Restrospective

Back in April 2009, I opened up a small store on Second Life called Violet Studios. The rest is history really, but I kind of felt the need to sit down, and put some words down as I know people have been asking me, when is new stuff coming.

In the first two years of Violet Studios, it is fair to say things were really on a roll with new products being released almost daily, and when things like that happen, its always going to be the case that before you realise it you have a lot of products in store.

Of course, it is part of business, that the work you did last year, can always be improved on the next year as you will always have learnt something new and during the second year, I started to improve the products I released.

One thing that was out of my control though was Linden Labs ceaseless “tinkering” with Second Life itself. During 2010, we saw new features arriving on Second Life like Alpha masks, and Tattoo layer, which were a plus point, however there were less well known and secretive project going on too, like their Script Limiting which in turn created chaos for both customers and designers who really didn’t have a clue what was going on or why items were failing.

During 2010, and early 2011, the steamrolling of new items started to slow down, as more and more I had to turn my attention back to projects that either were not up to my own standard and needed improving or replacing, and doing damage control as Linden Labs started to strangle the script limits, almost on a monthly basis.

On top of this, during 2010/11, the highly secretive “Mesh” project was building in momentum, however as most people involved with SL knows, being so secretive was not a good thing, as the rumour mills went in to overdrive, with certain people making wild, inaccurate claims over what mesh was going to be able to do and predicting that the virtual sky would fall when mesh arrived.

When Mesh was eventually released (with Linden Labs awful Viewer 2/3) in August, the rumour mill was put to rest, the sky didn’t fall, and frankly, even today mesh is struggling to make a massive impact on how we use SL as it is vastly limited by what it can do. However, back then, I didn’t know that.

By the end of 2011, the stream of new products was now slowly dribbling through, rather than the rushing torrent as I was spending my time going from A to B, to A, to A, to A... and wondering “when does C arrive?”

2012, was a poor year really. For almost the first 6 months of the year, I spent it in all out warfare with Blender, trying to teach myself Mesh and investigating exactly what mesh really could do, and reaching some pretty disappointing conclusions by the end of it, and feeling like I had wasted those six months. However I also realised that while I had been so focussed on getting new products out and repairing and updating items that needed to be fixed, the whole business had been suffering.

In the middle of 2012, I realised that I needed to focus on what I had in world already, and take a long, hard look at what needed to be done, and what needed to change, taking each department, and breaking down what was wrong, where I could improve, and not forgetting, where the newer features Linden Labs had introduced could be put to work to improve not only what you see, but how I worked.

I wont bore you with the break down of the projects, but using an example, take Verotic Evolution.

As customers, you have come to expect that I would be constantly developing new products, new make ups and new skins. But Verotic had grown in to an out of control monster and I needed to come up with a solution that would not only mean you could get the new items, but I could also build them without breaking out in a cold sweat at the thought of doing it.

The Stacked Multi Layer tattoo system has not only given you a huge boost in new make up designs, but also more choice in how they are set up. For me, it means that there are no more cold sweats, and I can even start to look at the new skins have had sitting in inventory for some time now.

Which brings me back full circle really to where are we right now?

Well, as it stands, there are two and a half projects really left to do. One is completing the market place update, and the others are some smaller projects that will be out in the next few weeks.

As it stands though, 95% of the work is now complete and I am now at the point where I can start putting all of the unfinished or in development projects in to full production.

No more massive updating or redesigning work – at this point, “C” is finally in sight and it means for you, that Violet Studios is going to be a busy store in 2013.

Hemi