Many of the firing ranges currently on sale have styles created by third parties, and we’re looking for new designers to add fresh ideas to our portfolio.  A designer receives a percentage of sales of all types of the range style created and there is no need to have any scripting skills, the scripted base, packaging, sales and support are all handled for you by TalTECH.  We’re specifically looking for people with ideas for mesh range styles.

If your interested, give me (Talwyn Mills) an IM in Second Life and I’ll send you the details.

Debit permissions allow an object to pay money from the owners Linden Dollar (L$) balance to people other than the owner of that object.  Many people will be familiar with vendors that require this permission to allow split payments or refunds to a customer, but granting debit permissions to a firing range will not cause it to turn in to a vendor.  My firing ranges have no way of selling other copies of themselves and they won’t bug your users to buy them.  They simply require debit permissions to be able to pay money to someone else.

So why does a pay to play firing range require the ability to send money to someone else?  The simple answer is a refund.  I am a great believer that people should get what they pay for and in the case of a pay to play firing range they are paying for a round on the range.   There are a number of cases where a user may receive a refund form a firing range, some of these are:

• If the firing range is full and they pay it anyway.
• If they pay the wrong amount (which shouldn’t be possible without a hacked client, and they don’t get to play a round in this case)
• If they pay then don’t start a game within a set time(for example if they crash)

In any case, the firing range will only ever pay out the exact amount paid by the user.  No money is ever sent anywhere else, ever.

So is a pay to play range useless if you don’t want to grant debit permissions?  No, a pay to play range will operate as a competitive range without debit permissions but it will not be able to charge L$’s for games.  If you haven’t already bought a range the don’t want to allow debit permissions, your probably best buying the cheaper competitive version.

So in summary:

• Debit permission is required in pay to play ranges to accept payment for rounds.
• Pay to play ranges can be used without debit permissions but your probably better off buying a competitive range in that case.
• L$ will only be paid out in cases where a user doesn’t play on the range, and only the amount the user paid.
• No money is sent anywhere else, ever.
• The range doesn’t turn in to a vendor or otherwise annoy your customers to buy it.

I hope that clears some things up for everyone.

This range will only be available untill December 31st after which it will be unavailable until next year.

More pictures after the break..

The style for this range was designed and created by XVIII Dae.

In this day and age you never know when you and your special forces squad mates will be called on to rescue hostages from the latest and greatest airliner. Get your training in now, hit those terrorists hard but watch out for innocent passengers.

Have a closer look at the range here.

Anyway, you can find my store here: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/11509

If you’ve previously bought a range and find you can write a review (I’ve no idea if that’s possible) please do so.

You can still purchase or gift TalTECH Ranges in-world at the TalTECH Weapons store.

The Marketplace does not allow you to change the object name associated with a listing, which means if you include the version in the object name and increment it on a new release, you’ll have to recreate the listing lose all the associated reviews.  I have therefore removed the version number from all objects associated with listings on XStreet SL and from now on will include the version number in the object description field.

Secondly, I’ve taken the opportunity to finally rename the old “Style 1″ range to the newer “Under Construction” name.  The range itself is still identical and old versions will still update to the newer versions.

Since Linden Lab have announced the closure if XStreet SL, lets take a moment to review the issues I have with the Marketplace and see how many of them have been resolved.

• A listing of items sold and who to.
• The ability to re-deliver items if the original delivery fails. (I think this is included in the transaction history)
• Feedback / rating system.
• Traffic reporting. (Reports -> Top selling items has a per-item breakdown, an overall figure would be nice too)
• Listing templates. (Auto-fill functionality is sufficiently similar)
• The ability to change the object associated with a listing (useful if you put version numbers in the name for your products)
• Mass activation/deactivation of items.
• An interface that doesn’t reset to defaults whenever it likes (for example, in your Manage Inventory screen, click the link to show only listed items, click the link to unlist one of the items and the table returns to the default of showing all inventory)
• The ability to sort the inventory table
• Search Inventory function that can search on partial words, not just full word.  (for example, searching for Bun in my inventory returns no hits, Bunker returns all my Bunker Assault ranges)

So it seems we still have some distance to go, though some of the more important points have been address.  Hopefully we’ll see more fixes and additions before Linden Lab kill XStreet SL totally.

.

Emerald Viewer Blocked From Second Life Dear Second Life Resident, As of 10am PT Wednesday, September 8, the Emerald Viewer will be blocked from logging in to Second Life as a result of violations of our Policy on Third Party Viewers. Residents who have been using any version of the Emerald Viewer will need to use a different Viewer to access Second Life. You can download the official Second Life Viewer, developed by Linden Lab, here. Or, you can learn more about alternative Viewers, developed by third parties, here. Please be aware that attempting to circumvent our blocking to access Second Life with a banned Viewer is a violation of the Policy on Third Party Viewers and may result in the loss of one’s account. For more information, please read the blog post. Joe Linden VP, Platform & Technology Development

That isn’t going to be the case.

The final release of Emerald is going to be built by Phox, probably the least trustworthy person left on the Emerald team, and appears not only to have controversial files that LL ask be removed intact, but will have the ability to allow the user to spoof the channel name.  The channel name is, by default, how LL knows which viewer your using.  Allowing the user to change it on demand is a common feature of copybot clients and I wouldn’t be surprised if Phox simply replicated the changes from the Onyx codebase.  Phox once again shows his true colours, preferring to attack Second Life rather than step aside with dignity.

The updated at the top of that page is rather interesting too.  If this is true, Fractured, Skills, Discrete and Phox and their alts will soon no longer be welcome on the grid and the CDS data collection system will be no more.  I really do hope this is true as it shows that Linden Lab are willing to take steps to protect their customers, in this case it has taken far too long, but their actions now set a precedence for the future.

On another note, Arabella has apparently distributed a notecard within second life accusing Jessica Trinity of attempting a hostile takeover.  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get my hands on this notecard as of yet (if you have a copy, feel free to drop one on my profile in SL) but Jessica has posted a rebuttal on her blog.  Given that Discrete and Skills had stepped down already and only the stubbornness of Phox was threatening the continuation of the Emerald project,  her actions appear to me to be intended to save Emerald by removing the last thorne in its side.  Of course we only have Jassica’s word against Arabella’s as to what happened and what the intentions of the involved were, plus no way of knowing what would have happened after Jessica’s attempt if it had succeeded.

The excerpt of dev chat in that post, if accurate, is also interesting, showing Phox’s egotistical attitude to Emerald and his willingness to destroy the project if he can’t make his buck out of it.  Would Emerald fail without Phox?  Possibly, but Emerald defiantly died with him and Phox and Fractured are the ones that killed it.

And finally, some people have been asking what they can use instead of Emerald if LL blocks it, especially those depending on its RLVa implementation.  Once again I’d like to recommend Imprudence, its has a full RLVa implementation, decent build tools, is actively developed and seems to be heading in the right direction.  And yes, for those of you that its important too, it has jiggle boobs too.