Would an offline sandbox be enough to make you switch?

Send pizza man, it's easily the most balanced food on the planet!

On a related note, will anyone kill/strangle/dogpile me if I release an offline sandbox for SL?

Not that I will for another month or two at this rate. Freaking Uni classes...

What would be the point, unless the program could recreate the prims in game somehow.

Actually that might not be such a bad idea, propose a plan to upload prim stats and locations to SL for rapid creation from an offline mode. I know I'D never use an offline mode, but for those of you out there that want it, it makes sense to not have to recreate your work over again in SL now that you've got it done offline.

More praise than kill/strangle/dogpile, methinks. I know my question would/will then be, "Would Jeffrey Gomez's solution be enough to make me learn Blender?" and the answer would probably be "yes".

Seeing how I'm not always able to get online all the time, yet still have a laptop with me (hey- it's the sticks, what can I say?), I would LOVE to be able to model offline at times.

Another reason- sometimes there are some large builds going on in Sandboxes and I hate being in the way or squeezed into a small spot.

My suggestion for it, and I'm sure it's possible, is to have it check and limit the number of prims that can be uploaded, so as to prevent those 2 billion Prim houses from appearing. Even if it was the Build Tools we have now in offline format I'd be happy!!

Dont know why it couldnt be done? Any game engine out there that has an editor (like the UnReal engine) doesnt require you to be in the game or online as you build. And I've seen some kick-ass stuff done with it!!! Thats part of why I go for games with editors and why I joined SL.... To be able to build unlimited possibilities. Yet being restricted to Online, In-World Only kinda restricts that.

Then the question becomes what is the limit on an upload? The maximum linked object size (currently 256)? 512 prims in total (linked or otherwise)?

I think there are some that would use it Jeffrey me for one.

Cat

If it was free for basic access I'd sign up right away. I'd carry on using both until one came out being more widely used.

Seeing as I do love to build, and often find interruptions by other players or spikes of lag to be quite annoying, I would love an offline sandbox. To be able to build in peace and then to upload builds instantly once I'm done would be the bee's knees.

If another competitor had such a thing, I wouldn't defect, though, just on that merit. I like SL too much as it is as a whole.

Indeed. Everyone knows the best coders survive on a diet that consists entirely of pizza and cola.

Here here!
<raises the last slice of his fourth pizza this week>

Secondlife is too great, and I have my own little sandbox, that me and my friends use to get away form greifers or any other type of rude, disrespectful person o:), and a offline sandbox is boring.. no people, maybe no music, or sometimes bugs O.o... I hate bugs, specialy in the phillpness a cockroach grows about 3 inches long O.o..

no, offline sandbox isn't that important to me. If we had one that would be cool, but I'm not suffering.

Yes, very much the same for me; it would be nice to have, particularly if, say, I've not got internet access but I fancy doing some building, but I need online sandboxes as well, and it wouldn't be enough to make me switch. (If a parallel SL existed with the same people that I knew, the same world and so on, but with an offline sandbox, I'd switch, but that would involve crossing dimensions I think.)

I'm also not sure that my computer could handle running a cut down SL server - it has enough trouble with just the client.

It would be useful to download my inventory locally too, otherwise it becomes a very limited tool without sounds, textures, reusable components....

Yes.

Switch? Why switch when you can have both.

I prefer to build free of interruptions but I do like building in context. No point creating a wonderful castle only to find it's the wrong shape for the terrain or, worse, it doesn't present glorious views when you walk around it.

Items for all areas are fine for offline building but this tool is not in itself enough to make me switch to another platform. I have too much invested in SL - notably friendships and time spent in learning.

There's times when I'd like an offline modeler (Sandbox crowded/full of prim trash/annoying people), but overall it wouldn't be enough to make me switch. I like to be alone while building, however, if building in-world you can still be in touch with your buddies via IM or visit them for a little chat.
You probably would have to login anyway to test your builds (me at least, since I mostly make vehicles) under "real-world" conditions,i.e. lag, interaction with other Avs, Physics etc. which I believe can't be accurately simulated... we all know how strange the grid behaves sometimes

So, short answer: Naaah

I think it's more the way the details of the question.

Would I try out a competing world with similar features? Yes, sure.

Would I be happy such a world included an offline sandbox? Yes, sure.

Would I "switch" in the sense of giving up SL for the new world, thus losing all the social links I have on SL, just because the competitor had an online sandbox? No way.

Would I be involved in both? Yes, very probably.

Depends on what else that world offered. That by itself wouldn't be enough to make me switch, but it would be a reason to build stuff for that world rather than SL, since there's lots of times I have a computer but no internet access.

Let's say it was otherwise the same as SL:

The "sandbox server" would need to allow multiple connections, or some other way of loading an alt into it.

As for uploads, well, you already pay L$10 per texture uploading them... how about L$10 per object on top of that? Don't forget to make your build easily relinkable to save on upload charges!

A world with better avatar interaction would make me leave. Offline Building *yawn*


Building in SL is already solitary enough. I mean if you are really building you can't carry on a conversation with someone using thse chat tools built into SL that are old as the internet itself.

I think the primary reason that people want a feature like this is because it can be very hard to find some quiet/uninterrupted/alone time to spend a few hours building. If Linden Lab would simply address some of the privacy issues that plague Second Life, the need to build off-line, or use alts, would diminish greatly.

Switch no, but I might use it.

Why does everything we discuss have to be so damn extreme? I don't plan to abandon Second Life even when we can host our own servers on our own grids with our own asset and login servers for our own purposes. The world will still be here. The communities will still be here. The fun of a crowded free-for-all circus atmosphere will still be here for all of us to enjoy. We don't all have to bug out and never come back just because there are other grids out there supporting business, educational, and private recreational endeavours.

I suppose anyone who works with anything even remotely comparable to the SL software is automatically tagged as a business-destroying newbie-eating Linden-hating enemy that must be put down at all costs for the protection of our dear singular Grid All Hail The Central Grid.

shame that

SL supports "TALK" protocol? o_O!?

The OP's question is an interesting one for me, in that it begs a broader question on "what would it take to make one switch away from SL?" It is pretty moot for now given that SL has no kind of meaningful competition and none on the near horizon.

When I first joined SL in 04, I also wondered aloud at the prospect of an offline sandbox, and the Linden response I got was firmly but politely negative. So I went and pondered it. I realized that to have any kind of sandbox beyond a very very simple 3D modeling space, LL would have to release (as in let us download) significant portions of server code (the script engine, the physics engine) and I can see why they'd be reluctant to do so. The security and IP issues are at least as discouraging as the development time issues.

As far as a simple prim editing environment goes, why spend time developing that when such a large percentage of the grid is usually empty (and thus ripe for use in quiet, undisturbed building)? Certainly there would be the added value of being able to build without internet connectivity, but I'm willing to guess that a substantial portion of SL's user base spends much of its time in close proximity to broadband jacks.

All this to say I'm squarely in the "it would be nice" camp, but not clamoring for devs to be pulled off havok, mono, render2.0, or what have you in order to work on an offline editor.