Introduction to Second LIfe

Introduction

This week, we start out on something completely different from what we have done so far in this topic. After going through so many different Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP we will now begin a few weeks working on Second Life.

Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab launched in 2003, This is like a social networking website but instead of profiles people communicate with each other with the use of avatars. An avatar is a graphical representation of the user’s character. This is similar to many Multiplayer Online RPGs (Role-Playing Games) where a user has his own personalized avatar, meets with other people’s avatars on the network and then do stuff together.

What is different in Second Life then other Online Games and Networks is the ability to build stuff in the virtual world and then program it in any way you want. This could be anything from clothing to buildings to cars with each having its own individual use.

Installing and Logging In

To install the client program for Second life an account was created with Second life on the website creating a username and password with the username being used as the name of your avatar and a sample Avatar is chosen to start with which then could be fully customized to the users desires (except the username). After registering the client application is downloaded and installed.

After installing the application, one could log in by using the username and password chosen in the registration. Also you must chose to login in either Basic or Advanced Mode. The difference is that in Advance mode you could code using Linden Scripting Language and the menus are arraigned in a slightly different way. What I found to be quite puzzling is that before you log in if you change from Basic to Advance Mode or vice versa you have to close the application and restart it. Since at first I decided that I will just look a bit around to see how things work in Second Life I decided to run in Basic Mode.

What I found to be quite annoying in Second life is the massive loading time it took to load everyone’s Avatar and the terrain around you and I am using a laptop which I can run games which came out a month ago smoothly so I can only imagine in 2003 how much worse the loading times where at that time since the hardware wasn’t as good. When I saw this I decided to lower the graphics used as much as possible so that it will run smoothly but for some reason I could not find the edit menu item anywhere to change the graphics (see screenshot below) at least I found a shortcut to go to the preferences (ctrl + p) and I lowered the graphics. Although the application now was much smoother when walking around the loading times where still long to load everyone’s Avatar and the terrain when either logging in or teleporting to a new locations.

The World of Second Life

Apart from this when logging in the first time you will be taken to a place to learn the controls. I found that the hotkeys/shortcuts automatically set for the controls are much simpler to use then the actual controls detailed in this part by Second Life. For Example, the key that is used to fly (yes you can fly around in Second life) is told to be “Page Up” and to go back down to the ground is “Page Down”, while the hotkeys for this command is “e” and “c”. Also the same applies for moving, I much prefer the  WASD set up of the hotkeys then the arrow keys since the mouse is used a lot in this to click objects and interact with them.

Teleporting

Since I mentioned teleporting before, let me expand on that a bit.

In Second life you have a search where you can find your friends and add them to your friends list by sending them a request. Once this is done and the request is accepted you could have private chats with anyone in your friends list and also something which is helpful is that you could ask for a teleport to go near friends quickly instead of needing to chat and decide on a specific place to meet and then make sure it’s a place where your fiend will see your avatar.

Conclusion

To conclude this post, I decided to get a change of clothes so that I won’t look like a complete beginner. I right clicked my character and selected edit appearance and started messing around with the shape and clothes of my avatar. I changed his hair, his figure through the multiple menus and features and decided on a short and fat dwarf like shape with a big beard since all the general male avatar seemed tall and well built and I like to be different. Next week we’ll start building some objects and scripting