Minutes before I figured out the wiki's big error, I had already put up the HUD for sale at both SLX and OnRez. Luckily no one bought the HUD, so no damage was done. But I'm a bit angry at the fact that the primary reference on LSL omitted a critical caveat on a function's description.
What I could do at least is prevent someone else from getting caught up like I did. I'm going to edit the wiki page for llParcelMediaQuery and note that it has the same caveats as it's sister function llParcelMediaCommandList. But as for the HUD, I guess I'll have to put it on hold until I figure out how to get around the underlying technical limitations.
| ]]>Boy, was I wrong. I did make a simple prototype, no problem. But when I moved all the appropriate objects, textures and scripts over, the shape reverted to a regular gate. WTF? "Ok, no problem, just find the script the function call that reverts the shape, and comment it out". The only problem? ALL the scripts are virtually unreadable to a mortal's eyeballs. I complained about it on the OpenGate network group, and I was told to look on the OpenGate website for why Doran did this. What i found made absolutely no sense at all:
People who've looked at the source code in-world have noticed that is pretty much unreadable. The first question I'm asked is "why the obfuscated code?"
During development of the first gate network, I would often succumb to the temptation of modifying the code in world to fix bugs. The result was that the online tarball would become out of sync with what was actually in use, and I lost much time scratching my head over which version was correct.
Obfuscating the in world code forces me to do development out of world.
There is a fair amount of shared code between the different scripts. On several occasions I found that I had different versions of key algorithms in different scripts, and this caused many headaches. To avoid this, I wanted to use C/C++ style #includes and #define macros, and that necessitated moving to a development platform with real development tools.
To some degree, obfuscated code is a natural result of using #include and #define macros.
Often people would make changes on their objects and submit them back to me for inclusion in the project. Such code had often gone through several iterations of copying and pasting in different tools, and it was often difficult to get a clean diff to figure out what had changed.
Obfuscating the in world code should help reduce this problem. I will no longer accept contributions that do not diff cleanly against the code in the distribution.
Many well meaning people who used the objects in world took them apart, picked a single script, and found their favorite nit to pick in the name of readability, efficiency, reduced memory, or reduced lag, and "fixed" them. They often did this without understanding the complete design, especially without understanding how the different scripts interoperated with each other, how the different objects interacted within a single gate, or how the individual gates interacted with each other in the gate network as a whole. On a few occasions this led to disruptions of the gate network. Now that the distributed chord algorithm is in use, these problems are magnified.
Obfuscating the in world code increases the level of effort required to make changes, and should reduce the number of frivilous unconsidered changes.
That last sentence and paragraph burned me up. She's obfuscating the code to actively discourage other people from making changes. While this doesn't technically violate the GPL's terms, it's actually a way of trying to be cute with it. Whenever I make a project, I always try to keep the code as neat and easily readable as possible, not just for me, but for anybody who wants to study it, modify it, and even sell their own modifications. That's the nature of the GPL at work. If Doran doesn't want other people to make changes and submit them for inclusion, she should have chosen a different license.
Yes, you read that last sentence right. It seems to me that Doran doesn't totally grok the GPL. A good GPL project doesn't put up obstacles to code changes, it removes as many as possible. So what can be done about a poor GPL project like this one?
Answer: Fork it and do it better!
| ]]>After we were done talking, I gave him a free copy of my Green Android Warrior avatar as something to cut his teeth with avatar creating, on the condition that if he makes an interesting mod of it he lets me know about it.
]]>First off, it's Windows-only. No Mac or Linux client at all, so you know it's already a small world. Secondly, by default you can't build anything at all. You need to join a "developer's program", where your creation is subject to approval by a staff. Also, many features that you get in Second Life such as Voice Chat, landmarks and others that you get for free, aren't available to basic members. But the biggest dealbreaker for me(and certainly a lot of other people), is that There charges money for creating stuff, and you won't turn a profit until you sell the item at least ten times.
It's not all bad for There, though. They have a fixed offline schedule, so no unexpected outages. Plus you can join up to fifty groups, twice as many as in SL. And for teens, they're not relegated to a "teen grid". However the inclusion of teens is a big reason why There has such rigorous restrictions, which actually makes me glad SL did make the teen grid. Heck, the teen grid is actually better than There.
So in conclusion, I can't recommend There as a good virtual world for anybody. It's a Second Life look-alike on the surface, but it's too PG-13 to be a Second Life competitor. Perhaps I'll start searching around for other virtual worlds and see what's good and what's not. Don't get me wrong, I still love SL but I think it would be a good idea to see what else is out there. Maybe I'll make my search into a blog category.
]]>Coincidentally, it was St. Patrick's Day, and the people there were celebrating in style, complete with a giant green cake. There's even a store past the giant bookcase where you can get a themed greenie avatar(I got the Jedi greenie, but now I wish I got Darth Vader instead). Greenies Home Rezzable is a great place to explore, play around, and just have a lot of fun. I'll definitely be going back there soon.
]]>In fact, I will soon start coding up a sample GPL implementation of such a device. My implementation will use the "webprim" feature as a safe page preview function, and offer the user the choice to load the page with the in-world browser.
However, making an in-world web device isn't my only project as of late. I've also released a script that allows prim manipulation via chat commands. I'll talk more about that in my next post.
]]>Development right now is happening with the LAN version(server can only be placed in the same sim as the client object). Once I complete the expected features for the server and client, I will port them to the email and "status light" versions of the server set. So if anybody wants to contribute code, ideas, or suggestions, IM my SL avatar "Antonius Misfit" and let's make it a truly open source project!
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