Codex Alpha

Good, I frequently update products as I improve skills, and go back and optimize some models, or correct issues from the past. When a new version comes out, at least people can redeliver to themselves to get the updated and optimized product.

I am a Premium user, and I appreciate having a simple little home base to put together small objects, prototype others, and Premium sandboxes for bigger projects and putting stuff together. Premium sandboxes are relatively dead, and everyone is so paranoid they usually warp out within seconds of you arriving - other users are scared of everyone else so you will have the sandbox to yourself. You can find land to rent or buy, usually for the price of your automatic stipend you receive as a Premium member, but the experience will be more laggy and the landscape nearby with ugly builds may not inspire you very much. Stick to private home and Premium sandboxes. For testing, use OpenSim and Firestorm on the PC, work out all mesh problems and scaling, then come build the pieces in SL.

Imagine of car dealerships charged you $10-20 dollars just to test drive a car. The same arguments presented in this topic could also be applied to that. "At least you could try out the car for $10-20 only and not $50,000..." Imagine the extra revenues that would add up for such a scheme.

This is true. Anyone with basic Google skills can go read up on the history of Gacha, and why it has been banned in several countries, yet still exists in many Western countries, and is considered a form of gambling. You won't get much agreement on this part of the forums though, because many of the top sellers in SL use this sales tactic for massive *profits. I've also argued that Gacha items contribute to the massive listing size and visual image spam of the marketplace, but LL seems content with the profits too, so that won't change anytime soon either. I never buy Gacha because I don't have a packrat-collector's complex, nor do I like games of chance or gambling.

Let's call it what it is. A $1L grab, just because they can. Demos, 'gifts' and 'free' items should also be $0. If the rest of us can provide these items accurately and ethically for $0, then others can.

There is no need for up and down votes. On Reddit it has the effect of promoting group-think, and those contrary to the status quo are silenced with downvotes. Add to that fact that there is no context behind the up or down votes, it just encourages people to be lazy and agree or disagree from the wings, without having to support their viewpoint much. It also gives power to voting 'cliques' that can skew the actual status of the opinions of most SL Forumers, and again is only presented without any explanation as to why they agree or disagree.

In this department, I am a consumer of the bar experience. I have all but stopped even trying to find one. I can also speak for approximately 20 others, and have watched their habits as far as bars are concerned. These are the main reasons. 1) We can't find you. Self explanatory. Even if most users know HOW to search for you, they'll generally find the main advertised clubs on the staff picks and go there.. 2) When and if we do find you, you are empty. When and if we find you, the event time is not as listed, or the club is empty, or the landmark is not anywhere near the club. 3) If you are not empty, your bar is ugly and full of billboards. Many, many, many nightclubs are simply designed ugly and look more like a sandbox with ads than a cool place to be. I understand you want to sell, but the dance floor and club area should at least have some style and be a bit more inviting than selling dildos and avatars on the same walls. Much like restaurants or anything else, a makeover once in awhile is a good thing. Update that old mesh from 2003, and stretched blurry 256px texture on the floor. 4) We want the bar design to be welcoming and of good quality, we're seeking a hangout. There is a HUGE desire by many users to have somewhere cool to hang out, a regular hangout. But most designs are garish, square, ugly with oversized and out of scale furniture or outdated, and the lighting is horrible. I've also been to clubs that WERE inviting, cozy and stuff but they're few and far between, and may have shut down now because i can't find them either now. 5) Lag Ahh the lag. Whether it's the 3 Million polygon avatars or all the billboard texture ads from 100's of board trying to load is not fun to deal with, nor is it pleasant on the eyes to look at grey avatars for 15 minutes. 6) Prerequisites like group join or 'cover' charge. Look I don't want to join your group, so please don't have your sim/club spamming an invitation every minute. Also those peddling for a cover charge before even coming in, or soliciting money when I JUST arrived is not cool. If I don't leave in the next 30 seconds as it is, and I stay for an hour, I'm sure I will leave a tip to support. 7) Limited genre music (everyone has different tastes) This is probably hard to address since all SL'ers have such difference in tastes in music, probably hard to keep everyone happy. That being said, look to your local nightclub in RL... are they exclusively 80's? or 90's? or all disco? Or is it Top 40? Top 40 with a mix of decades in a consistent format would help greatly. I might be a child of the 80's but frankly I'm sick of Guns N Roses every 3rd song. Spice it up a little and play some Miley Cyrus or something Weddings are perfect examples... the DJ there trying to keep everyone happy, from 8 year olds to 80 year olds, but at least the dance floor is hopping cuz everyone is happy and can put up with a few songs out of their genre once in awhile. 8) Have something to do... Real life clubs and bars have pool tables, arcade games, and maybe bullriding... give us somethign to do other than just standing on the dance floor playing random animations. 9) After all that then it's probably the problems you posted will come into play.

Yep, my products aren't quite advanced or even on a pro level yet. I'm self-taught and working as hard as I can improving my stuff as I learn - subject to information I can garner for intermediate tutorials on the internet - not an easy task. I do have big plans for some items for SL and am still excited by the possibilities SL has to offer. Even though your post was meant to be insulting - I don't need to return the favour. I'm simply having a discussion here and have NEVER attacked other people's work here, and in fact, I admire their skill at stuff and use it as inspiration and a guideline to improve my stuff. I also may watch tutorials and visit the online shops of some of the participants in this discussion, and study their objects to see how I can improve my stuff. I've currently got to a level where my models are a bit more detailed and such and am kind of getting stuck as to how I will LOD them and texture them the most efficiently without losing their design too much. I'm working as hard as I can while trying to survive financially in a very high-expense living area, so I do my best. Please keep this in mind, and have a bit more patience with me. I am not your enemy, I just am presenting an opposite view to yours and the personal attacks are not needed. I don't cherish 'no-mod' and it is not widely applied to every product I make, just on the items I deem appropriate. I've offered my reasons, and we just disagree. Oh well. Again, I am just taking the opposite position for the purposes of discussion, and giving reasons why I might not want to NoMod stuff. I don't consider myself right or wrong on the subject, just simply offering my opinion. I may present my case in a determinative manner, but it doesn't mean I won't ponder the points being made in this discussion and change my view. I discuss issues to learn, to improve myself, and to also provide any readers of this section with an alternate view. Perhaps centering on learning from discussion, rather than winning points would help this forum be a bit friendlier. Though I haven't really made clothing (well maybe a strange hat) yet, I can understand why no/mod on those items as well. I guess it depends on whether I am selling the mesh design itself, or if the mesh depends more on the textures and styles applied. Most fashion designers in RL only offer a limited selection of fabrics, because they had a vision for the end product. The mesh itself may be nothing on it's own, for example, a t-shirt. I don't sell t-shirts, but I could if I felt the art work on it would sell. That being said, It would be weird to me to spend time putting the design on the shirt, only to have someone mod it out after the fact.. Why not just sell the mesh blank and pre-UV'd and let the customer apply their own texture, rather than spend time baking out Diffuse, Normals, Specs, etc with AO? I do recognize that not adding no-Mod could be detrimental to a T-Shirt item because then the artwork may not appeal to all users, but then I would think the best time spent for an SL creator then is to sell blank meshes of everything, maybe suggest an end use of the project, but then put Mod on it to suit customers tastes. I know it would certainly save me time in the future not having to texture, script or test stuff. But then that's not what I want to do. Personally I want to create cool stuff that DOES something, other than a static prop, and I'm not into creating resale items. For that I'll head to Turbosquid and sell assets there instead. I'm not afraid of competition, in fact I welcome it. Competition, especially a friendly rivalry not only inspires me to improve my own products, but I can also learn quite a bit from those superior to me in skill. But never mind me, stick to the topic and stop bringing me into it.

Fair enough, but you don't really need mod permissions to rename things in order to find them again. There is a directory search function I have used for a long time that helps me find stuff quite quickly. Perhaps you could suggest to LL that the end user should be able to rename all products as default. Please keep in mind that we are making things for people to have fun with in SL, not selling them game assets to mod, retexture, resize, redefine and re-use in huge sim builds (which are then used to solicit $$ from visitors presumably for profit). Noone holds this position in this discussion. Right, so only purchase from creators that your taste suits. If you REALLY like something but don't, instead of calling for widespread permission changes on objects, send a notecard to the creator to see what they can do for you. It's not hard. And best of all you won't be seen on a alternate "SL Forum" calling for the boycott of creators who don't comply to your tastes. Then THAT is a win/win. I can create, present and sell as I see fit, and you can purchase as your 'taste' permits. What's the problem here? Then we are in agreeance. Buy what you like, and leave what you don't like. Contact the creator and see if they will customize something for your needs. But dont EVER, ever come on a forum and imply those creators who DON'T want to conform to your needs should be reviled, boycotted or coerced to do anything. That is anti-competitive behaviour. Well, that is your choice and perogative as a consumer - to shop elsewhere. If you really DO like the item, but not happy with the permissions, contacting them is as simple notecard away - I would say MOST will be agreeable and will do their best to accommodate you. But if not, that is also THEIR perogative.

Contact the seller using a notecard describing your problem and get it figured out. It's the easiest way to get to the solution.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChmVqzB62W1EEjDFq9cWFkQ Some machinima, original music, product showcases, most should be entertaining somewhat.

Buy the Premium annual. Cheapest option including stipend that you get back. This gives you the default Linden home that you can do small builds, projects, scripting as well as at least a base you can chill at by default. Premium sandboxes are low population (if anyone), good fps and latency and you can do big builds there. Rent some land starting small, I have used a certain 'bee' based rental vendor, not sure if they are the same today, seems a few people are using variants on their company names. Rent only what you can afford, if 0 traffic in 3 months but sales through Marketplace, no point to keep renting, return back to Linden home. Good luck

We agree then that every system has its pros and cons, and disagree about the validity of mod vs no-mod. As a shopper its never been a consideration for me, as I shop and buy items that I like - so my bias in providing my own items leans that way. Each to their own, but I would stop short of calling for boycotts or other things against other stores that don't believe as you do, or it could appear as 'anti-competitive behaviour' and break the Marketplace Guidelines.

From Yelp to SL, on all review type sites, the bulk of product reviews is either by crazed fanbois (or the proprietor themselves), or the angry customer who had no other recourse. Without context of a review, or an ability to discuss, or the willingness of the participants to concede a point, or come to an agreement, it's either Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, and therefore is absolutely pointless. I've been informed that people will review something they liked a lot, say nothing if they're satisfied, and low rating if they don't like it. So yeah, make good items, price shouldn't matter, and try to accommodate the occasional customer. I always appreciate productive feedback, its more valuable than an unsupported rating that tells me nothing.

Good job derailing the topic, Chellyne rather than participating in the discussion, and my reply to your post.

Ok, maybe I misread your post then. I would disagree then, because I don't even like the fact that MOD items can have name changed - nevermind being able to do it on no-mod items too! I pick my names carefully, and organize my names by series - modelname, so it's important to me that it is maintained... or I might as well just sell it as "TABLE 04062018", just uv for everyone to texture in world, and leave it at that. I could probably triple and quadruple my objects on my store with such an easier workflow, and save the 'works of art' or originality and profit on sites like Turbosquid instead, and just create generic and less ambitious mod items for SL.

Yet if you upload an item to be used that is under 1m in size but has 3200 vertices, the Land Impact is less than a 8-vertice cube at 10m.... It appears as though the viewer cares more about the SIZE of the object, and not necessarily the vertice count (at least on LOD1, and LOD2) LOD4 seems to count more, but no matter how I optimize a mesh, anything larger than 1m is penalized severely. Got any ideas why? Thanks

I can confirm this happens, and may have posted myself about this in the past. From my observations, it tends to happen to textures that may not have been used by me (or anyone) for a long time (months) and then when accessed suddenly, appears to be blurry and overcompressed. I wondered if it was what LL's servers do automatically to older and unused textures (being accessed by noone for a long period) to save space. As far as I know, these images remain so until freshly uploaded. Never got an official answer from anyone on this though to date.

I can't stand this kind of thing. I want to spend my time designing and optimizing for a standard size, and thats what I do. All my builds will be designed for the default SL Avatar size, give or take a foot or so, but at some point as creators we have to put our foot down and decide who we are designing for. Go ahead and be a minotaur. Just don't expect the human sized bed will fit you. Especially when it comes to avatar sitting positions, animations or even designs where you want a certain fluid look sitting in a vehicle cockpit or what have you. At least when designing for the Sims, there is only one scale to be concerned with. Of course on some items, adding modify works, but on complex builds like a house, everything from windows to even the scale of stairs will get all wonky on resize.

This is true. Probably one of the biggest beefs I have, and would probably ease me into including more mod permissions on future projects, is not having someone be able to change the title of the item to 'My Item', when it clearly is not. I mean, if we're not even allowed to advertise anything in-world to anyone, what else are we to do (besides just spend $L on random advertising schemes). Conversely, you could respect those who put in the time and effort in not only first learning the skills needed to create the 3D items that you take for granted, and also respect them as artists, instead of feeling self-entitled to other people's work on your terms. Without creators, there'd be no content for you to proclaim your self-entitled rights to. Not saying that those who would imply creators of original works are self-entitled, but I have a strong feeling some might be

OBS is more than adequate, and you should spend some time exploring the OBS Options and Settings, where you can record at different resolutions, fps and even a variety of formats to encode to, including MKV. Although it is mainly used to stream online, I have used it to record videos of all sorts for my projects and can record to a local drive with it.

I'm sorry Charlotte, but the keyworld listings are abused so much, that if you were to even try to combat and report each listing that does so, your finger will break off. I doubt SL could improve their search engine, but needs to work more like Google does currently, where the content of the product has to actually match the keywords used, or to abandon keywords altogether - as even Google realizes that are an abused method and therefore an invalid search mechanic.

My free items are gifts back to SL'ers for giving me TRULY free gifts when I joined SL, and some items also function as examples of my work which leads to other models based on it, so it effectively becomes a DEMO that they can keep and use. Kind of like a loss leader... If you like this free item, you may want to consider looking at this advanced item in the same genre..

Could I mitigate this with a very informative video that may include a walk through, instructions and demonstration of the item? Not sure that after I upload some more complicated items that demo items would even help, when a video might be much better.

Who cares why? If it's not a freebie, don't advertise it as such. All my items marked free or freebie ARE free. No exceptions. If you want to gift someone the item, send them the marketplace url to them inworld, and thanks for advertising the item for me, I appreciate it.