Nika Talaj

Nice job! I like that you've accentuated the basic architecture of the windlass (? I can never keep the boat names straight) by making the upper level so light and airy, and the lower level more man cave-ish. Is that a drafting table I spy in the lower right? And I really love your using that big neon bulb light 'sculpture' to fill the upper reaches of that space, very bold!

Your statistics are a little flawed, I think. Rolling for a new home is a stochastic process: regardless of how many rolls you do, EACH ROLL has the same chance of rolling a 6. During a release, the limit on homes you can claim is imposed by how many browsers of different brands you can refresh simultaneously, not by how many avies you have. The reason to have more than two premium accounts free at any one time is indeed to get more rolls, more rolls during the day, because there's a limit to how many homes you can claim & abandon per day. So I suppose if you have 10 premium avatars who each have 1 'claim' left on their account, you can end up with 5 homes at the end of a release - as soon as you claim a home, you log in a different avie to the land page and keep trying. I used to do that with 2 avatars on one computer when the pickle was releasing. I wasn't able to be online much during that time, so I missed most releases, and made the most of those that occurred while I was watching. You can actually abandon parcels and try again during a release; one time I claimed 5 different homes within a release using 2 avies and 2 browsers. Just gotta have both avies inworld (with 32m draw distance, Show Friends Only etc.), and be nimble. The other, more common reason to have more than one or two accounts is so you can hold onto more than one home at a time. This is where resentment sets in, I think. Pointing out how the system works does not make people seem envious and petty. You just did so, and no one is calling you envious for doing so. Insulting other people by saying that they are greedy, that their entire society is motivated by greed, that the only reason they claim multiple homes is to make others feel bad ... as you have done ... that is what sparks suspicion that your motivation is simple envy. I really don't think anyone bothers to claim multiple homes just to make other faceless strangers feel bad. And I really hesitate to categorize their motivation as 'greed', when a disorder such as hoarding could easily be in play . It could also be the case that some people have a lot of time to spend in SL, can enjoy a few homes at once, and have a few hundred $s available to purchase multiple accounts. Or that they have little time to spend in SL, don't enjoy playing GOH over and over, and want to take their time decorating one home of each style. Everyone has their own motivations, and reducing all those reasons to "greed" is going to make you feel that you're surrounded by evil schemers. Instead of by a diverse group of people with diverse motivations, which I think is closer to the truth.

Vic on land page

Yes, I think it would, because it's intended just to for shopping. For me, it's a matter of purpose. OTOH, the purpose of an art gallery is not to give things away, it is to create a nice outing for people who like to see art. Usually the venue & the way in which it is displayed is as important as the art itself. If some of the art is also given away, I sure wouldn't AR it. So if someone creates a place that presents itself as Maddy's Gift Shop where everything is free, or puts out a gacha yard sale where everything is free, the commerce is the POINT, so I'd be a little frowny. As in everything requiring a judgement call, it's easy to come up with cases that are headscratchers. What if someone gets a log home right next to the lighthouse the moles just put on Logland's south coast, and decides to make it an RP visitor's center? One room could easily house a 'gift shop', with Belli maps, postcards you can put a message on and deposit in a "mailbox" to send to another avatar, a faux history of the lighthouse, and linen towels with a drawing of the lighthouse on them ... all free. To me, that would be good RP fun, and I would get frowny if folks objected to it. [This occurred to me because I've often thought the little buildings that are usually part of the moles' lighthouses should be a special kind of Belli home to be claimed, or maybe offered for lease at RFL.]

Beautiful photos! And I agree with her, back in the spring I would never have guessed that they'd still have 116 Log Home regions unreleased in September.

trad!

As you say, the "Object Entry" setting does not affect vehicles, so if you are riding anything through a parcel with "object entry" off, it should be no problem. I haven't observed any 'object entry' issues. Similarly, if you bring a vehicle through a parcel that has no free LI (pretty common occurence in Belli!) I don't believe there will be any issue so long as you stay in the vehicle. Now, if you are entering a region that has reached the limit of avatars that can be in it, you won't be allowed in, but you will see get a message from the system (if your screen isn't completely full of HUDs and dialog boxes!). That is extremely rare in Belli. Another issue that you can see if you're unlucky is if you are crossing into a region and have a very bad crossing, you will sometimes be momentarily unseated from your vehicle -- not just visually, sometimes the chair you are sitting on will actually get an event indicating that you have stood up, and another evemt when the region reseats you. If you are unseated for long enough and the land you're over has 'object entry' off, your vehicle will poof before the region reseats you. Do you get any message in chat when you encounter these parcels? I'm wondering if someone has a security orb setup illegally.

Dozens of premium alts??? How many people do you think have dozens, or even 1 dozen, premium alts? One of the two of us has a misconception about the scale of this issue, usagihara! And why are last names suddenly part of this discussion? Let's not confuse people, you do not need a last name to get a Belli home.

The pace of LogLand development recently has really picked up, and I found myself wondering if that indicates that the Stilt home release might happen sometime during this fall. tl;dr version: personally, I'd be surprised if it happens before the end of the year. Seems to me the moles could spend all of the fall finishing LogLand if need be, particularly since some of this team may be called upon to contribute to gridwide events this fall. I think the last public update on Cloud Uplift was an Aug. 4th labgab, where Oz hazarded a date of the end of 2020 for completion. I didn't get the impression that was cast in stone, but it is rare for an engineering team to pull in a date as completion nears. It would be miraculous to do so in such stressful RL times. I suppose it's not impossible that some new cloud-based regions will appear before Uplilft completion, but new theme releases are usually hundreds of regions, and I haven't heard that Patch has dropped the slightest hint about any theme release before Uplift is done. Which makes sense. It's nice to see Uplift spawning improvements like the Whoosh! region crossings before completion. I count 116 LogLand SSPE regions remaining at this moment. Lets say roughly 20 of those will be purely recreational regions with no housing, and maybe 20 more of them might be completely done (totally winging it here), only final QA and naming remaining. So as a guess, that would leave about 76 residential regions still needing work A lot of them are coastal or railroad regions, which cuts down on the number of homes. And camming out on the map, you can see that many of them already have parcels placed. Still, 76 regions is a lot of work. Of course many recreational regions still need work too. Many of the newer LogLand regions are simply beautiful, and all are hand-built, no clones. Hoppers who like cabins should be busy in the coming months! And what of the new themes? Up north in the old SSP area, this morning I see one person in the pink SSP1501-1551 area, and one person in the single hot pink region, SSPMBC. (More Better Campers? Mole Building Competition?) I've never noticed anyone working on the large land-textured area SSP2001-SSP2040, but tbh I haven't been checking much the last few months.

One of the delights of Belli for me is that my tastes change over time playing GOH, as I experience more places. I got busy RL and forgot to downgrade Nika, and now she's premium for another year, Grr! But of course that means I have someone to hop after a spell without, and she soon landed a boat which isn't an ideal parcel. But the owner graciously stayed around to welcome her, expressed hope that she would enjoy it and then left, so I didn't feel like I could just dump it lol. It's centrally located on a pretty busy channel, attached to an atoll, other houseboats, Vics and Trads in <300m sight, no lighthouse, neighbors on both sides (though offset). Doesn't sound great, does it? I've let go so many "better" houseboats! But the neighbors have light furnishings and aren't around, the region has half as many homes as usual, there's an unencumbered long water view down the channel, it's right on big water, not far from a big park, and having all that varied landscape in view when you bump up your DD is kinda neat. You feel part of something, and there aren't many houseboats available to choose from anyway, so I began to furnish it rather enthusiastically. In Logland, my preferences are different too. i was joking around in the SSP thread about highly desirable ocean view cabins, but actually I prefer the foresty feel of mountainous inland landscapes there. We have one tucked into a hill overlooking a lake with a tall-peaked island, so calm and beautiful, some of you came there to get fireflies. We only meant to keep one cabin, but my partner also has a really interesting one that isn't fully built out yet. His Grand View looks out over a railroad track bed, and behind the track is a long 'mountain' range heading off diagonally for a few regions, bordering a large plain that will doubtless fill with homes. The ocean is on the other side of those hills. The back of the parcel has exactly the opposite feel - tucked into a cute little dell on a stream, kinda private. We cannot get ourselves to abandon that yet, we're so curious about how it will eventually 'feel'. Are we selfish to keep these, and a few others? We do go to them and enjoy them, conscious that we are lucky to be able to afford a few 'homes'. As you see, we often find ourselves liking parcels that not everyone would like. We do not feel like selfish monsters ... but even if others feel we are, we probably will continue to simply enjoy our homes, until we tire of each and let it swim away.

And most Belli homes that show up on the land page are not announced in that thread, at this time you just have to keep on trying. The Lindens also occasionally release a new region. Those have all been Victorians lately, but soon there will be new releases of Log Homes as well.

Nope, neither mine nor the Lindens'. They are particles (note that they disappear if you turn particles off). Particles are 'sprites', that is, rendered textures that have no physical presence in the world. The texture is always oriented toward your camera, so you see it fully no matter where you're looking from. LL has given particles the ability to respond to the environment (they can blow in the wind and bounce off the ground), but since LL did not gift their fireflies with these abilities, I didn't either. That may make them very lightweight as far as your client's rendering engine is concerned As opposed to particles, rezzing a new object is one of the more costly things a simulator can spend time doing. That's why temp-rez is such a beast.

Oh yah! The blue one in this pic shall henceforth be known as "Nika's House"! (Actually, I don't have any premium avies free, and don't plan to until Stilt Homes. But ....) You can just barely see Abnor's car in the pic by the dock, but he was nowhere in evidence. It seems likely that a stairway and path will appear going from the dock up to the lighthouse, of course. If you look really closely, you can see that the rocks are flattened a bit between the elbow of the path and Nika's House, hooray! (Actually, if it were a little more isolated it would be a great house to auction for RFL. I think it's situated on the lot so that a Grand View's front windows can look out onto whatever will be in the red circle.) Note the blue patches in the water next to the dock and on the other side of the lighthouse. These are called "waterway spacers", and I see how they make sense around the dock. The one beyond the lighthouse is right up against the region border across from a very sheer cliff, and has me wondering. Meanwhile, elsewhere @Squeaky Mole is continuing to push on with laying rail track, now well into SSPE1461. And at the end of the line down in SSPE1457, some log homes will have lively views with a new station! Last but certainly not least, if you were wondering where @Abnor Mole got to, at this moment he is making some adjustments to a certain hideout, it appears. He's looking considerably more buff than usual!

Just to be clear, the owners do not set them temp-rez. The sellers of the pets set them that way (and the one's I've encountered are nomod). You are right, I don't think mesh LI has ever been affected by setting it temp-rez. And at this point, it appears that you are also right in that animesh LI (animesh uses higher-cost calculations than static mesh) are not affected by setting an animesh object temp-rez! But ...... I'm quite sure it was not always that way, and it is pretty clear to me that others feel the same. Let me explain. A while after animesh went live on the grid, I went to an animal manufacturer's region. At that time, they were selling a small number of nice-looking animesh animals, and in the box came a regular version (~30LI) AND a temp-rez version (3-4LI). I was rather put off by this, and didn't buy. The maker has become more aware of the problems with temp-rez, because they no longer sell fully temp-rez versions. However, they do sell "hybrid" versions - the animal can be set to occasionally go temp-rez to run a cycle of full animesh motion. Then it switches back to regular mesh. They now very clearly tell their customers in the product descriptions that temp-rez can degrade region performance, and recommend that "Hybrid" animals not be used in busy regions. They created this hybrid mode in the belief that temp-rez animesh LI is simply based on the mesh LI, avoiding the higher cost animesh LI calculations. Here's a portion of a current marketplace listing. They go on to state, as a Con, the region performance impacts. BUT ... I went to their region this morning to check, and when these hybrids go temp-rez, their LI is now 30-40LI!! So, using this method no longer has any benefit at all. I'll let them know. I think it shouldn't impact their business much because few of their products use hybrid mode, and their models are still very good. I apologize for not checking this out again before posting. Re: my neighbor's plant pets: On close examination, it appears that portions of my neighbor's plants are made of simple prims that are temp-rez, and portions are mesh. I am puzzled as to why the maker bothers, perhaps using low-LI mesh to do the 'growing' and blooming was too difficult, but indeed their website states "Our plants are both beautifully detailed and low-prim as they are temporary rezzed above their pots." Maybe these are older products. The region has fewer than usual homes, due to being half water. I still will not be reporting my neighbor, but if you want a LM, Quartz, I'll drop it off inworld.

OK, good, thanks. I will quietly look forward to LL discussing this internally and some sort of policy emerging down the pike And understand, I would like nothing better than learning how to assess the impact of temp-rezzing on a particular region or parcel that I don't own; but I'm a nerd. I find myself wondering if that's a process that could be automated? It doesn't make sense to assume that we're ALL nerds capable of and/or interested in analyzing region performance, even so much as looking for temp-rezzing objects.

And you have the ability to stop merchants from making money by breaking your grid.

So it's the responsibility of the observer to determine the degree to which a region is impacted? (er, we don't have the tools to do that) The makers of these are engaging in an exploit, to subvert animesh LI rules. Via their unaware customers, these makers are damaging the performance of regions grid-wide. Do you want the names of a couple of them? Aren't they the people who should be reported? THIS IS AN EXPLOIT. Shouldn't the sale of such products be curtailed?

Some animesh pet makers are setting their creations to temp-rez to keep them low LI (there's a 15 LI minimum for rezzed animesh). This makes them attractive to unaware users in Belli, and since temp-rez items are against covenant here, they can be reported. The makers are not shy about this - some state it proudly on the marketplace! And some of these products are really neat. Who doesn't want a plant that actually grows when you tend it? Some of these, but by no means all, are breedable as well. The orange boxes here are temp-rez items surrounding a boat I picked up. * The clump of 4 temp-rez items are plant pets owned by what appears to me to be a genuine new SL user (not an alt). I don't think they're using them as breeding stock. So I'm hesitant to report this person, whom I think means no harm, and reluctant to be the bad guy who tries to explain temp-rez to a newbie. In this case I'll wait to see if she, or perhaps I, move on. Meanwhile, region performance suffers a bit. Really, the person who should be reported is the maker! These pest products have been around for quite some time now. Does anyone (say, @Patch Linden ) know if LL is planning to do anything about all these popular products being set to temp-rez by default? ------------------------------------------------- * If you don't know how I got this pic, I did it in Firestorm. I think SL's viewer has the same capability, tho. Right-click on your minimap and choose "show". You'll see "temporary" as one of the options, and they will show as orange boxes. Here's another handy temp-rez detection trick. Bring up Area Search, hit "Search" without entering any search text, and it will list every nearby object. Go to the "Filter" tab and set it up like this. Hit Apply, and voila, you have a list of just the nearby temp-rez objects. Note that objects will 'blink' onto and out of the list as they de-rez and rez again. Sigh.

It's their special messaging system. One of my alts was in early this morning, and it showed up looking sort of like a toast in the lower right corner of my screen, which happens to be where notices show up for me. I just logged in myself and didn't see anything; I assume it will get around to re-sending to those who missed it, sometime when they stay logged in for a while, similar to CasperVend gift deliveries? Why am I typing? Quartz is in this thread, and I'm pretty sure he knows ALLLL about it! *slinks away* Hey, Lil! I answered your question! Now give me your houseboat 🙃

RAILROAD COMING TO LOG HOMES! @Squeaky Mole is laying railroad track over Abnor's railbed in Logland! So far in 3 regions. SSPE1460 (right where the rail enters LogLand from the Hawkesblood Victorian region), 59 and 58.

The moles continue their buildout of LogLand's south coast. They have turned the SE corner and are beginning to develop up the east coast. After 3 superb recreational areas, we see this. Correct me if wrong, but I think the 4 coastal cabins in SSPE1152 will be the only log cabins in existence with unobstructed ocean views, as well as ocean water in-region (making it possible to rez a boat on any parcel in the region and "jump" it to the open ocean). They are high on a cliff, but that doesn't matter when jumping a boat. There are no hills obstructing the water views. So far it is just open ocean (just a fringe of actual water, then void regions), but who knows what may eventually appear off-shore! As the moles continue up LogLand's east coast, there will be many opportunities for similar regions.

If you just want to play/haul, and you don't need to be a freight provider, most folks start out (and many just stay with) the free version of the GTFO hud. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/GTFO-Game-Kit-FREE-DEMO-addwear-touch/15184491 Like the listing says, join the group and you'll get started up pretty quick, whatever level you want to play at.

Interesting. You know, it just struck me that I don't think Belli roads have object entry on. I know the train tracks don't. That would be a problem for KFM. SL vehicles are exempt from object entry limitations, but KFM vehicles cannot have physics enabled, so they are not truly 'vehicles'. They are more like moving chairs. Very low lag, but cannot go in places where object entry is not permitted. I did it over water, and like the Fairgrounds ferry, had no problem. Physics is wonderful; SL's physics engine automagically smooths out all motion for you. KFM tours can seem jerky, because while there is a calculated smoothing between hitting waypoints, there are no vehicle-specific dynamics. Your KFM boat doesn't heel unless you specifically position it to! But physics is costly to SL's simulators.

Thank you, the scripts are here. It is a very full-featured system, with the option to use either Keyframed or physical motion. If the mainland pods seem to be phantom, they are probably using Keyframed motion, which is VERY low-lag. KFM vehicles will go right through obstructing objects, but will collide with land or avatars. Recovering from that can be tricky, from a scripting perspective. But the land in Belli never changes, so I have no clue what the problem would be. I have used my own KFM tour system (mostly over water) in Belli between a couple of far-flung properties we had, and encountered no particular trouble with region crossings etc.. Perhaps it's something about the roads in Belli? Her system accommodates rez-on-demand, and you can use any object as the vehicle. The pods of course are tiny LI, which helps with region crossings. She also offers a boat (rowboat? I didn't go look), balloon, or cable car. If automatic tours are used, I'd say no more often than twice an hour. Remember, once rezzed they travel their route so are visible for a long time. Belli homes face RIGHT onto the streets, unlike most mainland properties. I wouldn't want to live on a road where a (nearly always empty) tour vehicle goes by every 15 minutes. Kinda like living on a bus route RL. OTOH, If they were just on demand, I'd generally be really happy to see one, because it would probably have someone in it whom I could greet!

That's odd. If these scripts are actually for vehicles using physics, I suppose there could be some problem , but ... if they are physical, having them run all the time would be terribly laggy, i would think.