Second Life News 2013-37

I was hoping to hear some word on what new projects the Lab is working on. But, not yet. May be in a couple of weeks.

Interest List Viewer Side

For a few weeks now the server side of the Interest List changes have been done and rolled out. But, the viewer side of those changes is taking some time. The team working on the viewer side is still stomping on bugs.

TPV Dev Meetin 2013-30
TPV Dev Meetin 2013-30

When changing Interest List code there is lots of opportunity for mistakes and things not to work as expected. The team is working to avoid a bad launch of the viewer side changes.

And we are told this viewer side Interest List stuff is not one of the secret things coming…

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Second Life News 2013-36 #2

From my perspective things are quite on the development side of Second Life™.  I suppose the Lindens could just be busy cleaning up CHUI, SSA, and working on HTTP. We also know they are working on the Advanced Experience Tools, which is probably requiring the rewriting of much of the permissions handling code for the SL system. But, every now and then we get a hint some neat new things are coming. Beyond ‘neat’ we know little if anything.

Beta Server Meeting 2013-33
Beta Server Meeting 2013-33

Andrew Linden said Tuesday that he had been fixing a griefing exploit. This is the one where large prims could knock avatars out of a region. Once upon a time that had been fixed. But, at some point the fix had been broken. That has now been fixed and the code is running in the RC channels.

While we no longer have any user group or Linden person associated with the SL Web Sites, we have heard that Monty Linden is doing some ‘web site maintenance’, which I suspect is adding some of the newer HTTP protocol code to the sites. But, we don’t really know. I guess that adding the newer HTTP communication stuff to the Direct Delivery process would be an improvement. 

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Second Life News 2013-36

Because of the Monday holiday in the USA, server roll outs are pushed back one day. The news on the server roll outs is a bit fuzzy as Simon Linden was not available at today’s user group meeting. Not has Maestro Linden made a Deploys post. But, Andrew Linden tells us the package on the RC channels this last week is to be rolling out to the main channel on Wednesday.

Server Scripting 2013-36
Server Scripting 2013-36

Andrew added a fix that is in that package fixing a grief mode where really big objects could push avatars out of a the region. Faux rotating kfm megaprims don’t knock people out of the sim anymore. Andrew specifically targeted those prims. 

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Second Life News 2013-35 #2

ToS Change?

There seems to be another ToS change. I have not looked to see what it is, but I did get a prompt to agree to the ToS today. I was in a hurry to be some place, so I didn’t read it.

Main and RC Channels

All the planned changes covered Tuesday have rolled out. All seem to be working. So, there really isn’t any ‘news’ for that part of Second Life™.

The server change that allows a server to restart as soon as all avatars are out of the region is on the RC’s. For now this is a region owner or estate manager tool. But, the plan is to move it into the Server Update Roll Out process to speed up the process.

There has been some discussion of having the server trigger a shutdown-coming-event in scripting. This would allow viewers and scripts to respond to a shutdown. One could have a viewer TP you to another region rather than let you get logged out. Expect such a feature to be a third party viewer feature first.

For now this is just talk. 

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Second Life Access Controls

The release candidate package running on all three server RC channels has a feature to add more access controls. We did not get much information on the feature. However Maestro Linden has posted more information in the SL Forum in response to questions.

Plus there were follow up questions and follow up answers. The idea is to make griefing harder and to give parcel owners more control. But, the controls for the feature are not in the current main SL Viewer. We will see them in a coming release. 

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Second Life News 2013-35

We have a bit of news on the server roll outs. The main gris will get the maintenance package from Magnum. This is the package with the Gray Box fix BUG-3547, the llListen fix BUG-3291, some crash fixes, and internal bug fixes… whatever those are.

Release Channels

All three release channels will get the same package on Wednesday. This package includes a physics fix to stop a griefing problem, another crash mode is fixed, fater regaion restarts for regions restarted by owners or estate managers. Rather than run through the full count down, the region will restart once all the avatars have left.

There are new region and parcel access controls coming. This package has the server side of those controls. Until we see a viewer with the corresponding controls, this change is not actionable.