Is MLPv2 the scourge of mainland?

[Vulpinus]

The more I check into why the mainland sim I'm on hovers around 18ms Script Time, the more I come to hate MLPv2.

The region has about 700 active objects with over 7000 scripts. That's over ten scripts per object. The only common things I've found that look like that are MLPv2 scripted (mostly)sex objects. There are only a couple of breedable-annoyances in the region (no, I don't mean my neighbours).

One of my beds (which the creator had endowed with two seperate MLPv2 engines!) had 24 scripts and took 0.05ms of script time just to sit there doing nothing. On average they seem to have ten to twelve scripts and run between 0.015ms and 0.025ms idle time.

Add a few dozen (hunderds???) of those up in a sim and, like mine, you're lucky when your door script gets a chance to run and let you in.

I've already removed (in disgust) the few items I had out with MLPv2 scripts, and know to avoid them and their creators in future. There's other, better stuff out there that uses a quarter of the resources.

So, please can we ban MLPv2?

/rant ;)

[Freya Mokusei]

Is this a people problem? Not that I'm opposed to this just becoming the Rant forum, it surely is halfway there.

If it wasn't MLPv2 it'd be some other script engine - MLPv2 is most commonly used by non-scripters and so there's no feasibility or practicality study completed. When people want poseballs in things, MLPv2 gets the job regardless of the objects complexity or purpose. You could swap MLPv2 for just about any other system out there and you'd end up in exactly the same place.

SL's always suffered from an imbalance between those with technical skill and those with entrepreneurial spirit. SL has lots of doers, but not so many understanders. Given a decade or so, this adds up - to the surprise of no-one.

LSL doesn't really have options for modularity - in some ways it's great that non-scripters can be enabled by having single-drop engines they can use to configure their stuff in a predictable way. But there's no way to nudge down the 'bloat' within MLPv2 unless you know what you're doing. Putting it simply, a lack of technical skill can't reliably be offset by added skill from scripters without stretching resources in other ways (e.g. constantly sampling simulator frametime dips, reacting smoothly to having no-one around).

The root cause is the same as it's always been, of course: No-one is driven to care about resource usage and the customerbase punishes those who don't succumb to feature-bloat. When it's a choice between resource usage and sales, people invariably choose sales because there's no negative feedback result for resource usage.

TL;DR My answer to your question is No, you're seeing the problem from too high up and too many years too late.

[Qie Niangao]

Hmmm. Well, there certainly are other animation engines available. Some even have authoring tools for converting from MLP-based configuration files to their own native formats. (For example, nPose, which is free, but I expect others, too.)

But ... those script times really aren't all that bad. They're roughly the same as other multiple-avatar animation engines, and some are very much worse. I don't think these contribute all that much to the script delay in your sim.

[Freya Mokusei]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

But ... those script times really aren't all that bad. They're roughly the same as other multiple-avatar animation engines, and some are very much worse. I don't think these contribute all that much to the script delay in your sim.

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That's my reading, too. Really, it's no worse than seeing a dozen of any single system repeated across a sim.

CPU times aren't a particularly useful metric between busy/idle states and I agree, there's nothing inherently wrong with MLPv2 as it's constructed (vs. other systems). Apologies if my first post read more critically, I was trying to make an over-arching point.

[Vulpinus]

No apology necessary. I don't take offense at other viewpoints. Sometimes I even learn from them

All I know for sure is that every MLPv2 engined thing I looked at had considerably higher script count and time than other, similar products with different engines.

...

Just had a welcome visit from Qie again as I was writing the above. Things seem to improve after his visits,

OK, I'm going to drop my worries about the script time, and back out with whatever dignity I have left.

 

 

[LlazarusLlong]

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Vulpinus wrote:

Just had a welcome visit from Qie again as I was writing the above. Things seem to improve after his visits,

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In real life I have a reputation for broken PCs springing back to life as soon as I am asked to look at them, even before I have actually done anything to them.

On the other hand, I merely have to walk past a room with a photocopier in it for the thing to start flashing every warning light on its panels and gush foul smelling smoke.

[Sean Heying]

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Vulpinus wrote:

On average they seem to have ten to twelve scripts and run between 0.015ms and 0.025ms idle time.

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5ms recommended time. 15ms about average. 22.2ms maximum time (leaving nothing else)

5000/15 = 333 sex beds per region and you are only running to the recommended time.

15000/15 = 1000 sex beds per sim. Even an adult region won't have this surely?