linden is the Director of Product for Second Life. She originally came to Linden Lab while working for The Product Engine, a company providing end-to-end consulting and software development services, and which supports viewer development at the Lab. Grumipty was initially involved in the development and viewer 2 (as designed by 80/20 Studio).

She became a “full-time Linden” in 2014. Her current position involves coordinating the various teams involved in bringing features and updates to Second Life (e.g. Engineering and QA), liaising with legal, financial and compliance to ensure features and capabilities meet any specific requirements in those areas, etc. This work can involve looking at specifics within various elements of the overall SL product, such as UI design and layout, etc.

Grumpity jokingly refers to herself, Patch and Oz as the “hydra” or troika, responsible for the development and direction of all aspects of Second Life.

Patch Linden is the Senior Director of Product Operations at Linden Lab. Originally a Second Life resident, he joined linden Lab in 2007, after being invited to apply to the company as a result of his work as a community leader and mentor from 2004 through until the invitation was extended.

His role is the only one of the three here that also encompasses Sansar, as he manages the respective support teams for both platforms. In this regard, he recently established a support centre in Atlanta, Georgia. For Second Life, his work also involves overseeing the content development teams, the Mainland Land Team, the Linden Department of Public Works – LDPW, aka The Moles, and managing the account support team.

SL Marketplace update: wish lists and favourites

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

After  pause of a couple of weeks when a last-minute hitch held up deployment, the latest Marketplace update rolled out during week #41, with the Lab blogging about it on Wednesday, October 10th, 2018.

It’s an update that sees a trio of new features added to the MP, all of which have been the subject of numerous requests – wish lists and favourites / follows. The update also includes a number of bug fixes.

For this article, I’m looking purely at the wish list and favourites options:

  • Wish lists:
    • Add items you’re not ready to buy to your personal wish list.
    • Make purchases from your wish list.
    • Share your wish list with friends (so they can buy you rez day gifts, etc.).
  • Favourites:
    • Add favourite items to a personal list for easy relocation.
    • Make purchases from your list.
    • Add favourite products to your wish list.
    • Add favourite stores to your list (use them to check on new releases more easily).
    • View one of your favourite stores from the list.

Adding Items to Your Wish List and Favourites Lists

Individual items are added to your wish list   / favourites list by viewing them in the Marketplace and then click on the Add to Wishlist or Add to Favourites options, located on the right of the item display.

Individual items can easily be added to your personal wish list or favourites list

Add A Store to Your Favourites

To add a store to your favourites, open the store’s main page in the Marketplace, and click the Add To Favourite Stores option on the left of the store’s main page.

Adding a Marketplace store to your Favourites

Viewing Your Favourites

You can view your favourites whilst on the Marketplace by clicking on your account name (top right) to go to your account page, then clicking the My Favourites drop-down, which will display the options: Products (favourites), Stores, Wishlist. The Products page will open by default, but may be blank if you have not selected any favourites.

You can access your lists from your Marketplace account page : click your account name at the top (arrowed) then click the My Favourites drop-down (circled, left). This will display the list options and open your Products (favourites) page (shown). Note the Add To Wishlist button, arrowed at the bottom.

With these lists:

  • Clicking on an item in the Product or Wishlist pages will take you to the Marketplace listing for that item.
  • Stores in the stores list will be displayed with up to four of their most recent releases.
  • Clicking on a store in the Stores page will (unsurprisingly) take you to the store.
  • Listed items / stores can be removed individually or in bulk by clicking on the check box on the left of an item / store and then clicking the delete button.
  • Favourite items can be added to your wish list via the Add To Wishlist button on the Product page.
  • You can share your wish list with friend using a dedicated URL:
  • You can view your wish list or list of stores directly using the following URLs:

 

The further revamp of Linden Realms in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The re-vamped Linden Realms and rock monsters. Credit: Linden Lab

Since it first opened in 2011, Linden Realms has proved to be an enduring game within Second Life. It’s seem various updates over the years, with the most notable (until now) occurring earlier this year when the existing playing regions were effectively fire-bombed as a part of an ongoing saga involving the wicked Ruth, she of the villainy in Tyrah and the Curse of the Magical Glytches (see my review here) and named for the original default avatar of Second Life.

On Tuesday, October 9th, linden Lab announced the latest revamp of the game, which sees it completely overhauled in looks and aims, building further on the backstory of Ruth and possibly – just maybe, perhaps – (I’m not going to give everything away) seeing the return of Old Boozehound himself, Magellan Linden.

In the new version of the game, the Linden Realms regions get a much-needed face-lift with much more modern-looking mesh items (most notably the rock monsters). In terms of game play, players must complete tasks and try to reassemble Ruth’s magical amulet … the breaking of which might have led to Magellan faking his own death in order to escape her wrath. (If this all sounds like the script from a soap opera, wait until Tyrah wakes up and finds Magellan stepping out of the shower*.  Just kidding! Although on second thoughts, I wish I hadn’t; the mental image of an undressed Magellan is now fixed in my head.)

Part of the re-vamped Linden Realms. Credit: Linden Lab

Anyway, I’m not going to go into great depth here, on account that LL have themselves with a veritable tome of documentation and images on the updated game. Suffice it to say, collecting crystals (exchangeable for L$) is still very much a part of things, so expect the new Linden Realms to be as popular as previous iterations.

I can say the new look is refreshing when compared to the old, and the detailing such that the locations spread across the 12 regions of each game area shouldn’t place too much extra load on things when avatars are running hither and thither in their hunt for crystals and amulet bits.

The game HUD has also been nicely updated, and looks the part – the old one really was looking long in the tooth.

The updated game HUD

As always, accessing the game is done via the Portal Parks (links below). As with previous iterations, those new to the game will have to accept the experience to gain access, but if you’ve previously played and have not revoked the game, you’ll be automatically granted access. And no, this isn’t anything to do with Project SSR 😀 .

More is promised by the Lab on Linden Realms, by way of an article on how this new version was developed and built, as a part of the Lab’s efforts to show creators how tools such as Experience Keys might be used.

*Yes folks, A Dallas reference!

Portal Park SLurls

Note the portal Parks and Linden Realms are all rated General.

EEP testing and project viewer officially announced

Posted on by Inara Pey
Courtesy of Linden Lab

On Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018, Linden Lab officially announced the opening up of EEP testing to Second Life users.

EEP  is the Environmental Enhancement Project – in short as series of in-development updates to the existing windlight capabilities in the viewer, and to environment settings / rendering across the board. In brief and in part EEP:

  • Gives region and parcel owners the ability to define the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, water settings) at the parcel level.
  • Provides new environment asset types (Sky, Water, Day) – referred to as “settings”  – that can be created in the viewer, stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with other users.
  • Allows the Sun, Moon and Cloud textures to be replaced with custom textures.
  • An extended day cycle, supporting up to 7 days a week and 24-hour day / night cycles.

And that’s just to start. The project will also include rendering updates to allow for atmospheric effects such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”), plus scripted and experience support for the new environment asset types (e.g. assign specific environment settings to an experience, which all participants will automatically have applied in their view when visiting the experience).

A simple 5-minute (including uploading the textures) demo of replacing the Sun and Moon with Mars and Jupiter respectively, then adjusting their respective sizes & putting them in the same quadrant of the sky. Note the windlight clouds drifting in front of Mars.

Testing EEP can only be carried out on Aditi (the beta grid) for the time being, where there is a limited number of parcels available for purchase. Testing can only be carried out using the EEP project viewer.

  • Download the viewer via the Second Life Alternate Viewers Page.
    • At the time of writing, the viewer was version 5.1.10.520121 – but use the above link to get the most recent version.
  • Test region: Aditi EEP Testing (secondlife://Aditi/secondlife/EEPTesting/128/128/23).
    • Parcels cost L$1, but as Aditi funds are provided by Linden Lab, you are not paying for anything with your own money.
    • You MUST be using the EEP test viewer why trying to purchase a parcel on the test region – if you are using any other viewer, your purchase will time out.

Should you opt to test EEP and find issues, please be sure to raise a bug report, using the [EEP] tag. Reasonably feature requests may also be considered.

The parcel-level controls for using EEP, showing the Sun / Moon options and day cycle track

If you do not successfully purchase a parcel, or wish to see what others are doing with EEP, you can still visit the test region  – but you will need to be using the EEP test viewer in order to see anything.

There are a number of resources already available for EEP to get people started

EEP atmospherics via Graham Linden

I’ll continue to have EEP project news and updates through my Simulator User Group meeting, Content Creation meeting and TPV Developer meeting summaries.

 

 

SL Halloween: of house tours and premium gifts

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Haunted Halloween Tour is back, with new twists

On Tuesday, October 2nd, Linden Lab announced the seasonal re-opening of the Haunted Halloween Tour together with a further Premium member’s gift.

Now in its fifth iteration since being unveiled in 2014, the Haunted Halloween Tour is an experience-led ride through (and under) an old house that echoes the Bates residence from psycho (I’m still surprised there isn’t a trip through a bathroom somewhere along it).

Reached via either Portal Park 1 or Portal Park 2, this latest take on the tour keeps the house, the usual coffin “cars” to ride in, and takes a familiar route through the house. But, as with previous years, there are a fair few new tweaks and changes to things.

We’re all probably familiar with Experiences by now, but do remind you need to grant permissions to the Tour in order to enter it. These are revoked on your departure

As the Tour is experience-led, those wanting to try it will have to accept the experience prior to passing through the Tour’s portal at either of the Portal Parks. This sometimes causes concern, partially due to the large dialogue that is displayed by experiences which indicates control of some aspects of the user’s viewer will be taken (see right).

There’s actually no reason to fear these dialogues: they are there to inform users over what is likely to happen and offer reassurance that it is all correct and proper (although admittedly, the dialogues could perhaps be made to be a little less threatening). And at the end of the ride, all permissions are automatically revoked until the next time you join the Tour.

However, if there are lingering concerns after taking the ride, the permissions can always be manually revoked – just go to the Avatar / Me menu (viewer 5+), selected Experiences, locate HA2014 in the list, click on it and select Forget. Should you do this, you will have to re-allow the experience on your next visit to the Tour.

I’m not going to dwell on the tour too much – there are new wrinkles, as noted. What I will say is that since 2015 and the first return of the Tour, I’ve tended to find it perhaps a touch too long, running for about 15 minutes. This variant is roughly the same length, but I (mostly) didn’t feel as if time was dragging as I have done with past iterations.

The Premium Gift comprises a camp site with tent, open fire and logs set around it for seating, the basics of the camp might suit any number of locations. The Halloween element comes with the inclusion of a spooky tree, pumpkins and grave stones.

The entire LI for the set is 85, but this can be reduced by only rezzing the items you require – so, for example, the tent, fire and seating could be used year-round, as the pumpkins could be removed. The gift is supplied with a rezzer in the form of a radio on a tree stump, which will also “read” stories in chat – one story is supplied and more can be added, if desired.

The 2018 Halloween Premium gift camp site. Credit: Linden Lab

I’m admittedly not a great fan of this type of Premium Gift – I much prefer practical benefits, vis more group slots, etc.). However, high LI aside (when compared to other mesh camp sets), some could find this one has use well beyond the Halloween season, although the static animations might be seen as a little limiting.

Premium gifts can be collected from any of the kiosks located in the Premium sandboxes.