Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Added Value

I promise-- this is my last post on scripting for a while!

27 January, 2009

Added Value

It’s one thing to kludge a script together and make it work; it’s quite another to make that script smart so the new owner can adjust its paramaters.

I quite frankly find it shameful for a seller to lock up a simple rotation or texture animation or sound loop script. The business part of such scripts is only one line, for goodness sakes! What are sellers thinking?

Many sellers take steps to ensure their customers can adjust the scripts in their products. I have some great hummingbirds from Animania and wandering octopii and sharks from Space Bums (yeah, I know, quite a name for an aquatics place!). I can touch them to rename them, turn them on and off, and set their wander range—and I can set the phantom status of the hummingbirds, which enjoy bumping you when they’re set to nonphantom. By editing a notecard, I can tweak any number of parameters in Outy Banjo’s fire, water, and fog scripts or Kitto Flora’s little steam train. And with Meiyo Sojourner's free lock door script I can use voice commands to lock or unlock a door and add and remove avatars from the access use.

Building in such controls takes effort, but gives an added value to a product. It justifies locking up the script.

1 comment:

WhiteRaven Slade said...

Wow.

That was grammatically frightful. I'd complain about THAT too. Who could have confidence in a company that can't seem to bother itself with intelligent communication?