A Glimpse Inside My Personal Matrix

Today, an event occurred that I just had to share. This post could also be titled “Why I don’t like talking to people.”

Last night, I was playing Second Life. I was just hanging around with my best bud Leila at a sandbox. (A sandbox is a public area used for building).

Now usually if I’m trying to build something, I’ll set up my private skybox to be left alone. You may wonder why I’m so anti-social in the sandbox, but the rest of the story will explain this.

If you can’t be bothered reading on, the answer can be summed up in one word:

Idiots.

So, I’m talking to Leila, and in strides Mr. Fuckwit.

Now, the social “rules” for Second Life are the same for real life. If you see two people together talking, you don’t just stride up and start talking. I mean, you might…but you’d walk up, introduce yourself and join the conversation…not just blurt out the first stupid shit that comes into your head.

This guy was a noob. Not a newb, a noob. There is a difference. A Newb is a new player who is trying to learn the game. A noob is a new player who thinks they know everything, will argue that black is white, and generally act like an asshole.

So he walks up and pulls out, of all things, a trampoline. At least I think that’s what it was meant to be. It was a black circle surrounded by a blue one. Forget the fact he just dropped an object directly on something I was building, the dumb bastard started jumping up and down on it, and tried to make me buy one from him.

Trying to be nice, I just say “No thank you.” To which he continually asks me why I don’t want to part with my hard earned lindens for quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

Upping the ante, he pulls out this little marvel:

PLEASE click for a better view...you must see the suckiness!

He said it was a sleigh. What I saw (and what you probably see) is a hollowed out cube filled with different colored primitives).

You see, to build in Second Life, you use “primitives” IE, basic shapes, cubes, spheres and so on. In the hands of a talented builder, they can make simply stunning and detailed objects. In this guy’s hands, you get a hollowed out cube. He starts trying to sell me this prim abortion as well.

Finally, Leila and I snap at the same time. Leila just asks him bluntly why we’d buy something from him we can make ourselves in 2 minutes. (I make a lot of objects for clothes, like flexible skirts, and Leila is herself a very talented builder).

Then, this 4 day old idiot starts telling us we don’t know what we’re talking about, and that we can’t possibly match his building skill.

Actual conversation:

Fuckwit : “Let’s see you try, if it’s so simple, you do it.”

Me : “Dude, I don’t have time for this. Look, I made 4000L this week from the stuff I made, how about you?”

Fuckwit : “I made 20,000 this week.”

Me : “Whatever, dude, can you go away now please?”

Blah, blah, blah.

Me : “Look, your whole sleigh is only made of about 6 prims, even a decent pair of shoes should have at least 20.”

Fuckwit : “You need 20 prims to make a pair of shoes? You mustn’t be a very good builder!”

Two things here. One, I’m making his dialogue actually readable. Two, apparently, more detail is bad in his eyes.

(Just in case you haven’t grasped the situation yet, in Second Life, I’m a successful builder. People actually part with their money to buy my ‘creations’. Leila is the same. This guy had only been playing for 4 days, and was still on his way to mastering the basics. He’s basically the guy from school who would talk out of his ass and argue with the teacher. I’m in no way a master builder, but against this guy, Leila and I might as well be frigging DaVinci)

Then he says “Well, let’s see you make reindeer as good as mine then!”

Big mistake.

Leila, stepping up to the challenge, starts to make a copy of his reindeer. Something she does in a couple minutes, and does a much better effort. I was considering just muting the idiot and going back to what I was doing…but as Leila was busy, and I had no-one there to talk to, I started to build a sleigh.

Of course, fuckwit decided to heckle. There was no way I’d ever be able to match his building mastery.

As the ten minute build progressed, fuckwit began to get nervous. It became obvious that there was no way he could look at my effort and still proclaim to be a better builder than me. So he resorted to making fun of my shoes. (Which was odd, because I didn’t make them, and his shoes where newbie shoes…in other words, just his feet painted black.)

Finally, I stood back, and said:

“There, that’s a ten minute build. I wouldn’t even THINK of trying to sell it. If I wanted to, I’d spend a couple hours, put in ten times the detail and script it to actually fly. Now do you see why I don’t want to buy your from you?”

Here was my effort:

At which point, he called me a cunt and left.

I Hear ALL!!!

This story, I just have to relay because it cracked me up. Chances are it’s one of those “You had to be there” stories, but who cares? This is my blog, and I can write what I want!

First, the back story.

The vendor in my SL store has a report function. In other words, if I’m online, the second someone buys something I get a notification of who bought what, how much they paid and which location they bought it from.

Now being the simply fantastic guy I am, I often check my sales list and either completely refund money that came from friends, or at least return half of it. (It’s not a strict policy, it depends on if I’m online or not, or can be bothered trawling through my sales reports).

Well, Misty is often online at the same time I am, so I usually get notification when she’s bought something right away. So from her point of view, she buys an item and then suddenly finds I pay her either the whole amount or half back.

This is where things get interesting.

For Misty, this had led to the belief that I am somehow omnipresent, at least within the confines of my store. The rumor has spread that nothing can happen in my stores without me being instantly aware of it.

How does he know what I’ve bought? How can he pay back the money so fast? How does he know?

Now while it’s true that SL is home to some extremely nasty and simply devious listening devices, it’s also they’re against the SL Terms of Service. If you record someone’s conversation without their knowledge, it’s a bannable offense.

In other words, while I’d love to eavesdrop and listen to what people are saying about my outfits…I don’t want to get banned from SL to do it.

So let me put that rumor to rest right now. If you’re in my store, I only know if you buy something. Nothing else.

Now for the actual story:

So yesterday morning, I log in early because I had some maintenance to do. Within seconds, I get an IM from Bridget…

Let me describe Bridget. You may know her as “Enigma” from her blog. She’s one of those funny, irreverent people, but I wouldn’t actually describe her as ‘silly’.

So I was surprised when I got her IM.

(This isn’t verbatim, but as close as I can remember)

Bridget : ROFL, Did you just log in for any particular reason?

Paulius : Huh? I’m just on for a few minutes, need to update my server.

Bridget : Oh, ok *giggle*

Sunny was sitting next to me, and said what I was thinking. “What’s going on with Bridget?” Why was my simple act of logging in funny?…and did she just giggle?

Paulius : Have you been drinking?

An obvious question I thought.

Bridget : LOL, no. (more giggles, rofl’s and lmao’s)

Apparently, she’d bought into the omnipresence theory. She finally cut and pasted what she’d said upon entering my store

Bridget : Kicks the big grey vendor thing because it won’t load fast enough.

Bridget : “Sigh, guess I’ll come back later”

Bridget : Looks around

Bridget : Picks her underwear out of her ass, and looks around again.

Bridget : “Did ya see that, Paulius? Did ya see that, huh?!?!”

Apparently, I logged in mere moments later.

Well, I thought it was funny. It was a slow news day.

On the upside, an SL typo led me to accidentally coin the word “Buttloaf”, which is my new favorite insult word ever. As in:

“Shut it, Buttloaf.”

Good Luck / Bad Luck

In my lifetime, I’ve experiences a lot of bad luck, a smattering of good luck…but very rarely both at the same time.

In fact, I recently had a bad-luck experience that turned into good luck.

If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll know all about my new vendor. (This post is Second Life related, but even in SL doesn’t interest you in the slightest, read on anyway…because while this happened in SL, it’s not really about SL)

Well, today I checked up on everything, and discovered that the vendor in my main store wasn’t working. Instead of showing off my amazing creations, it was a blank screen showing “Vendor Offline”.

I went to Sunny’s cottage and reset the server.

While my other (far lower traffic) locations updated perfectly, my main store kept getting to about 95% updated and freezing.

I tried everything. Nothing would make it work. I started swearing.

Then, despite the fact that the server is meant to work with vendors grid-wide, I decided to see if placing the server closer to the vendor would fix it. So I grabbed my server, and tucked it away in a corner of my store.

It worked, but I still wasn’t happy. Only Sunny and I (plus a few trusted friends) have access to her cottage. I didn’t like the idea of my server being out in the open, where people could try to dick with it.

I decided it would have to do, for now…and left it.

I logged out.

A couple of hours later, Sunny logs in to find her cottage, and the entire neighborhood missing. Apparently, the asshole who owns the land had sold it and cleared everything.

This isn’t entirely uncommon in SL, only usually the land owner will give notice, and anything that’s cleared from the land is returned to its owner. (If you leave an item on someone else’s land, it’s usually returned to you at the end of the day).

Sunny hasn’t got back anything she had in the cottage.

Now while I don’t revel in this, simply because Sunny lost one or two expensive custom items, I’ve got to see how good my luck was.

Here’s the thing. My entire inventory was on that server, and without it, my vendors are giant paperweights. Also, thinking I wouldn’t need them, I deleted my old vendors. I thought my clothing line was safe on my shiny new server.

In other words, if that server had gotten deleted, not only would I have had to replace it, I’d have had to upload everything I’d made again (IF I still had the original texture files in photoshop).

Plus, unlike the vendors which are infinitely copyable, the server is a one shot deal. You get one, and they’re expensive to replace…and there’s no way I could convince the guy who sold it to me that I just wanted a replacement for the lost one…and it’s not even his responsibility anyway…he could have turned around and said “Tough shit.”

In other words, if it wasn’t for that one vendor going on the fritz this morning…I’d be officially out of business.

Maybe it wasn’t a bug. Maybe my server just has a sense of self-preservation.

It’s like missing a flight, cursing your bad luck, only to find out later that the plane crashed.

Paulius Designs Goes Hi-Tech!

(Click the picture for a larger view...and yes, that is me standing next to the ad)

(This will be of little interest to many of you, but quite frankly, I just need someone to gloat/brag to).

Until recently, my Second Life business was run using freebie hardware.

Here’s how it worked:

Essentially, I had a box. I put my clothing into this box along with a picture of each item. People would look at the box, click an arrow on it to scroll through the different items, and pay the box, which would give them their item and pay me.

Clunky, you could only see one item at a time, and it meant I had to wander around and update each of my three locations separately.

Today, I got the real shit.

Let me explain this thing…because I’m inexplicably proud of it.

Now, when you walk into my store, you see the equivalent of a gigantic plasma screen, showing up to 16 items at once, tiled on the screen. You click one, and in the blink of an eye, the item dills the whole screen. You can even click a button on the screen, and it’ll give you a notecard explaining the item.

Best thing?

Networked.

I have a server. I put my new items in it, and at the click of a mouse, every single one of my stores updates at the same time.

Actually, that’s the second best thing. With my old freebie vendor, the only way I could tell if anything had sold is by looking at my cash balance before I logged off, and seeing if it had increased when I logged back in. I could see that someone had bought something, but not where they got it, or what they'd actually bought.

The new vendor not only sends me an instant message, letting me know who bought something, where they bought it, and what they bought…I can also set it to send my an email with that same information.

There is one downside. It’s a minor, petty little thing…but just to take that big business, hi-tech sheen off the whole operation…where am I keeping my server?

In one of the secure server storage facilities dotted around Second Life? In a deep, bomb-proof cellar, beneath one of the malls my store is located in?

Nope.

It’s sitting on top of Sunny’s fridge, in her Second Life cottage.

Heheheheh…I’m big business now, but I’m still a cottage industy.

A Missed Opportunity?

Today I decided to design a new outfit for my SL store.

Now this usually involves a lot of switching backwards and forwards between avatars. I upload certain textures under my male avatar (So my ‘real’ SL name is listed as the owner), send that to my female avatar, then switch to her to actually create the damn clothes.

Then something weird happened.

I logged out of my female character, then logged back in as my male character. I went to send my female character something…and it still had her listed as ‘online’.

That’s impossible.

Only one person has the password for that character, and that’s me. I’d just logged out of that identity mere moments ago.

So I did what anyone would have done. Put it down to a glitch.

Sure enough, it let me log back in moments later under the female character…no-one had hijacked it.

Then I started to think…Did I just miss a once in a lifetime opportunity?

What if there had been some rip in the time space continuum, meaning that at that precise moment, I was online both as my female character AND my male character? What if I could send myself a message, back through time itself, to five minutes ago…and tell myself all about the future?

Sure, I’d only logged in as my female character 5 minutes ago, and I couldn’t tell myself any earth-shattering revelations.

But it would have been long enough to say:

“In about a minute’s time, you’re going to try to pick up your drink. Not only is the glass not nearly as full as you think, but Sunny brought it to you in a plastic glass rather than a real glass.

So when you pick it up, don’t use the amount of lifting force you think you’ll need for a heavy, full glass…because it’s much lighter than that, and you’ll throw it all over yourself.”

Moral of the Story:

When faced with a rip in the time-space continuum, make sure you use it, and don’t throw red Kool-Aid all over yourself.

There Might Be Something In This...

Ok, ok, I know I'm boring you all to death with Second Life posts, but this one is actually worth mentioning.

As many of you know (and are tired of hearing of), I've set up shop in Second Life, and surprise, surprise, 'Paulius Designs' has actually become a viable business.

I know. I'm as shocked as you are.

I set up shop with a few freebie vendors, rented some wall space...but what I didn't know until today is that you can track all you in-game transactions from the Second Life website. Because I use freebie vendors, I don't have access to this information in-game.

In other words, I had no idea if my stuff was selling or not. Unless I'm actually playing when someone buys something, I'm not notified of the sale...and remembering exactly how much money I have between log ins is something I didn't really keep track of.

Well today I looked through my finances.

In the two short weeks I've been in business, I've made 1125 Lindens, which comes out to roughly four and a half real dollars.

Of course, when you take rent into account, I've only made about 25 lindens (about eight cents), but that's not my point.

My point is, I've broken even in two weeks, which is incredible, considering the only advertising I have is 'word of mouth'. It also turns out that nearly all of my sales have been at one of my three locations...which means I'll be dropping the other two when my lease expires on them.

That brings my rent down to roughly 500 Lindens a month...meaning I'll be in profit roughly 1750 Lindens a month (that's 7 real dollars).

Now, by now you're probably wondering why I'm so excited over such a small amount of money.

Well, the thing is, sales can only really go up. People buy. Other people ask those people where they got that outfit, the first people tell the second people, and the second people go buy.

I know the people who are buying this stuff like it, because my records show I'm getting repeat sales.

Then the progression is simple. I sell more stuff, make more money, and from there can afford to place my stores at much higher-traffic areas...sell yet more clothes.

Now, I'm a realist. I know I'll never make an actual living off of Second Life, but here's the way I look at it:

However small the amount of money, I'm essentially getting paid to play a game. I enjoy art and messing around in photoshop, and that's what I'm doing to create these clothes.

One of my friends from Second Life put it best. Second Life money is like money out of thin air.

Even if I just make enough to take Sunny to see a movie once a month...who cares? It's like a free movie.

Oh, and if you play SL, buy my stuff. Search for "Paulius Designs"...half price to anyone who sends me a notecard stating the name of this blog.

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman....

Ladies, I gotta hand it to you, I have no idea how you make it through the day.

Ok, as regular readers know, I play Second Life a lot, and have started my own clothing business in game.

I stumbled upon a problem. You see, you create clothes in SL by uploading your textures, then to create a new shirt or whatever, you have to put it on your character in order to apply the texture.

I’m a male. I have a male character. I make mostly female clothes.

Basically, I had one of two choices. Hijack Sunny’s character every time I make something new, or turn my character into an occasional cross dresser and get myself a ‘reputation’.

There’s also the problem that you need to take pictures of your clothes for your sales board…and it doesn’t matter how well designed that girly-pink strappy top is…no one’s going to buy it if it’s being modeled by a six foot tall guy with a goatee beard.

So obviously, I chose the first option…I make the textures in Photoshop and used Sunny’s female character to actually create the clothes and model for the pictures.

However, even that caused problems. I lost count of the sheer number of times I had to type “Sunny isn’t here, this is her husband, I’m just using her avatar to create some clothes”. Not to mention I was starting to seriously clog up her inventory.

So, I finally bit the bullet and made myself a female alternate.

…I know, I felt icky as well.

It solved a lot of problems. One, I didn’t have to hijack Sunny’s avatar. Two, I had a character to actually model the clothes for pictures for my sales board. Three, when the only items the new character has are clothes I’ve made, no searching through a massive list of items every time I want to look at something.

Then, to discourage conversations and misunderstandings, (after all, if I’m on using the female character, I’m ‘working’), I wrote in the new female character’s profile:

I’m actually a guy. This avatar was created PURELY for the purposes of being a mannequin for clothes design. Don’t take it personally if I don’t answer you or ignore friend requests. If I’m using this avatar, I’m working.

Seems simple enough, right?

Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?

So today, I made something new, log in as my female character, and apply the outfit. So I’m just checking to make sure everything looks right, when I get an IM:

“Hey Baby! How’re you?”

Another guy in the same area has decided he likes what he sees.

I ignore him. I’m busy…he’ll read my profile in a second.

“Hey baby, why are you ignoring me? Wanna go somewhere? I know a great place *wink*”

Jesus H effing Christ. I ignore him some more.

“What is it baby. Playing hard to get?”

Finally, I just say “Dude, read my profile.”

He does, and instantly vanishes. Obviously the idea that he just came onto a guy has disturbed him greatly. I chuckle to myself. I’ve been a female for 15 seconds, and I’m already starting to hate men.

So I finish checking the outfit. Then I decide to make some prims for it. (You make textures outside of the game, but to make actual objects, like flexible fabric etc, you have to make those in game).

I’m 15 minutes into making the object, when suddenly I get another instant message.

“Hey cutie!”

Sigh. “Read my profile.”

“OMG! Why do you have a female Av if you’re a guy?!?!”

Sigh. “Read the rest of my profile.”

“Oh, ok.”

This guy gets the message. He leaves me alone and I go back to designing…10 minutes later.

“Well, hello there sexy! How’re you this fine day.”

I’m about to lose it. I’m just trying to design some fricking clothes, and I’m being constantly hit on by guys who think watching two in-game characters have sex is actually a relationship.

I log out of SL, log back in under my male character. I search my inventory and transfer my adjustable title to my female character.

So I log back in under my female alt, and set the adjustable title up. Now anyone who looks at me sees a glowing sign above my head that says “I’M A GUY. PLEASE READ MY PROFILE BEFORE IM-ing ME PLEASE”

There, that should do it. I’ve got a gigantic sign telling everyone that despite the fact I’m using a female character, I’m actually a guy. I get back to work.

Then…no less that 10 minutes later.

“Hey Sexy! Nice tits! How you doing?”

This time I really lose it. I shout back:

“WELL, I’M DOING JUST FINE! MY BALLS ARE A LITTLE ITCHY THOUGH!”

Oh no. Now suddenly the pale friendless virgin sitting at the computer has had his sexuality questioned.

“OMG ur a fag! Why u usin a gurl?”

Ever just completely lose it? I typed so fast, smoke was coming off the keyboard.

“For FUCK’s sake!” I reply. “My profile states VERY plainly that I’m using this avatar for my clothes business. I’ve got a big glowing sign over my head that says “I’m a guy!” in foot high letters. I’m in a public sandbox that’s here purely for people to use to build things…Now what part of ALL THIS did you misunderstand as ‘I’m a girl who desperately wants to have virtual sex with someone who’s idea of a smooth chatup line is ‘Hey Nice tits!?”

The reply was a rather eloquent:

“Rofl! Ur a fag.”

Luckily, I’m a member of the sandbox group under both avatars, so I just banned him.

Now I should be clear that the vast majority of people you meet in Second Life are very nice people. I have used my female ‘mannequin’ a few times and not been bothered.

The difference is, while I occasionally get bothered under my female character…I’ve never been propositioned or bothered like that while using my regular male character.

I mean, sure, a good few women have hit on me in SL. (You can’t be listening to music in a virtual nightclub and not have people flirt with you). I also have quite a few female friends on SL…however, none of them have ever started a conversation with “Hey, nice ass!”…or called me gay if I’ve turned them down for anything ‘romantic’.

I mean, I’ve played as my male character and got ‘hit on’, and when I’ve let them know I’m married and not interested, usually the reply I’ll get is along the lines of:

“Oh, no problem, so where are you from?”

In other words, women can think “Oh, this guy’s not available or not interested. I’ll go look somewhere else or maybe he’ll just be someone fun to talk to.”

On the other hand, I’ve watched Sunny play, and occasionally she’ll get some freak who just walks up and says something really smooth, witty or romantic like “Wanna fuck?”…and when she tells she’s not interested, she gets called a ‘lesbo’.

In other words, the basement dwelling, teenage males can’t handle the fact that there’s a woman out there who doesn’t desperately want to virtually sleep with them

Seriously, ladies, I have no idea how you deal with it.

I’ve had less than an hour viewing a virtual game-world from the female perspective, and I found myself muttering ‘Men! Who needs ‘em?’

Paulius Creations Inc

If there’s one thing about Second Life (henceforth known as SL), that I don’t like, it’s that the clothes for men absolutely suck.

I mean, even in real life that average men’s wardrobe is boring compared to a woman’s.

Think about it guys, what’s in your wardrobe? Jeans, sweatshirts, T-shirts and a few suits and dress shirts for work and going out on the town.

What this means for SL is that each store is filled with pretty much the same stuff. Unless you wanna walk around dressed a Boba Fett or Superman, your choices are limited. Once you own a pair of SL jeans, are you going to buy another pair just because they’re a slightly different color?

It’s for this reason that I rarely buy clothes in SL, there’s simply not much difference between what you pay for in the stores and what you can find at the freebie places.

So today, deciding to strike a blow for male-kind, I pulled up Photoshop and decided to make myself some clothes.

Then I realized why men had so little choice.

Not only are men’s clothes boring to wear, they’re also incredibly boring to make.

You see, with women’s clothes you’re not just limited to ‘skins’. You can make skirts etc that have gravity, move when they walk, etc. It’s interesting.

With guys you basically pull up a T-shirt template, choose a color, write on a design or slogan, add a little shading or texture, and you’re done. Not very interesting at all.

I can make a decent T-shirt in less than five minutes and not only is it boring to make, it’s far too easy.

Even if you stick with just skins for female clothing it’s a lot more interesting…as I’ll explain further down the page.

So basically, after bitching that women are spoilt for choice while men almost have no choice…I started making women’s clothes for SL.

If you want an idea of what I mean about how much more interesting women’s clothes can be…look at the following pic and I’ll tell you how I made it:

Yesterday, Sunny had an idea for a new shirt design. So I handed her my sketchpad and my favorite pencil and said “Sketch it for me”.

Then, when she left for work, I got busy.

First was the actual cloth. Not too hard, just blocking in off-white and using the pen tool in photoshop to get a nice curve for the neck-line.

Then, I drew in the lacing at the front, also using the pen tool.

Now we come to the fun part.

See how the arms and upper body are see through and sheer, but the lower body and cuffs are opaque? Basically, to do that, you have to mess around with your image’s alpha channels.

Explained simply, the alpha channel is a black and white channel under your image. SL sees white as completely opaque, black as completely transparent, and all the shades of grey in between as various levels of transparency.

So once you have your design, you cut and paste it into the alpha channel, fill the image with black where you want transparency, grey where you want see through, etc.

Then we come to the other tricky bits. The template you use to create shirts for SL is made up of three elements. Front, back and inner and outer arm. (You only make one arm and SL just mirrors it for the other side).

Drawing something in 2D something that’s going to be wrapped around a 3D model is tough. For example, the cuffs on that picture took me forever. Setting the alpha channels to make them opaque was simple, but lining up the inner and outer arm was tricky.

The easiest way to explain why it was difficult is this: Imagine having two pieces of paper. You draw a line across one, put it away…then draw a line across the other. Then, when you put the two pieces of paper side by side, the lines have to match up exactly.

(Director’s commentary : This can also effect your design choices. I got so aggravated trying to get the opaque neckline to match on the front and back, I decided to simply leave the back sheer.)

It gets long and involved and every action counts…because the only way to ‘test’ to see if your design is working is to save your image, log into SL, upload the image (at a cost of 10 Lindens), create your shirt and see if it works.

If it doesn’t, you’re back in photoshop trying to fix it.

Now we come to the other design choices. What about color? Well, for this garment, the one thing Sunny didn’t tell me was what color she wanted it. So, I simply decided to leave it white so that it could be ‘tinted’ in game to whatever color she likes. This means you can’t shade and highlight very well (You can’t put light highlights on a white piece of clothing because they don’t show up and shading with black instead of a darker hue of a colored garment can just make it look dirty).

It’s a trade-off. Colored garments are very hard to tint in SL. If you have a dark red color, and try and tint it blue, it’ll turn out a very dark purple because the colors mix. I experimented with different tints and decided what with this particular top, I would leave it white…because as it appears to be made of very tight sheer fabric, it doesn’t need much texture anyway.

Then we come to the cleaning up part.

See the laces on the front? Remember what I said about how the alpha channels work?

Well, the white in the alpha channel tends to bleed over a little, meaning that the black laces have very unconvincing white edges around them. This means one thing…zooming right in on that alpha channel and manually cleaning up the edges.

(Director’s Commentary : When you create new clothes in SL, you essentially get a plain white skin. So for a new shirt it always starts out looking like a plain white sweatshirt. You then paste your image over this as the ‘fabric’, so if you haven’t set your transparencies well enough, you still see the white ‘sweatshirt’ underneath. With something thin like laces, the white edges stop it from looking like clothing and makes it look like exactly what it is…a drawing of clothing pasted on top of a model.)

The other thing you have to keep in mind is how the actual character will distort the clothing. For example, I made a T-shirt with a picture on the back of it. On my character, the picture was extremely noticeably distorted because my character’s shoulders are wider than his waist. On a female character, the shirt looked fine.

This can be frustrating, because you can create something to where it looks perfect. Only to discover you’re the only one who can wear it.

So to sum up, making women’s clothes in SL is interesting, fun and tricky. Men’s aren’t. You have a blue zillion different design choices and there a hundred times more challenging to make.

Just look at the picture…it looks simple and had a few problems. However, it took me well over an hour to make and put photoshop through its paces.

Beats making T-shirts and Jeans any day.

(Director’s Commentary : Currently, I’m giving away everything I design for free. If you play SL and would like some free clothes…send an Instant Message, in game, to ‘Paulius Griffith’ and I’ll be more than happy to send you some stuff. Also, if you have any questions on how the mechanics of making SL clothes works…drop me a line and I’ll be happy to help.)

Your Questions Answered

Ok, I got a few comments today on a couple of my SL posts. Rather than reply on a week old post, I thought I’d talk about it here.

First, from MC Etcher:

“Is there a version of the Imperious Curse? You could send people's avatars out to earn cash for you. Or rent them as slaves. Are there any evil wizards that need subduing?

What about a detective agency? Is there anything to solve? Are there (volunteer or otherwise) police? Hmn, could I start a detective agency, then kidnap someone prominent to have a mystery to solve? For a sizable fee, of course, bwa ha ha!”

I really should not play this game.

If you want to pay for the land and build it, you can do pretty much anything you want. People have art galleries to showcase their RL paintings and use the gallery to sell prints. Other people have made museums making use of streaming video. Other people make clothing and in-game object stores

Of course, SL works mainly around the three S’s, Sex, Socializing and Shopping.

In other words, plenty of clubs, beaches, waterparks, malls and ‘adult video’ establishments.

As for a detective agency, it would be possible. Someone has a boyfriend or girlfriend on SL, and wants to know what their partner is getting up to when they’re not around to supervise.

As for bad wizards…

It depends entirely where you go. Most people on SL are just there to chat and have fun. They come on to go to a club or a beach, listen to the music and talk to people.

On the other hand, there are hardcore role-players. They create a character, and never break character while they’re playing. You get the Star-Trek guys, the Star Wars guys, the Lord of the Rings guys and the Harry Potter crowd. (There are hundreds more, but I think those are the main ones.)

Now, as Kato asked:

Anyway... with all this freedom in the world, what prevents people from massively griefing everyone through any manner of nasty thing (such as misusing the wand you purchased)?

Well, I can honestly say I was surprised at how little griefing went on in SL. Don’t get me wrong, there are assholes on SL, just like on any other MMO, but you have very few problems.

Here’s how it works. SL is divided up into ‘Sims’…in other words, smallish areas. Each sim is owned by a different person, and they set the rules for their Sim. Each owner has admin rights to their sim, and can grant admin rights to other players.

So, if I went into someone else’s sim, and started throwing players around, blasting them up into the air or out of the sim, it wouldn’t be five seconds before I got booted out myself.

If I returned and started doing the same thing, they’d just flat out ban me.

So, if you act like an asshole, you quickly find yourself not able to go anywhere.

But SL is a HUGE place and it would take you months to get banned from everywhere. This brings me to the rap sheet.

Basically, other players can lodge complaints against you for abusive behavior etc. You get enough complaints, you just get your whole account banned. You can just create a new account, but if you’re actually able to grief people, you’ve been in the game a fair amount of time and accumulated a lot of cash and possessions…which of course you’d lose.

The other big thing is you get to know the people who own the sims, because they’re players to. You get to know them and like them, so each sim becomes pretty much self policing.

So there it is. Download SL and start playing…now!