Times Sands

Strife... Are you online? Any thoughts about this? This script is in a wraparound, hollow, cylindrical door that's linked into a building. The door is supposed to slice upwards when touched, and it visually appears to do so. But 80% of the time, avatars can't walk through the resulting opening. The other 20% of the time (or when the slice is done manually through the Edit window), they can walk through the gap. It seems like the scripted slice (on 80% of touches) only affects the prim's appearance... but does not affect its collision boundary. I did not see anything about this issue in the JIRA or on this forum. Can you offer any thoughts, Strife? P.S. And I'm not using prim-physics shapes here... these are all normal prims. Many Thanks! Sincerely, Timesie

Hello everyone, I've just run into some odd behavior with sliced box and cylinder prims. I was using a script to change the slice parameters for a door, and the first few times I opened and closed it, I was able to walk through. And then the situation changed. The scripted prim sliced just fine visually when I touched it to create a doorway opening... but I couldn't walk through. It was just like the unsliced prim's collision boundary was still there! (This was all done using the PRIM_SLICE parameter in llSetPrimitiveParams.) But when I then implement the slice manually through the Edit window, I was again able to walk through the door opening. So are scripted slices borked in that they don't change the prim's collision boundary? And has anyone else run into similar problems? (I'm on the Singularity viewer, by the way, because it doesn't overtax my somewhat low-spec computer.) Thanks tor any info you can provide.

There are a ton of sculptie tools out there. Everyone has favorites. This first class in a six-part course begins to introduce you to instructor Times Sands' own favorites... to unique tools that do things most others can't. And despite recent Linden developments (including Land Impacts and mesh), sculpties remain one of the most creative ways to make interesting low-prim builds. We'll use voice, and to cut lag, please remove as many scripted AOs, HUDs and attachments as you can before coming. You can either click "Second Life Institute of Architecture and Design" on any HHBS campus teleporter or SLURL directly to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kinetix/156/98/1609. Either way, you'll arrive in SL-IAD's reception building. Then head outside to Level 1 of our new SL-IAD sandbox complex. See you there!

Anyone who attended Times Sands’ HHBS/SL-IAD class about “Smashing SL’s Link Distance Limit” during the past two weeks is welcome to come to today's followup “Show-and-Tell” session at 4 PM SLT. There, students can show how they applied what they learned, trade related tips and tricks, or discuss (and hopefully solve) any problems they encountered. We'll use voice, and to cut lag, please remove as many scripted AOs, HUDs and attachments as you can before coming. If you come through normal HHBS Class Reception, click the TP pad for SL-IAD. Or SLURL directly to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kinetix/156/98/1609. Either way, you'll go to SL-IAD's reception building. Then head outside to Level 1 of our new SL-IAD sandbox complex. NOTE: And if you're not yet ready to show off your work, we're holding another Show-and-Tell on 2/21 at 4 PM!

Want to create BIG linksets that seem to violate SL’s 54-meter link distance limit? You can! Times Sands' latest class at the Happy Hippo Building School’s new "Second Life Institute of Architecture and Design" (SL-IAD) will reveal infrequently used techniques for doing just that… WITHOUT USING SCRIPTS. Folks who took the class last week found it to be quite an eye-opener! We'll use voice, and to cut lag, please remove as many scripted AOs, HUDs and attachments as you can before coming. If you SLURL directly to class (at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kinetix/156/99/1609 ), you'll arrive in SL-IAD's reception building. Then head outside to Level 1 of our new sandbox complex. See you there!

Want to create BIG linksets that seem to violate SL’s 54-meter link distance limit? You can! Times Sands' latest class at the Happy Hippo Building School’s new "Second Life Institute of Architecture and Design" (SL-IAD) shows you how. And NO SCRIPTS ARE INVOLVED. Folks who took the class last week found it to be quite an eye-opener! We'll use voice, and to cut lag, please remove as many scripted AOs, HUDs and attachments as you can before coming. If you SLURL directly to class (at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kinetix/156/98/1609 ), you'll arrive in SL-IAD's reception building. Then head outside to Level 1 of our new sandbox complex. See you there thisThursday!

The current Linking Rules page that you mention actually does make it sound like the new rules are truly all about distance! So in what ways do they include factors other than distance (beyond the number of prims, of course)? FYI, I just started to teach a new class [ at the Happy Hippo Building School's new "Second Life Institute of Architecture and Design" ] about "Smashing SL's LInk Distance LImit" (without resorting to scripts). And old factors like prim size do appear to not relate any more. But... just like the OP... I've also found that I can link prims whose centers are separated by much more than 54 meters, without using the special building techniques I teach in that class. So I'm very interested to hear if factors other than those mentioned on that Linking Rules page apply! :smileysurprised:

Are you a top-level (or aspiring) teacher who is passionate about any aspect of building, scripting or other virtual creation? Would you like to "teach for tips" in one of Second Life's most advanced new venues? Then come to the Happy Hippo Building School's second Grand Opening ceremony for its new "Second Life Institute of Architecture and Design" (SL-IAD), which is being held today, January 24 from 4-5 PM SLT. It'll take place at the brand new SL-IAD facility, and will include an informative presentation, followed by a guided tour and Q/A. Also, the Happy Hippo Building School itself is always seeking teachers for its existing facility. So if you are passionate about something that you'd like to share with others at a beginning, intermediate or advanced level, please come talk with Leslea Aldrin or Times Sands on 1/24, at 4 PM SLT, at the SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kinetix/156/98/1609 See you there!

Are you a top-level (or aspiring top-level) teacher who is passionate about any aspect of building, scripting or other virtual creation? Would you like to "teach for tips" in one of Second Life's most advanced new venues? Then come to the Happy Hippo Building School's second Grand Opening ceremony for its new "Second Life Institute of Architecture and Design" (SL-IAD), which will be held Thursday January 24 from about 4-5 PM SLT. It'll take place at the new SL-IAD facility, and will include an informative presentation, followed by a guided tour and Q/A. Also, the Happy Hippo Building School itself is always seeking teachers for its existing facility. So if you are passionate about something that you'd like to share with others at a beginning, intermediate or advanced level, please come talk with Leslea Aldrin and Times Sands on 1/24, at 4 PM SLT, at the SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kinetix/156/98/1609 See you there!

That parallels my own experience... except that ALL my clothes were being stripped off every time I logged in... and I was often changed to a female avatar. After a while, I got really tired of fixing all that,and decided to stick with just one viewer So it may be Firestorm from now on!.

Thanks again Rolig... That's a great link! I checked evrything out, and all the SL and internet-connection specs appear to be optimal. I'm actually using a brand new Dell Core i5 tower PC with a Radeon HD 7570 GPU and the latest drivers. The Radeon isn't listed in SL's compatibility tables, but it's a higher model number than the ones there. So it may or may not be "better" than the SL requirement. However, it does display SL without problems in Phoenix. I'm also asking around on campus, and if Firestorm gets thumbs up from people here, I may try de-installing Phoenix and doing a "Clean install" of Firestorm's latest production version. It just occurred to me that the wierd problems I had earlier may have resulted from my having three viewers installed at the same time (SL, Phoenix, and Firestorm). And while I never launched them simultaneously, they may still have interfered with each other when I closed one and opened another. So maybe a super-clean Firestorm install would be worth trying!

Wish I could switch to Firestorm, but its latest viewer (and SL's latest default viewer) insisted on doing one or more of the following every time I logged in: Removing all of my avatar's old (non-mesh) clothing. Changing my avatar's gender (I look horrible with breasts). Making random prims invisible even when they are still there. And that was after I did "clean re-installs." (You don't want to know what went on before!) The Firestorm folks weren't able to solve this prioblem either, so Phoenix 1.6.1.1691 is the only current viewer that behaves reasonably well for me. That's why I think I'm out of luck in monitoring this (for now)! Sad thing is that I use no mesh prims and very few sculpties... so investigating why my builds were disappearing may have to wait for more stable Firestorm and SL viewers. Sigh...

I may be out of luck! I'm using the latest production Phoenix build (1.6.1.1691), but it doesn't show the Land Impact of prims(as outlined by Jeremy Linden). Is that info buried somewhere else in its UI? Thanks, Timesie

WOW... Thanks everyone for the great info. I'm going to check into this, like NOW!!! Timesie

Hi everyone, I'm sure you've noticed that "phantom child" scripts quit working 100% after the arrival of mesh. I've re-checked several phantom-door/child scripts and they all still work fine if their prim isn't linked with any others. But if the phantom child prim is linked with other prims (as one would want with a phantom door), the prim now remains phantom even after its Flexi and Phantom statuses have been removed by the script. So I decided to test the Lindens new "approved" approach to this, which toggles PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_TYPE between "NONE" and "PRIM" (or "CONVEX") with statements like the following: llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(LINK_THIS,[ PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_TYPE,PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_NONE]); And I wanted to warn everyone about a possible nasty side effect. My 56-prim school complex contains a phantom door, and when I unlinked the door and tried the above new approach, it worked just as well as any of the older approaches. But when I then relinked the door and clicked it, the entire school complex was returned to my Lost and Found folder with an on-screen message saying that "the sim is full." This happened three times in a row. And the sim wasn't full... It had 400 free prims (and 456 after my linkset vanished). Has anyone else experienced this? And if you haven't yet tested this new approach to making phantom-child prims, do so with great care. Be very sure to save your linkset before triggering a prim that changes its PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_TYPE. P.S. I should add that I'm using the Phoenix 1.6.1.1691 viewer. I also tried using the latest SL default viewer, but it would not play nice when I switched between it and Phoenix (the SL viewer kept stripping off my avatar's clothes and changing its gender). So since Phoenix's support for megaprim editing is so much better, I'm sticking with it.

Interestingly, I'm having the exact same problem. AND it's also now occurring with my old WarpPos and JumpPos teleporters, which didn't exhibit the delays or <0,0,0> problem, but now are. Makes one wonder if the Lindens are breaking things again. Hmmmmm.......

Thanks Coventina... I'll check into it! Timesie

It's a brand new Dell PC straight from the store. So I'd think the drivers would be current. But I'll check into that... Thanks!

Hey thanks Kwakkelde... You got the cause! And temporarily upping the screen resolution through the Windows Control Panel did indeed reveal the Edit window so that I could move it back. Thanks again! Sincerely, Timesie

Hi again everyone, My old PC crashed and I just replaced it with a new Dell XPS 8500 with i5 CPU and an ATI graphics chipset that supposedly exceeds SL's minimum requirements. But I can't get any of the latest viewers (SL default, Phoenix, or Firestorm) to display the clothing I was wearing before the crash. My inventory shows the items as being "Worn," but I look naked except for my socks and underwearll. I've tried removing and re-wearing them to no effect. And I had saved several whole outfits before the crash, but none of them will go on my avatar now. Has anybody else experienced this problem... and if so, how did you fix it? I've been trying for days. I was wearing a tuxedo before, but now, I may be forced to build myself a prim-based barrel and hang it over my shoulders! Sincerely, Timesie

Hi again everyone, I was just doing some building edits in Phoenix and am not sure what happened... but the prim editing/texturing window vanished and is no longer showing up in the Phoenix viewer. It's not minimized at the bottom of the screen either. I right-click on the linkset, select Edit from the pie menu, and the window just doesn't pop up. I also logged out and back in without effect. Does anyone know how to restore it? Many Thanks!

And with suitable scripts, one can send one's cam across distances up to 4,000 meters! But beyond certain limits, you'll only see objects... and not avatars.

All true points Chosen! But once a mesh "Box Tube" (for example) is brought into SL, can I then adjust the ratio between the width of its central hole and the width of the prim itself? Or can I hollow out its tubular body by varying degrees? Or path-cut it into a half tube? If I have to return to the source mesh tool to create variations like these, then SL's edit window will remain the more efficient tool for what I want to do (despite its non-standard quirkiness)! That said, though, if the prim I want isn't implemented in-world, then the flexibility I desire will be moot. So I'll also search these forums and check the SL Wiki for leads to mesh tools that non-mathematicians can use. Thanks for all the insights, everyone!

Hi Again, Since my last reply, I realized that mesh wouldn't accomplish nearly what I want. Where mesh falls short is that the prim wouldn't have the same editing flexibility as the regular Tube prim... as with sculpties, Path Cut, Profile Cut, Hollow, Hole Size, and all that would not be available. So I'll focus first on seeing if the Phoenix people will create a "true" Box Tube... and then try the Lindens as (sadly) a last resort!

Thanks Chic and Peggy! Good thoughts all around. And maybe I'll use this as a first-time mesh project! One thing you both said triggered a further thought. Yes, the Lindens haven't really been in the new-prim business since I joined in 2007. But the Phoenix viewer people have. So maybe I'll suggest it to them. They've added a bunch of new primitive shapes (most of which look like they came from prim torture). And last time I checked, the new shapes displayed and behaved properly in the default SL viewer (though you couldn't edit them there). So maybe the shape I'm interested in could someday be added to and edited in Phoenix, and then also used in SL. I'll investigate mesh and Phoenix. Thanks again!