the great inventory challenge
When I said hi to Gogo this morning, she mentioned to me how she’d been working on sorting her inventory since the grid was having a bit of a fit, and pointed me towards the official Second Life blog where there was a post about inventory management.
The Linden blogpost includes a link to a Knowledge Base article about inventory management, which you can find here. I took a look at it and this particular sentence amused me: “Searching for an item in your inventory can be a frustrating affair; some Residents have over 15,000 inventory items to sort through!“
Lol, “some”? Perhaps this is indicative of the kind of social circles (crazed fashion enthusiasts with accounts that are roughly a year old or older) that I move in (hrmm LOL at the term ’social circles’ seeing that I am actually a bit of an introvert) but most of my friends are packing inventory counts that are in excess of 25,000. My own inventory currently stands at 22,700+ and this is AFTER I’d deleted roughly 3,000 items’ worth of skin/hair demos, landmarks, and unpacking scripts. And then I’ve heard of people carrying 45k, 50k, even 75k worth of stuff.
Which brings me to an interesting comment that Phoenix Linden posted in the thread following that blogpost (italics and bold are my own):
When you copy an item in your inventory, we only copy the data for the inventory reference to the asset and do not generate a new asset, and thus no asset server load. I designed, implemented, and deployed the inventory databases (now called agent store when we bother to use the new-fangled language) in Second Life 1.4. Currently there are something like 60 machines in that cluster and other than the simulators themselves have proven themselves to be one of our most scalable technologies.
However, we do not currently cap inventory count on a per-agent basis, and too many inventory items can degrade your performance. When originally authored the inventory was never meant to hold more than 1,000 items. After a few iterations and optimizations I estimate that current viewer systems should be able to track around 20,000 inventory items without serious performance degradation. Periodically cleaning out your lost&found and trash will improve your experience and reduce system load.
Holy hell… never meant to hold more than 1,000 items? For real? And what kind of performance degradation are we talking about? I’m already using a laptop with limited graphics power; if I’m experiencing yet more performance issues because of a matter that is completely under my control (inventory bloat), then it’s time to take action. You know, I was really proud of the fact that my inventory had dropped from 25k+ to a little under 22k several weeks ago but now I’m suddenly feeling quite motivated to get my count whittled down even further.
Before I can really start cutting out chunks of my inventory, however, the anal freak in me wants to assess how it’s currently organized. My biggest folders are my Clothing folder, Hair folder, Objects folder (cringe cringe and cringe again), and my Textures folder. I think my Clothing folder is as organized as I’ll ever get it, this is how the current folder heirarchy looks:
Clothing
- BareRose/GOTH/PUNK etc
- BAGS & PURSES
- BELTS
- DRESSES
- GLASSES
- HATS SCARVES & GLOVES
- JACKETS
- LINGERIE
- WHOLE OUTFITS
- PANTS
- SHOES
- SHORTS
- SKIRTS
- SUITS
- SWIMWEAR
- T-SHIRTS
- TOPS
Each of those folders contain more subfolders. More sub-categories are at the top, then folders by designers, then folders for individual items by designers I don’t have much from. This is what my DRESSES folder looks like, for example (not presented in it’s entirety because it’s way too effin’ long):
DRESSES
- ! ASIAN
- ! FORMAL/WEDDING
- !! <3 Cupcakes
- !! artilleri
- !! Baiastice Haute Couture
- !! bossa nova
- !! canimal
- !! Evie’s Closet
- !! Fireflies
- (CS) Sweetie dress
- (PixelDolls) Amoreux: Red
- (Simone!) Tin Roof Slip Dress in Black
I use the exclamation points as a way to place certain folders ahead of others. My Hair folder is similar in that it, too, is organized by designer name.
As for my Objects folder, quite frankly I’m kind of scared to look at it, haha.
Textures… I am not really sure how I should go about organizing it. I started making use of my textures folder only after I’d been in SL for about half a year or so; prior to that I was mainly a consumer and hadn’t really explored building. (That’s changed now ^^) Because of this, my Texture folder’s state of organization has mostly been ignored, and I’ve been freely dumping things in there without much thought. There’s lots of unorganized folders containing textures by various texture sellers, textures I’ve made for myself, and approximately ten gajillion snapshots.
I kind of don’t even know where to start, lol. Help? ^_^
*THIS POST TO BE CONTINUED ONCE I GET A CLUE AS TO HOW TO DEAL WITH MY TEXTURES FOLDER*
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About
About Melanie
I started this blog a couple of months after joining Second Life (SL) in February 2007. I’d actually intended for Grid Expectations to be an ongoing documentation of my friendships, virtual travels, and experiences in SL. I’ve since discovered, however, that one of the biggest pleasures of virtual life is playing with my avatar as if she were my Barbie doll, and this is reflected in the way this blog is dominated by posts about SL fashion.
SL has been a fascinating ride thus far. I’ve met some pretty amazing people, made new friends, explored the complexities and issues peculiar to online relationships, discovered my inner fashionista, seen some truly innovative things, and marveled at the astounding possibilities SL presents. The best part of it all? Having been exposed to different ways of thinking and perceiving things. 
It’s a great reminder that we truly are limited only by what we can imagine.
I’ve also recently begun exploring a new virtual reality called Blue Mars. Blue Mars is still in Beta, but what is in there so far is gorgeous and I’m excited to see how it will evolve. I’ll be posting about Blue Mars on this blog as I explore and learn more about that world, too.
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Visit my store & buy my stuff :p
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It would be nice if we could filter searches by creator as well — it would make organizing textures and photos THAT MUCH EASIER.
Comment by gogolita | May 31, 2008
I agree, that would be awesome.
Comment by melaniekiddofsl | May 31, 2008
Hello, my name is Wilma Delgado and I am an SL crackhead shopaholic. My inventory is sitting at a mere 42,900. This is after I deleted about 10k over the Christmas holidays. Yes, I know that I’m sick and I need professional help. Grins..so, does anyone wanna go shopping with me?
Comment by Wilma Delgado | May 31, 2008
My God, I thought I was bad at Just under 14k… That’s after whittleing it down and getting rid of a bunch of stuff I knew I’d never use or wear…
Comment by Velicia | May 31, 2008
LMAO! OMG! I am at 56K, and YOU should check out the Fashionista Closet, TP tp Sparkle Skye’s store. I am currently working on moving all my inventory there. I recently deleted over 2K of Notecards, and 4K of “objects”
and gasp over 1K of champagne glasses (empty). Lindens better step it up, Cause I still have shopping to do.
Comment by Whimsy Winx | May 31, 2008
31592 and counting!
Comment by Summerz | May 31, 2008
Wow, my inventory is only at 15k and once I clean up it’ll be back to 10k. Thing is this, I have a husband who COMPLAINS constantly if he sees my inventory get out of control. You’d keep it under control if you heard, “Do you understand the strain the asset db is under with that inventory?” I also get the “How many prims is that necklace? HOLY COW Do you understand the lag that creates?” lecture too. Being married to a programmer blows.
As for your textures folders I do this:
1 folder for my lauren fox textures
1 folder for all my jewelry textures (most of the textures are not needed but I do texture things before building)
1 folder for my clothing textures (I organize in folders by what the item is)
then I have random folders for: building – separated in woods, stones, windows, cupboards, etc etc
clothing: materials I can use for clothing, sorted by polka dots, etc etc… it’s personal how you sort heh.
Anyway, hope that helps.
Comment by Kesseret | May 31, 2008
The best help for cleaning my inventory came from Teagan Blackthorne in this post: http://gridexpectations.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/great-inventory-challenge/#comments
How I organize:
Hair: by style, short, long, medium, updo, with hats. I have all my red hair in one folder – just the shade I wear. I have storage boxes for the rest of my hair and pull it out only when needed. I have a box for long, short, etc. I do keep about 5 sets of multiple colors in a folder called favs.
Clothing: By Type: Pants, Sweaters, Tops, etc. and then inside those, by color.
Objects:
Household:
Landscaping:
Gadgets:
Business Equipment:
Building
Archives: (where I store the boxes I store archived hair, textures, etc)
Textures, I have folders for each client and keep them active about 4 weeks after their shoot. Then I put them into THINC’s texture organizer. I also use texture organizers for Glass, Walls, Terrain, Floors, Wood, etc. One organizer holding 100 textures cuts way down on the inventory.
Comment by Cajsa Lilliehook | June 11, 2008