Lindens to Reveal 5th Home Theme at Home & Garden Expo - 10am slt Friday Feb 28

[Raevyn Addams]

12 minutes ago, karynmaria said:

I keep all my doors open in all my homes, inside and outside.  I also have to have all my windows open.  I have noticed that people don't like their windows opened in their houses.  I find it very odd I guess and wonder why people don't open their windows.  My grandfather use to keep all the windows closed all the time in his house and it use to drive us all bonky.  I guess that is why i like open windows and doors.

This is going to sound strange as I know Second Life is NOT real life and I've never treated it as anything other than a great big virtual sandbox with elements of an MMORPG thrown in, but I still treat certain aspects of Second Life with real life constraints.

My home for example in RL I would never leave unlocked when I'm away so that anyone could just walk in. Same for windows and doors (or, oddly, those facing the "street"). It's not that I want to be unsociable but it's an odd feeling of protecting what's "mine" despite the fact it's not really real, it's just pixels on a screen in a virtual pretend universe. Logically I know the difference, but it seems that old habits die hard.

Maybe that explains some of it?🤔

[karynmaria]

@RaeLeeH  Yeah that does makes sense.  I don't think that people who have them closed are necessarily unsociable, I guess it just affords them their privacy like you said.  And you are right we do bring our RL houses to our SL houses in some ways.

[Mollymews]

On 2/29/2020 at 9:57 AM, Quartz Mole said:

 Because we now control all the doors and windows from a single script in the root prim to economise on script usage on the region, the whole house has to respond to touch events, so that the process touches script (which handles this) can determine what, if anything, it needs to do about the link that was touched.

Sorry, but all parts of the houses are going to remain touchable from now on.   That's not going to change.  

not to be too picky as getting this kind of script to work and perform consistently well across a huge estate like Belli is not a simple task

but llDetectedLinkNumber can be used to capture collision in a single script house controller.  Capture touch for windows, capture touch and collision for doors

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlDetectedLinkNumber

 

 

[Marianne Little]

I used a texture pack from the MP that has open and closed blinds. I like this option from the inside, so I will probably make something like this for the big windows.

Not totally closed, not totally exposed.

I didn't feel the "need" for this in the Linden homes we had. This is my house in Xenosaur.

 

[Marianne Little]

I didn't even need to make them in mesh, used prims set to Convex hull and let the blinds run in the walls. It became a total Li cost of 3 for a whole house.

I did not cover every window, I can have a texture change between open and closed. I am 99% sure that LL does not have open blinds option.

 

Edited March 1, 2020 by Marianne Little
added a sentence

[Quartz Mole]

4 hours ago, Mollymews said:

not to be too picky as getting this kind of script to work and perform consistently well across a huge estate like Belli is not a simple task

but llDetectedLinkNumber can be used to capture collision in a single script house controller.  Capture touch for windows, capture touch and collision for doors

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlDetectedLinkNumber

 

 

If you put a script containing a touch* event in the root prim of an object, then the script detects touches in every link in the linkset, at least what the script is in the state containing the touch* event.  Same with collisions and collision events.

Our scripts do, of course, work by using llDetectedLinkNumber/llDetectedTouchFace, which they then use to access all the information they need to decide what, if anything, they need to do with the link that's just been touched, and then do it with llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast.

But there's no way I know of to make them detect touches from only some links in the link set and not others.   To do that, I would have to revert to putting individual scripts in all the doors and windows, to communicate with the root prim when they're touched, which is what we did in the Trads, House Boats and Trailers, before rejecting that technique as an unsustainable waste both of region resources and Dyna and my scripting time (or possibly I could put scripts that contain only an empty state_entry, but no touch event, in all the links I don't want to be touchable, but that would be even worse).

If you (or anyone) can show me a method that will allow me to put a single script containing a touch_end event in the root prim of a complex object like a Belliseria house and thus make some, but not all, of the links touchable, I would love to know how to do it, but I don't think it can be done.

I'm always happy to be proved wrong if it means I can learn a useful new way of doing things, but as far as I know, I have to have the script detect all touches, and then ignore ones I'm not interested in.    

Edited March 1, 2020 by Quartz Mole

[Mollymews]

3 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

If you (or anyone) can show me a method that will allow me to put a single script containing a touch_end event in the root prim of a complex object like a Belliseria house and thus make some, but not all, of the links touchable, I would love to know how to do it, but I don't think it can be done.

we can fake it

the mouse cursor is a prim property. Once the prim cursor is set using llSetClickAction() then the script can be deleted

example setting a linked prim to the mouseover arrow pointer:

default
{
   state_entry()
   {
       llSetClickAction(-1); // set to mouseover arrow pointer

        // delete the script
        llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());
        llDie();
   }
}

the linked prim is still touchable. Just that the cursor won't be a hand on mouseover. It only changes to a hand cursor when we click on the linked prim

next example is the handler for a single script to control such a build

handler(integer method, integer link, integer face)
{
    // method 0 is Touch
    // method 1 is Collision
    llOwnerSay(llList2String(["Touch", "Collision"], method) +
        " Link No. " + (string)link +
        " Face No. " + (string)face);
        
    /* pcode for the filter
    
    if (link is a window && method is Touch)
    {
        ... do something with the window ...    
    }
    else if (link is a door)
    {
        ... do something with the door ...    
    }
    */    
}

default
{    
    touch_end(integer num)
    {
        handler(0, llDetectedLinkNumber(0), llDetectedTouchFace(0));
                
    }
    
    collision_start(integer num)
    {
        // face is -1 as we not going to do stuff to a face by colliding with the build
        handler(1, llDetectedLinkNumber(0), -1);                
    }
}

a downside of this is that it will raise a touch or collision event when a avatar bonks into a wall or clicks on a wall. However, these events are going to be sporadic, and less resource-hungry than more than one script in the build

 

[Malayaa Morningstar]

7 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I didn't even need to make them in mesh, used prims set to Convex hull and let the blinds run in the walls. It became a total Li cost of 3 for a whole house.

I did not cover every window, I can have a texture change between open and closed. I am 99% sure that LL does not have open blinds option.

 

I really like this for the windows where closed feels too confined and dark and open feels too open   I have bought a couple of mesh levolor style blinds but usually wind up not using them because of the Li and because they tend to "crumple" fast with LOD, I have the same problem with most wicker baskets.  These textures would solve both problems.  Thanks! (runs to Marketplace)

[Elena Blossom]

I confess I am a bit lost with this scripting posts, so I guess I will wait for other expert and handy users to share their great tips... I guess it's wiser to learn from those who have more experience. or I might end up with a massive white prim on the windows...

[Malayaa Morningstar]

8 hours ago, karynmaria said:

I keep all my doors open in all my homes, inside and outside.  I also have to have all my windows open.  I have noticed that people don't like their windows opened in their houses.  I find it very odd I guess and wonder why people don't open their windows.  My grandfather use to keep all the windows closed all the time in his house and it use to drive us all bonky.  I guess that is why i like open windows and doors.

In SL I like to have the windows open, it helps to hear the wonderful mole provided sounds of birds, crickets, lapping waves etc.  (or...at least it does in my imagination lol).  IRL, I like to have windows open when the weather cooperates, plus have a whole house fan in the attic to suck fresh air into the house and expel the stale air through the attic, which is awesome!

[Quartz Mole]

1 hour ago, Mollymews said:

we can fake it

the mouse cursor is a prim property. Once the prim cursor is set using llSetClickAction() then the script can be deleted

example setting a linked prim to the mouseover arrow pointer:

default
{
   state_entry()
   {
       llSetClickAction(-1); // set to mouseover arrow pointer

        // delete the script
        llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());
        llDie();
   }
}

the linked prim is still touchable. Just that the cursor won't be a hand on mouseover. It only changes to a hand cursor when we click on the linked prim

next example is the handler for a single script to control such a build

handler(integer method, integer link, integer face)
{
    // method 0 is Touch
    // method 1 is Collision
    llOwnerSay(llList2String(["Touch", "Collision"], method) +
        " Link No. " + (string)link +
        " Face No. " + (string)face);
        
    /* pcode for the filter
    
    if (link is a window && method is Touch)
    {
        ... do something with the window ...    
    }
    else if (link is a door)
    {
        ... do something with the door ...    
    }
    */    
}

default
{    
    touch_end(integer num)
    {
        handler(0, llDetectedLinkNumber(0), llDetectedTouchFace(0));
                
    }
    
    collision_start(integer num)
    {
        // face is -1 as we not going to do stuff to a face by colliding with the build
        handler(1, llDetectedLinkNumber(0), -1);                
    }
}

a downside of this is that it will raise a touch or collision event when a avatar bonks into a wall or clicks on a wall. However, these events are going to be sporadic, and less resource-hungry than more than one script in the build

 

Thanks, but what's the practical advantage to doing that?

As I understood it, the original complaint was that people are not able to move around the houses using double-click teleports in the Victorians, and won't be able to in the Log Houses or subsequent themes, as they are in the Trads, Houseboats and Trailers.

Unless I'm missing something in your explanation, that still won't be possible using your method, will it, since the touch events will still be raised?

If I wanted to double-click TP around my house, I think I'd put down large flat transparent prims on the floors, so when I double-clicked them, it would trigger the teleport.    Off the top of my head,  I might be able to fake double-click tps using experience tools and llDetectedTouchPos, but I'd need quite some convincing it was necessary before I even thought about trying to persuade Patch to agree to my spending any time working on it, since the control scripting for these houses is quite complex enough already (and we'd get complaints from people who were being teleported unexpectedly because they'd accidentally clicked things), and since people who really want to be able to double-click tp can do so already at the cost of only a couple of LI. 

[Nika Talaj]

7 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

To do that, I would have to revert to putting individual scripts in all the doors and windows, to communicate with the root prim when they're touched, which is what we did in the Trads, House Boats and Trailers, before rejecting that technique as an unsustainable waste both of region resources and Dyna and my scripting time (or possibly I could put scripts that contain only an empty state_entry, but no touch event, in all the links I don't want to be touchable, but that would be even worse).

Thanks, this served as a reminder to me to check that I've removed texture & colorchange scrripts, once I've got a home's decor & landscaping pretty much nailed down.  Personally, I really appreciate the discipline moles have shown in using minimal scripts in homes & particularly landscaping.

I've also been known to remove entire AVSitter setups from chairs & other furnishings if I know we'll never use that function.

It's easy to think that these scripts take very little region resources because they just hang around waiting for an event, and within the region they share bytecode.  BUT each script allocates memory for its variables.  Each one uses an event queue position.  Even scripts that never actually get an event consume resources.

10 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I didn't even need to make them in mesh, used prims set to Convex hull and let the blinds run in the walls. It became a total Li cost of 3 for a whole house.

Yes, this is what I was thinking of doing.  In a Linden Home, the reason to do it is so that windows in both the Linden house and the addition behave identically, and are controlled by a single switch.  Generally I do this sort of thing for a second floor, where the bedrooms and bath are.  Except that I wouldn't't even use a blind texture, I'd just darken the glass.  And I might shrink the prims down when not in use so as to cut down on alpha sorting, since the texture I used would be semi-translucent.  Depends on what's outside.

In an addition, the added prim can be linked to the window, so that if you open it everything looks fine.  But in the Linden home, this wouldn't work well if you opened/closed windows once you've "closed" them for privacy.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Nika Talaj

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, Quartz Mole said:

As I understood it, the original complaint was that people are not able to move around the houses using double-click teleports in the Victorians, and won't be able to in the Log Houses or subsequent themes, as they are in the Trads, Houseboats and Trailers.

Unless I'm missing something in your explanation, that still won't be possible using your method, will it, since the touch events will still be raised?

i replied to what you answered to Pussycat. Who asked can the Touch of the linkset be turned off and on. You said because linkset then at least not in these builds. I said well you can fake it at least visually by setting the mouseover property to -1 for the prims that won't get acted on. Which from an aesthetics pov might be worth doing

you are right tho about double click teleport, and I also get why handling collisions in these kinds of linked builds on this kind of estate is probably not a good idea

adding more to the conversation

it is possible to turn Touch off and on.  But it requires another script to act as a switch which has no touch event of its own. Switching the main script to Running / Not Running. A bit messy tho as the Turn it back On in the switch script needs to open a listen to hear a channel chat command while the main script is Not Running. When the main script is running the listen in the switch script doesn't need to be open

which also solves the double-click teleport issue on a linked set when touch is enabled, by disabling the script. Altho a prim cover on the floor like you say, versus another script

[Marianne Little]

4 hours ago, Malayaa said:

I really like this for the windows where closed feels too confined and dark and open feels too open   I have bought a couple of mesh levolor style blinds but usually wind up not using them because of the Li and because they tend to "crumple" fast with LOD, I have the same problem with most wicker baskets.  These textures would solve both problems.  Thanks! (runs to Marketplace)

Silly me, I should post what I used. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/28-Venetian-Blinds-Textures-Full-Perm-DT-Material-Collection/6228493

For Grand Views open front, it would be 2 rectangles and 2 triangles, linked to a Li of 2. 

I set my blinds to Alpha masking instead of Alpha blending, with a cutoff 120. It solves the alpha clash problem too 😉

I wrote in another thread, that the showcase region maybe have fewer homes than the actual regions. Perhaps we will need blinds because it is so close to the neighbor.... (I hope not)

Many mesh blinds is already set to max size, and stretching them, the Li goes up, linking them - Li does not go down. Very many mesh products is like this.

[Marianne Little]

@Quartz Mole, since you are active in this thread, can you answer i quick question about the Overlook. Both the houses I saw has blinding white walls, ceiling, trim and railings. Will it be options for colors and wood in that house too? I assume it will be, but I am not 100% sure, so I ask.

[Pussycat Catnap]

13 hours ago, karynmaria said:

I keep all my doors open in all my homes, inside and outside.  I also have to have all my windows open.  I have noticed that people don't like their windows opened in their houses.  I find it very odd I guess and wonder why people don't open their windows.  My grandfather use to keep all the windows closed all the time in his house and it use to drive us all bonky.  I guess that is why i like open windows and doors.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080216151308AA5pLqD

"Why is it that so many white people leave their blind,curtains or shades open in their houses at night?"

This stuff is so weird, folks had to ask it twice: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101110205305AAIiRLr

 

https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/dear-24-to-45-year-old-white-people-who-live-in-urban-s-1821051885

Dear 24- to 45-Year-Old White People Who Live in Urban Spaces: Why Don’t You Put Curtains and Blinds on Your Windows?

 

But apparently even some White folks wonder what is going on: https://letterpile.com/personal-essays/Why-Do-People-Leave-Their-Curtains-Open-At-Night

😲

Edited March 1, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Marianne Little]

8 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080216151308AA5pLqD

"Why is it that so many white people leave their blind,curtains or shades open in their houses at night?"

This stuff is so weird, folks had to ask it twice: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101110205305AAIiRLr

 

https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/dear-24-to-45-year-old-white-people-who-live-in-urban-s-1821051885

Dear 24- to 45-Year-Old White People Who Live in Urban Spaces: Why Don’t You Put Curtains and Blinds on Your Windows?

 

But apparently even some White folks wonder what is going on: https://letterpile.com/personal-essays/Why-Do-People-Leave-Their-Curtains-Open-At-Night

😲

I don't even know if it's irony, sarcasm, parody... those comments sounds so strange. Do people really think like that?

[karynmaria]

@Pussycat Catnap  I am more referring to the actual windows being open not the curtains or blinds,  sorry should have been more clear.  

[Pussycat Catnap]

3 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

Thanks, but what's the practical advantage to doing that?

As I understood it, the original complaint was that people are not able to move around the houses using double-click teleports in the Victorians, and won't be able to in the Log Houses or subsequent themes, as they are in the Trads, Houseboats and Trailers.

Yes exactly. The shape of the pointer is not the issue. It's that "click to move / teleport" is blocked by touch events.

I can accept it, if it's a technical limitation. I actually found some great rugs for my vic as a result that ended up getting used back in my houseboat as well...

But that is the issue - touch replaces other possible actions - so is undesired unless required.

I've found transparent prims don't register to clicks - I often end up clicking through them to whatever's underneath. I will have to re-examine in wirefram... Maybe the mesh I had my prims over and ended up hitting instead was actually bounding box located above it's visible surface - I gave up on transparent prims a few years ago when living in skyboxes.

Now that I have a collection of Mexican themed rugs - I have that solution. But I still find myself in an odd moment every now and then when a touch hits a wall and disrupts what I was doing.

If it's a technical limitation, as it seems to be - then that is that and I adapt. The reward does outweigh the issue by a notable margin after all.

 

p.s.: putting collision detection on the walls would actually start registering hits in insane numbers. I imagine a lot of us move around in SL inside buildings by letting the wall or railing guide us. Certainly everytime I go up and down stairs in these buildings I'm basically a collision roller-coaster.

 

 

Edited March 1, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Pussycat Catnap]

4 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

I don't even know if it's irony, sarcasm, parody... those comments sounds so strange. Do people really think like that?

There's a bit of all of that in the 'Dear White People' ones... but... this IS how folks think. Folks are seriously strange and creepy for leaving those windows open and putting their business all up in everyone else's faces.

[Dyna Mole]

38 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

i replied to what you answered to Pussycat. Who asked can the Touch of the linkset be turned off and on. You said because linkset then at least not in these builds. I said well you can fake it at least visually by setting the mouseover property to -1 for the prims that won't get acted on. Which from an aesthetics pov might be worth doing

you are right tho about double click teleport, and I also get why handling collisions in these kinds of linked builds on this kind of estate is probably not a good idea

adding more to the conversation

it is possible to turn Touch off and on.  But it requires another script to act as a switch which has no touch event of its own. Switching the main script to Running / Not Running. A bit messy tho as the Turn it back On in the switch script needs to open a listen to hear a channel chat command while the main script is Not Running. When the main script is running the listen in the switch script doesn't need to be open

which also solves the double-click teleport issue on a linked set when touch is enabled, by disabling the script. Altho a prim cover on the floor like you say, versus another script

This is a very good conversation. It's parallel to several that Quartz and I have had between us.  As you can imagine, the house control scripts have become very complex at this point, as we have added extra functionality (customized coloring of interior walls, interfacing with the LH security orb, ... ) and have taken steps to make scripts faster and more efficient. And, of course, we have made the scripts as tamper-proof and bug-free as possible.

With several thousand Linden Homes on the ground now, we have found more unexpected side effects than we ever imagined possible and we have had to make some compromises along the way to keep them minimal.  Reducing the number of scripts, for example, has improved region-wide load on the servers but has made the houses touch-sensitive so that you can't double-click to TP.  To my mind, that's a small sacrifice because it takes hardly any time to walk from one place to another inside your house (I do it all the time in RL, actually), but I do understand that it has removed a small convenience that many residents value.  If there were an easy way to get double-click TPs back without creating some other problem, we might give it a shot.  I've watched Quartz tear his hair out to get all the doors, windows, and blinds to operate reliably and independently from a single script (and not collide with the control and access scripts) , though, and I'm not eager to see him go bald just to make it easier to TP inside.

[Dyna Mole]

41 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

Both the houses I saw has blinding white walls, ceiling, trim and railings. Will it be options for colors and wood in that house too? I assume it will be, but I am not 100% sure, so I ask.

Yes. 😎

[Marianne Little]

47 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

There's a bit of all of that in the 'Dear White People' ones... but... this IS how folks think. Folks are seriously strange and creepy for leaving those windows open and putting their business all up in everyone else's faces.

I feel like I am a strange place in neighborhoods with a lot of residents from the Middle East, who block their windows all the time. Some hang black sheets or thick fleece throws, to be sure nobody can see even a silhouette. For me, it feels so closed and hostile. The houses have dead eyes.

"Do not come here, I want nothing to do with you". I thought it was their religion/culture, so ladies can take off their hijab. "All foreigners close their curtains".

It was a reminder that this feeling of "why are they doing it" goes both ways. 

Oh, and I would feel suffocated without letting natural light in.

 

Edited March 1, 2020 by Marianne Little

[811Lord]

7 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

I feel like I am a strange place in neighborhoods with a lot of residents from the Middle East, who block their windows all the time. Some hang black sheets or thick fleece throws, to be sure nobody can see even a silhouette. For me, it feels so closed and hostile. The houses have dead eyes.

"Do not come here, I want nothing to do with you". I thought it was their religion/culture, so ladies can take off their hijab. "All foreigners close their curtains".

It was a reminder that this feeling of "why are they doing it" goes both ways. 

 

maybe the neighbors got it wrong .....

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 hours ago, karynmaria said:

 I am more referring to the actual windows being open not the curtains or blinds

Where I live - Colorado, USA - it is primarily due to climate, but I know that there are also people that do not because of allergies.  Most people around here don't open their windows at all in the winter, but I open our bedroom window almost every night - unless it is sub-zero or a snow storm is going on.  If we get a warm day in the winter, I'll open the windows during the day also. Spring and Fall, I will have my windows open all day and night, if I'm home.  Summertime will totally depend on the outside temp.  If it is hot enough to run the air conditioner, then the windows stay closed until the sun sets.   However, I did not grow up around here.  I grew up in the midwest, with no air conditioning in most of my childhood homes, so I'm used to having my windows open a lot. 

Oddly enough, I almost never open my windows in SL.  Not sure why - I never really thought about it before.

Edited March 1, 2020 by LittleMe Jewell