Today we are getting the server maintenance package that ran on Blue Steel and Le Tigre this last week. This is the package that addresses the disconnection issue people have been experiencing.

Content & Mesh Meeting 2013-24

Blue Steel and Le Tigre

These release channels will be getting a new maintenance package. There are some interesting fixes and additions in this package. 

• Neighboring regions should now appear to the viewer sooner after a region restart (SVC-8019)
• Fixed some crash modes
• New Features Added
  • The simulator now blocks unsupported bits from being requested in llRequestPermissions()
  • New pathfinding character property for llCreateCharacter() and llUpdateCharacter(): CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL
    • CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL takes a boolean parameter, either TRUE or FALSE – If a parcel allows scripts and objects and the character does not have the CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL option enabled, it can freely cross the parcel boundary in both directions.
    • Characters which have CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL set to TRUE treat the parcel boundaries as one-way obstacles. – Pathfinding wander, flee, evade, and pursue behaviors will only choose goal points within their starting parcel. If a character somehow manages to escape its original parcel (e.g. it was ‘pushed’ out), it will be able to return to the original parcel, but will be unable to leave the original parcel afterwards.
• New LSL functions for returning objects from parcels
  • integer llReturnObjectsByID(list objects) – Requires new runtime permission PERMISSION_RETURN_OBJECTS. objects is a list of objects IDs to return to owner. If the script is owned by an estate owner or manager then any object in the region can be returned. Otherwise the script can return any object over land owned by the owner of the script. Throttled at max parcel land impact capacity region-wide per hour. Returns the number of objects that were returned to their owners or an error code.
  • integer llReturnObjectsByOwner(key owner, integer scope) – Requires new runtime permission PERMISSION_RETURN_OBJECTS.
    • scope is:
      • OBJECT_RETURN_PARCEL to return all objects on the same parcel as the script which are owned by ‘owner’. The script must be owned by an estate manager or over a parcel owned by the owner of the script.
  • New error constants for llReturnObjectsByID and llReturnObjectsByOwner:
    • ERR_GENERIC = -1;

• OBJECT_RETURN_PARCEL_OWNER to return all objects owned by ‘owner’ which are over parcels owned by the owner of the script.
• OBJECT_RETURN_REGION to return all objects in the region owned by ‘owner’ – only works when the script is owned by the estate owner or an estate manager.
• Parcel owner, estate owner and estate managers can not have their objects returned by this method. Objects which are owned by the group the land is set to will not be returned by this method. Throttled at max parcel land impact region-wide per hour. Returns the number of objects that were returned to their owners or an error code.

• ERR_PARCEL_PERMISSIONS = -2;
• ERR_MALFORMED_PARAMS = -3;
• ERR_RUNTIME_PERMISSIONS = -4;
• ERR_THROTTLED = -5;

That is a lot of new toys. Jump into the RC channels and check them out.

Magnum

This channel continues to run the Interest List update, but with some more fixes.

One fix is: An issue in which the simulator would send many unnecessary AvatarAppearance messages to the viewer (BUG-2800).

The other is: an issue where some users had difficulty viewing the source of large scripts (BUG-2694).

Viewer Channels

The viewer team is still testing the new viewer release candidate channels. Since the changes to create channels touches the login and viewer update processes, the Lab wants to be double sure they work. There is the specter of what would happen if people could suddenly not login or get automatic updates. They would have to hope users figured out they needed to do a reinstall rather than leave Second Life™.  So, I get the impression this testing is much more rigorous than normal testing.

I do know the uninstall process in the viewer has improved since I last used it. Once upon a time the uninstall process assumed there was only ONE VIEWER installed and cleaned out all the SL related files. Thus for years we have warned people to save their chat logs when uninstalling.

Now the chat logs seem to be safe when using the SL Viewer’s uninstall. The settings files are another matter. Uninstalling my beta wiped out my new Beta Viewer’s settings file which is understandable.

There is still some confusion when uninstalling the Beta Viewer. The Beta install used two different folder names; SecondLifeBeta and SecondLifeBetaViewer. I am still rather confused as to what the install and uninstall are actually doing. But, it looks like SecondLifeBetaViewer is going to be the install folder for now. Also the install/uninstall left me with some confused shortcuts.

I suggest you uninstall all your Beta Viewers and Dev Viewers. With new version I use the uninstall program to clean up shortcuts. I wouldn’t use the uninstall program of any older versions, like 3 or more months old. Some may be old enough they still wipe your chat logs. Once the Viewer Release Channels are working it may be time for a clean install of all my viewers.

Obviously if you want to keep your chat logs, back them up before doing uninstalls.