Looking Forward: Version 1.2

I am 100% behind the offline IM client! I'm far too productive at work

Seriously, In first life it's possible to get a hold of me through IM almost anywhere. I wish it was as easy in secondlife. Granted the stability issues, performance issues, and bug fixes should be a higher priority.

Personally, I would never use the Offline Chat and IM Manager. It doesn't anger me; I simply have no use for it. Is there really a shortage of chat clients in the world?

Anyway, I would like to be given a choice during the install procedure to not install the additional client. Or an option in Preferences to totally disable it. My system isn't high-end, and I can't afford to have anything running alongside the SL client.

I agree that development resources could be put to much better use. Just my opinion, but if UI is the top priority, then the priorities need to be seriously re-examined. The top THREE priorities should be:

1. Lag

2. Lag

3. Lag

As often as not, the game is simply unplayable because the lag simply overwhelms.

Yeah, I want an out-of-game IM as well so I can plan and talk with other team people a little easier.

Also, something i'd love is the ability to drop cameras and then to be able to switch between them with a hot key. That way you could check an object from multiple angles with just a few key presses and would save lots of fiddling with that camera control (which I can't move from where chat comes in which means it obscures conversations and ctrl+h adds just another window to manage, arr! )



Pirate

The first thing I'd like to see is better organization to our inventories. Perhaps even a storage area for items we rarely use, so that we don't have to keep downloading them everytime we log on. A move to folder option would be nice along with shift clicking to select a range of items.

Pet peeve here.. I don't like that all snapshots that others gives me defaults to the Texture folder. Its annoying and makes finding your real textures hard, and the list just gets longer and longer unless you delete them.

The offline chat messenger would be a nice feature. I would like the ability to make myself appear offline if I so choose, or only allow certain IM's to come through from certain people when I'm very busy with other things.

I'm probably pushing it here but I'm going to say it anyway
. I'd like to a way to organize my inventory offline, then synchronize it on the servers. Finding time to keep my inventory straight online is hard with so many intteruptions, and uses up the resources. If we could do this offline then synchronize, that would be wonderful. This may not be possible but its a feature I'd love to see.

Ditto on the inventory improvements. I have only been here for a little over a month and I already have a ton of junk in my inventory especially textures. I like the idea Cori suggested of having a sepatate inventory for things we rarely use. And i am all for an offline IM ability for the days when im stuck at the firehouse for 24 hours and cant logon. Other things I would like to see in the future is 2 player gestures like in The Sims.

I like a lot of the ideas floating around on this thread. Here are my two cents.

1) Typing lag, thats my number one complaint, it feels very sluggish.

2) Ability to create UI via script. Slider controls, radio buttons, command buttons etc. (could be worked in with #3) Own textures and alphas would be nice (could create a new in world skinning industry)

3) Customizable user interface. Repositioning of chat bar (cardinal edges and free floating and scalable (length). Ability to have chat bar auto hide when not being used (similar to the same option with the task bar in windows) same with the top menus.

4) FOV control for camera, both via UI and script. This would be useful for a host of things, mainly useful for the people who are doing fps stuff, nice sniper scopes, as well as for vehicles, widening the fov when you are on a motorcycle to enhance the feeling of speed etc.

For the new users have the client start in "Simple" mode and have an option for "Advanced" mode for the people who want bit more control. (As it relates to 3 primarily)

In Land editing a smooth tool would be great, not flatten, I just want it to smooth based on adjacent normals. (See Artisan in Maya, excellent reference for any "painting" like land deformation. Allows you to push/pull based on fist normal, normal, or set axis, couple different brush types etc, if you dont use Maya over there feel free to e-mail me and I will do up a camtasia runthrough of its key features so you can mill through it for usable info if any)


Anyway, just a few of my thoughts.

-Neil

There are plenty of suggestions to be found, but I'll leave that in the suggestions forum, and post some interesting USER INTERFACE type suggestions here

* Ability to hide oneself from the 'green dots' radar / main map view when AFK, BUSY, busy coding / do not disturb / whatever. Perhaps auto-visible when moving about to avoid spying or something...

* some way to whisper or link-message to a scripted / regular object (Or is there a way to do this already?)

* Ability to turn -off- the 'typing noise' that occurs when someones typing (it starts to grate... very quickly... in a crowd).

* Player Names that show up immediately when you mouse hover over them and fade away quickly when you move your mouse away. I know that you can hold your mouse there for like 5 seconds and get a mouse over, but I mean, more like you can sweep your mouse over a crowd and see whos who quickly...

Um... those are all I could come up with from the suggestions forum, for now...

Targeted emotes... Or just plane emotes.

I would like to be able to type,
"/me waves at Cori /wave"
and everyone around me sees in their chat scroll,
"Phoenix Zircon waves at Cori" and my av waves.

I think this is the only chat app I've ever seen where you can't emote. Gestures are nice and all, but without emotes they feel a little bland.

I also would love to see names popup quickly and fade quickly on a mouseover. That would be GREAT!