SL Starter Guide 2003

Second Life Starter Guide 3/19/03 1
Second Life Starter Guide
Welcome to Second Life
You’re about to enter a new world where you can be or do almost anything. If you
can imagine it, you can do it here.
This document will help you get logged into Second Life and explain the basics you’ll
need to know to survive and thrive.
Contents
Logging Into Second Life .............................................................................2
Your First Time: Prelude ..............................................................................3
Prelude Hints: ...........................................................................................4
After Prelude ..............................................................................................4
Second Life Basic Concepts ..........................................................................5
The World, the Play, the Reason for Being ....................................................5
Use Your Strengths ....................................................................................5
Updates....................................................................................................5
Hours.......................................................................................................5
Things to do in Second Life.........................................................................6
Your Avatar ..............................................................................................6
Other People—Meeting and Communicating ..................................................6
Top Tips For Newbies..................................................................................7
Money......................................................................................................7
Ownership and Permissions .........................................................................7
Getting Around in 3-D................................................................................7
Different Views..........................................................................................8
Inventory .................................................................................................8
Building in 3-D..........................................................................................8
3-D Terminology........................................................................................9
Building Tools ......................................................................................... 10
Scripting ................................................................................................ 10
Many Ways to Get Help............................................................................. 10
Reporting Errors, Problems and Asking Questions......................................... 11
Second Life Starter Guide 3/19/03 2


Logging Into Second Life
If you’ve already installed Second Life on your computer, skip ahead to step 4.
Otherwise, here’s the step-by-step for getting started:
1. Go to www.secondlife.com, click on the “Current Residents” Login
button.
2. Log in with the name and password you selected when you signed up.
3. Point to the Downloads menu and select Second Life Client from the
drop down-menu.
4. Download Second Life Setup and save it to your hard drive—in a place
where you can find it easily, then run Second Life Setup.
5. Follow the instructions on the screen.
6. Double-click the Second Life icon on your desktop.
You’ll see the Second Life Sign-on screen.
5. Enter your first and last names, and your password. Click on Connect.
Within seconds, you’ll be in your Second Life.
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Your First Time: Prelude
The first time you enter Second Life, you’ll find yourself in a special area we call
Prelude.
Prelude is a small orientation island, designed to guide you through some of the
basics of Second Life in a quiet, safe place, where you can progress at your own pace
before you teleport to the Second Life ‘‘mainland.’’
The person you’ll see in front of you ... is you. It’s your avatar----your representative
in Second Life. Don’t worry too much about how it looks right now----you’ll be
customizing it very soon.
You’ll arrive in the Starting Gazebo.
Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to turn and move.
Click on the rotating hand in the center of the gazebo to find out what happens
next. You’ll be offered a note card. Click on Accept and Open.
You’ll be guided through a number of stations, each of which will have an activity or
learning experience for you.
You may see some others around with ‘‘Lindon’’ as their last name. These are real
people whose job it is to help you and answer your questions. People without a
Linden last name are other new residents, like you.
As you pass through Prelude, you’ll learn, among other things:
• How to chat
• How to control your view of the world
• How to change your avatar’s appearance
• How to give and receive things and access your Inventory
• How to grab and move objects
• How to create your profile
• How to navigate through the world, and
• How to fly
Once you finish all the stations, you’ll come to the Graduation Gazebo. Again, click
on the rotating hand for instructions to teleport to the ‘‘mainland’’ to beging living
your Second Life.
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Prelude Hints:
• Along the way, move at a relaxed pace and be a little patient. Since this is your
first time in-world, it’ll take a few moments for everything to stream to you and
appear clearly. If you move too fast, you may miss a sign or something else
important. If you see a sign, or anything that’s a little blurry, just wait and
watch. It’ll be clear very soon.
• When you first get to Prelude, and at each station, click
on the rotating hand. Once you do this, you’ll be offered a
note card that will explain what you need to know. When
you receive the offer, click on Accept and Open.
• At the Starting Gazebo, pick a path, any path. You can
take either of two (eventually to become four) paths out
of the starting gazebo. It doesn’t matter which path you
take. All paths have the same stations along the way and
all paths lead to the same place. The only reason why
there is more than one path is to keep it from getting too
crowded.
• Read each note card you receive all the way through. There are useful hints at
the bottoms of many of them.
After Prelude
Once you finish with Prelude and teleport to the main part of Second Life, you’re
totally free to do what you want.
For some ideas on different things you might want to do, check out the rest of this
document.
To learn more about living your Second Life:
• Check out the rest of this document.
• Look through the Online Help system (F1 or select Basic Help ... from the Help
menu). It has a number of short tutorials that will expand on the basic skills you
learned in Prelude and proceed to advanced skills.
• Download and scan the Second Life Reference document from the Second Life
Website: www.secondlife.com.
• Go to the Community Forums and the Knowledge Base on the Second Life
Website. You’ll find lots of useful information and people to answer all your
questions.
• Meet people in-world and ask questions.
• Check out the Event Calendar on the Second Life Website to see what’s going on
in-world right now!
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Second Life Basic Concepts
The World, the Play, the Reason for Being
Second Life is a whole new society that exists only in cyberspace. What this shared
3-D space offers is wide open----anything is possible. It will grow and evolve and
become what the inhabitants make of it.
We figure that:
• Some people will want to explore----see all there is to see and keep up on what’s
new,
• Some people will want to use this new world as a place to meet new people,
socialize and network,
• Some people will want to build and create buildings, monuments and attractions,
as well as new clothes, textures and accessories for others to see and use,
• Some people will want to build an empire----start a business and make money to
expand their holdings and support the artists and craftspeople who build their
castles and summer homes,
• And, many people will find new and different things to do in this new and
different world. We look forward to being surprised.
Use Your Strengths
Everyone is different. Everyone has their own strengths, skills and creative prowess.
Some people excel in architecture. Others in scripting. Others in creating textures.
Others in avatar fashion design, sound design, social design (organizing events and
throwin’ parties) or new areas that we haven’t thought of yet.
You are a part of the creation of a new world. We value your strengths and
personality, and expect them to help us grow and develop Second Life. Stretch a
little, challenge yourself and learn new things from the others. But use your own
strengths.
Updates
There will occasionally be updates to the viewer program. When there's an update,
you'll be notified when you try to log on, and instructed to go to the Second Life
Website, sign in and download the latest version of the player.
Hours
Second Life is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We will periodically bring the
system down as needed for patches and maintenance, but your access time is
unrestricted.
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Things to do in Second Life
Right now, when the world is fresh and new the main things to do in Second Life
are:
• Explore
• Meet others with similar (or new) interests, network, make friends
• Participate in social events
• Participate in deadly battles in the Outlands
• Participate in various contests
• Create things and places others will want to explore
• Experiment with scripting
• Create textures and sounds out-of-world, and upload them
• Collaborate with others to build something big
• Start businesses that charge for Second Life products or services
• Much more that we haven’t even thought of yet----but you will.
Your Avatar
Your avatar is your representative in Second Life.
Your avatar may be male or female, and you can customize it in almost limitless
ways.
You can change your avatar’s appearance quickly and easily and as often as you like.
When you see other avatars, their names will appear above their heads. When others
see you, they’ll see your name above your head (but you won’t see your own name).
You can attach things to your avatar, to make it even more original (and functional).
The objects that you attach may be scripted, so they can function in different ways,
for instance, jet packs for faster travel, guns for games, etc.
Your avatar has a health rating only while in the Outlands, where the dangerous
games are, and in other places where damage has been enabled. If your health rating
reaches 0%, then your avatar is (temporarily) dead, and will be teleported to your
home location and healed. You can easily avoid these dangerous areas if you prefer.
Other People-----Meeting and Communicating
A big part of the Second Life culture is communicating and sharing with others.
There’s an open chat system for communicating with others nearby, and a built-in
instant messaging system for private and group conversations.
You can also use sounds, animations and gestures to add to your communications.
There's also a powerful search tool that lets you find other people or groups with
similar interests.
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Top Tips For Newbies
As a newcomer to Second Life, there are a few things that you should be aware of so
you can progress quickly while avoiding making any faux pas (isn’t that what my dog
has?) and causing yourself or others problems:
1. Learn by copying: look at other people’s work, copy textures, analyze others'
scripts, etc.
2. Delete your unused objects (and get your money back!).
3. Use physics and light sparingly (they put a heavy toll on processing power----and
cost you more).
4. Don’t upload copyrighted textures, graphics, characters or text. (No movie posters,
pictures of Elvis, etc.)
5. Don’t build malicious objects. Objects that follow other people around are cute----
but annoying after a while.
6. Use sound sparingly. Don’t be the neighbor with the annoying barking dog.
7. Know the difference between public chat and Instant Messaging. Keep private
conversations private----but don’t reveal any important private information (like ATM
PIN #s) at any time in-world.
8. Use your Inventory to store things you may want later. It doesn’t cost to store
things there, and it’s almost unlimited in size.
Money
Most things in Second Life, including building objects and buying land, cost money.
Everyone is given a weekly stipend to spend any way they want.
The Second Life economy is an entrepreneurial capitalism based on Linden Dollars.
The economy is evolving and will continue to evolve, depending on what Second Life
residents want and do.
If you want or need more than your stipend, you can find a way to earn more. You’re
free to start businesses. For more information on money and the Second Life
economy, see the Reference document.
Ownership and Permissions
Objects can be public or owned by a particular person. When you build something, by
default it is your personal property until and unless you turn it into public property.
Personal property has both rights and responsibilities. And costs. As owner, you can
set permissions that control if others can move, copy or delete your property.
Public property can be moved, edited, copied and deleted by anyone.
Getting Around in 3-D
Second Life is a true 3-D world.
This makes it much more flexible in many ways, but also makes it a little more of a
challenge to move around than in a 2-D world.
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If you’re not already familiar with 3-D navigation, just be patient. It gets easy after a
little practice. One of the tutorials in the Online Help system will explain it all and
bring you up to speed.
Different Views
There are different ways to look at the world while exploring Second Life.
By default, you'll see the world in "Third Person," looking over your avatar's shoulder
as you control it and move it through the world. You can use the scroll wheel on
your mouse to zoom closer to or farther away from your avatar. If you zoom all the
way in, you'll be in Mouselook.
Mouselook lets you see through your avatar's eyes, and control where you look with
the mouse. It's a good way to take a quick look up, down and around. It’s also a
great way to do some intricate flying if you move while in Mouselook. Mouselook is
the preferred view for shooting games within Second Life.
There are times when you need more control over your view, such as when you want
to closely inspect something from different angles, or when you're building
something. For this kind of viewing, you can use the Focus tool to take complete
control of the "camera," and move it around and zoom it in and out as much as you
want.
Inventory
As you spend time in Second Life, you’ll gather many possessions. These may include
objects, textures, sounds, items of clothing, scripts and other things.
You can store, view and access your Inventory at any time.
By collecting and keeping things in your inventory, they’ll always be handy when
you need them----and they’ll be safe in case the original is deleted by accident.
Building in 3-D
Moving around in 3-D can be tricky. Building things in 3-D is trickier.
When you first begin to build and move things around in 3-D, it’s not uncommon to
accidentally bury things in the ground and lose them.
Yes, it’s a bit more complicated than building in 2-D, but the extra flexibility and
power is worth the steeper learning curve. Spend a little time and work through the
tutorials in Help and you’ll catch on quickly.
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3-D Terminology
There are some terms in 3-D technology that you’ll run across in Second Life and in
this document.
Objects
An object is something created in Second Life. Objects are made out of primitives
(see below) and can be just about any shape, material or appearance. Objects can
have physics and/or scripts assigned to them for added functionality.
Primitives
Primitives are basic 3-D shapes, like cubes, cones and cylinders. Primitives can be
resized, reshaped, hollowed out and otherwise modified, then combined and
connected to make more complex shapes and objects. All building starts with
primitives.
Textures
Textures are the visual patterns applied to sides, or faces of primitives or objects.
Depending on how it’s designed and where you put it, a texture can be thought of as
wallpaper, a paint job or even a sign. Textures in Second Life need to be in the form
of a graphic file in either .TGA (Targa) or .BMP (Bitmap) format, set to 24-bit colordepth.
Camera
In 3-D graphics, scenes are generated from a particular viewpoint or location, known
as the camera. Think of yourself as a movie director when building in Second Life,
with the ability to move the camera around in the world to get the best shot.
Axis (Plural: Axes)
Everything in a 3-D world----including the ‘‘real’’ world, can be located in space by
three numbers, one on each of three axes.
Remember making graphs in math class? This is just like that, but with depth.
The X-Axis goes from left to right on the computer screen.
The Y-Axis goes from bottom to top of the computer screen.
The Z-Axis goes from the screen straight back into the monitor, providing the
illusion of depth.
Sounds simple. But there’s a little more to it.
Since Second Life is full 3-D, and you can look at anything from any angle, things
get turned around. When a primitive is created, it is assigned X, Y and Z axes. These
axes stay consistent with the primitive----not with the screen. If you rotate the
primitive, its axes rotate along with it.
Axes come into play for more than just positioning, especially when you get into
joints (moveable connections like wheels or hinges).
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Building Tools
The basic tools that you will use in Second Life to build things are:
Focus----Take control of the camera to view objects from any angle.
Move----move a primitive or object around.
Edit----Move, resize, or rotate an object.
Create----Make a new primitive.
Land----Modify the land in Second Life, raising, lowering or flattening as needed to
prepare it for building.
Link----connect two or more primitives into a single object.
Make Joints----connect two primitives with a moveable connection.
There are many variations and additions to these basic tools that we’ll get to later
on. But if you understand just these few simple tools, you’ve made a good start.
Scripting
A very powerful feature of Second Life is the ability to add a script, or small
program, to an object. Scripts can turn simple objects into interactive experiences
that impart information, play sounds, move or … just about anything.
The scripting language has been designed so even non-programmers can make simple
modifications and customizations. (For instance, a door may have a script so it opens
with a password. It will be easy to modify the door script to the password of your
choice.) We’ll soon (if not already) have a Beginner’s Guide to Scripting with LSL
(Linden Scripting Language) ready for download on the Second Life Website.
Many Ways to Get Help
There are three main ways to learn more about Second Life:
1. The online help system,
2. Downloadable Documents (like this one), and
3. The Forum and Message Boards
To access the downloadable documentation:
1. Go to: http://www.secondlife.com/
2. Click on the Current Residents Login button.
3. Log In.
4. Point to Downloads and select Guides and Tutorials from the drop-down menu.
To access the message boards:
1. Go to: http://www. secondlife.com/
3. Log In as a resident.
4. Point to Community and select Forum from the drop-down menu.
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Reporting Errors, Problems and Asking Questions
Since this is new and very complicated software development, and is constantly
being changed, updated and expanded, it won’t work perfectly all the time.
Please let us know about bugs, problems and anything else that makes Second Life
less than wonderful.
When you have problems, the program isn’t working right or other things happen
that you think someone ought to know about, please file a bug report. To do this,
select Report Bug ... from the Help menu.
You can also report bugs and other problems on the Forum.
Feature suggestions are also welcome. There’s a special discussion board in the Forum
for suggesting and discussing new features.
The Log File
At times, you may be asked to email your log file to someone at Linden. This is a file
that Second Life writes to your hard disk on a regular basis that keeps track of what
the program is doing. This file is called SecondLife.log and can be found in the root
directory of your C: drive.