Getting Ready to Learn LSL

Solving the ten easy puzzles presented here will get you into Second Life enough to so that you can make sense of the tutorials on writing Linden Scripting Language (LSL) scripts that the LSL Tutorial article indexes. We built a granite slab and a touch globe in our first hours.

1. The Second Life virtual chat world is a free Lego space with a programmer-friendly user interface. You can solve the ten easy puzzles here, in the order presented here, without having to guess too much from step to step.

2. The places you see in Second Life may be haunted by gangs of physically and verbally obscene vandals. That's what Google News tells us of this (2007) summer, and that was our first experience at the front door. But ignoring the gang worked.

3. Your Second Life feels like a first-person shooter video game: you move a doll ('avatar') thru the world, you have to choose a 'last name' from a list.

4. Your Second Life also feels like a third-person game thru a kind of X-ray vision: Alt mouse and Ctrl Alt mouse let you drag your point of view away from your avatar, til you press Esc.

5. We first learned how edit and save and swap in our choice of avatar. That was learning enough to feel reasonably anonymous. You only get 1 doll at a time, there is no way to say there are N of you logged in together thru 1 client. Your quasi-public 'birthdate' is the day you first entered.

6. We next learned how to 'walk', to 'sit', to 'stand up', to 'fly'. We learned how to 'search' for 'places' and how to 'teleport'. That was learning enough to begin exploring.

7. We next learned how to 'touch' things, how to 'take' things into our virtual backpack ('inventory'), how to drag out copies, how to 'more take copy's in, how to 'wear' things on my outside rather than my inside. Our 'inventory' is infinitely lightweight and small, so far as we can see, e.g., we put a house in it. That was learning enough to enjoy exploring.

8. We next learned how to e-mail a postcard, mostly as a way of revealing what the Slurl.com name for a place is. Natives maybes know a better way: that way is awkward and slow, but works.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Encogia/170/218/48 is an amusement park that tweens we know enjoy: diving pool, Ferris wheel, a carousel, a flume, bumper cars, tours by balloon or helicopter or rocket. The park lends dive skills and dance skills and gives away parachutes.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ambleside/99/125/37 is a village green that gives away popcorn and lemonade, together with eating and drinking skills.

9. The client app that connects us into the world runs on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, etc.

That is, it pretends to run, well enough. Like other great free but only half-ported Unix apps such as Stellarium, the Second Life client appears in Mac OS X as a virtual Unix word with its own menu bar and much need of Command Click ('right click'). Someone's made some effort to translate key mappings reasonably, e.g., Command C and Command V also mean copy/ paste, not just Control C and Control V, but select all left doesn't mean Home.

10. You might want to try Googling to find community of people who are thinking of joining Second Life but haven't yet. The experience of sending postcards hints that coordinating your efforts might let you start with 'Linden dollars (L$') in hand. You don't get any L$ for free by default (as of 2007-09-01).

11. You're ready now to go try to make sense of the tutorials on writing Linden Scripting Language (LSL) scripts that the LSL Tutorial article indexes.

Note: So far this English has the form of a blog of September 1, 2007: the day when one of us entered Second Life for the first time, working together with a non-programmer friend. This page is Wiki, please feel free to revise or reconceive. Or post into the Discussion tab an explanation of how the rest of us should edit for you, if we should. Or add links to tutorials like this that exist but we have failed to find. Thank you for helping.

Note: The F1 help for the building tools in world is not yet smart enough (as of 2007-09-02) to give you help in context. Help, negligibly obsolete, for the Object tab of the Create/ Edit tool you begin with is at http://secondlife.com/app/help/building/basicprims.php. In particular, the checkmark Physical teaches your object to move and roll and bounce, the checkmark Phantom lets other things like your avatar move thru object or not and the tab Texture, checkmark Full Bright makes your object glow in the dark.