retroengeneering and idea stealing

It's a bit of of a bugger, Naiman, and I am sorry. I'd rather see you improve your waves than be disheartened, and please know that many of us recognise the good quality of your work.

You don't "own" a technique, ideas and concepts are free, don't feel special that you had one because most designers have thousands of good ideas per day, all that matter is if you can make it happen.

I had a conversation in world today with someone who was talking about their stuff being copybotted. I cannot understand a lot of what the OP is saying but he seems to be talking about copying ideas one moment and copybot the next.
Copybot cannot steal scripts - nothing can. If the OPs product was clever and innovative because of the scripts then it should be protected still. If it is clever because of the prims and the textures then sure it can be copied directly one-to-one but then it always could even before copybot came along.
For all else, well nothing is created in a vaccum, we all stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before and I am not a fan at all of preventing people from making things along the same idea as someone else.

Sorry , My Language Isn't English as native one but , here I do not have a very sensitive keyboard and jumps a lot of letters and messes up typing ..

I didn't tought to close all 5 sims , just 3 probably , altough its a heartbreaking solution becouse I hae so much limited spaces and crap views , I created those sims in 8 months of hard work from all day long ostly and I did and refined lots of times , and u may beliveve or not , the waves , palms etc all whas created in the process of aking a beautifull place , infac mostly I do what I can't find that satisy me , but then this resulted in a good way to sustain the sims .... I put some shops just becouse of a plan for eventual selfsustainement , but with the new prices , all coming out at the end of my 8 months of work it just messed all pans off....

the prices of waves are "high" for a series of reasons , one I took lot of time to work on them to experiment and to find out good solutions , all this work is may be just vanified or skipped by people that make retroengeneering , and they find the food just ready there to collect after someonelse did it .... but also becouse insid eI tend to add as many options as I can , I always do my work lik those couse like to have choices , as my jackets etc , its not that I try to stand out of the others making something differet I try to stand out by making what I feel to miss in what I want .... so Inside each wave packs you find tons of texture variations , heights shapes sizes sound etc.... but since itwas not meant in beginning , when they where created as a "friendly" product for sale I just packed all that I did into on box .... I thjink I guess now I have to mke more easy to understand lite versions for the "non builders"....
infact not many know that using certain things makes lag .....

The lag in Las arenas is not due to the waves scripts neither by the sculpts but a concomitance of factors , high textures , people not knowing their compurter specifications and so optimize , few memory cache setting , low bandwidth etc and last but not less important the bugs of SL ...
people want to see the best but then they do not know that the best = also lag .... I sell anyway in my products also the counterway to make no lag ...
The easy way for a copier or a retroengeeering proces is that they skip all the hard part of experimentation , work , time spent uploading , testing etc , they find the work ready take the already found solution and so they can allow cheaper and faster solutions .... and this don't seems quite right to me ....
but I guess against those using the same technique and construction copied and retroengeeered by my product there isn't much can do right?becouse someone can always mke slight variations to texture or to sculpt or to script and claimis a differentthing or that he invented by himslef etc . actually there isn't even anything mysterious just a clever way to merge things togethe I guess and use decent ability to do .... probelm is make all together and havethe idea that works ....

now problem is Can I save my whole 5 sims ? or I need to rduce them to two , actually just shops? Las arenas osadas I kept 95% as a place where to have relax and enjoy , even the shop for waves is so much hidden to not breack the visual to visitors that a lot of people where getting nuts couse they coudlnt find ..... I did becouse I wanted to give people the best imersion possible ...... another one instad would just have placed a island with waves and plms all around and u could buy everything everywhere with sings etc ..... certainly a more businness apprach , but in beginning this was not what I looked for .....

I saw people fal in love in (not only of) my island ..... I saw people cuddle , rest in the shade or at (virtual sun) , enjoy what I created .... have fun around , explore .... this made my day and compensated also for the time and effort spent making all this .... but money is needed to mantain all in SL especilly and prices where needed to mantain an ambient of 5 sim without other further incomes than sales and not only form waves of coruse but other elements and also a lot from clothes from the other side of the bay .... lol I even added a completely deserted water si min middle just to cut out las arenas from the mainalnd to not disturb the view of people resting on the beach.... so another 100 usd a month just r this .... ( since I am from Europe I pa vat 20% ) too .... so u can understand how much copiers and retroengeneers that jump into this having easier life by just taking and trying to imrpoving something becouse they smelled the affair, ruins a pace that was free for all to enjoy .

Sorry, I cry BS at least in the area of scripts. Scripts cannot be stolen unless you set the permissions incorrectly. If another person writes a similar script to yours and has similar low lag performance then they have not skipped any steps that might require experimentation to discover a low lag process.

I also find it hard to beleive the secret sauce of the low lag you seem to be claiming is unique to your product's performance is in the textures and prims. Optimization of textures and prims for low lag conditions are well known to all.

I understand that losing income to another person who has a similar product is upsetting but really, your emotive appeal has little bearing on the fact that people are allowed to bring similar products to market.

I would like to know what solid proof you have that anyone copybotted or reverse engineered your products. So far I have not heard anything unique in the writings above but am willing to admit I may have missed something crucial.

Waves tend to be created either using particles or scultpies that are animated along with the textures to produce the waveforms. Except for the realism of the waves textures coupled with the synchronization of the animation of the textures in the latter and the cleverness of the particle parameters in the former I fail to see where there is anything you feel should be uniquely yours. Personally it sounds like the process is not as undiscoverable by others as you might think and others have experimented and made their own versions. It does not sound like rocket science to me.
Feel free to correct me and tell me where I have got it wrong.

Its not rockt sience , and asI said is even something simple, problem is that none put pieces together to make it in a certain way be4 ... infact its not the script thatmakes the difference te scripts are even freebie ones possibly around , the fact is in he idea to combine those script together with specifically made sculpts and specifically made textures etc all working in a certain way .
and no Optimization of textures and prims for low lag perfomances is not at all knowed around , too many people make extremely prismatic stuff or heavy textured stuff just becouse is cooler but this weights on performances the more u use the more u add the mre its cool the less it works .....

You're clearly talking out of your ass on this one, good content doesn't lag, good content is a judicious mix between detailing and performances, good content is content that is build with Sl's inherent problems in mind.


Most of the old content creators have been in your shoes at least once when it comes to have ideas you had reused by other peoples, in the end we survived and learned a lesson about life, now prove you are as good as you claim to be and bounce back up instead of whining on a forum.



No offense but basically you just brought the "tousand monkeys with typewriters might eventually one day write a text from Shakespear"

It makes a change, but I agree with Gabrielle. From everything that's been written, it appears that there is no retroengineering involved, no copybot involved, and no stealing involved. It's simply a case of you creating something good (the waves) and other people making something just as good, if not better - perhaps inspired by your creation. There is nothing wrong with that. The only way to prevent it is not to show the good idea to anyone.

You main problem is not that other people now make waves as good as yours - it's what LL has done with OS sims, and possibly the recent downturn in sales. You can't blame your problem on people who were inspired to make what you make.

When I first made couches, chairs and beds that changed colours or textures, I invented the idea. I don't think for a second it was a new idea but I hadn't seen it, so I invented it myself. (Even that wasn't new for me because I'd seen a script that changed textures on a prim). Now I see texture-changing furniture being advertised all over the place, but I've no reason to complain. As Gabrielle said, nothing is truly new - everything is developed from other people's previous ideas, which were developed from other people's previous ideas, and so on.

From what I've read in this thread, you have no reason to complain, except about LL's dealings with the OS sims. I can understand how disappointing the current situation is to you, but it isn't the fault of people making similar things to what you make.

Yes I agree , it was not my intention to be whining on a forum .... n4eiher I csan lament if someone takes my good ideas and retroengeneerize them to sell on their ow ... I guess i can only aknowledge and make something else ....about retroengeneering and use of copybots to retroengeneer I know it was the case but i cant say more specific things becouse I dont want to go further into the subject neither tell who or what used and even couse is actually impossible to demonstrate without counterrguments.


[QUOTE ]
You're clearly talking out of your ass on this one, good content doesn't lag, good content is a judicious mix between detailing and performances, good content is content that is build with Sl's inherent problems in mind.

[/QUOTE]

Kyra you are right there , inact you misunderstood my meaning I guess , good content is right what you sy , but many people instead make "good content" more on the visual aspect than caring for the performance side.... unfortunately not everyone is apro game developer here , but its not that the problem , the probelem is that SL allows you not any tools for havbing state of the art visual apperences as in other contemporary games and at the same time keep performances at top .... in other games you have a lot of tools , one for all for example is normal mapping , but then there there is no need to make extensive use of 1024 tetures for example becouse u compensate with breaking into smaller pieces the details and so on.... thus slower load times and less lag...

This part I strongly disagree with.
Since I hardly ever experienced this much lag, it is definitely not caused by the (low end) computer I am on. In general, I am very well ably to visit the different places within SL.

Now after seeing the rezzing speed on this particular island, I would guess that the textures used are pretty large. But I am convinced of the fact that the combination of scripts, many sculpts, and probably big textures are very important factors at your place. Plus the 10 avatars that were there at the time of my visit.

Do not forget, you are on an Open Space simulator. Your place, as pretty as it may be, is the perfect example of what Open Space simulators were not meant for. As I said before, this is what LL meant by abuse of the OS sims.
Do this same setup on a full simulator, and your problems are probably over.

But do not get me wrong, I am not here to bash you about the laggy island. The reason I posted, was to help you figure out what can cause the lower sales. And if I come to a place like this to buy myself some waves, you can be sure that I move on to shop somewhere else. Simply because I do not want to wait more then 15 minutes for my surroundings to rezz, only to find that I can hardly move around.

So my advice would be: Solve the lag problem, maybe lower your prices a bit, and combine that with good marketing. I bet your sales get a lot higher that way.

ou shouldnt disagree tough since i stated the same things .... many texures , large textures , alpha , flexi , animations scripting, sculpts poligons , low bandwidth , bad SL performances, bad client pcs etc all slow dow .... but the fact is that many people do not tune their settings for example I have two pcs one high end and one very crap ... with the crap one I can sty in Las arenas fin if I just rise the memory cache and I reduce the drag view , there is no point into seeing beyond whats on the shore since there is nothing around the island , well for the mot part , plus reduce the window size resolution .... many people think that all the places shoul rn the same , but that is not the case some places are built with just one texture repeated everywhere prims overlapped and no sculpts , no scripte etc then of course u have no lag but also the result isn't so appealing at least to me .... the poblem with OS is that they where "supposely" not made for this , but LL sold us and gived us 3750 prims and I bet everyone would have used up to the last prims he payed for , why I have to buy something to be told after some months I have to pay more becouse I abused , ? and abused in what terms? OS are placed on the same servers as a normal sim , just sharing it with other 4 openspaces , but after all it has aso the 1/4 of the resources .....

Apparently I do not get through to you, so I will leave it at this.

Naiman, i have your waves..
theyre great...
but.. the were very very hard to find.. i ended up IMing a boat creator to find out where she bought them...
and when i went to your sim to buy them, it wasnt immedietly apparent where they were for sale.. the place was very laggy (and no its not my pc nor my connection.. my specs are pretty good.. dual core ... 4gigs of RAM, GeForce 8800 GTS/PCI/SSE2... and a 100mb optic fiber connection) if i hadnt really, really wanted the waves, i would have given up and gone home and probably searched for something similar.

ùYE I purousely hidden the shop favouring more the visitors of the place instead than customers .... I guess a bad tactic fopr affairs but good for the people that relax there around .... I have to make some changes and I have a lot of new features planned that I was about to add and make .... as usual I ll make free updates to all that boght just remmber to stay on the group where I post updates and free updates..... I ll try reduce lag by replacing palms with lower end ones .... and take off the Weather generator , wich is the Peack lag making there togwther with lots of fishes , temp rezzing animals and so on .... I guss those are the main thing and I didn't tought about till now ....

And remember that an OS sim shares a CPU with 15 other OS sims. 4 per core = 16 per CPU.

That is about to change, I think, but it will still be a lot more sims per CPU than normal sims, which are 4 per CPU.

ty for the kind words czari....i think marcel has hit the nail on the head....you can have a great product..the best in SL, but if you are not marketing it correctly AND have extreme lag where you are trying to sell it.....you will have dismal sales.

My suggestion would be to lose the OS sims and have one good regular one that is a lovely showcase for your items. Things will run much smoother, folks will enjoy it and they will be able to see your wonderful waves in all their glory!

Your wave textures may need to be 1024 x 1024, but the palm tree and wharf textures don't. I have a good system and it still takes a while for everything to settle down.

BTW - a few observations about your original post re your competitor:

When I search for waves in SL Classifieds, your product is nowhere on the first screen. You need to pay more for an ad to raise your profile.

Unfortunately, the price difference in your product and your competitor's is really high. Unless you can prove a DMCA violation of your textures, you'll have to adjust to that. I couldn't really tell from looking at the waves if the textures were the same. Maybe take some screen shots and compare foam patterns?

Unfortunately, this is an utterly bogus. In the real world, you have materials costs, labor costs, shipping costs, advertising costs, infrastructure costs (rental? Ownership of the factory?), taxes, etc that set a MINIMUM cost.

In SL, you have ZERO costs for the actual product, so someone like Naiman is at a distinct disavantage competing against a no-talent copycat (excuse me, folks here call that innovators) with NO stake in SL using SLEX or the equivalent. The no overhead jackoff can undercut pricing to the bone or give it away free, since they have no real stake in the world. RL businesses have a stake in the real world, ergo, there is a level that they cannot go below or they lose money. In SL, a competitor can rip off your design, make a minor change to avoid DCMA and sell it for $1 L and STILL make a profit if they sell enough....but they return NOTHING to the world like the OP did.

For my own part, I see this more as a greedy talentless hack vs a creator issue...and would personally buy the more expensive original rather than subsidize those with minimal to no stake in the world ripping and undercutting a creator. People that want cheap or are talentless hacks think its great to do this, folks like Naiman suffer at their hands.

Maklin, everything you said is correct. However, what's being discussed is that the OP's product may NOT have been ripped, rather someone else made a similar product on their own. Whether that's the case or not is unclear, but the posts about how competition works are referring to actual competition, not people stealing things, be it through copybot or observation and intentional copying.

When I did create them I did just to recreate a mor realisic environment and I didnt put much attention to sell it or to publicize etc .... the sell thing come after many requested for them, and the price was settled couse of time involved in experimenting , uploads , tests , and most for pay the sims ....but I even didnt tought of putting on megaprims my name couse I am not a aggressive seller or didnt tought of "superimposing"myself on everyoneelse etc or to link my name to the waves to make all understand I am the creator ..... now the problemis that people will think I am the copier or the like , texture may be the same or not .... slighly variated or totally diferent , but the idea is anyway taken and with a more aggressive superimposition , and all to businness oriented campaign , will impose as the original creator and maker etc...
On my island I didnt write Super waves , best waves etc .... I called Las Arenas Rosadas ...... a place where people go to enjoy not a waves supermarket!

But that's the way the market work or you improve or you sink ...

And then folks like you spew out a load of utter crap. But I don't suppose you can help it.

I don't like to get involved in IP disputes, being a Second Life hobo with no property or interest in selling anything, but I do feel that Naiman is a victim. My guess is there was texture theft, whether it can be proven or not.

Amazing what you can find on the web. The person behind the "competition" apparently runs an internet business in Greece selling fake designer clothing. See a pattern here? Google the contact email on the items in XLStreet and see what comes up.

Again, may not be any way to get action from LL, but sad nonetheless.

I just want to point out that my posts have been made without seeing either the OP's product or the competition's, since I don't know who the competitor in question is. I think a lot of the posts in this thread have been from similar points of view.

That said, if theft is involved (that is, of content on the SL servers, not concepts or ideas of how to do something) I would file a DMCA if I were the OP. DMCAs usually are acted upon.

the thing is.. did Niaman make his own texture from his own digital photograph, or did he get it off the internet? If it is his own photograph and it is the same, then it would be an infringement... otherwise no.
the scripts cant be copied if the permissions are set properly.. and if the sculpt map is different, or if Naiman used a sculpt map that is available full perm.. and the sculpt is the same, then I would say there is no case.

When any creator puts a good idea out there, its open season for anyone to work out for themselves how to make the same or better item. It doesn't make it easier to swallow.. but you cannot copyright an idea.

Selling it at a lower price is also the competition's choice. Some ppl prefer to sell more for less, others less for more.

soooooo..... tonite I saw something that I think I can improve upon no it will not have the same texures and maybe wont sell it but who knows.

But if I took my idea that I had tonite looking at a pic of something and in my head can make it better is that bad?

Just want to know.

Bec