Getting ideas

This morning, Maggie and I took a stroll around our home sim, Sweet Hideout. Our landlord trad keeps working on it, and some of the stores there are evolving as well. We didn't find any major things new, but trad has been adding a little here and there, and some of the major changes recently is he cut down his tall office building and removed some very nice, animated animals from his park.

Before Maggie came online, I met one of our neighbors, a girl named fritz(?), and had a nice chat with her. Maggie and I also met trad this evening, so her new account could have group membership, plus trad fixed the new sign for our shop that I made. He also told me he had removed those animated animals because he thought they could be part of the reason behind the technical problems with the sim. I doubt a far from full sim would bog down because of a few moderately scripted animated objects, and after I told him, he at least put Maggie's favorite back: the alligator that ate her when she sat on him.

I had a power outage during the evening, and when I came back, Maggie showed me her latest creation, a baby transport. It was really nice, but I got a hunch of some possible improvements to it, so I played around some and got at least a proof of concept. It's up to Maggie if she wants to use my ideas or not, and I guess it's just me always thinking in straight angles that makes me want to straighten some things out.

Unfortunately the sim messed up again during the evening, so Maggie and I made a little excursion to one of the welcome areas and then went on a hunt for glasses for her. In the end, I made a couple of futuristic shades, quick and dirty, and taught Maggie how to make herself a pair. She became quite fond of them, and she looks cool in them as well. I really intended them just as a base for more realistic glasses, and I probably will follow that true in the near future, as soon as I find time to draw and prepare some frame textures for them.

Because of my RL illness, I was really a bit off today, so I left Avination rather early.

Economy:

2011-02-27: -

Avination stats:

2011-02-28 05:54 CET, 16,424 residents, 3,906 in 30d, 1,072 sims

Problems, problems

I've been too ill to visit Avination during the day, but this evening I spent a couple of hours together with Maggie there. I enjoyed seeing her a lot after the weekend without her. We chatted some, then went freebie-hunting, after which I was beat.

Our landlord trad sent me a notecard that made me jump: "complaint 2". At first I thought my script development had used excessive sim resources or that someone objected to Maggie and me "dumping" prices in our store, but it turned out he just wanted to share his communication with support about the technical problems he had with his sims lately. Despite a lot of fiddling and restarts, they still haven't managed to get the sims running smoothly, but often things rezz very slowly, if at all, avatars get stuck and partly ruthed and undressed, and minimap doesn't work right. Poor trad was really devastated about it, especially since some of his renters seem to have been at him about it and threatening to leave his sims.

Now, I entered Avination fully aware of that it was running on modified pre-alpha or alpha release OpenSimulator software, and I expected some glitches, but have actually seen much fewer of those than I had expected. However, many seem to enter Avination believing they will come to a clone of Second Life, where everything will work exactly as there. Unfortunately, the Avination information is not very good at giving them the correct information in that respect. Also, with the very rapid recent growth of Avination, I suspect they are having extra trouble in scaling their server park to accomodate. I expected that, so I'm not very upset about it, but some seem to be.

I read up some on a thread about Avination at SLUniverse during the day. It was a bit fascinating to see how people are either blindly defending "their" world, be it Second Life, Avination, InWorldz, OSgrid or something else, or doing their best to defame other worlds. I decided to try Avination for a reason, after having read up on the different worlds, and so far, I have gotten what I expected. Avination is in no way flawless, and I understand if those who are expecting an as mature world as Second Life, with identical tech, content, policies and such, will be disappointed. There are things in Avination I would have differently if I had my say, but those things I already knew about before entering the world and had decided were acceptable nonetheless.

Economy:

2011-02-26: -

Avination stats:

2011-02-27 08:43 CET, 16,173 residents, 3,383 in 30d, 1,067 sims

Real life illness

I've only been in Avination twice briefly today, owing to a real life cold with fever high enough ro make me pretty useless. First time, I just checked if yesterday's problems with frozen avatar in Sweet Hideout remained, which it didn't. Second time, I fixed a possible security issue with my stellarium, with a size menu that had been set in a way so it could have been scaled to intrude on neighboring parcels and shops.

Economy:

2011-02-25: -

Avination stats:

2011-02-26 09:17 CET, 15,845 residents, 2,744 in 30d, 1,064 sims

(I suspect the number of unique residents visiting in the last 30 days somehow got reset on the login page, so it's building up since 2-3 days back now, rather than since 30 days.)

A frozen day

This morning I went window shopping for skins, hairs and clothes for myself with Maggie. I didn't found much of interest in terms of skins and hairs, but at least some nice clothes, even if I didn't buy them.

Maggie will be off for most of the weekend now, so I'll have to entertain myself. In the evening, I continued working on the stellarium script, re-structuring it and fixing a few bugs in the permissions handling. I was able to do this, despite the sim Sweet Retreat messed up and kept me frozen stiff all evening, even after a couple of restarts. Otherwise nothing much happened today.

Economy:

2011-02-24: -

Avination stats:

2011-02-25 05:52 CET, 15,511 residents, 1,930 in 30d, 1,051 sims

A bit of turmoil

Avination was not in a very good mood today, and it took a few restarts before our home sim Sweet Hideout started working properly. Before that, it didn't rezz any visible items, and everyone on it were frozen stiff. I had a long talk with our landlord trad while things were cooking, and I think he and I are much the same in many respects, but me perhaps being a bit more tech geeky and him a bit more aesthetic geeky.

I managed to work some more on the stellarium script, adding proper permissions handling and function modularity, fixed a few bugs and changed the format of the configuration some.

Maid decided she wanted to change name today. The only way to do it was to create a new account, since she wanted to change both her first and last names. She decided to go through with it despite my warnings about how that could mess things up with her creations, no-trans assets and things like that. But she did pull through, so now my Maid since 16 months is gone and my Maggie has come instead.

I had a good day regarding sales yesterday, and sold in total five items, one fountain and one each of the four kinds of trees I created. I needed to spend some time and money on making a new sign for our shop as well, now reading "Magnuz & Maggie" instead of "Magnuz & Maid". I haven't had time to ask our landlord trad to put it up yet, and I hope he won't be too upset about the extra work.

Economy:

2011-02-23: sales +C$50, uploads -C$10

Avination stats:

2011-02-18 05:49 CET, 12,734 residents, 6,608 in 30d, 957 sims

2011-02-19 10:23 CET, 13,244 residents, 6,962 in 30d, 996 sims

2011-02-20 08:50 CET, 13,683 residents, 7,365 in 30d, 1,007 sims

2011-02-21 06:07 CET, 14,076 residents, 7,730 in 30d, 1,010 sims

2011-02-22 14:08 CET, 14,484 residents, 8,071 in 30d, 1,025 sims

2011-02-23 06:08 CET, 14,783 residents, 8,393 in 30d, 1,029 sims

2011-02-24 06:05 CET, 15,197 residents, 8,549 in 30d, 1,044 sims

A calm day in Avination

Today, I spent the morning just chatting with Maid, down in the nice little park by the sea, just behind our new shop. It was kind of romantic, especially with the big crocodile, which once ate Maid for her sitting on him, hissing just behind our backs. She was more or less back into shape again, after the problems she had yesterday.

In the evening, I fixed a simple tree pot for the trees I made yesterday, set it for sale for the usual C$10, and then found some time to work on the stellarium script. I'm really kind of overdoing it for the stellarium alone, but I intend to re-use it for several other items of mine, e.g. to change color of furniture, so I want it to be flexible and easily configurable. Much of the changes I did today was to make it more configurable from a notecard, instead of having to go and change parameters in the code.

I sold two more fountains today (C$20) and after I was done with the script, I had a lazy evening with Maid, both of us playing Zyngo for a bit over an hour (I won C$28). So, basically, I'm better at winning money on Zyngo than I am at earning them by selling my creations. That should tell me something...? On our way home, we ran into the Avination lag variant, me being frozen in place for a few minutes, and Maid walking straight out into eternity, before I teleported her back. I ended the evening with adorning the sign outside our house with a romantic picture of the two of us sitting cuddling at trad's sky bar on top of his tall office building.

Asset and rezzing problems

Today was no great day for Maid. She couldn't rezz her shape, her skin, her shoes and some of her clothes for the entire day. Still, we had a nice morning together at home, without her having any clothes. In the evening, we tried to fix some of the flaws by her managing to find new copies of her skin and some of her clothes.

Before Maid showed up, I had some time to work some more on my stellarium script. We also spent some time together building, her creating a book shelf and me a stool and 4 trees from the plant sculpt I created before and some default textures in inventory. I also fixed parcel description and snapshots on our new shop (C$20 cost).

I was also contacted by a friend from Second Life, who created a presence here in Avination as well. She knew I was here and had no major problems finding me, since I use the same name as in Second Life. It was a nice chat, even if she was a bit sad I am no longer in Second Life.

As Maid and me headed for bed, we met trad again, working on prettifying the region even more with some very nice street lanterns. Both Maid and me think we were very lucky to find his sims and be able to rent both a shop and a house here. So far, I've seen no other sim in Avination as nice as Sweet Hideout, and trad is definitely a very good landlord, being both ambitious, generous, friendly and helpful.

Avination, the beginning

This blog will tell some about my experiences in virtual worlds, starting out with the world Avination.

Backlog

• 2011-02-12 : I came to Avination to investigate alternatives to Second Life.
• 2011-02-13 : I was joined by my dear friend Maid, who has been with me in Second Life for 16 months. We explored some and we found our first freebies, me a T-shirt from FYI and a vendor from MLPV. I tweaked my avatar some to make it more to my taste.
• 2011-02-14 : Maid and I explored some in Avination. We found a freebie demo cuff set from Satiated Desires.
• 2011-02-15 : Maid and I explored some in Avination.
• 2011-02-16 : Maid and I explored some in Avination. We found a freebie shelf from Time Engineer, a wall shadow box from Allegro Chan and a cat suit from Fashion Vaher. I decided to get us some money (bought C$ 4000 for USD 16 and gave Maid C$ 1000), rented a shop for Maid and me in the region Sweet Hideout from trad Aeon (C$ 1 for the land and C$ 200 for 4 weeks rent), and created a simple 3-prim fountain for sale there.
• 2011-02-17 : I started creating a 1-prim stellarium, much as a scripting exercise to create a basic and re-usable interaction script (C$ 160 for texture uploads). I rented a small seafront house in the region Sweet Hideout from trad Aeon (C$ 80 for 4 weeks rent).
• 2011-02-18 : I kept working on my stellarium (C$ 10 for texture upload).
• 2011-02-19 : I created a shop sign "Magnuz & Maid", a hole texture, two vase sculpts, a general plant sculpt, 3 flower textures, and 4 2-prim in-world flower arrangements from the latter (C$ 80 for uploads).
• 2011-02-20 : I found freebie jeans from FYI, got the main features of the stellarium script working, and celebrated by letting Maid teach me how to play Zyngo (won C$ 36). My sweet Maid bought me a suit from Rosie Marksman in our home region Sweet Hideout to share some of her winnings, after we had explored Avination some and found the prices in other places rather high.
• 2011-02-21 : I sold my first creation, the simple 3-prim fountain for C$ 10. I rented a main street shop in the region Sweet Hideout from trad Aeon (C$1 for the land and C$ 200 for 4 weeks rent). Maid and I set up a small garden with my stellarium on the roof terrace, moved our things from the first shop to the 1st floor of the new one, and I created a simple 3-prim garden chair.

Summary

Avination is still a young and comparatively small world, even if it's growing rapidly (from 11,000 to 14,000 residents and 850 to 1,000 regions in my first week). It is of course much less rich in content than e.g. Second Life, but many content creators are moving there, or at least have part of their activities there. There are still some technical problems with the platform, but usually nothing that can't be sorted out by re-logging and clearing cache once in a while.

Avination is profiled much as a commercial world. One risk, partly already verified by in-world excursions, is that there is an over-establishment of malls, their owners wanting to make money on the content creators, but also an over-establishment of content creators, compared to the number of buyers. This results in many ambitious but more or less empty malls, and few or no customers in the shops that do exist. Also, both land rentals and content prices are often surprisingly high, considering the low cost of sims (USD 60/month), probably owing to many believing that lack of competition enables them to set their prices with large margins.

There still seems to be a lot of pioneer attitude in Avination, with people on an average more friendly and willing to help out than in e.g. Second Life. Or, that may be because we've just been lucky and run into the right people so far.

Thanks

Melanie Milland, the founder and director of Avination, also a lead developer of the OpenSimulator platform it's based on, for providing a full world which is surprisingly stable considering it's run on what the developers themselves say is a pre-alpha software.

trad Aeon, the creator, owner and manager of mine and Maid's now home region Sweet Hideout and neighboring sims, for creating a very nice environment, offering places to rent for very humane prices, and being an extremely nice and helpful guy.

Ying Inglewood, the owner of FYI, for providing Maid and me with our first useful freebies in her shop FYI, and for leading us to Sweet Hideout, our now home, in the first place.