Sock Monster Game

Working on an interesting game idea for a physics based game – sock monster. Collect as many single socks as possible. Collecting matches takes points away. I’m inside of a giant dryer that spins an throws the socks all about. Really interesting to see in action.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Motru using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Wierd Neighbors

I started noticing a lot of sounds from one of my neighbors on the main grid and discovered they had a chicken farm. The wierd thing is that I keep hearing things like farts an such. My guess is someone is griefing them somewhere, but I haven’t been able to find anything. From what I’ve been hearing on many SL Podcasts, people don’t like these chickens because of the lag they cause. Oh look … one of them says it is dead and revivable. Interesting…
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Motru using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Preso-Matic Game Kit

After New World Notes wrote a story about a college professor designing an giving away a game kit, I headed on over to the location and picked up a copy. It gives some basic functionality, but can be customized. You basically run around collecting tokens and try to avoid traps which end up taking a few coins from your pouch. Once you have collected enough coins, you find a prize board to view a few slides, and then answer questions on a quiz. Get all the questions rite and you can collect a prize. Collect enough prizes and you can win the game by checking your score on the final score reporter object.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Motru using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Cloneing

One of the ways that CSC was able to support the large number of people in- world on the first day of its 50th anniversary was to replicate the islands. Everyone was still able to have the same experience no matter which island avatars arrived at. A load balancer created to send landmarks to avatars inviting them to one of the islands. The island determined was based on both the number of agents present, and parameters indicating to potential for lag.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on CSC 2 using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Second Life on Ubuntu

I’ve recently installed Ubuntu on my laptop. The thing runs really nice. There are lots of pretty effects, and I’m starting to get a good grasp of how to use the terminal to install and update applications. (I know sudo foo!) I decided to check out Second Life as well. You don’t necessarily have to install anything, as it is simply unzipping files to a new folder and running the “second life” file. One difference that I have spotted already is that there are more options availabe for the “Hardware Options” dialog when editing graphics under preferences.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Pavane using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Reset Script vs State Entry

I’ve been able to cut my scripts initial memory down so that I have about 41k available. Originally I had about 25k available. The primary tips are to reduce the need for functions, global variables, lists, and string length. The other thing to cut back on is the amount of features you are starting off with. Keep the script as simple as possible. The shocker for me today was the memory consumption of llResetScript. I found that in some cases, I could replace it with a state change back to the default state with a memory savings of over 500 bytes. Other times, this method had no effect at all. This confuses me. Why is this method so memory intensive sometimes?
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Abble Bobbers

Over at the train station, I noticed Mytee Boa walking by. Both her and I were looking for the last apple out of 10. We joined up and searched the sewers for some barrels of apples. She showed me where to get my last apple. We must have spent the next hour looking for her last apple. She was about to go offline, until I confiremed that she got a few others that I had mentioned. I showed her one of them and and sure enough, that was it! The two of us went to claim our achievements as apple bobbers. I still have many items to find in the Octoberville 2009 hunt by PixelTrix.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on PixelTrix using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Walk into the light

After what seems to be a really dark and spooky place, I have finally walked into the light. Can this be even more light at the end of the tunnel? I can only hope, but I suspect it will lead to darker times.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on PixelTrix using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Freedom for the apples!

I decided to head on over to octoberville and check it out. I haven’t been here for years. The last time I came down here, I got a laptop and a filing cabinet in 2006. A few things have changed since then. The scavenger hunt has grown a bit and seems to have a story associated with it. Some rooms will not work unless you solve puzzles in others. There is also a role-play aspect to it and some puzzles need more than one person to help you out. It’s a long game. The lag isn’t any help either. That has got to be the worst part of it. I guess that is why they say it will take a few days to complete the hunt.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on PixelTrix using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

100 Word Stories – Fourty

This is my entry for the 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge 181 – Fourty.

Each day the programmer goes for a walk around a pond to relax. He sees a man playing a flute. It echoes over the water and fills his ears with musical joy. A gathering of large fish are often seen swimming close to the man playing the flute. Ideas fill his head about a fairy from the woods that turned his wife into a fish, and that he plays only to lure his lost love back to him. It is a silly story without an end or a purpose. After forty minutes, the programmer returns to a life of stress.

Download MP3: Lewis Moten – 100 word stories 181 – Fourty

Step Up and Stand Up

This Step Up campaign regarding content theft keeps reminding me of an old program to stand up against poverty. It’s not really that old, it is just that no one has really participated in it within Second Life after it’s first debut. In the real world, it goes on every year. This year, it will be on October 16-18 (A little less than seven days from now). The two campaigns sound so similar and are around the same time. Step Up is on November 5th. If you would like to Stand Up Against Poverty, I’ll have a little discussion event on October 17th at 6-7pm PDT, and free bracelets to help you stand up.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Hilbert using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Imagine One Outer Land Peace Tower

I decided to check out the Imagine One peace tower in memory of John Lennon, to be lit by his widow, Yoko Ono. Apparently, I found the unofficial tower made by Lennox Larkham. The tower is primarily a visual feast of animated circling eye candy. The first thing that I noticed was that the floor was made up of several layers of churning water. The tower is more of an experience to fly up in, and feathers are freely available to help you fly high. One wall was full of “My peace prevail on Earth” in many languges. (Side note: lookup September 21, International Day of Peace). Throughout the island, and the tower you can see different national flags and roses left behind in rememberance. My favorite part was falling back down through the lights.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Outer Land using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Snapzilla Fans Get Together

Matthew Kidomen contacted me tonight regarding a snapzilla get together. I hadn’t heard from him in about two years. He and a few others are encouraging regular users of the service to join the in-world “Snapzilla Fans” group to stay in touch. Snapzilla ( http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/ ) is a free and simple service to use. You click the “Snapshot” button in- world, and then choose to have the picture sent to an email address ( pics@slpics.com ). Their isn’t any fee, and you do not even have to sign up for an account. The picture, name, and subject, along with your avatar name show up on the site. If you want to manage pictures, or comment, then you can create an account to do so. Try it!
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Mavericks using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

LSL, A language without string replacement

One of my biggest head aches with LSL is with string replacement. I do not know of any other language that doesn’t offer this capability. This is the function that I would love to see (SVC-1085): string llReplaceString(string haystack, string needle, string replacement); So, llReplaceString(“Hello”, “ell”, “ipp”) would result in “Hippo”. Without this function, I have the option of finding string indexes, cutting substrings, checking string length, and concatenating the results. The other option is to use a trick with lists and null values. Lists eat away at memory & time, but use less code. The other problem I have is llUnescapeURL. It doesn’t unescape space characters encoded with plus signs (SVC-4900).
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Norwegian Forest using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Progress Bar Script

This little script shows a progress bar as floating text.

Sending Inventory
[||||||||||....................] 33%

showProgress(float value, float maximum, string status)
{
float percent = 0;
if(maximum != 0) percent = value / maximum;
integer barCount = 50;
integer bars = llFloor(percent * barCount);
llSetText( status + “n[" +
llGetSubString(
"||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||" +
"..................................................",
barCount - bars, -1 - bars)
+ "] ” + (string)llFloor(percent * 100) + “%”
, <1, 1, 1>, 1);
}

posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Radar Radar from Radar

After posting information about the MystiTool and Multi Gadget, I got a response from Timeless Prototype stating that a Mono version is in the works due out later this year or early next year due to Mono issues. Radar Masukami handed me a free radar hud that he had made. I checked it out and it took only 0.008 to 0.010 ms. I’ve seen it jump up to 0.040 for a brief moment once. I started sending him messages about what appeared to be a glitch. Then I noticed that it was open source. I fixed the bug, set the range lower, and delayed the sensor from 1 second to 15. Radar gives credit to original scripters (Sable Till, Water Rogers, Argent Stonecutter, Christopher Omega and Sapphire Bombay).
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

MystiTool Performance

After my previous post regarding the performance of Multi Gadget, Sphynx Soleil reminded me of the MystiTool and suggested that it performed better. I checked it out and found that it took between 0.096 and 0.109 (Multigadget was about 0.148). It too offered a suspend utility called the MystiTool Sleeper. I saw that it too decreased down to about 0.072 (Multigadget was 0.049 with the blocker). So, in simple terms, MystiTool takes less resources when running at regular mode. However, with both the MystiTool and Multi Gadget are in suspend/sleeper modes, Multi Gadget saves more resources. Multi Gadget can be forced to suspend with a blocker. MystiTool asks, but does not enforce sleep mode.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Avoid Methods

During my day job, I often separate code into functions for purposes of better manageability. Each function is a black box in a sense. It describes what it does, and goes ahead and does the job. In LSL, there are memory limitations. I find that the reverse is more beneficial. You can reclaim more memory by avoiding functions all together and putting the code in- line. A function should only exist if it is being called from two or more places within the code. I was able to reclaim about 6 KB of data tonight. I need to put down my work and breathe in some fresh air. I wonder when the old clouds will go away.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Top Scripts and Multi Gadget

I started digging a big deeper into my scripting problems with memory and speed. I ran over to the Woodbridge sim to get a snapshot into how much time the server was acquiring. It kept showing me as one of the most time consuming scripts on the sim at around 0.28. I recalled listening to the Podmafia (episode 111) today where Yxes was taking off different items to find the problem. I took off my multigadget and bam! I was no longer on the list. I also tried the multi gadget blocker with the multi-gadget on, but it kept jumping between 0.1 and 0.15. I need a light weight flight assist. I don’t see why the SL Client limits us from flying high.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Learning what NOT to do.

I’ve been sitting here trying to rehash my script to take up less memory, as well as to speed up a bit. After all of my little tweaks here and there, the script actually ends up taking more memory. More refinding and again, more memory. Although the script runs fine, I would really like to get the initial memory at start up to be much higher. I’ve tried abandoning lists, cutting down on string usage, string concatonation, and what seems to be a ton of other tweaks. I feel like I just wasted the night away other than learning what not to do. At least I have a local copy of the original script before I started working on it.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Hilbert using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]