FAQ thread

I propose that we post FAQs in this thread, then someone collect them in to one document and ask the Lindens to put these in a locked topic at the top of the Feature Suggestions or General Discussion topic.

NOTE, this thread is for questions you already have the answer to

Format will be one FAQ per post, question in Bold, answer in plain text, ancillary notes in itialics hypen hyphen author's name.

When will the Beta hours be extended?
Sometime. Right now, in addition to regular liasons, technical Lindens must be available at all times to deal with server and client problems that come up (this being the point of the "beta" exercise). This limits the amount of time that the beta can be open in a day. The current window was chosen so that a few evening hours would be available in all North American time zones.

It is an open secret that if you are logged in at closing time, you don't get booted out, but there are no promises that anything you do after hours would survive an after hours server crash or other disaster.
This question is answered in the knowledge base
-- Wednesday Grimm

Is there an out-of-game builder, script compiler or avatar model?
No. It seems frustrating that these are not available during the beta period, but when the game comes on-line 24/7, these will not really be necessary. It would require non-trivial amounts of work to create these programs, and I for one would rather see that work spent on the actual game.

Some people have had good results building things in external 3-d modelers then copying the primitive geometry 'by-hand' to objects in SL.

-- Wednesday Grimm

Where is the documentation for the scripting language?

At the top level of your Second Life install (C:\Program Files\Second Life) in a file called lsl2_reference.htm. This documentation is fairly preliminary and sparse at present. There are also tool-tips (hover over with the pointer) for all events, constants and function calls built in to the script editor.
-- Wednesday Grimm

Excellent idea Wednesday!!

This on helped me out a lot (Thanks to Misnomer.)

How can I learn to design my own clothes and work with alpha channels in my paint program?

Learning Alpha Channels

This website goes through a simple to follow step by step process to acclimate you to working with Alpha channels so that you can fully customize your appearance and do a world of other things!

That depends on your graphics card, but in many cases, the answer is yes. In order to do this, you will first need a reasonably fast graphics card. Check the Second Life knowledgebase for compatible graphics cards.

1) Make sure your graphics card is running in 32-bit color depth mode. This can be set from your Windows Display Properties dialog box, as well as the display management utilities that ship with most modern graphics cards.

2) When you run the Second Life client, at the initial login screen is a button labeled "Preferences...". Click this button and you will be provided with a tabbed dialog box. From there, click on the third tab which is labeled "Display".

3) At the bottom of the Display dialog tab is a section labeled "Fullscreen Mode: (requires restart)". In here, select the "Off" radio button, then click the OK button. This should exit you from the Preferences tabbed dialog box.

4) As the dialog box indicated, you will need to restart Second Life (not your machine), so when you are taken back to the login screen, click the "Quit" button, then restart the Second Life client.

Presuming your video card is compatible with the requirements of the Second Life client, you will now be running Second Life in a window.

If you find that after performing these steps, you receive an error message about your card not being compatible with Second Life, one of two things is the case. Either you did not set your video card's 32-bit color depth mode correctly or your card is truly not compatible with Second Life's Windowed mode operation. To restore full-screen mode without un- and re-installing the Second Life client, do the following steps:

1) Open Notepad (Start | Run... | Notepad).

2) Open the file settings.ini which can be found in your SecondLife directory (File | Open... | C:\Program Files\Second Life\settings.ini).

3) About half way down the settings listing is a line that reads "FullScreenOn FALSE". Change the word FALSE to TRUE.

4) Save the file, exit Notepad, then re-run the Second Life Client. You may need to re-configure the Display settings to select the proper full-screen resolution you desire.

This information was provided to me by BuhBuhCuh. Thanx, BBC. You're a Second Life Saver.

Something is wrong, how do I report it?
Make sure your sound and video drivers are up to date. Then check to make sure your sound and video drivers are up to date. After you've done that, make sure your sound and video drivers are up to date. Then check the knowledge base and search the forums to see if someone has already reported the problem. If not, do one or more of the following:
- add a question about your issue in the knowledge base
- post to the "technical issues" forum
- harass a Linden in world

-- Wednesday Grimm

Any bugs should also be reported through the bug reporter in the Help menu in-game if possible.

Here's another question I've encountered from a lot of new participants. This is how I respond.

"How Do I become a Linden?"

Linden chooses their team from applicants. It might be a good idea to be extrememly familiar with the policies and standards of the game on all aspects. For instance, if you want to be chosen as a future Linden, don't call other residents names, make fun of people who ask questions, berate novice players, or carry a militant attitude.

The Linden Liaisons are there to be of assistance, to help in organizing the game, events, ect. the ones I have been fortunate enough to interact with are friendly, attentive, unbiased and professional. They deal with issues presented to them with calm, collected demeanors, and present potential solutions. If a Liaison cannot provide such resolve to a circumstance, they direct you to someone who can. For further information see their website.