New to SL - Plz help

Hello everyone!

I have been playing SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) for over a year and am looking for

a new MMOG. In my search I came upon SL which looked very good from a

crafting standpoint although it seems very different from the SWG crafting

mechanics..ie. gather resources from spawns, checking quality stats, crafting

components and final assemblies...etc. SL, from what ive read, is more like the

3D things I made for the Half-Life mods.

To the point: Can someone please explain the mechanics of the building

process to me..ie..where do materials come from and how do you get them, what

are prims (primitives?), do you need a premium account to make anything, are

there any factors in your crafted items such as quality or can anyone pretty

much make the same things, do you have to make things using 3rd party

programs then import them into SL (other than textures and pictures).

I have more questions but this is enough info for now. So far the game looks

good and I really like that the crafting is only limited by the players' imagination.

With SWG you can only make the widgets that are predesigned by SOE (Sony

Online Entertainment) (whom I have come to dislike very much).

Thanks so much for your help. Any and all info will be greatly appreciated!

Best Regards,

Brig Bellow

Heh, don't take this the wrong way, but compairing what you can do in SL to any of the "crafting" systems I've seen is like compairing pong to the PS2. It's closer to making a HalfLife mod, but even blows that away in many aspects - it's just that you can do soooo much more in SL as far as customizing/making anything you can envision. But, since I like the analogy anyways, let me break it down like this for you.

The "Guilds" of SL -

BUILDER/Architect/Weaponsmith - (Some geometrical and artistic skills add a bonus of + 1, 3D rendering experience +2)
Right click and "create" a prim, you can make them in a number of shapes, and then link a group of them together to create "objects" An object can be anything from a car to a house to, well, anything you can represent in 3-D space out of these building blocks.

TEXTURER/Artist/Clothes Maker - (Somewhat artistic +1, Experience with Photoshop +2)
Using an external program like Photoshop, Paint Shop, or any other image editor, you can make/draw the textures that are painted onto the objects that builders make. OR, you can also use the clothing templates and design the textures that become the clothes people wear.

ANIMATOR/Dance Instructor/Sex Therapist - (Experience with Poser +2)
You can create poses and animations for your AV or to sell to other AV's using poser.

SCRIPTER/Programmer/Engineer - (Good with math and logic +1, Any computer programming experience +2)
Finally, you can learn "LSL", the Linden Scripting Language, a built in programming language that lets you make vehicles run, doors open/shut/lock, and do many, many, many more things.


I guess most people who are "financially successful" through SL either utilize some or all of the "skills" or "guilds" listed above, or are part of a larger network/"party"/business that creates and sells content... For example, lets say you start looking at SL and find that you can build and script. Maybe you build a boat and can put a script in it to make it run, but the sails and everything else it's composed of are made of wood - You can either find someone who can make a good sailboat sail texture, or learn to use a graphics editing program yourself and make your own sailboat sail. Then, once you have your completed boat, you can sell copies of that boat to other people in SL, and then use the money to go buy things you like in SL.

One of the best things about SL is that it's hard to define and "put in a box" - Lets say you're a musician and you're good with that and nothing else. Well, you can DJ or perform live concerts in SL, or hire a scripter to put different audio samples you make into a keyboard or DJ-table, ect, ect... The limit isn't some defined craft recipe or level cap - If you put the time, effort, and creativity into it, you are limited almost only by your imagination.

Hiya and welcome first off

Now, I'm no expert on building, but here are some tips and answers to some of your questions.

You might want to go take a look at the Ivory Tower and go through their step by step guide about primitives and building. It's a very informative and easy to follow lesson. You can also keep an eye out on the Events list for classes being taught. You don't need any materials to build - just right-click somewhere, select create, and the only limit is your creativity. Primitives are the "building blocks" of everything in SL basically, so when you start creating and you start out with a cube or a sphere etc each one of those is a prim.

Building is definitely not limited to premium accounts - you can do just as much on a basic account. Really the only difference between the two account types is that premium accounts can own land and get a bigger stipend each week. Other than that, premiums and basics have the same abilities and privilages.

While anyone can make things, there are of course different qualities of items just based on skill and practice. I, for example, have only just started trying to build and make things, so I'm not very good yet hehe. But there are some VERY talented builders and avatar makers and clothes designers who have been at their crafts for a lot longer and can make some amazing stuff. (especially compared to me!)

The only external programs you would use would be some sort of art program (Adobe, PSP, etc) to make textures and if you want to get into animations, people do those in Poser (I think - I have absolutely no experience in the animations here). Other than those things, everything is made in-world using the SL building/crafting tools.

Hope this helps, and sorry if I've overlapped what's already been answered.

WOW thx a bunch Logan! That's exactly what i needed to hear. That gives me a much better grasp on what can be done in SL. I'm still not clear on the 'prims'. Are they conjured out of thin air? What is it that you right-click on to create one and can you create things with just the basic account?

I understand the texturing/skinning process needed for covering objects. I have PSP and used it for Half-Life model skins and texturing. I also noticed that there is a L$10 fee for uploading these and pics to SL.

As for LSL, my partner in crime is a programmer and will pick up on this language quickly so we have a couple bases covered it seems. We just need to better understand how it all comes together by playing the game and doing the work.

SWG, up until now, had the best crafting ability out of all the MMOGs we've seen and that's what drew us to it. But since SL seems to have an unlimited crafting potential, I think we will be much happier in your community. And from what I've seen in the forums, there are a lot of nice, intelligent people playing the game. That is also something we've been missing in SWG.

Thanks again Logan for a quick and precise response. I look forward to seeing much more of SL and the great people who make up its communities.

Brig

Prims are yes, basically conjured out of thin air, like magic

You right click the ground, and choose create, then choose the prim shape, and click the ground again, where you want it to apear.

Online Basic Building Tutorial.

There are also many places in world you can learn building, try searching the find menu.


Thats great There is a L$10 fee, but there are lots of textures to buy in world also, as well as many free ones.



Hope this helps and GL!

Thanks so much Jolie! You answered the remaining questions I had posted. I will visit the Ivory Tower and learn all I can. My gaming partner and I were some of the best crafters in SWG but we have been capped and there's nothing else we can make in that game. SL is giving us a wide open frontier to work with it seems and that is exactly what we were looking for. SL is unique in that respect and we are looking forward to getting into the mechanics of its building processes and making new friends along the way. Who knows, maybe we can bring something to the game that nobody has thought of yet... But, for us, that's what's so much fun!

Thanks again Jolie. You and Logan have been a big help in making up our minds whether to play SL or not. I look forward to seeing you both ingame.

Brig

Thx for the response Zapoteth and thx for the link to the tutorial. I think we have all we need to get started ingame now. A lot of hands-on work ahead. This is going to be fun!

Thx again! cya ingame...

Brig

One last thing Brig, as everyone has stated above, your best bet is to find a sandbox, or if you know a friend with land, thats where you should start practising to build and work on projects. You will need a place that allows it since everyone will not allow you to just build what you want anywhere, be care of people who are stupid and might ban or flame you for things in game that you just leave/crash outta game. Find a sandbox, they get wipped every day or learn to clean up what you make!