Dedric Mauriac: Another life from the first

I’ve been playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto IV lately. One of the mini games within the game is playing darts. To be honest, darts in GTA is way too easy to play. It had me thinking about making a game of darts within SL. I figured as long as I could get the x/y position of where a dart hit an object, the rest would be some simple trigonometry to determine what area was hit. Unfortunately, collisions don’t provide a method in which the x/y position was collided with, or the face that was hit. There is a dection available on the objects position, but it is based on the center of the object rather then the point of collision. Rotating the dart board at odd angels makes the problem worse.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

A friend of mine asked me for ideas for building some collaborative games. I haven’t seen much of this in SL at all. Most games simply need one person. I replied with a few ideas for him and I hope that he is more than happy with the results, or is inspired to build upon them into different ideas. Most games these days seem to be confined to a box that aren’t really that much interactive themselves. I’ve suggested a few games with props and others that encourage people to move around and get active. Some are even very silly. I would love to take my readers on the journy, but I don’t know how senstive the work is yet. NDA? Who knows.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Brie using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

I still have an idea that one day I’ll be able to put an entire futuristic space station kind of theme together. The thing about SL is that you can put your wildest imagination together to convey an idea - even if it isn’t feasable. I could say tha the sky is the limit, but we all very well know that you need to work within the limitations of the environment. But since the environment continues to lift boundaries, we can still dream and ask - what if? What if we could make megaprims? What if we could make vehicles with 256 prims? What if joints came back? What if it was easy to make sculpties form an existing group of prims? We can only dream for now.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

One of the latest features of the Second Life Release Candidate allows you to see how much rendering cost each avatar around you will slow down your system. The colors range from green, to yellow, to red. The higher the number, the more costly your avatar is. It’s ok for getting a ball park figure, but it isn’t perfect. One of the things that I’ve noticed most of all is that hair makes a big impact. I thought my hair was pretty simple. Non-flexi, 53 prims and the same hair texture all around. I even went so far as to make a lot of the ends alpha since no one would see them anyway. I thought it may help the client ignore rendering those faces. Unfortunately, this added performance penalties.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Tonights video conference was about Gaia Online. I forgot about this world as I already had an account as “Lewis Moten” since last July.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Innovation Island using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

BluesSweet Tomorrow, one of my team members in “Take THAT, Cancer!” joined in to watch the Acedia videos and listen to the Mr O Show. She had sent me a peom called “IT” that needed to be framed by another team member who had some graphic software. I passed the peom to the team mate who volunteered for the job, but it’s been a while. I’ll have to ask them about it, but I may end up trying my hand at it. We hope to have it and other products give away with a minimum donation at our teams RFL shop location.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Acedia using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Fay dropped by the party and got on the line to be interviewed with Mr O himself. Fayandria Foley talks about how she joined SL RFL, what goes on, and her past experiences. She then danced with all of us for a fun time while IshtarAngel Micheline took pictures.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Acedia using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Take THAT, Cancer! - May 4 - Mr O Show @ 5-7PM - Host Orange Montagne on the superdeck Acedia 104, 214, 33 for the event “Acedia’s Valentine Palace”. Dance music to get your groove on to benefit the RFL. Get on over for the latest MRO Show with special guests, and it all benefits Relay for Life … it’s on now!
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Acedia using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Daequix Scarborough came to me asking if I had a voting system. She was using my comment boxes to allow people to drop note cards into each one as a way to cast their votes. We worked out what she needed. She needed a system that allowed people to vote on 12 out of 27 contestants. You can only vote on each person once. I set to work and created a system that allowed her to place vote stations at different places. Touching a vote station looks at its own data to see if the vote had been casted by that person before. If not, it went on to talk to the voting server to check how many votes that person had left. If they had some votes left, then their vote was counted.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Application.configuration

# this is a file to configure your application
# blank lines are ignored as well as lines
# proceeded with a "#" sign.

Name=Dedric Mauriac

Favorite Color = Blue

# This completes this tutorial.
# Come on down for many scripted products at
# Dedric Mauriac's Gadget Shop
# Woodbridge 87, 82, 27

Configuration Reader 1.0.lsl

integer line;
string configurationFile = “Application.Config”;
key readLineId;
string AvatarName;
string FavoriteColor;
 
init()
{
    // reset configuration values to default
    AvatarName = “Unknown”;
    FavoriteColor = “None”;
 
    // make sure the file exists and is a notecard
    if(llGetInventoryType(configurationFile) != INVENTORY_NOTECARD)
    {
        // notify owner of missing file
        llOwnerSay(“Missing inventory notecard: “ + configurationFile);
        return; // don’t do anything else
    }
 
    // initialize to start reading from first line
    line = 0;
 
    // read the first line
    readLineId = llGetNotecardLine(configurationFile, line++);
 
}
processConfiguration(string data)
{
    // if we are at the end of the file
    if(data == EOF)
    {
        // notify the owner
        llOwnerSay(“We are done reading the configuration”);
 
        // notify what was read
        llOwnerSay(“The avatar name is: “ + AvatarName);
        llOwnerSay(“The favorite color is: “ + FavoriteColor);
 
        // do not do anything else
        return;
    }
 
    // if we are not working with a blank line
    if(data != “”)
    {
        // if the line does not begin with a comment
        if(llSubStringIndex(data, “#”) != 0)
        {
            // find first equal sign
            integer i = llSubStringIndex(data, “=”);
 
            // if line contains equal sign
            if(i != -1)
            {
                // get name of name/value pair
                string name = llGetSubString(data, 0, i - 1);
 
                // get value of name/value pair
                string value = llGetSubString(data, i + 1, -1);
 
                // trim name
                list temp = llParseString2List(name, [" "], []);
                name = llDumpList2String(temp, ” “);
 
                // make name lowercase (case insensitive)
                name = llToLower(name);
 
                // trim value
                temp = llParseString2List(value, [" "], []);
                value = llDumpList2String(temp, ” “);
 
                // name
                if(name == “name”)
                    AvatarName = value;
 
                // color
                else if(name == “favorite color”)
                    FavoriteColor = value;
 
                // unknown name    
                else
                    llOwnerSay(“Unknown configuration value: “ + name + ” on line “ + (string)line);
 
            }
            else  // line does not contain equal sign
            {
                llOwnerSay(“Configuration could not be read on line “ + (string)line);
            }
        }
    }
 
    // read the next line
    readLineId = llGetNotecardLine(configurationFile, line++);
 
}
default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        init();
    }
    on_rez(integer start_param)
    {
        init();
    }
    changed(integer change)
    {
        if(change & CHANGED_INVENTORY) init();
        else if(change & CHANGED_OWNER) init();
    }
    dataserver(key request_id, string data)
    {
        if(request_id == readLineId)
            processConfiguration(data);
 
    }
}