What is the meaning of SL?

After 3 months of casual, intermittent, superficial prowling around in SL, dabbling in clothing, hair, gestures, dancing, sex, etc., I have finally found where my heart belongs. Scripts! I have been looking around in LSL Wikies, and I can easily feel at home with those ideas, and how they are presented. Careful study has led me to the "built-in functions", 310 or so of them, and I see that now all the secrets will be revealed. The only trouble is, their descriptions are written in a foreign language, pretending to be English. My dear friend and mentor has told me that I have to work around in SL until I "get it", and I know what she means. But that policy will take months, if not years, especially since I am clumsy and awkward with such policies.

I am desperately hoping that somewhere among all those wikies, there is a bundle that details what really goes on in SL, how all the ideas used in the built-in function descriptions work together so that those descriptions become readable and meaningful. Or maybe there's a book somewhere. (Definitely NOT with the word "Dummies" in the title). Can anyone suggest how I should proceed, so that I can finally advance to the addict stage without losing sanity? Help me out and I will be happy to nominate you for the forthcoming Nobel prize in SL thought.

Edwardo Tyler Jardberg

(Why doesn't SL provide a mechanism for avatars to have middle names? When I opened my account, the "friend" who was helping me told me not to worry about the name I chose. "You can always change it later", he told me!)

I am not sure about the middle names, but changing ones name, nope impossible unless they do it and they basically only do it if they do not like your name. Only option I know of is to create a whole new account of live with the one you have. I know I have.

Not being a scriptor but a dabbler, I might suggest getting hold of something like Builder's Buddy and just get into it. That has a lot of functions in place, it's known to work well and can be modified by yourself.

Meanwhile have the LSL wiki open to peruse those functions and test them as you go through the script.
Others to work on might be a vehicle script and particles which are a lot of fun of play with.

It WILL make sense after a while.

As for the name.. Definitely make an alt with the name you want. You will use an alt (this one?) to test permissions and lots of other things in and out of scripting.

Good luck with all.

http://www.amazon.com/Scripting-Your-World-Official-Second/dp/0470339837

http://www.amazon.com/Scripting-Recipes-Second-Life-Heaton/dp/160439000X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c/190-0259813-0398115

http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A2WM1KL9DQSQ18/ref=cm_blog_dp_artist_blog

Good luck with your Second LIfe

Second Life is like mystery wine at BevMo. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not so good.

One thing. Just one thing.






There's currently a serious effort underway to improve new user readability in the scripting wiki. There's been much discussion about it on both the Scripting Tips forum and the Building Tips forum. I would invite you to take a look, and to participate. Your input would be quite valuable, as we all try to hash out the best way to teach this stuff.




Ouch. Your friend was either grossly misinformed, or else he's no friend at all. The name you choose is the name you're stuck with forever, unless you switch to a different account.

Look at me, for example. My name was meant to be a joke. I didn't like the way the naming system was set up at the time, so I was trying to make a statement about it. It used to be you'd pick a last name from a list, and then add a first name to it. So I chose Few, and then added Chosen to the beginning, to say "I've chosen Few. Get it? Chosen Few, you stupid $#@%ing naming system!"

Now it's 5+ years later, and I absolutely hate the name. It was cute for maybe the first year or so, but now it's just a hassle. People tend to think I'm some sort or religious nut or something. It's really difficult to explain to clients why I've got such a strange name, especially since the naming procedure isn't even set up that way anymore. I wish I'd just picked Bob Smith or something.

Anyway, chin up; it's not as bad as it could have been. My heart goes out to those poor shmucks who didn't think to capitalize the first letter of their first names. They get to look semi-illiterate for all eternity. Your name just sounds like a some sort of Mexican/Swedish/Jewish hybrid, which probably isn't a bad thing to be.

Ah now, don't be self-conscious, Darlin. Assert your lower-casedness. Fight the good fight against capitalisation!

(Or is that capitalism?)

(Should capitalism be capitalised?)

I always assumed it wasn't stupidity when people didn't capitalise their first names, but that they were Gorean slaves.

Pep (No marx for you either Ephraim)

Re: scripting...

I've never really done any scripting (I did make a windmill once) but I'm pretty sure that there are classes out there that can help. Check with NCI for their schedule, or search on scripting classes in Events or All... you never know what might show up.

For the record, your name is fine. At least it doesn't have any numbers in it. Edwardo55239 Jardberg would have been so much worse.

Chosen, I ADORE your name! It's memorable, it's a cool Biblical reference (to Joshua's Band, if I'm not mistaken), it's unique. Not to mention that you yourself have become sorta kinda semifamous...it's WAY too late to scrap the account and become an alt.

"Chosen Few" is one of those SLebrities I get a kick out of namedropping on people. "Oh yes, you should call Chosen Few about that, he's the expert."

You are deeply disturbed and have severe mental process abnormalities.



But this shows there is hope for you. As long as you cannot grasp the gestalt of LSL, your neural pathways may possibly be realigned to allow a measure of sanity.

/me walks away, shaking her head. "Scripters. They're wizards, but they're nuttier than a pecan pie."

I think way back when I was kid in Ohio there was a motorcycle gang call The Chosen Few... so don't hate your name... instead just embrace your inner biker.

Not to go off topic, but I think Edwardo Jardberg and Chosen Few are perfectly fine names.

.

:0 k i think you mean you wanna really dig into scripting lsl, but feel like you're approaching a completely totally different language? ;0 i did too.

unlike most other programming - racing thru lines numbered 0-infinity whatever, code-blocking/oop notwithstanding - lsl is 'event-driven'. this means, when someone clicks on a prim object you've scripted, it 'fires' a 'touch-start' event and follows your programming inside that specific space. (and there's even a 'touch-end' so you can measure the times between to set up short and long-click responses, things like that.)

just go to the lsl wiki and dig into 'events' just to start with... all the other codey shtuff goes inbetween. have fun! it's a trip ;0...

The nutty programmer's motto; "If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read." (^_^)

And... Heh... Take it from someone who has a sentence. Don't be too hung up on names. Be happy you actually ~have~ a name. =^-^=

Aww, I like it.

To the OP: a good way to get started in LSL is to grab some scripts from the Scripting Library and see how they're put together.

42

To the OP: Do a search for a group called "free script library", and join it. The folks there are usually relatively pleasant and willing to help new scripters implement their ideas. The free script library is also a location in-world, where you can go and pick up copies of scripts that are related to the things you want to do, so you have a starting point to work from.

My advice to you is to pick up a good menuing system, because multi-page dialogs are nasty creatures.