Will Ross here, welcome to The Traveling Avatar’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life. On this show we discuss tips and tricks for the game Second Life, created by Linden Labs.

Today’s Episode: Back to Basics II: Things Every Successful Newbie Should Learn
 
But first ...
 

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Today on the show, some quick technical tips for new players.  And to keep it interesting I'll try to spend some time on the "whys" instead of just throwing out the "hows."  Also, to keep it more interesting, I'm recording this in the nude.  Just kidding. 

Clearing Your Cache:  Almost inevitably if you're complaining of lag, choppiness, or slow rezing, someone will suggest that you "clear your cache."  What is a cache?  Basically, your cache is where you store pieces of Second Life data that your computer may need to access again. The purpose of the cache is to hold on to that info, in the case of Second Life these are usually textures, so they can quickly be accessed without having to download them from the server.  Using a "game as brain metaphor" think of the cache as your short-term memory.  It's where you hold that phone number someone just told you, and it's gone once you've dialed it. 
 But sometimes your cache gets so full of useless, short-term information, that it actually takes longer for your computer to access it than it would if you were just downloading it from the servers.  Again, "game as brain," think of those times you spend an hour trying to remember the name of a b-movie actor, instead of just looking it up on the innerweb. By the way, the actor you're thinking of is Treat Williams. Come on, nobody here saw "The Substitute 2"? 
 
When this happens, go to your "Edit" menu, choose "Preferences," then, on the "Networking" tab click "Clear Cache."  It's then going to give you a message to reboot.  After you restart your cache will be squeaky clean. If your cache was the problem you should see an immediate increase in performance.  If it wasn't, open your computer's flux capacitor and check for gremlins and/or angry Ixupi spirits, and if you find any, bash them with a maglight. 

Disclaimer: the Quick and Dirty Tips network strongly discourages following the advice of Will Ross regarding the flux capacitor/gremlins/Ixupi situation. Any removal of evil spirits or gremlins from your computer should be done by a licensed, bonded exorcist.
 
Rebaking Your Textures:  Ever seen one of those people wandering around with a big white "Missing Image" across their body?  Ever wonder why they don't fix that?  The reason is that on their screen, they look just fine.  In fact, it's very likely that at some point you've been wandering around wearing nothing more than an error message and never even knew about it. 
 
This happens because Second Life uses "baked textures." A baked texture is a single texture, made up of all of the little textures in the objects you wear.  Imagine an artist painting a picture of a person.  They could paint a man naked, then paint on his clothes, then his raincoat, then the wall he's standing behind, then the poster on the wall, but its much easier to just paint what the eye is supposed to see and ignore the rest.  A painting is a baked texture. Unless it's a Salvador Dali.  Then it's just weird and neat.
 
What texture baking does is eliminate all unseen parts of the texture so you can have a single texture showing only what the eye can see.  And if there is a hiccup during this process, the individual textures that failed to be baked in are replaced with the white and black "Missing Image" notice. The texture will need to be "rebaked" in order to look correct.
 
To do this, you'll first need to get access to your "Client" and "Server" menus, which are normally hidden.  To make these visible to you, you need to hit CTRL + ALT + D.  Now, I gotta warn you they hide these things for a reason. You probably don't want to fool around with these menus unless you know what you're doing, lest you unleash Lovecraftian terrors and/or screw up your Second Life Client.  Once you're in the client menu, choose "Character," and then "Rebake Textures." This should fix missing image issues and remove any pesky artifacts on your avatar.
 
Adjusting the Size of Your UI: The last major patch introduced voice into Second Life, which is pretty cool.  It also moved your groups, friends lists, IM boxes and local chat to one box.  Then, someone had the brilliant idea to make that box have a minimum size.  Not cool. Currently you can set your communications window between "covers most of what you want to see with a big gray window," and "covers all of what you want to see with a big gray window." 
 
If this is driving you as nuts as it drove me, you might want to consider resizing your user interface, more commonly referred to as a UI.  (And God knows I try to stay common and speak jive like the young folks, with their Usher CDs and their electrified text messaging machines.)  If you'd like a little more space to see, go to "Edit," then "Preferences," then choose the "Graphics Tab."  You'll find a slider bar marked "UI Size" and you can use that to shrink your UI down to a manageable size. Or make it bigger, for all you Goreans looking for a good way to punish your wayward kajira.  

That’s it for this episode!  Stop by the website and check out my Twitter page, if you want to see what I’m up to on any given day! Send your feedback or questions to secondlife@quickanddirtytips.com, and the comment line is 206-888-6975; that’s 206-888-mysl.  The Traveling Avatar’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips network, so be sure to check us out on the web at www.quickanddirtytips.com. And our show is sponsored by GoToMeeting.com, so be sure to visit visit GoToMeeting.com/podcastfor your free 45 day trial.  Do more and travel less, with go to meeting!

So until next time, remember.  To err is human.  To have omni presence, the ability to fling lightning and neat resurrection powers is divine.