We have a fairly new page in the Second Life™ wiki for the new JSON functions. If you do not know, JSON is used for moving data to and from web sites outside SL. Use of JSON should make applications simpler and more reliable.
See: JSON usage in LSL
Category Archives: Scripting
Second Life News 2013-24 #2
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. Continue reading
Second Life News 2013-23 #2
There is a bit of news coming from various places.
SSA
Server Side Appearance has a problem that the Lindens have been working on for the past week. Well, thinking about, I’m not sure they are writing code. I first mentioned the problem of corrupting modifiable eyes and skin when going in and out of SSA enabled and disabled regions here: SSA Coming Not Too Soon.
Corrupted Textures
Some people say the problem is unique to the Phoenix Viewer. Latif Khalifa tried the SL Viewer 1.23, pre-SSA Singularity, Imprudence and Phoenix. But, only found the problem on Phoenix. Whirly Fizzle said. She could reproduce the problem on the SL Viewer 1.23. Whirly says old FS viewers were OK and did not have the problem.
New LSL Functions Coming
Kelly Linden let us know he is working on two new additions to the LSL (Linden Scripting Language). They are:
llReturnObjectByOwner
llReturnObjectsByID
The functions require the prim containing the script be owned by parcel owner or estate manager. The function only operates on objects on land in the same region/parcel as the script.
The ByOwner version takes a scope flag of PARCEL, PARCEL_OWNER or REGION (only usable by estate managers). They require a runtime permission (PERMISSION_RETURN_OBJECTS). This permission is *special* and the permission can be asked of and granted by group owners to operate on group owned land.
They do not handle encroachment.
The functions will return the number of objects returned OR an error code.
There is a throttle on the number of objects allowed in your parcel-pool per hour. If your parcel has a limit of 2000 you can return 2000 objects per hour.
llReturnObjectsByOwner cannot return objects owned by the parcel owner or estate managers.
llReturnObjectsByOwner will return all objects owned by the ID specified – for example Maestro could return all objects owned by Kelly on Maestro’s parcels with 1 call.
These should be a welcome addition to SL. It will make it much easier for land owners to deal with griefers. Kelly does not have an ETA, normal. But, since we are haring about them, they are close to candidate release.
Best Building Practices in Second Life
With the coming of Materials, being able to use normal and specular maps, how one builds is more important. Knowing or not good building practices is going to determine the experience in Second Life™. Poorly built items, whether clothes or objects, have a detrimental effect on our frame rates.
Penny Patton Efficient Building
The SL Wiki has a page about Good Building Practices. There is lots of good information there. But, a significant number of creators ignore the guidelines or don’t know about them. Or… it may be they don’t understand them.
Penny Patton has a new article up titled: Building a Better Second Life – Tips for squeezing both better performance and more detail out of SL through efficiently made content. This article is something that every person building in Second Life should read and learn.
Penny covers using textures and scripts. She gives examples of what efficiently built things look like. Her M&C fantasy build (some sections are NSFW) is an example of efficient building practices. Penny does get to her ubiquitous near mantra ‘build to scale.’
I believe her points are keys to a better SL.
Second Life Script Sources
I recently needed to see how some things are scripted in Second Life™. I went looking for an existing script similar to what I need. I came up with these sources for free Second Life scripts.
Free LSL Scripts
Waving Girl
Free LSL Scripts – This site’s domain was obviously selected for search placement: Free-SL-Scripts.com. The blog style site, once you get to the free scripts page, shows popular, recent, and after scrolling down categories of scripts. This is a great site for beginning scripters, IMO.
The site includes a great collection of tutorials on all sorts of things related to SL.
They have an in-world shop too: Phaze Demesnes.
SL Wiki Script Library – This is the script library maintained by users on the SL Wiki. It is a good collection of scripts. Some are old. A few are new. Continue reading
JSON Comes to Second Life
JSON is pronounced jay-sun. JSON is a text based way of representing data structures. Some think of it as an alternative to XML. It primarily was developed for use in JavaScript programming for transferring data across a network.
I suspect for many of us the arrival of JSON in the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) is a non-event. But, for scripters it is a big deal.
This week the JSON upgrades will be running on the RC channels, all three. The new stuff added to the LSL is:
- list llJson2List(string json)
- Converts the top level of the json string to a list.
- string llList2Json(string type, list values)
- Type is JSON_ARRAY or JSON_OBJECT
- Converts either a strided list of key:value pairs to a JSON_OBJECT or a list of values to a JSON_ARRAY
- string llJsonGetValue(string json, list specifiers)
- Gets the value indicated by specifiers from the json string.
- string llJsonSetValue(string json, list specifiers, string value)
- Returns a new json string that is the json given with the value indicated by specifiers set to value
- string llJsonValueType(string json, list specifiers)
- Returns the type constant for the value in json indicated by specifiers.
- Usage guide: Json_usage_in_LSL (added to Wiki 5/14 – today)
You may have noticed in there the mention of ARRAYS. That is a big thing. I’m not sure it is going to give us arrays as we have with other languages. But, it looks to be closer than the strided lists we use.
Provided this Release Candidate makes it past testing this week another set of JSON features will roll into the RC channels next week. No, no word on what those will be.
Kelly Linden is leading the JSON project. Questions on its implementation can be brought to him at the Tuesday Server & Scripting meetings in Denby.
Kelly says we are seeing JSON added to improve the ability to interface LSL with the larger web. The previous maintenance version expanded the content-type support of http-in and http-out which ties in with this JSON addition.
Second Life News 2013-15 #2
It seems the updates for the Release Candidate planned to rollout on Blue Steel and Le Tigre did not make it. So, the package planned for Magnum was rolled to all three RC regions.
The Magnum package is the HTTP one with a crash mode fix.
So, if you have been testing the new Animation Override functions, you are out of luck for a week or so. The scripts you have made will continue to work. But, compiling (saving) new scripts to test is going to fail.