Quartz Mole

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Please don't read too much into what I said. I was asked a specific question about what the system can do, and I answered it. That certainly doesn't mean there's any plan ever to offer more than 4 houses, but we could do if we wanted to, that's all. When designing the system, we tried to make it as flexible as possible, since the answer to so many questions about what it needed to be able to do was "we might want it to do that at some point in the future, but we can't know that until later". We didn't decide, for example, to offer our own security orb until we were quite some way into the project, but when we did it was very easy to drop an extra button into the menu. Similarly, quite late on in the QA process I was asked to re-order the buttons on the menus, which, because of our earlier decision to keep open as many options as possible, was something I could do in five minutes without having to update the menu script in every single house controller on the continent (which we can do, but it takes rather longer than 5 minutes!). However, the fact we can do something doesn't necessarily mean we will ever decide to do it. Certainly several times already (Abnor Mole describes one of them in the thread about Houseboat rotations) when we've come to look in detail at particular ideas that seemed initially attractive, they've turned out under closer examination not to be readily practicable and to have all sorts of unforeseen consequences.. So even though we can do something that seems, initially, a good idea doesn't mean that it's going to look anything like so simple or attractive after we've considered its wider implications.

That's the idea. Should we, at some point in the future, decide to add more styles in a particular theme (extra Traditional Houses or extra Houseboats) it's going to be simple enough to do. There's no immediate plan to do that, but we wanted to leave the option open. The other, more immediate, benefit is that we can use the same scripts for all the different themes we have, or may in the future decide to have.

Just for the record (and in case any other scripters are interested) those big green parcel marker objects you may have seen on the regions we're working on record the parcel's uuid and its central point as a KVP key-value pair. The house controller checks the UUID of the parcel 15 metres along its own positive x axis and records it, along with the parcel's centre (because it knows the UUID of the parcel with which it's associated, it can now use that to request the centre of the parcel from the KVP records). When it receives an instruction from the dialogue menu to rez a new house, it reads the correct offset for whatever model of house has been ordered (stored in a list it has previously read from KVP), and then uses that, and its own rotation, to calculate the target location for the house's root prim, and sends the result to the server/rezzer along with the model of house to send.

It's not the positioning that's the problem, it's the rotation. All the houses/houseboats are rezzed by one central server/rezzer on each region, in response to a message from the house controller, which sends an absolute target position to the rezzer. The rezzer calculates the appropriate rotation from the rotation of the house controller that's messaged it, rezzes the requested house at the required rotation and then sends the house its target location. The house moves to the needed x and y coordinates, checks the ground level there, and positions itself appropriately. There seem to be certain circumstances -- rare, fortunately -- in which the server/rezzer gets confused about which house controller's rotation to use. I think I know why that is, but if I'm correct it's going to be a major pain to fix, so at present it seems better to leave things as they unless the bug keeps on reappearing.

We'll always have Bellissaria

Just as a general point, the house controllers (mailboxes and life preservers) should always be facing a cardinal point of the region's compass -- so facing 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees. The house or houseboat should always rez with the positive X axis of its root prim facing in the opposite direction, using the houseboat's own frame of rotational reference, so if you open the edit tool, select the houseboat, and set the ruler to local, rather than world, you should the red arrow pointing towards the side of the slip where the life preserver is (not directly towards it but towards the same side that it's placed). If that is the case, then the houseboat is pointing in the direction it's supposed to, and there's nothing I can do to change that, for the reasons Abnor Mole explains here That's completely distinct from a very rare bug I've encountered only once since the regions were released to the public that has the houseboat facing in completely the wrong direction. I'm pretty sure I know what causes that now, and, while it's fixable if it's what I think it is, it's no trivial task for me to fix or for QA to test, so it's something I would rather fix manually on the rare occasions it occurs (it needs a very unusual set of circumstances to trigger it). I hope that helps clarify matters a bit.

Not I, sorry! Too busy dealing with people's houseboats and houses and with trying to get some more finished to be off playing music!

Whatever it is, and I can hazard a couple of guesses (no more), it's clearly not a usual issue otherwise we'd presumably have heard before. There's been no update recently that could have caused this, so I surmise that it's caused by some combination of circumstances that doesn't often occur. That narrows the field a lot, which will make any eventual fixes and workarounds somewhat easier. It's certainly now on the LDPW radar and my urgent to-do list.

Yikes! Please drop me a slurl for your parcel, either by a private message here or an offline IM in world, and I'll check it out as soon as I can!

You're going to have the Bellissaria Cat following you home, Dyna, and I'm not sure we're allowed to keep pets on the Mole Islands. Anyone following this thread might want to know that, under normal circumstances, I own all the houses and houseboats (rather than the parcel on which they stand) on the live Bellissaria regions, as opposed to the regions currently under development, since I'm the one who maintains the systems that make sure the latest versions of the right houses and houseboats arrive in the right place and pointing in the right direction. My houses and houseboats certainly don't stay empty for long!

Not saying, but old enough, and English enough, to have learned that no gentleman would speculate about a lady's age in public, so I don't think there's much I can usefully contribute to the topic.👴

I'm not going to comment any further save to say that I've always considered it prudent, whether as a tenant or estate manager in SL, to consider the spirit as well as the letter of rules and covenants, and how they apply to the specific situation or object under discussion, having regard for all the material circumstances.

Sorry for any confusion I've inadvertently caused. In this case, my liking the post was simply an acknowledgement of the name-check, and nothing should be read into it about LL's policies or covenants or anything else. A bit like my liking something in my mentions on Twitter -- do we moles really need disclaimers on our profiles similar to "Like/Retweet != Agreement"? I'd not followed that part of the discussion in any detail and I'm not even sure what the proposal actually involves. Even if I did, my opinion would be worth no more than that of anyone else who'd read the covenant and considered the specific question in detail. When I comment here, it's usually just going to be to respond to particular issues that are within my competence and responsibility -- that is, typically script-related -- or to offer very general advice (or because @Beth Macbainwill miss me otherwise). For policy matters, you need Lindens like Patch and Constantine, not Moles. Sorry to jump in like this but I had to make that clear for reasons I am sure you, and everyone else, will understand.

Don't worry. We moles have our super secret talpoid powers, and if we want to flash anything at you, you'll know about it (perhaps I could have phrased that rather more felicitously).

Not me, no. I'm not much involved in landscaping and decorating. You may remember I said earlier I'm a scripter, not an interior designer. I'm not much of a landscape gardener, either, and it's a bit pointless for one of the Moles who's good at it to have to waste time following me round fixing my design blunders. You'll have heard of Capability Brown, the great English C18th landscape gardener. I'm Incapability Mole when it comes to pretty much everything other than scripting or software. Other than that, I have people asking, "Is there no beginning that man's talents?" Well, I'm quite a good cook, but it's not much use in SL since there's only so many ways to prepare virtual worms.

I've fixed the houseboats belonging to the two people who contacted me. I'm not completely sure what happened there -- looks as if houseboat and the housecontroller must have lost contact with each other at some point, presumably during an update or rolling restart, but there's no obvious way of telling when. Certainly things are rezzing and deleting themselves normally again now I've deleted the old boats. Any more similar problems please let me know (and if you've submitted a ticket for a houseboat I've subsequently fixed, please don't forget to cancel the ticket -- otherwise it makes a lot of unnecessary work for some very busy Lindens!).

If @Evangeline Arcadia, @EnchantrixBrighton, @Naughty Nootan (and anyone else who has a similar problem) wants to drop me an offline IM or send me a private message here with a slurl directing me to the houseboat I'll take a look over the weekend. I (or any other Mole or Linden) can certainly remove the extra houseboat for you but I would like to take a look first because I need to try to find out what caused the problem. I blame that squirrel, myself.

Yes, but it will be a minor difference, whatever it is. If you use the House Controller (life preserver) to remove your old houseboat and rez a new instance, that should give you the latest version if there is one available. As a bit of general background, we keep on coming up with minor tweaks and improvements to our scripts, as and when we notice things or they are brought to our attention. Most of the time, we quietly fix them and update the rezzers. Then if and when someone reports a similar problem, we can resolve it by asking them to rez a new instance of the house(boat). If it's something important we can update scripts (some of them, anyway) in the rezzed houses and boats, and if we absolutely have to, we can delete all the rezzed houseboats and replace them with newer versions but that's not something we do if we can possibly avoid it. So as a general rule, if you have a problem with something and it appears to be script-related, always try rezzing a new instance of the house/houseboat. It may well be that you've come across something we've already fixed. If the problem remains, then report it, please, but always try re-rezzing first.

Guilty as charged. Just please don't ask me about either Brexit or state visits. (It would be off-topic, for one thing!).

Dunno. I'm a scripter, not an interior designer. Isn't navy a good colour for boats? It has a certain nautical resonance, after all.

For some reason the update seems to have missed some regions the first time round. I revised the updater yesterday, ran it again, and this time it seems to have covered everywhere. Any more problems with the walls talking to you, please let me know (it's only the one houseboat, the Windlass 32x32, that's affected, as far as I know). As Beth says, the issue with the Windlass interior wall not changing colour is intentional -- I don't understand the minutiae of mesh modeling but it's to do with the way the mesh faces need arranging in that particular boat and the need to keep the boat's LI down below a certain level. The matter was apparently discussed at some length during the design process and doing it this way was was a conscious choice that can't be changed without completely redesigning the boat, which we can't do at this point in the process. Sorry.

As the owner of the parcel where your Linden Home is, you can enable any experiences with a G or M rating (not A). Avisitter is enabled for the whole of Bellissaria by default as far as I know (it should be) and I think it's enabled for the older Linden Homes, too but I'm not sure. It should be, since for several months now we have used the Avsitter system when we make LPDW furniture with multiple animations and sits. If it's not enabled, the home owner can enable it as described here:

If someone will please send me, either with a PM here or an IM in-world (which will go to my email if I'm not online) a slurl for the affected houseboat, or at least tell me which region it is, I will come and take a look. Otherwise there's not a lot I can do.

If resetting the mailbox/life preserver as explained by Alyona Su and Shamu077 doesn't fix things and bring back the menu, please drop me a slurl either by IM or a private message here and I'll take a look. But please try the script reset first.