Ahhh good times

Ok, so I'm back on the downgraded comp (about to call the comuter store with a WTF message), and I logged in last night, basically to hang out, since getting anything done, or doing any exploring on this comp is about like building an igloo in the sahara...

So to start off, the night wasn't great, I had a semi-break-up with a very dear girlfriend, basically because she needs more from me, and I can't provide it (and she deserves more than I can offer right now). That was hard, I cried, but it's the best chance for her to be happy, and that's what I want most. So She'll be looking elsewhere (single woman alert), though we'll still be quasi-together till she does

The evening did brighten up though, as I attended a little informal get-together of forum people, slightly themed as a heckling session. Ok technically it was more like a field trip of experienced forum regulars, to a class aimed at newbies, Hostessed by Lindal Kidd (who was a good sport about it all, above and beyond the call of duty)... Mostly it was just goofy fun, plenty of innuendo, and playful conversation. I have to say, I had a blast, and literally fell out of my chair laughing more than once. Met alot of people I didn't know, or only knew through a few forum posts, enjoyed myself immensely with new friends. I'll have to do this again soon... this is what I missed about SL the most during my hiatus... the people. now if only LL would realize that it's the peole the make the place, and treat them right, maybe we'd have less issues.

See it's a post that's actually about SL, aren't you so proud of me? =P

Return of the ...

Well I'm back from my rather long getaway.... and upgraded too....

That's right folks, my return brings with it a few changes, and one of them is the computer I'll be using for SL. It's Big, Shiny, Black, and Pretty... and it's all mine...

dual Gigagbit LAN nForce750i northbridge, 1333 FSB, 2x16 PCIe2.0
Intel q6600 (quad core) running @ 2.4Ghz (not overclocked...yet)
EVGA nVidia GTX 280 (was a 9800GX2, got a better deal)
3Gb DDR2 Ram, RAID 0+1, 660GB HD total after RAID
7.1 Surround Sound, DVD-RW-DL + lightscribe
WinXPPro ('cause I HATE Vista)
22in Flat panel.

Let the jealousy begin =)


yes I know I could've opted for more RAM, by tweaking the registry XP will support 4Gb... but I've heard of issues with this so I skipped it... for now. However when (not if) I bite the bullet and migrate to Vista I'll be adding more ram, in matched sets

the q6600 is a good overclocker, and should be able to do 3.2Ghz safely with few changes in cooling

I'd have stuck with the 9800GX2 but they're back ordered indefinitely, and I'm impatient. The GTX 260 (next line up) doesn't really perform as well IMHO based on what I've seen... however the GTX 280 is pretty much par, especially at higher resulotions, and won't require a higher priced Motherboard to run in SLI with a second card (nevermind that scuttlebutt is, nVidia is scaling down support for GX2)

RAID is a HUGE bonus for this system, seeing as I just lost ~150Gb to HD failure, most of it irreplaceable personal items, and programming work... and here I was worried about SL screwing up my inventory eh?


So, I'll bet you're wondering how well it runs, in terms that mean something to you as an SL user? Well after having to tweak my settings to a great degree on my old comp just to be able to move and see, it's so refreshing.... I've got every setting on the 1.2 viewer maxed... even draw distance, running windowed at 1600x900 ... and it slides though SL like silk... zero client related hiccups, very few server related ones (group messaging is still hit and miss) and rez time is... scary fast.

the odd thing is with all these new pretty features, I can now see some of the things that suck about my Av... and the world around me... you'd be amazed at what differce bump textures make, or shiny effects, or even local lighting... and also how wrong they can go when people that can't see them try to use them...

Well anyways, that's my brag-n-bitch seesion, I'd also welcome any suggestions on games to play with this fun new monster, preferably RPG styles, online or off, SP or MMORPG (although subscription fees irk me)

Brilliant But Flawed...

so I've been meaning to work on a particular problem for ages, and was recently spurred on to attempt it, by someone elses work in a similar vein. At the core of both ideas was adding dynamic memory to LSL scripting, the ability to add a script as needed to store information, without having to worry about the limitations of a single script. Sounds fabulous doesn't it? and I did it too, well almost.... You see, it's just not possible in LSL at this time...

Now I originally came to this problem as a problem of storing permissions, because each script can only hold permissions for one person. You may have noticed dance floors and personal dance orbs (chimeras) that can support X people. that's because each person needs to have given a script permission to animate them, and each script can only hold one set of permissions... if it changes permissions to someone else, it must ask for them again.... so these devices have one script for each person they can animate..... that's one running script for every person they COULD animate, even if they aren't animating anyone...

now wouldn't it be nice if instead of all those extra running scripts, you didn't have any more than you needed at the moment? wouldn't it be grande if there was no limit to how many you could animate, right up to the limit the sim could hold? that's what I was thinking, and so I came up with a way to do it, but I never got around to testing it, and now I wish I never had.

The plan was simple, give the object a new script every time it needed more storage space. each storage script would label itself internally as it started up, using it's own name as the label. if you've ever added the same thing to a prim more than once, you'll notice it gets a number after it's name for each new copy, so the storage scripts can number themselves easily this way, and in fact I've used this method before, and it works well.

ah but you can't just give a script to an object using llGiveInventory, because the given script won't automatically load, and in fact takes a few tricks to get it to load at all. but there's another function, llRemoteLoadScriptPin, which WILL allow you to give a script and have it run. Great, but it has 2 problems. the first problem that it has, is that it will replace any script of the same name, in it's target destination. that won't work for us, because we need it to make new copies, not overwrite old ones. the second problem is that it can only work by giving the script to ANOTHER prim, it can't give itself a copy.

so we need to give the new copy to another prim, and somehow rename it in the process. ok, back to llGive inventory, this WILL allow you to give to the prim you're in, great, even if it won't make active copies... as it turns out, Remote Load WILL activate copies created with Give Inventory, so there we go, we use give inventory to create our copies, which should renumber their selves, and then activate them by giving them to another prim... oops we forgot a detail... remote load has to have a script in the recieving prim, that sets up a pin number, to be used when loading an active script.... hmm ok

to takle this and avoid having to wait on a new storage script I decide to always have one more script than I need, ready to use. When the script gets used, it asks for a new copy to be made, and sets the access PIN which it sends in a message to the controller. the controller makes a copy, and uses the PIN to load a new active script, the new active script, clears the PIN when it starts, and boom, no security holes and we've just added new storage. and this is where it all falls apart....

Now you remember I mentioned before how dragging copies of the same object into a prims inventory added numbering labels for each new copy? that's such a great feature, really. unfortunately llGiveInventory doesn't do this.... in fact, if give inventory sees that there is already a copy of the object being given, it just doesn't bother.... that means no duplicates, no numbering, and no way for the name to be changed so that it doesn't just wipe out the previous storage script.

The whole brilliant project, sunk like a lead balloon filled with rocks and shot down by a cruise missle... all because there is absolutely no way to rename a script in an objects inventory, using lsl.... so just for fun, here's the permission controller code I came up with... it wasn't quite done, it'd only handle 100 people safely (if it'd worked) and would have blown up SPECTACULARLY if the scripts ever got reset (I'ts missing clean up code), but here it is....

list gLstKnown; key gKeyStored; integer gBooExpecting; default{ state_entry(){ llSetRemoteScriptAccessPin( 0 ); integer vIntPrim = llGetLinkNumber(); if (1 == vIntPrim){ state sControl; }else if (2 == vIntPrim){ state sEmpty; }else{ llRemoveInventory( llGetScriptName() ); } } } state sControl{ state_entry(){ gKeyStored = llGetLinkKey( 2 ); } link_message( integer vIntOrigin, integer vIntCode, string vStrAnimation, key vKeyAvatar ){ if (1 == vIntOrigin){ llMessageLinked( 2, llListFindList( gLstKnown, (list)vKeyAvatar ), vStrAnimation, vKeyAvatar ); }else if (2 == vIntOrigin && vIntCode){ gLstKnown += (list)vKeyAvatar; llRemoteLoadScriptPin( gKeyStored, llGetScriptName(), vIntCode, TRUE, 0 ); } } } state sEmpty{ link_message( integer vIntNull, integer vIntIndex, string vStrNull, key vKeyAvatar ){ if (!~vIntIndex){ llRequestPermissions( vKeyAvatar, PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION ); llSetTimerEvent( 60.0 ); gBooExpecting = TRUE; } } run_time_permissions( integer vBitPermissions ){ if (gBooExpecting){ if (PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION & vBitPermissions){ gKeyStored = llGetPermissionsKey(); llSetTimerEvent( 0.0 ); state sLoaded; } } } timer(){ llSetTimerEvent( 0.0 ); gBooExpecting = !gBooExpecting; llMessageLinked( LINK_ROOT, 0, "Denied", "" ); } } state sLoaded{ state_entry(){ integer vIntPIN = (integer)llFrand( 100000.0 ) + 100000; llSetRemoteScriptAccessPin( vIntPIN ); llMessageLinked( LINK_ROOT, vIntPIN, "Accepted", gKeyStored ); } link_message( integer vIntNull, integer vIntNull_1, string vStrAnimation, key vKeyAvatar ){ if (vKeyAvatar == gKeyStored){ if ("" == vStrAnimation){ llMessageLinked( LINK_ROOT, 0, "Accepted", gKeyStored ); }else{ llStartAnimation( vStrAnimation ); } } } }

Avast Ye Scurvy Dogs...

No, it's not talk like a pirate week, that is of course unless you logged on to PiratesOnline.com, Disney's entry into the world of MMORPG's. Now some of us have been waiting for something like this since Sid Meier did his Pirates game back in the day. Buried treasure, battles at sea, daring raids... ::sigh:: Trust Disney to take a fun concept, and grind it haltingly into the ground... HARD. Now you'd think they could have pulled it off, after all, they turned what was supposed to be a walkthrough attraction into a fun ride, that eventually spawned a movie (no one but depp could have made that movie) which had enough force to spawn 2 sequels...

But in typical Disney fashion, in the process of turning movies to games, they completely ruin them. It's not the abuse of the the storyline that killed it, it's not even the standard dumbing down that disney does to all it's games, or even the poor attempts at removing the 'violent aspects' of the game (although it was painful). Nope what's killing this game is the rush to market, it's just not ready. The content in the game is scarce, the bugs are something I'd never imagine in a game released to the public, the devs randomly take the game servers down with 5 min advance notice and no way to find out when it'll be back up, and the average lag... OMFG.

That said it does have a few redeeming qualities, it's a disney game in which you kill, destroy, sink, plunder, and pillage.... the irony alone is a reason to play. You can also gamble, but it get's better, because you can CHEAT at gambling. During the course of the game certain quests and enemies will give you playing cards which you can swap into your own hand while playing blackjack or 'Tortuga'(Texas) Hold 'em. Sadly the cards you swap out are lost. The best part of the game though is the sailing, defeating other ships, and getting paids for it. Sadly basic (free) access accounts won't ever get more than the lowest level ship, though with a little practice she's quite able, it's not something you want to stick with.

Unfortunately, for all that's good the bad sure is bad. Bugs that crash you on loading when you sail a certain ship, freezes at loading screens where the game continues but the screen doesn't, crashes on firing cannons at sea, entering certain areas, bugged quests (some of which have been completely disabled, frequently laggy servers, lack of content (try watching 15 ships swarm on the same NPC boat for a kill and see your frame rate start to be measured in minutes). Nevermind their obscene memory recommendations or the fact that you're stuck installing to your root drive (actually you can copy it to another drive manually). all this for 10$US a month? hmmm nah, I think I'll wait and see if they fix it and add more content.

But by all means check it out... it has so much potential, the problems won't seriously annoy you immediately, and really is a fun concept for a game http://piratesonline.com

Kids Play

So, early in December I made (well renovated ) a child Av, for my secondlife account...

Originally I was aiming for something akin to Wednesday Addams from the movies (much creepieer than the TV show), crossed with Minoru from Chobits (Manga/Anime character, child genius), and I think I accomplished that. I also had a goal of making her an idealized me, something more happy, fortunate, and well, you get the idea... Oddly what I ended up with is so close to me as a child it's scary. Oh she's cuter and looks much better than I did as a child, but she's taken on a life of her own, and the creepiest part isn't her appearance, it's how much she resembles me as a child in action and behavior. Now some would say that's my fault, bad roleplaying etc. But the reality is that she seems so much like me because of one major aspect... she's much more adult in attitude (the child genius aspect) than her apparent age (I've settled on 13).

I know some think it's odd to play a child, some would even say it's sick. To those people I can only say, I do it for fun, to remember some of the innocence lost, and forget some of the realities of my life as it's become and just have fun. That said I'm finding that while there are alot of people that play kids, there aren't many active spots to hang out. I'd say especially at night, but frankly I just can't seem to find other kids at all... it's really disheartening, because as a kid, being alone is crappy... I'm not quite up for the virtual adoption agencies that've sprung up in SL, since I tend to just like to hang out without any strings attached, plus it kinda smacks of a virtual dating service and I REALLY don't want that. So hey if you read this and want to share some known places kid av's hang out, or if you have a child av and just wanna chat, feel free to drop me a line. My name is above, and I'm pretty friendly =)

on another note, I saw in a friends blog a link to a "Blog Readability Test", and thought hey why not, let's see what my blog comes up as.... Quite shocking really, It graded this blog with a "Genius" level. I'm not sure if that means I'm writing at that level, or that it'd take one to understand what I write (which could be good or bad). Regardless, you, the reader, should pat yourself on the back if you understand what I write... because for better or worse in my writing, Critics Rant thinks you're a genius!