The space between.. mesh, part 2

So.. for those of you who have wondered.. I'm not dead.

Over the last few weeks, I've been working my ass off, on a complete.. and I mean COMPLETE rebuild of my main store in Second Life.

Not only am I redesigning the look and organization of the store, I'm replacing almost every single prim, with some form of MESH. Now, for those of you who aren't yet familiar with what I mean by Mesh: mesh is a new way of creating content for Second Life. Rather than the conventional cutting and stretching of prims, or the somewhat clunky uploading of sculpt maps to make an object take on the appearance of a sculpture, this new technology allows for the direct upload of Collada DAE wireframe models into Second Life.



Mesh is cool, for three main reasons.

1. Mesh lets you do things that normal primitives can't do, like punching 3 holes through a single cube.


2. Because you can optimize mesh to be very lean on the number of polygons in the wireframe.. you can actually make things that render faster, and more efficiently than traditional prim constructs.


3. With mesh, a careful builder can reduce the primcount of a build, and/or add more detail within the same primcount. This means more appealing, more functional builds, that used up less of your land.

I'm a late adopter. I can't yet make so-called "Rigged" meshes that conform to the shape and movements of the avatar skeleton. But what I can do, is make use of low-poly techniques, to push the envelope of how much detail I can cram into my existing land.

For my customers, this means I can fit more vendors in my shop, and make more products available without being forced to buy new land.

As I said before, I'm reworking EVERYTHING.

In the balance, while we'll gain some cool things at ER, we'll lose some things too.

One of the things we'll be losing.. most likely.. is the gift-cards.

The current Gift-card system that ER uses is an add-on to the "hippoVEND" networked vendor system. Now it needs to be said: my affiliate vendors run on this system, I *LIKE* my affiliate vendors, and I have no intention of deactivating my entire hippoVEND system.

the new fancy vendors I've been working on, won't be powered by the HippoVEND system

At the same time, however, the new fancy vendors I've been working on (that use mesh in interesting, and sneaky ways) won't be powered by the HippoVEND system. While this does mean that the new vendors will be less laggy, and less likely to encounter delivery issues.. it also means that the vendors in my store won't be able to redeem those hippoUpdate giftcards.

I seem to go through this every year or two. Selling those Giftcards requires an additional prim per product, and as I'm now approaching something like 80 products in that system, that's 80 prims for vendors, and another 80 prims for giftcard vendors. Needless to say, that starts to add up after a while. While I could indeed switch to the "Amount Based" cards, where you might purchase a 500L$ giftcard for a friend.. I'd have to operate a hippoVend vendor that people could use to redeem said cards, since again.. they couldn't redeem them at the "normal" vendors.

The obvious alternative is fairly simple, and it's one I've relied on before. SL Marketplace.

ER has had a love-hate relationship with the SL Marketplace (formerly Xstreet, formerly SL Exchange). I've relied on them to provide gift-giving services in the past.. and while that option isn't ideal.. with these new home-brewed mesh vendors.. it may be the only way I can offer user-friendly gift giving for the forseeable future.

But as I said, for each thing we lose, we're gaining something too. These new mesh vendors are capable of selling up to 32 product variations in a single vendor. From a technical standpoint, it may not sound very amazing, but to be able to sell my entire collection of "Crystal Eyes" (for example) with just 6 prims as far as the land is concerned.. instead of the 27 prims it takes now. That's a massive achievement in-and-of-itself.

 

People have asked me time and time again for more latex items

What these vendors really offer, is "potential".. since I will no longer be strangled by prims-used-by-vendors, I will be more free to sell things that come "in colors". People have asked me time and time again for more latex items. Variations on my basic catsuits.. hoods, sets of stockings and gloves and so on and so on.. but with every such product, I knew I was facing the daunting requirement for 12 prims for each product, one for each color. With these new vendors, 12 colors can take just 4 prims.. and suddenly I'm free to offer discounted "fatpacks", and I'm free to offer many more than just the 12 colors I offer today.

Now just let that sink in. What if my latex came in 30 colors instead of just 12? THIS is what this rebuild is about.

There's another downside, to all this mesh stuff in the store though. Not every viewer in SL is capable of seeing Meshes.. and because of that, people using these "edge case" or "older" viewers, may not be able to see or use my vendors.  (or the walls in my store, for that matter). I'll probably offer a single "everything" vendor for people who can't see meshes.. but the good news is that the last numbers I heard from the Lindens, put the number at something approaching 85% of all logins use a mesh capable viewer. That margin is only going to grow over time. While that does mean that potentially, 15% of customers MAY not be able to see my store and vendors, the predominant product line at ER is the latex and fetishwear, and mesh fetish items seem to be the new hot thing. I suspect that mesh-viewer-adoption among fetish-interested-SL-users, is probably higher than average.

Regardless however, the risks outweigh the rewards.

I've termed this transition "ER Growing Up".. and in many ways, that's what I'm trying to do. I've painted myself into a few corners now and then, and I've let my own fears hold me back. I'm rebuilding the store.. prim for prim, and vendor for vendor. It won't be all done in a day or a week, but when it is done.. I sincerely hope it will be easier for me to make new products. I'm NOT going to keep raising the bar on myself.. making each product harder and longer to  complete, trying to make things more and more complicated every time. Instead, I'm going to focus on things I know how to make, and when it's appropriate, I'll stop trying to re-invent the wheel, and outsource certain things to people who know more about those things than I do. Rather than writing my own scripts to customize shoes, as an example.. I'll take advantage of prefabricated scripts that are well proven, and understood by many already.

there's no excuse for spending 2 months trying to script something, if I never get it finished

Now.. this doesn't mean I'll be lowering my standards, or "settling". ER products will still have their signature "look and feel". But there's no excuse for spending 2 months trying to script something, if I never get it finished. Better to get it out there for all to enjoy with an acceptable level of functionality, than to let it rot unfinished in my inventory, where only I can see it.

It's a hard point to reach, but it's an important one. While I CAN do all the parts of these things, it's not reasonable for me to ALWAYS do it all by myself every time.

So.. enough of that.. what else can people expect from ER? I honestly can't say for sure, mostly because I simply don't KNOW yet.

Down the road, I'll be looking into developing some things that will work in tandem with other people's products. (as a rough idea.. what if my latex came with appliers for some of the major prim implants on the market?) There's been talk of more eyes, and of marketing some of the skins I've made over the years.. the most recent being a merging of Sezmra Svarog's Splendor skin, and Eloh Elliot's Starlight. There's other things on the table too.. it's a huge pile of ideas, and customer requests that I'll definitely have to pick through carefully.

I want to do more in-store promotional stuff, there's a lot of ideas on the table for that too. I'm considering lucky chairs, for example.. I know a lot of customers have asked for those. Midnight Mania is another option I'm considering too. Riot-vend doesn't really appeal to me as a shopper, but I'll be looking into some of the "hunts" as time wears on as well. I'll be taking a long hard look at the way my newsletter system works too.. I've considered switching to a "group".. as some stores I know have had good luck with those, and while group chat is still as flaky as it ever was, having a group makes it easy to offer group discounts, or special group-only freebies. As always, if anyone has any good suggestions, feel free to toss me a notecard, use the contact form on the website here, or just leave a comment below!

I can't completely rule out the idea of more bears

One of the questions that's surely on everyone's lips is "what about the bears?" I'll be honest, my own doubts over last Hanukkah's bear spooked me. I haven't been able to feel "comfortable" with the project since then. It's really too late to push a 4th of July bear at this point. But that said.. I can't completely rule out the idea of more bears. They were a lot of fun to make, and people really did seem to enjoy them. I never once got a single IM from someone saying they found a bear's costume offensive. Maybe, once this rebuild is finished, I'll have time to really sit down with myself, and examine what I was trying to do with those bears, and see if I can't get back to the core idea of them. And just maybe, they might find their way back to ER in some new way, perhaps tied to some other promotional system. (maybe a group only freebie? or perhaps a claw machine with a randomly chosen bear, from all the bears ever?)

I'd like to hear from others.. ER customers, friends, and other shop owners as well. If you've got some advice or ideas, or just a comment on everything that's going on.. I'd love to hear from you.