Yingzi Xue

I have many thoughts on this, but have struggled to put together a coherent post thus-far, having spent a good hour or two writing and rewriting this post. I'm going to try to get it all in the post. It might be a jumbled mess. I apologize in advance. History When I joined Second Life in 2007, Hippo was the product to use for vending and renting. It was far from perfect. It was bloated because it had to be, to ensure reliability. Script functions would be added later to make way for better solutions. At the time, as a budding creator (scripter, builder), I wanted to open my own store and sell products. Hippo seemed the logical choice, so I purchased it. I never did end up using it, because I couldn't abide by the inefficiency of how it was designed. Like Casper, I wrote my own vendor system out of necessity, but ended up selling it as one of my products for many years. (It is no longer on the market.) Hippo lit a creative fire in me to do better, so the purchase was not a loss in my view. Keep in mind, I never intended for my vendor system to compete with Hippo, nor be the next big thing. It was aimed at a niche market that shared my view that vendors should be efficient, reliable and minimal. At around the same time, Casper's work was starting to gain traction. I eventually purchased CasperVend and CasperLet (et al), not only to support Casper's work, but to see the design of his products. CasperVend and CasperLet CasperVend and CasperLet are great products and will make a great addition to Second Life, but they're not for me. Here's why. Even though I own these flagship CasperTech products, I don't use them. The philosophy I held back in 2007 is still the same today. A vendor system should get out of your way and let you sell your products, not mire you in configuration settings and feature checkboxes. Upkeep should be simple and straight-forward. Closing Thoughts I hope Second Life takes their new acquisitions in the direction of efficiency and minimalism, updating the Marketplace with the same workflow. I would also appeal to the sensibilities of the creators out there, that less can be more.

Thank you all for your responses. Yes, I was aware of the spacing between prims to get physics to come out correctly, and the physics shape looks perfect, even when rendering metadata for physics. The physics shape was solid, until you bumped into it a few times repeatedly, and then you popped out the other side. I do think .2m+ is definitely the way to go for consistent results. I'm still trying to develop a good (simple) workflow for modeling buildings in Blender for Second Life without it becoming a convoluted mess, so I'm looking at the work of others for clues. I was looking at one builder's work. He seems to make all of his walls out of planes, and his physics turn out just fine. I tested with a single plane wall and I couldn't walk through it, even though it's not .2 thickness. I'm guessing he uploads each wall piece individually as planes then assembles them. Another interesting thing he does is overlaps his walls by .2m on each end. These responses have helped. Much appreciation.

.1 works as well. Edit: Although this may not be consistent either. I recommend thicker.

I made it .2 thick and it fixed the issue. I may experiment with slightly thinner just to see where the sweet spot is.

Thank you for the quick response. I'll make it thicker.

I'm working on a mesh boat. I've made a physics shape out of planes in Blender, and upload it with the mesh object. The physics shape shows solid in Render Metadata, but if I collide with it repeatedly, it will allow me to walk through it, even though it's supposed to be solid. Is there a certain thickness a physics shape has to be to keep this from happening? Or am I missing something?

Thank you for answering. I don't think it has, unfortunately.

I've been trying to get a front view (facing the avatar) camera view to work with walking, but the camera does not move with the avatar. I assume you have to update the position of the camera, whereas the follow camera is dragged behind the avatar. I wanted to ask here if anyone has gotten it to work before I give up on it.

It did the same thing for me. I did try a few different things to see if I could keep it from happening, but nothing fixed the issue. You can reverse the order of request functions in the code and pass a NULL_KEY on the outset; llRequestUsername silently fails. If you pass it a good key, you get the username, as expected. Granted, this is reverse of the functionality of the script, but it avoids the bug. One possible workaround... Since the username is already known, just check to see if the returned data == username, if so it's a fail.

I would point to Blender as one example of a great open source project (there are countless others). Most Linux distributions have thriving communities and you can find all the support you could ever want. The beauty of open source is that you can modify it to your liking, to get the functionality you want. Open source, by its very nature, keeps the software clean, because the source code can be downloaded, perused, compiled and used by anyone. LSL is an easy language to learn. There are plenty of examples available to get you started. There is a support forum where people are willing to help. There is a Wanted forum where scripters are willing to help make your project a reality. If you don't agree with the ideology of a developer or their software license, don't use their software. If enough people disagree with their way of doing things, it will cease to exist. It's okay to disagree with another person's opinion, with an ideology, with their way of doing things.

I can empathize with creators, sellers and resellers over the banning of gacha. However... the situation they find themselves in is of their own making. Rares What constitutes a rare item? Is it the extra work that goes into making an item unique? Is it the creator's emphasis on said item? Or is it the vendor script that makes it rare? Aside from the first question—the creative aspect—said "rare" status of the item is artificially produced and presented to the customer. Can extra work make an item truly rare? No. It's the selling method the creator chooses to use, to limit the purchase of said product. Campers, Traffic and Lag What causes camping, traffic and lag issues? The elusive item? The timed freebie? Is it the potential customer pining after them? No. These are problems caused and reinforced by the creators and sellers who use scripted methods to limit access to said items, thereby making them artificially hard to get. The false sense of the rare. The elusive item. The issues with campers, traffic and lag are self-inflicted by the creators and sellers that present these methods to their customers. The customers then adjust their behavior, to obtain an artificial rare through the means they have—camping, clicking, etc. Yes, using these methods can increase sales, but they introduce a host of problems that shouldn't exist if the products were sold outright, not withholding them from the customer through artificial means. It's a clever tactic. Present the prize, then make it hard to get. While it may be a dopamine goldmine, the consequences are many. Cause and Effect The issues I see complained about on this forum, by creators and sellers of gacha and the future problems of the potential conveyor system(s), and others that exist now, like lucky chairs, et al... are caused the creators and sellers themselves and how they choose to sell their products. The problems being discussed here, because of said systems being used, should give pause to creators who seek to place their products behind constructs, to artificially inflate their value. The conveyor system exposes what was hidden behind the gacha gambling mechanic; machines of excess profit and dopamine manipulation. Problems with other systems should be readily apparent. There are countless innovative ways to sell products and fix the problems that exist today. Innovate, don't manipulate. There is value in a special item that took longer to create. Charge the appropriate price and it will sell. If you can't sell your products without some sketchy methodology, then maybe you shouldn't be creating and selling products.

Regarding how some script... As a scripter who prides themselves on efficiency, I find that sad—but I know it's true. lol It'll be interesting for sure. I can't wait to read about it on the forums.

I think a queue will keep that from happening, as it will dump all of those extra attempts to interact with the object. If scripted properly, it should only respond to the current user. Much like some vendors operate. Once mitigated, lag shouldn't be much of an issue.

The script for making this function would be super simple to write, but as you said, handling input in an efficient, low-impact way is going to be key. No matter the delay, you're still going to have the potential for campers mass clicking on the object, unless you use a waiting list or queue for interacting with the unit. Cycle through avatars who have clicked on the unit and give them each time to use it. If an avatar leaves, drop them from the queue. This would make it somewhat fair and help dump unnecessary clicks. It'll be interesting to see how the creator handles it.

I was in the process of writing a post to make this point, but you beat me to it. Whatever profit you are used to receiving above and beyond the market value of your product(s) is not actually profit, but cash that wouldn't/shouldn't exist. Supply and demand. If there isn't a demand for your product(s), then they won't sell and you will go out of business. Businesses adapt or die every day because of this very thing. Being reliant on a gambling mechanism to make up the difference isn't a sound business practice. 1) It's unreliable to say the least, 2) It gives a false sense of value to your product(s), 3) It becomes a crutch. I sympathize with creators who are struggling with change, but I see a world of opportunity (untapped potential) for gacha style product(s) without the gambling aspect. Rather than trying to make an alternative gacha vendor to skirt the new rules, I'd be focusing on ways to maximize legitimate profits in the SL landscape.