Homeless Alts

Okay, I'm annoyed now. I absolutely hate it when systems are set up to reward the dishonest and punish the honest.

I created an alt, and I built a home for her above my main's land. Since I don't want to spend 100L and another $10 to create another alt that I have no use for except group-forming -- and don't really need the group for anything else either -- I thought I'd use the "feature" that automatically sets newbies homes to the first place they visit on the mainland. I sent the alt a landmark to where her home should have been and made sure that was the first place she went.

Except that SL rezzed her at ground level, NOT at the actual teleport location, so now her home is out in the open in the middle of the neighborhood. I can still get her to her house by prim-sitting (my flight feather is no transfer, and I don't remember where I got it), but it's going to get really tedious doing that all the time, not to mention that I gave her a private house for a reason.

Anyone have any tips for getting this fixed? Short of either lying to create a freebie alt or paying another $10 penalty for being honest? Is there any way to reset her home other than creating a group?

If there is no resriction on teleporting to a landmark in the sim or on your parcel, have her go to the home and set a landmark there. Name it "!Home" (the exclamation point will bring it to the top of an alpha sort) and stick it somewhere that you can find it readily. She can use that LM to teleport to her sky home. If she logs out from that point, and has "Last Location" set as her login preference, she'll log in at the sky house, even if that isn't technically set as her "Home Point".

Eventually LL will fix the bug that prevents people from setting their home point on land set to a group, where they are part of a group and should have the right to set a home point. Until then, this works.

Oh, and while it does cost L$100 to form a group, you only need two people to do that now. So you and the alt are sufficient.

Normally a parcel only needs to be set to a group before someone can use the "Set Home to Here" (and assuming they have the proper group ability for it) but that was broken many updates back, although it's listed in the new beta's fixes.

There's two things you can do if you don't want to wait for the beta to reach the main grid:

*) deed the land to a group
*) split a 16m² square off of the land and deed that to the group, have the alt set it as its home and then rejoin

The second might be more tricky since you said the alt lives in a skybox so you'd have to make sure you get the right square.

If you're unsure about either, please do ask . And if you decide to undeed land, remember to sell it back to yourself for L$0 which you can only do if you specify who's allowed to buy it (someone please correct me if I'm wrong about that )

(Edited to add that since the beta is on the beta grid now, it's likely we'll end up with an update next wednesday, so altogether it might be easiest to go with Ceera's suggestion of a landmark and wait until the end of the weekend for an announcement on whether it's update week or not )

I just got in-world and dropped the latest feather and otter monitor on you. And if you do remember where you got a no-transfer one I'd appreciate knowing it.

Just when I think I've finally graduated out of noob-ness, I find another casual reference that mystifies me.

What is a flight feather?

An attachment that allows you to fly higher and faster than SL "gravity" typically allows. Do a search for ninja flight feather. I never take mine off.

Flight script I wrote a while back to give people an alternative to X-flight, which was being distributed in source format against the wishes of the author. It's not intended to compete with X-flight, or Cubey Terra's flight accelerators, all it does is let you keep flying up past the 200 meter ceiling as if it wasn't there (as best as I can manage, given the differences in script performance on different sims).

I sell it for a small amount (I forget the amount, it's like 10c real money) and don't restrict redistribution with credit. There's a bunch of products using it, not all of who give me credit for it.

You can pick it up at Skyhook Station, and check out the rest of the gadgets I sell while you're there.

But why should it be necessary to set land ownership to a group? What's so hard about permitting people to set home to a parcel?

Thanks for that, Argent. I would be grounded without it.

I think they do it purposely so you buy land to call home.

It's tied to group membership so you don't have to open your land wide-open to every NOOB in SL, just so you can allow one friend to share your parcel.

There is a parcel-level setting, as I recall, that will allow anyone at all who is not explicitly banned from your parcel to set their home point on your land. I really don't think you want to do that, unless the land is intended to be a homeless shelter for newbies. And at the moment, I don't think that setting works.

The group option was supposed to allow a land owner some degree of control. They could create a group, and define a specific role in the group that allowed group members assigned to that role to set their home point on that group-set parcel. For a while it worked quite well. Then some update broke it, and they haven't fixed it since then.

Another good idea. Get on as yourself and your alt, turn this option on, have the alt set home, then turn it off. Their home position will stay set, even if they can't set it again.

I love the flight feather, thanks for making it .

Little bit confuzzled about the part I quoted though. I just got it from someone else and it's full permission, but from what you just said I should tell people where to go pick it up instead of just handing it out?

Really? I thought it was supposed to be three -- that will make things much easier!


And that, together with the two-person limit, may solve the problem entirely. Thanks!

Frankly, I'd rather not wait for anything that depends on LL having their act together.

Thanks, everyone, for the flight feathers! A few people dropped me copies.


Not sure yet what an otter monitor is, but I'm looking forward to finding out. *g* Thanks! The feather I picked up as part of one newbie package or another, I could only guess where, but I _suspect_ it wasn't no-transfer when I got it. I _think_ it was one of those glitches where I dropped it on the floor and the perms changed when I picked it up again. I think.

I'll ditto Kitty's question about passing the feather around, though.

Totally! Actually, right after I made the original post, I thought, "I can just temporarily toggle the "allow others to set home" here and then change it back!", logged in to try just that, and only when I didn't find that option remembered that I was thinking in MUCK terms, of setting the Abode flag. It ought to be a simple option change -- and there are enough philanthropists in SL I'm sure plenty would use it as a newbie shelter! For that matter, if I had enough land to separate my own private space from my would-be surrounding parkland, I'd leave the parkland Abode for all myself. Still turn off building, but leave home-setting possible.


At the moment, it's not findable; at least, I couldn't find such an option. I do hope they make it available again.

Anywhere you Can be (in SL) (at any height as well) open your map.
select the 'copy slurl to clipboard' button.
on your desktop make a new shortcut (the wizard opens).
Paste into that first box. Click 'next' and enter a relevant name.
That's all, unless for florish you want to change the icon to reflect the SL nature of the shortcut. Make separate shortcuts for any location (or alt) you want(i do).
The only bugaboo to this is regarding landing points that later lose the floor, so you enter SL falling..... whoops!

Zen, what is the advantage of an slurl over a regular landmark?

Well if you already own land or rent it, and have a group deeded to it, you can invite your alts to it and teleport them there to set their home point. I duno what problem you were haivng with that.

I must express my feelings about the ability for newbs to set their home point to anywhere once they leave help island. I believe something needs to be done to prevent this. Perhaps LL should designate a landing spot for once they leave? Or set the ahern welcome area as the home point upon creation of a character. You would still start out in orientation island but if you TP home you end up in ahern. That is just my idea though. Or how about on the website when your making your character you could choose a home location from a list?

there's been a BUG in SL since last summer.
You can set home if you OWN the land.
You can set home if your Group owns the land. (I think. I haven't done this in a while.)
A land owner can set ON the flag to allow group members to set HOME to land, (where the land owner keeps the land). BUT, the group members are not able to set HOME in this case.

Its been reported a bra-zillion times to the Lindens.

...I think I saw notice of a bug fix coming in the next release.
(Of course, that could mean that All of our Home Points will disappear

Meantime, YES. Make a Landmark of your desired home point. Name it with a leading '.' or '!', just as suggested. (this will make it sort to the top or bottom of your inventory.) In your inventory, move it from the folder of Landmarks into the uppermost folder of your inventory.
Makes it quick and easy to find. After awhile it'll become second nature...like calling a taxicab. (of course, calling a cab with Ctrl+Shift+H is even easier

you can fire up SL to start in a number of different locations...
home, sandbox, testing area, meeting place, favorite joint...
without having to load one place first(just to get in, then tp to the place you really want togo.
get it?

Well, that only works if you have a computer powerful enough to run two simultaneous sessions of memory-hogging SL. I'm not sure it would have worked anyway, though, if only because the landmark technique SHOULD have worked too, and didn't. I still haven't figured out why, so I'm putting it down to a temporary glitch and just using landmarks to get around. I haven't had any trouble with teleporting to the sky since; it only screwed up on the one time it mattered, of course. ::rolls eyes::


I'm not sure it needs to be prevented, but it could use some management. On this occasion it would have worked perfectly for me, if the teleport hadn't screwed up and put me down at the wrong coordinates. But that's because I was starting an alt and I knew to expect the home-setting. When I started my main, the first place I visited was some crowded region that was advertising rental apartments but didn't have any vacant, so I never had any reason to return there. But I had my login location set to home and was rather confused why I kept ending up there. Setting all newbies to the same home (or even one of several default locations) seems like a recipe for lag to me, though. I was startled enough last month to be suddenly sent to Ahern when my home sim crashed; being sent from one crash to a place where it's guaranteed you won't be able to move more than a foot or two is not my idea of a good time.


On the other hand, this is an excellent suggestion. I'd just like to see an <enter your own coordinates> option on the list. Maybe send a confirmation message to the coordinates' land owner to see if they'll allow it; there'd be time, since the newbie has to go through orientation anyway before setting home. Or add back the "allow home-setting here" option to the land management screen.

Actually you don't have to have both accounts logged in at all. All you gota do is invite the alt to the group, switch to it, accept invite, teleport over, and set it as home point. Group invites are stored like offline IMs.