Inventory Control

When you're brand-spanking new in Second Life, you may only have a couple hundred items in your inventory, and finding stuff is easy. Beware! Once you find the freebies (and that will happen fast, since there are many at Help Island, your first stop after Orientation Island), your inventory will explode to several thousand items. Keep a tight rein on your inventory! Second Life has no set limits on inventory size - your only limit is the time it takes to log in. The more inventory you have, the more items have to load, and that takes more time.

I'm trying to get my inv down to 15k (15 thousand). Right now I'm at 23k. I've still got a ways to go. :P

Some tips on how to tame the inventory monster:

1) Go through and eliminate duplicates. This is both easier and harder than it sounds. Easier because you can set your inventory to sort by name, and items with the same name will show up together. Harder because sometimes identical items will have different names. Especially textures.

When you're doing a mass search-and-destroy on dupes, it helps to throw them all into one folder so you don't have to search for them one by one.

2) Put stuff into folders. Just like on your hard drive, folders makes it easier to find things when you need them. You can have folders in folders too. For instance, if you were sorting textures, you can have folders for Fabric, Wood, Stone/Brick/Concrete, etc., and then sort those int sub-catagories, eg., Fabrics>Floral, Wood>Planks, Stone/Brick/Concrete>Marble, etc. Just don't go *too* far, or you'll have a heck of a time finding what you need.

3) Use keywords and special characters. If an item can be modified, it can be renamed. (If it can't, you can always throw it into a folder and rename the folder.) Torley shows this in one of his tutorials. He used the example of a red go-cart: (red vehicle cart), although I would abbreviate vehicle to veh. You're probably wondering why you don't just throw it into a Vehicle folder. Well, you can - but the keyword helps you round up all those vehicles to include them in the folder!

Special characters: I use special characters on folders that I want to sort in a particular way. If I want something to show up at the top of my inventory or the folder it's in, I use *, !, or ). If I want something to show up on the bottom, I use ~. I haven't worked out the exact sorting order, but it probably follows the standard ASCII order. I also use n), where n is a number or letter. This is handy for when you don't want things in strict alphabetical order.

4) Empty your Trash frequently! Until you empty that puppy, stuff inside still shows on your inventory count. This is bad if you're trying to slim down your inv; good if you deleted something by accident. It's not gone gone till you empty the trash. Until then, you can root around in there and reclaim anything that's not supposed to be there.

5) Toss whatever you're not using! I'm a packrat in real life and it carried over into Second Life, so I know it's painful to throw things away. You're always thinking, "What if I need this someday?" Suck it up! If you won't use it, don't give it a home. In Second Life you don't have to worry about recycling, landfills, hazardous waste, etc. - all those items you cherish are really nothing but records in a database. Freebies in particular can be nuked without a qualm - if you really need that item again, you can go grab another copy.

6) If you really, *really* don't want to nuke that item (eg that sports car you paid L$5000 for), you can always toss it into a prim. Just go to a place where you can build, rez a box, go to the contents tab, and drag your item(s) into the prim's inventory. Name your box something you can find later (I like to use the keyword (arc) to find my storage prims), and take it into your inventory. Now you can nuke the originals in your inventory. Caution: if you put No Modify items in the prim, the whole prim will become No-Mod (ie, you won't be able to change the name). It's best to rename the prim before you add the contents just in case. Yeah, I know I should have written it that way above, but I've got a cat in my arms and it's hard to type! :P

I have no idea how many items can be put into a prim. I suspect you can put your entire inventory into a single prim if you have a mind to. But that would be a bad idea. For one thing, it would make it incredibly hard to find anything (you can't search a prim's inventory); for another, prim inventories take just as long to display as a regular inventory does to load. Also, you can't access a prim's contents unless you can rez it. Oh, you can temporarily "Wear" the prim on your hand in a no-rez zone and get at the contents that way, but you'll look like a complete noob.

Storage prims can be put into other storage prims. You cannot put folders into prims, you have to open the folders and put the contents into the prim. But you can make a prim for each sub-folder, then put these "sub-prims" into a main prim. And the main prim can be put into *another* prim. And so on.

Full-perm items (ie, items which allow copy, modify, and transfer) can be stored on notecards. This is convenient because notecards don't have to be rezzed to access the contents. Just create a new notecard, RENAME IT, and drag your items onto the notecard. Save the notecard. Nuke the original. These archive notecards can even be put onto other notecards if you still need the space!

7) Speaking of storage prims, don't forget the virtues of specialized organizers. These include posestand/animation organizers, texture organizers, and sculptie previewer/organizers. They're basically glorified scripted prims, but they are really handy for seeing just what you have. Unless you're good at scripting, you'll want to obtain them from a third party. Try out the freebie organizers from Yadni's (Leda/210/28/54) or the Stillman Bazaar (Stillman/146/122/31) before you spend money.


Last word: Inventory control is an on-going process. It's been said that inventory sorting is the most popular hobby in Second Life. :) Don't think just because you've whipped your inventory into shape that you can sit back and relax. Every time you get something new, you will need to put it in its place. And inventory organization is not writ in stone. What works for you now may not work six months from now, and you'll have to reorganize.


I will probably be adding to this post as I think of more tips, so keep an eye on it!