Success Stories

Antone Blessed

Antone Blessed started scripting after 6 months of building in Second Life and her recent scripting efforts have lead to creating a menu driven particle generator. I caught up with Antone recently to see how her journey of learning scripting in SL has gone so far.

Simon Kline: so what got you interested in scripting?

Antone Blessed: it was the next stage after having spent half a year doing some building projects...creativity in sl and learning skills is important to me .. never was much of a consumer. Also I do some programming in rl and enjoy it.

Simon Kline: oh neat so you had background experience in programming?

Antone Blessed: yes but all financial mainframe business stuff .. cobol .. very dull, from the outside ..

Simon Kline: and so you did some classes in sl to learn scripting? was there any that helped you a lot on your scripting journey?

Antone Blessed: ohh all of it si .. but is just a first step .. gives you a bit of confidence and some ideas about structure and some leads to follow ..

Antone Blessed: the Psys menu particle generator has been very good for learning ..

Antone Blessed: I applied .. layered menus, communicating between scripts within a prim, particle system, and loads more interesting stuff..

Simon Kline: did you find it all relatively easy to put together? and what resources helped you along the way?

Antone Blessed: well it was time consuming cos as with such efforts they evolve rather than get designed .. hehe .. so several issues forced significant re-work ..the lsl portal was vital and also some advice from people in the scripting group helped

Simon Kline: and what's planned next? are you continuing work on this or have other projects in mind? :D

Antone Blessed: well want to do my own menu radio script that allows shuffling of the urls between menus ..but also now i have a particle generator i need to use it hehe .. other thing i need to work up is a notecard to go with it, cos there are 144 options in it to play with

i have considered doing some selling / marketing thing with it but not yet .. needs more developing ..

A big thanks to Antone for her time. As you can see she's learned a lot in a short time, with help from classes in sl, online resources like the wiki and other people. This combination of asetts is what makes SL so ideal for education.

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Miles Beck

Miles Beck started building in Second Life though 2007 and quickly found the value of learning scripting to bring items to life. He kindly made some time in his busy schedule for this interview:

Simon Kline: What got you interested in scripting in Second Life?

Miles Beck: At first, mere curiosity.

Later, I sold some non-scripted personalized items during Christmas 2007. I then wanted to open a greeting card shop with personalized cards. I needed to write scripts that would:
1. help purchasers EASILY add a chat message to a card.
2. rez the card when the recipient touches the envelope, and to be positioned correctly even if the envelope had been rotated. I also wanted to be able to customize the freely-available scripts for opening the card cover and the envelope's flap.

Simon Kline: How did you learn about scripting in Second Life?

Miles Beck: I took several classes and searched the LSL wikis as necessary. Some classes were a waste of time -- in many cases, the teacher knew scripting well, but was unable to communicate in an effective manner. Your classes were the best!

Simon Kline: What projects are you working on currently and what made you start doing them?

Miles Beck: Business has been so good with the greeting cards that I rarely have time for new projects! So I'm continuing to work on those.

A big thanks to Miles for his time, it's fantastic to see how education in Second Life can lead to bigger and better things.

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Kendall Weston

Once Kendall Weston saw what scripting can do she was inspired to learn both from teaching herself and from taking classes in a recent interview she spoke about how she got into scripting and what she’s done with her scripting skills:

Simon Kline: What got you interested in scripting in Second Life?

Kendall Weston: I first started getting interested in scripting with a water class I was taking. From there my interest went into doing scripting prims to make do cool stuff. Later I got interested in scripting in terms of creation of particles and art.

Simon Kline: How did you learn about scripting in Second Life?

Kendall Weston: The introduction I had was in classes in sl. From there I taught myself more from the lsl wiki, and then took more advanced classes. I like to try to build things from scratch that I have seen elsewhere to find out how to make the scripts work.

Simon Kline: What projects are you working on currently and what made you start doing them?

Kendall Weston: Right now I am working on some cool fountains that are scripted, controlled and linked. I am also working on some artwork using morphing scripts.

Simon Kline: What's planned next? Are you continuing work on this or have other projects in mind?

Kendall Weston: I'd love to build a whole garden area filled with cool scripted plants - some particle, some transforming, and some stationary. And there will be some really incredible fountains in the garden too.

Here is a picnic basket I made where I came up with the simple script for opening the lid without having to have a hinge on it:



Here is some artwork I made with particles:



Here is a Christmas card I made with a combination of particles and creating prims within a script:



A big thanks to Kendall for her time, it's easy to see she's making the most of what she's learned.

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Nya Raymaker

Nya Raymaker’s journey of learning has been about more than gaining knowledge, after learning scripting and about Second Life she’s now using her skills to help others while going through a personal transition. She kindly took some time to answer some questions recently:

Simon Kline: How did you get started in scripting in Second Life?

Nya Raymaker: I cannot narrow my "LSL story" down to any particular project and I have no way of measuring any commercial success... my story is a lot more obscure and personal ;)

As most people I started dropping free scripts I found somewhere into things to make them do stuff. However - that did not satisfy me for long and I started to read the scripts and change parameters I recognized.

Simon Kline: What made you start doing scripting classes?

Nya Raymaker: I wanted to be able to combine different scripts next but was very shady on how to do this... so.. this is when I started attending some classes to learn how it works.

Simon Kline: Did you find doing classes helpful and do you use any other resources to help you?

Nya Raymaker: Being far from a coder or scripter in my real life I was very surprised at how easy it came to me.... after three or four classes I could pretty much code fluently from scratch.

Of course - the wiki is my best friend cause on some stuff I can never seem to remember what integer to stick where in what line - the concepts and the trail of thought however are outlined in my head as soon as I think about how to do something.

Now, a year later, I can pretty much answer any question that starts in "can you" with a self assured "yes I think I can". and I am usually right. I am not so much scripting or making things to make an excessive amount of L$ - believe it or not - this girl hates shopping - and I have no interest in cashing L$ out.

Simon Kline: What do you like most about scripting now that you’ve learned it and what have you gained from learning it?

Nya Raymaker: For me the intriguing part is to make things work. Finding the best, smoothest and most functional way I can think of to make things work.

In a very real way this has given me a believe in my abilities.. not only in SL abilities.. but in my real me too. The ease with which LSL came to me has given me a good deal of trust in myself. This may sound very funny - being able to make cubes jump around helped me to have faith in my self and my abilities again. This is part of a very personal transition I have been going through over the last year and I will not bore anyone with the details, but yes.... it is the biggest success and greatest gain I can think of.

A big thanks to Nya for her time, it goes to show that what we do here in SL has amazing effects in RL also!

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Maya Paris

Mya's interest in creating artwork lead her on a path of learning scripting to learn how to create interactive animated artworks. Mya kindly took the time to answer some of my questions recently on why she learned and tell me about the amazing things she's created with this new knowledge.

Simon Kline: Hi Mya, lets start at the beginning! What got you interested in Scripting?

Maya Paris: I got interested in scripting in SL when I realised that all the most fascinating artwork was animated or interactive. I wanted to make some myself but at first I didn't even know that scripting was ..... so I started pulling full perms items apart and looking at what was inside.

Simon Kline: Great! How did you go about learning scripting and how did it help?

Maya Paris: I learned first by tinkering like that and then by coming to your classes,which have been great. They have helped me make sense of things and I can now make more adaptions to pre-existing scripts to get them to do what Ineed. I still have a lot to learn before I can write my own, but I'm looking forward to that.

Simon Kline: What projects has this new found knowledge enabled you to do?

Maya Paris: My most recent project is the Bicyclorama. It started when I heard about the SL version of the Climate change conference in Poland and I wanted to make a bikes piece. I made a windfarm-type rotor first and then added more things as I went along. I have used scripts for rotation, sound, particles and to trigger cycling animations when the avatars sit on the saddles. It's great to be able to make avatars cycle upside down without falling on their tiny heads.

Simon Kline: Fantastic! And what's planned for the future?

Maya Paris: I have a new project on the go at the moment called ( for now) Madame Mackenzie's Hypno-tunnel. I've used your linked lights and the particles on touch script that we made in class and also more rotations and a script to make a door that opens and closed like an iris.

A big thanks to Maya for her time!

For more information about Maya's projects please check out her blog at http://mayaparisbluestocking.blogspot.com/ and also there's a video at http://mayaparis.blip.tv/#1690883.

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