saya-secondlife

[saya-secondlife]

[saya-secondlife]

Don't Punch Downwards

Tonight I watched yet another one of those videos mocking Secondlife and the people who play it.

I'm not pretending that Secondlife isn't filled to the brim with things to make fun of.

My issue is one of the influence of the people that do.

Secondlife is one of the few platforms we have where people can create just about anything, learn just about anything and collaborate in an open environment.

There's nothing respect worthy of people who bring other people down to try to raise themselves up. Be the bigger person, help people grow.

Secondlife is possibly the easiest gateway into the tech world right now. It has a programming language that can be used as a stepping stone into a modern software engineering career (I would know). It let's you learn to 3d model. And yes, those socially inept people you love to make fun of, actually get a chance to talk to other human beings where maybe, just maybe they might gain some social skills.

Don't spend your life building your ego on people's shortcomings. Help the people around you.

Do something worth while and you will feel worth while.

[saya-secondlife]

Student Council

The newly formed Student Council has held its first meeting today! It is hoped that our group will be a starting point for getting the school up and running.

Attending the meeting was Jinx our Council head and our initial members, Ishiko, Lulu and Azumi. Running the meeting was me (the headmaster), and we had two guests, Nihara and Taruna.

The primary focus of the meeting was to look at what our members feel is Priority #1 for the school and to start breaking down our long term goals into smaller ones that can be done by our members.

Here is a brief overview of what our members want as the first thing the school does;

Jinx: Establishing our Setting and Story Line

Lulu: Events for the school and assignment of people to run them

Nihara: Bring more people to Kokoro

Azumi: Establishing Rules

We decided that working on the Rules would be an easy starting point for the council.

Our members have each been tasked with coming up with what they feel would be the three most important rules for the sim - We'll be holding a meeting in the coming weeks to review them and ultimately establish the initial rules of the sim.

Meeting Slides

[saya-secondlife]

A few updates!

My work is resuming at Kokoro, albeit at a reduced pace whilst I take care of some life organisation issues RL.

Nihara is working on our own unique school Uniforms, for both the boys and the girls, we're putting a lot of polish into them and I hope you'll like them as much as we do!

We're going to shift our focus towards the community aspects of the school. In particular;

- Student Council: Over the course of November, we're going to organise a small group to start looking into how we can help people get involved and breath some life into the school

- School Portal: I have started work on a new website for Kokoro focused around People, Groups and Events. The aim is to overcome friction induced by timezones and personal schedules when it comes to organising classes, clubs and special events.

That's all for now!

~ Saya

[saya-secondlife]

PSA

Often people turn up at Kokoro in groups of 4 or 5 and become suprised when their group finds it difficult to socialize or fit in.

I understand that people want to bring all of their friends when they explore SL, but please consider the following:-

Suddenly being surrounded by strangers is uncomfortable. It often spooks people into being ‘pretend AFK’.

The sim is our home. We’re here to relax and often talk about personal things we would not normally share with strangers. It’s more likely we’ll open up if it's just you on your own!

We’re not entertainers. It’s difficult to engage and keep happy lots of new people at once - Believe me I’ve tried - It is just easier and more personal to get to know and befriend you all individually!

I hope these tips will help you make friends at Kokoro and throughout your SL and RL! Happy exploring ❤

[saya-secondlife]

Retopo'ing some clothes I made in MD a year ago :3 Notice how evenly spaced the polkadots are? I didn’t spend 5 years tweaking the UV map to achieve that, I figured out how to keep the original MD UV map, so the UV is exactly the shape of the fabric before it was made into a skirt >:3

[saya-secondlife]

The Rei’s Stuff Squeezy Panties; Hentai Edition has been updated to Version 1.1:

This release contains some bugfixes:-

+ Fix the Whitelist functionality of the panties actually blocking everybody (Sorry! OTL ) + Fix no longer need to add your own whitelist to panties to unblock yourself + Fix incorrect "Panties are locked" message if the clicker is too far away - now says 'Too far away!' + Fix an issue that arises on first time attach due to script reset on owner change (from me, the store owner, to you, the customer) causing    the steal functionality to behave funny if another one of your friends also brought the panties at the same time next to you.

Also, a small change for peace of mind

+ The panties will show in hovertext when the notecard is being reloaded.

You’ll be prompted to update next time you put on your panties, just click ‘YES’ or, if you don’t want to put them on, you can use the Rei’s Stuff - Redelivery Card to get an updated copy.

Happy Pantsus!

[saya-secondlife]

LoD 2-64: A Kokoro Standard

This one’s a technical post being documented for future reference!

LoD 2-64 is a 2 part test that an object must pass to be eligible for use as a permanant prop at Kokoro.

1. LoD - The object has proper High, Medium, Low and Lowest Level of Detail (LoD) models.

2. 2-64 With the Viewer’s Level of Detail set to 2 and a draw distance of 64 meters, the object does not exhibit any jarring deformations or excessive pop-in from any line of sight the object would typically be viewed from.

Here is an example of a third party mesh object that would fail the LoD 2-64 test:

With an object like this, as the creator did not create a Low or Lowest model, it simply turns into a triangle when the camera gets far enough away like so:-

To clarify, not every object needs super great LoD models. The test is only considered a failure if the camera is somewhere where the user would realistically place their camera. If this object was for an enclosed classroom, it would be considered a pass as the camera would never get this far away from the object.

LoD 2-64 is just one of many standards that I aim to hold for Kokoro’s props to give visitors a better experience and I’m sure to write about those in the future as well!

Until then~

 - Saya

[saya-secondlife]

My partner Nihara made a cute Yukimi Lantern for Kokoro’s Onsen and I couldn’t resist breaking Haitus to texture it c:

[saya-secondlife]

I may have broken my hiatus to make a bench

[saya-secondlife]

Kokoro: The Challenges Ahead

This is a technical post relating to Kokoro Academy, please feel free to scroll past if long paragraphs of technical stuff aren’t your jam, I’m more or less using this as somewhere to throw my brain down :)

Despite my hiatus, my friends are helping to push the school forward, with lots of work going towards the town island. Jinx, Ishiko and Taruna have been planning out the Town island and using more detailed mesh so that we have a good sense of what the town might look like one day, Nihara, my partner who is a very talented mesh modeller is helping out to bring us new unique props so that the school.

Kokoro was not created just to be a scenic simulator on Secondlife.  One of the things I’d like is that as a school, we can provide valuable life skills to people who might otherwise never get the opportunity.

Teaching in Secondlife with present day technology is difficult and somewhat clunky. There are many problems that need to be addressed. You can’t easily create and display power points in Secondlife, draw on surfaces without it being a mess or disappearing after 60 seconds because the only way in-world pens work is with temp-on-rez.

Many people would say to me, ‘Ah, but what about those fancy browsers on a prim?’ - And, you would be right to look in that direction, but media-on-a-prim today kiiinda sucks. You see, Media on a prim only takes whatever URL is at the top of the window, and sends it to everyone. It does not update when you scroll, or if you click ‘play’ on a video, it only happens on your screen. A classroom of 30 people looking at a paused video whilst a teacher stands silently is not a learning classroom.

So, what exactly do I want to do about it? The answer is a little bit complicated, and yet awfully simple at the same time. To put it as simply as I can; I want to stream a computer to Secondlife, and let you interact with it as though it were a normal computer. It’d be just like using a real computer, because, well, you are!

Streaming computer screens is nothing new. Any systems administrator will be familiar with the likes of Remote Admin tools like Remote Desktop for Windows, and some particularly nerdy people will sit their nodding at the mention of ‘SSH’.

So, why am I writing about this? The simple thing is, I’ve been thinking about how I can make my development Haitus on Kokoro, into something for Kokoro. As I posted before, I need to make more money. I’m thinking about starting up a desktop streaming company. I think it would have an awful lot of use cases from Education to helping commercial business’s guide customers around their websites. It might be a chance for me to make an open source project and use it to teach people programming in the future. I’m not sure yet. It’s just a thought.

[saya-secondlife]

What information is stored about me at Kokoro Academy?

The rise of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law is coming in a few days time and whilst I’m not a lawyer or really know what to do, I felt it important to be open and share what data is collected about you at Kokoro and why:

If you are one of the last 100 visitors to the Simulator, when you last visited, and how many times you visited

The Land Sensor visitor system is currently tracking this data. I use Land Sensor to help with administrative tasks (eg, if someone is reported, I have proof that they were there at that time) and also allows me to remotely administer and monitor the sim when I’m on the go.

In practice on average if you haven’t visited the sim in about 2 weeks you won’t be on this list as by then you will no longer be one of the last 100 visitors.

Any preference data created

Currently, there are only two types of preference data, one is for the Kokoro Academy HUD position (that green thing at the top left) - if you move it, it saves the new position to a database along with your account UUID, so the next time you visit the sim it’s in the right place

The other type of preference data is the swim height preference, which saves how high you choose to float in the pool.

Now you know everything we collect!

~ Saya

[saya-secondlife]

I brought a new domain c:

money well spent

(sound doesn’t work in chrome :( )

[saya-secondlife]

Development Hiatus

I did not really want to talk about this because it’s a bit of a downer, and in all honesty I’d rather not be making this decision, but there are a lot of people eagerly checking on Kokoro for progress, and I feel it’s important to keep everybody in the know.

To keep it short - I will likely not be working on Kokoro much until the end of the year, and will instead be redirecting my efforts towards my store and finding some other passive income.

The reason for this is simply because, I have decided I want to save up for my own place to live and do my work, IRL. I am getting older and my sisters are growing up and fighting because they have to share a room, and honestly, I feel a bit silly paying rent to my parents as I get older - even if I do live in the third most expensive city to buy property in the world!

Please do not worry about Kokoro’s funding, There is more than enough income to keep the school running, and like I did with the school, I will find new ways to make money by myself to fund the things I want to do.

I do still have big plans for Kokoro’s future and I’m certainly not giving up my dreams just yet! I just wanted to let everybody know what is going on, that’s all

Hope you’re all doing well!

~ Saya   ❤

[saya-secondlife]

The Rei’s Stuff - Squeezy Panties are now officially released! Grab your copy here

The new Squeezies feature lots of customization, with changeable fabric, frills, ribbon and rim, all of which can be changed on the fly using the nifty texture changer HUD, and resources are included to make your own texture mods if you wish!

The Squeezy Stockings have been updated to Version 1.1 which is currently rolling out to customers. You’ll need to update your stockings to 1.1 in order to use them with the panties!

In addition, the updated squeezy stockings now feature the ability to hide sections of the leg from the Kemono Body HUD, so you’ll fit into that pair of boots you always wished you could wear with these!

Missed your Stockings Update? You can get a copy of my new redelivery card which will let you grab a new copy of any of your products, anytime, anywhere!

Hope you enjoy this update! ❤

[saya-secondlife]

In an effort to make things a little more convenient for everyone, I have created a Redelivery Card. You simply add the card, and follow the link!

The card takes you through to the Caspervend Redelivery page, which I have set up to display products purchased from me first, but you can also get redelivered any other Caspervend product using this card. Handy!

Future Products will include this card by default~

Get yours here