General News

Interesting #SL Things in the Background

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BUG-81

BUG-81 – add the number of groups you’re in to the bottom of the group list. I’m not sure that is the exact title, I can’t read the JIRA. Whatever, this is a feature in Marine Kelley’s RLViewer and is in a beta version of Dolphin 3. The code is being contributed to the SL Viewer project. So, we may see it in a future version of the SL Viewer.

It would be nice to have a count of the groups I’m in. Once upon a time we could click WATCH and follow progress on the JIRA item and hopefully give the Lab an idea of how many were interested in the feature.

BUG-59

BUG-59 – Add a GO TO LINE # to the script editor. (Not exact) This would add the ability to enter a line number and have the script editor scroll to that line. Could be handy. We’ll see it in Third Party Viewers and probably the SL Viewer.

RLV API

The Retrained Love Viewer has features not included in the SL Viewer. These are features that in a technical sense allow a viewer to be programmed to accept instructions from another viewer or scripted object. There are a number of possible uses beyond dominate/submissive play.

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Group Edit Update Week 37

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Update: The JIRA post was updated 07/Sep/12 5:07 PM. ADITI regions Aglia and Chooqu Clone have the new server code.

Group Edit changes are moving forward. The server program with the changes was being built (compiled) on September 7th. My previous article included links to the Project viewer and the JIRA. The test regions in ADITI will be posted in the JIRA.

JIRA – SVC-4968 – Group won’t load – too many members

For now, bugs found by Third Party Viewer Developers won’t be able to be added to this SL JIRA item, unless they are individually added to the correct JIRA groups. You can tell if you are in the group by looking at the bottom of the JIRA item’s page. If there is a Comment Button, you are in the right group, provided the item has not been closed.

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Valve-Steam and Second Life

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With coming presence of Second Life™ on Steam™ gaming several possibilities open up. Probably just as many questions come up too. It is too early to know how Valve™ and Linden Lab™ are going implement the union. But, people in general are interested in what Value is doing and thinking.

Valve’s Steam

An article I came across this morning is: Can Valve Go Beyond Gimmicks With Its Gaming Goggles And Wearable Computing? The opening paragraph is what caught my interest.

Virtual reality and the quest for the perfect controller are the stuff of science fiction, but in reality traditional controllers work perfectly well for gaming. Much more exciting than wearable computing is the possibility of a Steam Box.

A good virtual reality controller for Second Life would be great. Has this been in the works for awhile? Is this some part of plan? I suppose it could be… or not.

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Second Life Group Edit Update Week 36

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Baker Linden was at Friday’s Server-Scripting User Group meeting. He updated us on this week’s progress.

My news is that my group member changes will soon be deployed on ADITI. You’ll need a development viewer to test (on ADITI). You can find them here:

I’ll be posting in the JIRA (SVC-4968) on which regions this will be enabled (on ADITI).

There may be some issues during testing. When getting the member list of a large group, other info (group title, group info, etc.) may not properly load. This is an issue with the speed of ADITI’s  SQL server and shouldn’t occur once live on AGNI. To receive the rest of the data, wait for the member list to appear (this can be upwards of a few minutes), go back to the My Groups panel of the people floater and view the group profile again. The query will be cached this time, and the member list will appear quicker than it did before (depending on your connection speed). The rest of the information should be received this time.

If you find any problems while testing, please send me [Baker Linden] a message in-world (on AGNI) or email baker -at- lindenlab -dot- com.

This means we are getting close to having the update in a viewer for use on AGNI, the main grid. I think 4 to 6 weeks, but it may be sooner. When this rolls to the main channel older viewers not using the new group editing API code will be limited to editing groups equal to or less than 10,000 members.

I expect all Third Party Viewers to be adopting this code. I suspect the Phoenix viewer may be pushed into the ‘old’ viewer group and not get it. But, its awesome decedent: Firestorm, will certainly get the update.

#SL JIRA Change Reactions

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The big news sweeping the Second Life™ community is the change in the JIRA. It is not a popular change. I’ve been following the threads I can find to see the reaction. I’ve updating my previous post with new links. I’ll repeat them here.

[vimeo 49016161 400 240]

The video is comedy/satire. It well describes how many of us see the Lab’s JIRA change.

Threads

Innula Zenovka: Changes to the jira.. hiding bug reports? – SL Forum

NeoBokrug Elytis: Point gun at foot, pull trigger. [JIRA CHANGES] – Main thread at SLUniverse.

Botgirl Questi : Bugsy Linden Interview: The Real Story Behind the Jira Change – Comedy or… biting satire

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Thinking About #SL Mesh Modeling?

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I wrote the following for an SL user that wants to learn to build mesh items for Second Life™. If you are thinking about learning to build mesh items for Second Life, you too may find it interesting.

First: 3D modeling is not as complex as it is voluminous… There is just so much to learn… So, my suggestion is to avoid getting bogged down in details and cover as many aspects of modeling as possible. Then as you choose to make things, get into the details related to your project.

With and Without Normal Mapping

Modeling for each world or game has its restrictions and limits and Second Life certainly does. You will find lots of generic modeling tutorials around that are NOT Second Life specific. CG Cookie is a great source for good to great generic educational tutorials. Their best stuff is not free. But, it is cheap, cheaper than a book and more up to date. Also, some of the purchase-to-view stuff becomes free after a time. I tend to purchase a month’s access every now and then. I download the lessons so I can go back and review them later.

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