The Grey Inn is a hypergrid meeting place. To access it, set your home to a hypergrid enabled region and teleport from there, using either this link, or typing tgib.sytes.net:9023 in map search.

The Inn doesn’t have any proprietor and anyone can make themselves home there any time. It will be used for random events and objects all over the sim can be copied.

Music: Oi Da Ne Vecher by Lena Selyanina

Source: The Grey Inn Between

First, open the skin texture of your choice in Gimp, and the clothing texture along with it. Select the window with the clothing texture and chose “select all” from the selection menu (ctrl+a), then select copy (ctrl+c) from the edit menu. Switch over to the window with the skin texture and select paste (ctrl+v) from the edit menu to see your clothing texture applied right onto the skin at the place it is supposed to be. Now save the file under a different name (select “save as” from the file menu). You will be prompted to export the file as .png because it has several layers which png doesn’t support. Select export there and chose a new name for your file. Now upload the newly created skin and follow the tutorial on how to apply it to your avatar.

To make a clothing item out of them, right-click on the folder you’d like them to be on and select “New Clothes”, then choose the clothing layer you’d like to create. It should be self-explanatory which texture goes where; in order to make a t-shirt you can use the undershirt, shirt, or jacket layers, for example. Wear the newly created clothes and edit your appearance by right-clicking your avatar and chose “appearance”. In the appearance window, click on the clothing layer you created, then upload the clothing texture and drag it from your inventory to the space that says “fabric” in the appearance window. It should appear instantly on your avatar. To keep it, click on save, and close the appearance window again.

Source: base underwear

Please see the tutorial on how to import clothing.

Yes, it’s there. Look harder. It’s on the second level in the pie menu, and in the General tab in Edit. And it’s the difference between open grids and closed ones. The difference between OpenSim and Second Life.

Everything digital revolves around copying, and copies are not a technical question, but a legal one: Copyright. Laws, unlike technical processes, are not universal, nor are they always safe and clear. Legal definitions are, by default, vague enough to cover several different cases, but at the same time should be precise enough to give some understanding about what they cover, and what not. This is especially complicated with copyright, as it tries to cover a myriad of things, with a multitude of uses, some of which have not even been invented yet. (Who would have thought about whether or not a couple of prims are copyrightable 10 years ago?)

If you’ve never seen it, then you probably have not been outside of Second Life, or a comparable service. It is the first thing that struck me when I entered OSGrid: Most things could just be copied. I made it a habit to fly around or walk through sims and right-click on anything nice I saw to see if I could take a copy. Most of the times, I could.

The question about whether or not you are allowed to copy something is not easily answered. Not only would you have to know the laws and jurisdiction of your country on these matters, but also (quite often) the details of the terms of service of whatever site or service you’re currently on, which in turn are connected to the laws of the country the hosts of these reside in. Not complicated enough? Well, maybe there’s some special licenses involved which the creators themselves used to license their work, and which could override the terms of service, or not.

Usually, we just don’t care. If there’s a nice picture on the web, we just save it to our harddrives without giving it a second thought. If a friend sends us an mp3-file, we just keep it. If we blog about something we just read, we copy and paste parts of it into our blog post. And if we make something in Second Life, we use elements that are available as freebies or take textures off the net.

There are several answers. The safe one is: No, you can’t. If you want to be absolutely on the safe side, you must never copy. You can buy original copies, and you can consume them. That’s about all. The semi-safe answer is: Stick to content that’s open and free. Creative commons, open-source, free software, all these were founded with the goal to give everyone the legal ability to copy the creations thus licensed. It is only semi safe, because the free licensed stuff itself may contain material that is not freely distributable. Only because someone licenses their creations free doesn’t mean they have the legal right to do so.¹ It’s a tangled mess, even with things that look relatively simple. Do you know if the musician publishing his songs under creative commons didn’t include someone elses melody in a song?²

Not caring – well, that’s a valid decision too. With most legal things, the risk of doing them is only partly in what’s written in laws; a large part of it also lies in the scope and extent of the action, if the violated party has any knowledge about and interest in the violation (and the capabilities to pursue it) and, finally, if judges will agree with them.

Copying, therefor, is risk assessment, and everyone needs to do their own. Can we copy things in Second Life? Well, the permissions may give you an idea about what the creator might have thought about that. Can we copy things out of Second Life? Not, according to Linden Lab’s Terms of Service. In most cases though, it might be relatively safe to copy things for personal use – to use them on your private standalone, for example.³ If you ask me about my things – feel free to copy.

1. The Second Life Viewer code, for example, although open-sourced, contains libraries and code which are proprietary and closed.
2. I even included someone elses words in a song, but that was in another country, and alas, the guy is dead – for more than 70 years.
3. Things get worse – much worse – when you try to sell things you copied without permission.

Source:Pink Sculpt Outfit

This outfit is entirely made of prim attachments; the bra and panty are sculpted. Please see the tutorial on how to import this creation.

This skin is based on templates offered for free by Eloh Eliott. It comes in several different styles and uses the dark female base. Please see the tutorial on how to use TGIB skins.

Source: lovebird

The first grid covered in the Missing Image is Role Play Worlds. The “Worlds” in the name, or “realms”, as the operators call them, are separate areas on the grid, all dedicated to a certain theme. At the moment, there are three role play realms – Fantasy, Vampire and Gor – with Gor being the most advanced of them. In addition to that, there’s a fourth section, called “Oasis Grid“, which serves as a general hangout and meeting place for users and features some urban / modern / beach theme. There’s no need to create different accounts for each realm, as they’re all on the same grid, using the same asset and user database.

The welcome area is quite advanced and serves as a general info-hub as well as portal to each realm. Users can get some starting equipment here and visit the shopping areas around for additional things to buy. Also it’s the place to get the RPX meter, which is the hud for Role Play World’s in-world combat system, along with several weapons. The system handles combat, damage, death¹ and healing already, skills are planned for a future release. Also, players can create their own weapons, using the RPX developer kit.

The realms are nicely built, with the gorean realm being the biggest one by far, and also being the most heavily developed. Many areas are still being constructed, but still there are some great sights already. Teleport points (ships, portals, etc.) make for “realistic” travel, as flying is prohibited in most regions, and the use of lightshare can set the mood for the different realms. While users can rent their own regions from RPW, there are some regions set up as “fight to keep”, which means a user can keep them, as long as they can defend them against intruders, which offers additional possibilities for roleplay.

Below is a copy of the answers to my initial email to the grid operators, reposted with permission.

Hello V,

Thanks for your interest in RPW, by the way nice site you have there. Im
answering just below each one of the question, please forgive my english as
is not my native language.

On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:14:51 -0600, V wrote:
> This is an enquiry e-mail via http://roleplayworlds.net/ from:
> V
>
> Hello there,
>
> I’m V of tgib.co.uk, where I plan on giving our readers an overview of all
> major opensim grids. Therefor, I’d like to ask you some questions about
> Role Play Worlds:
>
> 1. What audience is your grid aimed at?

A: Role Play Worlds, as the name suggest, is aimed to the gamer community,
at the moment to the gorean, middle aged fantasy and vampire role players.
The way we are bulding it, manage each world by separated (design, concept,
rules) regardless of be inside the same grid. Recently we start a general
purpose world, called Oasis Grid, which is non themed, users can relax,
share, and build at will.

>
> 2. Do you have any guidelines regarding PG or adult oriented content?

A: RPW is a 100% Mature grid, not underaged players are allowed as the
role play themes can involve adult content.

>
> 3. Is there an age limit for joining your grid?

A: Yes, the users must be over 18 years old. You can read the complete TOS
here:

http://roleplayworlds.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83&Itemid=188

>
> 4. Is there a theme to your grid? If yes, how do you introduce new members
> to it?

A: Yes Role Play Worlds is a multi theme enviroment, at the moment you can
find The Gorean Theme pretty advanced, a Fantasy Theme (kind of king arhur
legends, lotr, etc), a Vampire Theme (this last two themes are pretty new
about inworld building) and a Free Style Grid called Oasis Grid, that is a
free style theme for user to build anything. The grid have a General
Welcome Area for the themed worlds, all the needed information to get
started is there on the first login, plus there is always someone willing
to help the new commers. You can see the worlds maps here:

http://roleplayworlds.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=228&Itemid=205

>
> 5. Is your grid hypergrid enabled? If not, do you plan on incorporating
> hypergrid in the future?

A: Not at the moment as a way to protect the creators and merchants
contents and permissions. We really want to go hypergrid, but when it reach
a maturity level enough to protect the content created by the users.

>
> 6. Is it possible for users to connect their own regions to your grid?

A: No, RPW is a closed grid due several reasons, one of them is the
security of users creations. Allowing users to connect their regions to the
grid, open the possibility of hack the user creations rights. As a second
and no less important, is the reliablity, support, stability and planning.
The way we are building it give us total control of the grid, this allow us
to offer a quiality service, stability and quick support. By example,
imagine a medieval city on a region hosted by a user, full of players, we
cant control the server power to manage the region, or if the user go
offline or drop his server, everyone on the city will be kicked out and/or
the builds done by the users can be lost and there is no way for us to
control it. So in order to reach a organized enviroment, build the world
under a detailed plan, our option was be a closed grid.

>
> 7. Can users rent land from you? If yes, at which rates?

A: Yes users can rent land, parcels, buy regions, etc. The rates vary, we
have as a base cost 30$ setup fee and 30$ Montly Tier for a sim of 5k prims
and 30$ setup fee and 100$ montly tier for a 20k prim sim. The difference
between the cost is due that low prim sims share servers with other regions
and the full prim sims are managed in it own server/customer. The prim
limits, is more a stability limit that allow us to control the load and
stability on the regions, we started with a small limit, and we has been
rising to a level we have for sure is safe for the region stability. You
can find packages as well, that are cheaper than buy the regions
individually. by example 2 low prim sims pack is 30$ setup fee and 50$
Monthly, cheaper than get 2 low prim sims individually. You can see the
full list here:

http://roleplayworlds.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=96&Itemid=154

>
> 8. Is there a currency system built into your grid? If not, do you plan
on
> having one in the future?

A: Yes, we use a PayPal based system that make use of the payment features
of opensim/viewer (pay a user by a profile, pay a vendor, donate, rent,
etc) but instead of use a virtual currency, the payments are handle by
paypal in paypal secure enviroment. After the payment is done, the system
handle the process in world to update the rental scripts, ownership,
deliver, etc. We believe is much better a direct player to player economy
system without %, 3th parties or currency exchange.

>
> 9. What kind of resources are there to get more information about your
> grid?

A: You can find a lot of information, pics, etc on the web pages and in
the FAQs section at http://roleplayworlds.net and http://oasisgrid.com

>
> 10. How can users participate in how the grid is managed and built?
>

A: We are open to the community sugestion and help, a lot of work has been
done by residents in world, pretty nice builds and diff kind of creations,
even the General Role play Rules, that are grid wide, are discussed with
the community in the forums and updated if needed.

> 11. How are disputes handled between users or between the grid
management
> and users?

A: In rp any issues are managed by moderators, or regions owners, when
something need our attention is usually due copiers or someone breaking our
TOS. The community is pretty adult and usually manage the issues itself
pretty good. As grid we respect and support all the residents while they
act accordly to our terms of service.

>
> 12. Do you hold events? If yes, how are they announced? Also, can members
> hold their own events?

A: Yes, we have several nice features, like interactive live concerts,
where the users can listen, see the avatars band in world, the real band in
video and interact with them by the inworld chat. We promote the events on
the home page usually a week before. Another feature are live jams for
musicians, they can connect and jam online and the jamming session is
transmited inworld so the others users can listen them playing, is a real
nice experience. Members can hold their own events as well and make use of
the system and promote it on the web page as well.

>
> 13. Can we make this interview with your answers public on tgib.co.uk
> under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
> (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

Yes sure, thanks for contact us and my apologize for my english . I
hope you give us a visit and meet you in world soon. If need more info you
can reach us inworld droping a IM to Aramil Ewing, BlueWall Slade, Deoria
Delpiaz, Breey Kanto and Akiko Kujisawa, or mailing us to
info@roleplayworlds.net

>
> Thank you for your contribution. I look forward to hear from you.
>
> V
> http://tgib.co.uk/

1. when dead, players are teleported to a “death city” where they will spend time recuperating

OpenSim is special in the way that it is no service, but an open sourced platform which anyone can build their own services on. This leads to a great number of different implementations of the software, which resulted in a lot of public grids. All of them are hosting their own user base, and are usually not interconnected. Some of them could be your home. In order to give an overview on the existing grids, I collected basic information on a Grid List, and am starting to give a portrait of several grids. However, the choice is still up to you.

Some questions you might want to as yourself are: Will this grid still be in service tomorrow? There have been grid projects in the past that started very promising and with a lot of people signing up, only to disappear shortly thereafter. To sustain the credibility of the operator, at least some complete real-life identity informations about them would be useful. There is a surprising number of grids that do not even provide an email-adress for contact, leave alone information about the people running the site. (For the grid list, I included only those grids that at least provided an email contact.) Also, are the services as you imagined them? That’s hard to judge from the outside, so if you found a grid you like, log in and get around for a while before you start spending money on something. Is it laggy? Is it mainly empty? Do they provide you with some basic equipment, or are there offers to customize your avatar? All of these might be things you’d miss if you didn’t check them beforehand.

If your main incentive is to meet other people, take a look at the user base of the grid, and look for optional hypergrid support. Many grids are very small, and even on the largest of them the number of people online at a given time is rarely in the three digits. You will spend a lot of time going through empty regions unless you can find some social centers or connect to other grids occasionally. Similar questions arise when you want to make a business out of selling in-world creations. Without a large userbase, there won’t be many customers. Additionally, if a grid doesn’t offer a currency system or some other solution, you simply will not be able to sell (or buy) anything.

Can you do what you had in mind doing? Take a look at the terms of service, or a similar statement. Are you too young to join? Do they prohibit adult content? Will they allow you to connect your own region to their service? There are some questions that should be cleared up front.

Language barriers might be important for some. Several grids are language oriented, and chances are, you will meet people of that nationality or set of languages on the grid more than any others. That’s good if you only speak that one language and want to meet other people who can understand you.

I hope, the upcoming grid portaits may serve as a guidance for some. You should keep in mind that it is, still, your choice. Also, you don’t have to join any grid, if you don’t want to, and opt for having your own OpenSim installation. That’s the good thing about it: It is versatile enough to be able to meet anyone’s needs.

Source: Art Deco Bathroom

Please see the tutorial on how to import this creation.