Wulfie Reanimator

Okay, clearly there's some kind of barrier between us. I'm not calling anyone or anyone's opinions dumb. Behavior. How you act based on your opinion. I'm sorry I've used the word dumb and you know I'm sorry because I haven't used it since the first time. I don't know of any phrase that could be more light-weight without cycling back to being condescending. This'll be the first time I'll pull my "English is not my first language" card. Are you going to tell Luna the same thing after she barges in and dismissed me for my opinion? It's okay to feel upset. I'm not against it. I've never argued about feelings. Be upset and show it. But can I say the same thing Luna did? I don't like doomsayers or scaremongering. People who act as if the whole world (SL/LL) is ending because of personal experiences or opinions. If somebody comes here with concrete numbers and says "look, the economy is actually in a downward spiral," there's nothing I can say. I might question it, as I did Coffee's anecdote, but I'm actually open-minded even if the discussion in this particular thread doesn't really reflect it. The increased fee also does affect me. I'm hit just as hard as everybody else, but -- like Coffee, who is a real merchant -- I don't rely on it. I've been here for 10 years too, I'm a merchant making roughly 8500 L$ (30 USD!) per month between my two accounts. My opinion is just "I'm okay with it," but for some reason that's not a valid opinion because "I'm not a real merchant" because either "I don't make enough money" according to @Rya Nitely or "I don't spend enough time" according to @Luna Bliss. I don't agree with those criteria and in my opinion they are close-minded and dismissive of small creators.

If that's the case then I'm happy to hear it from her and learn more about her insights. I don't know her brand, that account's store is all I can go by or do you think I'm clairvoyant? (I don't.) I haven't even been here for a whole page, and you're already trying to kick me out? I'm literally going out of my way to be as general and non-demeaning as possible but everybody who's quoted me so far (Except ChinRey, even if we disagree on some points) seems really worked up about me talking about statistics, to the point of direct insults at me. What gives? (Edit: I guess I'm on a new page now...) I feel like all of you are missing the context in which I'm speaking. I'm not talking about any one individual. Anecdotal experiences (such as Coffee's supposed bigger store) are subject to way too many variables. When we take a step back and look at things at the macro-scale (not the furry thing), we'll see more general behavior which we can't see when we focus on the tiniest details -- individuals. How do you explain a drop in sales when nothing has changed in your store? How do you explain an increase in sales when you increase your prices? How do you define the spending culture within Second Life? Do you ask your friends? You can't answer these questions if you only look at a bubble. There's stuff outside the bubble that still affects it.

She replied to me. Maybe you should let her speak for herself? She can handle a conversation. I also have a store through an alt as well. It made 27'650 L$ this year, 2300 L$ average. 7 listings, 6 of them 50L and one 100L. I'm just as real of a merchant as she is.

Even if I believe that at face value (and I have no particular reason not to), you have a very small store and (I imagine) small target audience as well. It's hard to definitely correlate why your sales have dropped (could be the new price, could be the season, could be popularity of home types, some LL algorithm, etc.), and I think we can agree that "tanked" is a fairly subjective term. If you're getting 50 sales a month (averaged from the past couple months) and you drop to 40, it's a bit inconclusive compared to going from 1000 average to 800. If your sales have only tanked for a month, there's no real conclusions to make because the sample size (products and maybe sales) and time frame is very small. There could just be some confirmation bias at play, because like you said, increasing your prices is scary because if people don't like the new prices and you have no customers, what are you going to do? Going back might not bring them back. So because you have these fears in the back of your mind, you perceive any drop in sales to be proof that you were right to be worried.

I'm sorry but there are lots of good reasons to do that. Maybe not in this case since it doesn't really affect others, but I also haven't called anyone dumb; only specific behavior, which is different. You're the one who's mischaracterising me by saying I have no empathy, which I do, but only when I'm talking on a personal level. This is "bigger picture stuff." The grief/death was an analogy. "Grieving a death" = "This fricking sucks, I'm no longer able to operate full-time on SL. LL sucks and it's their fault." "Telling everybody we're all going to die" = "LL is disincentivising creators. Who knows when they'll stop? No one can keep going at this rate and soon there'll be no creators." One of these I'm completely empathetic to, and wouldn't even think to argue. The other is doomsay. What I meant was "if the increased fees mean that you would rather choose to have another job because it pays more, and only create SL content as a hobby, that's fine and I don't blame you." On the other hand, this could impact me even if I made 0 L$ per year. If all the prices on MP went up by 7.5% (or even 15%) tomorrow (because the creators want to offset the cost), I wouldn't bat an eye. I would keep buying the stuff I like because I think it's only fair for creators to raise their prices if they want and I'll support them if it's reasonable. (7.5% is.) I find it very weird that some think that increasing their prices a little bit would cause an even bigger drop in total revenue. Does it work the same the opposite way? What makes one think they've found the one Goldilocks zone for price, and why isn't it the same for everyone? What if a creator improves over time?

You're absolutely right, but that isn't mutually exclusive with the fact that having additional formal steps to account creation has an impact on the amount of people who end up staying on SL.

This is just a pure guess, but it could be the same reason why they removed last names altogether. It made it harder for new users to finish the sign-up process and integrate with SL. Coming up with a name is hard, especially when you already have an online alias but it isn't available. Coming up with two names is even harder. Changing last names to be picked from a preset list got rid of a thing called "overchoice," at least half of it. This didn't solve the problem though, because you still had to choose two names. If you didn't like any of the names available, you were stuck with a name you don't like and you're more likely to quit before you find reasons to stay. This is why the last name choice was eventually removed. Bonus rambling: As for the reason why Premium is required to change your name (instead of one fee of $50), it's a way of getting you to try Premium even if you've never had it before. If they wanted better optics, they could've just offered "one month of free Premium when you change your name," but that would've encouraged name changes, which LL specifically doesn't want to do. The target audience for name changes are people who are already invested in SL (not necessarily monetarily, but in such a way that they aren't going to be leaving anytime soon).

This... I'd pay twice the amount, but I'm also holding out hope that some specific last names make a return eventually. Until then I'll probably not change my name unless there's something clever to use.

Again, I've never said or implied you can't be unhappy about it. I'm responding directly to the dramatization of "everybody will quit and LL will go out of business because of this." Pay raise vs pay cut are very different things. Any permanent decrease in pay has the potential to put somebody who's "doing okay" into the "maybe danger zone" or close to it. There are also reasons why some people can't just look for another job. I'm aware of these exceptions, but I'm not talking about exceptions. I'm speaking in general, so anybody's personal situation and feelings are not what I'm talking about. I pay more than this in my weekly rent for my inworld shop - L$7500/week. And this is a saving of L$500 with Ebbe's 'making land cheaper' plan. So yes I also think land is expensive but he was going to distribute the money from merchants to land owners, that was the plan. So, there hasn't been a significant enough decrease for it to sift down to my rent. Why quote what I'm making and responding with what you're paying in rent? 🤔 I linked the pages that I used for my calculations. The Market Sell page shows the real numbers and includes the fee of selling lindens (3.5%), so of course I included it. If you want to suppose lower rates, feel free to do the recalculation yourself and post it here. I did not alter any rates because I'm pretty math dumb and didn't want to distort the amounts by making mistakes. Maybe you would be replaced, maybe you wouldn't. I don't mind either way. If your shift to tinkering means you're making the most of the money you could be earning to sustain yourself, I'd say that'd be a good decision for you. Certainly if most people stop producing work, it becomes much easier for others to even accidentally replace you if their rate of "just tinkering" is faster. But I don't like this emotional narrative that's being weaved. I wouldn't tell someone in physical pain or grieving a death to not do it. However if someone was having a mental breakdown and telling everybody that we're all going to die, I would slap some sense into them (as a figure of speech).

Kind of a spill-over for me from the other thread, but, what you listed is the same process that applies to many (if not most) other platforms where you sell individual assets or small groups of them.. except they take 30% or more for the same effort.

@Rya Nitely I promise it's not jealousy. Any money I make (~6000 L$ per month) is from 10% commissions from things I have scripted for other people. SL isn't my job and I don't want it to be. I don't need anybody to "shut up" either, my opinion is just as valid as yours or anybody else's. And my opinion is this: Scenario 1: For example, let's say people spend 1'000'000 L$ on your products on MP. The current Market Value for those lindens (259:1) is 3862.5 USD. LL takes 10% as MP fees, you get 900'000 L$. You Market Sell all of it. After fees, you have 3225.06 USD. You cash out. After LL's 5% fee, you get 3063.81 USD. Scenario 2: Let's back up a bit. What about before? Same initial scenario, people have spent 1'000'000 L$ on your products. LL takes 5% as MP fees, you get 950'000 L$. You Market Sell all of it. After fees, you have 3404.19 USD. You cash out. After LL's 2.5% fee, you get 3319.09 USD. That's a difference of about $250, when you're getting over $3000. Sure, losing $250 (or 7.5%) sucks and it doesn't take a genius to understand that, but it shouldn't be catastrophic. If SL was my full-time job and I was living paycheck-to-paycheck (or even 90% of my paycheck), I wouldn't sit on that knife's edge until I get cut. That would be too scary. I'm also sorry if me calling out dumb behavior offended anybody (maybe the wording wasn't as graceful as it could've been), but I stand by it, because of what I've just explained. (And to further clarify -- smart people make dumb decisions too. Me calling something dumb does not mean I'm calling the person dumb as a whole. That's what Tonk did.) I also understand that this is the biggest fee increase LL has made. The previous increases were only for processing, from ($1 flat to) 1.5% to 2.5%, which is literally a pittance at any scale. Now we're at 5% and Marketplace was increased for the first time in its history. I'm also expecting that the rate might still go up, and I will still be saying the same thing as I am now. Think ahead and be financially secure, as you should be. If you can't take another 2.5%, you should be looking at other options now, not later. That doesn't mean you need to stop now, but don't let yourself get caught off-guard. @ChinRey Was it okay for people to pay $300/mo for 256sqm of virtual land? We're at least down to $230/mo now, thanks to the shift in pricing. It's still a pretty ridiculous price at the face of it (ignoring the cost of CPU time), but I don't think that's very "fair" either.

That's not exactly true. You can do perfectly accurate ray tracing with LSL, for example an NPC is correctly displayed as a capsule, and spheres are perfectly smooth. See: But what raycast sees is not representative of how the engine handles certain objects in every case. For example, an avatar that is sitting on an object looks like quite a thick wall, but is actually much smaller if physical interactions are attempted. I think the standing capsule shape is also correct. But anyway, these shapes are hard-coded, there's no way to change them.

Pretending that there's doom and gloom because of raised fees (to 10%!) is really dumb, especially when the fees have been the same since the beginning. It's even dumber to say "without us, you're nothing" because business is always at least a two-way street. Without Linden Lab, you can't sell anything either. Then what? You both need each other on this platform. And as personal financial advice -- if your ability to support yourself is threatened by 5-15% increase in cost, maybe you shouldn't rely on that form of income. The money comes from us, not you or Linden Lab. Raising your prices because the cost of doing business has increased is a perfectly valid reason to do so. Go ahead. I'll pay that additional 5%. Linden Lab has more sources of income besides Second Life, especially now that Tilia is up and running. You as well compare Linden Lab's business model to Valve instead. Valve's main source of income is Steam, which is just a platform for others to sell their creations (not just games) on. Steam also takes a 30% cut from all sales.

Set the minimum price to 2 L$?

No, that image was created with scripted ray tracing.

Isn't it the definition of "selfish RP" to prevent others from flying because "humans can't fly?" 🤔

GTFO was interesting, it recently became available for purchase. Oh, not the same GTFO game?

Apparently, and it doesn't surprise me that somebody did it first. My function is based on very basic graphics-programming mathematics. The viewer uses basically the same calculation for displaying the HUD objects themselves. The math in that version is quite a bit more obscure, though.

To put it in simple terms, there are many different kinds of "lag." The term is ambiguous on its own. There's low framerate, there's delay in inputs/actions, there's slow/weak connection, etc. Some of it can be fixed by you, some of it can be fixed by LL, some of it can be your ISP's fault, and some of it can only be fixed by the people making stuff for SL.

All it actually "does" is convert a 3D coordinate to 2D screen space. The main purpose for this is to show something on the HUD that relates directly to something in-world. For example, here's a simple HUD that overlays prims onto avatars when they are within view. (I used a repeating sensor and looped through each avatar.) - https://giant.gfycat.com/RepentantKlutzyBoar.webm

"It's my ART"

It really depends on what your intention is. If you want to absolutely prevent an avatar from moving faster than X meters per Y time, create a "cage" that is slightly bigger than the avatar's hitbox and make it snap to the avatar's position every time the avatar touches the cage. This way, the avatar can kind of "push" the cage in the direction they want to go, but cannot go past it even if they have some kind of movement enhancers. I've only seen this approach in combat sims though, where oppressive tactics are kind of the norm. Another alternative for complete movement control is llMoveToTarget, where the time to reach some nearby position is long enough to be slow and smooth. This only really works on flat ground or for flying (and if the script is attached to the avatar), though. Detection of upward/downward slopes gets too fiddly with raycasting.

I'm like 30% sure I've posted something similar here before, but it's not in the past 10 pages at least... Here's a pretty simple function that takes any position in the world / region, and converts it to a useful 2D-position (relative to attachment point) that can be used on the HUD. vector World2HUD(vector region_pos) { vector cam_pos = llGetCameraPos(); rotation cam_rot = llGetCameraRot(); // Calculate the offset from camera to region_pos. // Positive X is the forward-distance to region_pos. // Y0 & Z0 are at the center of the screen. // +Y is left, +Z is up; when the HUD is at ZERO_ROTATION. vector relative = (region_pos - cam_pos) / cam_rot; vector hud; if (relative.x > 0) // Ahead of the camera { // "Perspective division" // Here, the forward-distance is used to divide the // two other components to "map" them to a lower dimension. (3D -> 2D) hud.y = relative.y / relative.x; hud.z = relative.z / relative.x; } return (hud * 0.87); // FOV ratio fix. ZERO_VECTOR if behind the camera. } An alternative calculation can be used to map the 2D coordinates so that +X is right and +Y is down (like it would be for OpenGL, etc.) hud.x = relative.y / -relative.x; hud.y = relative.z / -relative.x; Essentially, if you're going to use this function in a HUD attachment, make sure the HUD is attached to Center or Center 2 and not rotated. If you want to use the alternative calculation, the HUD must be rotated <0, 90, 270>. Changing the orientations is not terribly difficult if you edit your attachment and display the local coordinates, so that you can tell which way the axes go. Here is an example that tracks an avatar: default { state_entry() { llRequestPermissions(llGetOwner(), PERMISSION_TRACK_CAMERA); } touch_start(integer n) { list target_data = llGetObjectDetails(target, [OBJECT_POS]); vector target_pos = llList2Vector(target_data, 0); vector hud_pos = World2HUD(target_pos); llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(1, [PRIM_POS_LOCAL, hud_pos]); } }

I'm sure the situation has been explained to you, whether you acknowledged it or not. If LL's systems detect some kind of suspicious activity on an account, it can be locked while they investigate it. This could be (for example as you said) a sudden spike in spending from an account that hasn't been active for a good while, or big discrepancies in login locations, etc. The best things you can do is ask if there's a way for you to prove your identity, or just wait while they investigate.

I assume you mean the Marketplace? You're not guaranteed to have your ad show up immediately and for the whole duration of the subscription. At least it wouldn't make sense if that was the case, because there are lots of other merchants doing the same thing. Or maybe you're talking about something else.