Your (Second-)Life is what you make of it...

Right now, a user can create and sell scripts, objects, textures, avatars, but I don't think that's enough. We need more things to create and sell.

Namely, there's a couple things I have in mind. First of all, Interface. Take a look at a lot of modern MMOGs and you'll find the best of them have a completely modifyable interface. Namely, Everquest.

Base the interface off a windowing system, so that each panel in the interface is minimizable, closable, and such, and allow custom art and textures to be used. EQ uses XML, but in all reality, you could use other things to allow the interface buttons to be programmed and moved around as the Interface designer wants. Of course it'll take prowess to create an interface, but so does scripting, artwork, modeling, etc.

To that end, These interfaces should have the same attributes as your standard object, such that they can be sold, copy protected and modify protected. This would allow custom interfaces to suit First person shooter style areas in the game, or Roleplay areas. The owner of the land or event could simply place an object that dispenses copies of the custom interface.

Any thoughts on this idea?

I think this is an excelent Idea. It would be super phat to be able to implement different HUDs for instance - if you have a scripted vehicle, it could be scripted to change your "skin" would change to allow a better navigation system.

or show how much damage your Mech has taken

or do Infrared for nightime deathmatches

BBC

While a great idea my personal opinion is that it should be a post-release feature. Like it was for EQ.
To my knowledge, EQ is the only game to offer such functionality - and they didn't do it till the game was out 2 years. What other games offer this?

My reasoning is that the interface is so tied into everything else that doing what you suggest isn't just it's own (LARGE) project but rather a LARGE layer of complexity added onto the entire system. Every new system feature or change or bug fix could potentially effect the interface system.

However on a related note, I really would like to see the interface moved more client side, or in some way detached from the frame rate. It would be nice if the interface could be operated at least semi smoothly durring moderate lag.

I don't agree that this should be a post release feature. EQ did it so long after release, because back when they first designed the game, a user customizable interface was laughable. Now that it's a feasible technology though, I think it should be used more widely, especially in a thing* like SL. EQ took a long time in developing their newest user interface because the framework for it wasn't there. They had to take code that wasn't written even remotely for such a task and rewrite it. For SL to be released, the interface has a long way to go. I personally don't feel that the Interface is release quality. Being that SL is still in closed beta, I think now would be the time to include a feature like this, since the interface code will likely need work anyways.

EQ is the only game I've experianced first hand with a fully customizable interface. For the life of me, my head is blanking about what other MMOGs have customizable interfaces, but I do recall reading about a game or two that will be using such a feature. Lack of rest will hurt a person's think, blarg!
If that sentence made sense to you, I'm sorry.

Amen!!

Ryozu, GREAT IDEA! I love it! BUT... NOT NOW! Lindens have more "important" stuff to do! But I would love to see this when the game goes GOLD! great idea, lindens should add this on their to do list for 1.0

That I can agree with. Maybe not now, but definatly a 1.0 release feature, if you ask me.

So, we have attachable HUD objects, but they don't have access to changing the actual SL interface itself...

Soooo... Is it post release enough now that we can consider packaging the existing XML interface, customizing it, and sharing it? =D