First Night Experience

This is sort of technical issues and sort of feature requests all thrown into one so hopefully General Discussion is the place for this. Also, regardless of how you interpret my whopping post count, I'm new here so some of this may have already been discussed in great detail. Just think of me as "into wasting forum space" and all is dandy.

1. Apparantly your desktop needs to be in 32-bit colors to be able to run in windowed mode. At least it does on my machine, because anything else crashed the client before it even began.

2. After logging in for the first time (7pm EST last night), my edit appearance window wasn't working. None of the 3d models were showing up in the little windows. Instead there were just gray boxes. It was suggested that I restart the client. I did. That fixed the problem.

3. After logging in for the second time, none of the player loaded textures were showing up on objects in the world. Everything was either plain colored or see-through. It was very ugly. Never change the game to look like that. Not that they would, but I thought I should mention it just incase someone over there gets a stick up their posterior one day. Anyway, I restarted the client again and the textures started showing up. Then it was pretty.

4. I'm not sure, but items 2 and 3 may have been related to the fact that I had Winamp down-streaming audio while playing. I did notice a significant increase in game speed when Winamp was not pulling in data. I've never had problems with this in any other games though. SecondLife must be a real bandwith hog... I love it. Max out that DSL baby! Lemme see what you got!

5. I like to fly off into the sunset. Well, not particularly, however the game likes taking control of my avatar and sending him flying off into the sunset. This happens a lot when I select a landmark and click the 'fly to' button. It does happen sometimes when I fly manually though. Eventually I get so far out of bounds that I get a nice crash to desktop. Luckally when I re-enter gameplay it tells me it can't find the server I logged out on and throws me in a safe place.

On to the more feature side of things and questions:

6. Property Issues/Questions - I went lot hunting towards the end of my run last night and found that much the empty land is empty for a reason. This place has hills, and lots of them. Well, actually a lot of them equate to bumps, but still it's no place to build a house. First off, I assume the map will be extended a lot before going live, right? At this point I'm seeing a lot of houses being built on stilts. A whole flat land would be boring, but right now it's just limiting good property for houses.

Also, how does it work when you get boxed in on your property? You either have to convince your neighbor to sell or move? I see some evil motives being brought out here. Someone buys a nice little lot with hopes of expanding it some day only to get boxed in by some a-hole looking to make their life miserable.

What about property standards? Say I plop down a good amount for a nice lot on a hill overlooking the water. Then someone, again just to be a prick, buys a plot right next to it and builds a giant wall right in my view. Will I be able to file a complaint against this person for ruining the landscape?

7. Garbage Collectors - I've noticed a lot of trash sitting around littering public property. Like people created a crappy box and just left it sitting there. Perhaps give users other than the owner a reason to clean it up. Give them a percentage of the item's worth for trashing it. Sort of the way you can clean up corpses in most MUD's. A lot of areas are looking really crappy because of this random garbage sitting around.

8. Organization - Right now the land is chaotic. Are there any plans for making each section more like a community other than just a random scattering of buildings? Public roads/paths would be nice, so I'm not walking through people's property to get from point A to point B. Also, someone with enough money could technically wall up an entire section of the map (unless you can't build a wall that can't be flown over). Some sort of control on this would be nice I think.

Also, what about defining property use. For example, some servers could be commercial while others are residential. Maybe tag a couple servers as production centers (where builders live and work). This way someone wanting to build a nice quiet two story home won't end up sitting next to a dance club or high traffic trading shop.

I think that's enough for now. Please talk back at me so I know if I'm crazy or not.

Good point.... but that's because you were in Sim8 (welcome server)... The laggiest server around! Go around... and it's not so bad!

LOL I like #6 I can see what you mean... I've been in game for a while... and I like my space... so the other night, somebody came along and bought a 2x2 square of land next to me..... Like right stuck on me! I was like ARGH!!!!! there is like tones of land everywhere else! but NO they had to buy right next to me.... so Since I had alot of money at the time I bought all the lad around that person + 3 wide around my existing lot. They moved a little farther... they got the message! I'm sorry if that makes me... (as you put it) a-hole... but hey I don't want someone else's house stuck on mine!

I did go around to different servers. You change servers when a new name pops up in the lower right hand corner of your screen, right? The only time it was extremely bad was when I was flying. That's to be expected though, as you're downloading all those textures you're flying past.

ya the servers change names... you can see it whne you pull the map out!

I think SL eitticate is required......No one should buy land right on top of/adjoining other properties unless.......

1. They ask first (should always happen regardless)

2. Invited to do so

3. Zoned for it (should still ask neighbor)

4. The area has many buildings/land purchased in this manner(also should still ask first)

Oh one last thing...If they intend to build a monstrocity or raise an unsightly mountain, they should set their view depth to at least 128 and note all properties they can see, then ask those property owners if they would object to a giant view blocker.

However, concerning the above mentioned a-holes, they aren't gonna care crump about your 4 line items after the Beta. Granted, any kind of covenant will limit the freedom we have, I think it may be needed in the future. We all don't have the money (yet) to pen in the objectionable neighbor like Nexus did, AND, if this guy was a true a-hole, he wouldn't have moved on, he could have erected a 2x2x10 bell tower !!

hahahahahahahaha

CRUMP! I love it!

#!

I'm sure you've picked this up by now, but just to make sure: When you choose land, you can raise it, lower it, or level it.

This is good: Smooth the rock out of the way so you can lay a nice foundation.

This is bad: You're laying out with your sweetie watching the sunset over the water (for example) then one day suddenly the water isn't water anymore!

Also if you see one of those crappy boxes. they could be a stray object one that the creator doesn't know about. If we all help out and send little notes to the object owners we can get it cleaned up.

Notes giving coordinates or even a landmark.

Im having problems finding land to build on! With limited funding I can't exactly afford to haul off and emass a huge mountain out of the ocean, and now I feel guilty for buying where I did. Dang it! I think tonight I'll go return my land and keep looking
*sniffles sadly*