What’s up with the new “Help Request” option in 1.13.1?
Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 12:25 PM by: Pathfinder LindenIn 1.13.1, you will notice a new menu option in the viewer under Help called “Help Request.” You’ll also notice that “Live Help” is gone. What’s up with that?
First some history. The “Live Help” channel was originally created as a place where certain Resident Volunteers (called Live Helpers) could make themselves available to the Second Life community at large to answer a broad range of questions and provide moral support. It is important to remember that our Volunteer program for Residents was created because many experienced Residents expressed an interest in making themselves available to assist New Residents in a variety of ways, helping to introduce them to Second Life in a friendly way. Our Help Islands and InfoHubs continue to be a key way for Volunteers (primarily the Mentor group) to meet with New Residents, teach them basic skills, and guide them to the Mainland where they can explore Second Life on their own.
The concept of Residents helping Residents is very important. That’s one thing that makes Second Life a very special place, and we at Linden Lab want to facilitate that whenever possible.
However, over time the questions in the “Live Help” channel shifted focus. Residents began asking more complex customer service based questions in Live Help, questions that volunteers should not have to be responsible for answering. Questions about abuse issues. Questions about account problems. Questions that, very often, required a Linden to answer or work through.
We responded by creating in-world F1 Help and the Second Life Knowledge Base. We put as much information as possible into both those resources, and continue to do so today. We also encouraged Linden Liaisons to monitor the Live Help channel, helping out whenever they could
Unfortunately, our Customer Service capabilities have not grown fast enough as Second Life has grown. The main issues on our end have been both a lack of enough Linden Staff to personally handle customer service issues and an inadequate triaging system to make sure specific types of requests are sent directly to the appropriate departments.
To solve this, we’ve been continuing to beef up F1 Help and our Knowledge Base to proactively answer as many support questions as possible. Sending Residents with questions to these resources is a key way for us to scale, helping both Lindens and Volunteers avoid answering the same questions over and over. We are also working hard on revamping our entire Customer Service and Abuse Reporting system, as well as hiring more Concierge and Liaison Lindens.
I am also personally working on overhauling the Resident Volunteer program. As I described, it continues to be a key way for us to help Residents help each other, and I will be focusing on improving knowledge sharing between Volunteers, designing and implementing Volunteer orientation and training session, processing Volunteer applications in a timely manner, and hiring full-time dedicated Lindens to directly support the Volunteers in their work. I’ll post more details about these plans in another blog entry next week.
The key thing is that Resident Volunteers shouldn’t be trying to handle Customer Service issues. That’s Linden Lab’s job, and we don’t want the burden of unanswered Customer Service questions to fall on the shoulders of Volunteer Residents.
As a first step, we’ve changed the name of the “Live Help” channel to “Help Request.” Live Help Volunteers still have access to it, and are encouraged to monitor the channel and assist with general questions from Residents. Over time, “Help Request” will change into a more sophisticated Customer Service system that will better triage immediate in-world customer service questions. We’re also aggressively encouraging Residents with questions to first explore F1 Help and the Knowledge Base, since many times their questions have already been answered in those resources. Until we implement more sophisticated systems, Liaisons are monitoring “Help Request” as the primary way for them to receive customer service questions. They will be helping with complex issues as usual and, as noted above, guiding people to F1 help and the Knowledge Base when appropriate. There may potentially be a wait time for Request Help as we triage the calls coming in, so your patience is appreciated.
Finally, we will eventually create another link under the Help menu called “Volunteer Guidance” specifically for Volunteer Residents interested in continuing to help other Residents via a Group IM-type communication channel. Residents currently helping as Live Helpers in “Help Request” will be able to migrate to this new channel, and continue to help Residents the way it was originally planned. Customer Service questions will be triaged via “Help Request,” while general questions and moral support from fellow Residents will happen in “Volunteer Guidance.”
Making sure Residents with support issues are adequately helped by Linden Lab is important. Helping Volunteers be more effective and helpful to other Residents is also important. We’ve got growing pains, and again I apologize for them. These plans address both issues, and thank you for your patience as we work through everything.
Take care,
- Pathfinder Linden
December 13th, 2006 at 12:37 PM
Hip Hip Hooray! About time something to be done with helping people by using more people to help without needing to bug Linden about little minor stuff while they are needed for something else that is more troublesome.
I see bright future yet to come.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:41 PM
let’s hope this frees up some time for the linden coders to take care of glitches, gremlins and griefers. WOOT!
December 13th, 2006 at 12:46 PM
I want to know how to back in history and get my original avator back, please?
In two days, its changed twice.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:46 PM
The “Live Help” channel has not been too “Live” for me as of late. the last three times i tried it no one responded. So I was left to fend for myself. I hope this will provide a beter means of findings out if some strange problem I have is a bug to be reported or something I’m doing worng in which I would be waisting a trobleshooters time if I were to report it as a bug. And we all know how precious throubleshooting time is.
Thanks for making attempts to improve customer service in world and out.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:46 PM
Bad move. Sorry. Help should be easier to obtain, not harder. How can you just make such a big change with no prior information, warning, message of the day? Only a small fraction of residents visit the blog or the forum, so most people are stuck wondering how on earth they’re meant to get the live help they’re entitled to.
The end result? People IM’ing Lindens directly… and being ignored.
Broccoli
December 13th, 2006 at 12:54 PM
Any idea why my avi is invisible? All I can see is my hair! I’ve relogged and rebaked a few times to no avail.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:56 PM
Dig it. YAY! Now ya’ll PLEASE take some time off and come visit us more on world
I don’t even care for a bear…although I might if I knew what they were 
Thank yas all! Thanks also for showing that you listen to us, and that we are all on the same page!
December 13th, 2006 at 12:59 PM
I was directed the F1 Help site three times in the past few days and got nowhere. I mean nothing cam up at all. I’ve got a brand new keyboard, so it’s not hardware. Uh, do ya think maybe I need to take my scripted shoes off for the F keys to work…..! Would be nice to fill us all in before Live Help starts sending us off into Never Never Land.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:59 PM
Help has always been easy to obtain. People are just lazy in obtaining it. They blow by the tutorials in orientation or don’t bother to look at the resources in F1, Knowledge Base, Forums, Mentors, etc. They instantly go to “Ask a Linden” demanding the “help they’re entitled to” and when Live Help gets flooded with such calls instead of searching for answers themselves they IM Lindens directly trying to bypass the queue. Then they complain that they are being “ignored”. Maybe that fraction that doesn’t visit the blogs or forums should try it sometime. They might learn something.
December 13th, 2006 at 1:02 PM
What Broccoli Curry said!:-)
December 13th, 2006 at 1:08 PM
Any idea when new volunteer applications will be evaluated again? I submitted an application since i was three weeks old, and it’s been over six months now. I don’t mind too much, but am curious as to what’s going on…
December 13th, 2006 at 1:08 PM
Itazura, I’m guessing your comments are pointed in my direction… I’m not exactly clueless, but there was an issue of sandbox griefing that could *not* be answered by looking up on the F1 or anything, I needed a Linden to assist.
I’m fully aware of where to find help - and in this case, I went to look for the direct course of action to report it properly… and it wasn’t where it should have been. I didn’t see anything in the release notes about this change, and you’d have thought that something this important should have been pre-mentioned?
Broccoli
December 13th, 2006 at 1:11 PM
LOST ALMOST MY WHOLE INVENTORY AND MY AVATAR IS INVISIBLE TOO
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
December 13th, 2006 at 1:12 PM
Yay more bullshit features…. wtg Linden and search us STILL down…. bunch of hobbyists…
December 13th, 2006 at 1:13 PM
I agree with Itazura. 99% of the problems could be found within the webpages of Second Life itself. At the very least, go around and find some veterans and ask to pick their brains for a few minutes. I’ve found that most of them are willing to help for a few minutes; they’re glad to share their knowledge with others. And you never know; you might find a friend or two along the way.
December 13th, 2006 at 1:16 PM
All of my Inventory, is gone, I mean several hours of work building and scripting, over 200L$ worth of uploaded textures, OH NO : (.
December 13th, 2006 at 1:18 PM
Dragonlady, you can access F1 help without using the F1 button by clicking on Help and chooseing the very first option.
Broccoli, if more people stopped and looked for things themselves instead of running to Live Help so much for things they CAN find in the other resources, my guess is the liaisons would be freed up enough to respond to griefing incidents like the one you mentioned much more quickly. That’s the whole point I think.
December 13th, 2006 at 1:18 PM
Yep. It’s another update alright. Logged in with no clothing downloaded, search doesn’t work and neither does teleport. I don’t think I’ve ever posted a comment here in my over one year of membership but I really have to hear the same generic reasons we always get. I need a good reason to laugh because this update has just frustrated me more.
December 13th, 2006 at 1:19 PM
Downloaded new version, logged in, all aok, tp’ed to rental area, no profiles viewable, no tp’s to anywhere including home, got caught in the enternal-fly loop, quit program, tried to login again and got old entery screen. Am I alone in this? What happened?
December 13th, 2006 at 1:25 PM
Can you beleive it, New Version (LOL) No Live Help, obviously they are fed up of all the complaints
I clicked on the SL logo to start the program, and whey hey, system reset again. only SL does this on my machine. My very expensive Inventory still has not returned.
New version and NO TP.s
What R U doing SL. Youy havent even looked at the constant crashing issues in this update, so after 8 weeks of constant crashing I still have to put up with it. Will it ever be resolved
December 13th, 2006 at 1:32 PM
Ok So when someone drops a couple of huge sim size invisible prims on my build and makes it impossible for me to delete them because they are actually sitting on another empty piece of land in another region what am I supposed to do now? With live help it seemed like I could find a linden on line for stuff like this, what now????
December 13th, 2006 at 1:33 PM
Now we need to submit a request for help? How long will it take?
Directing somone to the Knowledge base takes 30 secs, but if there’s a legitimate problem we now get to wait.
What about when the problem makes the program unusable? Does LL care about quality assurance?
December 13th, 2006 at 1:34 PM
ALT-A, ALT-S, ALT-D, ALT-W, ALT-E and ALT-C now either don’t work or bring up menus instead of the old behavior of allowing camera movement (also known as alt-zoom by many). Even with all windows and chat closed and clicking on objects in-world.
This is a builders nightmare and makes a lot of other things difficult as well as you can’t simultanously use a mouse with the right hand, hit alt, and use the arrow keys. Arrow keys are uncomfrotable to use with your left hand even if you aren’t also trying to hit the alt. Your only recourse is to take your right hand off the mouse which means moving your hand back and forth continuously when you are trying to rotate around an object you are building.
This is horrid… and it’s a major change in the controls that makes SL nearly unusable for some.
December 13th, 2006 at 1:38 PM
One thing that I go to LiveHelp for is for status updates on issues that they may be dealing with but that aren’t necessarily posted on the blog (such as “the grid just went flakey 5min ago”, “there is a grey goo attack in progress” — which i have been told by LiveHelp hours before any sign of it). A transient “state of the grid” that is up to the minute and may not have as many details as the blog has, but at least gives us people in-world an idea as to what the heck has just gone wrong and is it just me? This may reduce the flood of issues that are sent out when one of these grid-wide issues occurs.
December 13th, 2006 at 1:43 PM
@Dragonlady Majestic, RE FI help not coming up. Check your F lock key. Most modern keyboards have multiple things assigned to the F keys. If the F lock isn’t active then pressing the F1 key isn’t going to register as F1.
December 13th, 2006 at 1:49 PM
WOW…. I can’t even get on-line now…. “Can’t find the server” great upgrade.
Oh FYI…. I have a Metro connection..
December 13th, 2006 at 1:54 PM
i really don’t like to be the one to bring bad news but, until this release i was able to right-click on a av, go and see their profile, and from there i was able to select and than use ctrl+c to copy their full name. Now their name can NOT be copied.
Lets see if i got this right. If a user name is longer than 50 letters i have to type that. like i don’t don’t do enough typing already. this is bad:_(
December 13th, 2006 at 1:56 PM
@Allen: I have the same problem, but when I IMd a Linden about the silly problem I was having, they reffered me to the live help channel. After telling them that LH was disfunctional, and had been for over a week, I was told that they were probably busy and to just hang in there…
I really, honestly thing that it should be a job requirement for ALL Lindens to puruse through the assorted (yet extremely limited) forms of feedback that residents have and brush up on our ‘bugs’ and ‘glitches’ and ‘gremlins’ so they might actually come up with some USEFUL assistance, instead of refering us to a non-working element of the game.
Now, most times, when i do feel the need to call a Linden for something, they are right on the ball and extremely helpful (unlike my half dozen or so LH experiences), however, during this period (man, i hope its just a period and not an entire era) of platform turmoil, finding a Linden that is a step ahead of everyone else is as much a pain as the problem itself.
To those Lindens that go out of thier way to think outside the box, YOU are the ones that give me my tiny glimmer of hope for Second Life It is folks like you that, if you have your way, will bring a lot of the nay-sayers back into the fold (Including me, if things ever get that bright). Maybe your disease will catch on and the rest of your coworkers will see how much more appreciated you are. Gold stars to every one of you! (the rest of em get cold turd hogies :-p )
December 13th, 2006 at 2:15 PM
keyboard not working properly anymore, search still dead, problems logging in, loss of inventory.
Even my pressing home key to fly isn’t working
I look for live help which I actually liked and NEVER had a problem with and its been removed.
ONCE again lindens change things that don’t need changing
if it aint broken don’t fix it
or in the case of SL
If it is broke lets add something new and ignore the fixing it.
The simple fact lindens is this.
When I bought my island in 2005 the most problems we had was a little lag and images bluring on load. I could fly over the mainland and everything rezzed before i left the sim.
I could go to a dance club and see everyone
I could have a gun fight on my sim without lag..
This wasn’t a dream, I would NEVER have invested the 950$ at the time if it had been as bad as now.
Never had a problem with pose balls or missing image texture or skin textures going wierd or inventory dying.
So please tell me what we have gained in the last 2 years to make up for all this ?
For the record I have over 200k worth of cars, planes, guns, in my inventory that I haven’t been able to play with my friends for almost a year…
I went back to Anarchy online to actually play a game lol and I come on here somewhere I pay 195$ a month just to see friends.
I have 2 pc’s a core duo 2 and a p4 each with 2gb memory and fast graphics card.
Oh yes I forgot, I know what we gained
(editing appearance)
and now
click here to instant message.
If im so fed up why don’t I leave ?
The money I invested in the island
(no its not a business)
The friends I come on sl to see and who live on the island
Fix the damn place or go back into beta
December 13th, 2006 at 2:16 PM
Woot, hopefully these changes will help the residents in LH answer calls easier, being a LH’er myself i see how busy we get on weekends and can see how other residents may think LH is either broken or they are being ignored when it is the exact opposite. It just takes us some time to get to them
Cant wait to see the other changes.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:20 PM
I must say. one of the big problems is clearing backlog of volunteer applications. I talk to may people who have applied as mentors and live helpers who have waited six months.
Why not open up several more Help Island Public’s. I don’t mena a welcome area or a hub (Help island should be removed form the hub routing). A island called Help Island run by resident (mentors maybe) The is is run by the resident. Allow a gorup to run it and deal with griefers, send out estate notices asking people to only hang out if they have questions.
I would love to help people more but I spend my time at Help Island Public dealing with griefers, recieving landmarks to clubs and filling out AR report. If I could right click: Eject, I could get back to helping. Another alternative is to make Help Island Public damage enabled and see if Luc will give mentors PsiTechs. I can take care of myself if allowed to.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:22 PM
And lets add a classic, my wife just teleported and her hair went between her legs and her left shoe is now sticking out of her backside ………
If it was a joke id be laughing, but now i want to cry
December 13th, 2006 at 2:22 PM
Whose idea was it to change how the keyboard/hotkeys work? I hope tha person dies in a fire.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:27 PM
@Rex Cronon
“i really don’t like to be the one to bring bad news but, until this release i was able to right-click on a av, go and see their profile, and from there i was able to select and than use ctrl+c to copy their full name. Now their name can NOT be copied.”
That’s a bug. It’s bugging us big-time, too. We’ll fix it ASAP.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:32 PM
I fully understand the change and over use of the live help for customer service. Fact of most people online is that when they need assistance they don’t like to read. I like the fact you seem to have put the majority of “questions” that people have in your F1 help option but its kind of a cold place to go to search for help for new and old members. I’ll get to the point now. People are generally lazy and want answers now a lot of times and don’t want to read. It would be a nice idea to have a search that was more automated like an ask jeeves sort of format. That way your members can in fact ask a question in search much like they would a live help or customer service representative and the ” answers or options” would be presented in a format more inclined to assist with the problems they’d like resolved. Including answers that are based on issues currently going on in world. Like search not being up or whatever the issue may be. I’m fully capable of reading, but at times when i’ve had issues with second life and gone to F1 for help. Frankly it sucked and didn’t provide any further assistance. Had there not been someone in live help to assure me that there was a problem i may have been thuroughly frustrated and gave up. And you can say make sure to check the blogs all ya want, but we all know that the updating of the blogs isn’t always in line with what is going on in world. Kinda like the right hand not talking to the left on a regular basis. So long story short change is good. Just keep the ball moving in the right direction.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:34 PM
it is good that is a that is only a bug and not a feature.
p.s. hard to belive i just said that:)
and is nice to see that lindens read the posts:)
December 13th, 2006 at 2:35 PM
‘The concept of Residents helping Residents is very important. ‘
Of course it is very important. It’s free labour (for Lindens)!
December 13th, 2006 at 2:43 PM
Itazura Radio: Help has always been easy to obtain. People are just lazy in obtaining it. They blow by the tutorials in orientation or don’t bother to look at the resources in F1, Knowledge Base, Forums, Mentors, etc. They instantly go to “Ask a Linden” demanding the “help they’re entitled to” and when Live Help gets flooded with such calls instead of searching for answers themselves they IM Lindens directly trying to bypass the queue. Then they complain that they are being “ignored”. Maybe that fraction that doesn’t visit the blogs or forums should try it sometime. They might learn something.
Could not have said this better myself. People feel entitled to FAR too much these days, and want everything served on a silver platter then spoon-fed to them. These are the people who have made the Live Help system useless. There is a wealth of information out there: F1, the forums, other residents, orientation islands, places like the Ivory Tower, etc. If you are unable to find help in SL, then maybe you don’t have the skill that is necessary to use a program that focuses largely on communication.
Live Help is no longer useful because of the residents who bombard them with questions that are easily answered in several other places. I have needed lots of help here, but the only time I have contacted a Linden regarding SL issues was to ask that I be perma-banned from the forums because I was sick of everyone’s attitude.
I have found help in the manner described above, and from befriending more experienced residents. You will find that if you treat people well, they will be eager to help you out.
Of course LL/Live Help gives a damn about the problems of the residents, anyone who thinks otherwise is foolish. Everyone wants SL to succeed, and the residents to be happy.
December 13th, 2006 at 3:05 PM
I think it’s time to bring back the general discussion forum, i always found that forum about the best place to get help and infomation regarding SL problems.
December 13th, 2006 at 3:38 PM
Please give us a heads up to any software changes in the future. One day I fully expect to log in and not have a clue how to get dressed or move. Tisk Tisk.
December 13th, 2006 at 4:06 PM
HELP REQUEST:
[16:04] DolphPun Somme: Some guy has a boxed physics object with a push on collsion which bascially means the object never rests and lags the sim. Is there anything I can do?
[16:04] Second Life: You are the only participant in this IM session. Your message is not being retransmitted or stored.
December 13th, 2006 at 4:40 PM
AAaargh, I can’t build! Its the only thing I do and now I get menus popping up everywhere. I am trying to find a work around but am finding myself getting more and more frustrated. It’s like trying to learn the piano now when all I want to do is circle around a building I am working on.
Two thumbs down on the WASD keyboard changes! ANY function on the computer is only comfortable after you learn to use it without looking (IE: Typing). What’s next are we going to change asdf to abcd? To change functions that were previously used without thinking is driving builders crazy. Change all the menus, chats, whatever you want.. but please don’t start changing the keyboarding. Sorry to sound so negative… just frustrating.
December 13th, 2006 at 5:31 PM
[...] (more…) [...]
December 13th, 2006 at 5:37 PM
for me I cant click F1 or knowlegdge base question going to website because i crash always have so i look to live for support and since you dont have it then from now on i will be calling you all direct if that is the case and i am going to bug report continous ly continously til interaction and imissing images are gone i am fed up with empty promises of bug fixes when it never comes , reloging and crashing im fed up with it “{it shouldn’t happen “
December 13th, 2006 at 6:29 PM
Atwolf thats what NCI is for
I Like the new ‘help’ titles and future considerations Path, makes sense to try and seperte them. If your going to add in a volunteer guidance to the list would it make sense to change the other one to Linden Support or something close so its easier to tell which one you should be clicking for your Q.
If no-one answers a help request just invade New Citizens Inc hehe I’m sure one of us will be online.
December 13th, 2006 at 6:44 PM
I haven’t had a chance to log on yet, but does this release also make F1 Help searchable? It would actually be a useful resource for new users if it were.
December 13th, 2006 at 7:11 PM
[...] Live Help, now that’s another story. Live Help is now called Help Request. Dozens of in-world notecard maintainers and New Resident Support personnel will now be tearing their hair out — in a variety of languages. While Help Request still largely functions as it did from a technical perspective (only having received what they call a marketing upgrade), the focus of it has shifted. Rather than being primarily volunteer-driven, it’s now more Linden-driven, though volunteers are still welcome to participate for issues that they can deal with. [...]
December 13th, 2006 at 7:59 PM
@Wildefire Walcott
You can search both F1 Help and the Knowledge Base here: http://tinyurl.com/yx9r9a
Ideally, there would be a link to that right on F1 Help. Even more ideally, a search field and button right on the F1 Help screen with results appearing in the same place. We’re working on it.
December 13th, 2006 at 10:52 PM
Well, I type a question in “Request Help” and it doesn’t even echo to the screen. Yet another broken part of SL ?
I was looking for information on a severe rendering bug introduced by 1.13 (TEXTURES ARE NOT RENDERED ANYMORE ON LARGE MULTIPRIM WALLS !!!). It has been documented, tested and acknowledged by Harry and Skye Linden.
Apparently, changing the music and movies button layout was more important in 1.3.1 than rolling back this “optimization”?
I’m sorry to say, why I really like SL and Linden labs in general, I’m really losing confidence in your ability to manage a development process.
December 13th, 2006 at 11:48 PM
Dear Path, it would be nice to tie in things like the Mentor, Greeter, and Instructor chat groups together. These days, it’s hardly an hour or so per week I can spend helping new users out on one-to-one training. However, these three groups are constantly in chat related to helping people out with issues here and there. And this is, IMHO, a Good Thing™.
Of course, what happens is that most people who are in more than one of those groups, to make sure they get their answer, post the question on the three — usually, waiting a bit for an answer, then moving to the next group, and so on. This is fine — best way of reaching lots of knowledgeable people quickly, when you have a newbie asking something you don’t know.
The easiest way to go about it, of course, would be simply to move over all the Volunteers into a single group, called SL Volunteers, and create three different roles (Mentor, Greeter, Instructor). That way, we would all be able to chat to each other in the three groups. It would also save us two precious slots for groups, which are always in huge demand!
Thanks
December 14th, 2006 at 12:45 AM
Hi,
we are from germany
and we worked with the german menue.
After last update on Nov 29th the german menue dosn´t work.
We are hoping, that it runs with the update on Dec 14th…..
but it´s not so.
Will there be a “play” with german menue??
greetings
December 14th, 2006 at 1:54 AM
As an IT manager and software developer for a university I’m heavily involved in developing systems to try and manage IT help requests and so I can appreciate quite how hard it is to get the right sort of help to people when they need it. This looks like a good move and I wish all you Lindens well in getting it to where you want it to be. There will always be the folks that don’t make use of the resources that are available through ignorance, laziness or just newbie-cluelessness. You only have to look at this thread and see quite how many comments that are irrelevant to the topic to see quite how much difficulty folks have in determining where it is appropriate to address their concerns. I just wanted to wish you well in helping the bulk of us who can make use of the resources
December 14th, 2006 at 3:26 AM
Live Help has been great. When my hippo model fell over and buried my cat, they were really kind to a newbie.
December 14th, 2006 at 5:13 AM
Talk about your confusion Gwyneth it would not work.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:56 AM
Now I am angry. I’m telling you that upfront because I think you need to know LL. What did you do to the texture tools? What was wrong with the texture picker? Why did you feel a need to change this now? I do NOT want to learn another system of how to do something in SL I have a RL and do not have the time to dick around with your bonked tools. Do not expect me to get in line to ask a basic question about how and why you changed the tools yet again. I am getting really sick and tired of how you run or is that ruin your program.
Grrrrrrrrr
December 14th, 2006 at 9:57 AM
HOME / BUILDING / TEXTURING
When editing objects, the Texture tab in the edit pane allows you to set colouring, transparency and how textures are applied to the object. Good texturing can make the difference between average content and great content. You will find a default set of textures provided for you in the Library area of your Inventory.
TEXTURING ALL OR ONE FACE
When texturing an object, you can apply a texture to all of the faces it has (all 6 sides of a cube for example), or you can set a texture for one or more specific faces only.
Texturing all faces..
1. In edit mode (Ctrl-3), select one or more objects.
2. On the Edit pane, go to the textures tab.
3. Click the Texture and/or the Color boxes and use the pop up windows to choose how the object should look.
4. All faces, on all the objects you have selected will be changed to the new settings.
Texturing selected faces..
1. In edit mode (Ctrl-3), select the Select Texture option.
2. Left click a face on an object. It will get a target style overlay to show it is selected.
3. If you wish to select more faces, on this or other objects, hold shift key down while you left click on other faces. They will all becme selected. Using the camera will not deselect them, so use Alt-Zoom or Ctrl-Alt Zoom to move the camera around if you can’t quite see all the faces you want to select (see here for info on Camera movement).
4. Click the Texture and/or the Color boxes and use the pop up windows to choose how the object should look.
5. Only the selected faces will change to reflect the new settings.
In addition to the above methods, textures can be drag-dropped from your inventory onto objects directly to texture them. Holding down the shift key while doing this will change all faces of the object, otherwise, only the face that you drop the texture onto will be changed.
THE TEXTURE PICKER
When changing texture, the texture picker window opens. You can enter search words to find textures quickly, or navigate through using the treeview. As you select textures, the preview window will show them along with their dimensions in pixels.
Clicking the Blank button will cause no texture to be used (a blank opaque covering), whilst clicking Default will apply the plywood texture seen when you create new prims.
The Apply Immediately tickbox will set the object to the selected texture live - as you preview them, whereas unticked you will have to find and hit the Select button on the texture picker window to actually apply the new texture.
Using the eyedropper button on the dialog, you can select textures and tints on objects. Click it and your cursor will change. You can now click on any object in the view (that you own) to copy the color or the texture. No more scrolling through the list and asking yourself, “Did I want texture1 or texture2?” or “What shade of blue is that?”
OTHER TEXTURE OPTIONS
Transparency
The higher the value, the more see-through the object or selected faces become. You cannot go above 90% transparency with this method. If you want something to be totally transparent, you will need to use a transparent texture (an empty 32bit .tga format file).
Shininess
For those with Shiny Objects enabled in their graphics Preferences, making objects shiny will allow them to reflect light producing an attractive looking sheen to objects. The higher the setting, the more glossy they will become.
Bumpiness
If you wish to add a bumpy quality to a surface, you can choose from a number of bump mapped styles.
Full Bright
This option can be set on one or more surfaces to cause them to be lit up, so they will stand out well during darker periods of the Second Life day. Particularly useful for signs and notices that you don’t want people to miss when it is gloomy.
Mapping
Default will cause textures applied to react to changes in the dimensions such as top size being lowered, whereas Planar will pin the texture to the plane, such that textures do not get distorted when you change Top Size, or Shear them.
Also.. Default mode allows texture repeats to be set such that a setting of 1.0 stretches the texture to one repeat regardless of the size of the face, or by a per meter method using the Per Meter field at the bottom. Using Planar, texture repeats can only be applied per meter, meaning that a 10m cube will have 10 repeats with the same setting of 1.0 - there is no Per Face option..
Rotation
As you’d expect, this allows one or more face textures to be rotated in their alignment.
Texture Repeats
How many times to pattern the texture across the surface, either per meter or per face depending on the Mapping setting used.
Texture Offsets
Fine control over exact positioning of the textures being overlaid.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:58 AM
please put it back, ppl are busy now working on xmas stuff and dont have time for this!!!
December 14th, 2006 at 9:59 AM
not to spam you or anything but the texture pop up window is not popping up as in the instructions above. Yeah I think that is one hell of a “bug”
December 14th, 2006 at 11:07 AM
need help
second life did not work. software installed. my pc has all that hardware that needed. it always try to log in and than the chrash debugger opens… sorry if somebody can help me in german language ?
December 14th, 2006 at 12:03 PM
Wow…hmmm…geeez….
Ok I am going to rant here…
GET OFF LL’s ASS ABOUT THIS!!!!! MY GOD PEOPLE There are how many people in the game? How many people to please? Think about that when you post a bunch of crap to LL. If you have a problem, dont post in a blog just practically cuss LL out. That is pretty immature. Kindly ask someone for help or just check around the website for answers. If that still dont help I am sure there is someone that is willing to or there is another way to get help. Lindens have a job to do, and they have made some big accomplishments in the past. Are you forgetting that? And do you know how long it can take to fix a bug? Or make an improvement to a game without messing something else up? Its basically a bunch of writing, programming, testing and if it dont work its back to the drawing board. I believe i read this from a Linden themself, “There are so many things to do, and not enough people to do it” How would you feel if you were trying your best to do something and make other people happy, and all they could do was WHINE and COMPLAIN about it not being good enough, however, they do forget the good stuff you did? So please, go easy on the Lindens because just going off on them in a blog is not going to help, actually, going off on them PERIOD isnt helping. Politeness and patience goes a long way.
December 14th, 2006 at 12:05 PM
I think these changes are good news. There are now way too many residents to expect live help on an ad hoc, IM basis. A queuing system was badly needed, and I would infinitely prefer to wait, knowing that my request will eventually be answered, than to call Live Help and receive no response at all, or have the helper disappear mid-conversation, which is often what would happen. Beleaguered volunteer help lines are not customer support, and just frustrate everyone.
It is also good that you have underlined the distinction between in-world assistance where the answers are known, and technical support, where they usually are not. Most of the issues I have called Live Help about have been system problems - but there is a huge range of niggling little problems in SL which aren’t obviously tech support issues but aren’t addressed in the help files. I.e. is this problem player ignorance, a known bug, or a weird server-side system problem unique to me? (In my experience, usually the latter.)
And sending a bug report doesn’t seem to achieve anything, as I have addressed numerous bugs this way which never appear on the ‘known issues’ list, are never fixed, and never result in any further communication to clear up the issue. Often I would call Live Help in the hope that this would alert a Linden, but never really expected a reply (and did not harass them, because of this).
In future I will follow up persistant unaddressed bug reports with emails to support staff, and won’t bother in-world liaisons at all. 99 times out of 100 my friends have been better help and seem to know even more than any individual live-helper or Linden. You are right that residents should be the first line of assistance to one another - and I am always happy to help anyone with questions in-world.
December 14th, 2006 at 3:15 PM
I´m stuck frozen since 2 days know and can´t log in…grmbll
December 14th, 2006 at 9:17 PM
I’m glad F1 is being expaned, I’ve never found an answer to the problem I’m having.
Last time I tried to use Live Help it took an hour to get an answer, and three times getting differnt answers. I gave up and just dumped all my attachments and that work so I could walk again. Then I put them back on.
For more complex questions that may take trouble shooting I’d suggest adding trouble tickets. That live helpers or Lindens can suggest using that. I had to give the same info 3 times.
December 15th, 2006 at 7:46 AM
So, if something critical is happening RIGHT NOW, and you really need a Linden to intercede on a problem RIGHT NOW, will this new “Help Request” chat channel actually get a response? It sounds to me like it will have even fewer people listening to it, and that the most likely “Help” that will be offered is “go read the FAQ”.
I’m sorry, but is your sim is under assault by swarms of griefers, or you have a self-admitted child in an adult area, or you have caught someone red-handed stealing or reselling content or scamming people out of money or land, we need something more than “dead air” on a party line that might occasionally be listened to by someone with authority to do something about a time-critical issue.
December 15th, 2006 at 9:51 AM
Pathfinder Linden suggests we search the Help and Knowledge base, which I do frequently, and which is out of date, and incomplete, and disorganized. If it was both complete and up-to-date, you would greatly reduce the need for live help. For example; I would like to know how to use the Attachments area in the Group Notice window. Can’t get it to work; it is unexplained, undocumented. Seems to me like a little bit of intense writing and updating could save Lindens a whole lot of dealing with the same questions over and over.
December 15th, 2006 at 1:18 PM
Hey People,
IT A GAME, G-A-M-E! And its free, so if you dont like it, dont play it.
Al
December 15th, 2006 at 10:28 PM
OK seriously i need help. i was going to reinstall the secondlife windows program but after i uninstalled it it wont let me INSTALL it can anybody help or is this a problem from the previous bugs PLEASE help on this cause it keeps telling me about errors.
May 28th, 2007 at 3:49 PM
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