Completely New and Have Some Questions

[TwilightMyth]

Hi, I am new to Second Life. I have a few questions or issues that I seem to be experiencing.

In the tutorial, at the shopping part of the tutorial I keep getting an error that says Equipment Malfunction Please Try Again Later.

I signed up for Premium, and I thought I read that I'd be given $1,000 LS for joining but my LS balance is 0. 

I built a house as part of the Premium membership - Is there a quicker way to travel to my house in the viewer program? Right now I get there by clicking the link from the website, haven't figured out how to travel there in the viewer yet.

Also how do houses work in Second Life? - In IMVU "houses" were like private chat rooms that every user had. In Second Life I see I can open the door and walk outside, and I see I have neighbors and I can look in their windows and see their furniture and pets, and I assume I could walk in their house too although I did not try that. Could people also just walk into my house? And is it like the public chat areas where if you are nearby outside the house you can chat with and hear other chats going on around you from within the houses?

I see some places have groups - how do I create my own group?

How do the breedable pets and gachas work? I'm most excited about this feature I think. 

Also it seems that we can resell items we no longer want or need - therefore could we sell our pets' offspring?

What are the best freeware tools for creating meshes or textures for Second Life?

I think that covers my questions for now. Thanks in advance for any help!

[Klytyna]

40 minutes ago, TwilightMyth said:

In the tutorial, at the shopping part of the tutorial I keep getting an error that says Equipment Malfunction Please Try Again Later.

Forget the mostly worthless tutorials...

40 minutes ago, TwilightMyth said:

I signed up for Premium, and I thought I read that I'd be given $1,000 LS for joining

You get that when you have been a paid up member for 45 days...

41 minutes ago, TwilightMyth said:

Is there a quicker way to travel to my house in the viewer program?

You create a 'Landmark', usually the easiest way to do that is to click the little star icon in the locatin bar at the top of the viewer. Once you have made a landmark, it can be found in your landmarks folder in your inventory, and you can use it to teleport to your house, there is also the option to 'set home location' and then clicking the 'home' button takes you to that location.

44 minutes ago, TwilightMyth said:

What are the best freeware tools for creating meshes or textures for Second Life?

Blender and Gimp, but that is advanced stuff for a new account...

45 minutes ago, TwilightMyth said:

How do the breedable pets and gachas work? I'm most excited about this feature I think.

Also it seems that we can resell items we no longer want or need - therefore could we sell our pets' offspring?

Items in SL have a set of "permissions", Copy / Mod / Trans...

You can sell items that are Trans, including breedables and spare gacha.

 

[Rolig Loon]

The best way to get started is to begin familiarizing yourself with the Knowledge Base (link in the tab at the top of this page), beginning with the section on 

Don't expect to learn quickly.  SL is a complex world, and it keeps changing all the time.  Not only that, but much of the content you see in world was created by us, the other residents around you. Something that you learn in one place may not necessarily work the same way in another place because it was made by someone else. This is not IMVU, so don't expect most of what you know about IMVU to make any difference here.  If that's not too confusing or frustrating, you'll fit in just fine here. 

Oh, and disregard Klytyna's advice about tutorials.  Some are definitely better than others, but there are many very good ones -- some created by Linden Lab and some by long-time residents.  The Knowledge Base is your default resource, and this Answers area is another.  In world, visit Caledon Oxbridge University or NCI, both of which have excelleent tutorials and often have mentors on hand to answer quick questions.

 

[Lindal Kidd]

1 hour ago, TwilightMyth said:

I built a house as part of the Premium membership - Is there a quicker way to travel to my house in the viewer program? Right now I get there by clicking the link from the website, haven't figured out how to travel there in the viewer yet.

Also how do houses work in Second Life? - In IMVU "houses" were like private chat rooms that every user had. In Second Life I see I can open the door and walk outside, and I see I have neighbors and I can look in their windows and see their furniture and pets, and I assume I could walk in their house too although I did not try that. Could people also just walk into my house? And is it like the public chat areas where if you are nearby outside the house you can chat with and hear other chats going on around you from within the houses?

I see some places have groups - how do I create my own group?

I assume you got a free Linden Home...if you actually bought some land and built a house on it, though, this will still apply.  1) Go to your Dashboard page on the SL website, and look in Land Manager/My Mainland.  This will give the location of your home.  2) Click on that location.  A map similar to this should open up:

Click "Visit This Location".  Your viewer will start up.  Enter your login information and you will be logged in at the location of your home.  3)  Landmark the spot by Klytyna's method or use World/Landmark this Place.  This will create a landmark in your inventory.  4) You can set this location as your Home position, too.  Use World/Set Home to Here.  Now when you log in, if your viewer is set to log you in at Home, you will appear at this spot.  You can also immediately teleport Home from wherever you are by hitting CTRL+SHIFT+H.

Land and houses in SL work a lot less like IMVU's "rooms" and a lot more like Real Life.  Virtual land is like land in Real Life.  You don't have to teleport everywhere, you can actually walk or fly across the virtual landscape, crossing over land owned by LL or (more likely) by other Second Life residents.  You buy or rent a piece of this land, and then you can build a house on it (or buy any of thousands of houses created by others, and put it on your land).  A house in SL is NOT a chat room, it is simply a three dimensional object.  You need land, AND a house.

You're right...this means you can walk into your neighbor's house, or they into yours.  If you're close enough (20 meters), you can hear their local chat.  However, there are some privacy features you can use.  In World/Parcel Details, in the Options tab, there is a check box for privacy.  If you un-check it, anyone on your land will be invisible, and inaudible, to anyone outside your land's borders, and vice versa.  You can restrict physical access to your land too, either in this About Land window, or with a "security orb" device.

There are groups for everything in SL!  Store groups, club groups, groups to learn a second language, groups who share any sort of common interest.  Yes, you can make your own group, too!  Here's more on that: https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/creating-managing-moderating-and-disbanding-groups-r48/

[angeoco]

1 hour ago, TwilightMyth said:

Could people also just walk into my house? And is it like the public chat areas where if you are nearby outside the house you can chat with and hear other chats going on around you from within the houses?

Oh yes, they can walk into your bedroom, just as you can walk into theirs. However there are several settings you can apply. You can set parcel privacy (in the menu: world > parcel details, or whatever the wording is), which can prevent people seeing into your house/parcel and you seeing them outside, and/or hearing what people inside/outside are saying. You can add a security orb (a purchased object), to prevent people stepping into your parcel or staying there for more than X seconds, you can add banlines (a garish yellow fence around your parcel), but you need to be careful as orbs and banlines can affect genuine neighbours and passers-by, making you into a neighbourhood nuisance and stop you making friends in the area.

1 hour ago, TwilightMyth said:

What are the best freeware tools for creating meshes or textures for Second Life?

I prefer Inkscape to GIMP for most textures. Inkscape is a vector-graphics editor, used for drawings, while GIMP is used more for painting and editing photos.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

5 hours ago, TwilightMyth said:

I signed up for Premium, and I thought I read that I'd be given $1,000 LS for joining but my LS balance is 0. 

To clarify this, Premium Membership comes with a weekly stipend of 300L. After 45 days (so two payments of premium), you get a one-time additional reward of 1000L on top of your stipends. Even though you get it slower, premium is definitely worth the price, especially if you consider the free land tier, extra groups, etc.

 

5 hours ago, TwilightMyth said:

How do the breedable pets and gachas work?

Almost all content in SL are created by other users like in IMVU, but the big difference is that people even create the functionality (scripts) in SL. Nothing is exactly standardized, so how things work might always be slightly different.

Klytyna already mentioned permissions, but here are the specifics: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Permission