Bushveld Tales

My first attempts at capturing video were poor. I also learnt that the built in video capture does not capture sound, yet. A google later brought Eric Linden's Top 10 Machinima Tips to my attention.

The next step is to actually try out all these tips and see what I can produce. My first 'project' is to capture the fantastic fireplace that has already been build in the Bushveld Boma.

Thanks Malaprop

My first attempt at solving this was asking Linden Labs to replace the default water texture with a 'land' texture. Rather disappointingly, they couldn't help.

This left me with two options.

The first was to build a wall around the simulator. I gave up on this option as I couldn't build the wall with sufficient textural variation or high enough. It was also using up way to many prims.

The second, which is currently in place, was to raise the land at the edges of the simulator. This works reasonably well, but the effect is spoilt whenever an avatar flies high enough to see over it.

Even though I could overcome this by making the Bushveld a no-fly simulator, I decided against it. Losing the ability to fly in Second Life is very inconvenient.

This process took a couple of weeks and even though the Bushveld was progressing, it was happening very slowly.

I'd already spent time planning the layout of the Bushveld, but was astonished by how long it took me to level this "small" bit of land. Even with the help of a land levelling script it still took me hours to flatten the land. (Uploading of RAW files support only came much later in the year).

The next thing I did was rez one of the animals I'd bought and set it free to wander. It took off, straight at the simulator and was returned to my inventory. It had gone off world! Luckily for me this wasn't the mainland else I'd never have gotten it back.

This made borders a priority. Has anyone else tried to make the default water around a simulator less noticeable for a non-Island theme?

Definately a topic for another day.

Seeing as I had a whole Island on the way I decided to use my parcel of First Land, maybe turn a quick buck. Having read about unscrupulous realtors I rather hesitantly bought my allotted 512 sq. m. worth of First Land. (For a whole L$512)

Within 5 minutes of buying this plot of land I had an offer for purchasing it at L$1500 and free rental for a month. Knowing that the value of land was approximately L$5.50 per sq.m. I declined and set the for sale price at L$4999. (Call me greedy)

I wasn't paying any "additional" tier on it so placed a few of my " free to copy" particle effect statues on it and returned to Starry's land to help assemble the house I hadn't finished yet.

A couple of days later I realised my balance had grown substantially and teleported to my plot of first land. The plot had been bought and a huge house was spanning it and a few others in the vicinity.

I was convinced that making money in Second Life would be easy. I was to learn the error of my ways, but then that is always the way, isn't it?

Thanks to Gwyneth Llewellyn, Tateru Nino and many other, very helpful, volunteers I spent much longer on the island than most. If only they had stopped showing me cool stuff all the time!

Some memorable events on the Island:

• A female avatar arriving in all her naked Barbie doll glory.
• Playing Fuego!
• The paisley translucent chair I made.
• Building a particle effect "statue". (Have seen much better particle effects since then, but still like mine)

Eventually I felt compelled to leave the island. Gwyneth (I think) gave me a collection of newbie friendly calling cards. Amongst these were very useful places such as the Ivory Tower Library of Primatives, Robin Sojourner's in-world texture tutorials, and Yadni's Junkyard.

I visited all of them and at Yadni's Junkyard I managed to become a blockhead. Apparently all newbies wear a box on their head at some stage. Fortunately for me I was on my own at the time.

After a couple of weeks exploring and meeting some great avs, I followed Starry Moonlight's calling card. Starry made me feel very very welcome. Gave me a hoverboard which I had great fun playing with. She also invited me to join her group which I did. She even gave me a house to live in.

I had to assemble it myself, but it was a very generous offer, for which I'll be forever grateful. I really enjoyed the week or so I spent on Starry's land, but felt it was more like "The Sims" than what I wanted for my Second Life.

It was then that I decided to upgrade to a premium acount and in January 2006 Leon Ash was born.

Anyway, I'm Leon Ash, a Second Life avatar. A rather ordinary avatar, but nevertheless a resident in Linden Lab's virtual world.

I first heard about Second Life mid-2005, but only joined in January 2006. There is no particular reason for this delay other than my first life has a tendency to interfere with my second life.

And on that high note it is time to click the "Publish Post" button and breathe life into this blog.