Newbie questions

Hia..

Still pretty new here and while it is possbile that the answers are buried in the forums somewhere, they do not seem easily searched, hence my asking...

1) How do skins work? Do they work like clothing, in which case how do they work with clothing, if at all?

2) Is there any particular ettiqute regarding trying on freebies? I have taken to building and saving a little portable ramshackle changing room to try them in, but still worry about the fact that there does not seem to be any way to get a sense of precisely what you are getting in advance...

3) What is the deal with camping anyway? Some of the posts here suggest that you can be paid simply for being in world. Not really my kind of thing, but dislike not knowing things especially when they seem prevalent things.

4) Anything else I should know? For the record, while I am new to SL I am not new to being online, so I know a lot of basics including RP conventions such as (brackets) for OOC.

Someone will beat me to this but here's my take.

1. Skins are painted over your shape - like clothes except you cannot take them off. You can replace them with another skin from your inventory. You can try on demo skins and since they can be expensive it's best to try on a LOT of demo skins before buying. There are many good freebie skins though. There are templates somewhere on these web pages for making skins in Photoshop or GIMP if you are venturous.

Clothes work in layers and you could almost consider the skin as the innermost layer. Some freebie skins come with underwear permanently painted on - for no reason that I have ever discovered.

2. I have carried around a portable dressing room too. But the thing about freebies is - they're free. So if you don't really like something you can discard it.

3. Camping is a way to make it look like a store has more traffic than it does, so it gets higher on the search engines - which is why I search alphabetically.

4. It's best to move away from the teleport landing zone and use the mini map to avoid running into any people that you can't see yet. The green dots show up before the people. Standing in a TP zone waiting for everything to show up (or rez as we say) is like an elderly person stopping at the top of an escalator and looking around with people stuck behind.

[maybe after eight edits I'll be satisfied with this post. ]

Welcome!

Yep, clothing and skins are images that stack up on top of your base avatar in layers. At the bottom is the base "noobie skin", then any custom skin (which technically uses the legacy "tattoo layer", then underwear, then pants/shirts, then skirts and jackets. When you put on an outfit the SL client "flattens" all the layers into a composite image, which is then uploaded so everyone else can see it the way you do.

Getting buck naked in a skin store is likely to raise some eyebrows, but I see people all the time trying on demo clothing and hair with no worries. Still, it might be more considerate to do your shopping then fly off somewhere relatively isolated to try stuff on.

The measure of a land parcel's "traffic" is used to rank search results in the "places" tab, and historically was important in other ways too. This is hopefully falling by the wayside, but in the meantime there are still plenty of people who are willing to pay a small amount to keep a bunch of avatars around to keep traffic up. And there might be benefits to having a bunch of green dots on the map too, giving the impression of a popular place.

You'll hear about bots in this context too. Bots run custom clients (the viewer is Open Source so a skilled coder can do all kinds of things here) to log in and perform various functions. A land owner desiring more traffic can, instead of paying campers, log in a few bots for the same results. On the flip side there are bots programmed to camp in other people's camping chairs to get the money. Yeah it's a strange world.

Camping is generally regarded as not being worth the time for the camper (probably not even paying enough to cover the electricity a computer consumes) but that doesn't stop people from doing it for what appears to be free money. Especially, perhaps, people with a background in WoW and other RP games where it's illegal and unethical to simply buy some spending money like you can here. And of course some people will have their computers on anyway and figure they might as well make a few lindens while they sleep.
SL is a pretty free-form world, if you go anywhere with special rules or expectations aside from common sense you'll likely receive a notice of such when you first arrive.

Consider checking out The Forum Cartel. Search for it, there's a group to join and a hangout/clubhouse type place where you can meet some of the forum regulars, who are generally nice, helpful and funny people.

Oh, and have fun!


EDIT: Weston beat me, that's what I get for being so darned long-winded

Another thing about skins, be sure to check the demo in different lights. You can change the sunlight by going to the World menu and selecting Environment Settings. When I first bought my skin, I got the one that looked best in the store, then found out that it looked terrible in daylight. I had to go back and buy a different shade.

Based on questions I've seen other new people post, one good thing to bear in mind:

...if you're flying around and bounce off a set of red lines hanging in the air, and/or are flying around and get a blue Message Box (these appear in the upper right corner of your screen) saying You May Not Enter------don't take it personally.

When a lot of people buy land for the first time, they end up checking this little box about Restricting Public Access, which creates the red Ban Lines.

And there are other people who delusionally think they can have 'privacy' in SL, and so buy devices that eject those who happen to be flying across a sim, or even send them 'home' (which for a new person may be the current version of Help Island).

It's just a normal part of Second Life, and nothing to worry about or assume is anything to do with you as an individual.

Thankies for the responses... definately some useful information there. Particularly like the comment on checking things out in different lighting, something I would not have considered.

Still not decided how much time I want to spend in SL (or money), but poking around there seems enough to tempt me to do at least some of both

Hi, Alexander

I was about to suggest that money trees are a much better way for newbies to get a few L$ in-world if they haven't yet decided to commit to putting payment info on file, but money trees are usually only pickable by those with avatars aged under 30 days, and I see from your forum join date that you started in February of this year. So I'm afraid those are out as an option for you.

The others before me gave you good, detailed answers to the rest of your questions, so I'm just going to point you to a blog post that I made a while back:

http://sl4nowt.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/30-things-every-newbie-should-know-before-starting-second-life/

Make sure you check out all the comments, because I just couldn't keep up with everybody on there

You'll find 2 different types of hair in SL: System Hair, and Prim Hair. System hair is the hair that you can make using the sliders in Edit Appearance. Prim Hair (sometimes referred to as "wigs" or just "hair" - e.g. "I bought 2 hairs yesterday" is made out of prims, which you know are the basic building blocks of SL. The vast majority of prim hairs require you to wear a "baldie" or bald system hair. 99.99% of all purchased hairs also come with a baldie to wear; wear it, or see your own system hair poking through the prim hair. This really confused me at first.

Also, Shape is not the same as Skin. Shape defines musculature and bone structure, and can be controlled using the sliders in Edit Appearance. Skin, like the others have said, goes over the Shape, and gives it color, shading, and detail. You can wear only one shape and one skin at any time. One suggestion: you can buy a shape (there are excellent shape makers out there) or you can make your own. If you make your own, SAVE IT WITH A NEW NAME, i.e. "Alexander Tall Stud Shape" or whatever. If you just "save" instead of "save as" I can guarantee you'll lose it for ages in all the mess of freebie stuff you'll pick up.

And welcome to SL!

4. a. How to open boxes. Also, take the box up again after you open it. Otherwise it's littering.

b. Since you're a guy, if you are playing a human male av, well, I will let the forum guys IM you about that one, if they want to.

c. If you go to a club, click the dance ball to dance; it's usually above the dance floor. Sometimes it's a silver one but if there is a blue one, click that, as it has the 'male dances'. The dance balls for couples usually are double. Learn how to 'cam around' to find it, since most clubs disable flying capability. 'Camming around' can be helpful in other ways in SL too; some good, some not so good. Lol Sometimes the dance balls are elsewhere, or the floor is what you click. Ask a club host if in doubt.

Click the same dance ball to stop dancing, or you will still be seen as 'dancing' at the next place you go to, even if on your screen your av appears not to be.

d. Go into preferences, click text chat tab, and look for the way to stop that 'typing' animation when you type your chat text. Otherwise your av will always pretend to be typing when it 'speaks'. Not a huge deal, but it can look strange if you are trying to be a scary vampire for instance, or if you use another animation - such as "Stop or I will shoot!" while your av stops to type it.

e. Remember above all that Second Life should be FUN.

f. IM me here or in-world if you'd like landmarks to freebie shops etc., of course Search/places works too. Also, you are welcome to join my group for people looking for others to go places with on a whim in SL. It's listed in my in-world profile.