CasperVend 2/Introduction
CasperVend 2 is the next evolution of a powerful networked vending system, which began life as CasperVend (v1). It often occupies the #1 spot on Marketplace under the Business category, and is the best selling vendor system in Second Life.
The development and progression of our technology has been brisk - so much so that we are truly pushing forward the technology in our field, and our competitors are forced to try to keep up with us.
Today, CasperVend has tens of thousands of active merchants and is approaching a million units rezzed inworld.
Mission Statement
CasperVend is the leading vending network in Second Life. It took us just one year to reach massive usage and popularity, thanks largely to our enthusiasm to push the limits in the following fields:
- Security
- Stability
- Customer support
- Speed
- Resource usage
- New technology and innovation
What is it?
CasperVend is a commerce solution that lets you monitor and control every aspect of your business. It is far more then a simple vending machine, yet it is very simple to use. It provides a centralised web-based system that allows you to add new products, change prices and watch your sales, without needing logging in to Second Life.
CasperVend is limitless. You can have as many products as you want, and as many vendors as you want. Our networked system is backed up with regular (hourly) backups, and enough capacity and redundancy to happily keep your sales network online even if we suffer a massive failure or network outage.
CasperVend will enhance your business presence in Second Life.
Purchase Options
CasperVend 2 is available in three flavours:
- CasperVend Free - Free to buy, includes affiliates. All sales (except merchant self-purchases) are charged a 5% fee.
- CasperVend Premium - L$1,995, includes affiliates. Commission free, apart from affiliate vendors which charge 2% per transaction.
- CasperVend Fat Pack - L$2,995, includes the Premium vendors and also includes all of our current expansion packs.
What vendors are there?
Free / Premium Vendor Pack
- 1-Prim Scroller - Land impact: 1.
- 1-Prim Static - Land impact: 1.
- 3 Panel Strip - Land impact: 3.
- 3-Prim Stand Scroller - Land impact: 2.
- 5 Panel Strip - Land impact: 1.
- 7 Panel Flat - Land impact: 4.
- 7 Panel PrimSaver - Land impact: 2.
- 7 Panel - Land impact: 4.
- 7 Panel Vertical Flat - Land impact: 4.
- 7 Panel Vertical - Land impact: 4.
- 9 Panel PrimSaver - Land impact: 2.
- 13 Panel Flat - Land impact: 7.
- 13 Panel - Land impact: 7.
- Headless - Land impact: 0 - for use in your own objects
- Touch - Land impact: 1
- TwoFaced - Land impact: 1. Shows product texture on both sides.
- Mesh Vendor 7 panel
- Mesh Vendor 13 panel
HoloVend Expansion Pack
- HoloVendors in legacy prims
- CasperVend HoloVend Legacy (1.x style)
- CasperVend HoloVend PrimSaver
- CasperVend HoloVend 1-Prim Scroller
- CasperVend HoloVend 1-Prim Static
- CasperVend HoloVend (Small Items)
- CasperVend HoloVend Platform
- HoloVendors in Mesh
- CasperVend HoloVend Mesh Style 1
- CasperVend HoloVend Mesh Style 2
- CasperVend HoloVend Mesh Style 3
- CasperVend Holovend Mesh Style 4
- CasperVend HoloVend Mesh (Small Items)
- Scripted Tools
- CasperTech Rez-Free [Boxed] - (Contains the Rez-Free Tracker script)
- JEVN Import Tools (v3)
- CasperVend Redelivery Terminal
- Scripts
- HoloVend Tracker 2.x script
- CasperVend Mapping Helper
- Instructional Notecards
- 1) Holovendor 2.X Readme
- 2) Mesh Vendors - Script Usage!
- 3) IMPORTANT- Notes for existing users
- 4) IMPORTANT - About the Permissions Statement
- UpgradeBees
- 5) UpgradeBee DROPBOXES ONLY v2.x
- 6) UpgradeBee HOLOVENDORS ONLY v2.x
- Customisation
- Templates + Customisation [Boxed]
Vendor Expansion Packs
These are additional vendor styles that work with the CasperVend system. These do not come with a dropbox. (The HoloVend and Quantity Vendor DO require dropbox operation, so they must be used with either a Free or Premium vendor pack. The TextureVend can operate as a stand-alone product.) The available CasperTech vendor expansion packs currently are:
- HoloVend - Our rezzing vendor. Currently includes 11 vendors, with some mesh styles.
- Quantity Vendor - Sell multiple copies of an item in a single transaction.
- TextureVend - Our lightweight texture vendor. It allows you to sell many textures quickly without the need to create a new product for each one.
Promotional Expansion Packs
There are promotional packs that also work with the CasperVend system. Like the vendor expansion packs, these do not come with a dropbox. The available CasperTech promotional expansion packs currently are:
- Gacha! - A new, really fun way to spice up the shopping experience for your customers. When your customer pays a price (up to 4 price points are configurable), a random prize is awarded!
- Gift Cards - Our gift card system plugs right into CasperVend (and supports all of our plugins). It allows you to sell or give out cards with a balance that customers can use to buy things in your store.
- Lucky Chair - Our unique lucky chair system allows you to connect right into your existing CasperVend setup to give out prizes to your loyal customers!
- Midnight Madness - Reward traffic with prizes!
Third Party Plugins
Some fellow CasperTech merchants and landlords have made "plugin" items that work with the CasperTech line of products. You can see vendors for these various plugins in the CasperTech Creator Showcase inworld.
New Technology
We are well known in the industry for innovating and pushing the boundaries of our field:
- We were the first large networked vending system to introduce single script operation - and we are still the only company to offer ALL of our vendors with only a single script, using 0.002ms of script time each on average.
- We were the first to release very prim efficient mesh vendors - permitting a good looking 7 panel vendor using just one prim, and a 13 panel vendor using just two.
- We were the first to include marketplace integration as standard; our customers have always been able to integrate their marketplace sales with our system, to provide all of their customers with redeliveries and updates, as well as getting intuitive, clean and informative statistics across the board.
- We were the first to add full transaction tracking for our customers (and for their customers). Anyone who purchases from a CasperVend vendor can see a full transaction log showing exactly what's happening with their delivery - this gives huge peace of mind to our merchants and their customers.
- We were the first to introduce video support in our vendors - with CasperVend 2.0, users can now view videos either from hosted mp4 files or directly from youtube. This adds a whole new level to vending in Second Life - merchants can show exactly how their products look and work.
- We were the first to use precaching on our vendors. The invisible faces of most of our vendors are used to invisibly preload textures so the user doesn't have to wait around.
- We continually invest in new technology to keep CasperVend faster than our competitors.
History
CasperVend was originally released in September 2010 after around one year of development. It was developed with no intention of being released to the public - Casper didn't like the existing vendor networks on offer, and developed CasperVend for his own use. Soon though, the public interest in CasperVend got so large that CasperVend had to be released to the public.
The 1.0 suite of vendors was released with many of the features our users love today, such as having only a single script in each vendor, and the ability to link CasperVend to marketplace sales. However, one area that we were and always have been devoted to is providing a good service to our customers - and a lot of this involves developing the service to meet the needs of our customers.
Second Life is a very diverse place, and over time we added new features and expanded the capabilities of the CasperVend network. Eventually, it was clear that our current units were reaching their capacity, and we needed a complete redesign.
CasperVend 2.0 was launched on the 6th of February 2012, after two weeks of beta testing. The final release was first used by 7Seas in their new bait vendors - exploiting the great financial security that CasperVend has, a point where other systems had let them down in the past.