Indie Teepee – How Designers Do It

Indie Teepee is new to me. I find it is an annual music, arts and shopping festival, held from the 10th to the 24th of July. The event will feature music, live performances, a drive-in machinima screening, original mesh designers and art installations. Sounds interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okog1BQ65KM

But, in, I guess, a spin off there is a podcaster covering Second Life™ in a series named Indie Teepee. Oddly enough I ran into all this on Facebook while following up on the SLUniverse article asking designers to stop using Firestorm, which I still think is an odd way to go about fixing a lag issue in SL.

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Second Life Viewer Problems

Slow Render

I’ve been seeing slower rendering of scenes in Second Life™ for some time. It’s like taking 4 steps better-forward, 2 worse-back, 1 back, 1 forward… changing often with each viewer release. It is hard for me to tell if it is me/my-computer or actually the viewer changing. Now others are mentioning that things are taking a long time to render, which suggests it is more the viewer than it is me. Enough so that a developer asked at the Third Party Devs’ meeting if there had been any changes to the interest list processing that may have slowed things down.

254. Eyes Wide Open
Eyes Wide Open by Scarlett Loxingly, on Flickr

Oz Linden answered there have been no deliberate changes to the interest list. He also points out that as complicated  as the SL system is other changes could affect the interest list processing. So, Oz wants to hear about misbehaving render.

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Second Life: Firestorm a Designer’s Problem?

We still have a debate ongoing in Second Life™ over on SLUniverse in the discussion started by Adeon Writer, Dear Mesh Content Creators: Please stop making your content on Firestorm, continues. I provided my thoughts in Second Life LoD Problems – Is Firestorm to Blame. In that article you’ll see I think designer and consumer ignorance are to blame. I also see plenty of fascist rule makers out proposing their solutions.

I prefer freedom and free market solutions over rules.

SlackGirl - Sue
SlackGirl – Sue by Rehana Seljan, on Flickr

One of the solutions proposed in:

BUG-6243Provide an informative warning when creating sculpts or mesh that may render improperly for others.

That places everything on the designer and provides no incentive for the designer to comply. I prefer something to provide information to everyone about what everything is doing to our render efficiency. That is why I filed: 

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Second Life Damage Changes

In Friday’s (6/19) Third Party Developers’ meeting at the 15:00 mark of the video discussion about changes to the SL Damage System starts. The changes were made by Grumpity Linden. She is off on maternity leave with her new baby. So current discussion is sort of one sides as Oz Linden is just in listen and learn mode until Grumpity returns.

The Imperial Retreat
The Imperial Retreat by Canary Beck, on Flickr

The complaints about the change are people mostly considering the result is a bug ridden. Ser  JIRA BUG-9422  – List of problems with the new parcel damage behavior for discussion at the next TPV meeting

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Second Life Viewer Update Week #25

Last week (#25) was the Third Party Developers meeting. We have interesting things to talk about from that meeting. Since I am doing short periods of writing between my Norco inspired naps that news will out in a series of short articles.

*144
=”*144 by Mia Sparks, on Flickr

Viewers

RC Second Life VMM Viewer version 3.7.31.302677 is out. (NMM = Viewer Managed Marketplace) The comment in the release notes says, “This viewer allows Merchants to manage inventory associated with Marketplace Listings from within the viewer. In addition to making management of Marketplace Listings easier, sale of items that Merchants do not have the right to copy will now be supported with Viewer-Managed Marketplace.” 

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Hair Fair 2015 Coming

This is one of my favorite events in Second Life™. With mesh hair it is possible to have a much lower Avatar Render Cost (ARC) or Draw Weight, which it is called depends on which viewer you are using. Whatever it is labeled in your viewer it costs you performance. So, I am replacing my high ARC sculpty do’s with new mesh do’s for that reason.

Luna Jubilee
Luna Jubilee by Kaelyn Alecto, on Flickr

The fair opens July 11 and runs to July 18. This is the 10th university of this event, or so I am told.

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