SL, a newbies first experience

Hello all, it is me again, after one night of playing around in SL, I have some thoughts and questions that come to mind that might help me get started in the game.

When I first started, on the green hill, following the basic instructions were quite easy, it was then when I thought I wouldn't have too much trouble with the game. But then, I entered the 'mainland" and gosh, was it a whole nother story. The first thing I saw infront of me were 3 tutorials in scripting. As much as I am in awe of websites with javascript, and the people who make them, I didn't feel motivated at all, to learn a script language to play a game. That was my own choice, so I am not blaming anyone, however I just kind of said "well whatever" and went out of the building. I wanted to find people. I wanted to find a community. I used find and sorted by traffic, and there were tens of thousands of people in this one place. I was smiling, thinking to myself, "lets go check this party out!". However when I arrive, I realize not one person there would respond to me, rather, they just sat there like zombies.

A little disgruntled and with no money to gamble I decided to find other places, and it seemed every place had this problem. Also, I found that the "traffic" doesn't mean # of people there at all, as I found some with about 100 worth of "traffic" yet, when I went inside, had a total of 0 people inside. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I was quite unhappy after my 6th initial teleport into an empty club. I then decided to just fly around to one of the green dots and hope its not a camper. Well I did, and it wasn't. I met (I forgot his name) him and we had a nice long chat about how to build boxes, and what not. It was great to find a person who was so willing to help a noobie. His main method of business, was building pianos, which looked as real as I could imagine. He went on to talk about linking boxes, making things flexible, and what not. I am not logged out at his place, as this is the only human life I have found thus far in the game.

Is there a better way to search up people? Like real people? I just feel so cheated when I go to a room expecting tons of people, but instead get next to none. I think when I have some extra money i am going to create a club/lounge/disco that has no campers, offers no rewards, except for the fun and company of all the friends in it. Maybe every now and then take out some stuff I built and try to sell it, and see if I can. Anyways, these are my initial impressions, I hope you enjoyed reading .

Welcome to SL, Jon!

You're kind of on the right track in using the FIND menu... but try checking out EVENTS. This is where you will find classes, dances, games -- all listed with specific start and duration times -- where there should be other folks to meet. (A little warning: you'll find that some events are "non" events -- yard sales and camp sites keep sneaking in.) It may take time: I've noticed things are a little quiet right now, which I chalk up to summer and folks possibly going out into the actual sunshine!

Hang in there, keep popping in to places, keep saying hello to folks. You'll eventually find your way in the world

Welcome to SL

And you're right, traffic doesn't mean the number of people there. Traffic is a number calculated using the number of people and the amount of time they stayed over a 24 hour period. What that means is that if you go to a place because it's traffic number is high it could mean any number of things.
* They use camping chairs so they always have a small group of people there all day long equalling a high traffic number every day.
* They had an event yesterday that had 30+ people who stayed for a couple of hours equalling a high traffic number for just THAT day.
*They regularly have events at scheduled times each day with the number of people fluctuating but equalling relatively consistant high traffic numbers most days.

As the other poster mentioned, the best way to find people is to go by the events list and attend scheduled events. Another great way is to type a key word in the search window under places (something that interests you) and check out those places. You might check out ten before you find any people but that tenth one might have that one person who becomes a friend.

Good luck and keep it fun!

Jon, now I'd like to track you down somewhere. I think I need a buddy to wade through all of this with...and maybe a mentor to get me started/settled here. I just arrived on the mainland, ended up in a totally empty 'lodge' with no direction/guidance.

I'm told I can search out classes etc to help me. However, I have not had the time.

Maybe I'll run into you and YOU can give me some help...who knows!

"I come in peace"

Hi, welcome to SL.

I don't suppose you might know where it was that you came into that had scripting info?

One place to find people at is in the sandboxes, there won't be any campers there. The sandboxes are in the find places, although some of them are entered with the names backwards. The sandbox sims are called Sandbox Cordova, Sandbox Goguen, Sandbox Newcomb, and Sandbox Island. If you use the places tab in the find dialog and search for sandbox they will be listed as Cordova Sandbox, Goguen Sandbox, Newcomb Sandbox, and Sandbox Island. These are places for building and scripting. There's usually a bunch of stuff some of which will look neat and some will look like trash. If you introduce yourself to enough people there someone is likely to talk to you. Some of them will be busy. If they don't answer or don't say much just assume they are busy and go on to the next person.

I'v sent you an invitiation to the New Citizens (NCI) group, a good place for new folks to meet people, get lessons, and get some free stuff.

The Shelter is another good place for new folks to go, for much the same reasons as the New Citizens. The Shelter has some real nice game shows, word games and trivia games, that I like a lot. (Darn it I just missed on while foruming.)

TeaZers is a popular place with a bunch of lessons. I've not personally hung out at TeaZers much so I can't speak of it from experience, but when you look for events in the Education category TeaZers is the place with the most entries, from my observation.

I've sent you the NCI welcome pack, which has a landmark for the NCI headquarters, and I've sent a landmark for the Shelter, and a landmark to the TeaZer Isle.

Despite the potential for being griefed, your best starting spot is one of the many sandboxes. Most of the large ones are provided by the Lindens. I provide a half sim in Jizo where many newcomers have met and worked together. If you haven't used the map yet, click "Map" at the bottom of the screen and type in "Jizo" then teleport. Or click "Find" and then select the "Popular Places" tab. You should find the Linden's "Sandbox Island" as well as mine, "Clubside's FunZone Sandbox". Finally, you can also use "Fin" and click the "Places" tab and enter "Sandbox". If you view the map you'll see the number of people, green dots, currently there. Try your new skills, work together or just meet some people and see what's going on.

hey thanks all for the replies! It's great that there is such an active and helpful community here, something which really motivates me to want to learn more about the game.

Elora, I will be happy to find you, sadly, I know probably as much or less than you. I took a 1 hour crash course on creating shapes from an owner who's place I crashed into by accident, and it helped me a lot. Currently I have downloaded the clothing photoshop files to start on my way to creating better looking clothing (the ones that don't make it look skin tight).

Thank you suezanneC for sending me that stuff! sadly I am currently at work and cannot sign in to check out what I got, but I'm sure it will help me a lot in the future.

I never knew about these events tabs, I was thinking there would be places that friends gather and just chat and have fun, almost like a chatroom I used to frequent.

And now it makes sense about the traffic. To be honest it is sort of misleading, and I'll let you know now, casinos are the devil.

I am willing to look anyone up and meet and chat with anyone in game. Be warned, at the moment I look pretty ugly, with clothes that don't seem to fit right and a body that seems too large for my head. However, I am working on figuring out this "appearance" feature.

Another question I have is once I have created something I would like to sell, how do I go about selling it? and what areas (assuming I have 0$L) can I go to to sell it? I know I cannot own land yet.

I have been sort of addicted, yet disappointed with SL since last night, however the active community here on the forums have helped me reassure myself that I will find some fun and friendly people soon enough!

It seems we are in the same boat.. lol Feel free to msg me, I am still exploring and what not.

Events are where its at! Check them out!

If you see a high traffic site and in its description it says "camping", "money chairs" or "dance pads" skip it, the people there are afk alts usually.

Try the "events" tab and do a find on "shelter".

Oh, welcome to SL

Thanks all for the valuable info. Have to tell you I ran into one nery 'interesting' character tonight...attempted a seduction! Was very amusing, had a variety of acoutrements (spelling) this place is full of surprises.

Jon, I'd like to connect with you somehow somewhere to chat. Don't know where or when...but sometime.

Much appreciating all the guidance...I'll be back!!

It's my opinion that the best way to make some L$ to "live" off of is creating and selling things. I co-own a little store and mall and I love it!
So a little advice, take it or leave it.
1st Find what you're best at. I would do this by checking out classes first. Under events look for classes on prim building, photoshop, textures, scripting, whatever interests you. Take some of these classes, practice practice practice.

2nd When you've managed to create something you're proud of that you think other people will be interested in you have two choices for a selling location... renting vendor spaces in malls or buying your own land and building a store. Do a little research on this.

If you rent, you don't necessarily want to waste your money renting in a place that just builds traffic with camping chairs (again just my opinion) you want to actually spend some time looking at malls and watching the people. Are they actually wandering around shopping, or are they all sitting in chairs or on dance pads being AFK (away from keyboard) zombies. Zombies don't buy stuff very often. I've found that a place is fine with chairs as long as there are ALSO shoppers wandering around buying at the same time.

If you decide to buy your own land, check out the neighborhood. Do people seem to have open land or is it all blocked in with ban lines? Are there other stores nearby or is it more residential?

3rd When you've got your spot and you're ready to sell, how to do it? High prim items like furniture or buildings, do some research on the types of scripted vendors (like vending machines) that are available. Some people who sell buildings even have a scripted system set up so that the building can be temporarily rezzed (appear) in front of the customer so they can get a good look at it. Other more ordinary vendors you can take a look at it any mall, the items are shown sort of like flipping through a picture book and choosing the page you want to buy from. There are free vendors available for people just starting out or pricey ones for those who want to pay for them.

If you sell something like clothing as I do. My advice is that whenever possible instead of using automated vendors, use prim display boxes. A prim with the clothing inside and a picture of the clothing (fancied up in photoshop like a magazine ad) on the prim. For some reason they seem to sell better this way. I use a combination of the two methods. In my own store and in some of the malls where I rent space I use prim boxes. In some of the malls where I rent smaller space I use a scripted vendor.

(btw for clothes making or texture making, if photoshop is out of your price range, check out something called "Gimp". It is a free simpler version available online if you look for it.)

Best of luck.

Oh and to meet up with someone as you two seem to want, search that person's name under "people" in Find, open their profile and send an IM.

hey Clubside, I just arrived at your funzone haha. Umm, I have what I want all drawn out clothing wise using photoshop, however i wish there was a way to "try on" or see what it looks like in game, and make adjustments, rather than having to upload multiple times and pay money for each time just to change one small little thing.

Also, I would like to know how to make a cut cylinder, I am looking to make a sort of robe, and I heard I need to attach something to my waist as a cut cylinder, any ideas?

I'll tell you how to make a cut cylinder, but it will up to one of these other great people to help you with the whole clothing thing. I'm afraid my building has been fairly limited and I'm not too bright to boot!

After creating a cylinder, make sure the "More" information of the edit dialog is open. On the "Object" tab you will find a "Path Cut Begin" and "Path Cut End" as well as "Hollow" and other features. One a lot of clothing people seem to use is "Taper". Try playing with the up/down gadgets until you get comfortable to just type in numbers which will always be more precise. Good luck!

thanks clubside, yeah I sort of figured it out, would rather have had a "wrapped" feeling rather than the split down the middle feeling of the robe (kind of like how a towel would be around the waist) but I guess that will take a litle more investigating to figure out. I have already somewhat edited what i want for clothing, so I just need to add this "cape" part of it to finish it up. THe major problem I am having now is how do I attach it to my body. And when I do attach it, how do I put it back on the ground so I can re edit the length and what not? I know how to do the "right click attach" commands, however it attaches the middle of the cape to my waist, not the top, so it looks like I am holding a shield or something rather thaan wearing a cape lol. any ideas?

hehe thanks for the info! I actually don't have enough $L to upload yet so haven't tried, and the preview grid is only for accounts created before June 28, therefore doesn't apply to me. I hopefully can find a cash tree soon.

There's a money tree by me Though it usually has only a few Ls at a time as its picked frequently.

Here you go: http://www.terabit.nildram.co.uk/tattoo/

And, welcome to SecondLife .

-- Tengu

Edit: I'm on vacation now, or I could give you detailed instructions - instead, a quick overview, from memory: download the avatar and clothing templates from http://www.secondlife.com/downloads, create/tweak your clothing in your image editor of choce, and save the piece (let's say a shirt) as a .PNG file.

Find the upper body image in the Tattoo directory tree (it will have an odd allcaps name, but fairly obvious) and overwrite it with your image, using the Tattoo filename. Open the appropriate male or female avatar model in Tattoo (I believe it is the .obj file), and Tattoo will use your clothing as the skin for the 3d model (because you replaced it's default upper body file with your image, which still has the name Tattoo was expecting).

Now, you can rotate the model and see how the clothing looks - but even more nifty, if something isn't lined up correctly, you can use the markup tools inside Tattoo to actually paint on the skin while it is still on the 3d model (say, to mark the spot on the image where a seam _should_ go, but isn't, etc.). Then save the Tattoo session, reimport the .PNG into your image editor, tweak... wash, rinse, repeat.

I can't give much more advice than that, as I don't really make much in the way of clothing... but that should give you a leg up. Much more information can be found in the appropriate SL forum (Texturing, etc.). Good luck!

Its boring as hell but you could try somewhere like "The Edge" (its usually in Popular Places) get a VIP tag from an employee and camp for a couple hours.

Ah, how many innocent women have fallen when hearing the line: "Just click on that pink ball!"

Romance is not xcite Selador >.< if it was every woman has earth shattering..... well you know ; P

I hope the Lindens read this. Sort of an argument for keeping the forums open eh?

Welcome Jon! If you're looking for some great, almost free stuff, check out the GNUbie store in Indigo. Everything is one Linden dollar and you can get things like vehicles, clothes, avatars...

This post makes me wonder if there should be a buddy system for new players. Thoughts?

It's not a game!