Why do so many new players not get the inventory system?

[Charlemagne Allen]

On 3/18/2024 at 11:02 AM, Extrude Ragu said:

The SecondLife inventory system is suffering from a lack of useful metadata to filter on.

Before mesh, every clothing item had inventory metadata that indicated if it was clothing, what type of clothing it was, had icons etc.

Now if you want to find that mesh dress with a funny name you forgot. Good luck, because there's absolutely zero filters you can apply to your inventory search to find dresses or wearables in general. They're all just 'objects'.

If we had good metadata, TPV's or LL could use it to make a dedicated dress up UI seperate from general inventory that worked similar to character creators in other platforms/games. We could even extend it to show items from the MP to try on demos right from the dress up UI in world.

Of course, all this requires vision, leadership and big picture thinking, which is very hard for LL to do when it has different teams of staff managing different parts of the technology.

 

 

Please don't ask people to tag their objects. It will result in a huge cluster***** of arguments.

[Charlemagne Allen]

On 3/18/2024 at 11:02 AM, Extrude Ragu said:

 

Double Post Sorry

Edited March 20 by Charlemagne Allen

[AmeliaJ08]

2 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

This only happens because many creators fail to set a better attachment point. Hair creators know to set the skull as the attachment point. The pelvis seems like an intuitive attachment point for pants and skirts, so I set this myself for new clothes. I usually set tops to the spine, unless they could be part of an outfit with multiple top pieces, such as a bra, a shirt and a jacket - or when they only function properly when set to the chest or stomach (eg. stripable clothes).

I see *so* many creators using Chest as an attachment point for clothes that it bugs me, for some silly reason Chest does not have the appropriate alpha priority and I frequently have to select left/right pec instead which does.

I'm surprised how long it is taking for the knowledge about alpha priorities to filter through to all creators, I had to ask the creator of a brand new hair if they intended on making a semi-transparent root prim so that alpha priorities actually work... coming soon, I'm told.

I get that it's unintuitive and as far as I know LL have never actually properly broadcast the 'rules' but given how alpha glitching must be a regular complaint it is surprising these mistakes are still being made.

For reference, just in case anyone is still in any doubt: https://slalphaglitch.tumblr.com/

 

Edited March 20 by AmeliaJ08

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I see *so* many creators using Chest as an attachment point for clothes that it bugs me, for some silly reason Chest does not have the appropriate alpha priority and I frequently have to select left/right pec instead which does.

I'm surprised how long it is taking for the knowledge about alpha priorities to filter through to all creators, I had to ask the creator of a brand new hair if they intended on making a semi-transparent root prim so that alpha priorities actually work... coming soon, I'm told.

I get that it's unintuitive and as far as I know LL have never actually properly broadcast the 'rules' but given how alpha glitching must be a regular complaint it is surprising these mistakes are still being made.

For reference, just in case anyone is still in any doubt: https://slalphaglitch.tumblr.com/

 

I didn't know there was an attachment point alpha priority. This is something mesh body and clothing creators need to know.

It also makes even more sense now that root prims for mesh wearables need to be invisible. Stop with the brains, internal organs and prims with the store logo on them! These only contribute to texture loading lag.

[Ceka Cianci]

38 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I didn't know there was an attachment point alpha priority. This is something mesh body and clothing creators need to know.

It also makes even more sense now that root prims for mesh wearables need to be invisible. Stop with the brains, internal organs and prims with the store logo on them! These only contribute to texture loading lag.

I made a thread on it when it came out.. They really need to sticky things some times..

I think there was a blog post about it from LL and then like usual, left up to the rest of us to get the word out..

 

[Arielle Popstar]

4 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

That's on the creator/seller. If the seller sets another attachment point when you buy the item it will attach there.

Let's go back - wayyy back - back into time. When mesh clothing was introduced for the system body it couldn't/didn't follow as many bones as current mesh clothing does, and a lot of fitting relied on having the body at certain shape settings. That could have meant that every piece of mesh clothing would have required a different shape, and mesh clothing started out as a complete FTS situation.

Then a few users set up a system of "standard shape" settings that could be used as a benchmark and allowed a comparative amount of both variety and consistency.

The current de facto mesh head UV map is also user-generated rather than LL-generated.

Partly but it is mostly on the Lab for setting up the mesh upload UI's the way they did and not having an easy way to change it. I in fact tried uploading a couple rigged meshes and found no way to change it from the R-Hand, (L-Hand in other grids). I'm open to being shown differently but currently I don't see it outside of the Creator changing the attachment point after it has brought in. This imo is all on the Lab.

Edited March 20 by Arielle Popstar
added info

[Theresa Tennyson]

13 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Partly but it is mostly on the Lab for setting up the mesh upload UI's the way they did and not having an easy way to change it. I in fact tried uploading a couple rigged meshes and found no way to change it from the R-Hand, (L-Hand in other grids). I'm open to being shown differently but currently I don't see it outside of the Creator changing the attachment point after it has brought in. This imo is all on the Lab.

What's the difference between having the creator needing to set the attachment upon initial upload and needing to change it before they sell it? If they're in a hurry they'll just pick the default either way.

[Persephone Emerald]

25 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Partly but it is mostly on the Lab for setting up the mesh upload UI's the way they did and not having an easy way to change it. I in fact tried uploading a couple rigged meshes and found no way to change it from the R-Hand, (L-Hand in other grids). I'm open to being shown differently but currently I don't see it outside of the Creator changing the attachment point after it has brought in. This imo is all on the Lab.

It's not that hard to change the attachment point after the mesh is uploaded. I bet almost every mesh hair, hat or headpiece you own attaches to your skull when you first wear it.

The creator simply needs to wear the mesh attached to their own body at the point where they wish it to attach either before adding textures or after the first textures are added. It's the same as making a package that is going to attach to an avatar or their HUD. After the attachment point is set, then they can make more copies with different textures, scripts, animations or whatever.

Btw, they can also make the item phantom at this time too.

Edited March 20 by Persephone Emerald

[Arielle Popstar]

8 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

What's the difference between having the creator needing to set the attachment upon initial upload and needing to change it before they sell it? If they're in a hurry they'll just pick the default either way.

 

3 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

It's not that hard to change the attachment point after the mesh is uploaded. I bet almost every mesh hair, hat or headpiece you own attaches to your skull when you first wear it.

The creator simply needs to wear the mesh attached to their own body at the point where they wish it to attach either before adding textures or after the first textures are added. It's the same as making package that is going to attach to an avatar or their HUD. After the attachment point is set, then they can make more copies with different textures, scripts, animations or whatever.

It is even easier for the Lab to have set the default to a null point forcing the uploader to use a drop down menu to select a point, ensuring they are likely to choose a more appropriate spot to attach it to. 

[Solar Legion]

On making the Inventory system similar to places that are not Second Life/encourage more laziness/ remove the need to actually know how to use a computer (or file system) - No. Learn it. Don't want to? Stick to Consoles.

On having Linden Lab either set a default attachment point or having a selector on upload: No. Take the time to actually set the 'default' attachment point after upload yourself or attach it to where it makes sense to you after you've purchased it (if you're so inclined or absolutely need to do so).

...

Honestly at this rate it may be best to just shut down the Internet and EMP all Technology, much as I personally find it useful.

[AmeliaJ08]

2 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I didn't know there was an attachment point alpha priority. This is something mesh body and clothing creators need to know.

It also makes even more sense now that root prims for mesh wearables need to be invisible. Stop with the brains, internal organs and prims with the store logo on them! These only contribute to texture loading lag.

Most of the brands (hair, mainly) can very quickly update their products since the root prim is often the logo inside the head and simply making it 1% transparent fixes all of the issues but yeah, not all of them are doing it yet.

 

[AmeliaJ08]

59 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Partly but it is mostly on the Lab for setting up the mesh upload UI's the way they did and not having an easy way to change it. I in fact tried uploading a couple rigged meshes and found no way to change it from the R-Hand, (L-Hand in other grids). I'm open to being shown differently but currently I don't see it outside of the Creator changing the attachment point after it has brought in. This imo is all on the Lab.

I agree it is utterly unintuitive but the attachment point you choose just sticks whenever you copy the item. It's... it doesn't make any sense and really should just have an object property that you can set the default attachment point but yeah, that is how it works.

I remember wondering how I set the default, head in hands when I worked out how it actually works.

 

Edited March 20 by AmeliaJ08

[Arielle Popstar]

Sorry but people are here to have some free time and leisure, not thinking up workarounds for the half finished messes left by the well paid programmers employed here. There are plenty of well working examples on other platforms they could take hints from even if they choose not to come on the forums and get some feedback from the residents they overcharge to use their 30 year old UI's. I'm sure some here who like to crow how well the Lab is doing would be screaming if an inworld scripter or other creator had left their product as messy as the Lab has left their usual efforts.

[Arielle Popstar]

7 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I agree it is utterly unintuitive but the attachment point you choose just sticks whenever you copy the item. It's... it doesn't make any sense and really should just have an object property that you can set the default attachment point but yeah, that is how it works.

I remember wondering how I set the default, head in hands when I worked out how it actually works.

 

Well I am ok with the attachment points sticking, just not how the majority put it to one point that everyone else uses. More thought would be put to the best point if the default position on upload was not set, prompting uploaders to select the best point for their particular item.

[Theresa Tennyson]

15 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Sorry but people are here to have some free time and leisure

And the ones who sell clothing are using their "free time and leisure" to make things that other people pay them for.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

11 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

On making the Inventory system similar to places that are not Second Life/encourage more laziness/ remove the need to actually know how to use a computer (or file system) - No. Learn it. Don't want to? Stick to Consoles.

I don't disagree with you often Solar (if at all, really!), but we all know SL is in the unique position of being 20+ years old. I'm not saying the inventory system or any other specific system is in dire need of a complete redo, BUT, there will come a point where SL will get lost in obscurity if it doesn't adapt at least in some way to current tech and make itself a bit more familiar.

I'm a diehard fan of the C64/Atari gaming era (and DOS gaming, and Sierra, and and and), but I came to realize that nobody under the age of 35 knows what the hell I'm even on about if I try to get into all that in this here 2024, LOL. If I mention a game that's been released within the last 5 years, though, I'm no longer looked at like I have 3 heads.

For the record, I hate modern consoles, so I'm in no way advocating SL adopt any of that mess. I'm not even a fan of the whole mobile craze. It could use a little polish for PC users in general, though.

I say this, of course, well aware that the OG Everquest just hit its 25 year anniversary (omg, I'm old) and that game is STILL raking in a ton of cash and lots of players with those old wonky graphics and dated mechanics, so...maybe I'm just wrong about this. 😂

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

And the ones who sell clothing are using their "free time and leisure" to make things that other people pay them for.

Yes and the Lab has allowed them to develop questionable habits rather then push them in some way to make their attachment points better. Seems like some want the consumer to develop the workarounds rather push those including the Lab to develop the better products.

[Solar Legion]

9 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I don't disagree with you often Solar (if at all, really!), but we all know SL is in the unique position of being 20+ years old. I'm not saying the inventory system or any other specific system is in dire need of a complete redo, BUT, there will come a point where SL will get lost in obscurity if it doesn't adapt at least in some way to current tech and make itself a bit more familiar.

I'm a diehard fan of the C64/Atari gaming era (and DOS gaming, and Sierra, and and and), but I came to realize that nobody under the age of 35 knows what the hell I'm even on about if I try to get into all that in this here 2024, LOL. If I mention a game that's been released within the last 5 years, though, I'm no longer looked at like I have 3 heads.

For the record, I hate modern consoles, so I'm in no way advocating SL adopt any of that mess. I'm not even a fan of the whole mobile craze. It could use a little polish for PC users in general, though.

I say this, of course, well aware that the OG Everquest just hit its 25 year anniversary (omg, I'm old) and that game is STILL raking in a ton of cash and lots of players with those old wonky graphics and dated mechanics, so...maybe I'm just wrong about this. 😂

In some instances "familiarity" is essentially code for laziness/unwillingness to learn/"simplification" to the point of absurdity.

If we end up losing something so basic and simple as how to navigate an actual directory structure ... it really will be time to seriously examine things and consider that EMP.

ETA: For the record I am advocating for the bloody rest of these places to actually ensure people are familiar with such basic things and remain familiar with them.

Edited March 20 by Solar Legion

[Solar Legion]

As for another bit here: It is not on Linden lab to press creators to actually set a default attachment point - it simply is not.

Nor is it going to take so much of one's oh so precious leisure time to attach the items where they make sense for you if it bothers you so much.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

1 minute ago, Solar Legion said:

In some instances "familiarity" is essentially code for laziness/unwillingness to learn/"simplification" to the point of absurdity.

If we end up losing something so basic and simple as how to navigate an actual directory structure ... it really will be time to seriously examine things and consider that EMP.

I totally get what you're saying. I don't think we're in danger of losing the knowledge of how to navigate a directory structure, though. Games and virtual worlds and platforms don't particularly need that feature.

Think of it this way - people who work in any business whatsoever will likely have that skill. Most companies operate on Windows (and goodness knows businesses are slow as hell to update to current tech). Many people will be navigating directories and databases and files and whatnot at work. Mobile phone shenanigans didn't annihilate that knowledge and if anything could do it, it'd be that (though it is somewhat responsible for horrible typing and communication skills - just sayin'). 

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

In some instances "familiarity" is essentially code for laziness/unwillingness to learn/"simplification" to the point of absurdity.

If we end up losing something so basic and simple as how to navigate an actual directory structure ... it really will be time to seriously examine things and consider that EMP.

What is absurd is some not realizing that there is a significant portion of the SL population who spend more time inworld sorting their inventory, shopping and outfitting themselves then the real world, because it takes more time. I would be faster running to the local Wal Mart in R/L and buying a particular clothing item then it takes me to do the same inworld. SL inventory and shopping is such a clusterfud that computers have not made our virtual lives faster or more efficient. 

[Charlemagne Allen]

Just now, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I totally get what you're saying. I don't think we're in danger of losing the knowledge of how to navigate a directory structure, though. Games and virtual worlds and platforms don't particularly need that feature.

Think of it this way - people who work in any business whatsoever will likely have that skill. Most companies operate on Windows (and goodness knows businesses are slow as hell to update to current tech). Many people will be navigating directories and databases and files and whatnot at work. Mobile phone shenanigans didn't annihilate that knowledge and if anything could do it, it'd be that (though it is somewhat responsible for horrible typing and communication skills - just sayin'). 

No, Chromebooks destroyed tech literacy.

 

[Ayashe Ninetails]

2 minutes ago, Charlemagne Allen said:

No, Chromebooks destroyed tech literacy.

I don't think I've ever actually seen a Chromebook out in the wild. 

Phones, iPads/tablets, gaming laptops, MacBooks, portables (Nintendo Switch, etc.) - all over the place.

[Solar Legion]

12 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

What is absurd is some not realizing that there is a significant portion of the SL population who spend more time inworld sorting their inventory, shopping and outfitting themselves then the real world, because it takes more time. I would be faster running to the local Wal Mart in R/L and buying a particular clothing item then it takes me to do the same inworld. SL inventory and shopping is such a clusterfud that computers have not made our virtual lives faster or more efficient. 

That's a 'you' issue.

Solve it yourself.

[Solar Legion]

13 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I totally get what you're saying. I don't think we're in danger of losing the knowledge of how to navigate a directory structure, though. Games and virtual worlds and platforms don't particularly need that feature.

Think of it this way - people who work in any business whatsoever will likely have that skill. Most companies operate on Windows (and goodness knows businesses are slow as hell to update to current tech). Many people will be navigating directories and databases and files and whatnot at work. Mobile phone shenanigans didn't annihilate that knowledge and if anything could do it, it'd be that (though it is somewhat responsible for horrible typing and communication skills - just sayin'). 

I've seen more in the present generations that do not quite understand directory structures than I am comfortable with.

PC gamers will be more familiar with such things as well.

Frankly I'd find an inventory system that more matches present games and such to be more of a hassle and less intuitive for something like Second Life.