Sunday, 31 May 2015

10 Traits That Make Running a Clan Easier

Starting a clan isn't a small decision and shouldn't be taken lightly if you want long term success. To have a smooth running, fun, social clan here are 10 traits to make these aspects a reality.


1. If you want to start your own clan, you need patience.

 When SighFye and I started our clan we literally just had each other, we jumped into our empty Call of Duty Black Ops server and waited for people to come to recruit them and to populate the server. You also need to have patience with people. We all have different personalities and we clash at times, during these times patience is your friend. You will have times when you will have to remind people of your clan's rules and resolve conflicts.

2. To keep the success of your clan going you need persistence. 

 SighFye and I ran a successful clan for 2 years, we kept things running smoothly by being persistent in our efforts almost every day. In the beginning we really had to stick to it, even if it meant sitting in an empty server for over an hour waiting for people to come. 2 years later, although much quicker, we were still populating servers and bringing everyone together to play. 

3. It takes confidence to run a clan.

You've got to have the confidence in yourself and your clan to be successful. Lacking confidence shows, even behind a computer screen, in the way you present yourself and your clan. Not only do you have to exude confidence but you have to be able to approach people to invite them to join your clan.

4. Assertiveness is needed to keep your clan running the way you want it to and for conflict resolution.

When you start a clan, I recommend setting rules or guidelines for people to follow, you will need to be assertive to gain respect of you, your clan and the rules which will better your chances of people following the rules.

5. As a clan owner you are responsible. 

You are responsible for making everything run smoothly. You may need to resolve conflict between people, make sure game servers are up and running, assign people admin roles to take a load off of you and make sure people are following the rules.

6. You need adaptability. 

Things change and people change. You'll have people come and go, you'll have games rise and fall and you'll need to be able to adapt to this. You may find members of your clan demand something new or different, or the members simply move on and you may need to move on with them to a new style of play or even a new game. It's best to stay 2 steps ahead and change things up a little to keep things fresh and interesting.

7. You need to be thick skinned. 

Don't take what people do or say to heart. Everyone's different and people do and say things that others don't understand and at times, this causes conflict. The more people you have, the more likely it is that you'll have some sort of conflict. You may, yourself have a fight with someone or you may just have to step in when others are conflicting. Either way, you need thick skin because people will try and hurt you when they are hurt. Remember, what people do and say is only a reflection on themselves, not on you.

8. To run a clan, you need people and to be a people person means to have compassion. 

If you run your clan based on having a great social environment for people to be a part of and genuinely have the best interests for all involved, you will have a successful clan.

9. Trustworthiness and integrity. 

If you want your clan to be successful in the long run, you need to be trustworthy and have integrity.
If you try to lie and cheat your way to success, you'll fail. It's that simple.


10. Be Passionate

Lastly is the most important trait you need to run a successful clan and that is passion. If you're passionate about running your own clan, you'll make it. SighFye and I didn't know a whole lot about running a gaming clan, we'd dabbled in helping to run Guild's in World of Warcraft and clan's in Second Life but this was a whole new cattle of fish. We simply dove in and went for it, these ten traits we already had and passion was our biggest. It motivated us to get the clan up and running, then kept us going even when times got tough and rewarded us with many fun nights filled with laughter on TeamSpeak as we gamed with our crew and some memorable wins during our time of competitions.


Running our clan was awesome and we'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. These 10 traits we figured out ourselves as we went along and I hope this list can give you an insight into what it takes to run a clan. 

Have Fun!

Bellistik

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Saturday, 30 May 2015

Best Lego Builds

Hey Guys SighFye here and I've been looking at a few Lego build. I mean who doesn't like Lego

When I first started this post my idea was to get the best builds. However I started falling in love with a lot of very small builds and wanted to do the post about mini builds, BUT, I still loved the big builds. So I have split this post into two categories.

Top 10 Minibuilds

10) Phone: Simple and cute
9) Star Wars Characters: You can tell who they are and they are made with minimal pieces.
 


8) Sydney Opera House: Brilliant work and oh so small
7) Wall-E: My Nephew would love this build. Captures Wall-E's essence .
6) Mech Warrior: Brilliant Design

5) Minion: Who doesn't love Minions

4) Batmobile: Now come on. I struggle to build a tiny horse

3) The tardus: AND IT OPENS

2) Micro spaceship: this would have been my favourite as its so perfectly built and such a small build too.

1) Snoopy: Out of all the mini build I saw this one takes the cake. It so perfectly represents snoopy.

Top 6 Large Builds - Not including my top 3 all time best builds

6) Harry Potter: I normally don't like builds with people but for some reason I liked this one
5) Ghost Busters: Once again, its a scene and Im not normally into scenes. But I do love Ghost Busters
4) Iron Giant: The giant looks just like in the movie.
3) Robotic Sleave: Built by an 11 year old and really impressive
2) Terminator Spongebob: Its got all the aspects of both
1) Terminator: This one impressed me because it look like a terminator head. Not like a head made of lego trying to look like a terminator :)

Top 3 All Time Best Builds

3) Wearable Halo Body Suit: This is incredible. A suit that is even able to be worn:



2) The DeLorean From Back To The Future: This one impressed me even before I saw the extra pictures of it opened up. the wheels even turn up.






1) A drivable car made entirely of lego: This is insane. It runs on air and really drives.
Well that's it guys, my list of best lego builds. I hope you enjoyed it.

Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Second Life - Learn To Script: Chapter 4

Contents

 

Chapter 4: Lets make a donation box

In this chapter we will be making our next product. This will be a donation box that accepts donations and shows the highest donator. To do this we need to do test to see if the donators amount is higher than the current highest and replace it if it is. To show the highest donated we will use floating text. Lets also make it so the donation box will accept a user and pay that user. That way we are not only learning how to accept payments but also how to send that payment to the person using the donation box.

Lets Get Started

Ok so the first step is to create a script within an object. You should know how to do this by now. I am going to see how much you have learned and let you do the set up scripting. In this script we want to have two states. We learned how to do states in the last chapter so I will leave that up to you to figure out. Lets call the states, default and inUse. Both of these names are without spaces.
In the default stage setup a touch_start event. In that touch event make the script say “Welcome to the donation box Raiden Faxel. You are now logged into me.” . Replace Raiden Faxel with the name of the avatar touching the script. Then make the script swicth to the inUse state.
In the inUse state make a touch_start event and make that event say “Thank you for using me Raiden Faxel. You earned $L0”. Again replace my name with the name of the avatar touching the box. Then switch back to the default stage.
Do you have your script written? Ok... lets see how well you did. Your script should look something like this.
 
How did you do? Yours may be slightly different. Touch the object and test it. If you are see the two messages, a different one each time you touch it then your script is working well and you have learned for the past chapters, well done. If not, take the time out to look at my script and compare it to yours. What did you do different?

Sometimes when you write scripts you will try to save it and you will get this message.

 
This reads as so. On line 24, character 4 you have an error. You will also notice that the line 24 is in bold. This is showing you that this is the line that has the error. In this example and this can be the most common error, I forgot to place a ; at the end of line 23. The ; tell the script that it is the end of a line. Every line needs one at the end.

llSetText

If you are looking to script in Second Life then you have definitely been around long enough to see objects and people with text above them. It may be something from a floating text above avatars heads or a donation box with some text over it. The llSetText is how this is achieved.
So lets go ahead and add the floating text.
Step 1: Add a state_entry event to each of your default state.

Step 2: Add the following line of code inside the state_entry event.

Step 3: Save your script.
You will notice that the floating text your entered will appear above the prim your script is in.


Before we continue I want to explain what vectors are.

Vectors

Vectors are a group of 3 floats used as a single variable. They are seen as <x,y,z>. They can be used to set locations , velocity, and colours. In locations you have an x, y, z location. With velocity we have speed on x axis, speed on y axis and speed on z axis. In our script we have used the vector for a colour. This is set as an RGB colour code (Red, Blue, Green). You can get all the RGB colours you want from this a quick search on google. Just type RGB colour codes. With the vector x = Red, y = Blue and z = Green.

Alpha

So now we have a little understanding on vectors, the other thing I want to explain is alpha. In the SetText command we have an alpha parameter. The alpha parameter set how invisible the set is. 0.5 will make the text 50% see through. 0 will make is not show at all. 1 will make the text 100% visible play around with your text for a bit changing the colour and alpha.

Clearing Floating Text

If you don't want your text to appear anymore all you have to do is set the text to nothing.

The important thing to remember is this. If you add floating text to your prim, then decide you don't want that anymore, you can't simply remove the line of code that sets the text. This will keep the text there. The prim itself has a text variable and you are just setting it. So if you set the text and then remove this script, the text will remain. Before you remove the script you must first clear the floating text and run the script.

Continue Our Scripting

Ok now let continue with our script. Add a state_entry event to the inUse state. Now add some floating text to the inUse state_entry. Make this one say “Raiden Faxels Tip Jar\nAll Tips Greatly Appreciated\nTop Tipper Sigh Parx $L0”. Of course change the Raiden Faxel to the users name. Later we will change Sigh Parx to the actually highest tipper and the amount they tipped. The \n in the text makes a newline in the floating text. In order to change the name to the user we need to store that name when they log in. We will also store their key for later use. Add this at the top of your script.
Then in the touch_start event of the default state, set these variables with the following code.

Now we can use this variable in the state_entry of inUse to change the floating text to include the users name.
Your code should look like the following.

Accepting Payments

There's only one command you must add to accept payments into an object but there is an event you must add also to run code when someone makes a payment. Without either of these you can not accept payments. So lets look into that. To accept payments into your script you have to set the pay price of the prim. This is done with the following code.
The price integer is the default amount you want in the custom pay box. The list of quick_pay_buttons are the buttons people can press to pay that amount. Before we start this let me explain lists.

List

A list is a group is variables in one variable. You can have a list of all different types of variables except other lists. I like to see a list as an organised box of things you want to use later. For example I can have a list of avatar names. I would write this as follows.
 
Each name in my list has an index number. The first name in the list has 0. Then each index goes up by one. So Raiden Faxel has 0, Sigh Parx would be 1, Roxy Beliveau has 2 and Warfina Tisch has 3. We can use these numbers to get the information later by using the llList2String command.
 
So to get “Sigh Parx” for the list all we type in is this.

 Let's Add The Pay Option

Ok so we are ready to add the pay option.
Step 1: In the state_entry event of the inUse state create a list with four payment prices. I like 50, 100, 200, and 500 as a default.
 
Step 2: Now add in the SetPayPrice command. We'll put the price as 100 and use the quick_pay_button list we just created.
Step 3: Add the money event to the inUse state.
The money event simply gets the avatars key and the amount they donated. We'll look into this very soon.
Step 4: Save your script and test it. Log into your donation box, and then right click the object to select pay. You should see this dialog come up.
 
As you can see our quick pay buttons are on the side and our default amount is in the other amount textbox.
This script is the basics of a donation box. But we are going to go a little further and put the highest donator in the floating text, and we also need to make this pay the person logged in. At the moment it will pay the owner.

How it works

As the script starts the script starts in the default state and waits for someone to touch it. When they log in it moves to the inUse state when the llSetPayPrice command runs and sets the buttons for the donator. Having the money event in as well allows the object to then show the pay option. When an avatar pays an amount they are given a dialog to choose an amount. When they click pay. The amount is taken from them and given to the owner of the object.

GiveMoney

This script is what takes money from you and hands it to another avatar. But there are a few things you need to understand about this command before using it. First of all, there is no way to know if the money was actually sent or not. Lets say the script says to send $500L but the avatar only has $100L. There is no way to test to see if the full amount was paid. There is another command that gives all this information but for this script we are only sending the funds as someone makes a donation, so the money will always be there. Second, a give money command must be accompanied by a permission allowing for the the transfer of funds.
The give money command looks like this.
The destination script is the avatars key where the money will be sent. The amount is the amount of lindens that will be transferred.
Let's add this into our script.
Step 1: Add the permission line of code in the state_entry of the default state. This will ask the owner for the permission to send the donated money to the logged in user.

 
There are many other permissions to give but for now this is the only one we need. As you can see this gets the owners key and requests the PERMISSION_DEBIT permission. The avatar will be sent this permission dialog.
 
Step 2: Add the give money command to the money event we added in the inUse state. We can use the userKey for the destination. We can also use the amount variable in the money event.
Step 3: Save your script. You will be sent the permissions if you have your script in an object in the sim. Accept the permissions,. If you have a second avatar, try logging them on and log them into the donation box. The use you avatar to make a donation. This should pay your first avatar, then your first avatar will pay the avatar using the donation box.
If you use 1 avatar you will see, you have paid [username] [amount] twice. This is because you made the donation which goes to the object owner. Then the object sends that donation to the avatar logged into the donation box, which is also the owner in this case.

How It Works

When the script first starts the owner is asked to accept permissions to take lindens from them. This is required to send the money to the avatar using the donation box. When someone makes a donation the money is sent to the owner and then the script sends that amount from the owner to the person using the donation box.

Notes

There is a lot of worry out there about vampire bites that take your money or other scripts that do the same. This is not possible. For someone to take money from you you need to first accept the permission for the money to be taken from you. If you get a permission and you dont know why, deny it straight away. It is possible to place a give money command inside a product you buy and then drain you money. So if there is no reason for a scrip to to take your money, deny to permission. However if its something that must use money then you kinda need to take that risk. If you see your money draining just take the object out of the world and then money will stop being taken.
The second thing that must happen to take your money, is the object has to be owned by you. No one can make a script to take money from you in an object they own and without permissions. So relax a little with all these scares.

Final Additions

The last thing we need to do is show who made the highest donation to the avatar and a total amount of donations made. Lets just jump in and do it.
Step 1: Add three more global variables. Global variables are ones outside all of the script so we can use them through the whole script. These variables will be...
highestName will be used for the avatars name who donated the highest amount. HighestAmount will be used for the highest amount that avatar donated and totalDonated will be the total amount of lindens the logged in person have raised.
Step 2: In the money event we need to add the amount donated to the totalDonated.
What this says is, “Set the totalDonated to what totalDonated already equals plus the amount the avatar donated.
Step 3: Change the message the user gets when they log out to show the total donated.
 
Use write (string) before totalDonated because totalDonated is an integer not a string and we are trying to add it to a string. This tells the script to treat it as a string.
Step 4: Reset the total donated when they log out. Do this by setting totalDonated to 0 when the script enters the default state_entry event.

If statements

So now lets look at if statements. These run tests on informations to run different code. And if statement looks like this.
The condition is something that must equal true for the code inside the brackets to run. Lets take our code example. We need to see if the donated amount is higher than the current highest donated amount.
However we can not write it like this. The script will not understand.
If we place the if statement in the money event we can use the amount they donated against the highestAmount variable we made. That would look like this.
The code inside the curly brackets will only run if the if statement is true. We have a few things we can use to do tests.
<
Less Than
>
Greater Than
==
Is Equal To
!=
Is Not Equal to
You can also use a string in a if statement. For example if avatarName = “Raiden Faxel”
So lets add it all in.
Step 1: Add the if statement above in the money event.
Step 2: Inside the if statement set the highestAmount to equal the amount.
Step 3: Set the highestName. We do this by running a new command call llKey2Name. This command looks like this.

 
This command takes and avatars key and gives back the avatars name. We can use the id in the money event to get the donators key. Heres the code to set the highestName to the avatar who donated.
Step 4: Set the floating text to show the highest donator. This must be done in the if statement as we only want it to change if the amount is higher.
The final code inside your money event should be.

How It Works

When a user donates, the money event is run the amount donated is added to the total amount and then the money is sent to the avatar using the donation box. The amount is then tested to see if it is bigger than the current highest amount and if it is the amounts are changed and the floated text updated to show the highest donator.

One More Thing For You

At the moment if someone is logged in anyone can log them out just by touching the box. We need to stop this from happening by seeing if the avatar touching the box is the same avatar that has logged in. If not, tell the toucher the donation box is currently in use. The other thing to do is when the user logs out we need to reset the amounts in highest donator. I'll leave this to you to figure out. And show you the code next week.