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Making SL playable?
WSIMike
Member Posts: 5,564
So, I decided to try SL. I'd only given it a brief try-out in the past but never took it very seriously, as I was looking for a game in a virtual world, rather than purely a virtual world.
Been doing some reading and also have been seriously working on learning 3D modeling; working on my chops, if you will.
So I did some reading into it - here and elsewhere - and found it to be a pretty intriguing place, actually. That there are MMOs, essentially, inside the game itself is pretty cool. And of course, the way that players can create their own content is a perfect match for me to be able to work on 3D modeling, and perhaps share the results (the ones that are good enough anyway 
) with others online.
So... setup an account, downloaded it and started to check it out.
I'm about ready to uninstall it this morning after trying, unsuccessfully, to see or do anything at all last night.
1. My first minute in game, once I got out of the orientation area, I was greeted by people playing *awful* gangsta-rap, cursing up a storm, spamming sound-clips from The Breakfast Club and other movies. It was a cacaphony of noise and bad music and people who sounded 13 year-old wanna-be sailors trying to impress themselves over the game's voice chat, which I turned off as quickly as I could find it.
Before someone says it, no, I don't mind cursing, when it's part of normal conversation and not used every other word... What I heard was stuff like "What the fuck is up muthafuckas!" and "Hey, fuckin' hoes! Where my fuckin' hoes!"... You know, quality stuff like that.
2. I tried customizing my character, and half the sliders didn't work. I'd move them, but nothing changed. Tried changing the hair texture... nothing. Tried changing the hair color... nothing. Tried changing the hair look... which resulted in either nothing, or my character's head becoming completely deformed. I had to keep moving around because some idiot kept parking himself in front of my character, so I couldn't see anything I was doing, and started basically dry humping me. After 3 times, he got bored and went off to act like a dipshit to someone else probably.
Ultimately, I tried moving a slider and it crashed the game completely. So, I gave up and now look like pretty much every other person who chose the same template as me.
3. Figured, okay well let me at least get a look around and see what there is to do. Heh.
Moving around seemed to be an exercise in aggravation as well as, aside from the unintuitive and clunky movement controls, I was rubberbanding all over the damn place, or would just keep going in a given direction for about 5-10 seconds after I'd let go of the walk button. I ended up in walls, in furniture, in the ground... A few times the game froze up completely and when it unfroze, I was swimming in mid-air... above ground. I finally ended up getting jammed between a tree and a wall before saying "screw this" and logging out.
4. Prior to giving up, I tried teleporting to some other spots. I tried the one for Erie Isle, which has been mentioned on these forums and sounded interesting. Teleported, fell through the ground... kept falling. Tried teleporting somewhere else, no one else around, nothing around, nothing to do. Teleported back to a bookmarked spot where there should be more people... and the noise/lag/bugginess resumed...
Said "screw this" and logged out.
Before I completely uninstall it, however, I figured I'd come here and see what those (Hatter, etc) who do play it regularly might perhaps be able to suggest to make it A: Playable, B: Tolerable. I mean, seeing as how SL is a highly successful platform/world/environment/what-have-you, that has many people "playing" it, has many companies set up in it, etc.. there must be something good about it. Perhaps someone can shed some light to explain why my experiences - which were nothing but negative, frankly - are not at all typical of what one can find in SL?
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Comments
Id try to Defrag it with Gamebooster, put it in Admin mode, Turn my NVIDIA control for 3d to let application decide.
maybe get Advanced system care and run Smart ram, Game Booster, and the Turbo boost on Advanced system care.(Helps in Darkfall to im sure most all games.)
Other then that it comes down to Whats your Computer Spec's?
My current setup is:
- Core 2 DUO E8200
- 4 Gigs of RAM
- Windows 7 64-Bit
- NVidia 9500 GT video card
- 5 Mb internet connection which I tested at 4.8 Mb right before I posted this
That said, my PC specs are really irrelevant to the issues I'm having.
Falling through the ground - which happened again just a few moments ago before I logged out, incidentally - has nothing to do with my system specs. It has to do with their collision detection which, for some reason, isn't managing to keep track of where my character is very well. Besides the times I've fallen completely through the ground and kept falling, I find myself frequently ending up "inside" objects... like a platform, or road... for a few seconds before the engine realizes "oh hey, you're not above ground" and starts to raise my character above it. That's a seriously lame issue for an application running as long as SL has been to be having.
Here's something else freaky that happened... When I was falling, I decided to teleport so I could, you know, stop falling. The game teleported me, then a box came up saying it couldn't teleport me at that moment, as that function was unavailable (something to that effect), and it placed me back where I'd fallen through. Except, apparently the game still probably thought I was falling because my character - and you have to visualize this - started sorta folding in on itself into the ground... from the head down it was like I was "collapsing" in on myself. Pretty weird looking. It seemed like of SL still had me "falling", but now the engine had me physically above ground with the collision properly working, thus the weird gltich. It was pretty messed up.
Moving is still awful. If it's not rubber-banding, then it's my character "warping" around. If it's not that, then I'm 'swimming above ground'. If it's not that, my character's not moving at all. Navigation is a pain because there's a good 2-3 second delay between when I start turning my character, and SL decides to turn my character. So, I turn to avoid a wall or to follow a path, and I end up walking into the wall, or a nearby tree, anyway. No wonder most people tend to just stand in one place everywhere I go. Navigating anywhere is a nightmare.
This happens even at the lowest possible in-game settings. So, again, it's not my system.
If I didn't know what SL was, or how long it's been around, or all the press it's gotten, I would write this off as an extremely amateurish piece of crap. Knowing what SL is, and how long it's been around, and all the press it's gotten makes it inexcusable.
I play MMOs that are *far* heavier on system resources than SL should be, and they run just fine. SL is a work of extremely sloppy, unoptimized programming. I've seen better performance out of completely amateur work.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
My wife plays and there is a new veiwer thats just been released and has a bunch of problems. It certainly sounds like it has nothing to do with your computer specs.
My wifes advice was if your on viewer 2 get off and get viewer1 much smoother.
Second before you log in look at your settings and look for drew distance. By default it's set to 128 you should change that to 96 or less.
Hope that helps.
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
There is nothing more dangerous than a true believer.
Well as someone who has been with SL since 2003, i have to say alot of what you said does happen.
BUT, has nothing to do with your system....mine is worse and i rarely have those issues unless in a sim/server that is full of people and/or lots of objects, scripts or other things that you have to load.
Each Sim is its own server some are older, some are newer...the engine itself was not made for the huge amounts of extra content that is now in world. Everyone and thier sister have thier avatars covered in sculpted items, scripts, skins that have to render. Each person you run into has to be loaded individually, its like any other MMO with lots of people around only worse cause its not just graphics you have to worry about.
Sims that are near thier limit on prims also have issues , since you are loading land, prims, sky, water and whatever sounds and other things people have placed on it.
SL is not a game like other MMO's it has alot of issues because most people dont know how to keep the lag down, they just load up everything they can without a thought on how it effects others.
Could things be better? probably...
My suggestion is to turn most of your details down to nothing when you first load, then find a water sim....then visit some sims that arent filled with 100 people, that would be a good start.
Thank you for the information, as well as to others who've given some insight or tips.
Regarding viewers, I went to the Second Life website and saw that in addition to the 1.x series viewer, there are also various 3rd party viewers. I'm curious if there's a suggestion as to which of those might be better?
Also, I wasn't aware that avatars could put such a heavy load on the system due to custom items or scripts... So perhaps I'm a bit more harsh on Linden than I should be for the client's performance. However, it would seem to me that they would put some kind of restrictions on how crazy someone can go knowing how it can affect others' experiences.
Ah well.. I'm downloading the 1.x viewer now - the one still avail on their website. So we'll see how that goes.
I really do want to give SL a serious try, but those performance issues with the 2.x viewer are making it very difficult. Hopefully this older viewer yields better results.
Thanks again.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Okay quick update.
Running on Viewer 1 right now and... holy cow what a difference lol.
No rubber-banding, no falling through the ground... Everything's smooth, even on the highest settings - though my avatar seems to have a phobia of stairs that takes a moment for him to get over :-p. Just needs a little coaxing it seems.
So... anyone in here who'd like to share their avatar's name so I can at least chat with some "familiar faces" so to speak? I'm assuming none of you will try dry-humping me >.>...
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I played SL on and off since 2006, and I run a clothing and gesture business for a little income on the side ^^
My name on SL is Blake Romanas, come troll me or whatever
I will troll back ^_^
Oh, and I recommend this viewer, its so much better than official SL viewer.
http://emerald.modularsystems.sl/index.shtml
Has few things regular SL dont have.
Funnily enough, I just uninstalled Emerald. Was actually a lot laggier than the 1.x SL viewer on my system and, the real kicker, even after disabling voice chat, I kept hearing people talking.... even after I'd quit the program about 5 minutes later.
This time, I was greeted with some woman who felt the need to call everyone a fag about every 5 seconds or so, and found it incredibly clever and cool to repeat a certain racial slur that starts with N, ends with R and rhymes with Tigger... laughing every time she said it, adding at one point "which is funny because there's a "racial slur here" here right now. I guess she finds racial slurs entertaining. Such is the case with small minds, I guess.
Anyway, I'll be sticking with the SL 1.x client for now, 'til I get the hang of things more and start to understand what a lot of the fancy lingo I'm hearing and reading actually means :-p.
Thanks again.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Well i say to stay away from the welcome areas like waterhead,Ahern,Help Island Public, Because they tend to attract griefers. I prefer to be at places like GYC(Gay Yiffy Club),or the Furnation Sandboxes.
Hey Mike,
Sorry you had a rough time at our place, but also thanks for giving it a shot.
That first 15 minutes of SL is a notoriously lousy experience for people. It's really unfortunate because the 1% to 2% that make it through the grinder generally love SL.
If you decide to give it another try, join the "Erie Isle Homeless Group" (there's an object you can touch to do this) and also the "Erie Isle OOC Chat Group". Once you're in the groups you can just IM the group for help. There are generally quite a few people around but there are 4 Erie sims and RP mostly happens away from the entrance.
You might also want to have a look at : http://www.erie-isle.com/getstarted.html
Stop by http://www.erie-isle.com/ and say hi.
Hey there... Not a problem. I don't think it was a problem with Erie Island itself and, in fact, I did manage to get back there and walk around a bit. Wasn't really anything going on, though, so I left for the time being. I'll have to head back there another time.
I did get past that initial awful stage and am getting the hang of things.
One thing I've learned is to just sorta stand still for a few moments when you first teleport and give SL a chance to download the base geometry. Problem I was having is that I was trying to move around immediately after loading in. Though, even with that, I still find myself showing up underground and having to find my way out.
As I'm a graphics designer and also work with 3D, I'm particularly intrigued by the whole creating custom clothes and items. I'm looking into creating 'sculpties'. What an interesting concept that is; image-based 3D modeling. It's like normal maps, only in reverse - instead of the normal map being produced from the geometry, the geometry is produced from the normal map. Very neat concept that kinda eluded me at first.
So, once I'm more familiar with that, I'm going to try my hand at creating some neat stuff.
Other than that, I've been looking around at different spots, tryin to find areas dedicated to, or at least featuring things I'm interested in. I did find a wonderfully constructed location named, I believe, The Progressive Museum or something like that. The creator took the themes and album covers from different prog bands (Rush, Yes, Genesis, Marillion, Pink Floyd, etc) and made displays out of them. He does some very cool stuff with an inverted sphere (basically, the faces are looking inward rather than outward. I won a little contest he has there where you have to guess the number of different Rush albums represented in that section. I guessed right (a couple tricky ones that are easy to overlook) and got a nifty t-shirt and the suit from the cover of Hemispheres.
So in all, I'm definitely digging SL so far. So much to see and do and, really, I'm still kinda wrapping my head around a lot of it... but it's coming to me.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Hey Mike. I've been in Second Life since 2007 or so; didn't take it too seriously until 2008. Since then though I've been creating, scripting content, running stores and sims and so on and so forth. Let me know if I can help with anything or answer anything for you.
For now based on what you posted there I'm going to give you a heads-up or two that'll save you some frustration if you're into 3D modelling.
1. 'Sculpties' really aren't an interesting concept. They're one of the backward things about Second Life that's finally on the way out now that Second Life is soon to offer mesh uploads in the form of COLLADA format files. This feature is currently scheduled for Viewer 2.1 last I heard; but it isn't in the betas right now so that may've changed.
'til then though, yes, sculpties are the only way to get custom geometry into Second Life. Every prim can be loaded with a sculptmap that'll change its shape; a sculptmap being usually a 64px x 64px image where each pixels RGB value correlates to the XYZ position of one vertex.
Because of the way sculptmaps work, every object has to basically be 32 x 32 vertices; with a trivial few more points for sculpties using cylinders and planes for base topology. The way sculptmaps are generated are based off the UV maps; basically the quads, of equal size (and only quads, with no holes) are flattenened and fill the 0 to 1 UV space.
So you're pretty limited working with only 1,024 to 1,056 points; and while you might say, be able to sculpt a skull with that, you can't punch in any holes for eye sockets due to strict topology constraints; you'd have to indent and fake it.
But...rejoice. Mesh support is coming soon. Custom UV maps and all that.
2. Speaking of normal maps, you've probably also noticed Second Life doesn't really have a concept of materials for objects. There's things abstracted up that you can do; like light in place of self-illumination, shininess in place of reflectivity, bump map templates instead of a normal or bump map channel, etc. But no raw interaction with materials like one would be used to from Maya or Max.
So most people render to texture/bake materials and high-poly detail into their textures, and just deal with that.
Hopefully now that we're finally getting meshes, one day we'll get materials too.
Anyway that's a small primer. If you ever have any questions about all the quirks, let me know.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
The issues you are lag from the server however you may not have had your network settings set correctly in the viewer. SL seems to max out around 1500kbs at the moment so not really much point in setting it higher (there are other graphic settings to play with as well such as AA etc). Your PC seems fast enough for what you are planning to do. I would definitely recommend getting a space navigator mouse. ATen thousand times easier to move around and cam. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEAyMDDSh5g
With your 3D skills it should be an intersting endeavor.
have fun
Ormand Lionheart
www.youtube.com/fuzonacid
It sounds like you defaulted in to the teen grid (if that is still up). As for the lag issues there are caps for numbers of folks in individual sims. When the numbers get close to the cap lag wil happen if there are a ton of scripts running where your tryin to TP to.
One thing that I did when ever i was playing tourist was to turn all of my settings down in game and set the grafics card to fast and ugly mode. Then re adjusted it in game when i landed. Make no mistake you could have a super computer and it will lag.
With that being said the one thing for me that makes it all worth while is the creativity of those that learn to create things in game. There are some amazing places to check out. Most of them are off the mainland.