Month: May 2015

Bits of Stuff Around Second Life

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The Rock Closed

A ‘skill’ game in Second Life™ has been shut down by the Lindens. Named The Rock Trading, you can get that latest information here: IMPORTANT INFORMATION FROM LINDEN LAB, PLEASE READ POSTED BY ROCKERDUCK VELLA, 12-MAY-2015.

Untitled
Untitled by Mia Resident, on Flickr

Losing Linux

There is an update to the Linux story. The Lab has made a blog post on the subject. The link is iin an update I added to the end of my post: Second Life Losing the Linux Viewer? Inara Pey has also written about the update and included an audio clip of Oz talking about the change at the Third Party Developers’ meeting. I link to her in my update.

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Second Life Viewer: RC Second Life Big Bird Viewer version 3.7.29.301361

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This viewer was promoted from a Project Viewer to an RC viewer today. This viewer has fixes for some attachment-related issues, particularly when multiple attachments are added or removed at the same time. It also has enhanced logging, so your SecondLife.log file will have some additional lines related to avatar state in general and attachments in particular.

Illumination
Illumination by Leonorah Beverly, on Flickr

Being promoted from Project to RC means this version is closer to what will eventually be released as the main default viewer. It will also likely be more stable than it was as a Project Viewer. So, if you have been having attachment issues, this is probably the viewer to try to solve your problems.

AvaStar 1.5 Released

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Gaia has a post out today (5/13 – Wednesday) announcing a new release of AvaStar 1.5.6. See: Avastar-1.5 is Out.

There is an update tool in AvaStar Blender. I was thinking it is in the release I have, 1.4.5. But, I don’t see it. Seems it only arrived with version 1.4.8. If you have 1.4.8 the last part of the video shows how to use it. Otherwise, you will have to download 1.5 and manually update AvaStar as I did.

There are a number of small fixes in this release. The list of them is in the announcement. But, the most interesting ones are discussed in the video.

Tutorial: Second Life Masking

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Lildaria Resident started to do a tutorial on Masking in Second Life™. But, she found a good tutorial already exists. She reprinted that tutorial. See: Tutorial: Understanding Mask Mode.

(Image and user poofed…) Blackspot by dolletjes, on Flickr

In the tutorial it is talking about masking meaning alpha layers, hiding parts of the avatar or things in Second Life. If you aren’t clear on how this invisible, transparent, and translucent thing works, check it out. I think it will help.

If you are trying to understand how to implement ‘masking’… I think this tutorial falls a bit short. But, that may just be me not getting the ‘how to’ part of it.

The End of Second Life?

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Everything ends. It is just a matter of when. We hear this story of Second Life™ ending all the time. It is not new. Lots of Chicken Little. That SL has not ended, does not mean it won’t. The sky COULD fall. But, I think we will have plenty of warning should the end draw near.

mediterranean girl
Mediterranean girl by Annahyss Resident, on Flickr

I came to Second Life from Myst Online, which has closed and come back a number of times. So, I’m used to games I like closing. Rizom is another one I liked and played for a time. It too closed and came back. Others just closed. 

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Second Life: Catching Up

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Being gone for almost 2 weeks, there is lots for me to catch up on. These are the things I found interesting.

Mer étincelante
Mer étincelante by Nunie-SL, on Flickr

Scripting

I previously mentioned this. But, now the new avatar height and hover controls officially have their counterparts in the Linden Scripting Language (LSL): LLGetObjectDetails() and LLGetAgentSize(). See: New LSL support for Avatar Shape, Height and Hover.

A part of LLGetObjectDetails() is the flag: OBJECT_HOVER_HEIGHT – Gets the hover height of the avatar.
If id is not an avatar, 0.0 is returned. Normal values are in the range of-2.0 to 2.0 with a default value of 0.0. This value does not reflect the avatar shape’s “Hover” setting, only the dynamic viewer setting.

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