Patricia Mattercaster

Make Battle Critters, a game where you breed the perfect fighting cutesy animals. They look like cute kitty kats with armor, but they are vampire kitties and werewolf kitties. People go to your sim only and adopt a young Battle Critter animal for free, and get signed up in the Monthly Battle Critter Champioship Extravaganza, where they can win cash prizes. But to stand a chance they have to buy weapons and armor for their animals, so it can hunt for food in your sim. It needs to hunt daily, using the hud, otherwise it runs out of experience points and ultimately dies. The weapons and armor gives the critters more power so it will hunt better (more efficiently) and defend better against other critters. Hunting and battles give the critter experience points. But, don't forget, weapons and healing potions are limited to they will have to use strategy in their battles. To participate in the Championship Extravaganza people have to pay 500L, but it's worth it cause the cash prize is big. The championship has different leagues for low, medium and high powered critters. The Battle Critter that does worst gets fed to the Giant Toad God in the Pit of Disaster (which can be bought separately). The champion Battle Critter gets the options to Retire (so it won't need to be fed and will just become a normal pet that can't enter into anymore champioships, unless reactivated by feeding it the Elixir of Eos (sold separately)), be sold to the highest bidder (but you get a cut of the sale) or continue being a battle critter needing to be fed and trained and so on. If the person chooses to retire they get less prize money tho The Champioships must have live commentary and be either streamed, or recorded for youtube, so more people can come to SL and join your Battle Critters Empire. Soon Mattel will want to buy the toy rights, and Dreamworks will make the Battle Critters Movie. It's gold i tell you

Hi. Yes, people rent stores close to clubs under the impression that traffic from a club is more or less traffic to the store, but this is false in my opinion since most people rarely venture outside of the club. The club build is not optimized for store integration because people build malls and stores as they would in RL. But... Avatar movement is not anything like rl (unless you're Nightcrawler from the xmen). So the problem is people dont walk outside of the club, period. This is from my experience anyway, i dont have any statistical data to support my statement...but, yeah, they stay in the club. So, how do we get the avatar to walk outside of the club? NO, the question is how do we integrate club and mall into one entity that doesnt look like a huge box with products inside and a dj booth in the middle. People like to browse, thats why the marketplace is preferred -one click and you get a big selection. Inworld shopping should be similar: People should be able to cam inside the confines of the club and browse in such an easy manner too, with neat, organized sample products sitting on relevant, aesthetically adequate displays integrated into the club build (not in big ugly boxes). In the club people usually stay in one place (so they wont bump into other people -a big issue in sl), so they choose to cam and do so within the realms of the club (because of graphical limitations of their PC they choose low draw distance). So, yes, imho club and store should become one, because that's where the avatar cam will gravitate -inside the 64m sphere of the club. I think most people's Avatar Cam Gravitation Sphere (ACGS, lol) is within 64m. So, yup, a club should promote the stores, but not by being in people's face about it. The club could, and should, very well offer stores the possibility to display animated ads on the walls of the club. The dj and hostesses could wear outfits from the stores, and casually suggest where they got them from. The Club contests could include prizes from the shops. More clubs should be doing this already. The club could host weekly release parties/events that feature whatever the stores are launching that week. Discount events, Fashion shows with a dj playing quick snippets of songs to coincide with models walking into the club wearing new products. Stores should supply DJs with custom mp3 ads that the dj can play between songs... i havent seen anybody doing that in clubs!! Why not have the dj and hostess wear a box with an ad over their head... i mean people are so fond of floating text, why not have ads on that too? Has anyone tried this? I think it's pretty safe to say clubs and stores live in a kind of symbiosis, regardless if club owners do or do not realize it. Stores should put ads for the club inside the boxes too. I think it's called cross promotion? Specially now that people barely have a reason to go shopping inworlds anymore, such a thing is imperative -stores should put ads, for current events in the clubs, in the boxes they sell in the marketplace. That brings me to another issue: If the marketplace gave the merchant the option to update and attach things like notecards and LMs to her/his products in an easy manner (one or 2 clicks for all a merchants boxes, ideally), people would be more open to promote inworld locations such as clubs, because, let's face it, nobody wants to update the LM in a 100 different product boxes twice a week. It's insanely time consuming and not a viable marketing tool for the ever changing and moving SL world. The marketplace is here to stay, and i don't think it's smart to look at it in a inworld vs marketplace way. I think both can coexist and actually help inworld economy greatly, because anyone even without an SL account can browse the marketplace to some extent. Maybe LL should look into promoting SL in a different manner in facebook... bring people in not by promoting the chance to be an elephant avatar or an orc, but by promoting the shiny, cool things the avatar can get on the marketplace (and show off in a social environment inworld). People like buying nice things, and if LL can market the idea of buying nice stuff for your avatar as an accomplishment, instead of focusing the marketing on the avatar itself, well I think that would bring more people to SL (by such people i mean those that like to play those myriad facebook games where they earn points). LL, promote that instead, let the inworld brands, and people's natural desire for status, boost the SL brand. But i digress... Currently LL needs to implement an easier way to update box content in the marketplace, because inworld economy would benefit greatly and avatar logetivity too. Imagine a noob comes to sl, buys some stuff on the marketplace and gets an invitation to a current event or party in the box. This solves 2 problems, the noob gets his products easily, say a vampire outfit, and also 1) gets the option to visit a perhaps similarly themed vampire club, or roleplay environment motivating that person to stay in sl, and 2) boosts club/store awareness putting a smile on everybody. The merchant and club owner would be playing a key role in the integration of all newbies into the SL world, taking some of that role from LLs hands -and perhaps this is the way it should be, because the noob would meet likeminded people faster in a club/roleplay environment that caters to the noob's interests. Sure, these ideas may seem idiotic to some extent (they don't seem so to me), but there really needs to be more emphasis on creating a viable, beneficial club/stores/marketplace relationship. In a sea of many dumb ideas theres probably a good one that can be implemented by the right person? So i'd welcome more people to give ideas Sorry for wall of text, but this topic interests me a lot.

i've had temp textures last about a week

brilliant idea but it guess your clients would have to be logged into their sl account in some way or another for the lindens to be deducted when they purchase the items for sale. Unless the sl marketplace had an official task-bar kinda thingie, so you could be logged in while surfing on other sites and buying stuff from there using lindens.

I was so happy when i found out they're trying to improve buying linden dollars from outside the USA. I hope they also make it easier for people to change their linden dollars into local currency. I'm in Chile... so exchanging my linden dollars i earn at my store into chilean pesos could be a lot easier (right now i have no way of getting them transformed into chilean pesos). Imagine, i could probably buy one or two packs of cookies with those profits!

yes i agree, i love the new signup page! great great move on behalf of linden. made me want to play golden axe for some reason...

I'm going to start making prim attachments using the smallest shape i can find, perhaps a child shape, this way i'll know the prims will scale down to fit the smallest avatar. But when i box the items for sale i will first adjust the prim attachments to a medium shape. This is more convenient for customers i think, something that will fit most without hassle.

Is that some daft punk i hear?

This is where i keep my box, it's 1L/day/prim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sunrise%20Park%20Island/234/34/2000

yes, he sells them lol how convenient lol

When i price my items i look at other items by other creators. Usually they make nicer things, with better sculpty work and textures, so i try to be objective about it because i'm new at building sl content. It's a delicate line of trying to be humble but also not underpricing. Your work, time and love you put into the product has value. I also take into account the noobs who, like me, are usually broke and have to spend sad nights playing freeplay zyngo to get some lindens... I put myself in their shoes and think how i would feel paying X qty of lindens and receiving Y box. Thinking from the customers perspective is the way forward imho. Now, if your stuff is pro quality, then price according to the competition. Like the joker said, if you're good at something don't do it for free. If it's expensive, but really good quality, not even the noobs will shed a tear when they receive the box. Unless it's happy tears

It must be really horrible, i remember how the earth shook under my feet here in chile - it was unreal, like the laws of physics had changed. I imagined that the world was coming to an end, i looked up waiting to see an asteroid strike us or something. It was surreal, i can't explain in words, you feel helpless. Now i think about Japan... omg it was even more severe, higher richter scale even. It's truly scary, and i pray for all humans that we do not have to suffer like this. And now the reactors, radioactivity ((( i hope our poor japanese brothers and sisters don't have to suffer more

Yes, the more i think of it the more angry i get. We have enough lag in the sim as it is. Good thing i have the forums to ask about this

Sorry if this has been mentioned, and i hope it's not a dumb idea... but maybe you could lower the price of your items to 0 or 1L before buying them to test the items? i guess it would be a pain to do that with lots of items, but it would be cheaper in the long run. Duh i realized i should have done that myself when i tested an item some days ago. I also like to agree with the residents saying you should have backup magic boxes in other sims too. There are nice places that charge 2 or more lindens/day for just hosting the box.

It's so nice of you to do this, wow it's such a good thing there are people like you in this world

Wheeew! ok, thank you very much, all of you for answering! i was so worried... thoughts of being banned for going against TOS were racing through my mind.

Sorry if this doesnt belong here, but i have an urgent question regarding selling stuff inworld. I was told by a land owner that it's against TOS to sell things in-world without a "pay script" or "vendor script" in the box with the items i'm selling. It was suggested i get some type of vendor. Is this true? Am i obligated to put some kind of vendor script in the boxes i sell? Until now i havent put any scripts in my boxes (i sell clothes btw). Have i been doing something against TOS all this time?! :( please somebody let me know about this.

Yes, the marketplace takes a cut even if you're buying your own items Sucks, specially for small stores like mine. The marketplace used to have a test delivery button, but it seems to be gone.

Hi, i have a small store and recently got some hippo vendors. I made some 25% comission vendors to distribute among those that are interested in rezzing them on their lands. There are 3 kinds of vendors, one for the female prisoner outfits, another for casual clothes/world war 2 roleplay, and finally one for adult sci-fi outfits. Perhaps you own a prison, or a sci-fi sim and would like to rez a comission vendor as a way to support your sim? If you are interested, send me an IM (patricia mattercaster), or notecard is safer, and i'll send you a vendor ASAP.

Please limit threads, the spam is ruining the forum! I love these forums, don't let them be ruined please.

Suspiria (awesome name btw), "Killing off" creativity is a bit harsh isn't it? My guess is that it's just a way to keep down forum spam. I'd prefer more Lindens are dedicated to improving the viewer, instead of cleaning up the forums. Perhaps what this website needs is a kind of chat app running on the side so that all us people can join there and flame eachother to our little hearts' content. It would be easier to chat, flame and ban spammers. Why, you could even be a moderator. I do agree tho, 2 posts (or is it threads) is way too limiting, maybe 4 posts per day would be better?

The more Facebook and Twitter apps become integrated with secondlife, the easier it will be for users to flow from one platform to the next. Secondlife can only benefit from an increasing user base, and so will content creators. Facebookers will require a simpler GUI, and it wouldn't be dumb for Linden to create a simpler, non-builder's viewer, for people who just want to chat and look pretty. Maybe a brower app with basic chat, tp and appearance editor. Builders can have another more complex viewer with some sort of mesh creation tool plus the prim stuff. Why one viewer for all? I think Linden has been shooting itself in the foot by trying to serve 2 kinds of customers with the same dish... Just make a facebook app, with a simple 2D representation of an avatar. Let the facebookers click the colorful icons and make their little 2D recreation of themselves.. then the app shows them a finished 3D approximation of what they just created. Then pop up the message: Bingo, now you're just one click away from joining the global entertainment universe that is SL. My oh, so humble, advice is: Better, Faster, Colorful and Intuitive non-builder viewer for the facebookers. Think about it, these people want something simple and fast. It's like going clubbing -they don't want to learn what it takes to master the record they're dancing to, or what it took to brew their beer or whatever... they just want fun, and fast. Noob island and all that is just horrible, slow and off putting... not everybody wants to sit and learn about prims and all that. They don't want a doctorate about virtual worlds!! They wanna have fun after getting home from a hard day at work. Ok, nuff said about that. Oh, and the fact that people complain about wanting their profiles kept private is ridiculous. Guys... if you want to have privacy don't put stuff on your profiles in the first place. People in SL can be just as creepy, if not more so than those "pesky" facebookers. Oooh my profile is gonna be liked on facebook... jeez get over yourselves.

Welcome to SL!! Glad to see you like building stuff. The more you use the program to build, and maybe even make a store for yourself, visit some clubs, you will see what needs improvement. Maybe make an alt and work inworld.