Creating Content - Making A Training Session

So going to take you on a journey of creating a new training session. It's going to be a hoot. And a hollar. If you'd like to play along, I'm assuming you have the Content Contributors stuff already unpacked and in your inventory. If not, you're going to get lost in a hurry. Hell, I'm going to get lost for you, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Just as an aside, this isn't my normal workflow process. As the guy who wrote all of this stuff, I have subtle things that happen here and there when it comes to bundling behind the scenes. I'll try to avoid those steps. Anyway, a normal lifecycle looks something like:

1. Dream up an idea
2. Create the script
3. Refine the script
4. Upload the script to the Contributor Portal

For many purposes, that's all there is to it. You can automatically use your new creation either on yourself (or a trainer use on you) or when you're training others. It's yours. But if you're wanting to sell or distribute your new session, the lifecycle extends:

5. Prepare the Content Distribution HUD
6. Your own vendor management

Those last two can get tricky, according to how you like doing things. So let's begin!

1. Dream up an idea

Let's say we're considering a "BBC Worship" training script (I say this because I just did do one a few days ago) ... Where to begin? What's it about? What's the objective? I actually have a lot of problems here, but so many people have so many seriously badass ideas. I doubt anyone who's reading this would even consider this a step like I do. But it's where I begin, all the same.

2. Create the script

OK so what I tend to do is write the script first and then add in the bells and whistles like subliminals and such in step 3. This is where several "macros" are very important.

- {0} gets replaced with the trainer's name
- {1} gets replaced with the subject's name
- {gender} gets replaced with the subject's gender
- {title} gets replaced with the trainer's title
- \n gets replaced with a new line character, so you can do multi-line things.

All in all, something that looks similar to:

Relax, {1}
Just relax for {0} now
Nothing to do
Nowhere to go
So just relax for {0}
Let your mind drift now
Breathe deeply, {1}
Deep breaths in through the nose
And exhale slowly through your mouth
And with each deep breath you'll find yourself relaxing more, {1}
Good {gender}

Fairly easy, right? Each line is displayed to the subject with those tokens replaced. Keep them in mind, because they're useful in the other commands, too.

In the Creator's bundle, there's a notecard just for explaining macros. It's important. Read it.

3. Refine the script

Here's where all of the fun crap happens, like subliminals, broadcasts, whispers, and all kinds of stuff. You can make a script do special things. Normally, I start off with the training itself and then circle back and add all of this fun stuff. You have a lot of these commands at your disposal, and the content editor on the portal tries to keep an up to date list of what you can do. But at it's heart, a "command" is a line that begins with ":" (a colon, minus the quotes). So here's a snippet kind of illustrating this:

:subliminal 3|I am fixated for {0}
Whisper to yourself for {0}\n"I am fixated for {0}"
:subliminal 3|I am focused for {0}
Whisper to yourself for {0}\n"I am focused for {0}"
:subliminal 3|I obey {0}
Whisper to yourself for {0}\n"I obey {0}"
:subliminal 3|I submit to {0}
Whisper to yourself for {0}\n"I submit to {0}"
:subliminal 3|I must fixate for {0}
Whisper to yourself for {0}\n"I must fixate for {0}"
:subliminal 3|I must focus for {0}
Whisper to yourself for {0}\n"I must focus for {0}"
:subliminal 3|I must obey {0}
Whisper to yourself for {0}\n"I must obey {0}"
:subliminal 3|I must submit to {0}

The ":subliminal 3|text" tells the system to do something. In this case, it's telling the system to display a subliminal "text" for up to three seconds. There's a whole lot more like that. I have a strong tendency to use subliminals a lot along with with the ":broadcast" and ":saytostarter" commands.

A helpful reminder here is that these commands ONLY WORK IN INDUCTIONS, TRAININGS, and AWAKENINGS. Things like subliminals, broadcasts, devotions, and such are limited to the "{0}", "{1}" macros.

Much like the macros, there's a notecard in the bundle dealing with the commands and what you have available to you. Read it. Really. 

4. Upload the script to the Contributor Portal

Oh man now we're at the fun part. Screenshots, y'all!

First off, wear your Contributor HUD (In Firestorm, right-click and select Add):

Should show up on your right hand side:

Rock on. Now "touch" the HUD. You're going to get a popup asking you to go to a web page. Of course, you want to do this:

Now you should be at your Contributor Home Page. Looks something like:

Now we're cookin' ... Rock on! So for our purposes, we're going to click on "My Trainings":

Now keep in mind I've got a ton of stuff in mind. What you see will likely be a lot less populated. The important thing here is the "Add" button. Click on that.

OK so you have a "Title" and you have "Content", and a legend with some of the various macros and commands available to you just for verification. It's very important here that title be unique (and by unique, I mean across the entire system, so choose your title wisely). As a pro tip of sorts, I try to always use the word "Training" in the title, usually in parentheses. This just gives nice visual indicators later on.

Now once you have your content in, you should have something looks kind of like:

Save it and let it do its thang. Voila! You're done. You have officially added your own content.

You should be able to use your content anywhere it's supported. You can use it on others and you can have others use it with you. It's yours. 

Now something to keep in mind. Don't be afraid of experimentation. You can always come back and edit your content to correct any mistakes or make additions. So nothing's etched in stone here. You're free to mangle at will, and I encourage that. Creating this stuff is far more of an art form than it is a science, and I don't have a lock on the best approach by any means.

4A - What now?

I'm not going to get into the Content Distribution HUD so much in this one. It's already gotten too long. But you can do a lot right from the web, and you may not even need the Content Distribution HUD immediately.

Why's that? Well, the Contributor Portal lets you "share" your content with others. When you're in the Trainings page, you should see a list of your trainings. To the right of each training are several icons:

See that arrow to the right? Yeah that's the one. If you want to share your creation, click on that. You're going to get a popup box asking for a Second Life account name:

Just like it says, don't do their display name. Has to be their username or their SL UUID. For your sanity, go for the username and click OK. Now if the user exists and is valid, you should see a new popup asking you to confirm this:

Click OK. You should get one last popup box to confirm this is all good:

Congrats! The recipient of your love will now have your creation available to them. All very cool and stuff.

Now I went to all this effort precisely so people wouldn't have to mess with the mechanics of the Content Client unless they wanted to sell their content. I figure the vast majority of folks want to create their own customized content for their own personal use with limited distribution, and I applaud and encourage that.

Pre-5 And 6

The next steps all require basic understandings of building in Second Life, especially when it comes to setting up your own vendors. But when dealing with the Content Client, you need to know how to set permissions on objects and content within an object. It's not that hard, really, just a little mysterious if it's your first foray into the weirdness that is Second Life.

5 - Prepare the Content Distribution HUD

I'll do this separately at some point, as the Content Client is a beast unto itself. The bundle has a pretty comprehensive guide on it. What you'll need is the "content key". In the listing of your trainings, there's a convenient "copy content key" icon (it'll be the one on the left). That's what you plug in to the "content-key" notecard (of course without ANY spaces, blank lines, and so on).

6 - Your own Vendor Management

This is so far out of scope of any one tutorial I won't even scratch the surface. I will share that I use and I explicitly trust the entire CasperVend line of products. It's beyond great, friendly support, lots of documentation, and almost always beats SL at the "laggy-weird-shit-happening" game.