making sim-on-a-stick your own at i live in science land

making sim-on-a-stick your own

yesterday’s post about sim-on-a-stick being used by a primary school, which is known as elementary school though the 6th grade in the US, led to some good questions here, via twitter, LinkedIn, and in email. the biggest concern seems to be how to have a different default avatar

the beauty of sim-on-a-stick is that it is not something you install (and that’s part of the issue for not having a Mac version – the Mac version of MoWeS wants to install a piece on the root machine). sim-on-a-stick is not an installable program, it’s just a a folder of files. unzipping that folder does not change any registry settings or install anything on the host computer. the only thing that can create additional files on the host machine are the viewer’s cache files. it does not really matter where those files are created, they just help the world load faster as a convenience. those cache files don’t need to move with your sim-on-a-stick – all your work is saved into the SQL files in the sim-on-a-stick folder and thus remainfully portable

if you build on your regions, import textures, change your avatar, and/or add new avatars, they all stay together in your sim-on-a-stick folders. that allows you to copy your sim-on-a-stick folder to any PC or USB stick and have all of the changes you made. this is more portable than say a Word document. if i write a Word document and say “all men are created equal” and then give you that document and you change it to “all women are created equally” (say no to flat adverbs), then the next time anyone opens that Doc, it has those latest changes. sim-on-a-stick is one step better – you don’t need to have any program installed on your machine =)

this magic happens because of the work that Roger Stack did to show us how to make a “live usb stick”. the sim-on-a-stick folder (whether on a stick or on a hard drive) basically acts like a mini server with Apache, PHP, and MyQL

sorry Ernie, i'm not so good at making avatars

this “mini server” allows for Crista Lopes’ Diva Distro of OpenSim to run in a self-contained manner. Crista’s Diva build includes her Wifi console which lets you create as many accounts as you like – Susie Student, Ernie Ecolier, and even your real name! =)

you can import educational tools, load complete regions (OAR files), and anything your heart desires. whatever you have in your inventory and rezzed out in the regions will be there when you copy your sim-on-a-stick folder (soas072_imp132 folder, for example)

making your own version of sim-on-a-stick is straightforward – create accounts, create skins, shapes, outfits, regions, et cetera. if you use the version with Imprudence, you can log in as the new account name, say Ernie Ecolier, and then the next time it fires up it will be with Ernie’s name. make several accounts and create those new avatars in-world and save their shapes, skins, and outfits into named inventory folders

once you have everything set the way you want, just zip up your sim-on-a-stick folder and distribute it

creating accounts via Wifi, and more sim-on-a-stick tips, are listed on the sim-on-a-stick posts page =)

written by Ener Hax

February 11th, 2012 at 9:50 am

posted in virtual worlds

tagged with opensim on usb drive

[...] making sim-on-a-stick-your own – feb 11 customize your stick distribution [...]

sim-on-a-stick posts at i live in science land

11 Feb 12 at 9:56 am

While I adopted SoaS because it has MySQL included and configured, the fact that SoaS is not an installed product has been something of a hidden bonus. I am constantly wiping things and reloading them as I build and develop Excelsior Station. All I really need to do is save my OARs and IARs and I am good to go if I really screw up any settings (which I do as part of the learning process).
Further to that, I recently copied my sim to a stick and was able to go around and show some people locally what VWs actually look like, rather than leave them trying to picture what I am describing. ( They love my purple skin :-D )

Sarge Misfit

11 Feb 12 at 10:14 am

that is such a perfect use case of sim-on-a-stick, especially being able to show others on any PC =)

if it had not been for Roger Stack, this would have never been so easy

Ener Hax

11 Feb 12 at 10:20 am

What has Minecraft and Sim-on-a-Stick got in common?

Answer: They both took a foundation implementation, and then improved it, and presented it to be palatable to a wider audience.

In the case of Minecraft, the creator Markus Persson, expanded on a game called Infini-miner made by Zachtronics. Markus introduced more options, packaged it better, and the rest is history.

There is a country mile between a product, and a shrink wrapped product. Sim-on-a-stick was a vehicle that allowed the Coffs Harbour example.

Sim-on-a-stick is very significant in the evolution of Opensim.

Breen Whitman

11 Feb 12 at 3:26 pm

one of the nicest posts i ever have read and i read millions
when the kids try at home the younger kids will see
it and want their own.
soas = the new frisbee?

stiofain

11 Feb 12 at 9:51 pm

it was neat seeing the success of the school in New South Wales – kids love being creative and adults should too! i think it’s a fundamental part of human nature =)

12 Feb 12 at 4:21 pm

lol Breen, the comparison stops there – if i could only monetize SoaS? well, that’s not in my nature, i am very happy to see so many people use it – that’s a testament to how nicely OpenSim has been coming together – i can’t imagine where OpenSim (Overte) will be in a year! OpenSim just runs very smoothly =)

12 Feb 12 at 4:23 pm

I was hoping this blog would tell us how to change the input log-in names to our own and the password to something else. Maybe I missed seeing that somewhere, but it would be nice if its possible to do that easily to match my avi name for SL, OSGrid to be the same on my USB drive world too. Thx!

Sentra

18 Mar 12 at 10:07 am

hi Sentra! fear noot, it is very easy but you do have to know what to do! =)

i will make a video for that today and post in this afternoon! =)

thanks for the shout out!

18 Mar 12 at 10:55 am

What would be cool to see is if this could be ported to a linux variant. I’m particularly thinking of “TurnKey Linux” which is used to run your own wordpress blogs and similiar websites. I little bit of tweaking on a vanilla Turnkey configuration could produce cool results.

I’m not that much into coding – but if it’s just a matter of a little translation in getting your sim on a stick to work on a linux system – this would be awesome.

The only key requirement for turnkey linux is either a spare comuter that’s not being used, or a computer running a virtual machine software like vmware or virtualbox.