Sirius Selona Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 I like to go sailing in the Blake Sea. Unfortunately, the last couple of months one or more griefers have taken over the boat rez dock I like to use at a Linden Hub island. At least one person runs continuous attacks with follower objects. I say at least one, because it's hard to tell for sure. There could be more than one actual individual, or it could be one individual running multiple alts and/or bots.Having been in SL myself since May 2009, I know how to getting rid of griefer objects by teleporting to another sim, or sitting on a prim, or non-physical vehicle, etc. But I don't know how to stop a follower object if I want to stay at a location like a dock with my boat. Also, people have AR'd about this situation, but because it's hard to know who the actual individual(s) is who causes this griefing, I'm not sure LL can or will do anything.Is there anyone on this forum who either knows of a defensive script or method that will stop a follower object? Or maybe even reflect or return the object back on its owner?I'm posting this now in hopes a discussion can at least get started, and tomorrow morning (Pacific time) I will try to get a screen cap of one of the offender objects/avatars/bots and post it here. Thanks to all in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Thibodeaux Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Does derendering or blocking the object help you at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dillon Levenque Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Sirius, because you're so obviously knowledgeable I'll forego what would be my usual advice: find another place to launch your boat. You don't need my advice, you already know that. I'm hoping there really IS some way you can reflect the follower on its owner, or find out who that is, or something. As you know there are so many forum posts about griefers that are just absolute rants. You ranted not at all. Stated your case and asked if anyone had a possible defensive device. I too will keep an eye on this thread in the 'morning'. I could get into a little griefer smacking if I really thought it would work. Either way I wish you the best of luck on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aethelwine Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 I think some huds protect against this sort of thing by displacing the avi and camera from the avis actual location. The followers would therefore go to 50m away or however it has been setup. Rather like the way offsim swimmers and surfboards work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qie Niangao Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Maybe, but the OP mentions a boat, and if the idea is to offset the avatar from the agent, that boat would also need that kind of exotic animation, as would any AO used, etc. It would seem pretty dreadful, frankly, and I'd much prefer finding a different place to launch my boat if it were me. I really think the only hope is to round up confederates for a good ol' fashioned AR party against the griefer alt-of-the-day (the followers' owners). I realize this could be a long war and the griefer may win; they obviously have nothing better to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madelaine McMasters Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Qie Niangao wrote: Maybe, but the OP mentions a boat, and if the idea is to offset the avatar from the agent, that boat would also need that kind of exotic animation, as would any AO used, etc. This reminds me of the summer I joined a sailing club. My boat's captain was a li'l nutty and I refused to use sailing lingo, so he often maneuvered the boat to dump me in the water. I spent more time in Lake Michigan than on it. So, a HUD that plopped me into the water 50 feet away from the boat would feel like old times! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sirius Selona Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Here are two screen caps of the possible bots or alts that demonstrate part of the problem. The first screen cap was taken last light around 10:30pm Pacific time. These two male alts or bots float in the same place 24x7, never moving and always right on top of each other. If you try to chat with them, you never get a response. This cap was taken this morning about 5 minutes ago as I type this. The island is now crowded. Same two bots/alts in the same place as last night. Many, if not most of these avatars are not operated by individual people. They just appear all in a closely packed crowd like this. Some are online 24x7 but are hidden underwater sometimes. There is rarely, if ever any chat going on. Somewhere in that crowd is the person or people who attach the followers. I couldn't get a screen cap of a follower this morning, but will keep trying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nefertiti Nefarious Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Sirius Selona wrote: Here are two screen caps of the possible bots or alts that demonstrate part of the problem. The first screen cap was taken last light around 10:30pm Pacific time. These two male alts or bots float in the same place 24x7, never moving and always right on top of each other. If you try to chat with them, you never get a response. This cap was taken this morning about 5 minutes ago as I type this. The island is now crowded. Same two bots/alts in the same place as last night. Many, if not most of these avatars are not operated by individual people. They just appear all in a closely packed crowd like this. Some are online 24x7 but are hidden underwater sometimes. There is rarely, if ever any chat going on. Somewhere in that crowd is the person or people who attach the followers. I couldn't get a screen cap of a follower this morning, but will keep trying. What happens if you mute those avatars? Does that get rid of their objects too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Summer Tison Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Sirius Selona wrote: I like to go sailing in the Blake Sea. Unfortunately, the last couple of months one or more griefers have taken over the boat rez dock I like to use at a Linden Hub island. At least one person runs continuous attacks with follower objects. I say at least one, because it's hard to tell for sure. There could be more than one actual individual, or it could be one individual running multiple alts and/or bots. Having been in SL myself since May 2009, I know how to getting rid of griefer objects by teleporting to another sim, or sitting on a prim, or non-physical vehicle, etc. But I don't know how to stop a follower object if I want to stay at a location like a dock with my boat. Also, people have AR'd about this situation, but because it's hard to know who the actual individual(s) is who causes this griefing, I'm not sure LL can or will do anything. Is there anyone on this forum who either knows of a defensive script or method that will stop a follower object? Or maybe even reflect or return the object back on its owner? I'm posting this now in hopes a discussion can at least get started, and tomorrow morning (Pacific time) I will try to get a screen cap of one of the offender objects/avatars/bots and post it here. Thanks to all in advance. I'm actually at the spot now, it seems to be a dumping ground for bots and the like, very odd place with some very old bots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pussycat Catnap Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Looks like Tiny Empires bots. Not to be confused with the 'Tiny' community. Tiny Empires is some kind of game in SL where you score apparantly by having lots of people in your team in some way or form. For one reason or another many of its players get dozens of bots and park them. Usually on Linden owned land or the land of land sellers. They are a bit of a plague in linden oceans - as they seem to think this hides them well (as if we couldn't see the green dots). In the past they have been a mostly harmless nuissance. Mostly in that they still created uneeded avatar lag and some of them end up quite kitted out - I've been tossed from a boat before when hitting a sim full of them. If there's one using a snopping object - it might be the bot owner using one of them to track people investigating the others... Perhaps this fool think (s)he has 'squatter's rights' to the land the bots now occupy... With you coming there often, you are on that bot owner's "turf" and this might be an attempt to chase you off... Of course - that's all a guess... similar to a pattern I've seen before, but hard to be sure. There ARE still a few places in SL where you can go to buy traffic bots (one in the sim just north of Fietzo) - and its possible this one is here to avoid being in a spot that would lose them their land... But I think Tiny Empires is a more likely possibility. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Qie, as a scripter, and without giving any griefers who may be listening in info....I keep hearing about these following items. In general, how do they work and how does one get attached to an avatar? I'm totally unfamiliar with this type of griefing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madelaine McMasters Posted October 22, 2013 Share Posted October 22, 2013 Czari Zenovka wrote: Qie, as a scripter, and without giving any griefers who may be listening in info....I keep hearing about these following items. In general, how do they work and how does one get attached to an avatar? I'm totally unfamiliar with this type of griefing. Scripted objects can sense nearby avatars and obtain their location. This is how greeters know you've arrived at venues so they can give you welcomes, notecards and the like. Scripted objects can also move, as we see all over SL. Put those two things together and you have objects that can move to the location of an avatar. These things don't really attach to avatars, they simply sense nearby avatars, pick one (or are directed to one by a menu given to the object's owner, showing all the names within sensing range, like you see if you have a hugger) and move themselves near the avatar. They'll continue to sense/move until the avatar vanishes from the sim or the operator recalls/takes the object. I have a fireball that follows selected victims around, attempting to incinerating them. I purposely made it a little slow, so that you can easily outrun it, though it's persistent and will eventually catch you. The fireball is small and yellow while hunting and bursts into a beautiful (to me) violet blaze when it reaches its target. It was great fun some years ago to watch it try to vaporize a friend who'd climbed onto a swingset. My poor fireball was not quite up to the challenge, though it tried valiantly to kill her. Another joy of SL. ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 So followers can be made to "unfollow" once a targeted avatar is out of range or tp's to a new sim? I know this probably sounds like a really silly question but coding/scripting makes my eyes start to blur. Thanks, Maddy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dillon Levenque Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Czari, I believe from what I've read that it's not so much a distance thing as a sim-crossing thing: they can't follow into another sim. I'm guessing it's because scripts have to be handed off from sim server to sim server. When you cross a sim border your scripts and everything else about your avatar gets handed off, and the follower then loses the link to you. That's probably wrong in detail and possibly in total, but that's the way I understood it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madelaine McMasters Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Sensors are range limited to 96 meters, so they can't find you if you're farther away than that. But, if one has found you, or if the scripter uses another method to obtain your UUID, the object can continue to get your location anywhere on the same sim, or as much as 34 meters into any adjoining sim. So, if you can't get farther away from a follower than that, it'll continue to follow you, even across sim borders. (Just like AnnMarie's unmanned vehicles can cross sim borders). Objects can't TP (unless you're wearing them), so teleporting away breaks the follower's grip. Crossing onto a sim set to "no object entry" also stops the follower at the sim border. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sirius Selona Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Hi everyone. Thanks for the tips and suggestions. I did try both derendering and muting/blocking, but those features did not work completely. I managed to get some screen caps to post here. But first, people who say go to another rez zone are right in that it's the easiest thing to do. But I wonder why I, or anyone, must be harrassed into not using an LL-provided public hub and rez zone by out-of-control griefers. I'd rather try to find a way to defend against them if possible. If I could figure out the one or possibly a couple of actual avatar/people behind this, I'd report it to LL with all the screen caps I took. But it's impossible to figure out who is behind this situation. Anyway, here's tonight's screen caps. These images and the ones I already posted should give people who read this thread a good understanding of what's happening. The follower objects. What happens is a bot/alt does the actual following, but they wear this object. Follower on me. Follower derendered, but bot that's inside it is still following me. I sat here so it wouldn't push my avatar giving me time to do the screen cap. A derendered and blocked/muted bot/follower can still push an avatar. Here one named "AlexKlingonClayton" is pushing my bf's avi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qie Niangao Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 But it's impossible to figure out who is behind this situation. Now I'm confused. Other than the infinite-alt problem, why would this be hard to determine? Why isn't it just whoever's riding the follower and pushing you around? Incidentally, there's this window you can access called "Bumps, Pushes & Hits" that might be useful in documenting who is causing the trouble. It used to be readily available, but now it's under the Develop menu, so maybe it's not as useful as its name suggests, but it may be worth a try. (Just in passing: it's possible for a scripted object to follow anywhere within a sim, not limited to the 96m range of sensors, but teleporting to a distant sim will shake them.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syo Emerald Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Since all of the avatars used seem to be bots (at least thats what Sirius descriped them like) its not possible to really spot the resident behind them, as they are all just throw-away avatars. And its kind of wishfull thinking, that LL will react quick and ban the real person behind those bots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qie Niangao Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Right, okay. So that's just the same ol' griefer alt problem. I mean, there's no magic. No way to determine the RL identity of the griefer, nor guess which alt is their favorite at the moment. There's also nothing to be done to defeat the follower script with another script. Well... one can make or buy scripts of ever greater annoyance to the victims griefers -- if they happen to be around to notice and be annoyed -- but if you come up with anything that's actually any good, it will be a lesson to the griefers and they'll soon enough demand that the "combat" HUD scripters do the same, so they can grief everybody else even better. AR them. Or not. Go to a different rez zone. Or not. Yeah, it's bad for LL's business, this kind of aggravation, but it would probably be even worse if they enforced ARs with any diligence or dispatch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Dillon Levenque wrote: Czari, I believe from what I've read that it's not so much a distance thing as a sim-crossing thing: they can't follow into another sim. I'm guessing it's because scripts have to be handed off from sim server to sim server. When you cross a sim border your scripts and everything else about your avatar gets handed off, and the follower then loses the link to you. That's probably wrong in detail and possibly in total, but that's the way I understood it. Thanks Dillon...you're speaking my language where anything with scripts is concerned. I think I'm getting it now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 I was thinking the same thing. While I agree with the OP in that it shouldn't be the "griefed" who have to go elsewhere, it's just easier than losing time and energy dealing with griefers if other options are available. It's similar to the posts I've seen lately complaining of griefers at certain free store - there are a lot of (imo better) free stores in SL. Same issue with sandboxes; if a griefer is too annoying in one...go to another (or throw up a sky platform waaaaaayyyyyyyyy up in the sky - most sandbox griefers want low hanging fruit, no pun intended). @OP - I know it's aggravating but if you can rez at another area it's probably just as well to do so. BTW, from what I can tell in the photos, I really like your hair and skin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sirius Selona Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Good morning everyone, and again, thanks for the discussion. I gather from the discussion that there's no way to defeat a follower that's being used as a griefinig object. And yes, it is easier to just go somewhere else. Also, I have AR'd them using the bot that was attached to me last night. I know of other people who have AR'd this problem too. I think, for me, it's the principle of the thing. This is a Linden Lab Infohub and supposedly safe area. It's public land set aside for general use. Sort of the equivalent of a park in real life. And the principle is identical to a real life situation when a park is taken over by a gang. Do you let the gang have it, or do you go to the police and pressure them to deal with the situation? Fortunately, this is not real life and it is, indeed, easy to just go somewhere else. Especially since there's no way to defeat the bots and LL is not likely to do anything even though they have received AR's about the problem. And so, once again the bad guys win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Whatever it is that attracts Griefers to the info hubs we get the impression sometimes that LL is content to leave them alone there and let them hang out there. It's better than having them running around all over the Grid. And for the record, never ever ever try to confront a Griefer yourself. Just silently AR and move on. Pretty much every one who has tried confronting a Griefer has lost. They can and they will make your SL miserable. Some of them are very good at what they do. Once you respond they keep coming and coming after you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sirius Selona Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Pierre, I understand what you're saying. It's just so disappointing to have no choice except to let the bad buys win. I was hoping only to find a way to defend against a follower, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do so. Followers have a good purpose in SL. Pets are only one example. But when they're used as griefing objects, I was hoping there was a way to defend against them. Sad that there isn't any way. But oh well. It is what it is. :matte-motes-grin: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Sirius Selona wrote: Pierre, I understand what you're saying. It's just so disappointing to have no choice except to let the bad buys win. I was hoping only to find a way to defend against a follower, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do so. Followers have a good purpose in SL. Pets are only one example. But when they're used as griefing objects, I was hoping there was a way to defend against them. Sad that there isn't any way. But oh well. It is what it is. :matte-motes-grin: First off, it's Perrie, not Pierre. That said, please don't get me wrong. I wish LL was more proactive in dealing with this stuff. Things that disturb the peace, that impede other residents ability to enjoy the grid, that appear to have no other purpose than to be a nuisance should be dealt with swiftly and decisively. But I also understand given the resident to employee ratio that sometimes it may be a bigger uphill battle for LL than meets the eye. Especially when I know the stupidity of some of the AR's that LL has to sort through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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