Ingmann Design Group » First Land

A place for New Residents!

Noel — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:44:00 +0000

Tymmerie Thorne is a much more famous blogger then I am concerning Second Life, it’s worth reading her blog to see what she talks about, it’s quite a glimpse into the social life of a Second Life resident and how much we invest in this world. But what I wanted to talk about today is her new ‘academy’ for new residents called Starting Point. I’ve been accepted as a Helper into this group and I’m happy to share the accumulated knowledge of 4 years in world. (Even if it only fills a thimble.) If you know of someone you’ve always wanted to introduce to Second Life or you have been itching to try it yourself, hit the link on the left to sign up then look for Starting Point and join in the fun with some mentoring and availability of gracious helpers. Thanks to Tymmmerie for creating yet another grassroots way to help people, that’s what the spirit of Second Life has always been and I’m glad she hasn’t forgotten it.

Land Use

Noel — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:30:00 +0000

It’s always nice to see Second Life through new eyes. One of my long time friends is relatively new to our virtual world and so the questions make me think about how much there is to learn. One of the things that is essential to learn as a builder in Second Life is management of resources. What do I mean?

There are several resources you have to pay attention to, the first of which is size. But this is closely tied to prims. The amount of virtual land you have gives you your limit on the amount of prims you can host. It’s like paying for storage on a server. If you pay for a full sim, you can use all the resources of that sim as you see fit. If you pay for less you can have less ‘content’. Premium members get the ability to not pay extra monthly for their first 512 square meters on the mainland and it’s possible to live simply and well that way. However most people quickly expand to more. The limits on how many prims per parcel amount is here. Become familiar with it.

The third resource, which isn’t nearly as easy to keep track of or manage is script resources…. and that’s a whole nother post.

Dungeons & Things with Teeth…

Noel — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:55:00 +0000

Brochure: You need a quality place for certain things, and privacy to boot, both of which you can find in your own private dungeon skybox. This dungeon is gorgeously textured with one way windows, dark stone, a fireplace to keep you warm, and gold leafed columns that hint at the fine things going on out of reach of the ones subject to your will, the raised platform makes a perfect overlook to watch the goings on. Built in a low prim manner this is expertly textured with fine details yet the privacy one needs when using such spaces.

And now with every one of our skyboxes comes an amazing teleporter that requires no scripting and no notecards to configure, it’s extremely simple to set up and will serve you well. Made by Fnordian Furniture, whose items you can see at http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=225731

This was built as a private escape, made with the inspiration of a vampire friend whose name it honors.

This skybox is 20×20 and fits on a 1025 lot with plenty of room to spare. This requires a teleporter or landmark and has no doors. It takes 29 prims. I have other designs that will suit any lot size you have. Check my other items.

The Story: This one was fun, inspiration from a bunch of different people and work with a scripter for one of the great things I personally had a hand in concept and development. I kept getting requests for dungeons in my castles, and though they are easy to do I thought it might be nice to have one people could buy and install easily. The problem with SecondLife dungeons is this, if you dig far enough in the ground, you get water. So your dungeon floods. The easiest way around this is to make it look like you have a dungeon by using teleports. Problem with this is that most teleporters look very modern, and I wanted something that fit in the gothic theme, yet I was still in my ‘builds for new residents’ mode and wanted something easy to set up. Many many teleports require editing of config files and make designing webpages with multiuser links easy.

So I started scouring SLX and I found Fnordiporters. You can look at his other stuff here. I liked his design, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted, so together we came up with a teleporter that didn’t need notecards. It’s a bit silly but you pop down one pad and wear a magic wand, touch the other pad then go back and touch the original. The script in the magic wand stores the locations and changes the configs without having to edit them at all, which is nice for those of us who just want things to work. As a result every skybox that I make has a rebranded one of these. The skybox itself is pretty simple, although the fire texture was fun to work out. I like the way it turned out, in fact I use a larger modifed one of these as my personal retreat. I hope you like it.

P.S. I didn’t procrastinate.

P.S.S The title refers to this being named for a Ventrue vampire princess who is still a dear friend.