Second Life News 2013-28

This week we are getting new rollouts. The main channel got a maintenance release. I think anything called a maintenance release is a security and exploits fix. Whatever, we are told that this release has a fix for a popular griefing tactic. The hope is we will see less region crashes.

Server/Scripting Meeting #27

Server/Scripting Meeting #27

This package also includes the LSL changes for llApplyImpuse and llXorBase64. 

Release Channels

Blue Steal

This channel is getting a release with the Experience Tools foundation changes.  That means there is little if anything to see. But, the changes are needed for a coming release of the tools. Still no ETA on when they will arrive.

Le Tigre

This channel is getting the SSA baking enabled. The code is getting an update that has a signaling API labeled: UpdateAgentAppearance. The API function IncrementCofVersion has been added too. This allows an ability to force a rebake of the Current Outfit Folder, your appearance, without having to change your appearance.

The code has the API function UploadBakedTexture removed. I think this means the end of temporary texture uploads.

Since client side baked texture, for appearance, are no longer shared, that sharing code has been removed.

Visit a Le Tigre region to see if your viewer is supporting SSA.

Magnum

This channel gets a maintenance release with two bug fixes for Pathfinding. One of those is the fix for regions that continuously rebake the Navmesh. The other has to do with the Pathfinding options CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL, which will be set to TRUE unless the script sets it otherwise.

Other News

The Lindens have added a notice to the SL Viewer’s splash screen that tells us they may enable SSA by the 13th, Saturday. They encourage everyone to update their viewers as soon as possible.

Group Bans

Baker Linden gave us an update on Group Bans saying, “I’m making really good progress on group bans. I’m doing a bit of a refactoring because I changed the way the backend works slightly. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be finishing up the backend code.

I’ve considered adding scripting functions with group bans. It won’t happen at launch, but I’ve been thinking about it.”

Baker tells us that if you’re banned, you’re on the ban list until you are taken taken off. Once you’re off, you’re then free to rejoin the group. From previous information we know Baker plans to limit the list to 500 names. He will be including some tools to make managing the list easier.

Backlog

Simon Linden mentioned, “There’s a backlog of unreleased bug fixes and mini-features like the new ribbon particles. The first part of that is the project viewer I linked to before. Once that one is out, we’ll get the next one going.

The new viewer release process will hopefully help with that backlog problem.”

What Simon is talking about is the current Beta Maintenance Viewer which has the ability to select particles. It also has the particle throttle. When a viewer slows to 4 FPS no new particles are generated. This gives one some room in which to fight particle griefing.

What it is missing is the Ribbon Particles. (See Second Life Scripting Changes for more info on Ribbon Particles.) The Ribbon Particles code is built into the server software and on the main grid. But, there is no viewer that supports the feature. The new viewer release pipeline is supposed to roll out this week. So, features like Ribbon Particles will move to the release candidate viewers and the main release viewer faster.

 SL Cache

There is some discussion of work being done on the viewer cache. No one is very impressed with the viewer’s ability to cache things and not have to re-download stuff. One of the Lindens tells us, “I know there’s been some viewer-side work on that with the group Andrew’s involved in … he’s done the server-side code, but others were working on the viewer and caching was one of the systems they were improving.

That would be a really helpful improvement. I’m carrying a couple of gigabytes of stuff in my cache and I still am downloading stuff when I return home. I login there and time there. I would expect to have everything in the area already downloaded.

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