In world only for now

Hi all.

Linden Lab finally screwed the pooch with Xstreet and had announced the imposition of some ridiculous listing fees. In essence, they have decided that they should charge us twice for the tier we were paying to host their stupid little boxes, and should charge us for stuff we weren't charging for, stuff that wasn't even promoting items for sale, we're not really a business at this point, and probably won't be any time soon.

So, our Xstreet listings are gone, we will look at alternatives in the near future.

Meanwhile, you can still get our free items on our little temporary plot in Ceilostomo.

How to make furniture and pose balls compatible with Seamless Sit

Most furniture, pose balls, stands, and so on are already compatible with Seamless Sit. A few items are not, but it is usually easy to fix them so they will work.

If you are making a sit script, all you need to do is make sure that after you obtain PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION and before you start your own animation, you have:

llStopAnimation("sit"); // stop the system default sit

Yes, that's all there is to it.

(I should note here that if you stop "sit" and don't run an animation of your own, your avatar may appear to still be running your custom sit or even a stand. This is just an SL quirk, things will sort themselves out as soon as you run a new animation.)

One fairly popular line of products that doesn't stop the default sit are the Sexgen and Neolove furniture. (Items based on the MLP scripts, including ones that are sold as fake Sexgen furniture, are already compatible, so skip this unless you have the real thing.)

Looking in a recent SexGen Platinum bed (this one is version 5.01a), I found that the pose balls in its inventory were full permissions, so it was possible to patch them to be compatible. The "BB Ball v4.0" script inside each ball can be modified as follows:

--- BB Ball v4.0.lsl 2009-04-08 15:16:55.000000000 -0400
+++ BB Ball v4.0mod.lsl 2009-04-08 15:15:54.000000000 -0400
@@ -48,6 +48,7 @@
               {
                   if (gbAutoHide) llSetAlpha(0, ALL_SIDES);
                   gkSitter = llAvatarOnSitTarget();
+                    llRequestPermissions(gkSitter, PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION|PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS);
                   llSay(gnChnFromBall, gsMyName + "|Sit|" + (string)gkSitter);
                   gnMode = MODE_ANIM;
               }
@@ -93,7 +94,7 @@
       else if (sKeyword == "Move")
       {
           gnMode = MODE_MOVE;
-            llRequestPermissions(gkOwner, PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS );
+            llRequestPermissions(gkOwner, PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS|PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION );
       }
       else if (sKeyword == "EndMove")
       {
@@ -118,12 +119,16 @@
       if (gkSitter != NULL_KEY)
       {
           gnMode = MODE_MOVE;
-            llRequestPermissions(gkSitter, PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS );
+            llRequestPermissions(gkSitter, PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS|PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION );
       }
   }

   run_time_permissions(integer perm)
   {
+        if (perm & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION)
+        {
+            llStopAnimation("sit");
+        }
       if (perm & PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS)
       {
           llTakeControls(CONTROL_FWD | CONTROL_BACK | CONTROL_ROT_LEFT | CONTROL_ROT_RIGHT | CONTROL_UP | CONTROL_DOWN,

Torimato? wat.

Today we pushed out some new AO toys. Well really, it's one new toy, but we will be packing it up in a few forms to suit different needs. We have a new standalone HUD, a substantial update to MEAO for MystiTool, and will soon be distributing a faceless version for use inside your own creations.

For those who like their AOs embedded into MystiTool, we have MEAOv2 for you. Like the previous updates, upgrading is pretty straightforward, well, as straightforward as things get with MystiTool. Turn off the old version, delete the old readme, core and interface scripts from your HUD, drop in the new replacements, wait for them to try to load, pick Reset from the MEAO menu, detach MystiTool, wait a couple of minutes, and put it back on. You're done. The new features are the same as what we put in the standalone HUD, so keep reading!

For those who like to keep things separate to avoid the occasional MystiTool update shuffle, or who don't need no stinking multifunction HUDs, we also have the AO available in a spiffy new standalone version, which we have decided to call Torimato, because that's three terrible puns in one. The little pictures here show what it looks like in its expanded and collapsed views, and you can stretch it to as big or small as you like (If you forget to stretch the textures, just pick reset from the HUD's menu, and it will fix itself).

Those little fast-forward buttons let you switch to next sit, walk, ground sit or stand. If you hold down those buttons for a moment, menus pop up to let you choose specific animations or random mode for each. The little button with the red line across it shows that forced ground sit is off; when it's on, it will be green like the sit override button above it. The blue button brings up the full AO menu, and holding down the menu button does the collapse and expand thing for you.

Okay fine, there are shiny buttons to poke at, but what does this thing do? Well, it's kind of a wish fulfillment AO, using the raw ultimate power of Mono to remove many of the old limitations that its Franimation and ZHAO ancestors had to endure. So here is a bullet list, because anything put into a bullet list is automatically ten times more important.

• The notecard format is backward compatible with ZHAO-II, so you don't need to start from scratch. Play with the new features and add them as the mood strikes. Default settings have also been set to match ZHAO-II, so out of the box, your old notecards will work pretty much the same as they always did.
• We added some new animation states, for Typing, Busy and Away. Striding and Soft Landing will now work if you add them, without tweaking the script; if you leave them out of your notecard, they will be handled the old way (aliased to Walking and Landing, respectively).
• You can add individual run times to animations. In this release we are only using the timers with stands, but we already have hooks in place to expand this functionality. This means that you can mix and match long animated stands and short static transitional poses, or even animated stands of different lengths, without them looking silly when put into the same notecard (older AOs used the same timing for all stands). Hopefully this will help make us all look a little less like robots!
  
• You can have as many animations of any type as you want in one notecard. Stands, sits, ground sits and walks have menus, the rest will be selected randomly on each play. This is my favorite change, people are random and quirky, and avatar motion needed a little more of that.
• We retained Seamless Sit, and made it a tiny bit more seamless. If you haven't seen this feature yet in other AOs, it checks to see of whatever you are sitting on has turned off the system default sit animation. If that has happened, we know that the object is trying to run an animation of its own, so we turn off the sit override automatically. If you decide you really want your own animation to run over what the furniture has, mash the sit button once or twice and your own animation will play.
• There are more AO commands that cover pretty much everything, and you can put those commands right into your notecards. Did you ever load a different notecard and get annoyed that you also had to go in and change the stand time and random/sequential from the menu, or things like that? These commands make all that go away.
• The standalone HUD can also accept those commands from chat (we have this feature turned off by default, but you can turn it on from the menu or enable it in your Default notecard). This is super convenient if you have the editor open often and can't click on the HUD, or of you want to control your AO with gestures. (We don't use this inside MystiTool, because that already has its own listener we can use.)
• The object listener (mainly for LuLu support) has been extended to be more generally useful. It will accept any AO command chatted on channel 1 by objects owned by you. It's turned off by default, and you can leave it off if the idea scares you.
  
• You know that quirk where you would swim out of the water into the air, and still be swimming? We fixed that.
• Even though a lot of stuff was added, the new notecard reader moved to the interface script, so there is plenty of room for your animations in the core.
• ...and more little bits and pieces here and there.

I know what you're thinking. Is this going to be a huge laggy beast? Well, no! In fact, we checked and re-checked because we didn't expect the load would be so low after all that tweaking.

• Out on populated main grid sims, the sim stats were lost in the noise, so that was kind of inconclusive.
  
• On the preview grid copy of Morris, which has a nice steady low script load, the total script time stayed nice and steady even when we reset or loaded new notecards.
• On the preview grid's Kapor, empty when we tested, total script time usually showed as zero with the AO running, occasionally blipping up to 0.1 ms. When loading a new card, there was about a second of 0.2-0.3 while variables got cleared, then a few seconds of 0.1-0.2 while the notecard lines were read, then back to near zero when regular AO operation resumed.
  
• On the test sims running the new Mono scheduler, timer displays were about the same as in Kapor. Also, our free space held up pretty well under the tighter memory management, so we are happy.

OK, so where to get this stuff? You can pick them up in world, or go to our Torimato and MEAO pages on Xstreet.

MEAO does the Seamless Sit thing now.

A while back, Moeka Kohime added a neat enhancement to ZHAO-II, called Seamless Sit. It's brilliantly simple: if you sit on an object and the default SL "sit" animation is stopped, then the device is providing its own animations, so the AO shouldn't try to do its own thing. Most pose balls and furniture already do this, because the default sit is at a fairly high priority (4) and gets in the way. This replaces the AutoZHAO system we used to use.

There are a few items in world that will still require a manual AO off, the ones I'm aware of are the furniture sold under the SexGen and NeoLove names. Furniture driven by MLP and Xpose does work with Seamless Sit, though.

We also stabbed a stupid teleport bug that could get in the way if you were wearing more than one AO. Thanks to Shamus Carter for finding this one!

The updates are up on Xstreet, and in the vendor at our little shack in world.

To update, stop your AO, delete the old MEAO core and interface scripts plus the old READ ME - MEAO notecard, and drag the new ones in from your inventory. Or you could, you know, like, read the READ ME notecard, if you're into that kind of thing.

After making any changes to an attachment, it is a really, really good idea to take off the attachment, wait a couple of minutes, then reattach. That will help ensure that changes stick. This comes from a weird old SL quirk that seems to have recently become more commonplace.

A quick nag

Hello, today I am going to nag you.

There was a MystiTool update this week, so some will be transferring stuff between old and new versions of the HUD. While no-copy assets always cause headaches, the grid seems to be especially hungry right now. So, if you have any no-copy animations or other goodies to move between your inventory and objects, go slowly, in little chunks, and check often to make sure the inventory moved over properly.

If you have older no-copy animations, it would be a good idea to check with the animation seller and see if things have changed. Because the no-copy issues are so widespread, some vendors have been switching over to copy/no-transfer instead, it can't hurt to inquire about an exchange if they have done this.

Oh, and sit up straight, wipe that silly grin off your face, and don't forget to make your bed before you go to school!

Lovely new 1.25 Server change :p

24 January 2009: In the SL forum was another report of the Mono checkbox being ignored (different scripts), in that case relogging helped. So if one voodoo stabbity workaround doesn't work, try the other, and try again *sigh*.

Updating: The new problem only seems to affect compilations done on certain viewers. I see the compilation problem (namely, the compiler is ignoring the mono checkbox) under the Kirsten S16 viewer, but not the official 1.21.6 or 1.22.6 viewers. So if you are having trouble with compilation, try a different viewer and make sure Mono hasn't become unchecked.

Everything seemed fine on the beta grid last week, but something changed in the Mono LSL compiler in the version of 1.25 server that is being rolled out to the main grid. Existing copies of the MEAO scripts continue to run OK, but there is a memory error in the compiler that will prevent recompiling the core script after making changes. While the rolling restart is still underway, move to a region that is still running 1.24 if you run into this problem. No such luck, whatever changed is already affecting 1.24 regions too. I'll rearrange a couple of things to work around this lovely new SL glitch before tomorrow when the second half rolling restart happens.

To check what server version is running on a sim, go into Help->About Second Life... and look at the second paragraph, which looks like:

You are at 284947.1, 264661.8, 3501.4 in Ceilostomo located at sim5710.agni.lindenlab.com (8.2.35.12:13002)
Second Life Server 1.24.10.106829
Release Notes

The line in bold is the interesting one.

MEAO updated again, 2009-01-05

It's 2009 already? Yikes. The holiday break thing gave me some time to put together a few changes to our little AO scripts that I've been meaning to get at forever. Here's the list:

• SL hasn't been dealing well with animations following teleports for the past couple of server versions, so our kill/restart kludge is more aggressive now. I really, really hope this is the last time I have to revisit this one.
  
• New variables in the core script, autoStopShort and autoStopShortTime, to deal with stickiness in certain prejump animations. You may want to reduce the time slightly (I went with 0.5 second) if your prejumps are very short.
• There is much less llOwnerSay (yellow text) chatter now.
  
• The Settings button/command now includes the last notecard read.
• AO on/off state is preserved over relog/reattach (standalone ZHAO behavior is to force it on). Same for AutoZHAO, in case anyone is using that.
• Remove an old limitation: We now carry a list of Second Life's built-in animations. This eats a little memory but brings benefits. If you include a valid built-in animiation in your notecard, there will no longer be a warning. If an animation in the notecard really isn't found, it won't just generate a warning but it will now be removed from the active list, stopping the usual AO spam to DEBUG_CHANNEL. Yay!!
  
• Fix for an obscure ZHAO-II bug: if we loaded a notecard without a walk after loading one with a walk, haveWalkingAnim was not being set back to FALSE, so the default walk would be killed inappropriately.
  
• Internal: link messages now carry a number (linkChannel) so we can ignore irrelevant messages zooming around the HUD earlier.

To update, stop your AO, delete the old MEAO core and interface scripts plus the old READ ME - MEAO notecard, and drag the new ones in from your inventory. Or you could, you know, like, read the READ ME notecard, if you're into that kind of thing.

As usual, you can pick up the updated scripts at Xstreet SL, or in world at our gleaming superstore in Ceilostomo.

MEAO (finally) updated for Mono

Sorry for the long delay in getting this one out there. The Mono rollout on Second Life went poorly at first, but we really wanted to use it for this version, so we waited until they could whip it into better shape.

Aside from Mono and much more free space, the 2008-10-05 edition of MEAO includes "fakesit" in the menus and the command line. You may be familiar with this feature from other AOs, it runs the current "Sitting On Ground" animation no matter what the real animation state is. It's nice to have if you want to sit on a floor without pose balls, or even in the air. (The script isn't picky, you don't have to use ground sit animations on that line, go ahead and be silly!)

The other new little feature is deferred stopping, which can help smooth animation transitions in the face of network latency or overloaded sims. The old animation is stopped a short time after the new one begins, reducing the chance that Linden defaults will leak through and increasing the chance that ease in will happen.

As usual, you can get the update for free from Xstreet SL or at our little shop.

To install the update, turn the (old) AO off, delete the old MEAO Core and MEAO Interface scripts and the "READ ME FIRST - MEAO" notecard from your MystiTool, and drop in these new scripts and readme notecard. It is a good idea to detach and reattach MystiTool after this kind of change, Second Life remembers attachment changes more reliably that way and it makes sure that MystiTool and MEAO agree on channels and such. Do see older entries in this weblog about attachments with no-copy animations in them, those warnings are still very current!

Oh yes, if for some reason you want to tweak the source code, you will want to use an RC or Preview version of the SL viewer. The 1.20 and earlier viewers don't know how to compile to Mono, and at this point we really need mono to make everything fit. 1.21 "should" be the official viewer fairly soon, so hopefully this inconvenience will be short term!

Mono goodness and not so goodness

Just a quick note about the 1.24 server release. Both of the little add-ons we hand out for MystiTool, the MEAO AO scripts and Inco's chat toy, do compile and run OK under Mono.

Timing is a little different in this server release, we are going to play with potential tweaks from the last few months to see what looks best in the final product.

Meanwhile, you can recompile the existing ones if you want to play. It's fine to mix and match Mono and regular LSL scripts, so you can do this in your exiting MystiTool. You will get a whole lot more memory for stuffing in animations, but you may notice that default animations leak through. You can always go back to regular LSL if you don't care for what you see, and again we'll have something to smooth it over shortly.

*SQUEEEEEEEE!* LL finds gobs of lost inventory!

Last night, the Lindens quietly announced that they were able to recover lots and lots of missing inventory. Some no copy animations I felt bad about losing came back, so maybe you will be lucky and find some too.

What you need to do is clear your SL cache, relog, wait and wait and wait and wait for your inventory to reload. Then, have a look in your Lost and Found folder. I hope that you find the same pleasant surprises I found! This little present from LL hasn't found everybody's lost stuff, but there are quite a few happy people tonight.

See LL's blog entry for the rest of the details, they plan to make this an automatic thing in the future.

Yet another MEAO update, more notecards.

Today's little update was inspired by an old ZHAO-II bug noticed and patched by Lyssa Varun. It would display its disheartening "You cannot have more than 12 animation notecards." message before subtracting the help cards, so the limit was even lower!

If people are actually running into this limit, even one or two shy of that, then it's time to allow for more notecards in the menu.  So that's what today's update brings, you can now choose from as many as will fit in script memory.

MEAO has actually had a "secret" way to handle more than 12 notecards all along, by using the "/1 ao load notecardname" command. But now that's available to people who prefer buttons too!

The updated boxes are out at the usual spots, the vendor in our shop and at SLExchange.

To install, take the old MEAO Core and MEAO Interface scripts out of your MystiTool, and drop in these new ones. It is a good idea to detach and reattach MystiTool after this kind of change, Second Life remembers attachment changes more reliably that way.

And once again, please take care when using no-copy animations inside attachments! See our earlier entry for why.

Silly walks (MEAO update)

There are a few smallish changes today, in MEAO 2008-05-25a.

1. Second Life used to leave animations running after you teleported. This was frequently seen as a bug instead of a feature, so the Lindens changed things so that it no longer happens.  Unfortunately, that "bug" was also a feature in ZHAO-II. So, this MEAO update includes a new event handler to fix things up after teleports.
2. There was an ongoing battle of sorts between controls used by ZHAO-II for walk corrections, and by MystiTool for its move lock toy.  MEAO sheds the control event so that conflicts are now avoided.
3. The teleport tweak ate a little precariously into what little free space ZHAO-II had, so Inco took to the scripts with blunt implements of destruction and made our bloated notecards fit again. There are actually a few more free bytes than when I started!

The updated boxes are out at the usual spots, the vendor in our shop and at SLExchange.

To install, take the old MEAO Core and MEAO Interface scripts out of your MystiTool, and drop in these new ones. It is a good idea to detach and reattach MystiTool after this kind of change, Second Life remembers attachment changes more reliably that way.

And once again, please take care when using no-copy animations inside attachments! See our earlier entry for why.

Teensy optional MEAO update

You can take or leave this update as you wish.  The free memory display is in bytes instead of percent now so that the numbers won't look silly under Mono. Also, if you couldn't get the mysterious "curanim" command to work, that's because I left out an 'r' in the help text. It's curranim. Doh!

As usual, pick up a fresh box at our little shop or on SLExchange.

To install, take the old MEAO Core and MEAO Interface scripts out of your MystiTool, and drop in these new ones. It is a good idea to detach and reattach MystiTool after this kind of change, Second Life remembers attachment changes more reliably that way.  Do see older entries in this weblog about attachments with no-copy animations in them, those warnings are still very current!

Oh, about that Mono thing. Yes, we are testing on the beta grid, and yes, at the moment everything works fine. Things could change in the next few weeks before Mono goes live on the main grid, but so far it looks like it will be a painless recompile. A more capable replacement AO is in progress, but we won't tempt fate and try to make two big changes at once.

More on HUD inventory loss

In our last episode, I wrote some rather dire things about being careful about moving HUDs around because they and their inventory can be lost. If you have been affected, you might be interested in this JIRA entry (log in and vote if you want to get Linden attention on the matter!) and also a recent blog entry (and another) from Keiki Lemieux about getting Linden support assistance.

Some anecdotes suggest that it might be less risky to do things one at a time. That is, don't try to wear a HUD that is rezzed on the ground, or replace one attachment with another. Instead, detach or pull objects into your inventory first, then wear in a separate step. That does seem like a reasonable possibility, since you are hitting the servers with fewer transactions at once that way.

If you have especially valuable no-copy animations and are afraid to lose them, it might even be safer to use them the hard way for now: play them directly from your inventory so there is no rezzing involved.

MystiTool 1.0.23 is out but be careful!

It would be best to NOT upgrade your MystiTool right now, because at this writing the Second Life asset servers are having trouble again. In fact, if you are using any attachments or HUDs that are no copy or have no copy contents, don't try to attach or detach them now. Watch the Second Life blog for news, and remember that they often say everything is fixed when it is really NOT fixed yet.

When the asset servers come back, moving your animations and MEAO to the new version will work just like the last time, see our earlier blog entry for instructions.

MystiTool 1.0.23 now lets you use custom textures on buttons, so if you are using custom buttons for the AO functions you can make them look like their ZHAO-II counterparts.

The texture for AO on/off is e470eec7-0c82-98b2-ac3c-dee6e2b3b4e7 and for the menu it is b205e7dd-3855-98cf-e090-1f6af934b784 . So, using the examples in our instructions, you could define your MEAO buttons like so:

/1 c1 set ao toggle
/1 c2 set ao menu

Then, to make the buttons match those settings, use:

/1 c1 set_texture e470eec7-0c82-98b2-ac3c-dee6e2b3b4e7
/1 c2 set_texture b205e7dd-3855-98cf-e090-1f6af934b784

For Inco's little chat script, just move your old Chat Phrases notecard into your inventory, then to the new MystiTool HUD. Copy a fresh Chat Script from your inventory into the new HUD. Make sure it is started correctly, as with the MEAO notes linked above.

A giant L for your forehead

Inco brings us this incredibly useful item. It is exactly what it looks like, a huge L you can wear on your forehead on days when you feel like you need one. Pick it up from SLX or at our little shop in Hanson. 5L, that's about two cents!

A new little toy and a new face

Incoherendt Randt is now a Toritoys script kitty, and is offering an inexpensive little MystiTool add-on called Inco's Chat Script that lets you simply say, shout or whisper commonly used phrases to public chat with a button press. Drag in the script and notecard, change the notecard to include things you might actually want to say, and you're ready to go. It is available in the new Toritoys shop for a whopping 5 lindens, mod/copy/transfer OK!

"Error reading notecard. Please try again." fix

If you like, you can pick up a teensy update to MEAO.  It is only a one line change to the MEAO core script, to suppress the "Error reading notecard. Please try again." message that would turn up if other scripts inside MystiTool also used dataserver events. It was a leftover assumption in ZHAO-II that it had the whole HUD to itself, harmless but annoying.

You can pick it up in the usual place, well, the new usual place, that is =)

To install, take the old MEAO Core and MEAO Interface scripts out of your MystiTool, and drop in these new ones. It is a good idea to detach and reattach MystiTool after this kind of change, second Life remembers attachment changes more reliably that way.

Moved to, uh, whiter pastures?

Toritoys has a permanent home now in Hanson, right behind the infohub! Here is a SLURL for the relocated shop, still a temporary structure until I get more time.

MEAO and MystiTool 1.0.22

First the good news: everything seems to be working just fine here after the update. The bad news: with a HUD update comes moving over your stuff!

You can migrate your AO stuff just as you would move from a standalone version of ZHAO-II, see the MEAO instructions for details. In a nutshell, copy your animations and notecards to a fresh folder in inventory. Leave the old MEAO scripts behind in the old HUD and copy fresh ones into your new copy of MystiTool along with the animations and notecards.

If you did copy the old scripts back into the new HUD (naughty naughty!), you may find that they are stopped from the shuffle. That's OK, they can be fixed! First, wear your new MystiTool loaded with scripts and animations and notecards, and let it do all its startup things. Then, right-click and edit it. Go over to the Contents tab and wait a couple of minutes for Second Life to properly fill in the entries (it can take a while before all the contents are really there and the menus work). Right-click and open the MEAO Core script, make sure the "running" box at the bottom is checked, then press the Reset button. Close it, and repeat with the MEAO interface script.

Feel free to contact me in world if you find any issues. My network access may be funky for the next few days while some fixes are done around here after some storm damage, but I will get back to you when I can! If you don't hear back within a day or so, try again (perhaps with a notecard) - I simply don't trust that SL communications will always get to me the first time :/