I’ve been thinking about some ideas and comments recently brought up by the conversation on C:SI and animation overrides, and I’ve decided two important things:
- I’m going to personally switch to the ZHAO-II AO. I’ve looked at the code, and it’s much cleaner than the previous ZHAO and uses less scripts (which was, of course, one of the goals that the developer had in mind).
- I am going to customize the ZHAO-II to be more "C:SI-friendly", because assuming that Colin is right, it would at least be a nice thing for me to offer to the C:SI community. I still don’t expect all that many people will use it, but maybe I will be surprised. In any case, I want one for my own use, so might as well continue my tradition of offering free goodies to people - I often give away items from my list of personal projects
Ziggy Puff recognized that it can be a pain to edit the notecards, so a free converter was provided by him that will read the data from an existing ZHAO-I notecard and convert it to the simpler ZHAO-II format. This is a pretty cool idea, and I’m actually making a web-based version that does the same thing, and may at some point actually provide a handy form for enhanced editing. Either converter could be used, though my thought was that a web-based UI for the notecard converter might allow "fast-and-easy" editing of animation sets like Aimee uses.
But there’s one big problem:
EVERY SINGLE FARKING ACCOUNT I HAVE HAS HAD THE ZHAO NOTECARD LOST.
I’m not shitting you. My main account and every alt I have that I cared enough about to purchase an AO for gets this message when attempting to open the notecard: "Notecard is missing from the database".
I’m simply flabbergasted. I’ve lost other inventory due to database hiccups or whatever LL is blaming it on this week, but I’ve never seen (or even heard of) such a consistent inventory loss before. I wonder how they would even attempt to explain that.
Un-freakin-believable!
Update: Apparently, Vint Falken is experiencing the exact same thing.
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I imagine that anyone who purchases the item will get the same response. I have had this problem with some of my scripts. Sure, the object still runs and reacts when you touch it. However, when I try to view the source code, I get errors about the script not being available. I’ve handed it off to friends with full permissions and they have the same problems. Handing a copy of a note card is actually just giving them a reference to the same Asset UUID. Once they save it, then it gets another UUID. Problem is, saving it is pointless if you don’t have anything to look at to begin with. After losing a second set of scripts to what appeared to be the same problem, I went into a big thing of depression for a few weeks and stayed out of SL. I tried later exporting all of my scripts, but there just isn’t any standard way of backing these things up. I have tons of scripts, textures, sounds, note cards, and object parameters. *sigh*
Yes, I’ve read about how notecards are essentially the same object until re-saved, though I’ve resaved all of the notecards I’ve mentioned above when I customized them after purchasing the AO.
I, too, have gotten sick and tired of inventory problems and left Second Life for a while; Like you I also came back anyway and continue to work on stuff
I hope they get these problems resolved (not just [Resolved]) at some point in the near future. I’d sure like to be able to log in without 5 “Gesture missing from database” messages each time
Not to mention all the other losses.
That reminds me… I guess I was wrong above when I stated that I’d never seen such consistent losses before; I actually have seen it. Every avatar also has multiple “Gesture missing from database” errors on each login. This happens even for those avatars that I *didn’t* care enough about to buy an AO for, so I guess in a sense the missing gestures are actually more consistent.
First time i leave a comment here
Its fun, two days ago i had the idea for an AO-Engine too that is designed for use with CSI. I havent spent a lot of time with LSL but what about the idea of making an AO that deactivates the override for walking, hardlanding and maybe even standing when a sword is drawn? This way ppl wouldnt need to switch notecards for fighting because the only reason i have multiple notecards is that i want to get rid of some overrides.
Something i ve seen on SLX is this
Auto sit-cancel HUD
i’m not really able to check if this version is really reducing the lag or how it is better or worse then ZHAO-II .. maybe thats something you could check out
Humm… need a girls and boys version too. I don’t like having the same animations as a guy! JMO
Well, basically, if I make a C:SI-friendly HUD, it would only be coded to work with C:SI, but the animations would come from your existing AO. So you’d still have all your dainty girl animations
The only things that would be different would be “under the hood” so to speak. For instance, there’s really not much need to play many animations when you are in ready stance or blocking stance, so a C:SI-friendly AO would be aware of when you are in those stances and not play animations that would interfere with them. That sort of idea.
Tak, are the notecards still viewable inside the ZHAO II HUD inventory? I’ve found that my AO works better sometimes if i copy and paste the notecard contents into a new notecard. I haven’t totally lost a notecard but the simple act of making a new notecard seems to allow some anims to work that did not previously work when loading from the older card. Mind you, nothing was changed in the text of the AO notecard…simply a copy/paste and save into a brand new card. This probably gets around the UUID issue that Dedric mentions above. But then again I really have no idea how all of this works. I’m just happy when my avatar does what I want it to do.
What timing! Apparently Vint Falken is experiencing the same problem: http://www.vintfalken.com/ao-notecard-missing-from-database-advice-needed/
@Solace, no, the notecards are not still visible. Any attempt to view them results in the “Notecard is missing from database” message
Left a comment on Vint’s blog… don’t really have anything more to add, other than “I’m sorry you’re going through this trouble”.
Thanks Ziggy
I know it wasn’t your fault, just in case that wasn’t clear. It’s something wrong from the Linden Labs side of things, though I can’t imagine how or what or why it’s happening the way that it is.