Building Diary

Tuesday 2008-01-29


Save your work!
After last week's disaster about loosing my work, I now always remember to 'take copy' of everything I've created in SL.

Building the tower again
Many people have asked me why have I built a 'office building' in SL, I told them that's not a office building, it's a gigantic apartment I've built for myself, anyways, I've got convinced by them, I should really make it smaller. I don't have time at the moment, but I will change it when I get time to do it. ;)

Something you may need to consider
I know that it's great to be creative, and building really good stuff requires to use a lot of prims, I've recently been told that is a limit of how many prims can be built on each island. I think it's 150,000, but I am not entirely sure about that. So if you are sharing the island with a lot of people, make sure you consider about other people before you build anything big, like my big office building, I've already been told off by a couple of people that it's taken up a lot of space.

Assigning different texture on different sides of a prim
As I am still a novice user of SL, I didn't know that we can use different texture on all available sides of prims, for example if you want to build a house, I asume that you may want to build a big piece of concrete landing and perhaps also to build the same size of wooden floor board on top of the concrete bits. If someone has asked me the solution of this scenario, I would've told them to 'shift-drag' the concrete floor and change the texture of it, but now, there is a great and easy way to do that without using more prims. I found that you can assign different texture to the 'faces' of each prim, to the scenario I've suggested above, once you are in the 'build' mode, and within the 'build' window, choose the 'texture' tab, and click on the radio button next to 'Select Texture', you will then be able to select whichever 'face' or 'faces' of a prim to change it's texture.

Scripting
As I mentioned in the above paragraph, I am still a novice user, I don't really know much about scripting at all, but in the class I've been given a very simple task to make an object which says "Hello" followed by the name of the person it is talking to. It was not that hard to do so as instruction of finding out what 'detected' does when used in script. It took me about 2 mins to figured which lldetected function I should use, I've chose 'lldetectedname' to detect the avatar who have touched the stone-like greeter I've created, and display it's name.

I've also been given another task to do, which is making an object which complains if someone other than the person who owns it touches it. At first, I thought I would just use a set of if-else statement to compare the output of "lldectedname" and the output of "lldetectedOwner", I then found that I've gone the wrong direction when thinking this through, as "lldectedOwner" only returns the key of the owner, not the name of the owner, so that will not work, after I've done a little bit of research on the second life wiki, I finally found out what I can do with the "lldectedOwner" output, I've altered the script to:

if (llDetectedKey == llGetOwner())

so it will detect the owner's key if valid, then compare to the detected object's Key, in this case, it will be the key of the avatar who just touched the greeter. I've tested it with a different account, and it works :)

I still have a lot to write about what I've learnt about SL, but this is taking too long, so I will just leave it till tomorrow :)

Directed learning in my own time

Sunday 2008-01-20

Things I've done and learnt

As everyone has built something on the HW Island, I had decided to build a house on island too. I've builded a pier-like platform on the coastline of the island, and start using some basic techniques to build some panels for floors and a wide-view glass windows. My building contains 6 levels, I have not looked for how to write scripts for an elevator yet, but I did think about building one.

I have also read chapter 3 of the book and I've made the stairs with the grid functionality provided by the building tools. Also I had used the hollow shape function to create a whole on the floorboard in order to fit a spiral staircase into the house.

Unfortunately the island was cleared out by Judy without any prior notice, I didn't even keep a copy of what I've done... therefore there is no real evidence of what I've done.

My Building @ HW Island

Luckily I have saved a snapshot earlier this morning, so I can remember what I've learnt while I was building this building. First I've builted some circular steps as a path towards the pier-like platform for the foudation of the house. Then I've builded the main stones for the bottom bit of the house, and an extra thin layer for the wooden floor boards. I've then built the staircase using the tutorial from chapter 3 of the textbook, although I followed through the tutorial, but I've used some blocks instead of thin steps for the solid effect. Then I've built some glass panes for walls (energy saving :)) After everything is done, I've linked the small parts together, and shift drag a whole level to create another floor on top of the first one I've created. I've then chose the 'edit linked part' option in the object menu, and chose the floor pane in the corner and created a cylinder shape hole for the spiral staircase I've created following the tutorial in chapter 3 of the textbook.

I've then created a flat roof on top of 6 levels I've shift-dragged on top of one after another. For the sake of not having a bare roof, I've created a helicoptor rest on the roof.

I was hoping to put some furnitures into that house that I've built, but when I logged on to second life after dinner, I found that I've already been given limited access to the part of the island that I've assigned for, and everything is gone, but building that house I've practiced more about how to assemble simple shapes to big objects.


What I'd like to work on next time

Next I may build the same sort of structure building for the group project depends on what my group members would like to produce for this project.

Problems

There is one thing I've noticed while experiencing the building functions on SL, there is no way we can set an object to have a bigger length than 10.00, not on x, y and not on z, so I cannot create one big floorboard in one go, although shift-drag function to duplicate objects are quite easy, but it would be nice if we can make objects bigger.


Interesting finding

I have tried so hard to find free Linden money around SL but I didn't achieved. I had found a place where there are dance pads and you can camp there to earn about $L5 for 10 mins or something like that, but since the administrator of that particular location didn't let me to create a landmark on that area, I did not note down the coordinates of that place, and never have earned any money....

I've now found a place where there is a lucky prize draw, as long as you stay there before the system logs you out as being away for so long, you can stay there and have a chance of winning $L1 at a time. It's a very very slow way to optain Linden Dollars, I've won once so far, I think the best way to earn money again is to find those dance pad again :)

The place where they do $L1 Prize Draw

2nd Lab session - Building in Second Life

Monday 2008-01-14

After the last session, I spent sometime at home and tried to learn more about how to do different things in SL, including following the tutorial in the 'Creating your world' book by Second Life. The book is very interesting with very good illustrations guiding me through how to create different shapes and how to assemble them into different objects.

Since Judy told us to go and find some free stuff, I've searched for 'freebies' using the SL built-in search function, and it came up with loads of places that we can go to get free stuff. I recommend 'freebies island' as it's really free, not costing anything unlike some of the freebie places, charging $L1 for each items.

Me @ Freebies Island (140,147,29)

Apart from trying all the building techniques, I have also visited a lot of different places by searching different keywords in the SL search function, I've got some free stuff, including textures, furnitures, houses, vehicles, accessories, and clothings etc. I was curious if there is a place called 'Hong Kong' in Second Life as I miss my hometown so much :) , and I found one, it's name is 'Hong Kong Island' with the coordinate of 122,136,23. I found that most of the buildings are very well built, and they do look like the real ones in Hong Kong. Good places to look at includes the big budda statue, and the New Hong Kong Exihibition Centre, they are brilliant. Although the locations of those buildings are not exactly where they supposed to be, but it's second life, anything can be anywhere :)

A snapshot taken when I teleported to Hong Kong Island (with the flag in the background)

The Buddha Statute in HongKong Island (62,103,62)

When I first landed in Hong Kong Island, I saw that lovely driveway they had built, and I decided to drag one of the lovely vehicle that I had obtained from freebie Island earlier on to the road and try to drive it, but as I haven't done that before, instead of dragging one out of the inventory list, I tried to wear the vehicle, surprisingly SL let me to do so, so I looked like an idiot walking around with a bike attached on my head... ;p

Me wearing a bike (not riding it)

As I am living in Edinburgh now, I also checked out rather they have built a good Edinburgh in SL, once I've teleported myself to 'Edinburgh North' at 72,97,37 , I found myself in a very familar place, I keep thinking that place looks like Calton Hill, and when I looked up the location title bar, there I was, the creator of that landscape must have done a great job :)

Me @ Calton Hill, Edinburgh

Today we have learnt about the concept of creativity in the lecture, and at this lab session in the afternoon, we have learnt and tried to create different objects on the HW Island together through a little competition, each of us had to create something before the end of the tutorial, and Judy decided who built the best object by the end of the class. I have learnt more than just following the book to create objects, I've also got to experience how to be creative.

I didn't know what to create, but I suddenly wanted a lolly-pop so I created a giant lolly-pop, and a giant sweet :)

My giant lollie-pop and my giant sweet

Although I didn't win the competition, I do think that I've learnt to be creative in this lab :)

First time experience about Second Life

I don't think I am going to explain what is SecondLife here, if anyone needs information about SecondLife (SL), please read the article on wikipedia.

I think SL is great, although I am not particularly interested in another way or meeting people online, but it is a great media for some people to communicate or interact with other people.

I do not have a decent graphic card on my home pc, nor on my laptop, so I didn't have a great experience with SL at start as it keep crashing.

I like the idea of you can build anything you want in SecondLife with Linden script and the "ease-of-use" designing tools available when you are in a buildable area, people can really open up their creativity mind when it comes to no rules apply.

I think the induction area / tutorial is a bit long, but it does guide you through a lot of things that you will need to know when you are using SecondLife, for example the keys that you may need to change the camera angle, or how to fly more efficiently (without falling onto the ground by hitting 'f' to stop flying from a very high position), etc. I think it is worth going through it without skipping it.

My first snapshot at the induction area learning how to sit on an object.

That's all I have done for my first lab, will continue recording my progress of learning about SecondLife on my next post.