#SL Video of Linden Realms Tools

Lots of us are interested in the tools used by the Lab to build Linden Realms. Some of us have called them the Linden realms Tools or LR Tools. At practically every Linden UG meeting someone asks about them.

[youtube mGPiywc6Hh0]

Yesterday near the end of the workday the Lab posted a log article about the new tools. They have named them the Advanced Experience Tools. We now have a preview of which tools are being released. The only timeline we have is over the next few months. (Reference)

Professional Creators Program

Within the post is information about a new Professional Creators Program. The Lab says, “This program will provide members with helpful resources, such as tutorials and exclusive closed betas.

Many of the features in the Advanced Experience Tools (AET) would be a griefer’s dream. The Lab has to come up with some means of restricting the tools and avoiding having them used for griefing. Remember Rod saying they had plans for griefers?

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#SL Scripting UG News Week 10

The previous Monday meeting fell on a holiday, so no meeting. This week some interesting items but not much news.

Second Life Scripting Meeting

Last Names

I think we all know Rod Humble, LL CEO, had to walk back his idea to bring last names back. The interesting part is Kelly Linden had not heard the story by the time of Monday’s meeting. My point being: the Lindens are not a homogeneous well informed body. They often have their heads into their projects and are oblivious to much of the goings on in Second Life.

llGiveInventory()

This week’s roll to the main grid has the relaxed llGiveInventory() throttle. This doubles the rate subscribers and other messaging and delivery systems can send. The new rate is 2,500 sends per 15 minutes.

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Second Life PathFinding Tutorial

I’ve wanted to take time to play with the new Pathfinding feature now in alpha testing on the ADITI grid, also known as the Preview Grid. I took the time this weekend. I learned a few things. As you may imagine the documentation is incomplete at this stage. Not much point in writing lots of information that may change.

My First Pathfinding Bot

I’ll explain some of the problems I ran into with Pathfinding and then get into the script and how I fixed the problems. This is not a beginning tutorial for scripting. I am assuming you know about basic scripting with the Linden Scripting Language.

Simple

Writing Pathfinding scripts is way way simple compared to what was previously needed to create similar behavior. My first try was to create a follower. I have a Serge inspired character I made for OSGrid and decided to use that. My little bot is made from two prims and a sculpty. Because of the sculpties work I have to scale it to make it look right. That wacks the bounding box, which I was not over concerned with when I made it. Someday I’ll need to redo it in mesh.

The sculpty gave me my first challenge.  I needed to rebuild my bot here in SL. I rezzed the spheres I needed and put him together. Then wrote the script and tried him out. He promptly fell over on his side… 

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#SL Server Scripting Update Week 9

Several interesting things were discussed in Friday’s Server Scripting meeting.

Video Memory Compression

In pre-meeting conversation I heard a new texture compression process is being tested for storing textures in video memory. The feature is in one of the project viewers. I’m unclear on which project. While there are some video artifacts it almost cuts memory use in half. There is a Debug Setting that turns it on. It is off by default. …and I don’t know the name of the setting.

Second Life Server Scripting Meeting
Second Life Server Scripting Meeting

It seems the current iteration of the feature also compresses the User Interface textures resulting in some oddities.

RC Roll Outs

Simon Linden says the new software packages rolled to the release channels Wednesday are working well. Another region crossing bug was found. So, they are planning to roll the Bug Fixes package to the main grid next week. I think that means the Le Tigre and Blue Steel will roll to the main channel and Magnum’s will stay on a release channel.

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#SL Online Status Update

As many know the various online status boards, pagers, and subscription devices were expected to break and stop working when llRequestAgentData() was changed. That change was expected to roll to the main grid in a couple of weeks. That feature change is now on hold.

SVC-4823

This is the JIRA item where the details and issues of the change were being collected. The JIRA item now has quite a few legitimate use cases. There are still lots of people that have yet to figure out the JIRA is not a forum for discussion.

The large number of legitimate use cases apparently surprised the Lindens. They are now considering how to provide for the legit use cases and still disable the griefer aspects. See: SVC-4823. Oz Linden has made a couple of posts in the JIRA and several Lindens have been following it.

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#SL Server-Scripting UG News Week 9

There is quite a bit of news this week. Some interesting stuff.

Encroachments

Andrew Linden has talked with the ‘land people,’ whoever they are, and the feature that allows one to return encroaching objects is ready. The feature has been in progress for weeks. Mesh objects created some problems apparently. The code is already rolled to the main grid and apparently has been there for some time. But, now it is ready to be enabled. Andrew is working on a script to go through and enable the feature on all the mainland regions.

Server Scripting Group

He is in process with the script. Exactly when it will be ready and the encroachment feature is enabled is not yet set. I would guess a week or two, but there is no way to know. However, once Andrew is sure his script works, he’ll tell the support team and give them an opportunity to make a blog announcement.

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