Archive for January, 2008 Page 2 of 6

Off topic: XKCD Rocks

If you haven’t heard of the online comic XKCD (and you love geek humor), then you really should check it out!

If you need a little idea of why I think it’s so good before you go clicking blind links, lemme just post a couple of examples that I thought were funny (and that would fit in my blog’s format):

bug

dangers

And my absolute favorite one of all (as well as my son’s):

matrix_transform

Popularity: 25% [?]

Clan Information

In an ongoing attempt to make the Combat: Samurai Island system more comprehensive, compelling, and open we have started working on a few projects that require, among other things, the ability to programmatically discover who is in each official C:SI clan.

Unfortunately, there is no consistency on how the various clan groups are set up in Second Life®, with the result that as far as I can tell, a few clans are so small that they are in danger of being disbanded :

  1. Crescent Moon - 34 members
  2. Shadow Samurai - 20 members
  3. Ako Roshi - 35 members
  4. Kyousei Clan and Dojo - 5 members
  5. Vanguard Samurai - 63 members
  6. Order of the Fox - 3 members
  7. Yakuza Samurai School - 4 members
  8. Tendai-shu - 72 members
  9. Ancients of Eternity - 4 members
  10. Samurai Giri - 25 members
  11. The Oda Clan - 15 members
  12. Samurai of Daoism - 453 members

Now, I know that some of these numbers are incorrect, most likely because the people who set up the SL™ Groups have the "Members are visible" checkbox unchecked:

MembersVisible

For now we’ll use what information we have, but in the future it’s possible that there will be problems caused by not being able to know who’s in which clans, so I’d like to personally ask clan leaders to make clan members visible.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Catching MONO from Linden Lab

Uh, yeah…  I’m just paraphrasing the following paragraph from a post on the VTeam blog entitled Q&A Series continues with Catching MONO… :

Don’t miss Q&A: Catching MONO tomorrow 1/28/08 & again 2/5/08

Linden Lab® Studio Icehouse is now testing a simulator upgrade which will dramatically speed the running of scripts. The Linden Scripting Language (LSL) will not change in any way, so all of your existing scripted objects and attachments will continue to function as before, only faster. The key to this improvement is an open-sourced virtual machine called Mono.

Babbage & Scouse Linden - Monday 1/28 at 7am PST
Periapse Linden - Tuesday 2/5 at 3pm PST

Visit the VTeam Blog for full details & SLurl

Ugh, 7:00AM :(

Well, I suppose I’ll make a good effort to make it, as I *definitely* have some questions I’d like answered regarding LSL scripts running on Mono.

[EDIT] Here’s the SLurl: Volunteer Island SW

Popularity: 26% [?]

WindLight® V1.18.6 : WTF were they thinking?

I mentioned previously that the latest version of WindLight® was an abomination, but only now is the true measure of FAIL being discovered.

Apparently, the issue with C:SI swords and other attachments being partially visible (or as Colin puts it: "turned my Wave into airport landing lights) when they are not supposed to be is intentional.

Lemme just pause while that last sentence sinks in….

Yes, Seriously.  Torley Linden specifically commented on this fact way back on 2007-12-13, but I only discovered it today on the Torley Linden/Project Updates page of the Second Life® Wiki.  Specifically, here’s what that page has to say regarding the issue:

[2007-12-13] [WINDLIGHT] Alpha textures becoming opaque at a distance

Yes, it’s intentional that alpha (32-bit, see-through) textures become opaque (solid) at a distance — this was done as a speed booster, since layered alpha textures decrease performance.

At the same time, I know how ugly it looks in some situations, and how it impairs other things — for example, if want to take a picture of an apartment building and the contents of its floors, but when I zoom out, the glass windows (alpha textures) go opaque, blocking my view.

I wonder if it’d be a good idea to map this to Objects Mesh Detail… or provide an option in Debug Settings.

Next steps: collate Issue Tracker stuff related to this like VWR-3101, forward to our Developers on Team WindLight® for a better solution…

There are apparently no less than 20 issues in Jira related to this, and it seems from everything I’ve seen so far (especially given the amount of time that this issue has apparently already existed), that there is no intention of fixing it.  The best indication that I’ve seen thus far that LL has any intention of doing anything at all is a quote from Torley on the 15th :

Look for a fix for this soon — the transition should be more reliable.

In other words, "we intend to keep alpha textures opaque, but we’ll try to make it so that it only happens at 5 meters instead of 0.5", or something very likely to that effect.

Thinking forward, since WindLight® is effectively a beta test version that runs on the main grid, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that they intend to migrate this fucked up idea to all versions of the viewer in the future.

I’m so flabbergasted I can’t think of anything else to say.  I’m just… 

Seriously, Linden Lab® : WTF were you thinking?  Do you *ever* actually USE Second Life?

 

 

P.S.: I know that at least Torley uses Second Life® and I love Torley, but Torley is an always-optimistic, "make the best of things" person who doesn’t appear to be the one making these asinine decisions, so please don’t think I’m picking on Torley in this post.

Popularity: 24% [?]



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