SCD IST 110H

For Second Life Homework Assignment 2, Team Multivac decided to make a sign that reflected the history of the College of Information Sciences and Technology. The history of IST was our focus because each of us was not aware of our major's history. Although our major has only been around since 1999, IST has grown quickly and by focusing on the history of IST we proved how proud each of us should be of our major and Pennsylvania State University.

In order to make our sign, we visited the sandbox at Istania, the College of Information Sciences and Technology island in Second Life. The sandbox allows avatars, or users, to create prims, or various shapes, and build objects such as a sign. Instead of creating an actual sign, we created a kind of museum dedicated to the history of IST with a series of signs highlighting important dates. We decided on a museum to house our signs because the design of the museum would force avatars through the building and see certain signs in chronological order. To further force the chronological order of the museum, we made do not enter signs at the exit of the museum. The building itself was not to hard to create and was built out of cubes. The doorway is just a hollowed out cube, and the 'S' in IST hanging over the entrance is two of half circular tubes. We decided on an appropriate color scheme of blue, white, gray, and black to fit in with the Happy Valley scenery.

To make our signs for inside the building, we found pictures from the Internet and uploaded them into Second Life. These pictures then became the textures for modified cubes to appear as signs. Through visiting SimTeach, we found the script necessary for our signs to give notecards to avatars who touch them. In addition to the picture, the notecard will textually highlight the history of IST.

In order to complete our assignment, we divided the work evenly amongst our group members. Garrett was responsible for purchasing Linden dollars, finding images, and uploading images into Second Life. DJ and Corinne were responsible for researching the history of IST and compiling the information into notecards. Steven was responsible for writing the final report. All team members were responsible for the building of our sign and were assigned different sections to build. Corinne was responsible for the walls and the roof. Garrett was responsible for the columns and doorways. DJ was responsible for the picture signs, the green signs at the entrance, and the do not enter signs at the exit. Steven was responsible for the "IST" sign at the entrance, the "1999-NOW" sign, and scripting all the components of the building.

During the project, we encountered a few obstacles. One of these obstacles was finding the script for our signs to give avatars notecards. After searching the Internet for a while, we found a website that provided the answer. Another obstacle was creating the notecards. It took some searching, but we discovered that we could create new notecards by accessing the create tab in the inventory folder. Another obstacle was the issue of ownership. Because we built our sign as a team, we each owned different parts and were unable to link all the prims together. However, we solved this issue by selling all of our original modifiable objects for 0 Lindens.

Then, Steven bought all of these items and linked them together. Another difficulty was trying to make the prims that spelled out "1999-NOW" spin because the 1999-NOW was only readable from one side. We fortunately found the script, but when we included the script for 1999-NOW, the entire museum started to spin. This caused a mini-crash and catastrophe in Second Life which mutated our entire museum. Luckily, we were able to restore the museum. The solution to stop the entire museum from spinning was to make the 1999-NOW sign and the museum separate objects with the 1999-NOW floating above the museum.

As a team, we have learned more about the building process in Second Life. We have learned how to manipulate prims, upload textures, create scripts, write notecards, and unify all of these into a cohesive final object. We also learned more about our College of Information Sciences and Technology along the way.