Below is a short summary of the latest Community Meeting, followed by its chat logs – which have been gently edited for formatting, to put questions and answers in bold for easy skimming, and to omit greetings and farewells and other such asides. Meetings are hosted by Estate owner NeoBokrug Elytis at 2:00 pm on the first Saturday of every month at The Potato Farm in The Wastelands, and the discussion is typically divided into three main topics: Estate, Game, and Roleplay & Events. Everyone is welcome to attend!
ESTATE:
➳ After a long period of not reclaiming land, Neo is returning to the old Grace Period rules for overdue tier: each month of continuous land ownership grants another day of grace before reclamation, up to a total of 7 days.
➳ These old rules also allow for further extensions if there’s an emergency – but only if Neo is made aware of the situation.
➳ Linden Lab has made changes to how Group Notices are sent to email: you now have to opt into this through your Accounts page.
➳ A reminder that we have a Discord server where you can find more-reliable event announcements – and various conversations.
➳ Occupancy had a slow decline over 2021 and has overall been “treading water.”
➳ It is possible that changes to the Estate may need to be made if occupancy continues to be low.
➳ Work on the Northgate Community Gateway has returned to top priority, to help teach new users how to use SL (and hopefully inspire them to stay in The Wastelands!)
➳ If you have friends in other communities on SL who haven’t visited – or haven’t visited enough – bring them over!
GAME:
➳ The spawn of Giftmas collectibles and Giftmas Scrit ended on January 1. Some scavengers may have spares to trade.
➳ Neo has migrated Wastelands project data to a new script editing system that loads faster, is more frequently updated by its developers, and can also help optimize the scripts themselves. Harder, better, faster, stronger.
➳ The rez delay issues are still A Thing.
➳ Neo is beginning work on the Playable Race system with its racial modifiers to health, hunger, hydration, damage, and more. If you have ideas, let him know!
➳ Saul the Food Trader may not still be dead?
ROLEPLAY & EVENTS:
➳WL15B: The Wastelands’ 15th Birthday celebration is only a week away! Starting on Friday, January 14 and running through the end of Sunday, January 16, 2022.
➳ The schedule is quite full, but if you’d like to host an early DJ set, live performance, game show, bloodsport, strange ritual, or anything else you can think of, contact Neo or Apo with your available dates and times!
➳ The Wastelands’ collaboration with the Salvage Station shopping event was very successful, and it is likely to be an annual event, if not more frequent than that.
➳ Some time after the Birthday, Neo hopes to host a screening of a film made by his former art history teacher.
➳ There was a small discussion of realworld merch and possible logo changes.
➳ The Mutant Witch has completed construction of the new Almanac – an in-character calendar. If there’s a roleplay-related event you want to mark the date for, let her know!
➳ Reminder: The roleplay character template has been added to the Wiki – add yours today!
Weekly Event Summary:
All Times SLT:
Sundays: Brawlers Market Fightclub – Noon; Storytime with Wasteland Drifter – 2pm
Mondays: Mutant Drum Circle – 6pm
Tuesdays: Film Night with Wasteland Drifter – 5pm
Wednesdays: Manimal Madness (née Escape The Miasma! with Soda Foxen) – 6pm
Thursdays: Booze & Blather [RP Event] – 6pm
Saturdays: Sandling’s Evening Madness – 1pm; Fight Night – 3pm; Apo’s Audio Atrocities – 5pm
First Saturday: Community Meeting – 2pm
Second Saturday: Barrelhead Bazaar [RP Event] – 11am
Third Saturday: Wasted Raiders’ Raid – Noon
Fourth Saturday: Second Second Saturday Skull Ball – 2pm
Want to host an event? Let Neo know the event details by Wednesday night and he’ll add it to the weekly group announcements, Discord announcement, and Plurk feed!
I. THE ESTATE
NeoBokrug Elytis: IT’S… TIME.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: wooo!
Sandling Honey: \O.O/
NeoBokrug Elytis: First community meeting of the year! Happy New years and all that! I hope everyone had some good holidays fun!
NeoBokrug Elytis: We’ll start with the discussion of land, and estate things! Please hold your questions until I ask for them. :)
Sandling Honey: (I should call my Community Meeting halves the Evening Sobers)
NeoBokrug Elytis: Occupancy has been slowly sliding all year, and that sort of coincides with the stagnant growth SL has had this past year. Which is understandable given the pandemic and all. I would say at best we’re treading water.
NeoBokrug Elytis: But I know some people don’t have as much “fun spending” as they did before, what with the loss of jobs, pandemic, and all the bullshit.
NeoBokrug Elytis: And with Omicron here, I don’t think it’ll get better until that gets better. But on the other hand a lot more places are locking down again, so perhaps SL will once again see a small bump in people coming online. I wish it were for better reasons though.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I just got done with my twice a year “land audit”, where I fix parcels that may have fallen through the cracks, redecorate all of them, take a tally on what’s up.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Only two were not marked for sale that should have been. :)
NeoBokrug Elytis: Last month I had mentioned that I will be much more strict on reclaiming land when it’s due. I had been holding off on doing anything like that, because I didn’t want people to worry about their SL land holdings. But It’s been a bit over a year now and I can’t keep doing that indefinitely. So starting tomorrow I will be back to the normal way of doing things.
NeoBokrug Elytis: For those who don’t know, basically every month of concurrent tier you have on a single parcel, gets you one extra day of “grace period” before I reclaim land if it becomes overdue. Up to seven days.
NeoBokrug Elytis: And I am not going to lie, tomorrow occupancy is going to take a pretty big hit. Before the pandemic we were at these levels of occupancy and I had mentioned that I may change the estate because of it. That is still on the table. :\
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): How bad are we going to be?
NeoBokrug Elytis: I am trying to get northgate done so I can perhaps convince new folks we’re worth staying in Second Life. Northgate will be my primary focus for now. I have worked hard to clean my plate of projects. I have been super busy since before October. And after the birthday celebration this month, it should be clear sailing.
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa) quickly covers Storms eyes with her hands
NeoBokrug Elytis: Speaking of — well that’s probably events discussion, so I will save it.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any questions about estate and land things?
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): How bad are we going to be?
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): On a scale of 1-5?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Not good is a proper answer. It is in my part to holding on to a lot of overdue land.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I could have, and should have made it available for folks.
Hime (hime.hijinks): What’s Northgate?
NeoBokrug Elytis: I know most of everyone’s friends are here in The Wastelands; but if you got folks outside The Wastelands and you think they would enjoy our wreckage, let ’em know about it. Maybe they’ll get some land here.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: I dunno, I think letting folks keep their land was a good courtesy. It’s not as if there weren’t other plots available.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Northgate is a Community Gateway for SL that is currently in development.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I think it was a good thing too Apo, but it’s also a double edged sword.
RM Beedit (rmarie.beedit): seems like WL15 couldl be a good opportunity to get new people seeing WL?
Rax Stooge: I try and dra g randos here as often asIcan
NeoBokrug Elytis: I hope! I am going to poke the lab itself and let them know we’re about to be 15.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): every day is a good opportunity to drag ppl into our dirt
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oooh, indeed.
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): :D
Hime (hime.hijinks): I’ll try and spread some word, too.
NeoBokrug Elytis: But word of mouth built is, and it will sustain us. I am doing better with “marketing” than I was before.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Just tough meatspace times.
RM Beedit (rmarie.beedit): would be nice if WL15 had a featured event yeah
NeoBokrug Elytis: Also, thanks for the tunes Sandling. :)
Sandling Honey: Of course :D
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any other questions about estate things or land?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Oh, while we’re here still. Do not forget that group notices no longer forward to email unless you EXPLICITLY set them to go to email. You can enable that in your email preferences at the Second Life website.
RM Beedit (rmarie.beedit): I LOVE THERI WEB SITE
NeoBokrug Elytis: I know everyone doesn’t use Discord, but since groups aren’t super reliable, and they’re becoming less relevant — I want to try to encourage people to use Discord. It has a lot of features — some of which I haven’t even used yet, like the ability to post events there.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Plus it’s on every device, even your web browser.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Didn’t they change things a while back so you had to opt-in for offline messages to go to email, too? At this point, it almost feels like an oldschool email newsletter would be needed to get people info in their nibox.
NeoBokrug Elytis: So if you use discord, and you want an invite to our server send me an IM.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I think the default was always Off apo.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: *inbox
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Ahhhh, gotcha.
Drifter (wastelanddrifter): Discord is where I post the blurbs for film night, for those who want to know about showings in advance.
NeoBokrug Elytis: But now groups are defaulted to off too even if you have email forwarding enabled.
Verity Goodnight: also it has a table-flip shortcut
Verity Goodnight: (and an un-flip one)
NeoBokrug Elytis: Let’s not forget shrug
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any questions about any of that?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Moving on to game things then!
II. THE GAME
NeoBokrug Elytis: The giftmas spawn has officially ended as of 30 minutes ago. Whatever is left in the “spawn cache” will still spawn for the next few hours. But after that it’s all done.
NeoBokrug Elytis: If you have an incomplete set, many folks have spares and extras to trade. A lot of folks are talking about it in discord, but feel free to use inworld group chat too.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): got some doubles if anyone is still short
NeoBokrug Elytis: All of that was only SOME of what we never got into the game for one reason or another. :)
Aposiopesis Fullstop: There’s still time to add ’em. :V
NeoBokrug Elytis: Haha they are very prim heavy, and I used all the tricks I knew to reduce that. They are not exact copies of the final object (but the bonus one is)
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): if multi rock is under them. we do not care for prim count a bit
NeoBokrug Elytis: Aside from that, not much in terms of game development! Mostly just catching up from October, and prepping for December.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Good old Multirock. :D
NeoBokrug Elytis: With regards to game development, I have spend the past couple weeks trying to migrate to Sublime Text from LSLForge. Mostly because the updates to LSLForge are few and far between, and using eclipse is a pain these days. Opening the project takes a solid 2 minutes. Even then there’s issues because it doesn’t handle includes well.
NeoBokrug Elytis: So it thinks the whole project is “broke” until I force an new save on an include, then it takes just as long as it did to start up to re-check everything.
NeoBokrug Elytis: ANYWAY
NeoBokrug Elytis: It is very annoying.
NeoBokrug Elytis: So I am going to refactor and rebuild my project with Sublime Text, and select packages installed — and optimizing everything with LSL PyOptimizer. Testing between LSLForge and LSL PyOptimizer saves me a very tiny amount of memory for the primary HUD script, but that means it works a little better in the end.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Also I know a lot of you probably just heard white noise from me; but I am letting you know I am working on things still — even if you don’t see it.
NeoBokrug Elytis: I had to build a little powershell script to add functionality to the compile that Sublime Text and LSL PyOptimizer doesn’t have but LSLForge does. It works, so we’re good.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Any questions about game stuff?
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Are those rez delay issues still a thing?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Yes. It is a sometimes issue.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: The most fun kind to try to fix!
NeoBokrug Elytis: I hate is so much. :)
NeoBokrug Elytis: And once again if you folks have ideas for Racial modifiers or abilities within the game for those upcoming changes, let me know.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Moving on to event stuff in a minute…
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oh yeah, I gotta brainstorm more of that!
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): :o
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): obviously mutants get +65% awesome buff
III. THE ROLEPLAY & EVENTS
NeoBokrug Elytis: WL15B is right around the corner. It is a celebration of our 15th year on the grid — a 3 day party gauntly!
NeoBokrug Elytis: Gauntlet.
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): Obviously
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): Wooo!
Chav Paderborn: wow almost old enough to swear!
Sandling Honey: *Feels the urge to check for spawners*
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): xD
NeoBokrug Elytis: I think a lot of slots are filled up, but I also think there’s room for MOAR events if you want to host something!
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): your never to young to swear. fuck that
Chav Paderborn: fukin fuk!!!
xrrawva: ouou dev environment software setup is my least fav part. i keep backups for all eclipse folders just in case it implodes some day so i don’t have to think about all configs again.
NeoBokrug Elytis: If you have ideas, but need help planning, and you want to host something, let me or Apo know!
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): who left the smoke masheen on?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Same xrrawva. I once had eclipse eat the entire wastelands project.
xrrawva: hnng
Verity Goodnight: ughhh eclipse
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Yeah, the schedule’s pretty well pencilled in, but not quite everything is locked down – I’m sure we could squish in another hour or two of weirdness somewhere!
NeoBokrug Elytis: And if you ever want to host non-WL15B events, you can still ask us. We’re good at edumacating you about how things can be done in SL. :)
NeoBokrug Elytis: More RP events peppered in the week would be nice, if anyone other than those already hosting events want to give it a go.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Hopefully there will be an exciting poster soon, as well, courtesy of Mutsy! :D
NeoBokrug Elytis: Anyway; Open floor for RP and events discussion!
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): xD
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): Yes… I’m working on it ^^
NeoBokrug Elytis: We’re all counting on you!
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): o_o;
Aposiopesis Fullstop: She’s got lots of fingers and claws to count upon…
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa) groans
Aposiopesis Fullstop: ◕‿◕
NeoBokrug Elytis: I forgot to mention, The Wastelands took part in SL Syndicates Salvage Station. We loanded them a smaller simpler version of the game for the event. I guess that counts as game dev stuff! And rumor is that Salvage Station will happen at least annually, it was that popular.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Booze & Blather still happens at 6pm SLT every Thursday for anyone wanting to do a little casual RP – or to lurk behind the wall and observe!
RM Beedit (rmarie.beedit): ^^^
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): o_o_o
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oh, cool; I’m glad it was a hit! There was a lot of quality stuff there.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: (Especially the stuff by Angh!)
Verity Goodnight: i enjoyed it
NeoBokrug Elytis: Yeah! Lots of good merch to get!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Someday, we still need more meatspace Wastelands merch. :V
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): :D
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): Gimme a t-shirt anyday
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): uh oh, we lost Storm
Sheala (sheala.olivieri): A t-shirt with the WL badge logo
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): Exactly
Sheala (sheala.olivieri): Would love that
NeoBokrug Elytis: I kinda wanna update the WL logo. Something hand drawn. :)
Aposiopesis Fullstop: I’ve done some research occasionally, and custom flags are sadly WAY more expensive than you might expect….
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): technicaly .. thers 2 shirts haha
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): pin badges, hats, arm bands, books, pens, heck plush dolls of Neo :)
NeoBokrug Elytis: 15 years is a good run for the old logo.
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): yeah
Sheala (sheala.olivieri): It’s done a good job
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Because it is the logo!
RM Beedit (rmarie.beedit): bandana
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): Just needs a wipe over with a dirty cloth
Sheala (sheala.olivieri): What’re you thinking, Neo? More like a silhouette?
NeoBokrug Elytis: About merch: I did file a support ticket to ask if I could make a system in SL that would accept L$ as payment for real world things. There’s nothing in the TOS that says we can’t. So all I would need to do is collect and calculate shipping.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: There used to be a fair few shirts, kinda – Redzone sold some Wastelands-themed ones in their shop.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Yeah, I remember those.
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): nice :D
Rax Stooge: im literrallty wearing my redzone spike trap shirt right nnow
Aposiopesis Fullstop: :D
NeoBokrug Elytis: Haha nice!
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): ^^
NeoBokrug Elytis: I am both excited for the party, but my body is dreading it.
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): O_o
Aposiopesis Fullstop: My job has just made Monday the 17th an official holiday – which is good, because I am going to NEED it.
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): Oh wow
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oh yeah, and I still need to get some dates of RP events to you, Ccindy, for the Almanac. :D
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): do it
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): also. found what i was looking for
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oho?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Are you folks ready for this year?
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): Nope
Malice Shepherd: Absolutely ot
NeoBokrug Elytis: Fairest answer ever.
Drifter (wastelanddrifter): I guess so.
Aposiopesis Fullstop: So cool, Ccindy!
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): you dont know it apo?
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): oooh
Aposiopesis Fullstop: I do, but it is also still so cool!
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): i should make a new one. its what 10 years old
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Yesssss. Mooooar.
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): one day
RM Beedit (rmarie.beedit): After two years of liminality why not another
NeoBokrug Elytis: Probably a week or two after WL15B, I will be showing a movie or movies my old art history teacher made. So that’s a spare little extra events. :)
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Oh, that’ll be neat!
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): :D
NeoBokrug Elytis: I had to hunt down an obscure DVD.
Malice Shepherd: Lost media obscure?
NeoBokrug Elytis: Almost. Goodwill was selling ONE of them on amazon.
NeoBokrug Elytis: And it’s not opened yet, so that’s good.
Malice Shepherd: nICE
NeoBokrug Elytis: So yeah; 99.99% chance you’ve never seen this.
NeoBokrug Elytis: Thanks again for the tunes Sandling!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Yar, thankye, Sandling! :D
Aposiopesis Fullstop: (Also, your new album is rad.)
Sandling Honey: Most welcome! :D
NeoBokrug Elytis: If there’s enough people we’ll play Warzone in Fort Stygian. :)
Aposiopesis Fullstop: wooo!
Sandling Honey: And thank you – Yeah it’s plugged now over in the music subchannel on the Wastelands Discord, for those interested!
ɱʋʈֆƴ Ƙαɭίɠλѡɚ (mutsy.kaligawa): Thanks Sandling! ^^
Malice Shepherd: Noice
Beatrix (beatrix.washborne): is here for WZ!
Aposiopesis Fullstop: wooo!
NeoBokrug Elytis: Take care everyone, and I hope to see you all around. :)
Aposiopesis Fullstop: Seeya, Neo! Happy New Year!
xrrawva: byye
Sheala (sheala.olivieri): Take care, Neo
Rax Stooge: BYE
The Mutant Witch of the Wastes (ccindy.pfeffer): have a good time everyone
Aposiopesis Fullstop: To Stygian! \o/