RIP WilliamD Bracken

My close and best friend in Second Life, WilliamD Bracken, hadn't logged in for weeks when I started getting worried. I began sending him the usual "hey are you OK?" IMs but no reply. A week went by then a month and still no reply. Sadly, just last week, I got a reply to one of my IMs via email from his real life son letting me know that William had passed away on January 26th. Color me devastated.😢

About William

Will (as I called him most of the time) was funny, kind and a great conversationalist. Whenever we were online at the same time, we'd often spend hours chatting up a storm while dancing at our usual club haunts such as Muddy's, FogBound or Junkyard Blues. Will was also well-known for creating elaborate builds on his home land, especially for Halloween or Christmas. You could also find us hanging out in his hot tub or mine.
I never knew exactly who he was in real life other than his first name and things going on from day-to-day; just as he knew similar things about me. Neither of us felt the need to extend things any further. Regardless, easily 75% of my time in SL was spent with him. I'm pretty sure he was a lot older than me but he never acted like it. (Although his tastes in music mostly involved 60s & 70s music while mine run from the 80s to current stuff.) We both liked listening to the blues from every era which is why we often went to Junkyard.
Will was also the founder and original part owner of Muddy's nightclub in SL (still going strong). It's kind of ironic that I never went to Muddy's when he owned it because I was busy doing things for Blackhearts (like playing occasional hostess and making club themed clothing for them). He had lots of stories about all the personalities and ups and downs from running a club. 
What else do I know? Hmmm. Will was always barbequing something in real life. He was eager to explore interesting new places in SL. One of our favorite SIMs was a Japanese island with a lovely forest, various onsens and interesting little hideaways. We also spent a fair amount of time in the HP Lovecraft SIM, Innsmouth. He was quick to give virtual massages (which, believe it or not, often helped). And finally, he never went mesh. I think it was a badge of honor for him that for as long as he was in SL, his shape and haircut were pretty much pure Linden OEM old school. We actually me each other through the inworld HUD game Tiny Empires about 8 years ago back when our mutual queendom (Hirilorn now Hirilorn Rising) used to hold parties. After a few dates (yes they exist in SL), we became regular besties. 

RIP WilliamD Bracken. I miss you a lot. May your afterlife be as fun as your Second Life and real life.

WilliamD & Snickers on Halloween Ride

Chilling by the pool.

Running alts in Second Life for Tiny Empires and TE3000 using Radegast and other viewers

If you've played either Tiny Empires or TE3000 for any length of time, you have probably created an alt or two (or more) that you also use to play the games. And while most viewers can be successfully used to run two or three avatars at once, going beyond this number can be challenging. Here's my personal experience that may help optimize your setups.

Using Firestorm or the Second Life Viewer (and others) to login more than one avatar at a time:

Firestorm (the most popular third-party viewer) AND the Linden Lab official Second Life viewer both default to only allowing ONE instance of the viewer at a time. To run more than one (and be able to log in a second or third avatar), you have to change your settings in Preferences.

In Firestorm, this setting is located under Preferences / Advanced / Allow Multiple Viewers (may reduce stability and performance). Note the warning "May reduce stability and performance". YES IT WILL. Firestorm is system intensive. Running two instances is even more system intensive.

In the Second Life Viewer, this setting is located under Me / Preferences / Advanced / Allow Multiple Viewers. Although the viewer doesn't say so, running two or more SL viewers will also reduce stability and performance.

In both cases you will need to restart the viewer so the changes stick. The next time you open the viewer, you can click on the icon again and a second instance will open.

Even though I have a fast computer, lots of RAM and a good graphics card, running two instances of either of these viewers will tax my system. I can hear it in the constant changes in speed of the computer fans. Running 3 at once will bring it to a crawl.

Use a less system intensive (but still full-featured) viewer:

Due to their high levels of functionality and configurability, Firestorm and the SL Viewer are both piggies when it comes to disk usage and system resources. There are several alternative viewers that are not nearly as greedy and in fact, may actually improve your Second Life experience, especially on lower performance computers. The two in particular I have used are Singularity and Cool VL Viewer. Both use earlier forks of the official viewer and have user interfaces that mimic older Second Life viewers such as Snowglobe, Phoenix, SL 1.23, etc.

I am a particular fan of Cool VL Viewer because the single developer, Henri Beauchamp, is constantly updating both the features and bug fixes. In fact, many of Henri's bug fixes find their ways into the official viewer, Firestorm and others. However, Cool VL Viewer is NOT on the Linden Lab Third Party Directory because Henri has a famous, long-running dispute with the Lab over the personal disclosures required which he believes violate EU law (he is based in France). Regardless, his viewer is highly trusted and he insists that it complies with ALL Linden Lab policy requirements. Those in the SL development community are generally very supportive of his stance. 

Singularity is the other less system intensive viewer that I have personally used. It is similar to Cool VL Viewer and is listed on the Third Party Viewer Directory. However, it is considerably behind Cool VL Viewer in its support for the latest Second Life features. 

Another full-featured viewer I would consider is active is Alchemy. The developer is active and it is listed on the TPVD in case you care about that.

Just to give you an idea of the performance differences, with Cool VL Viewer I typically get inworld frame rates of 60+ FPS. With Firestorm, a more typical rate is 35 - 40 FPS. 

Here are the download links for the above mentioned viewers. Again, as with FS and SLV, you will need to set their preferences to all multiple viewer instances.

Cool VL Viewer - Cool VL Viewer (free.fr) (scroll down to find the latest release for Windows or Linux)

Singularity - Downloads - Singularity Viewer (versions available for Windows 32/64, Linux and MacOS

Alchemy - Alchemy Viewer (Windows 32/64 versions only)

Move those caches and keep them separate!!

Texture and inventory caches generate a LOT of disk writing activity. By default, most viewers put their cache folders on your system drive (or wherever you installed the viewer). For Windows this is generally in Users/<you>/Appdata/Roaming/<viewername>. First off, if you have a Solid State Drive (SSD) as your system drive, the constant writing can be hard on it. SSDs have a limited life and while most of us won't reach it, heavy game play with caches on the SSD can shorten it dramatically. Second, in my experience, I get better overall performance when the cache is on a different drive from the program itself even if that cache is a hard drive.

Moving your cache is simple and similar for most viewers.

In Firestorm, choose: Preferences / Network & Files/ Directories

In Second Life Viewer it's: Me / Preferences / Advanced / Cache Location

So pick a spot on a different drive and relocate the cache there. I use D:\SLCache\Firestorm which is on a nice fast hard drive while my system SSD just has the program.

Note that if you run different viewers, keep the cache locations separate. For example if you run Firestorm, Cool VL Viewer and the SL Viewer, each should have its own cache folder. As above, mine are D:\SLCache\CoolVL  and D:\SLCache\SLViewer. You do not need to setup different folders for different accounts nor should you try. Also, size of cache may help. Bigger is better (within the limits of the viewer) if you have the space.

Use an ultralight viewer such as Radegast

For those that don't know, Radegast is an ultra-light-weight Second Life viewer. By lightweight we mean it doesn't use a lot of system resources such as graphics, CPU, RAM, etc. It is not at all full-featured, but it can be used to play Tiny Empires and TE3000. Plus it has some very useful command line options that you can script or put in a batch file.

The current version is 2.33 and you can download it here: Radegast – A lightweight virtual word client for Second Life and OpenSimulator

With Radegast, I've had as many as 8 accounts logged in at once including one instance of Firestorm. Yes it's a bit slow with that many log-ins but for gathering gold and interacting with the HUD now & then, Radegast works fine. I've heard of some players logging in as many 20 alts on Radegast.

By default, Radegast is setup to allow multiple instances so nothing to do there. A few things to note however:

1. For many, the "clock" in the TE HUD won't display correctly. This seems to be graphics card related.
2. Displaying the HUD is NOT intuitive. You have to click on CHAT, RIGHT-CLICK your avatar name in the right hand column and then select Attachments. Now find the HUD in the list and select VIEW. Uggh.
3. Sometimes the HUD will look like it hasn't accepted your answer. This especially happens with check boxes. Generally, closing the HUD window and re-opening as above will clear this (and almost always you'll find that the HUD has accepted your answer).
4. Sometimes the HUD will seem unresponsive. Again, close the window and redisplay it. If that doesn't fix it, you can either detach the HUD and reattach it OR simply log out and back on.
5. When using Radegast it's best to use the full size TE or TE3000 huds. Not the compact version. Radegast does not display the compact version very well.
6. Be careful with the arrows. Make sure that HUD has displayed the new page or alternate selection. It can be slow to respond when running multiple avatars. The last thing you want to do is accidentally accept a bribe offer when you meant to "politely decline". :)
7. DO NOT OPEN A 3D WINDOW AND TRY TO USE A HUD. It won't work. Close the 3D window and then you can access the TE HUD again.
8. DO NOT TELEPORT WITH THE HUD VIEW OPEN. Close it then TP. In fact, even if you close the HUD view, you may STILL have to detach and reattach the HUD when you get to your destination.

Launch all Radegast boats at once

A cool thing about Radegast is that you can create command files to launch and login all your avatars at once.

START "AVATAR1" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Radegast\Radegast.exe" -a -u "AVATAR1 Resident" -p "<open text password>"

START "AVATAR2" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Radegast\Radegast.exe" -a -u "AVATAR2 Resident" -p "<open text password>"

The above commands would be placed in a batch (.BAT) file for Windows. Note that the START "AVATAR1" is required and gives the START command window a title. It does NOT have to match the AVATAR login name but for ease of identifying the Radegast windows, it's very helpful.

If you DON'T want to have your passwords sitting in a batch file in clear text, then you can leave it off but you may be prompted on each login.

Here is the complete list of Radegast command line switches: Command Line Options – Radegast 

Other tips and tricks

Optimize viewer for performance, not appearance

In general, if you're going to try to run multiple avatars at a single time, you should optimize your full featured viewer for performance instead of appearance. This means lowering draw distances, keeping graphics to LOW and ensuring you have drivers and system things up to date. Here's a link to tips provided by Linden Lab on optimizing SL performance:

How to improve Viewer performance - English - Second Life Community

Keep in mind that with server-side rendering, your avatar will look the same to everyone else even if you don't look so hot to yourself. However since things you are wearing can induce lag so minimize your scripted items, mesh stuff and other complexities. The most lag free avatar is Ruth. :)

Hang-out some place quiet

You will have far better performance if all your alts are lurking some place quiet like an empty SIM, or better yet, an empty SIM 1000 meters above the ground. 

Tiny Empires returns to (unreal) life

The Tiny Empires servers are back up and all those HUDs and alts are back online. The restore time was around 3am SLT with a brief hiccup of a few hours. You may now return to your regularly scheduled sabotage.

Oh and I'm still looking for more subjects so if you want to switch kingdoms to a fantastic one, IM me. :)

Our futures with Tiny Empires?

I dunno, what do you think?

The Great Tiny Empires Crash of 2012

As of this writing, the Tiny Empires servers for one of Second Life's most popular games are still offline. That's 2 days and counting. According to some, the last time they went down for longer than a few hours was in 2008 when they were toast for 3 days.

Let's hope Ultralite Soleil can get them back up soon. The natives are getting restless, bored and some have even been forced to play another game called Real Life.

Tiny Empires server down!

OMG! I'm going through Tiny Empires withdrawal now. Ultralite Soleil's game server went down yesterday and as of this morning, it is still offline. From the official group notice:

Greetings all,
There is bad news and good news. Which shall I give first? <rolls dice>...

The bad news is that there has apparently been a catastrophic failure of some kind in the Tiny Empires servers and they will have to be rebuilt, which could take the rest of the day.

The good news is that I managed to grab a good backup before the failure, so nothing in the Tiny Empires games will be lost. Your acres and gold are safe.

I will update you more as I learn more. 

Ultralite Soleil

I guess I'll just have to go shopping.☻

P.S. If you are interested in playing Tiny Empires (in Second Life of course) or moving to a great kingdom (White Horse), please feel free to IM me in-world (Snickers Snook) or send me a PM on Twitter @snickitty.

Tiny Empires in Second Life

OK, I'll admit it up front. I'm hooked on Tiny Empires. For those who don't know, it's a HUD-based MMPG you play inside Second Life. There's not much to it. You buy/sell land, earn gold, build on your land, answer riddles now, read info texts, take part in polls -- all with the goal of trying to accumulate land so you can move up in your kingdom's hierarchy.

It's kind of like Amway where the more people you sign up as your subjects, the higher and faster you can go up the chain. I am a fallen princess in Tiny Empires. When I left Second Life for about 4 months to take a RL break, I lost about 6 subjects and all the land they had. So I went from being a Princess to a lowly Marquise. Now I've worked my way back to Duchess and am probably a month or two away from being a Princess again.

Depending on what kingdom you belong to is key to enjoying the game. I've been in three different ones now and each had its own personality. One was very focused on recruiting and snagging as many people as possible without much social interaction. Another was back-stabbing and crazy. My current kingdom, White Horse, suits my personality perfectly. The people (and King Tremor Trefoil) are mellow, kind, generous, fun and really interested interested in helping people along.

If you find a good kingdom, the chat, activities and friendships can be as good as anything you'll find in Second Life. And it's not like raising rabbits or chickens or doing an intense role play thing (although you can if you wish). TE is very light in its demands on your Second Life time -- which makes it perfect for a busy chica like me. You can get as intense about it or you can float merrily along. :)

Getting started

If you are interested in playing Tiny Empires, feel free to contact me in world (Snickers Snook -- send me a notecard if I'm not on) and I can get you started with the free, 14-day trial HUD. If you decide to continue playing and wish to join our kingdom (or hopefully my line hehe), depending on your situation, we can help with a discount on the full HUD ($799L regular price).

Here's the website for the game: http://tinyempires.com/

You can also pick up the free HUD in my store at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cherry%20Park/95/230/24
It's on the wall to your right. However, if you do go straight for the HUD, please IM to let me know you've started. You'll need a liege so we have to make sure you are tagged to the right person. :) I also want to make sure you have the latest tips & tricks etc.

Happy empire building!

UPDATE: -- I've left the old blog post intact but things have changed dramatically since I posted this. I'm no longer in White Horse and was pretty naive about realities when I was there. There are good people in the kingdom but suffice it way, I'm no fan of the king period. Regardless, I have since worked my way up to Vicerine of the very fun Queendom of Hirilorn and am pleased to call Queen Aabbi my friend.

Something's phishy with Second Life signatures

After the great phishing exploit of the Second Life Blogrums, Linden Lab disabled "certain features" of the Jive SBS (aka Jive Turkey) software that runs the forums / blogs. As it turns out, those features included some of the most common ones used by residents: quoting, smilies, bold formatting, images (to be expected) and video (to be expected).

Next on the hit list for security was Linden Lab limiting images on XStreet SL to only those served by Linden Lab's own servers. So no more YouTube vids or similar product demos. While none of those really affected me directly other than the royal PITA the blogs have become to use (as if things weren't awful enough), I found that trying to update my secondlife.com profile signature to use an <img> tag failed utterly. What I couldn't understand was why other residents had working active sigs with animated GIFs and all but I couldn't even stuff a stupid static GIF even off of an XStreet listing.

Several of us starting posting about this and low and behold, up pops Yoz Linden with this gem:

Yoz Linden post in SL blogs

So basically, sigs with images are grandfathered for residents who already had them because Linden Lab "assumes" they are safe. But anyone trying to update theirs is SOL. What a crock!!! I'm no webbie expert but from what I've learned (thanks in part to friends Patchouli Woollahrah and Maggie Darwin), it's trivial to replace an existing image with something malicious. It's not just the <img> tag itself that can be used maliciously but the file being linked to as well.

Plus, even if simply disabling sig editing is a sound technical answer, letting some residents have image sigs while others can't is inherently unfair.

On top of this, no one has said anything at all about the potential security holes in "Media on a Prim" (MOAP) which lets those so inclined watch even more pr0n from inside Second Life (she says sarcastically).

OK so again I ask the question, WHY did Linden Lab throw away vBulletin in favor of JIVE SBS (Clearspace)? Oh yeah, the reasons they gave were because vBulletin wasn't secure and wasn't scalable. Yet, as I pointed out here, some of the biggest community sites in the world (with far greater hacker exposure) run vBulletin and phpBB. JIVE SBS doesn't even crack the top 500 for sites in terms of posts or user base.

So let me translate Linden Lab speak for you. "We had no clue then. We have no clues now. We like shiny things. Ooooh SQUIRREL!!"

Lindal Kidd's "An Open Letter to the Lindens"

With the imminent closing of the official Second Life Forums (in favor of Linden Lab's horrid "blogrums" aka Jive Software's Clearspace), literally hundreds of farewell messages are being posted. They range from the drama embued "I'm leaving SL" posts to "See you on the SL Universe forums" to the more normal soft, whimpering acceptance of grief and loss over what was truly a remarkable community. Count me in the latter group.

None of these posts though, can hold a candle to Lindal Kidd's parting shot, "An Open Letter to the Lindens". Lindal cross-posted it to both the Forums and to the blogs, although, as has all too often been the case of late, Lexie Linden locked the thread (and will probably delete it) before it's had a chance to really see the light of day.

I urge you to read it before it's too late. Lindal does a great job of summing up what's right and different about Second Life and all the crappy things Linden Lab seems hell bent on doing to kill it.

If you have access to the official Forums, you can read the post there and offer your own comments.

It's a sad time.