My tiny wishlist.

I've only been playing (living in?) SL for a few days now. But I do have a couple things I'd like to see in SL.

1. Ambient Lighting. Nighttime can be a real pain, even when you're inside. It would be nice if buildings could be set with an ambient lighting level/color. I know I can use the debug menu to make it constantly daytime, but I like the day/night cycle.

2. Clothing textures over prims. There are some avatars/prims that I'd like to use, but I owuld have to give up wearing normal clothes. I'd like to see the ability to set a prim/object as Clothing Textureable.

3. Larger chat buffer. Right now the buffer is much too small. If I want to communicate in any real volume, I have to break it up into multiple chunks. It's not that difficult to do, but it is just annoying after comming from systems with large chat buffers.

Otherwise, I'm really enjoying SL, and have found the people really friendly and helpful.

I believe you can go to preferences and turn on "Shadows" and "Local Lighting". It would turn shadows on and any prims made of the material "light" would give off light that is their color. The other two suggestions I like alot too.

For the 1st thing, there is a slider in the preferences that will keep nighttime from getting TOO dark, but still let the day/night cycle go on. And yes, local lighting will make areas designed around that feature to be lit at night. Shadows aren't really worth the performance hit. They are primitive and unrealistic.

If you want a prim surface to look different, you just re-texture it. For instance, a prim skirt can be textured with plaid or gingham or tweed or whatever, to match the rest of the clothes. The texture that is used to put clothes on the basic avatar shape is designed JUST for that shape. There would be no way for it to extend to attached prims in any controlable way. Best just to re-texture the prims normally, for sure. (So this is doable, just not quite how you suggest.)

By chat buffer, I'm guessing you mean the Chat History window (control-H)? From what I can remember, I don't think I've EVER seen the log-in text at the top get pushed out, even at noisy town halls that go into overtime. If you mean the text that shows up on-screen for a time over the wolrd itself (without a window) then fades away... There is an option in the preferences to make each line last longer. I set mine to 45 seconds usually. This can make the whole screen fill with text in a noisy environment, but there's plenty of time to read things without hitting control-H all the time to scroll back.

I didn't know about the Local Lighting setting, I'll give it a try. But I have the Nighttime light set fully high and it's still depressingly dark at night inside. I'd use the gamma setting, but it's a global change that effects everything, including other windows.



I know you cant exture the prim, but it means that whenever I buy a new T-shirt or Pants/Skirt, I'd have to retexture the prim. This is assuming I have the permissions to use the texture in the clothing item. It would be nice if the engine took the model as a whole, including clothing-enabled prims, then apply the textures.



Actually I meant the text-entry. I'm sorry for not being more clear. In reading other posts, it seems like the /me emote has a lower limit than normal chat text entry? I wish I was able to getinto SL to test this, but even if normal chat has a higher limit, I'd still like to see the /me limit raised, as I like to use poses to flesh out my speech.

example:

Ketra Saarinen says: I don't know. Maybe you should consider the other option.

Ketra Saarinen frowns and absently taps her temple as she considers. "I don't know." Looking you in the eyes, she points for emphasis as she says, "Maybe you should consider the other option."

I tend towards the more verbose form. So I'd like to be able to type more when I use the /me command. That reminds me of a fourth item for my wishlist:

4. Shortcuts for emotes, or a way to make them. i.e. using : instead of /me. So to get "Ketra smiles."

miles.

instead of

/me smiles.

I've been in a few systems where the use of that is even adaptable. If it detects punctuation after the : it will place the text immediately after the sender's name.

:'s lips twist in a smile.
Would become "Ketra's lips twist in a smile."
Instead of "Ketra 's lips twist in a smile."

It was a small convienience but it adds up over time.

Local Lighting WILL slow your frame rate down, though. Be warned.

The only option is to do the texturing yourself. And yes, not having access to the same base material pattern the clothing designer used would be a hardship in this. But there just isn't any other option. If you need only a small area covered with the same material, you might be able to zoom in on your clothing and take a screen shot, then edit and upload that small sample to apply it to your prim. If you are making, say, a small hump on your back or a lump in your shorts (if "dufflebag" isn't big enough for you) then this might work. It's not trivial, however.

I think the limit on text input, or any text output, even from scripts, is 250-256 characters. That's just the way the internal system is coded. It might change, but if it does, it will probably have to change accross the board. I'd suggest making that a formal feature request to be voted upon. I'm sure it will get a good number of votes.

I thought this was the place for suggestions. Where should I set up this poll?

Feature voting in the dropdown menu on the main page or the nav bar on the left in Community.
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And I've never seen a prim set to "Light" actually cast light on other objects, cast chadows, or anything other than look "bright." Even at night. One of the first things I messed around with, me and several people were haivng trouble modeling at night and tried to make a giant 'sun' to give us illumination to work by.
We failed.

Ok, I have another Item I'd like to see.

An 'off-line' SL IM client.

I'd like to be able to chat with my friends that are currently in SL, when I'm not able to connect. I think it would be really handy, and it may even replace other IM programs for some people. At the veryleast, it would provide another community feature to SL.


If LL wanted to get really tricky, they could make it a Second Life Portal.

Include Account Info

Profile edit/lookup

L$ balance and exchange

IW and RL transaction histories

etc.

But really, I'd love to have the chat funtion.