An Engine Fit For My Proceeding

2006-08-22T20:36:00.000+01:00

This is a test post from the Grid.

A movement of place

2006-06-08T22:41:00.000+01:00

Well, after my experiences with Yahoos I decided to invest in a more permanent and personal Aethernet Hosting Situation, and thus this journal can now be found at:

http://ordinalmalaprop.com/engine/

I have imported the full complement of posts from this location into the more sophisticated "Wordpress" engine present there, and thus I would advise that further Discussion and Linking should be carried out at the aforementioned "address". Posts here will remain of course, but I hope that the new environment should provide a far superior experience for visitors, with categories and suchlike.

The renting of said space also gives me the chance to experiment with such things as HTTP Requests, and it is on that subject that I am now to post, with a New Project in with which any reader may freely join!

Please note: my XML Feed has now been updated with the new location, and thus resubscription will not be necessary.

"She got the trams to run on time, mostly"

2006-06-07T14:05:00.000+01:00

The Caledon Tram is now complete. Well, it is at least running, trundling the streets of Caledon, Caledon II and Port Caledon and occasionally stopping and tinging a little bell for folk to jump onto it. It is also operating, it seems, reliably, which is really rather important for public transport and something that I wish would be more appreciated by Transport Ministries in the Other World.

It has taken me some time to script this device, which perhaps it should not have, given its relative simplicity. The core of the tram is the same notecard reader which powers my balloons (the Touring Dirigible is still at the Lighthouse, incidentally) but the movement is, this time, nonphysical, as I believe I have mentioned before.

I recently discovered that there are people unaware of the difference, so, a quick description: physical movement involves physical objects, which must pass through intervening space, may collide with other objects, bounce off them, twist through the air and so on. One can set the physics flag on an object quite simply from the "edit" menu, and then grab said object and throw it about if you so desire, or use scripting functions to apply forces to it. Physical Non-physical movement involves nonphysical objects, like the majority of the scenery that you see around you in Second Life. These can be repositioned using the function llSetPos, and rotated with llSetRot. They do not react to the presence of other objects unless scripted to, which explains why, if one stands in front of the moving tram, one is not actually flattened by it but instead startled as it passes right through one's body.

The tram's linear motor is really a timer that triggers a number of subscripts via linked message, each one calling llSetPos to move it a tiny distance ahead, so that the overall effect is of relatively smooth movement... this is not actually as smooth as physical movement but in practice, not so bad. One peculiar quirk of nonphysical vehicles seems to be that, if someone is actually controlling them directly, they traverse SL in a manner far more smooth than if they are without a controlling avatar... however we do not really have the option of a permanent tram driver (perhaps, a profession for new residents in the future?)

The instructional notecard mostly contains a series of waypoints between which the tram moves, and its behaviour is predictable upon reaching each one:

1. read for the next waypoint;
2. find out its direction relative to the current position;
3. turn on the spot to face that direction;
4. repeatedly move forward a small fraction of that directional vector until reaching it.

The turning part gave me an appalling headache and the process exemplifies, I think, the simple principle "don't believe anything you tell yourself". The sub-process of turning can be laid out as follows:

1. which direction am I facing in now? (llRot2Fwd(llGetRot()));
2. which direction should I be facing in? (llVecNorm(targetPos - llGetPos()));
3. what is the angle between these two directions? (llAngleBetween(direction1, direction2));
4. if this angle is not within one turning increment, repeatedly rotate around the Z-axis by that increment in a suitable direction until it is;
5. do one final rotation to face the target.

Now, clearly if the destination is clockwise of the actual facing of the tram, one should turn clockwise, and similarly for anticlockwise, or the tram will spin around far too much and look daft. However, and here is the embarrassing bit, I had become convinced for some unknown reason that llAngleBetween would return a value greater than PI if one vector was to the left of the other. I have absolutely no idea how I decided that this was the case since it isn't, but I had taken that as one of my hypotheses and did not question it for ages, with the result that the tram rotated on the spot in an annoying fashion with me shouting "ARGH WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS YOU STUPID THING" when in fact it was I who was the stupid one. Let this be a lesson to you, dear reader - we are all idiots, particularly me.

The tram, however, regardless of script untidiness and possible improvements, is now running, and people have told me that they enjoy riding it and find it a most pleasant addition to Caledon and that makes it all worthwhile. (I have been invited to possibly develop a similar system for Second Life's Third Birthday Celebrations, so it may reach a wider audience.)

~ * ~

Whilst I did script the tram, the actual building and texturing work was done by those master craftsmen Reitsuki Kojima and Shaunathan Sprocket, and it is they who one needs to thank for its elegant two-wheeled steam-powered design. Scripts are nothing without an actual tram to put them in and those gentlemen deserve the lion's share of praise. If it were left up to me doubtless the trolley would be a box with rivets on it, and nobody would think it pleasant to ride at all.

~ * ~

Those of you hoping for a view of my Stretched Metaphor may have to wait for a little while, as I have become distracted, but I can tell you that it involved eggs.

Disappearances and Inconsistencies

2006-06-01T14:59:00.000+01:00

The Aethernet company "Yahoo!" have apparently closed my account with their "GeoCities" service, on which I was storing certain script files referred to in this journal.

Despite my annoyance I know better than to try to argue with an enormous corporation based on another continent with undoubtedly no interest in my affairs whatsoever, and thus I will be looking for alternative storage of some sort. In the meantime, cached versions of these scripts can be found through the services of another enormous corporation based on another continent with undoubtedly no interest etc:

I have also been informed that this journal is of Most Peculiar Appearance when viewed with a peculiar, antique Aethernet Browsing Device known as "Internet Explorer". Imagine my surprise upon discovering that this malfunctioning gadget is actually amazingly popular! I cannot for the life of me see why it is that this "i.e." (as I'm told it is abbreviated) refuses to correctly draft my writings, but clearly something must be done, thus I have changed the journal's appearance temporarily until such time as I know what the necessary modifications might be.

I regret boring you, dear reader, with these mundanities but I feel that notice needs to be given. I shall however be boring you with relative non-mundanities forthwith. Hamlet Au's latest post regarding Laukosargas Svarog's virtual ecology has reminded me of a few further developments of my own humble system of more technological ecology which I have been mulling over, and feel that the time is right to now mull more publicly. Be warned that the piece contains possibly the most strained metaphor ever attempted.

Fiddlesticks

2006-05-26T23:07:00.000+01:00

I am a patient soul. One has to be if one wishes to appropriately instruct the Difference Engine. I am quite prepared to manipulate symbols for hours on end to make the forthcoming Caledon Tram operate consistently, and have done so already, for many, many hours. At the moment all that it lacks is smooth rotation at its turning points, which should be a simple task, even given that, as my fellow scripters will know, Quaternions are the Devil's Work and very easy to make mistakes with.

Something I am not prepared to put up with is the ridiculous frequency of unconnected problems whenever I require to test the latest version of the tram, freezing, slowing down, moving in reverse on occasion, or simply being thrown out of the universe and having to re-enter. I am sorry. As I said, I am a patient soul, but this is...

*marshals self, removes unladylike language*

...nonsense. One might as well try to build things in Rausch, where at least the random removals of oneself from the area have understandable reasons behind them, enthusiastically hostile fellow-travellers. Here, it is the blind universe that I am fighting and I do not like it.

Perhaps one should only be creating small, portable things, or ones which do not move around a lot.

A Not Entirely Convincing Comparison

2006-05-21T08:31:00.000+01:00

As per a suggestion by AngryBeth Shortbread, I have this morning been playing with an Engine-driven system that attempts to match one's features to the most appropriate star of stage or cinematograph. I have to say that I am not entirely convinced by the results; repeated use with various pictures resulted in the following being judged most similar and appearing most often, the more common on the left:


Christina Ricci	Rani Mukherjee	Christy Turlington

I must say that one thing that I have never been told in Second Life is that I look like Christina Ricci, and I think it unlikely that I ever will. Still. Diverting.

Unphysical Tram-Pushery

2006-05-15T14:55:00.000+01:00

Anyone walking the paths of Caledon on Sunday might well have been greeted by, first of all, the sight of myself perched upon a fair-sized tram; second of all, the sight of said tram repeatedly and awkwardly colliding with buildings and newspaper dispensing devices and rental payment machines as it attempted to turn ridiculously tight corners; and thirdly, my cursing the damned thing and the damned layout of Caledon and the bridges and everything under the simulated sun.

The construction of a reliable, vehicle-based transport system inside an existing landscape designed for people to walk around is simply not practical. Either one knocks down a number of houses, hopefully evicting the tenants beforehand - unlikely to be popular - or one uses vehicles which are not reliant on infrastructure (*ahem*, balloons, *ahem*) or one simply does not use vehicles.

Much as I vastly prefer having moving objects in Second Life being physical, the time does come when one must accept the limitations of physical objects and particularly vehicular physics. They hate travelling between sims, for a start, and routinely behave bizarrely. They frequently stop working inexplicably when asked or forced to sleep. They are easily knocked off-course, blocked by a simple plywood cube in their path or pushed around by vandals, and yes, even Caledon has experienced a number of attempts at vandalism - Port Caledon, I am told, was attacked by hundreds of beachballs on Saturday.

Simply put, physical objects are at the mercy of almost everything, and this is not something that makes for a good, regular, transit system. I certainly cannot be there at all times to put the things back in place myself, and whilst mechanisms for self-defence and self-correction can be scripted - my touring dirigible, for instance, corrects its own course and can easily survive a few unexpected bumps - they will never be perfectly satisfactory.

In contrast, a non-physical vehicle, one that is moved and rotated by a number of tiny calls to llSetPos and llSetRot, is almost impossible to vandalise, considerably more reliable and precise, and can effectively ignore the presence of obstacles (since it moves through them). Why are such things not used more often? Well, the last point really is also a flaw - a vehicle which moves through all solid objects is just not very believable, and also not terribly useful in environments possessing "fake ground" (prims textured to appear to be ground or rocks or suchlike).

Vehicles should not move through solid objects without a very good reason, and it is not practical to have them look for objects in front of them first, since it is currently impossible to detect the size of an object with a sensor. Say, for instance, I am standing in front of a wall. If I wish to detect its presence with a sensor I must first of all have the centre of the wall inside the arc in which I am detecting. Secondly, when llDetectedPos tells me the position of the wall, it will be the position of that centre. Which is frankly not a lot of use given as I have no way of finding out the extent of that wall. It could be one metre long, ten metres long, who can tell?

Really, LSL needs a function which takes two points and tells you what, if anything, is between them. Surely this would not be too difficult. I have simulated this using, ironically, physical objects - I have a "detector gun" which shoots out a projectile in a straight line that informs the firer of what it has hit - but I suspect that using that continuously to tell a vehicle whether it is on top of something or bumping into something is not practical. (Remaining on top of an object for instance I can see as particularly problematic; how can one fire a projectile downwards when there is no room so to do?)

Dear reader, I do understand that you are probably now most tired of these complaints of mine, and thus I will conclude this piece. Rather than continue to grapple with the production of a physics vehicle tram I shall be creating what I believe is known as a "proof of concept" design, illustrating that one moved non-physically can be both graceful and reliable, and in many cases nobody would ever notice the difference, particularly if a gentle push were involved should one happen into its path.

My balloons, however, will remain physical, as they are my own personal toys rather than the backbone of a public transportation system, and encounter fewer obstacles such as litter, pedestrians etc. Ducks, occasionally.

Goo Fragmentation

2006-05-14T21:31:00.000+01:00

In recent days I have modified the operation of the cannon of my Gun Balloon, to add effects that I find rather pleasing: there is now a two-stage particle effect upon impact, consisting of a brief yellow/red explosion and a longer-lasting plume of smoke, and more importantly, the shell itself produces shrapnel. A quick sensor call is used to determine whether there are avatars within three metres of the detonation point, and, if so, the shell launches a fragment directly at them at 20m/s (plus their detected velocity - there will be no escaping here!) If not, or if there are less than three avatars in the radius (likely) up to three fragments are ejected in random directions, biased towards the horizontal.

Thus, for instance, if nobody is around the point of detonation, three fragments will shoot out at random. If one person is within three metres, one will shoot at them, and two others in random directions. And so on. It would be nice not to have to rely on this sort of targetted fragmentation, but in practice one cannot easily simulate a blast wave and dozens if not hundreds of potentially lethal fragments exploding in all directions - thus three will have to serve.

Now, the scripting element here was influenced by the thread in the forums regarding a Grey Goo Fence. This construction has been put into place to counter the threat of self-replicating objects which threaten the integrity of the Grid, which I'm sure we would all agree is a laudable aim. In theory, any device rezzing objects at a rate of more than 40 per second - or rezzing objects which rez other objects and so on down the line - will find itself shut down for a period.

As a figure this does not seem too unreasonable, and given the rezzing procedure of each shot of the cannon:

one cannon shell
three fragments upon impact of shell
one empty cartridge

totalling five rezzes per shot, I decided on a rate of five rounds per second, meaning twenty-five rezzes, to be absolutely safe.

I have to say though that this has not turned out to be the case. The rate of fire is controlled by a timer in the cannon, which issues linked messages to subscripts whenever it fires whilst the trigger is being held. Thus it is possible to control the rate quite effectively. For any timer interval below 0.25 seconds - in other words, any rate of fire greater than 4 per second, or any rate of rezzing greater than 20 per second - one receives after a few seconds of sustained fire the ominous message:

grey goo fence: rapid or recursive rez

This is not as was advertised. I was concerned that the original version of the fence would hamper the operation of such creations as fractal trees, but really, if we are to have a fence at all, let it be set high. If I had not deliberately tested this I would be facing complaints from purchasers, I'm sure - even if one must fire for several seconds before encountering this message.

An era ends

2006-05-09T20:42:00.000+01:00

Well, it has happened: I have finally divested myself of my mainland property. It was really getting to the point where maintaining two plots simultaneously was becoming an absolute chore.

I shall now be dwelling on the island of Caledon, though do by all means visit my old address to see what has been done with it. I have sold the land to my neighbour, aliarna Deladda, part of a very pleasant group of people whom I am certain will not be filling the place with horrible advertisements, but rather will put it to good use, which was a major concern of mine.

It does not seem too long ago that Ms Deladda first arrived in a plot of First Land right in the middle of my Theretra area, and I confess I was a little annoyed at the time, as I had been planning on taking over that plot myself. However, one must have manners, and she was (and remains) a perfectly reasonable person - there was certainly no rancour, and after an introductory chat I was perfectly happy. A degree of land-swapping took place after this, with which I was quite happy, maintaining a contiguous plot for myself and for the growing group to the side of me.

Eventually I decided that the time was right to remove myself from the mainland, where I had been since bought First Land, expanding and consolidating. Given my well-known objection to land spammery I was most concerned that the area would not become a burden to my neighbours, thus offered it to them for what I feel was a fair price. And today we have concluded the sale. That corner of Theretra is safe from spinning ad cubes. Good luck!

Permit me a little moment of nostalgia here. It has only been, what, less than six months, but in Second Life that is an awfully long time.

Balloons, Diplomacy, Appeasement and Potted Meat

2006-05-07T19:45:00.000+01:00

I have been informed several times in the last week that my Touring Dirigible in Caledon has been found in peculiar places. Some of these places are understandable - say, trapped in a tower which has grown somewhat since I last plotted the course - but some are frankly inexplicable. For instance: even given the vagaries of the physics engine, how could a dirigible find its way inside the top floor of the Academy, when it is actually too large to enter?

I suspect that some person has been taking pot-shots at my balloon. This is not a pastime that meets with my approval. I have therefore put into place further scripting which will enable me to locate any such culprit should this occur again (as well as raising the travelling height of the balloon somewhat).

Further on the subject of balloons, various of the landed gentry of Caledon seem to have become recently most interested in the practice of diplomacy, manifesting itself in the construction of gunboats. Whilst I am at heart a peaceful soul and wish no part in imperialist endeavours, I clearly cannot let such a craze go past without contributing in some small way, lest my reputation as a gunsmith suffer.

Hence the Ordinal Gun Balloon, built around a giant cannon somewhat reminiscent of my Engine Rifle, though much larger. A most diplomatic device, I'm sure you will agree, though pedestrians should be aware that it is, well, almost impossible to actually hit anything smaller than a wildebeest, except perhaps by accident.

To be honest the building was largely inspired by my desire to build a vehicle that utilised Mouselook for its guidance. Whilst not in Mouselook, one controls the Gun Balloon fairly conventionally, rotating it, moving forwards and backwards and the like. Whilst in Mouselook, however, the balloon orientates itself to point in the direction that you are looking.

This is not a terribly complicated effect to achieve at heart, merely requiring the use of llSetVehicleFlags(VEHICLE_MOUSELOOK_STEER);. However, I was somewhat perplexed for a while as to how, precisely, to get this to work. The mistake that I was unknowingly making involved the angular motor. The Wiki is fairly clear on this, but I had, ahem, not actually read that section.

For the direct information of those reading though, the issue is that the value of the angular motor whilst VEHICLE_MOUSELOOK_STEER is active is not actually the value of the angular motor, as such. Instead, the angular motor is controlled entirely by the direction that the avatar is looking in and its difference from the vehicle's current forward X-axis - and the value of the angular motor is in fact a scaling factor for this. So, if one uses:

llSetVehicleVectorParam(VEHICLE_ANGULAR_MOTOR_DIRECTION, <1.0, 1.0, 5.0>);

whilst Mouselook Steering is active, rotation about the vehicle's Z-axis will be five times more responsive than about other axes. Being the silly sausage that I am I was regularly setting the angular motor to zero, thus cancelling all of my piloting mouselookery completely.

~ * ~

The vital issue of suitable hats, though, has not been satisfactorily addressed in Caledon to my mind. One cannot have naval vessels, aerial or otherwise, without appropriate headgear, and, to be frank, epaulets are needed as well. Hats first, diplomacy later.

~ * ~

I am aware that I seem to be spending less and less time here writing on the subject of the actual mechanics of scripting. I am not precisely sure why that is, but to be frank, I suspect that it is because I am now past the stage where I am constantly encountering new functions within LSL of which I was not previously aware, and am now more at the stage where one wrangles with reality itself, using the functions as a tool with which hopefully to beat the laws of physics into submitting to one's will. Quite frequently, of course, the capricious spirits governing the natural sciences within Second Life merely laugh at the feeble attempts of mere mortals to achieve their goals, and there is little that one can do against their will.

I was wondering whether one could take a different approach to trying to beat them with Science, and instead try to appease them. Praying to their masters is sometimes effective but again, a slow process. I thought, for instance, that one might have a vehicle which, upon approaching the famously haunted borders between Sims, began a ritual chant and perhaps lit some incense. I am not quite sure what sacrifices the Spirits Of The Physics Engine really appreciate - they certainly seem to enjoy taking my balloons, so perhaps a set of smaller balloons could be launched to meet their approval.

I have found, on this subject, that when a dirigible is crossing these boundaries, if it slows down to a walking pace and begins to repeat a mantra, it is much less liable to being thrown into the centre of the Grid or otherwise discombobulated. (One cannot actually hear the mantra, but trust me, it is repeating it within its little scripted mind.)

~ * ~

I must mention finally the most appropriate movement by certain of those with Power in Second Life to remove the detritus that silts up the Events listings, sometimes involving the presence of a green and purple pony. I am not one to criticise potted meat, a fine invention, but really - it is appropriate for sailors, explorers, students, not lists of Events, where one should be able to find unique occurrences rather than simply folk playing baccarat or whatever it is people do all day in casinos.

Alternative plans

2006-04-30T22:47:00.000+01:00

Now, if you will excuse me, I must return, as I wish to speak to Mr Shang on the subject of a noticeboard for residents.

Or maybe not.

*drums fingers*

Amazement and Towers

2006-04-30T20:55:00.000+01:00

One thing that always amazes me that anyone has ever heard of me in Second Life at all. I fear that I shall never get over the idea that anyone might remember my name or, for that matter, know it without me having met them or annoyed them in some way. I am most gratified whenever anyone does, believe me, but each time I am quite astounded by it.

The above came to mind when I was asked by the very talented Tateru Nino to pose for the illustration on the Tower on a Tarot deck. Of course, I was immensely flattered to be asked, and I think that it ended up rather well - you can see the full set on Dwell On It. I think it's a fascinating thing to interpret the Tarot in the medium of Second Life avatars; an activity that I am proud to be connected to. Torley as the Fool is particularly good.

I am not an expert in the Tarot and certainly not in the meaning of the Tower card, but I see from Wikipedia that:

* To some, It symbolises failure, ruin and catastrophe.
* To others, the Tower represents the Paradigms constructed by the Ego, the sum total of all Schema which the mind constructs to understand the universe. The Tower is struck by lighting when Reality does not conform to expectation.
* Epiphanies, transcendental states of consciousness, and Kundalini experiences may result.

Hm. Well. This is not intended to be a conventional interpretation and thus I will not take the "ruin" elements to heart. My Lighthouse has yet to be struck by lightning, though Reality has commonly failed to conform to expectations, mostly on the matter of physics and sim boundaries.

~ * ~

Recently I have been doing many things, as always, but today I decided to take a break from speculative technology and concentrate on something that I find strangely relaxing - the replication of antiquities in Second Life.

It is a good test of one's skills to attempt to create a functional duplicate of an object that exists in the "Real World", and it is ideal for those moments when one is not feeling desperately inspired and full of ideas for novelties, as all of the details are already there. In fact, quite often during the process one comes up with an idea for something entirely different. Just as the way around Writer's Block is to write, so the way around Creator's Block is to create.

This Sunday I decided to build a replica of Dr Watson's service revolver, something which would be of interest to a few people, I judged. There are different opinions as to precisely which model this would have been, but I settled on the .455 Webley as my choice. In actual fact I based my model around the Mark 6 version, which was only created in 1915, but don't tell anyone that. They all look rather similar in any case.

Being myself I couldn't help but add a series of features once the basic design and texturing were complete, so the revolver, apart from firing bullets as one would expect a revolver to, now

* has a selection of various sampled sounds attached to it;
* has custom animations for holding and firing the weapon, as I can't stand the default ones;
* has muzzle smoke;
* breaks open when one has fired all six rounds, ejects the empty cartridges (which fall to the floor) and animates one's avatar to engage in reloading.

You know, if one is going to spend hours scouring the Inter Net for textures and images, one should at least also spend some time scripting suitable behaviour for the device.

A couple of antiquarian friends of mine with a particular interest in antique firearms have indicated their approval of the final product, and thus I think I shall put it out for sale forthwith. To return to my original theme, that is the other thing that continually surprises me about Second Life, the idea that people will actually pay good Lindens for things that I create. I should hope that they would as I have already spent several hundred on textures, animations and sounds for this one item. It is not just a question of one payment for each component, either - it is impossible to tell whether an animation appears just right, or whether a sound seems quite appropriate, before one has uploaded it and paid to do so.

~ * ~

Now, if you will excuse me, I must return, as I wish to speak to Mr Shang on the subject of a noticeboard for residents.

Incidentally, I am selling my land in Theretra. If anyone wishes to buy a continuous plot of land there with amenable neighbours, please do contact me.

Things which are Useful but also amazingly Simple

2006-04-26T21:44:00.000+01:00

One of the things from which I have gotten the most amount of use recently is an Event Monitor. This is a very, very simple device. All it does is:

1. listen on a particular channel, in this case -122;
2. add anything said on that channel by an object with the same owner as its to a string, with a timestamp;
3. email said string to a particular address once it has reached a certain size, or when a new day has been reached.

It's really amazingly simple to do - not being in SL right now, I haven't access to the code, it is available from my free vendors - but if one has a number of different interactive parts of one's build, there is nothing simpler than to add the line

llShout(-122, name + " has touched " + llGetObjectName());

for instance, allowing one to monitor how many people are interested in that object, whether it might be in an inconvenient place, and so on.

Even more information can be gathered by the use of volume detect objects. For the uninitiated, the use of llVolumeDetect turns an object phantom, and triggers collision events as appropriate whenever anyone walks through it. Such a thing is perfect for monitoring who is going where in one's property. On that basis I have also placed a doorway monitor object in the free vendors, the script being fully commented, which will tell a main event monitor whenever someone enters or leaves a building.

Once one has an event monitor set up it becomes almost routine to add a notification to any script with which a visitor might interact. I have it in various places around my property, as well as in all sorts of touch scripts and others - for instance, the free vendor incorporates it so that I can tell who is taking what. (The Block Rezzer seems to be popular for some reason. Well, it is quite amusing I suppose.)

The result of all of this is a deeply seductive voyeuristic experience. I look forward to the reports each day, telling me who has gone where and touched what while I have been asleep. I am not entirely sure that this is healthy.

Amazed

2006-04-24T19:58:00.000+01:00

I would just like to say that I cannot believe that anyone took the time to score 770 on my Steel Pigeon Projector. I re-engineered it to record the highest score so far, and clear the scoreboard every day, but really. 770? Even if all of those were double-scoring red pigeons, that's 335 of them to be shot down.

*shakes her head in amazement*

Still. I certainly mean no criticism. If it is seen as entertaining enough, then by all means shoot as many as you desire... they feel nothing, it is not cruel.

Pistols and glass

2006-04-23T18:31:00.000+01:00

Seeing as how my Duelling Pistols seem to have attracted some interest, I have put the entire system up for sale for anyone wishing to take advantage of it themselves, with a few modifications:

* Custom poses exist (for those who have not seen them as yet);
* The powder load is now variable, to deal different levels of damage, and can be selected by the duellists concerned;
* Pistols for retail, as standard, can be reloaded from any ammunition box, or their damage changed using any damage selection device. If anyone wishes to have pistols that will only respond to objects owned by a particular person (as is the case on my Duelling Ground - one can only load the free pistols from my cartridges) they need only make the request and I will be happy to create pistols modified to their specifications.

The Duelling Pistols crate comes with all of the devices required for a duel, as well as two pistols, one copiable (for the owner) and one transferrable (to be passed to his or her opponent). Additional transferrable pistols are a mere L$25 apiece.

~ * ~

Commercial announcement completed: I can now speak on other matters. I was pondering possibilities regarding the Following Camera in Second Life, and found it odd that it was always the movement of the camera that was determined by the direction of the vehicle or person moved, which would tend to ignore the camera angle. Why not the other way around? Or near to it in any case. With this in mind I built a Giant Glass Pinball.

Englobing oneself allows one to move around by changing flux density in response to the Grid's magnetic field; so nothing unusual there, then. And there is some fun to be had just from bouncing around the landscape and watching oneself spin dizzyingly. However, one will notice when using one's forward, backward, left and right controls that they move in relation to the current camera position. Forward will move you away from the camera, backward towards it and left and right perpendicular to its direction. (The pinball has been modified so that it will not launch into the air or attempt to drive itself into the ground, though by bouncing off solid objects one can achieve some amusing heights and tumbles.) Thus if one holds down the backwards key, one will repeatedly travel towards a certain point, pass through it and then go backwards.

The suggested process to see this properly would be to rez the Pinball, move the camera to a suitable position - I would suggest a high-up one - then Englobe oneself, locking the camera there. It can be released for repositioning or locked again by simply touching the Pinball.

It should be noted that this is not technically a vehicle at all, merely a physical object propelled by llApplyImpulse, and as such its facing is entirely irrelevant, as can be seen by the peculiar angles that one englobed within it finds themselves at.

The Pinball may be found in the Gadgets dispenser at either the Laboratories or Ordinal Enterprises, along with whatever other ridiculous things I've made since the last time I wrote here - I think there was a drunkenness attachment as well, for instance. I am sure that regular readers know the sort of nonsense that I tend to create.

Steam-Powered Confectionery for All!

2006-04-15T17:33:00.000+01:00

Ordinal Enterprises is proud to announce an Easter event of sorts: the Easter Egg Cannon.

Merely find and touch the above device (which should not be a matter of great difficulty) and... well, what to do should become clear.

I am not planning to make a huge amount of steam-powered confectionery in the future, and know of no-one else in the business of doing so, thus this will likely be your Only Opportunity to acquire such a thing - and for No Charge! How can this be resisted by a rational lady, gentleman or other?

(go there directly)

Product not for internal use. Ordinal Enterprises is not responsible for diabetic comas or coal poisoning.

Edit: Well, if you, the reader, did not pick one up, I fear that you will never obtain the item. My apologies, but I did say that it would only be available for a limited period.

An ecstacy of fumbling

2006-04-05T17:58:00.000+01:00

I had thought that I would wait until I had actually completed something new related to the power generation system before I made another post but, with typical dilletantism, I have done very little on that front, preferring instead to:

(a) build a scanning device to detect the "Magic Money!" items, which have been spoiling the pristine look of much of the grid, or, more realistically, adding three more ugly, shiny, spinning, exploitative prims to the environment. This device is available, with full permissions, at both of my locations for No Lindens At All, and whilst these particular parasites will not be in existence forever, the device might at the least prove educational for anyone wishing to look at a basic sensor device that also uses a dataserver call;

(b) play with chemical weapons. Ahem. 'Tis nothing unethical. Unfortunately, I have been encountering some quite significant problems with the basic Engine of Second Life here, and I will wait to see if that can be resolved before posting on the matter of the simulation of the physics of gas clouds;

(c) creating a Duelling Field. Once paralysed by peculiarities of the physics Engine, I decided to concentrate on something a little more conventional, the creation of an area specifically for duelling - the settling of scores by the skill of arms.

I have created an area specifically for this purpose, just across from my rapidly-expanding home in Theretra, at Theretra 177, 168, 98. What concerned me (apart from a simple "ring out" system) was that weapons should be balanced for this purpose, and so I have provided duelling pistols for general use.

These pistols are designed in a manner such that their activities are easily documented. One can only load them with bullets by touching a specific ammunition box, and every bullet loaded causes the pistol to say on a public channel that it has been loaded, and with however many bullets. Thus, one can always be sure that one's opponent is keeping to the correct rules.

In addition, the pistols will publicly state when the wielder has been struck, so that there can be no doubt who has drawn first blood. (It must be said that one can also use one's own weapons in this area, there is no requirement to use mine.)

The matter of shield devices has been concerning me. Most shields are gaudy things that are quite noticeable, but it would certainly be possible to have one that merely nudged an approaching bullet out of the way, and this would be difficult to detect. I am working on this particular issue. I also have a rapier that is usable for less clumsy, random duels, and I will be putting this out for general use in the near future.

Edit: The duelling system is now for sale.

~ * ~

I would like to mention before closing that Roger Wake has used the windmill code to build his own wind turbine, of a more modern nature, which you can see at Arah 76,147. I am extremely flattered that my scripting has been of interest to others and would encourage anyone to visit this particular creation.

The uselessness of frames; a cathedral of sorts

2006-03-28T13:58:00.000+01:00

As mentioned, I constructed a windmill that draws power from the movement of the wind, and was considering also building a solar panel, but then I thought: what sources of renewable energy are exclusive to Second Life? Why limit oneself to those existing in the Other World? I therefore created the latest generator, one that taps energy from the movement of frames. After all, frames mostly do nothing, there is plenty of excess power there for the taking. As long as the framerate remains high, it will continue to generate a reasonable number of Ordinal Energy Units.

One can find these items, as well as the battery, in the Engine Room at the Caledon Lighthouse. Please feel free to take a copy for your own examination. At the base of the lighthouse is a transit chair to take one directly there - one can also fly upwards, should one not have a great sensitivity to banging one's head.

~ * ~

A couple of other things of minor note: a neighbour of mine in Theretra very kindly offered to swap her plot (which was right in the middle of my other land) for a part of mine next door to it, which was advantageous for the both of us; I now have a large, continuous piece of land, and she is right next door to her friends without my firing range getting in the way.

I was not too sure as to what I was going to do with the increased area. I did have an idea concerning a ruined "steampunk cathedral", but a problem one faces when constructing things out of geometric primitives is that it is hard to actually make rubble without it involving a vast number of them - and so in the end, I simply built a sort of non-ruined cathedral.

It doesn't look terribly like a cathedral from the outside at the moment - I would like gargoyles and similar flim-flammery, and more rivets are clearly required - but I am running out of prims I'm afraid, and I do actually wish to put some objects inside it as well. Inside, it does, at least a little more. My plan, vague as it is at the moment, is to incorporate much in the way of gears and machinery, and also a miniature museum of computational history. (I'd like to build an Enigma machine in LSL, for a start.) It may, however, be a little blocky in appearance.

This would all be a lot easier were the land next to me not apparently Linden-owned, but set to sell to only one person. Dash it. There are several plots in that state nearby and, while on one hand I relish the peace of empty plots and dread the appearance of some appalling casino or other lag establishment, on the other, if I wish to extend myself I need to be able to actually buy these things. I could purchase random plots around Theretra simply for their prim allowance, but I would prefer to have continuous land, as stated above.

If only my prim mine did not simply distribute prims to other parts of the grid, but rather allowed me to keep them. I should really have thought of that, I now see.

~ * ~

Ah. Yes. One final point. I did also speak with a gentleman on Sunday who was interested in my Touring Dirigible script, visible in Caledon at the moment. I promised to inform him when said work was publicly released, only, rather predictably, I failed to take his name down. I do most humbly apologise and would ask him, if he is reading this particular piece, to contact me forthwith. 'Tis not actually publicly released as yet, but likely will be shortly, as soon as I decide on a price and arrangement for it. Clearly it should be copiable, as vehicles are prone to all sorts of mishaps, but on the other hand, should the smallholder wishing a brief tour of his or her land pay the same as the landowner using it for ferry tours across multiple sims?

Oh, Second Life is too short to worry about such stuff. I shall just pick a sum and sell at that.

Butterfly windmill

2006-03-25T13:49:00.000Z

As is so often the case, the butterfly nature of my mind has led to me completely forgetting to continue work on any of my past projects, and I have, instead, been working on something completely different today - a power distribution system. Clearly if one needs to have such large items as a lighthouse lamp working, one needs a power source, and as of the current moment, it is powered by a windmill.

The windmill itself generates electrical power which is then transmitted to, and stored in, a battery of my own design. (All power connections are safely buried underground or otherwise well insulated, do not be concerned.) The lighthouse then takes energy from the battery whilst it is lit.

Windmills do not actually generate an awful lot of power, but I take advantage of the peculiar cycle of day and night in Second Life here. Astronomers have calculated that a day lasts for three hours, whereas night lasts for only one - thus the windmill has three times the length of the nighttime when it is not required to power the lamp, and can therefore charge the battery.

For any parties interested in how this particular arrangement is scripted, it is a fairly simple three-part arrangement of shouts and listens. Only one permanent active listen is required, in the battery itself, on channel -70809.

Generator objects such as the windmill send energy to the battery by shouting a positive number on this channel. The battery then adds a number of OEUs (Ordinal Energy Units) to its store. At the moment, it is limited in capacity to 100,000 OEUs - more than this is released as a harmless shower of particles, though I would not expect it to ever get there.

The windmill's script is more complicated as it also alters the speed of the rotation according to the current wind velocity, and produces different amounts of power depending again on wind velocity, but a simple example of this sort of object would be the Etheric Generator, a fairly simple device producing energy through ambient ether flow (unfortunately, not powerful enough to light the lamp).

Consumer objects such as the lamp request energy from the battery by shouting both a negative number and a randomised channel for a response, for example "-300,-2379845". They then start to listen on their randomised channel for the battery's reply, because the battery might not actually have enough energy to fulfil their request. The battery removes either the given number of OEUs from its store, or all of the remaining ones, whichever is less, and shouts back the number of OEUs provided.

Again, the lighthouse lamp itself is rather more complicated than is necessary to illustrate this point, seeing as how it must also rotate and check for sunset and sunrise, but I have constructed a simple and inefficient Flare Bulb which takes power and wastes it by merely spitting out particles.

At this point, you, the reader may or may not be curious as to the scripting of these things, and in case of the latter I here present:

- The Battery script
- The Etheric Generator script
- The Flare Bulb script

So relatively simple, but more interesting things could perhaps be done with these basic principles. Note how the Flare Bulb only requests power once per minute usually, for efficiency, but if it does not receive its maximum, it will request more power once that has run out. On the matter of efficiency, as long as we do not have dozens of these devices or ones running at high timers, there is only one open listen, and the system should have relatively little impact on sim performance I would judge.

- - -

What is the purpose of this, I hear the gentleman at the back ask? Yes, you, sir. You look to me like some sort of clerk or other man of business, possibly even an accountant. Where is your soul, sir? Do you have no appreciation of the joys of simple creative activity? Begone with you, and run through the park with no shoes on until you have re-united yourself with the pleasures of experience rather than commerce, or until you tread on a squirrel, at which point you may stop so as not to cause further harm.

A Simulator Notification

2006-03-21T22:54:00.000Z

The latest version of the model of the proposed Steampunk Sim can now be found in the back garden of the Manor at Caledon.

The old location has disappeared, but this is a more appropriate place. Whilst there, why not visit Ordinal Enterprises and take advantage of the Steel Pigeon Projector (plus free rifles for sporting folk) or perhaps, take a ride on the Touring Dirigible, newly updated to process around Caledon?

Yes, some actual scripting posts soon. I have been working on a polite "Do Not Disturb" notifier which simply tells visitors that you do not wish to be bothered and would prefer it if they would leave - a civilised alternative to security devices. More significantly, I am also writing a key database system, which will allow one to store a practically indefinite number of keys, using linked scripts and rezzing of more when necessary. And there are always other projects on the hop, as it were.

Towering Issues

2006-03-15T19:58:00.000Z

I have to say that, while the update to version 1.9 has been delayed for three hours, which will likely cause my fingernails to become practically non-existent, looking at the video by Ben Linden regarding camera controls - a sizeable Quicktime file - gives me hope that I will be able to tailor the view inside of the lighthouse to make it perfectly possible to view the interior, rather than the visitor's camera bouncing through stone walls in an unfortunate manner. This should be an extremely interesting thing to play with, in any case. Top show, Linden Labs! (At least I say that now, on the assumption that other problems will not be broken. It does not do to take a negative outlook on these things when one has no hope of actually affecting the outcome.)

I foresee that it might perchance become used a little much generally, but hopefully the necessity to script it will restrain some of the more egregious uses. And of course, one can always refuse to allow an interloper to control one's worldview.

Edit: Well, looking at the details, it appears that only attachments and vehicles can control the camera as yet, which is something of a blow. But I'm sure something will arrive at some point. Meanwhile, there are other things to consider.

Caledonianism, Enterprise and Bubbles

2006-03-15T12:24:00.000Z

Recently I have been spending most of my time in Caledon, where one can be assured of good and polite conversation and fine design. I do occasionally pop back to the mainland when I wish to design something that explodes, but not too often these days.

I referred earlier to my confusion as to what to do with the plot; this has not really disappeared. Mr Desmond Shang, the landowner, provides every resident with their choice of one of his fine houses - I originally selected the Fogg Residency, which is extremely impressive but also, well, far too large for me, really. For a while it sat there, intimidating me with its immense open spaces, and while I made some pathetic efforts to furnish it, it became clear that I was unlikely to ever do so in a manner that would satisfy me.

There are those that have an instinct for interior design and the building of furniture, and I am afraid that I am not one of them. I can also be both ridiculously perfectionist and extremely tight-fisted. I was aware that I would not be able to build enough quality furniture of my own to decorate the place, and I was not prepared to spend the time and Linden Dollars necessary to select and buy it from others. (One might contrast all of this with Mr Gould's fabulous work on the Manor nearby - well worth seeing.)

I therefore removed the Residency (do not be concerned, it is still in my inventory and shall doubtless find its way out at some point in the future) and engaged in some extensive landscape gardening.

The relatively flat terrain of Caledon has now developed a small hill, atop which is a lighthouse. I think that a lighthouse is a more suitable home for an inventor, really. As noted on the photograph above, the top deck, designed for socialising, supports one of my Champagne Waiters (now for sale) and a small table, though should really also have some chairs and perhaps a telescope. The lamp itself detects the rise and fall of the sun and, once it dips below the horizon, lights and begins to rotate. Inside the tower one can find transit chairs to take one to the different decks, as well as a vendor of my free items.

The issue that I have at the moment is that I have decided to begin a small career as a merchant, and really, the inside of a lighthouse is not a particularly good commercial environment. It is difficult for a customer to look around without their viewpoint going outside of the tower and their being presented with a blank stone wall, unless they enter mouselook, that is, in which case they lose many of the camera controls that they are used to. Baffling one's customers is not a terribly effective commercial strategy and thus I think that if I am to sell any of my creations, an exterior building might have to be, well, built. For the meantime I will be placing them in a separate vendor.

For posterity, here is a short list of other things that I am working on or plan to release soon:

* A non-physical ground vehicle script, enabling a design to be more stable and controllable than current ground vehicles in Second Life (which are, well, not) and also of greater than 31 prims. This works fairly well but unfortunately ignores the presence of other objects, which is amusing but not that desirable. I think it may emerge that physical vehicles and flattish terrain are the best solution. Given this, I expect that I shall be putting out the script for general inspection as a freeish item.

* A bubble machine, and associated scoreboard which counts the number of bubbles popped. I may have mentioned this earlier; it was a toy that I was working on a while ago and recently remembered. I find it rather diverting and others have as well. This will be appearing at my home area and in the appropriate vendor.

* I have also put my Steampunk Car up for sale, a large and unwieldy vehicle that nevertheless some people expressed an interest in. I think the wheels need a little work, as they are currently unsupported by spokes of any sort and look a little bizarre.

* The Cranial Pistol, a concealed device mounted on the side of the head. Upon entering mouselook, an protective monocle and barrel appear, and one can fire a series of small, somewhat inaccurate projectiles. This will be another that I shall be selling closer to market prices.

* I shall also be putting out the Mk909 Engine Rifle, which I really must stop fiddling with and just sell for heaven's sake.

* I had a request for a simple chat relay script - a chat relay is a device that allows the owner or another person to listen to speech from an area that they would not normally be able to do so. For this end I here publish two scripts - a simple chat relay, and an advanced chat relay which detects whether the owner is offline or within range of the relay device already. Be warned! Simple as it is, this script can be used for surveillance, which can land one in trouble should those being eavesdropped upon not appreciate it. Pay attention to propriety and simple good manners.

* And probably a number of other things which I have entirely forgetten.

---

Oh, I nearly forgot! The makers of SLurl have now officially incorporated my SLurlBuilder page into their site - thus no longer will one have to visit scrappy Geocities in order to access it. I have added a SLurl for the Lighthouse at Caledon to the side of this journal in honour, and hope to continue using this fine service whenever referring to a place in Second Life.

The Pepperment of Nearby Objects

2006-03-08T11:51:00.000Z

I am most gratified by the number of people who have mentioned to me, during conversation in Caledon and elsewhere, though mostly in Caledon itself, that they have read this particular "blog" and, amazingly to me, continue to read it and even find it not completely worthless. Dear reader, your correspondent is most flattered indeed, and will certainly try to continue producing whatever it is that people actually come here for.

As to my current activities, well, I have been and continue to be somewhat busy, though not producing an awfully large number of actual products as such. One thing I have done is construct a Pepperbox Pistol for Professor Jefferson Gould. This is a six-barrelled firearm, designed to be used at close range, perhaps across a poker table.

'George Bemis . . . wore in his belt an old original "Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a "pepper-box." Simply drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an "Allen" in the world. But George's was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers afterward said, "If she didn't get what she went after, she would fetch something else." And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon--the "Allen." Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it.'
- Mark Twain, "Roughing It"

I have decided to make all of my projectile armaments use (at least) two seperate scripts in the same prim for firing and control, as this eliminates the awkward and somewhat unpredictable sleep after each projectile is rezzed. One script is merely something along the lines of the following:

// Firing sub-script
// Ordinal Malaprop
// 2006-03-08

float gBulletSpeed = 60.0;

default
{
 link_message(integer c, integer n, string msg, key id)
 {
  if (n != 0) return;
  vector rot = llGetRot();
  vector dir = llRot2Fwd(rot);
  llRezObject("Bullet",
  llGetPos() + dir + <0.0, 0.0, 0.75>,
  dir * gBulletSpeed, rot, 1);
 }
}

and with the other, whenever one wishes to fire a bullet, one simply calls

llLinkMessage(LINK_THIS, 0, "", NULL_KEY);

from one's main firing script. (One would also likely trigger a sound and activate other special effects.) In the case of the Pepperbox Pistol, the accuracy must be reduced, which is done by modifying the third parameter in the above script - the velocity of the bullet - by a random vector, thus making it travel in a different direction. For completeness it would be better to apply a random factor to the rot variable and thus rez and point the bullet precisely in its direction of travel, but really, in this case, it makes no practical difference.

The other element is to add a chance that the pistol will discharge all of its ammunition at once. For this purpose, we use an llFrand check whenever the trigger is pulled and, if this succeeds, instead of issuing one link message we issue a number equal to the current number of bullets left:

do {
 llLinkMessage(LINK_THIS, 0, "", NULL_KEY);
} while (--gAmmo > 0);

The beauty of using link messages for this purpose is that they queue up whilst the fire script is asleep. Recall that after every llRezObject call, there is a short pause, depending on the mass and velocity of the rezzed object. If we had these calls issued from the main script the whole thing would sleep for a while, but given that it doesn't, we can do other things whilst the pistol is chain-firing. Any controls or sensors, for instance, would still activate, say one that detected whether the owner had left mouselook. (In this case there are no other things to be doing, but I can certainly imagine cases where one might.)

One does not wish to have one's master control script ever pausing any more than is absolutely necessary, and this holds even more true when one is considering such particularly sleepy functions as llGiveInventory and, God forbid, llEmail, which pauses for twenty seconds at each invocation. The use of link messages and sub-scripts is a vital tool for any complex scripting, and if I ever become organised enough to put together a scripting class for Withnail Academy, as I have occasionally muttered about doing, I shall certainly devote a lesson or more to it.

Communistic Troublemaking

2006-03-07T12:35:00.000Z

Whilst not actively scripting, building or taking tea with like-minded folk, as I have mentioned previously, I am known to be involved in politics, much as I'm sure that many of you find that a bore. Occasionally I am known to engage in events such as political debates, helping in the construction of a Black History Month exhibit, or, in the case of last Sunday, a protest rally regarding the shameful laws recently passed in the state of South Dakota. Whilst I am not personally affected by the laws of the United States, it is a matter of both principle and international solidarity.

Merely touch the image below to view photographs of the event:

We visited Democracy Island, the Neualtenberg Marketplatz and the Welcome Area, pursued by a helicopter from the Metaverse Messenger and a selection of our regular team of griefers, who were actually relatively quiet and unobtrusive (once muted, anyway). It was only upon reaching the Welcome Area that we received a little opprobium from those around us - I believe that they were put out at their in-depth and wide-ranging debates on science, ethics and the Arts (these are standard topics for conversation at Welcome Areas) being interrupted by a squalid team of ragged Communists. For which I can only apologise.

Despite having Linden approval, I and many others ended the rally being frozen by a Linden; I was forced to leave Second Life due to technical issues anyway at this point. Certainly, it was an interesting experience and, I consider, worthwhile, though as with all rallies one is never quite sure whether one has made a blind bit of difference.

The property ladder

2006-03-03T14:44:00.000Z

In a fit of enthusiasm last night I rented a large plot of waterfront land in Desmond Shang's new Victorian sim, Caledon. (This is not the steampunk sim that I and others have been discussing, but a number of us can be found there regularly.) It is an extremely pleasant sim generally and well worth a visit, even at this early stage. However, this morning I must admit that I have absolutely no clue as to what I am going to do with this plot.

I really have been spending money insanely on Second Life this month, buying land and L$, increasing my tier and so on, and the time has come for my accountant to grab me by the scruff of my neck, haul me back and wag a finger in my face, saying "Malaprop! Stop immediately! Spend a cent more and I'll have your guts for garters!"

So, hm. I shall probably put a shop there of some sort, selling my more complex and decorative items for a price. I am not giving up my old land or stopping building freebies and toys, they will always be available, but I have to make a little money or I will end up in debtor's prison at this rate. I think I may also build a café. I did also have another idea but I'm not sure of the demand for it... sorry to be cryptic, I shall mention it if I do go ahead. I'm sure that, as more people build there, ideas will start to come to mind.

I shall provide a direct link to the area once there is actually something there to look at. And there will be no more tier boosting, no more huge Lindex purchases. Well. Okay. There is one more thing to do. Don't look at me like that! It's really important, and it's a great investment, it will boost the value of my existing land... what are you doing with that ledger?

(Exit, pursued by an accountant.)

If a prim falls in the forest...

2006-03-03T14:18:00.000Z

Goodness, it's been a while, hasn't it? Well, I have been reasonably busy, though that is not a very good excuse, I know. Conversing with my fellow steampunks takes up quite a bit of time, as has building various pieces of gadgetry - the Prim Mine in my home area, for one. As I say to new residents, you don't think prims come out of thin air, do you? No, they have to be extracted by dint of hard labour, sorted, and distributed across the grid.

I cannot hope to equal the output of some of the great Linden-owned prim mines, where the suspended are put to work (this stuff about "the cornfield" is nonsense, they hand the miscreant a pick and shovel and don't let them out until they've come up with the required number of toruses). However, I do have a steady flow of prims emerging from the ground now, which gratifies the heart.

My distribution system is causing me some irritation, though, and I can't see why. One can't let the prim reservoir overflow so, at regular intervals, a balloon takes off from next to the mine, ascends to a specified height and then shoots the prims off in all directions - a noisy process, but one which takes place quite high in the air. It then returns to await the next load.

I could simply have moved the balloon with llSetPos but I felt that this would be cheating. Instead, I made it into a self-piloted vehicle, like my tour balloon. The cycle is quite simple really, it all depends on the actions of a timer, which every time it ticks reasons thusly:

Am I within 2m of my current target? If so...
If the current target is the mine:
I've returned home. Turn physics off and use llSetPos to make sure I'm precisely at the home position - also, this way I can't be pushed about while asleep.
Go to sleep for sixty seconds.
Set current target to 100m up.
Turn physics back on again.
Toot whistle, announce departure.

Otherwise:
I must be at the top. Shoot prims out in random directions and make a lot of noise.
Then set current target to home (the home position is stored in a global variable at state_entry).

If not within 2m of my current target...
Calculate direction from current global position to global position of target.
Set velocity to be that divided by my rotation (I think that's what it is, I hate rotations).

It's quite simply really and while it took me a while to get working, that was just me being a fool.

What I'm finding rather annoying about it now, though, is that it is quite simply lazy. When I'm actually there, watching it, following it or sitting on it, it seems to perform as required, toot, up, bang bang bang, down, toot, up and so on. However, when I leave and return I invariably find that it is not at the mine. I take a quick jaunt upwards and what do I see? The balloon sitting there motionless. I have to give it a "push" somehow to get it moving again, either by sitting on it, touching it or, bizarrely enough, right-clicking and just selecting the edit option, not actually making any changes. Any of those things sends it down again and the cycle resumes.

I thought the idea of mechanical servants was that they didn't need watching all the time, that they wouldn't slope off for a fag whenever your back was turned, and then have the cheek to sit there insolently until you actually pushed them back to work. Clearly I was mistaken.

---

There are a couple more devices available at the showroom, a blank sign for protestors which is scripted to let one hold it in a reasonable posture rather than just dangling it vaguely, as avatars are wont to do if not given specific instructions, and a balloon, also for protestors or advertisers or anyone having a message to annoy others with, which follows its owner at a set (yet changeable) height above the owner's head. This balloon is much more obedient. Perhaps it knows it is being watched.

There is perhaps a serious point here that for purely cosmetic systems, one might consider that there is no actual point in them being active and laggy in situations where there is nobody around to see them. I prefer the idea that my balloon is actually active while nobody is around, certainly considering that sim resources in Theretra are hardly taxed, but were they to be I might incorporate a sensor that activates on returning home. If nobody is around, it turns the timer off and enters a waiting state, where it scans once a minute for avatars, and if any are around it wakes up and continues.

Animated discourse

2006-02-27T17:16:00.000Z

I have often complained about the lack of suitable animations in Second Life of use to a designer of mechanical items, such as myself. I have often complained at quite tedious length, in fact; I was doing so just yesterday. The issue is that the standard method of creating these thing is a program called Poser, which I'm sure is a fine piece of software but seems not only over-featured for use with SL, but also overpriced.

I was therefore extremely pleased to come across a forum thread devoted to a free animation production program called Avimator. It is claimed that it is still in an early stage of development but I found it perfectly adequate and, indeed, intuitive for the production of custom animations and poses. For instance, my Mk909 Engine Rifle and swordstick (both unreleased at this stage) now have holding poses more suitable for their designs than the standard, and I produced a "lunge" animation for the swordstick far more appropriate than the existing "sword_slash_r" (only a very poor fencer would swish their blade about in such a manner).

SLurling and the status of aeroplanes

2006-02-26T11:37:00.000Z

Those who publish pieces regarding Second Life on the internet will be interested to learn of a service known as SLurl, which allows once to easily link to a location in Second Life and have the viewer taken to a map of it and given the option to visit, whether they have the Second Life client installed or not.

I consider this a most useful service to provide, and a simple SLurl is just of the form:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Acontia/56/186/86/

which one would hope that anyone could construct. However, the building of a customised SLurl that utilises the full range of other options is somewhat time-consuming and a little daunting to the novice.

To save time in this matter, I have created what seems to me a useful web page that allows one to simply fill in the blanks on a form and produce a SLurl. It is called SLurlBuilder. Please feel free to use it as desired.

If anyone was concerned with the progress of my paper aeroplane investigations, I can announce that I did, in the end, come up with a design for the aeroplanes that seems to provide reasonable results. Rather than calculating the angle of attack each time, I simply assumed that it would always be zero given that the plane does turn to face its direction of movement anyway.

The plane now basically works with lift and drag, both proportional to the velocity. Lift applies in its local Z-axis, and drag in its local X-axis. Using llSetForce with the local flag set really does save a lot of time as far as calculating the correct co-ordinates is concerned.

The resulting item is now available at Ordinal Laboratories, but one can also scan the aeroplane code here and now should one wish (pretty colourised HTML version).

On the use of paper to construct small flying devices

2006-02-22T11:44:00.000Z

I confess that I have been building weaponry yet again, and this time some of the most devastating and immoral devices ever created. Yes, I have been building paper aeroplanes.

The basic launching device is quite simple, just a paper aeroplane that you hold in your hand and which throws a sub-aeroplane of identical appearance but quite different behaviour. The sub-aeroplane (which I shall term the plane, as opposed to the launcher, for convenience's sake) is the issue here. It's quite simple to give the plane a high buoyancy and just let it fly across the landscape or classroom:

// Simple paper aeroplane script
// Ordinal Malaprop
// 2006-02-21

default
{
 on_rez(integer param)
 {
  llSetBuoyancy(0.9);
 }

 collision_start(integer n)
 {
  llTriggerSound("pop", 1.0);
  if (llDetectedType(0) & AGENT) {
   llWhisper(0, llDetectedName(0) + " has been hit by a
   paper aeroplane from " + llKey2Name(llGetOwner()) +
   "!");
  }
  llDie();
 }

 land_collision_start(vector pos)
 {
  llDie();
 }
}

(Note the telltale element there in the script, designed to prevent pupils from pretending that it was not they who committed the offence.) This looks perfectly fine and would allow one to rain paper aeroplanes on Philip Linden quite effectively - as long as one throws them horizontally. At a steeper angle, however, they look a little ridiculous. Firstly they travel quite happily at the same speed a great distance into the air, which real aeroplanes do not do. Secondly, as they fall, they retain the precise same angle that they had at launch, which again, real aeroplanes do not do.

It would seem that the best idea would be to have a simple simulation of aerofoil lift combined with the "point in the direction of travel" mechanism described in my previous post concerning rocketry, and on investigating this I really do mean simple. Lift appears to be proportional to the square of the speed, and I plan to simplify the lift co-efficient drastically, so that it simply goes to zero after the plane goes outside a certain angle. I shall remove the buoyancy too, as I am not actually using Cavorite-impregnated paper.

A useful enhancement to the launcher here would be to allow the wielder to hold down their mouse button to increase the speed at which the plane will be launched, releasing it to throw, as this will affect its behaviour.

Please do not ask how I plan to deal with planes that have rolled around their forward axis, because I will make a face as if sucking on a sherbet lemon.

On the matter of the serving of refreshments; an eye on intrusion

2006-02-19T19:06:00.000Z

I have recently expanded and redeveloped my showroom area and to celebrate this, have constructed a device of great social import - an Automated Champagne Waiter, controlled by its own specialised engine and the most accurate thermometers available to chill the vintage champagne to the perfect temperature and pour it as if one was in the finest Paris hotel. Moreover, it has the capacity to top up one's glass as often as desired. (It will not actually follow one around doing this. That is a project for later I feel.)

I think, though, that it could be improved. Dear reader, what is it that you would most like to see from a champagne device? I'm at a bit of a loss for ideas for improvement.

Incidentally, I would hope that no visitors consume so much champagne that they come to believe that damaging the highly volatile fuel tank on the dirigible deck is a good idea. A few impacts from high-velocity items such as bullets and... well, I'm not responsible for the consequences, and my lawyers confirm this.

I would also appreciate it if they did not use the high-speed transit chairs if their stomachs are feeling a tad unstable, as there is nobody to clean the area apart from myself, and I am a modern woman who does not feel it is her place to do such a thing. We are not living in the eighteenth century any more. I trust that anyone becoming ill after a jaunt will bring their own mop and bucket.

---

More practically, I note that folk are still complaining about the interference of ne'r-do-wells in their home areas, and I agree that it is most improper occurrence should someone return again and again to taunt a lady or gentlemen, and take photographs of their bedroom activities, which I am informed is a common pastime of such people. With this in mind there is now a Defensive Panopticon available, easily updatable with specific names, that warns one when any of those on the list of unwelcome people is around.

Of course, there is always the ban tool on a land parcel, but that does not help anyone who has chosen to make their home some way above the ground, and if one has a somewhat small area it is quite possible for a ruffian to sit very close and listen in to one's private conversations. For this reason, the Panopticon alerts people whenever offenders come within ninety-six metres, over one's land or not, and has the potential (if so desired) to eject them at any altitude should they trespass.

I have often pledged never to produce any so-called "security" item that is indiscriminate in its effects, throwing pilots out of aeroplanes and so forth, but one which requires specific names to be added I feel is quite legitimate. This is a simple device, which I designed some time ago, and have been meaning to release for some time once it has developed a friendlier interface.

It must be said that it might be considered somewhat, well, intimidating in appearance.

A polite notice

2006-02-17T08:55:00.000Z

Vending devices in Second Life are often distinctly brusque and indeed even rude, as well as being festooned with garish floating text. Last night, whilst designing a device of similar purpose for my own potential use - I have not made up my mind - I decided that in any case mine would be more polite.

(Also note a new spinning FOR SALE sign... *sigh* I really need to move out of this area.)

Communications and so forth

2006-02-14T13:22:00.000Z

A perpetual problem for myself and others whose body clocks are tuned to Greenwich Mean Time is that of communication with other residents of Second Life. A gap of eight hours between London and the Western coast of the Americas means that, when dealing with those resident in the Colonies, one spends much of one's time asleep when they are awake, and then wakes and is eager to speak, but is unable to actually enter Second Life due to the demands of work and has to wait for many hours, tapping fingers irritably and perhaps forgetting what one meant to say.

(This is not to mention the much greater irritation caused by not being able to attend events, but there is little to be done about that apart from demanding that they start earlier. LSL doesn't have any time machine functions it appears.)

There are also other occasions when one is trapped in the Other World for extended periods - say, on account of one's Powerbook having broken down again - with access to email but not to Second Life itself. It would be nice to be able to at least initiate messages, and at the moment one cannot do this. Most people are aware that instant messages from within Second Life can be forwarded as email, and many of those people are also aware that replying to the email will send an instant message back.

What fewer people are aware of is that the address that one replies to is actually only a temporary session one, and is not reliable for long term use. Normally, to send an email into Second Life one addresses it to key-of-the-recipient@lsl.secondlife.com, and when one receives an email from an instant message, the reply address is similarly key-of-the-sender@lsl.secondlife.com.

And that's all well and good when dealing with objects. Objects retain their key indefinitely, so I can save the key of an object somewhere, send it emails until the end of the world at the same address and it will always pick them up. But this does not work for communicating with people - the value of key-of-the-sender above when they send you email via IM is not their actual key.

I am not sure whether addressing mail to actual-avatar-key-of-the-recipient@lsl.secondlife.com works, but it's inconvenient to carry around an address book, or keyring I suppose, full of impossible-to-remember keys. If this doesn't work, and it's only temporary keys that do, which may be an attempt to limit people harassing others via email sent from the Other World (laudable intention, annoying results for me) there is no way to initiate a conversation from outside.

(Yes, Ordinal, get to the point.) So, anyway, here is my temporary solution - a script that waits for email and turns it into instant messages. Say I wanted to send a message to my friend Professor Jefferson Gould but was unable to log on. When I first set the object going, it said three things which hopefully I recorded somewhere:

Email-IM Gateway: My email address is some-key-or-other@lsl.secondlife.com
Email-IM Gateway: Security key is *12345678* - include this as the subject of the email
Email-IM Gateway: Polling for email every 60.00000 seconds

Actually I don't need to record the last one, that's a bit irrelevant, but the first two I do. I compose a short message to Professor Gould and send an email in the following format:

To: some-key-or-other@lsl.secondlife.com
Subject: *12345678*
---
Jefferson Gould//Mr Watson - come here!

The gateway receives the email and sends two instant messages to Professor Gould:

Email-IM Gateway: Ordinal Malaprop has sent you the following message - please use the IM tool to reply to them directly
Email-IM Gateway: Mr Watson - come here!

"Aha!" I hear those of you who script thinking, "How does it know the proper key just from the name Jefferson Gould? You need a key to send a message with llInstantMessage. You're cheating, aren't you?" Er, that's the problem really. There is no way of getting a key directly from a name in LSL. So I have to have keys and names listed in a notecard, and the script reads through the lines of the notecard until it finds the right name, then takes the key from that. Which is a pain because they need gathering first, which means that I won't be able to send an email to anyone whose key I have not already obtained, unless I can find a public key database somewhere.

I've not tested the script for this so I won't post it up right now - in any case this entry is getting rather long. Once I do so, though, I will, and also the script for the key harvester that I use, and they'll be in the showroom as usual, which could get a bit crowded. Maybe I should script a vendor too so that not all of these things need to have their own prims, even if I do quite like the current layout.

The issue of keys and names is an interesting one. People do feel protective about their keys being recorded. I wonder how much of that is just simple suspicion at surveillance. Perhaps that's something for another entry.

*thinks* I might integrate this into my existing "contact me" object, to produce a Multi-Functional Communications Engine.

---

Edit: I've been informed that there are public name to key databases in existence that can be used for this purpose - for instance, the one maintained by Ulrika Zugzwang or this one on w-hat.com. These are not entirely complete, and would take a long time for a script to search if fully included - but the public web lookup pages give one the option of finding a key from a name and then sending to that. I shall modify the script so that one can specify either a key or a name to send to.

Scripting tips

2006-02-12T11:17:00.000Z

Tip jar,
originally uploaded by Ordinal Malaprop.

I have changed the manner in which my showroom operates. Instead of having a few free things and the rest being all very cheap (nothing over L$50), items are now either free or cost L$1 - the latter helping me keep records of who has bought what.

In the corner is the Lurking Crate, which reacts... unusually for a crate, when approached. This contains random items that I've designed but which aren't serious or detailed or working well enough to warrant my building a whole retail box for them. These are all free.

Almost everything should be full mod/copy, although doubtless I've failed sometimes since I am appalling with permissions. Let me know if anything does not meet this standard. New scripts should now have the following licence header however:

// ---LICENCE START---
// The latest version of this script is always available for free
// from Ordinal Malaprop via dispenser in my home area or directly.

// This script may be distributed as desired and used as desired
// under the condition that:

// - this header licence information is not altered;
// - it is clear in the documentation of any item using it that
//   the script is being used, with author (just a quick mention
//   is fine, e.g. "Uses <script name> by Ordinal Malaprop");
// - it is not sold BY ITSELF, UNMODIFIED.

// I would appreciate it if you let me know if you are using the
// script yourself, but that's not part of the licence.
// ---LICENCE END---

If you are a past customer and I have not already contacted you regarding a refund, do please let me know and I will send you back the difference in prices.

The only real income that my establishment will now generate is via the tip jar. If anyone feels that products from here are useful or entertaining or otherwise worth something, and feels like expressing their appreciation, that is one option. One could also rate me up if one was moved to spend - I do appreciate this as well.

Leave of absence

2006-02-08T13:02:00.000Z

My lovely Powerbook has just this afternoon gone in for repair, and may be some time (well, hopefully it will be back before the end of the week). Until then however I will not be Second Living, so don't complain if you need to speak to me and I'm not around.

My last act was to modify the rocket mentioned below so that it fires out submunitions on detonation which themselves detonate in random colours half a second later, providing a rather extensive and messy shower of particles.

Not as hard as I thought

2006-02-06T01:35:00.000Z

Well, colour me an embarrassed shade of mauve - after lots of faffing about with llSetTorque et cie, I find that llRotLookAt does work with physical objects, it's just that you need rather inflated parameters to get it to do anything.

If we declare

float strength;
float damping;

at the top of the script, and set those variables to be

strength = llGetMass()*3;
damping = strength/3;

in state_entry(), things work out quite well if we just add the instruction to rotate to set_engine, which now looks like this:

set_engine(vector dir)
{
    vector vel = llGetVel();
    vector drag = vel / gMaxSpeed;
    rotation rot = llGetRot();
    llRotLookAt(rot * llRotBetween(<1,0,0> * rot, vel),
    strength, damping);
    llSetForce((dir - drag) * gAcceln * gTimer, FALSE);
    gFuel -= gTimer;
    if (gFuel <= 0) explode();
}

And thus we have a rocket that now moves to point in its direction of travel, calculating the rotation between its forward axis and the velocity using llRotBetween, multiplying that by its actual rotation and then turning there. Don't ask me how that works. I really don't understand rotations very well, still, I'm afraid. I got a lot of that from the wiki page about llLookAt.

I also added a longer detection spike, to let the maximum speed go up a bit, and added a little more flash to the launcher - now, once you run out of ammunition, the Harlequin ejects the empty cartridge (which bounces about for a bit on the ground and emits smoke) and you go through a reloading animation. I think it looks rather good, personally.

What remains is to give the rockets a slight heat-seeking element, pointing them a little towards the nearest avatar. This will probably just make them miss, but should help at long ranges. Not that I can see anything past 96m in any case.

A project proceeding

2006-02-05T14:16:00.000Z

Readers interested in Victoriana, steampunk or just good taste and design might be interested to see the preliminary model of a dedicated steampunk sim that is being planned at this very moment.

This impressive maquette was built by Professor Jefferson Gould and continues to grow every day. If all goes to plan I shall personally be involved in the scripting of some of the infrastructure - automated hansom cabs, balloon tours, communications, that sort of thing. Obviously there needs to be investment in the project, but given that everywhere that the model goes people, flock around it and make comments such as "that looks great, when can I visit?", "I'd rent a house in a place like that", "I'd love to set up a shop/gallery/other there" I believe that it would definitely be economically viable.

There will be more publicity for it in coming weeks, but for now, here are a few photographs. You can see the full-size model quite frequently on evenings in Cordova Sandbox; I'd host it myself but alas, I do not have the spare prims in my home area.

---

Edit: The model has found a home at Acontia 52,186,86 - click to visit it. To see the whole collection of pictures, including the latest design, visit my gallery on the subject.

Looking at solutions

2006-02-04T22:07:00.000Z

Edit: Turning problems detailed in this post have been solved, and some of the conclusions proved incorrect - see above.

---

One would think that llLookAt and llRotLookAt would be the ideal functions for use with a guided physical projectile that one wishes to have pointing in a certain direction. Certainly, in the wiki, it says "this function works for both physical and non-physical objects".

Does it? No, unless I'm doing something horribly wrong.

This evening I have been engaging in a little rocket science, trying to build a projectile that

(a) accelerates constantly in the direction that it is pointing until it runs out of fuel. This is fairly straightforward, it just requires using llSetForce. I added in a drag co-efficient that represents air resistance, proportional to the current velocity, as well, so as to limit the speed.

(b) moves to point in the direction that it is moving in, more or less. (Aerodynamic objects tend to do this - think paper aeroplanes.) It's easy to make vehicles do this, there are automatic parameters to set, but for physical objects I can't see any mechanism apart from applying a force or impulse myself. And that's where I'm having the problem.

First things first; the basic motor. (I was told earlier on today that I didn't post enough code examples so I'm doing a little of that now.) Here are my global variables:

float gFuel; // current fuel
float gFuelMax = 10.0; // seconds of flight time
float gMaxSpeed; // calculated based on FPS
float gAcceln = 10; // metres per second per second
float gTimer = 0.2; // check every X seconds

On entry, gFuel is set to gFuelMax, and gMaxSpeed... well, that is set to llGetRegionFPS() * 1.5. Why? Well, the rocket itself has an invisible central prim that is 1.5m long, for collision detection, and I am assuming that llGetRegionFPS() will give me the physics framerate. Any faster than the above and there will be "gaps" between the positions of the rocket meaning that a collision might not be detected. See the previous post that I made about bullets for more on this.

Anyway, also on entry we set a timer with a frequency of gTimer. All that the timer event does is call set_engine(llRot2Fwd(llGetRot())), to set the engine going in the rocket's current forward direction. set_engine is a function that takes a direction as a parameter and consists of the following code:

set_engine(vector dir)
{
    vector vel = llGetVel();
    vector drag = vel / gMaxSpeed;
    llSetForce((dir - drag) * gAcceln * gTimer, FALSE);
    gFuel -= gTimer;
    if (gFuel <= 0) explode();
}

The value of the vector drag varies depending on the current velocity, and is a push in the opposite direction to the rocket's current movement - note, not the direction parameter sent to the function. At maximum speed, drag will have a magnitude of 1, which should cancel out the rocket motor if that is acting in that direction. Okay, the drag should really be different for different directions, since the forward drag on a rocket is much less than the drag on other axes, but give me a break, it's only alive for a few seconds. Er, I mean, that's an optional project for advanced students.

That all works fairly well it seems. The problem is that the rocket should really turn in the direction of movement - real rockets do that. Only I can't seem to get that working. I can't use llSetRot, that's only for non-physical objects, and when I try to use llLookAt or llRotLookAt, they just don't do anything at all. I tried building a sensor object that used those functions to look at the nearest avatar to test this. When it was non-physical, it turned fine (and I've used this many times before). When it was physical, it just didn't move.

I don't know if I'm screwing up some parameters or not - I'm sure I've used llLookAt with physical objects before - but it is annoying me greatly at the moment. Once I find a solution (if ever) that doesn't involve the use of llApplyRotationalImpulse, which I don't understand and which scares me, I'll post something on the matter.

As a post scriptum, hold_R_bazooka is all very well as an animation, but why on earth does aim_R_bazooka have to involve your left hand entirely changing position?

I demand compensation

2006-02-03T12:45:00.000Z

Two outages within twenty four hours? I am entitled to permanent service from Linden Labs, all day, every day. God dammit, I pay their wages. Haven't they ever heard of customer service?

I demand compensation for this outrage. It just isn't good enough. Linden Labs are a disgrace. They release clients with critical flaws like, um, the display box in llDialog() being one whole line smaller now - they destroy my grid-famous Avtrap Mall by introducing point-to-point teleporting - and they're going to cripple the TringoChairCasino that I built just to help newbies, out of the goodness of my heart, by removing DI. They're stealing from me. This is theft. They're like some sort of Communists!

WHERE IS MY MONEY, LINDEN LABS?

I'm going to hold my breath until I get it.

By my command

2006-02-01T10:28:00.000Z

Here's a script that I could have found very useful recently:

string gKillCode;
string gOwnerEmail = "owner@somewhere.com";

default
{
  on_rez(integer p)
  {
    llResetScript();
  }

  state_entry()
  {
    // Generate random kill code
    // This stops just anyone killing the object
    // if they get its key
    // Email this to the owner
    gKillCode = "*" + (string)llRound(llFrand(2000000000)) + "*";
    llEmail(gOwnerEmail, "Kill object by email",
    "My kill code is " + gKillCode);
    // Now set to poll email every five minutes
    llSetTimerEvent(300.0);
  }

  timer()
  {
    llGetNextEmail("", "");
  }

  email(string time, string address, string subj,
  string message, integer num_left)
  {
    // If the message contains the kill code,
    // email a confirmation and die
    if (llSubStringIndex(message, gKillCode) != -1) {
      llEmail(gOwnerEmail, "Confirmation of receipt of kill email",
      "Dying now");
      llDie();
    }
    if (num_left > 0) llGetNextEmail("", "");
  }
}

That's just off the top of my head right now so there may be the odd bug, but I think the basic idea is sound.

If one creates anything that might annoy other people, one should include some sort of emergency kill script, or even

llListen(999, "", llGetOwner(), "die");

and

listen(integer channel, string name, key id, string msg)
{
   llOwnerSay("Dying now");
   llDie();
}

so you can go around shouting "/999 die" to purge the area if it ever comes down to it. (The above obviously needs changing if you have other listens running. Don't blame me if you just stick it into your code and your objects die at odd times.)

One other thing that I have learnt recently is that I'm getting much too involved in certain factional fighting, and it's causing me to make mistakes and bother people who are uninvolved. It's also getting in the way of other things that I am doing. I don't want this to happen, so I'm going to pull back - I'll provide scripting support, alerts, presence loggers (not chat loggers, no, that's against ToS if you're not there and they don't consent) etc but I'm not taking an active part any more.

(Unless I change my mind of course.)

I've had enough of building weapon delivery systems; after I've fulfilled the responsibilities that I already have, I might build a sandwich delivery system.

Physics bridge collapse

2006-01-30T00:18:00.000Z

Physics bridge collapse 2,
originally uploaded by Ordinal Malaprop.

As an quick experiment I tried to build a bridge over the stream on my land that was supported purely physically. The only non-physical elements were the two top bars you can see in the pictures, and the top rings connected to them - apart from that, each individual ring was a separate object, and the bridge itself the four rings at its corners was as well.

It didn't work very well. As soon as I enabled physics on the objects concerned, it started to behave a bit oddly. Two corners of the bridge began to swing downwards. The sim began to run like treacle. And then the whole thing began to break apart, very slowly, with rings passing through each other and shooting off in a rather interesting but utterly unproductive way.

At the end of it I was left with the base bridge board half through the stream bank, with the departing links scattered across my land. Though I don't have much land, so it wasn't hard to track them down and delete them.

I suspect that non-physical objects may be the way to go in future, but I'm determined to get something interesting working on a permanent basis. Earlier on I built a small installation with similar links chaining a scripted physical "creature" to a post, which constantly tried to get away. A similar thing happened there, with breaking chains. Perhaps SL was just concerned about cruelty to scripts.

Further observations and a moral dilemma

2006-01-29T01:11:00.000Z

This post does actually have some scripting content in it - I promise.

Further to previous posts, vandalism has continued, with flames being placed around the Black History Month exhibit, and I have produced what appears to me to be a weapon that is hard or impossible to shield against. I would call it a defensive weapon, but in truth, any weapon can be used offensively, so that would be a misnomer.

I have been playing with push scripts recently and it seems to me at the moment that an effective push weapon has two elements - firstly, the targetting script, which identifies a target and sends instructions to the second group, the push scripts themselves. One link message will activate an arbitrary number of other scripts. So one can simply have

llMessageLinked(LINK_THIS, 1, (string)(llVecNorm(dir) * 2147483647), id);

(where dir is the direction to the target and id the target's key) in the targetting script when contact is established, either by collision or by sensor or however one wishes to do it, and then have a number of other scripts in the same object that are merely

default
{
  link_message(integer s, integer n, string str, key id)
  {
    llPushObject(id, (vector)str, <0,0,0>, FALSE);
  }
}

The above can be duplicated an arbitrary number of times. I am not aware of a limit on the number of scripts in one object but it's certainly rather high.

Apart from sitting on something, which protects one from any push, I am not aware of a defence against pushes apart from the threat of legal action - and it appears that this is not sufficient to deter a sufficiently keen griefer, given that punishment is going to be limited to a few days' suspension for an alt account. Setting a land parcel to ban all foreign scripts from activating is possible and has some effect, but it is inconvenient for visitors and also does not protect against pushes launched from outside the parcel. I have established that it is quite possible to set one off of sufficient magnitude to seriously annoy whoever is on the receiving end. The stupidest griefer can set off a C4 script from just outside.

So what is one to do? I can't sit around in group areas all day waiting to catch vandals at it. Banning them from the area is pointless as they can just use alts or build vandalising objects outside the parcel and move them in. Abuse reports are filed each time, but there seems to be little reaction to them, and I don't have much confidence in the deterrant effect of any sanctions applied. We've identified a lot of names of people who are likely to cause trouble - all of the vandalism so far has been by two of them. I built an early-warning system that sets off an alert whenever any of those names come within 96m, but it would be so easy to add the object that automatically fires unstoppable phantom missiles that push once they come within range. Except that that would be against the rules.

I suppose that sometimes, one must be the grown-up.

I hope to get away from this more martial theme in the near future.

Nazi grief

2006-01-27T17:44:00.000Z

Last night, more Nazi Drama occurred, with one and then three shaven-headed fellows hovering just outside the SPSL headquarters and basically saying very little, just being there. This exposes a problem with small or narrow plots of land in Second Life, which is that anyone can sit on neighbouring land quite happily, listen in to conversations, make contributions of their own, and there is nothing (legal) that you can do, apart from convince your neighbours to ban the folk concerned.

If one is attempting to construct a case with Linden Labs against an individual or group one can hardly go around pushing them into orbit - even if it doesn't lead to your own suspension, it is the sort of thing that confuses and annoys arbitrators, who prefer clear-cut cases and do not like dealing with mutually warring parties. Confusing arbitrators means that your case gets dealt with more slowly and any decision is likely to be more lenient and "even-handed" - "you both stay off each other's land, and if any of you see members of the other group on your land, report it" rather than "you, you there, stay off these guys' land and never bother them again or we'll send you all to the Cornfield in an instant".

So all that is left is to engage in an awful lot of verbal abuse. It may seem a little out of character, but I have to confess that I can be somewhat offensive at times. Also, one can posture with weaponry, pull out bananaphones or other noisemaking devices, bombard people with copies of the Communist Manifesto, build signs, attempt to put hats on their heads with rude messages on them and so on.

It doesn't actually get you anywhere, though, and while I rather got caught up with righteous anger at being invaded and group loyalty at the time, I feel rather embarrassed about the whole thing now. This is a bunch of toy soldiers who are bored and want to have a fight. In Jessie, you can only fight other people who come into Jessie, and clearly that's been a bit dull for them. Some of them may have some unpleasant views, but it's not like they're actually going to get anywhere promoting them on SL - it makes no difference to me if they sit there muttering to each other about race mixing in the trenches in Jessie, and taking it outside of that is a good way to get LL to react much more quickly. Others, I'm sure, are just playing at it in order to provoke other people, something which I've so much of in other contexts that if I ever take it seriously I should kick myself.

Being the sort of person I am I immediately started thinking of automatic drones to place in Jessie that would seek out and kill selected targets, again and again and again (and I'm not sure how the one I designed could be easily stopped) but really, that is rather childish. I'm interested to see if it would work now but it's not actually going to help anything.

If you're going to vandalise a place...

2006-01-26T12:50:00.000Z

red_star_lounge_vandalism_4
Originally uploaded by Ordinal Malaprop.

...either do it properly, or do it so garishly and tackily that it's unbearable to look at. This is neither.

Last night the headquarters of the SPSL, the Red Star Lounge, were vandalised by a bunch of Nazis with whom there has been some conflict. (They call themselves "anti-Communist" but they're keen on eugenics and so on as well, it appears from having chatted a bit.) I won't go into that because it's a bit tedious. However, really, if one is going to vandalise a place, at least take some care with the objects.

(full gallery)

Ad Builds In Second Life

2006-01-23T11:17:00.000Z

One thing I did forget to do is mention my Ad Builds In Second Life gallery. This is a selection of the best, worst and ugliest pieces of advertising that I have seen around the virtual world, with an emphasis on the worst - but please do note that simply being in there doesn't mean I'm necessarily saying that your ad is terrible. On the other hand, if the caption says "this ad is terrible", yes, I am saying that.

If you are reading this (and there are the odd few people apart from myself who do read this, I'm told) and you know of a really appalling or otherwise notable ad or area, please get in touch with a comment or in-world with the location and I will go and check it out, giving you credit if you like. One thing I'm finding annoying at the moment is areas which are utterly flooded with ad builds, which might be fine individually but together make you want to turn your draw distance down to 2m.

N.B. This isn't just about Bush signs, though obviously they count as well. That's old news, okay?

Automatic Writing

2006-01-17T18:07:00.000Z

Oh goodness me, so many things that I've been building recently, I just don't know where to start, but I'll begin with my growing interest in the production of automata. I think of it as my way of giving something back to Second Life when I'm not there to "entertain" people with my "sparkling" personality and "ready wit".

--

First of all I continued work on Delilah, my "obedient proxy". Delilah is a mostly conical creation whose main purpose is to allow me to explore SL to an extremely limited extent while I'm not even there. Over email, she can be told target positions to go to, a height to hover at, a speed to move at, and also to say or shout messages from me - this uses similar code to the Touring Vehicle that I have mentioned previously, just with a different interface. She will feed back information about any speech that she has heard and, if asked, data on which avatars have entered or left her local area. I have set her to travel across the grid in my absence and hover around listening to people's irrelevant chat, which was not particularly enlightening.

The problem with Delilah is latency. llEmail (for her to feed back) has a twenty second timeout, and I don't really want to have my inbox filled with every event that occurs around her in any case, so responding to any chat in a timely manner is practically impossible. Some sort of XMLRPC interface might work, with a web page that I could log into and see updates whenever I felt like it, but that's rather a lot of effort for someone who knows only the basics of how XMLRPC works. At the moment, poor Delilah must be considered a flawed creation.

My next automaton was an aerial mobile guardian - a spherical machine with two main modes, "watching" and "chasing". In "watching" mode the guardian waits, spinning slowly, until someone approaches within a set distance. At that point it enters "chasing" mode, moving to a set distance away from that person and opening fire with the two cannon mounted on its sides. The guardian uses llSetPos rather than moving physically so is immune to pushing effects, though I should really fix this to make it work physically - I'm afraid that I was lazy, and llSetPos is so less fraught with problems than real physical movement.

However, through my contact with other members of the steampunk movement, for example Professor Jefferson Gould, I have learnt to take more care with the appearance and animation of my creations, and I am quite proud not only of the actual structure but also of the action of the cannon, which eject brass shell casings and the barrels of which recoil. Pictures to follow.

--

I have been doing other things but frankly, I'm getting so behind on this that it's not worth me trying to remember everything. As well as that I am not logged in anyway. This blog was originally intended to be a proper scripting diary, and I should post more frequently, bad Ordinal. I'll mention things if I they come to mind in future.

A space, not an oddity

2006-01-12T14:15:00.000Z

I'm in New World Notes! Well, two sentences of mine are, in the recent post about the MTV avatar fashion show:

But under that objection lurked a larger one, perhaps: feeling imposed upon by a media giant that didn't seem to appreciate the essence of Second Life culture. As Brodie put it, "MTV is about what is popular, not creativity." And why a fashion show, when there was so much more to the world? "I wouldn't want SL to get any more of a reputation as basically being computer dress-up," Ordinal Malaprop worried, "That's only a small part of what goes on, fun as it might be."

One thing that does interest me about the MTV event is that, shallow as it might be (and I don't think I'm exactly taking a huge risk in thinking that could be the case) it's about something within SL rather than SL itself. Coverage outside of gaming and futurist media has mostly been along the lines of the Newsnight program linked to previously - events were used to illustrate things that could happen, but the subject was Second Life.

In this case the subject is a virtual event rather than the concept of virtual events, and I think that marks something of a step in the direction of considering virtual space as a valid environment for things to happen in, as when the BBC reported an outbreak of plague in World Of Warcraft. I also think that it's a step forward. Introductory "what is this thing?" articles are all very well, particularly considering that SL is an unusual online environment, not an easier-to-explain "game", but I think that illustrating interesting things happening within SL, and treating them seriously rather than just as a gimmick, is a better tactic to raise interest. Not only are you showcasing SL, you're implying that what goes on in there has value in itself.

If this leads to an immense flood of new bling, though, I will be demanding compensation.

(Democracy Island post coming soon, but my screenshots are at home.)

"Impeach" in a crowded sim

2006-01-09T12:10:00.000Z

Unfortunately, during testing of the Kinetic Metaphor Propagator, it emerged that people were hearing the shouts of the Political Statements and thinking that the Impeach Bush ads had started actually shouting now, a terrifying spectre. So the Statements will have their volume reduced somewhat, to "say" level (20m) rather than "shout" (100m).

I would also like to point out that Ordinal Laboratories takes no responsibility for:

* any free speech used on unappreciative targets (don't blame me, there are a million push guns out there already anyway);
* any bannings that may occur from the exercise of free speech in this manner.

Freedom of Speech, automated

2006-01-08T12:30:00.000Z

I was at some of the speeches and demonstrations at Democracy Island yesterday, and I'll make a few comments about that, but I'd first of all like to announce a great step forward for political speech in Second Life - the Ordinal Laboratories Kinetic Metaphor Propagator v0.1.

In patriotic red, white and blue, it enables high-speed, targeted message distribution - when a Political Statement hits a free-speech recipient...

* it shouts "IMPEACH BUSH! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ! NO BLOOD FOR OIL!";
* it explodes in a shower of IMPEACH BUSH signs;
* it plays "Stars And Stripes Forever";
* it sends whoever it is flying some considerable distance. This is an important part of the message, as being pushed out of the sim is a metaphor for Bush being ejected from office. Do you see?

Now, some readers may be thinking that this sounds like a push gun and it might be in some way annoying to those people affected by it, but what harm is being done to you? You can just ignore the effects if you want, just like you can just ignore telemarketers or enormous multiple multicoloured signs floating in menacing clusters around your property 24-7. I tell you, if you find this annoying it's really because you can't accept the truth of the message. The irritation you feel is merely cognitive dissonance.

---

Post Scriptum: You might be interested in watching the excellent piece from BBC1's Newsnight called "Do avatars dream of electric racoons?" See Jeremy Paxman as an avatar! A general overview of MMO... well, Massively Multiplayer Online Things, I suppose, with a long section about Second Life.

The Punitive Boringness of Agriculture

2006-01-06T16:44:00.000Z

I'd heard about the Cornfield on the SL forums before, but I always thought it was a joke, until a few days ago...

Nimrod Yaffle, a resident of the virtual world Second Life, has revealed details of a bizarre and dark prison Second Life's maker Linden Lab is now using to lock up criminal avatars. Dubbed the "The Corn Field," the moonlit environment contains only rows of corn, two television sets, an aging tractor and a one-way teleport terminal allowing no escape. It exists as an alternative to standard disciplinary measures, which traditionally prevent access to Second Life completely.

After breaking Second Life's rules, Yaffle was informed via email by Linden Lab that he was being sent to The Corn Field. "I thought it was a joke," Yaffle told me in-world. "I never even knew it existed before I went there, and by the looks of it, a lot of other people didn't either." Rumour and speculation about the prison has been running amok in the Second Life community since word of The Corn Field spread, but until recently the prison simulator hadn't been officially confirmed. (Clickable Culture)

This was even mentioned in the Guardian, or at least on their games blog. The thing is, it makes me want to visit, and I'm too much of a wuss to actually do something that could get me banned. Perhaps we could have tours organised, invisible to the criminals themselves.

In which the Safety of Vehicle Passengers is Discussed

2006-01-05T12:45:00.000Z

One thing I've always found annoying in SL is the number of times people fall out of vehicles. I've been on a few newbie tours with the SPSL, where we descend on a Welcome Area, grab a couple of newbies and whisk them off, and without fail at least one of them jumps out. (Perhaps that says something about our conversation.) Similarly, when I was attending a building session on Tuesday, held on a platform high above the ground, people seemed unable to stay seated.

One of the problems is that you often don't realise that whoever it is has fallen out until another passenger looks around and says "oops, we just lost X". In a vehicle, that means they're back somewhere on the ground, one of many possible green dots, and sometimes you can't find them at all. I therefore decided to create a script that would at least inform the occupants when this happened.

I shall be putting it in my showroom later on, as it now works, but it is based around the fact that when somebody sits on or gets off an object, the number of linked primitives in that object changes. The avatar is treated as a prim itself. This triggers an event which can be detected by a script.

Scripts can also obtain a list of the prims that make them up, as well as the names and keys of those prims. It is quite easy to find out the name of somebody who has just got on board, as they will simply be the last one on the current list. (The event actually tells you what their key is so if you were only concerned with people getting on board, you wouldn't need to bother with prim lists at all - you could just get their name straight from that.) If they've departed, though, clearly they're not on the list any more, so you have a slight problem.

The pseudocode for my script looks something like this:

On startup
Get a list of prims in the object (we assume that nobody is sitting on the object). This is the "base list". Any more prims will be treated as passengers.
Also save this as the "old list" to start with - see below.

When a prim is linked or delinked
Get the current list of prims in the object ("new list").
If linked (more prims than previously i.e. someone has gotten on):
* Say "hello" to the last name on the "new list".
If delinked (fewer prims than previously i.e. someone has gotten off):
* Go through all the names on the "old list" that aren't on the "base list".
* For each of these, check whether they are still on the "new list".
* If not, you've found who's gotten off. Say "goodbye" to them.
Either way, after you've finished, set the "old list" to the "new list".

In practice you don't actually need to save the "base list" since you don't care what's on it - all you need to do is save the size, and only check items on the old and new lists that have an index greater than that size. If there are 18 objects on the base list you know you only need to check objects 19+ to see who's left, because those are the only ones who will be passengers.

The effect of this is that the object you drop the script into whispers "Hello, X! I now have Y passengers" or "Goodbye, X! I now have Y passengers" on sitting or unsitting, which can be heard by everyone. One could also add any other functions that one wished to activate on boarding or disembarking, giving notecards, rezzing a platform underneath them etc. Because it also has the key of anyone who's left, I thought that a possible enhancement might be to then set up a sensor to find out where they'd actually got to - say whispering every few seconds "X is 25m north-east" or something - which would help you find them.

A live demonstration

2006-01-02T23:12:00.000Z

Should anyone wish to experience the automated vehicle touring thing that I have been talking about, there's a demonstration available at my home area (see sidebar). Sit on the vehicle, touch it, it will go.

One thing is that you should remove all hovering or other flight attachments that you might have, because they will also hover the vehicle itself and interfere with its movement. I don't think that there's any way around this.

The wave of an alternate future

2006-01-02T11:01:00.000Z

(click to enlarge)

After all of my complaints here and the addition of several "lovely" new ad blocks in my local area, finally, someone has actually created one that looks nice - see right.

It's tasteful, it doesn't glow or spin or bob up and down, and it's actually useful as well - go inside and click on the computer screen and you get an up-to-date list of other property for sale in the local area. I hope that it will be the wave of the future, only a lot of people seem to think "the future" means "glows and moves around and has the design quality of a home page circa 1996".

Clockwork and balloons and an actual building

2006-01-02T01:58:00.000Z

So what have I been making and doing?

A clockwork blunderbuss: I decided that it was time to prove at least some retrotech credentials given that I claim them, and I have long had a gun that shoots any object loaded into it (for physics testing - a terrific euphemism for "blowing stuff up") so after a meeting with the Victorian Retrotech Society I made one out of good old-fashioned wood, polished brass and iron.

Yes, I know, it's a very nice hat. See the little key at the top of the magazine mechanism? No, look closer. It's not a sight, it's a key.

Every time one fires the gun, that key turns an eighth of the way anti-clockwise with a tick, until the magazine is emptied - at which point, through the miracle of self-winding, it winds itself all the way back up again. I have, you see, developed a mechanism for postponing the input of all of the energy required until an undefined point in the future - at that time there will have to be some sort of high powered steam plant involved, but I'll be long gone.

Nobody will ever notice this key turning, of course, unless they suddenly become confused at the fact that they can't fire and look down to try to find where the "tick tick tick" noise is coming from. But it's the little touches, you know. There is also a flurry of sparks when one fires a "bullet". (My favourite is the anarchist bomb, which bounces around until the fuse expires and then explodes in a shower of shrapnel.)

A mechanism for the production of touring vehicles: It seems that many groups in Second Life are now interested in hosting tours, for fun and/or profit. I spent a very long time trying to use such functions as llMoveToTarget to construct objects that one could sit on and which would propel one towards a destination.

I ran afoul of a concept known as "energy", which is not the same as the energy that we all know and love from physics classes, but instead is a concept dreamt up by Linden Labs with the intention of confounding scripters and making their projects throw up inexplicable errors. Simply put, objects use up "energy" when moving themselves and other objects around, and only get energy back at a rate inversely proportional to their mass. No, this doesn't make sense, I'm quite aware of that. Yes, tiny objects end up being more efficient propulsion than larger ones.

In the end I simply modified my autopilot balloon script (see previous) to read destinations sequentially from a notecard instead of requiring a pilot, as "vehicles" (i.e. any object designated thusly by the scripter) are not subject to energy restrictions, though require somewhat more fiddly techniques to move around. And now I have a script which, when dropped onto an object along with a notecard specifying waypoints in global format, will cause said object and anything linked to it to fly in a reasonably realistic manner between all the points in order. Lines which are not global co-ordinates are either special commands (change height, pause etc) or are commentary to be read out to the passengers.

I've tested this fairly thoroughly and it works. All that's needed are vehicles to attach it to and courses to follow. The Socialist Party of Second Life and the Victorian Retrotech Society are both interested in this particular piece of difference engine trickery, and I am happy to oblige them both, though the last thing one would wish to see would be advertising blimps using the same technology, so I'm afraid that direct access to the script will be restricted to certain trustworthy groups and individuals only for the moment. I am quite happy to discuss the principles behind it, though, should anyone be interested.

And finally...

A showroom, of sorts: My home area has long been a rather desolate place, but now contains a small building filled with a selection of my creations, either for purchase for a nominal fee (nothing over L$50) or simply for free copy. Everything is modifiable by the purchase. I'm not running a business here. That would be trade. It is simply an area for intellectually curious gentlefolk to explore the details of my humble creations.

Penguins and balloons

2005-12-21T22:20:00.000Z

Two quick notes:

1. I finally got my balloon vehicle autopilot to work - say "target theretra/200/200" and it locks onto the global co-ordinates of point [200,200] in Theretra, "auto on" and it starts to fly. In the right direction. Correcting the course if, say, you bounce off an object and start spinning, which was the hard part because to get a vehicle to move in a particular direction you need to take account of its facing as well, which means calculating the angle between the forward rotation and the vector to the target and turning that into another vector. Which means vector geometry, and while I could do that in my sleep when I was 17, now, I've forgotten an embarrassing amount of it.

There is probably an easy way of doing it with built-in rotation functions but I don't care, I've done it with a whole load of messy trigonometry and I'd rather not know that I was wasting my time, thanks.

It doesn't control your altitude. That, I decided, was not only going to make things harder but also be pointless, since on moving across the landscape you frequently encounter things of ridiculously variable height and need to move up and down to avoid them. Thus altitude is left under pilot control. It also has four silly-looking propellors which I may remove.

2. I have lost a heat-seeking penguin. It followed me into a restricted area with which I have been having trouble - instead of just not letting me in, that area tends to shoot me straight through it, make me sink through the ground, paralyse me or send me to another entirely different location, and it routinely sends any vehicle I happen to be riding right off the face of the virtual world and into my Lost & Found folder.

This sounds like some sort of imaginative and illegal security script but it's not; I'm fairly sure it's a bug, or a selection of them. Anybody who could write that sort of script wouldn't bother putting up the red lines around the property as well.

Anyway, my heat-seeking penguin disappeared. It is lonely and needs love and it will follow you around if you're not careful. Note to any Linden Labs employees or self-important unofficial game cops: it's not a griefing object, if you touch it it switches off. I was just playing.

If you find my penguin please send it home - I've not even saved it.

Bullets and Such

2005-12-12T18:20:00.000Z

Right. As promised, here are a few things I've discovered so far about bullets, which might at some point save somebody some time. The basic idea is that you rez a bullet using llRezObject to give it an appropriate velocity towards the target - but I think if you're looking for advice you probably know that much already, as it's already in the standard .

I had a frustrating time originally when I tried to build an automated gun turret that fired at intruders. It was pointing in the right direction, it was firing bullets properly, but a lot of the time they would do absolutely nothing, just shoot straight through me (the only test subject here). You could watch them go past by changing the camera angle. Very annoying. Speeding them up didn't seem to help at all, though slowing them down did, but then they have a hard time hitting anything.

What I'd been suspecting based on this experience was confirmed to me later on - the physics engine works on a frames basis, moving objects a certain distance N times per second (N usually around 44 in my experience, you can get the current framerate with a script) and detects collisions after each move, it doesn't interpolate between the two positions. A small fast-moving object can therefore just appear on each side of a target without ever touching it. So you can't use one of those small round bullets that you get in the old free gun scripts, uh uh. What you actually need is a long thin spear-type thing, to ensure that it will cover all of the intervening arc that it travels along. I calculated that a bullet that travels at 100m/s - slow for a real-world bullet but works in SL - should be around 100/40 = 2.5m long to be absolutely sure that it would hit intervening targets. This seems to work.

So my bullet here is a 2.5 x 0.1 x 0.1 cylinder. When rezzed it turns itself fully transparent since the gun isn't supposed to fire spears, but you can see where it is from a particle at the centre. When it detects a collision event, it uses llPushObject to apply an upwards impulse to that object, determined by the parameter that the gun passes to it after it rezzes.

More about the revolver

I modified the gun and bullet so that one could change the degree of push applied by voice command ("push 1", "push 50" etc); the gun passes a parameter to the bullet which is multiplied by 100,000 to get the upward impulse used by llPushObject. On a direct hit, the default setting of 1 sends a target dummy pretty high, but then they're quite light, and since the impulse is divided by the cube of the distance between the centre of mass of the bullet, and the centre of mass of the object pushed, hitting a dummy in the foot means it just bounces upwards a little. So there is a slight challenge involved to satisfactory target practice.

There are also two bullet types now - one pushes forward, or at least in the same direction as the vector from the bullet's centre to the object hit's centre i.e. the following vector:

bulletForce * llVecNorm(llDetectedPos(0) - llGetPos())

so if you shoot low it could be mostly upwards, and one pushes strictly upwards:

<0, 0, bulletForce>

These can be selected by voice command as well ("push fwd" and "push up").

Target dummies

One has to have something to shoot at. I wrote a script that displays the weight of the object it is put into as float text, records and displays the maximum height above ground that the object reaches, and, after a certain period of time (about two minutes) sends an IM back to the owner saying the maximum height and the distance that it is currently from its starting point, and then dies. This helps solve the "oops where did that one go?" problem that seems to happen a lot to me. I hope nobody was disturbed by large wooden objects falling from the sky, but in SL they only weigh 8kg despite being two metres high.

Firearms safety

Of course, if one of these bullets hits a person by accident, it'll send them flying up in the air as well, which is at best annoying for them and at worst gets your account suspended. The base push is quite low, so it won't send somebody into orbit. I could have modified the bullet so it wouldn't push an avatar but I decided not to...

1. It adds an extra level of required complexity;

2. There might come a time when there's a legitimate reason to push somebody, a game, as a demo, to get them out of somewhere, whatever;

3. (and most importantly) If I'm building a gun it should be something I have to take care with. It wouldn't be hard to make something safe that would only interact with target scripted objects and I'd never have to worry about anything but... I don't know, what good is that?

Late Night Push

2005-12-12T16:10:00.000Z

It was late and I wasn't asleep for some reason, so last night / this early a.m. I made myself a revolver, added a modified version of the Linden Revolver Script and an explosive upwards-push bullet, created some target dummies - simple wooden pyramids with balls on top, physics and temporary - and took them all to a sandbox, where I spent some time shooting them and then trying to shoot them again on the way down. (Total score: zero.)

What struck me was how normal this seemed. Here I was in an area full of lots of other complex, scripted objects, blasting things up in the air in real time, watching them spin around, bounce on the ground and so on, all in real time, all of it relying on a general physics engine rather than something specialised for this purpose. I could have, and did, change the details, add new objects, modify the code, change the whole behaviour at a moment's notice, with very little time required to re-compile. That's actually pretty damn impressive stuff for a program to do. But it was only when I thought about it that I noticed.

Jaded? Jaded would have been if I'd said "this is rubbish" instead of having fun blowing things up. In any case, we can't sit around marvelling at technological advances, or we'd still be pointing at wheels and saying "wow, I just can't get over how good those things are". As I always say, the human capacity to find the most amazing things ordinary is something that stops us just spending our entire lives looking up at the sky.

I'll post some stuff about scripting bullets later.

A multiplicity of Bushes

2005-12-11T11:39:00.000Z

Okay - has anyone seen more than nine IMPEACH BUSHes in one area? The neighbours must really have been vocal.

(Chaska [56,58])

The area in question has every land flag ticked for some reason - no fly, no script, no build, and damage allowed, for some reason, though I can't see anything that would actually cause you damage.

I should start a competition.

The Obligatory IMPEACH BUSH Post

2005-12-10T21:03:00.000Z

Despite it now being rather yawnsome for anyone involved in any of the SL communities, it may be the point at which I say something about the IMPEACH BUSH guy, Lazarus Divine. (Not, I understand, the one who represents Rugged Regiment, the Soul Mechanical Crew and the 6th ward.) If you're a SLer who has somehow remained unaware of IMPEACH BUSH... the executive summary is that guy buys tiny plots of land (16m2) and puts signs up all around SL that look like the following:

(picture taken outside a Socialist Party building) These are very annoying if you have them in your view. Simultaneously, the price of the land is set extremely but not insanely high, so that people who find them annoying can buy the plots to remove the signs, providing a very nice profit on the original land purchase.

When I first came to SL I saw a lot of these signs and thought that it must be some sort of craze - I'm not at all in favour of the war in Iraq or Bush so I was fairly heartened to see what I thought was evidence of general agreement. It didn't take long before finding out the real purpose of them though. There's no political element, despite what the guy says - if you argue or cause trouble, you find yourself surrounded with as many of the signs as possible, and, some people say, sometimes on the end of a lot of verbal harassment, though I have no experience of this myself.

The content of the signs has been chosen, as far as I'm concerned, as a deliberate attempt to pretend that this is some sort of political speech that's being attacked. It's a nonsense idea that somebody would put up these signs as an honest political campaign, in garish clashing colours and annoying locations, and then sell the plots of land at inflated prices. The guy is gaming the system, stopping himself from being banned or told to take the signs down under cover of "free speech".

I have to say, though, that I can't see a lot of difference in practice between the above signs and, say, something like this:

which can be found at Theretra [211,173], and is just one example of land spam that I picked up this afternoon. It sits there in the air, spinning and the light at the top flashing. This stuff is everywhere in First Land areas, where people start with small plots and then move out fairly quickly, selling to land barons.

What is the point of this? Garish and intrusive advertising in the real world is there to increase brand consciousness, but there's no brand here. If people want to buy a particular piece of land, they'll look there to see who owns it, in which case a subdued block at ground level is quite enough (as Anshe Chung uses). Nobody is going to look at a spinny block and think "oh, actually, yeah, I wasn't going to buy that land but I think I will now".

There's basically no reason to make the most annoying ad possible on a land package unless either you just don't understand simple advertising principles, or you want to annoy people enough that they're likely to just buy the bloody land to get rid of your bloody sign. Lazarus Divine has this latter motivation, I'm fairly sure, but the only difference is of degree. He's not interested in being a long-term landowner, so he can raise prices to ridiculous levels and make a short-term profit without worrying about people hating him, but he's not invented the idea, he's just taken it to its logical conclusion.

I can't stand the Impeach Bush signs, particularly because I think that this man is taking the piss out of my own political beliefs for profit, but I have to say that complaining about those and not the general land spam that goes on is ridiculous. My Second Life has been made far worse by other ads. What to do about it, apart from whinge? Well, I'm planning a more organised response, but the obvious thing is do not buy land from anyone advertising like that and, just in case the former ignorant defence is the case, tell them why. A message saying "I was thinking about buying the land at [X,Y] but I think that your advertising policy is much too annoying to support" could well have an impact, if it comes from enough people, and, you know, there aren't actually that many people in SL. Pointing out that advertising is being counterproductive is the best way to get it changed.

Incidentally, I'm compiling a gallery of particularly bad examples, so if you are reading this and have a good one, please get in touch.

Concerning an Irrationality of Permissions

2005-12-10T15:10:00.000Z

I recently received notice from a person to whom I had given a copy of my Visual Radar Display (which, now that I think about it, is a stupid name - a radar display that wasn't visual would be worth noting, but not one that was) that it wasn't working. Odd.

I took a look and asked him to try a few things. The marker object - the glowing dot - was apparently disappearing from the radar's inventory after the first appearance of one, and the radar was complaining. Very odd. Works fine for me. So, thinking that it might be a problem with permissions, I took the marker out of a copy of the radar, made sure it had full modify/copy permissions set, deleted the old one, put the new one back into the radar, and gave it to him back to try. This image shows what happened:

That's a picture of no dice. It still didn't work.

It was only until this morning, when I received some further advice, that I worked out what had happened. The permissions of object A when it is put inside object B's inventory are not necessarily the same as the permissions of object A. They're not the same as the permissions of object B. One might think this a little illogical and I feel that one would be correct in this thought. I've just been playing around with putting objects inside other objects and sometimes, it appears, they are the same as those of object A. I'm still a bit confused, but the lesson that's been learnt at the end of this is check the permissions of object A once it's inside B's inventory, by right-clicking A and selecting "Properties", rather than assuming that SL is going to be sensible and give it the same permissions inside B as outside B.

A new hobby

2005-12-04T23:56:00.000Z

Something that I have been doing quite happily since I built my first vehicle has been spotting and investigating skybuilds.

I'm a curious sort of person anyway, and one of the things that I enjoy doing in SL is looking at other people's homes, particularly trying to get into bits that they're trying to protect. Is this bad? I suppose it is a little, really. I'm not interested in spying on anyone - if a place is occupied I will stay away - but to me, a "keep out" sign, implicit or explicit, says "take a look".

People don't usually build sky houses unless they want them to be unobvious, so looking above 200 metres is intrinsically attractive to me - anything there is going to be something I'm not meant to see, and thus want to see. The procedure is quite simple. Go up to a point above the clouds, change the graphics options to show everything to maximum distance, see what's about. Then turn the graphics options back down to make SL workable and go and investigate the areas where you saw things. Hover around them, get out, take a walk.

(For anyone who wants real privacy from people like me: it's not hard to get scripts that eject anyone automatically from a particular area who's not on a list, no problem. But I'd urge you not to do so, because there's little enough in exploring SL that's a challenge.)

In which more peculiarity occurs; also, a vehicle

2005-12-04T23:20:00.000Z

I was innocently sitting at home, minding my own business, when a hovercar pulled up above my property, stopped, and one of the occupants opened up with an automatic weapon. Either it was a rather ineffective one or it missed, because nothing appeared to happen. Then, the car flew off. This all took a few seconds and I was entirely unable to respond with any form of responding fire. I have a Seburo for these purposes, you know.

Anyway, I've been investigating vehicles. These are relatively complex things to build, but I think that I've now got most of the issues involved. There are a number of different parameters to do with movement that one needs to get right, and one needs to understand how to take controls, but as far as the movement goes there seem to be only two major things to understand:

1. Linear motion - you move yourself left, right, forwards, backwards, up and down with linear thrust, and you use linear friction parameters to control when you stop;

2. Angular motion - the same, but as concerns spinning you around. You might also want to use the VEHICLE_VERTICAL_ATTRACTION parameters to keep the vehicle upright.

It's all relative to the rotation of the vehicle, so if you thrust up but you're pointing towards the ground you'll go horizontally. Really, it seems daunting playing with the scripts concerned, but if you start from one of the basic sample vehicle scripts you'll get the hang of it in no time.

So here is the AG "Bandit" Skimmer v0.5.1...

with my good self piloting it. It has two main modes, controlled by voice commands - "hover" where the vehicle keeps a constant height above the ground or sea (which you can move up or down) or "fly", where you can thrust up or down in the same way that you would thrust back or forwards. As well as that, the anti-gravity can be turned on and off, and there's a front-mounted gun:

which fires a pointless red plasma bolt that explodes rather prettily on contact with anything:

though, at the moment, it seems to detonate immediately on leaving the skimmer if it's not moving. I'll fix that. When you're moving it's fine. Should there be a call for it, the bolt could also kill people or cause them other discomfort, though it's really just for show.

I'm not pimping for sales here by the way - contact me in-game and say "I read your blog" and I'll be quite happy to give you a copy of any of the objects mentioned here. I'm not much of a saleswoman. I just don't care, really. Certainly if you're interested in how any of the bits work, I will tell you, at length, until you're so bored you wish there was a way to remove your ears.

Ring ring ring etc BANANAPHONE?

2005-12-02T12:13:00.000Z

So I was playing with an object, that, when touched, sent you flying a few hundred metres in the air. And I tried it out, and it did indeed do that, and when I returned, I found I'd acquired

Yes, a bananaphone, playing a segment of the music on a loop and following me around. I laughed for a little while and then deleted it, because it was going to drive me mad.

So I'm assuming that there must have been a bananaphone lurking at high altitude above me, waiting for an innocent victim to latch onto. I've tried to find more of them up there but with no success. Who plants bananaphones five hundred metres in the air?

The answer, as expected, was very simple

2005-11-30T11:20:00.000Z

From the Second Life forums: set the dot to be "temporary when rezzed". Then it doesn't count against your prim limit. Well, that was easy.

To bulk this post out a bit, have a more representative picture (click to enlarge).

In which Suspicions are Raised regarding the Efficiency of Prim Counting

2005-11-30T02:54:00.000Z

Your correspondent has perhaps become over-impressed with the idea of creating objects that follow one about or spy on one. Scripted objects of reasonable complexity so far consist of:

- A gun turret which raises an alarm when seeing anyone nearby, and also opens fire on them without even giving twenty seconds to comply;

- A CCTV camera on a pole which watches passers-by suspiciously, and also takes their names down;

- Some daft-looking fish in a tank. Okay, these weren't actually spying on anyone, but they did look as if they might be;

And today:

- A radar device using coloured dots to represent the positions of nearby people.

This has the following appearance:

(click for larger)

Unfortunately the snapshot function in SL doesn't appear to record floating text, but be assured that the yellow dot there had my name over it, and how far I was from the scanner (four metres I believe).

And that's all very well and good. It's not a terribly hard thing to scan an area for avatars. llSensorRepeat and the sensor event are what you want to look up here. Whenever a scan takes place, the device - I called it a Visual Radar Display, or VRD - goes through the list of people it has found, calculates a scale according to the maximum range so that the furthest avatar is placed at the outside of the display radius and everyone else is placed proportionately inside it, and then rezzes dots at appropriate positions.

Getting the dots to play nicely was the hard part. Each dot should have the name of the scanned personage floating above it, which initially I did by having the dot do a little mini-scan itself, except this is slow and doesn't work properly if there are lots of fast-moving avatars around. (Also, it can't scan from the position of the actual VRD, so things could go slightly wrong.)

I solved this with smart dots, which could be told what to display, and also told to disappear when a new scan was to take place. These dots listen on a channel exclusive to themselves for the VRD to tell them the name and range of who they represent, and whether that person is the owner of the VRD or not, in which case the dot should turn yellow. Fine. It all took a bit of tweaking but I don't mind doing that. Oh, it makes noises too when you turn it on and off, and you can give it voice commands to change the radius and the scan interval, did I mention that? I'm mentioning it now.

I did most of the testing in a sandbox, where there were lots of other people around for the VRD to scan, and then took it back to my home location to test, and that's where I encountered a slight problem. I have 38 prims left in my home area allowance, after I accidentally killed off the poor innocent fish. They live on in my inventory, don't worry, I will put them back. This should be plenty for radar purposes - the VRD itself is two prims, each dot including the central one is one and there's never more than three or four people within scan radius of my little abode in any case. Every time a new dot is placed, the old one is deleted first, so there shouldn't be any problem, should there?

Apparently there is because after a time I get an error message telling me that the VRD can't create a new object because my "parcel" (land parcel, it's not rude) is full. Well, it's clearly not full, is it? I delete all my unused junk. But there's no telling Second Life this. "Don't give me that," it says, "you're full, you're out of luck, I don't care, ha ha ha".

If I wait a bit I find that it does let me start placing dots again, which leads me to propose that perhaps, just perhaps, it's not keeping proper tally of objects in the area, and takes a while to notice that I've told a whole load of dots to die. This is probably something very well-known of course but I'm finding it very irritating. I don't have the prim allowance to build a huge spectacular building, and now it appears that I can't even pointlessly flood the place with coloured dots. Something must be done, or I will write a letter to the Telegraph.

In which Ordinal expresses Frustrations regarding Modes of Transport, and hopes for a Bright Future

2005-11-27T02:08:00.000Z

If there is one thing which has annoyed me more even than people rezzing enormous noisy waterfalls next to my home land before I worked out how to restrict spatialised sound, it has been the telehub experience. It's a nice idea in theory; create a de facto community area by making people who want to visit an area teleport to a central location first then make their way to their destination, which should not be more than a few hundred metres away.

In practice what this means is that land around telehubs becomes much more valuable commercially because it's the first thing that people encounter, having no choice in the matter, and tactics for getting your attention become extreme. It's not just a question of immense gaudy adverts everywhere, but also of you actually being constrained in where you can go. It's made worse by the fact that all the data has to be downloaded before you can avoid it, so, in practice, you take off from the telehub, fly for a bit as grey objects slowly appear around you, and then inevitably stop with a thump as you hit something that hasn't fully appeared.

Now comes the fascinating game of "find your way out of a building which you can't see". Let's try going above it... no, I've hit the ceiling. Maybe if I go a bit to the left... no, I'm still bashing my head against the virtual glass like a deranged fly. Often the only way to escape is to wait until the sex motel or shoe mall that you're trapped in has completely come into existence, and then see if you can find your way out. There is no C4 in Second Life. Unfortunately.

I really can't see how this works commercially. I'm not inclined to buy things in places that harass me. All I can think of is that this is land spam - if you throw it in enough people's faces, someone somewhere will buy something and make the effort worthwhile. It also appears to serve the commercial interests of land speculators, whether the tactic works or not, many of whom seem now to be complaining and demanding to be compensated for purchases that they have made which turn out now to be much less valuable - because now, in case you missed the announcements, point to point (P2P) teleportation is being introduced, the details being fairly sketchy details at the moment, but clearly it will mean that visiting telehubs becomes optional. And who would want to visit most of the ones that exist at the moment by choice?

I suppose there might be some ethical point if they have bought land direct from the Lindens at inflated prices when the Lindens knew that they were going to abolish telehubs in the near future, but if they've acquired them on the open market? Tough.

The effect of this on SL commerce isn't actually a point that concerns me in any case (and certainly not the effect on the property market). I'm looking forward to a situation where I can go where I want to go without being funnelled through a laggy sales zone. If that means that the structure of how stuff is sold has to change to one less based on annoying people, that's just an extra bonus.

An introduction

2005-11-24T23:11:00.000Z

Before I write any more I think that I should post a little about myself.

In Second Life I am Ordinal Malaprop, member of the Socialist Party and the Victorian Retrotech Society, birth date 9/9/2005. I'm mostly interested in scripting since, in my First Life, I am a programmer, but I'm also interested in pretty much anything else that comes along - socialising, politics, exploring how things work in Second Life.

I'm a creator type. I do a little clothes design, but I'm not terribly interested in that - almost all of my time is spent on scripting and building, at this stage mostly tinkering. I build up a lot of in-game money because I don't have much to spend it on; the odd item of clothing or gadget that I see and think is cool, but rarely anything for a particular purpose (though I'm always on the lookout for quality Victorian clothes). I buy textures and sounds occasionally but they're not hard to generate myself or find on the net.

Firearms? Objects? Textures? I understand that this might not mean a lot if you're not a Second Lifer. It's probably easiest to visit the link to the left to the official SL site and read some of the descriptions. On a basic level, Second Life is an online multiplayer 3D environment where people can create and program objects in the game, unlike most such things where you are limited to whatever the authors provide. Players can build houses, furniture, robots, vehicles, clothes, weapons, all sorts. I'm going to assume for the purposes of writing this that the basic principles are generally understood, simply to make my life easier, but if there's any confusion leave comments and I'll do my best. I expect that most people reading this are going to have found it while specifically searching for Second Life material anyway so aren't going to need much basic explanation. In fact, you probably know more than I do.

First post

2005-11-24T10:57:00.000Z

How shall I fashion me to wear a cloak?
I pray thee, let me feel thy cloak upon me.
What letter is this same? What's here? 'To Silvia'!
And here an engine fit for my proceeding.
I'll be so bold to break the seal for once.

(Two Gentleman Of Verona, Act III Scene I)

It's not meant to mean anything particularly. I could probably dig out some relevance if you like.