Chey in Fireworks

Written 24 July, 2008

Chey in Fireworks

Watching fireworks in Second Life is in some respects better than watching them in real life.

No mosquitoes, for instance—unless you deliberately buy them and place them on the land.

No rainouts.

But most of all, it would be pretty darn difficult in RL to fly up into the fireworks and let them explode all around you.

Independence Day Fireworks at Whimsy Kaboom

Written 23 July, 2008

Independence Day Fireworks at Whimsy Kaboom

The Fourth of July holiday saw two great fireworks shows on our Whimsy Kaboom sim. We had an early show to accommodate Second Life’s Europeans, and another after most of the U.S. was dark.

At Sweetie’s rez day celebration Fnordian Link told us about two HUD-based fireworks systems—the Decuir system and the Cubeos system (I found Cubeos on www.SLExchange.com). Both systems happened to be on sale through the Fourth, so I bought one. And then the other for Sweetie. And then the other for myself. And then the other one (for Sweetie) for her. What all this means is we both had both systems.

As my entire experience with SL fireworks had consisted of setting off freebie rockets and sitting in the grass last Independence Day and watching a fireworks show, I was a bit apprehensive about coming up to speed on the Decuir and Cubeos systems, but I needn’t have worried. It was easy to set up shows.

We used demos for the first show. Sweetie, being Sweetie, insisted we tweak for the second show, so we spent about ninety minutes beforehand setting out emitters and deciding when they would be triggered.

We had big crowds for both shows (I had listed them in Events). The shows ran without a hitch. Sim performance was spectacular during the first show. The second show started out fine, but the sim was hit with massive time lag about halfway through.

Now, fireworks are particles, and particles don’t lag a sim (the rezzing of the emitters might), but earlier we had two shows running simultaneously and about 15 avatars on the sim with no time dilation of sim frame rate slowdown—so what was up?

I don’t know, but I suspect one of two things: either SL was cutting up or one or more of the avatars present at the evening show had Avatar Rendering Costs of 20,000 or so (don’t laugh; see the next post). I think next time we have an event I’ll ask a friend to keep tabs on ARC for me.

The lag, however, didn’t make much of a difference, as people were just standing and watching the show.

I’m considering creating a custom fireworks show, using both systems, and setting it to run every two hour or so in a theater up in the sky.

Rez Day Party for Sweetie

Written 22 July, 2008

Rez Day Party for Sweetie

June 29th was Sweetie’s second rez day. Just think about it! Two years in Second Life.

Saying nothing to Sweetie, I decided to set up a celebration.

Since we have no venue at Whimsy, I IMed my brother Mordecai Scaggs and asked if we might use his dirigible for the festivities. Of course he said yes.

At Mordecai’s suggestion, I IMed disk jockey Gabrielle Riel; fortunately, she had an opening.

I made an invitation and mailed it to our friends and acquaintances, asking them to come to a surprise party for Sweetie.

An hour before the allotted time I made an excuse, zipped over to Caledon Tanglewood, and flew up to the Rakehell (for some reason, there are no direct TPs in Tanglewood). I set out a big rug, a few chairs, and banners and talked briefly with Gabrielle, who had arrived early to set up.

I teleported home and immediately got a notice all of my objects had been returned! Grrr! I had forgotten to put on Mordecai’s tag. So I went BACK to the Rakehell and set everything out again.

I again returned to Whimsy, and on the hour, I asked Sweetie to follow me. When we arrived on the Rakehell, there was already an assemblage of people, and…

SURPRISE! They all shouted.

I’ve been to quite a few parties in Second Life, but I have to say this was the very best. The music was great, the Rakehell was beautiful and roomy, and we were surrounded by friends and Second Life family. We all danced, chatted, and, after a time, started rezzing particles.

Sweetie, as usual, provided the light show, using her own avatar as the source. Somehow, she’s able to get blinding intensities of light from her Mystitool. The bathed the entire front half of the HUGE Rakehell in multicolored light.

Our friend Fnordian Link arrived and set out one of his new creations, which rezzed big bright letters that floated in lines in the air, following the chat. We had lots of fun touching the letters to pop them.

I’d originally thought an hour would suffice, but toward the end of the first hour I negotiated with Garbrielle for additional time. The party wound up lasting two hours, and nobody wanted it to be over!

Special thanks to Mordecai and Gabrielle, and to Greg Paslong for sending us his photos of the event. I am making heavy use of them in a ThincBook I’m making in commemoration of my Sweetie’s one and only second rez day.

Another Impossible Task

Written 21 July, 2008

Another Impossible Task

Sweetie is always setting impossible building and scripting tasks for me.

“Oh, nice door. But wouldn’t it be cool if it was a big metal door in three sections like an airlock? And of course you’ll need a space station to go with it. And we’ll need a big rocket so we can ride up to it. And spacesuits! We must have spacesuits! And laser guns! Can you have it all by tomorrow?”

Most recently, Sweetie decided she wanted a walking broom. Yeah, like the broom in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment of Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

Think about it: a broom that walks, carrying buckets of water.

And not only that; she wanted a version that would grab itself and work its handle to sweep the floor.

I tried to tell her there’s no dirt to sweep in Second Life, but she clouded up. “Sweetie must have her self-sweeping broom!”

And so I made one for her.

Making a broom wasn’t too difficult. I made the bottom flexible so it would sway with the broom’s movement (thinking optimistically that I could eventually make it move!).

I made two sets of arms. One pair hung more or less loosely at the broom’s side; the second grasped its handle, hand over hand.

Fortunately, I had been experimenting with a rez-on-touch bridge (another Sweetie request),and had learned how to turn prims invisible on touch. I adapted the script, and by experimenting to find the numbers of the various prims, I managed to make the broom change arms on touch. The relaxing arms would disappear and the sweeping arms would appear—until the timer ran out.

The trickiest part was moving the broom. I used a script from an elephant ride to make the broom rock from side to side like a seesaw, but when I linked an axis prim and made it rotate, the broom went nuts.

I thought about making the broom follow its owner, but that wasn’t particularly what I wanted it to do. I also thought about using Puppeteer, but I knew that would make the movement awkward.

I had just decided to script a string of commands to made the broom walk when I saw this weekend’s blog from Torley Linden. He talked about several scripting tools. One, called Scratch, caught my attention. It builds scripts out of Second Life by allowing the user to move blocks into a string in a program area; it’s like Lego LSL. It sounded perfect for the long string of movement and rotate commands I would be using.

So I downloaded Scratch, and in about 30 minutes, my broom was walking. Thank you, Scratch!

Woo hoo!

Feeding Rosie

Written 20 July, 2008

Feeding Rosie

It isn't easy maintaining an 80-meter robot head. Take Rosie, for instance.

Yeah, I know the Jetsons had an easy time with her-- but she was a regular-sized Rosie, and she had a body, which allowed her to forage for herself.

The giant Rosie head at the Robot Sanatorium, though-- she's another story altogether!

Fortunately in this time of inflation we managed to procure a few low-prim, large-sized edibles for her. Here's Sweetie maneuvering a giant hot dog into her mouth.

But the mustard! Rosie didn't want the yellow French's that came on the hot dog. She had to have Dijon. And so we have a certificate from the mayor of Dijon in virtual France thanking us for our contributions to his city.

Let me just say they were significant.

Robot Sanitorium

Gort Comes to the Robot Sanitorium for Help with Anger Issues

Bender was Court Committed for Substance Abuse and Personality Disorder

This Rosie is REALLY BIG! A 15-Meter Gort is Barely Visible on the Landing

Written 18 July, 2008

Robot Sanatorium

They’ve been serving us for nearly a century now, and even before that, when they didn’t have a real name.* They build our cars, clean our houses (think Roomba), and entertain us as actors and actresses on television and in movies (Robby the Robot was soooo deserving of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Forbidden Planet, don’t you think?).

There’s no shortage of repair shops for robots with dead batteries or busted sprockets, but when robots have a mental malfunction—when they go robopsychotic, when they refuse to open the pod bay doors, when they abuse Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, when they refuse to comply when told Klaatu Barada Nikto, what then?** Where do we sent them? Where, oh where, are the robot sanatoriums?

We understand the Matt Groening TV show Futurama once depicted a robot asylum, but we didn’t see that episode. So we at Whimsy are moving to provide a much-needed social service by opening a robot sanatorium.

The sanatorium-to-be can be found 3500 meters above Whimsy Kaboom; just look for the 100-meter replica of the head of Rosie, the Jetsons’ robot maid. We’re only just getting started, but already robots are beginning to gather on Kaboom. We had to hurriedly construct a tier of tightrooms because some of the celebrity robots were getting out of hand. They’re used to getting what they want when they want it and didn’t want to wait for us to finish our build. Gort, the big robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still, kept threatening us with his death beam and Bender overdosed on hydraulic oil, and there was no recourse but to medicate them and lock them up for their own good.

Although far from finished, the Robot Sanatorium is open for visitors.

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* The term robot was introduced by Czech playwright Karel Čapek in the 1920s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots).

** Not to mention the many berserk steampunk robots in the Caledon sims!

Rosie Redux

Written 19 July, 2008

Rosie Redux

Here's my entry in the contest at the Museum of Robots.

Museum of Robots Competition Winner

Written 19 July, 2008

Museum of Robots Competition Winner

Today the Museum of Robots on the Kubrick sim announced the winners of it's build-a-robot competiion. Prizes were awarded in three categories: avatar robots, stand-a-lone robots, and homage robots (robots which pay tribute to famous robots of movies and television). There were five winners in each category and two winners of peoples' choice awards. $43,000L in prizes is to be awarded.

I was one of the winners in the homage category for my build Rosie's in Trouble.

Thanks to Michel Runningbear, and of course Sweetie for going to the award show with me and providing moral support.

Woo hoo!

Where’s my Lava Flow?

Written 17 July, 2008

Where’s my Lava Flow?

Pele was pouting.

“Whatever is the matter, volcano goddess?” It pays to pay attention to Pele.

“I’ve no lava flow,” she pouted. “I had a lava flow where we used to live. Why don’t I have a lava flow here on Whimsy?”

“Sheesh,” I said. “I can’t do everything at once. Haven’t I been working for weeks on teaching you to throw rocks?”

“And now I can,” she said, “and if I don’t have a lava flow by this time tomorrow I’ll be tossing a bunch of them.”

“Okay, okay!” I said.

And so now Pele has a lava flow on her southern flank.

This one is better, I think, than the old one on Forsaken, if only because I now know more or less what I’m doing when I build. More or less.

The only major difference is I added a little glow to the moving lava at the top of the stream—not much, just .08 for the highest (and hottest) section, and .06, .04, and .02 for the lava further down the mountain. The effect is subtle, but nice on dark nights.

I’ve toyed with the idea of adding an ability to change texture so the lava flow can run hot sometimes and be mostly solid at others, but what the heck; Pele is satisfied, and so am I.