Second Life PathFinding Tutorial

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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 Development Viewer Update

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I have been watching for a Development Viewer update since February 6. Yesterday SL Dev Viewer 3.3.1 (250315) became available for download. See: Snowstorm. If you are not closely following viewer development it is hard to know what new features and fixes are in the development viewer. If you read ‘repositoryese’, it is easier. I’m not that good at it.

ADITI Receive Testing Area

Viewer related fixes and features from all the various projects make it into the Development Viewer before moving to the Beta Viewer. The Development Viewer is for those that like to play with the bleeding edge tech from the Lab and do not mind some problems. The purpose of the viewer is to allow SL users that want to help to test the viewer. For most users of the Dev Viewer it is mostly about running and using the viewer and letting it send crash reports. Filing JIRA’s to help explain problems is greatly appreciated the various teams. Bitching about bugs in the viewer is poor form that displays a lack of understanding.

Download & Install

The download is about 28mb and it’s fast.

The install is simple straight forward run and done.

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#SL Server Scripting Update Week 9

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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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Linden Layoffs?

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I see on Tateru’s and Inara’s blogs and in loads of Plurks that Esbee and Charlar are leaving the Lab. I’m bummed.

As of yesterday Charlar was proceeding with Advanced Creator Tools. I got my join notice to the new group.

Welcome

Thursday,01 Mar 2012 16:05:28 GMT

This group’s purpose is to provide a channel for some communications related to the Advanced Creator tools. You are the first members because you are also part of the closed beta for the tools themselves, especially the Experience Permission system. This beta will take part initially on Aditi with a private group meeting and forum. Currently I see no reason to require an NDA. What we’re doing isn’t necessarily sekrit, it’s more that we want to work out any kinks with you all in a calm, professional group.

That group is for beta testers helping with the Linden Realms Tools. New permissions systems are needed to go with the tools. So, there is lots to work out. I have no idea what the status of this project is now.

Charlar’s departure will likely put a kink in the Content-Mesh Creation group too.

I’ll miss Charlar.

UPDATE: I do have it from a reliable source that Charlar neither left nor was fired… but, he is not here any more. Figure that one out…

I haven’t heard much about what Esbee was doing. I knew her from when she ran the Viewer Evolution group. I missed her when she left the first time. Recently I haven’t been able to tell she was back. So, I’m neutral on her departure.

Phoenix Firestorm Hour

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Well after all the tech problems at the Phoenix Hour, now the Phoenix Firestorm Hour, I finally got to see the video of the meeting. I’ll paraphrase it here. As usual I’ll provide time marks so you can listen to the parts that interest you. I try to be accurate, but I have biases and preconceptions so I can hear things differently than they are intended. So, you’ll find the video at: New Linden Lab Policy.

Phoenix Firestorm Hour

I’ll point out here that the paraphrasing I have here is 5,000+ words. The meeting was an hour and 45 minutes not counting time out for crashes and region restarts and the 40 minute delay in starting. If I had stuck it out from my early arrival to the end I would have had more than 3 hours in the meeting. I really think some of the changes talked about here are FAR less important than the fact they regions didn’t stay up.

If you’re in a hurry, there are 250 words at the end that pretty much sum things up.

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#SL Online Status Update

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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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