New Developer Incentive Idea: Award For Not having a laggy club

Hey, I got this wacky idea.

How about we figure out how to reward people for not having a club that lags with 30 people? There are some out there... but the majority of clubs are 0.2 fps molasses-lag-fests.

We could call it the, "Maybe if you plan to have more than 20 people in your club, you should consider not using a ton of poseballs will open listens, tons of vendors for all your club officers, particle spammers, money givers, guest trackers, uncompressed large-sized textures, and animated disco lights" developer awards.

Not Funny

I wish it were funny.

There are very, very few clubs in SL that aren't poorly designed lag-fests.

I accept this challenge! o.O

I tried doing something like that with Hell on Gold Coast. I think it used 10 textures max, one particle effect, one scripted animation effect, one scripted rotation. Of course, it was only open for a week, but the night it opened we did pretty good on the lag, I think, considering it was 1.6.

I'd absolutely like to see more well designed clubs in SL that take lag into account.

Me too, if nothing else, it's the start of an interesting experiment, and the eventual results of such efficiency will lead to added enjoyability within a club. So it's not just a learning experience, but a lot of fun. This is another void in SL that has a lot to be filled.

I think chipmunks are cuter than squirrels.

~Ulrika~

Check out the Frogg Marlow show sometime. Drift & Cua bent over backwards to use a limited amount of textures, and keep the script count down low at Clydes. Unfortunately, when there's a packed house, the framerates can drop.

If you can pull it off, I hope you publish your tactics so others can learn from it - although from my own experience, many sources of lag are outside of the venue builder's control.

I've gone out of my way at the Shelter to leave as light a footprint as I can get away with, while still providing the kind of environment new folks would want to hang out in.

Some things we've done:

-Used Low-Rez animated textures instead of color change for our dancefloor
-Colission & llMinEventDelay to get around using Timers
-Free Newbie Vendors are of the passive vendor flavor
-Conservation of listens or sensors
-No poseballs with listens
-All textures at 256 x256 or below where possible

Its frustrating, because no matter what we do - we're still at the mercy of our mall-neighbors for resource utilization, and our guests from an attachment perspective.

Josh is building a club on Slootsville, its aimed at being low lag, and its not going to have no stinking poseballs/flashing lights/spinning balls or anything like fricking dance pads/camping chairs, this mean I can get some Developer Incentive back?

The whole POINT of the club was to gain extra dwell to help me more with the sim, as I can't justify paying $195 a month just to hang out anymore, not with stipend gone and everything else, seems i'm a tad tooooooooo late, unless the "new" system will be anything similar.

why not a limit on club scripts and objects? this would solve this problem.

Have you ever visited the spa, Hiro? I'd love to show you around. Might be good to come by sooner rather than later, also. In fact, in order not to have lag, I invested in a sim that i share only with Linden Labs (poor investment, that, I suppose). Nonetheless, we have very little lag. We've been able to pull off a fashion show with a packed house at our new location (granted coz we are mainland, we can only get 40 in).

At the old locale I dedicated hours every week (literally like 4 hours) to doing lag sweeps through the sim and begging neighbours to eliminate open listens. I have hired consultants to help me eliminate lag at the old locale and at the new one. I think most entertainment venue managers take lag quite seriously, but it is hard to be a host and also tell people please leave all your prims at the door. Nonetheless we have been very very conscious of avoiding lag: no moneyballs, no self-changing vendors, no slots, no tringo, no camping chairs or dance pads, poseballs mostly in the sky (other than dance animations and a handful of other furniture balls).

We make use of Flipper's script to replace open listens (though a couple of times that ruined the item in question so the choice was made not to have the item in favour of having low lag). Additionally I have had to make other choices to eliminate lag such as get rid of physical fish that could be pushed into places like lovely physics fountains (also eliminated). Our builds use very few textures, but do so pretty elegantly: a lot more can be done with blank than people think. Textures of any complexity mostly are being reserved for art.

I think that some very nasty generalizations have been made about entertainment venues in SL and those very generalizations have harmed more than helped people who are actually trying to entertain your customer base. I am saddened by the fact that not only is the baby being thrown out with the bathwater, but that those who are experiencing loss of revenue and support are further villified and insulted. Didn't this happen before back in 2004? Why throw salt on an open wound? What is the motivation here?

I admit, a big problem is blingtards.

A huge chunk of lag is caused by:
animation overriders
bling scripts on jewelry
"sexy walk" shoes
those retarded particle "poof" scripts that appear when someone says your name, or you trigger them with a phrase, or when you tp in/out

- and all of them - whoops - potentially have open listeners.

The only real solution is to bad outside scripts on your land if you're a club owner. If you have a dance ball set up, people really aren't going to miss anything but the lag.

You could also investigate alternatives to poseballs. Not that I'm advertising anything. Not that my signature mentions anything. *ahem*

I don't see particle poofers as often as I did when I first started SL. I remember they were one of the kewlest things I wanted to get my hands on. I eventually learned more about those effects from Water Rogers and CrystalShard Foo. But I remember some in particular, like a handwritten "Bitch" and the marijuana leaves, and after awhile it wasn't so fresh, but it still amazes me to this day, thinking back. I have one (watermelons) I use, but selectively.

Hiro, respectfully, I did invest in multianim furniture and it is upstairs in the love hostels (other than the Eden room which is nature themed and has no furniture per se). I spent a significant amount on a variety of furniture pieces.

Can you please answer my question about the motivation behind the original post? I appreciate very much your contributions to SL, particularly the free vendor. Nonetheless, it feels very much that you are saying that event venues deserve to be eliminated wholescale.

Cool! I wish every club would follow your lead and provide better products for their guests!


Sure you can ask, absolutely.

Clubs have been taking a lion's share of the dwelloper incentives for what? A year and a half? Two years? This is on top of the L$ bonus for dwell? Many, many clubs are simply unattendable because of design. And yes, there are a handful of truly good clubs that do a great job of proving a fun setting that isn't lag-city; these clubs deserve the rewards that they get, and I wish there were more at that higher caliber.

I'm not going to name names as to which are good and which are bad, because the thread isn't about criticising specific people.

But meanwhile, while the lag-fest clubs have been enjoying developer incentives for doing everything *but* coming up with original content, the real innovators of SL rely on their own skills and marketing to provide monetary support for their projects.

Seriously ... what encourages the innovation of SL? Another cookie-cutter mall-sino-poseball-tringo-dancefloor-lagarama club, or the host of cool building and scripting projects?

Good moring Persephone can you give me IM on yahoo. [email]acald161@yahoo.com[/email]

who will be here to appreciate cool building and scripting if there is no social SL? Again, it comes down to user base. I agree that a lot of what DI was funding wasn't my fave either. But, I also know that without it, a lot of places with genuine events happening will be in the position I am in: trying to decide why it is that they should pay out of pocket to entertain folks who will spend their money keeping people who DON'T fund or support events in business.

Joe Newb comes in world, goes to a club and meets people, decides to stick around, and because of that club, the cool builders and scripters get to stay in business. hell it even puts some through college. But at my expense. My personal, out of real world money expense. *shrugs* so take clubs out of the equation and then what happens? hm. I guess we will see.

Maybe events and community will happen in strip malls and people will be happy with that. Or maybe SL will turn into a ghost town tour 24/7 (come see the amazing build that no one actually inhabits). Sorry for my pessimism. I just have seen what happened with the "Events Work Group" that wasn't. Events and community building are my favourite parts of SL. I hope I can say that in 3 months.

The names have been changed in this response to protect the innocent!

This is remiscent of when HugeJoe claimed that Club TopNotch "kept SL alive" and was promptly chewed down in the forum. Clubs are cool, clubs provide some things to do, but if you think that clubs are some mainstay of SL, you really should get out more.

The bottom line is:
Before there were clubs, people got together and hung out.
While there are clubs, people get together and hang out.
If all the SL clubs were to poof, people would still get together and hang out.

Clubs don't bring huge masses to SL. They certainly provide things to do, and that's a very good thing, but implying that without clubs there would be "no social SL" is ... frankly ... completely not true.

Hiro, I'm not saying that clubs are all there is to do in sl, but people do often go to event venues in order to meet folks. I'm sure that without organized events or without organized event venues people will meet and hang out. But, have you ever been the new kid on the block, looking around and deciding how to meet people? Sure, you can maybe chat someone up at the laundrymat or at a local tavern. In fact, the organized activity often provides for conversation and gives you a chance to get to know the person (as in omg, she uses the same bleach I do!)

It is a bit harder to make one's way if there are no organized activities and folks are just standing around and most of them seem to know one another already. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm overestimating the value of organized activities, but I think that organized events help people have ways to meet one another and a reason to start talking. Lots of event venues aren't clubs. In fact, the "club" of the spa is a very small part of the overall build.
The thing is, though, that the club, the library, the theatre and the mud wrestling ring all provide places for people to let loose and have organized interactions that they might not otherwise engage in. I think that this kind of content is inherently valuable for SL because people having something to do makes people more inclined to stay here.

I'm also not meaning to overstate my importance, but I do think that folks who entertain people and get people talking to one another and give them opportunities to get to know one another better do something valuable in sl and that value translates to dollars and cents for people who sell objects in sl.

In case you haven't seen it, the 'new' system was rolled out with the new website yesterday:

http://secondlife.com/developers/directory.php

In short, it looks like there's no plan to replace it with anything that has any kind of direct monetary supplement to players again.

I think it is the DANCING ANIMATIONS that cause lag. THAT is what causes me to slow to a crawl, not the bling or anything else, cause it happens even when "all the right people" are doing the dancing, and not in a club but in "places all the right people go to".

Yet I have never heard anybody talk about that.

coco

I don't have a laggy club, I want my money, now!!!!

I'm waiting......

I thought the handwritten "bitch" made out of marijuana leaves was particularly creative.

I'm not arguing with you about the DI, which I don't much care about and figure has probably been somehow unfair from the get-go, but there's more to life than building and scripting, Hiro.

Can someone tell me, though, am I right about the dancing animations?

coco

Considering the low end specs of your video card, and limited memory, they may in fact cause lag on your system because it is a client side effect. On most systems though it is a non-issue, you don't often hear of reports of problems with it. The animation system is designed to scale - it plays less frames per second in laggier situations, but there is only so much it can do. Without some definitive testing on it, animations have never been listed as a lag culprit, in comparison to the server/client side effect of additional avatars, scripts, etc.