Second Look at Steam

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Steam Logo (TM)

Darrius Gothly has a new article out about Second Life™ and its coming addition into the Steam Library of games titled: More Steam, Cap’n! I think it is worth a read. Darrius’ biases and frustration with the Lab is in there, but the points made are thoughtful.

I agree and disagree with Darrius on various things… in general not just in the article. But, he always seems to have some  interesting insights. I’m going to cover a number of the points he covers in the article giving my spin on the issue. That doesn’t mean he is wrong, I just see it differently. I could be wrong… nah… not me. You’ll make your own decisions on that.

Category

Steam has game categories. SL fans have opinions on which category the Lab will list SL. We have no clue what the Lab will do. Is SL an adventure game? Is SL a Creativity Tool?

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Bandwidth Problem Update

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With the release of the Havok 2012.1 update and Pathfinding came an increase in bandwidth used.  In the articles #SL News Week 33 and #SL News Update Week 33 I mention the problem. See JIRA: SVC-8124 – Excessive “ParcelOverlay reliable” messages sent by regions since last rolling restart (2012-08-08). Votes=124 – Watches=90 – 8/24. Resident interest in the JIRA shows it obviously not a big issue, unless you have a bandwidth capped/metered Internet service.

Networx Bandwidth Monitor

The fix for SVC-8124 was added to all 3 release channels to increase the probability that it can roll to the main grid next Tuesday.

I asked Oskar Linden if the Lab has seen an increase in bandwidth used since the PF release and 8124. He says not that he has heard. I suppose that means either it is a small enough problem, for the Lab, that they aren’t talking about it in house or Oskar has had his head down working and not noticed it.

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Scripting News Week 34

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Working with Pathfinding I’ve needed to do some things I don’t normally do. Basically I avoid doing rotations as much as possible because I just have not gotten my brain around idea of Euler-Quaternion and why gimbal lock is a problem.

The new task I needed to accomplish is how to get my Pathfinding AI Character to look at someone in the area. We have lots of new functions that can be used to assist with that.

My Pathfinding Character

I looked at llLookAt(). This function points the positive Z-axis toward an agent or object. That creates an immediate problem because the llCreateCharacter() points the Z-axis up. I think one can rotate the Character to make the Z-axis horizontal, but that doesn’t work for my character that needs to be taller than it is wide.

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Firestorm Support Island Opening

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I received an announcement today that the Firestorm/Phoenix Team has created a support island that will be opening on August 25th. The island is for use of the SL community. The team is encouraging RHN, White Tiger Mentors, Mental Mentors and others to use the island for training and support. I get that other support groups are welcome too.

Update 8/25 – Now Open: Second Life’s Firestorm Support Island by Firestorm/Phoenix

Update 7/2017 – Photobucket has disallowed use of their hosted images on 3rd party sites unless I pay them. Images are here.

Obviously the island is designed to assist new Firestorm users and for the team’s support crew.

FS Landing
FS Support Island Landing Point

The island has a landing point that starts new users on an educational path, a literal path as you can see in the images. It is designed for those using the Firestorm Viewer.  So, people using other viewer may be a bit confused by the images of what to click. But, confusing new users by showing multiple user interfaces might be worse.

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