Slice a Prim, and Why Do Things That Have Been Fixed Always Break Again?

Sliced Cubes. All are .5 x .5 x .5 meters in size.

Written 12 May, 2009

Slice a Prim, and Why Do Things That Have Been Fixed Always Break Again?

I’m starting to figure out some things about the RC 1.23.1 viewer.

First, there are changes in the edit menu. Most notably, you can set permissions on grouped items, and you can slice certain prim shapes.

Slice is rather like dimple on a sphere. It’s just like slicing an apple. You can set a start point and an end point for a slice. I’m sure it will prove handy (I do wonder if people with older viewers will be able to see the sliced shapes, though).

This past weekend I sorted landmarks. It wasn’t until I had been to a hundred or more places that I realized I hadn’t crashed once or had a single failed teleport. Sweet!

I’m having real problems selecting things, though. When I right click and choose edit, they become unselected. To grab them, I have to keep the edit box open and select them again.

It’s the same for looking at profiles of other avatars. Often they simply don’t come up.

The avatar pie menu has radically changed. Nothing is where it used to be. Detach and Edit are buried below the first level, which is way annoying.

When entering a new area, some things rez only partially. Eventually they snap in, but there seems to be no logic to it.

Awhile back I read an article by Gwyneth Llewelyn in which she said the Second Life viewer is kludged together in such a way that changing any feature can have cascading effects that break entirely unrelated things.

I’m sure that’s true, for time and again broken features (problems with selecting items, profile not appearing when chosen, avatars floating upward when hovering) get fixed, only to be broken again in the next release candidate.

I’m beginning to think—no, I’m CONVINCED— that it would be a wise investment of Linden Labs’ time and money and talent to rebuild the viewer in a modular fashion (like the OS Grid viewer), or, better yet, to cooperate with the OS Grid people to bring us a common viewer based on the more flexible, faster, less problematic, and modular OS viewer.

How nice it would be to get new features without having old ones broken!

Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong

Written 13 May, 2009

Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong

A franchise called Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong features pominently in Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash, a novel on which Second Life is loosely based.

When I first came to SL, I was vaguely aware there were Mr. Lee's in world, but I didn't actually find myself in one until the other night.

At first glance it looked like a freebie emporium, but read here.

Chey's New Video Card

Written 12 May, 2009

Chey’s New Video Card

I’ve been running my new nVidia GeForce 9400GT video card for a week now, and it’s sweeeet.

The installation went well. I just removed my old card and plugged the new one in in its place, then ran the installation disk, then uploaded the latest drivers from nVidia. When I set up my dual monitors, and all was well.

I have all features cranked to the max except for water reflections, which I keep turned off except when taking photos, as reflections are a framerate killer. With a draw distance of 144 meters I’m getting 10-15 fps in most places and as much as 25 fps in sky builds, as compared to 6-7 on the ground and 12 or so in the air with my previous card (and that with some features backed down a bit from max).

My second life experience is noticeable smoother, especially when flying. Rezzing is faster (especially sculpties), although there seem to be some rez problems with the RC 1.23.1 viewer. Even with 1 gb of DDR2 video RAM, the signs in stores can take a while to resolve.

The new card has a big heat sink instead of a fan, so I’m keeping the side of my case off for the summer. This fall I’ll be retiring the VAOI case and transporting its innards to a case that will allow plenty of fans.

The new video card was a steal at $44.99 with free shippping from www.newegg.com.

Chey Makes a Script-Killing Script

Written 12 May, 2009

Chey Makes a Script-Killing Script

After talking with jeweler Caithlin Carter, I worked on a pair of scripts that will kill all scripts in a linked object, and then delete themselves.

One script sits in the root; it communicates via link message with the second script, which sits in each and every child prim with scripts in it, telling them to activate-- then it kills all the other scripts in the root prim. Then it deletes itself-- and the killer scripts in the child prims delete themselves, too. The result is a linked object with no scripts.

The scripts are full perm, and they're not as smart as they might be-- they require the user to write in the exact names of each and every script that must be deleted. But the price is right.
Anyone who would like a copy of the scripts should IM me. I'll send them along free of charge. I ask only that you not give them to anyone else; instead, just direct them to me.

Chey Hears From Caithlin Carter

Written 10 May, 2009

Chey Hears From Caitlin Carter

Caithlin Carter, the creator behind CCD Jewelry, gave me a buzz today. She had read my blog about scripted jewelry.

Caithlin's jewelry is gorgeous, and I've missed being able to wear her scripted pieces, so I was thrilled when she told me she would send me scriptless versions of the jewelry I had purchased for her.

We talked for a while and I told her I would work on a script that would deleted the scripts in a prim. Within 15 minutes I sent her a full-perm script that deletes a script in the same prim and then deletes itself.

I'm working on a pair of scripts that will delete all scripts in all prims. One will sit in the root prim and communicate to the second one in the other prims via link messages. I'll send it to her full perm in case she wishes to use it, and to anyone else who wants it. Just IM me when I'm in world or drop me a notecard.

I would like to thank Caithlin for her graciousness.

Grrr!

Written 9 May, 2009

Grrr!

When Save Object Back to Inventory broke, the Lindens said they had every intention of fixing it.
I notice it's no long in the Tools menu in viewer 1.23.1.

Grrr!

Linden Moon

Written 8 May, 2009

Linden Moon

Last night I downloaded the 1.23.1 Release Client viewer.

Straightaway I noticed a new font in the statistics menu, I don't particularly like it, but I do appreciate that it improve readability.

A friend IMed me to ask if I was having problems with things rezzing, and I said no.

And of course, I immediately began to have problems with thing rezzing.

I've noticed I myself don't rez in right away, appearing instead as a cloud, and when teleporting it takes noticeably longer times for objects to appear.

Tonight I clicked on myelf to get the edit menu and found I couldn't. Instead, I got the same pie menu you get when you click on another avatar (Profile/Appearance/Groups, etc). No edit.

I'm hoping that's a glitch and that things will be hunky-dory when I next log in.

Alas no. I just relogged, and the problem persists.

Here's a workaround: Click on a prim and choose edit. Then, without closing the Edit menu, click on any prim you're wearing. You'll be able to edit it.

(By the way, you can use the same technique to check out your friend's hairdo-- you know, the one she won't tell you the maker of).

Speaking of the edit menu, there's a new Permissions button in the Content tab that will let you set permissions on groups of prims or objects.

Best of all is the new moon. When it's near the horizon, it's huge-- and it casts a shadow on the water!
It gets obscured by clouds, too. Above are two photos.

Using Smart Scripts

Written 8 May, 2009

Using Smart Scripts

I wanted to make the point that I'm not opposed to scripts in wearable. A few scripts can spice things up-- but I would certainly say 500+ scripts in a single piece of jewelry is excessive!

There are a number of ways to keep scripts under control. One is simply to use fewer of them. A second is to make them efficient, using, for instance, timers instead of sleep statements and linked messages instead of listens.

I've bought jewelry that will let you resize and otherwise alter itself, and then, at your option, kill its scripts. They delete themselves, and are just gone. When such jewelry is possible, the buyer can keep an original on hand in case future alteration is desirable.

When listening is desirable, the listen event can be triggered by, say, a touch, and remain open only 30 seconds or so. To their credit, most scripters do this.

An exception is poseballs, which typically hide themselves. You can't very well touch them to make them reappear, now, can you? (Well, you can, by highlighting invisible, but many people don't know how to do that).

The longer I'm in Second Life the more I realize that the very things that this world so desirable--complex scripts, beautiful objects, being able to get large numbers of people together at one time in one place-- can degrade the very experience they are meant to enhance.

So please, fellow jewelry makers, keep your script usage to a minimum, huh?

Why do Merchants Sell Lag Makers?

Written 5 May, 2009

Why Do Merchants Sell Lag Makers?

Some months ago resize scripts began to appear in many wearable products— mostly hair, shoes, and jewelry. The script—I should say scripts, because there is code inside every prim in the object—allows the user to change size and in some cases shininess and color by way of a blue menu. Residents who are unfamiliar with Second Life’s building tools tend to find this convenient.

Some resize scripts will allow you to delete them after you’re satisfied with your jewelry. Some won’t. And since you can’t delete scripts from no-mod items, you’re stuck with them. This is more than unfortunate; it’s potentially disastrous.

Many merchants who had been offering modifiable wearables have begun to use the resize scripts and setting their creations to non-mod.

Now, sellers of modifiable products take a bit of a risk. Because the new owner can readily see the type, size, rotation, and other characteristics of the prims that make up the object, it’s relatively easy for a rogue avatar to reverse engineer a hairdo or stiletto heel or necklace. This enables thieves to duplicate the item, apply their own textures, and sell the imitation as their own. It’s no wonder so many merchants have welcomed the resize script.

Non-mod items, however, are not a good deal for customers, who cannot change the name so they can find it easily and cannot change the item to meet their needs or rid themselves of objectionable characteristics of the item. For this reason, a lot of non mod purchases are disappointing and are never used or thrown away. See here for one such tale of woe.

I love many of the designs at CCD Jewelry—so much so that when my inventory ran amok and gobbled up most of my accessories, I went back to the CCD store and repurchased the missing sets.

CCD uses a resize script in is products. I’ve had no need for the script, since the earrings and necklace I bought there fit just fine and I was happy with the default textures. It’s lovely primwork, and I love to wear it.

Last week, I noticed Whimsy wasn’t running quite right. I hit SHIFT-CTRL-1 and looked at the statistics window. The total frame time was high, and the script time was up—a lot. For the first time, the sim wasn’t healthy.

At first I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Nothing on the land had changed—but when I used the Debug feature in the Region/Domain menu I saw I was by far the laggiest item on the sim.

Moi? Laggy?

I turned on avatar rendering cost (Advanced > Rendering > Info Displays > Avatar Rendering Cost> and took a look at my avatar: about 2500. Not great, but half the ARC of a lot of avatars running around the grid.

I changed my Sirena hair for my trusty low avatar-rendering-cost Mystikal Bubbleponi and looked again at ARC and script time.Avatar Rendering Cost was down, but there was no improvement in script time.

But when I removed my CCD necklace, the sim immediately returned to normal. When I put it back on, free time decreased from > .4 to < .1 milliseconds and total script time increased by .3 ms. Even the sim frame rate dropped from 45 to 43.

The necklace I was wearing had more than 110 nanoprims. Its rendering cost was about one thousand, which certainly wouldn’t drag down a sim. But each of its prims, and the prims in the matching earrings, contained at least two and as many as six or seven scripts.

The earrings, at 68 prims each and running the same scripts, were as a pair worse than the necklace In toto, the CCD jewelry set was turning a high-performing sim into a mediocre one.

The most scriptficient way for prims in a linked set to talk to one another is through linked message; the least efficient way is through multiple listens. 750+ listens would almost certainly have a noticeable effect on a sim.

Here’s a scary thought: what if tens of thousands of high-prim jewelry items and hairdos are equipped with horribly laggy listening resize scripts capable of making a big hit on simulator performance?

The notecard that came with my jewelry set bragged that the scripts used were non laggy. Clearly, that’s not the truth—although creator Caithlin Carter may believe it to be.

I’ll no longer be wearing my CCD jewelry unless and until Ms. Carter replaces my items with scriptless versions. You can bet I’ll be asking her to do that.