Second Life

Things about SL

#SL News Week 50

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Once again, there is no roll out to the main channel. Bugs in the release candidate channels prevented a promotion.

Blue Steel & Le Tigre

These channels will get the same package as last week, but with fixes for the found bugs.

Magnum

This channel get a slightly different package. It is the same package as is running on Blue Steel with the addition of additional bug fixes, an improved fix for the memory leak fix, and a new feature: longer animations.

Server-Scripting Dec 2012
Server-Scripting Dec 2012

In a short article I mentioned the animation change. Animation files were previously limited to 60kb. That limit has been changed server side to 120kb. The change will allow for 60 second animations that are more complicated.

A viewer change is required before we can take advantage of this server side change. No one is sure when the viewer change will hit Dev or Beta viewers. 

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From #SL Griefing to Extortion

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This article got way longer than I intended. Even after I went back and did a trim pass to reduce the size. But, I did not want to write another piece on griefing that didn’t place a new perspective on the subject. Griefing is advancing and getting more sophisticated and dangerous. I’ve pointed out those dangers and possible defenses. Also, anti-griefers are starting to become self-righteous griefers abusing others in the name of fighting griefers. It is a mess.

Crying Leo by storyvillegirl on Flickr
Crying Leo by storyvillegirl on Flickr

In RL we see the same mess with Pro-Life and Pro-Choice people. The idiots on one side kill doctors that perform abortions. The idiots on the other side try to force people with religious objections to pay for abortions. Both are insane and display disregard for their ‘stated’ principals. Getting the rational people on both sides to work it out is the only solution.

In recent months griefing has progressed to include extortion. Extortion is a RL crime. Griefing in Second Life™, particularly in the SL fashion industry, has been a part of the drama of SL. Griefing via extortion is probably only a new-to-some-of-us thing. The old song the Lab does nothing continues and is lame now as it always has been.

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#SL Animations Growing

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This is kind of neat, so I’m posting it as a separate article.

The roll out tomorrow on the Magnum channel will have a server change that increases the size of animation assets (the file size) from 64kb to 120kb. This will allow an increase in the complication and length of animations.

Until the corresponding change arrives on the viewer we cannot take advantage of the change. But, this is a significant change in the animation side of the Second Life world.

#SL Mesh Upload Problem

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Some people have run into a problem uploading mesh. There is a JIRA filed on the problem: SH-3055 –[PUBLIC] Cannot upload any model (*.dae) file; “xxx failed to upload, see the log file for details”.

There is a fix making its way through QA. See the preliminary build in Simon’s repository: 266471. I understand this version has a fix by Runitai Linden. Some other issues in that build have kept it from merging with the Development or Beta braches. Until the other problems are resolved this fix is a bit jammed up.

If you are having mesh upload problem, try the viewer and provide feedback on the JIRA. I can’t tell which JIRA’s are open to basic JIRA users. But, I think this one is open to general users. If not, email Alexa Linden and mention SH-3055.

You probably know viewers can update quickly. The viewer provided  above (266471) is linked to via a static link. The newest version from that repo is here: Latest Simon II. I haven’t read the branch notes so I’m not sure the new versions are better for mesh upload. As the Lindens are likely to experiment with adding and removing fixes to find problems you just can’t know without reading the notes. Even then it may be impossible to tell exactly what is going on as these notes are often likely meant only for those making them. But, it may be worth a try.

#SL News 1 Week 49

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This week is short on news. A couple of user group meetings were canceled. A couple of Lindens are on vacation too. So, there isn’t much coming out of Linden Lab™ this week. It is the holiday season.

Server Beta Meeting Dec 2012

Servers

Tuesday there was no package roll out. It seems a number of regions were restarted. I suspect because of the server side memory leak. It seems to be related to rebuilds of the Pathfinding Navmesh. So, any building that affects the Navmesh, like making an obstacle Static and clicking the Rebuild button, is going to push the server closer to a crash.

On Wednesday the Lindens did roll a maintenance package to all three Release Candidate channels. The same package rolled to all three channels. I has the bug fixes built after last week’s testing. Unfortunately there is a new one: Email messages sent by scripted objects are not triggering emails when the owner-recipient is offline. That is a pretty big problem. Maestro Linden has confirmed this is a problem.

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#SL Best Practices

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Jeremy Linden has been working on the Second Life(TM) wiki, the Best Practices for building, mesh, animation, and more. Check out the main page: Good Building Practices.

 

Revised Wiki Page

This page covers all the aspects of building or making just about anything in Second Life. If you are building with mesh, check this out. It covers several aspects of reducing Land Impact costs.

I would say the place is being spruced up for the coming entry into Steam. Whatever, it is nice to the wiki updating.