scripting – Ahuva’s Blog

Dusting Off the Scripting Skills

Hanging about at Carriage Trade has made something abundantly clear: I have LOTS of chocolate and wine in my inventory, but not too many horse treats. I headed over there the other day to take some photos of the shops and stable. I was hoping In The Habit was open (it wasn’t then but is now) so I could perhaps add a bit to my clothing inventory. Because you know I NEEEEEEEED more boots. 🙂 After taking some pics around the shops, I went to the stable.

Chancy, a beautiful buckskin, was there when I arrived. We started chatting. She asked me about the group rules and about the sim. I really didn’t know much more than what it said on the sign and said so. Moonsorrow, a lovely Arabian, showed up while we talked, asking the same questions. When Mute, a handsome palomino, came seeking the same information, I IM’d to Georgianna. Help! We all have questions. It was truly fascinating. The horses can join the group, rent stalls and some other benefits. People can come to the livery to ride or take out a carriage. There will be a cost for that. The horses and the sim will share in that. *grin* I think that’s great! It’s a wonderful way for people who would like to ride to find a mount willing to take them. The horses make money and have fun and don’t have to support the overhead.

It apparently sounded fine to Mute also, who rented a stall. I looked for a suitable stall-warming gift. I was SURE I had an apple somewhere. I found it finally – rezzed one on the ground and passed one to Mute. But that wasn’t satisfying. It seemed to me that a stall-warming gift or a treatsie should be more interesting than that. I resolved to do better.

I returned home and built a basket. Yes, you read that correctly. I dug out my building skills and made a basket. (I confess – first I IM’d Honour and whined that I needed her to build me something. And then realized – hey – *I* know how to do THAT.) My friend had already passed me carrots and sugar cubes and a better apple. I put the foodstuff in the basket. I’d forgotten how to wear the basket properly. I IM’d to Shenlei for help on that one. Oh, right – poses and script. Done. My wonderful script teacher HellspawneD had taught me how to make a script that offered a choice, so I modified that for carrots, apples and sugar cubes and headed back to the barn.

I tested the basket on Belvidere and Apollo. They seemed to like it. I noticed a problem, however. Given the choice between nutritious carrots and sweet sugar cubes, the horses chose sugar. Repeatedly. THAT is NOT healthy. *grin* So I resolved to brush off my scripting skills and modify the script again. This time I’m going to LIMIT how many sugar cubes a given horse may have in a given SL day. That’s right, Mom is watching. 4 carrots, 2 apples, 2 sugar cubes in an SL day. I’ve already put Dale and Hell on notice.

I also met another of the barn cats – Midnight. I LOVE SL animations. If you touch Midnight, there are options for petting, following, meowing. 🙂 We all went out for a ride, and Midnight followed right along. I can see that I will have to add cat treats to my basket.

Voilà!

I DO remember how to do some things! My AO has been throwing off errors lately. I thought I’d fixed it – I noticed a typo in the notecard and corrected it. But the error kept appearing. Since I wasn’t there much lately, usually just bopping in and out, I didn’t devote much thought to it. We did a test last week, however, and my AO was throwing off the error like crazy and other people (Noobs) were noticing it. *red face* We explained what it was, but yeah, I was embarassed. So I went in tonight to fix it, once and for all. I didn’t see a typo, but I recopied and pasted. Error. Removed the pose. Error. Big duh. I saved the notecard and RESET THE SCRIPTS!!!! Tah Dah!!! Error free. Now that I look at that pose – I don’t know why I tried so hard to put it in. *grin*

Thought for the Day

Every schedule should have some slack in it to deal with the problems you know will happen. Happened. Just sayin’……

(LOL. look at the proportions in this pic. No WONDER sometimes I feel that my work is overwhelming. *grin*)

Lost All Control

Maybe I haven’t lost ALL control. But my inventory has. Not just my SL inventory. My opensim inventory is rapidly becoming a disaster as well. (Don’t look in my RL closets either.)

But this post is a serious plea for assistance. I am doing development in opensim. I have co-developers. We are all working on pieces of the whole. In our regular software development we use a version control system. We need something similar inworld with our prims. It doesn’t even have to be that complicated. We have very few prims and we simply want to remember which is the latest version. Does anyone out there know of something? Has anyone developed their own method that could be shared? We are constantly asking “WHICH one of these is the latest version???” We need to clean up our act. We know it can be done better. As I stood here looking at the boxes, trying to figure out which was the right version, the sun moved across the sky. HELP!!!!!! *watches as all the blue boxes fall on me*
<

What a Difference a Line Makes

Okay, this is too amusing not to share. *grin* I am trying to customize my avatar in yet another world. So I moved over my AO and my radar. Attached them. Nothing happened. Sigh. Re-saved the scripts (that works in one of the worlds). Nothing happened. So I went back to my source and copied the scripts. Pasted them into the new world. Nothing happened. Do you know? *grin* At least, oh thank my lucky stars (LOL and any invisible Friends I may have) that I didn’t ask anyone for help.

4 Dancing Chicks

On the fifth day of August, my true love gave to me:
4 dancing chicks
3 background folks
2 fantastic chims
and Von playing live yet again!

Von Johin has been very much in action lately and I have been loving every minute! Oura and I went chimera shopping earlier – she got hers, I was too tired to make a decision (yes, I seem to be back to being tired a lot. WHY isn’t 4 hours a night sufficient rest????) Dz has one of the best chims going – I LOVE dancing with Dz. So we all met up at Von’s concert. Sharon logged in and told me that she’d just graduated university!!! WHOOOO-EEEEEEEEEEEEEE Sharon!!!!! That is so fantastic!!!! So I tp’d her over and she jumped on Dz’s chim and the 4 of us danced up a storm. I am so proud of Sharon, let me say – she is smart, funny, talented. Congratulations, sweetie!!! She and Oura had already met, but I introduced her to Dz that night. Dz really is one of the best scripters I know. *grin* I love when my scripting friends hit it off. My friends are not only smart, but beautiful, inside and out.

I should mention that Dz and I were having a side conversation about my problems with my demo. Our demo has crashed the last four times we tried to run it. ???? I began to think Honour might be right and that it was my hair. 😦 I explained it to Dz who caught the culprit right away: my radar script. I had it cycling too frequently. So combined with other timers at the site, yeah, I crashed the region. LOL. Or at least that is the current theory. We’ve not had a chance to test it. So all you radar-wearing folks – be aware of what your scripts can do. Ahuva, Sim Destroyer.

Sign me in, please?

Sometimes I am amazed at how difficult it is to communicate in this world. I don’t mean technologically. I don’t mean language barriers. I don’t even mean that we give words different connotations. Sometimes – we can’t communicate because the event the one person describes is not in the reality of the listener.

I have a demo in 45 minutes (less, by the time I finish posting this). I have a bug in my script. I’m saying something two times instead of once. It’s a list of names. I spent nearly 4 hours this morning talking to some really, REALLY smart people about my bug. They kept asking me questions that just seemed crazy to me. I thought I’d explained the process I was scripting. I thought it was incredibly obvious. I didn’t understand WHAT was so difficult. The more I tried to say I am trying to do these steps, the farther apart we seemed to grow. So. Here we go…..

1. Avatar walks up to the signin desk.
2. Avatar touches the poseball.
3. Animation takes over, avatar is signing name.
4. Script is sensing all other avatars around the avatar signing in. Because the one avatar is signing in ALL the other avatars (co-workers) standing about. Don’t argue yet. That’s what my manager requested. Keep reading.
5. Script shouts the list of names (avatar signing in AND all other around) to a Welcome Board in another room.
6. Welcome Board displays list of names.
7. Animation ends.
8. Avatar that was signing in is teleported to the other room with the Welcome Board.
9. Avatars that are left in first room must each click the teleporter device to tp to 2nd room.

Yes – there are holes here. I KNOW that. This is just a little tiny demo. It’s not meant to be a finished product. The only goal was to mimic a real-life scenario and put up the names of the avatars. But that is exactly the catch. “real-life scenario”

My scripting friends could not envision a scenario where one person would sign-in another person. I am totally blown away. I do this all the time. Two of us walk up to a sign-in desk. If I pick up the pen, I’m going to sign your name, too. If you pick up the pen – I expect you to sign me in. Sure – if we’re talking badges and security – we each sign ourselves. But talking a casual kind of demo/meeting, where the point is simply to see who came in??? For heaven’s sake – you’re standing there – sign my name! No. I had TWO people look at me/ IM me and say “personal integrity”. You have got to be kidding me. I asked more people. Nope, they’d NEVER sign in someone else. So I guess that makes my manager and I and one co-worker and one SL friend the only people in the universe who would sign-in someone else so that they didn’t have to be bothered.

Tell me. Honestly. Would you sign me in?

Beam Me Up!

Beam me down, too. And across! *grin* I woke up this morning thinking “teleport system”. I have been wanting one since I was at my friend’s house this winter and saw hers. She owns a whole sim, and could teleport all over. She modeled the device to resemble the physical layout of her sim. I was totally impressed and envious. I tried to hire someone to do the same for me. He left SL and has never returned. LOL. Sheesh – am I THAT difficult an employer?????

Anyway, this morning I woke up and I had a picture in my mind of what I wanted. I thought “I can DO this”. Dark and Honour and Shenlei and Hell have all taught me to torture and shape prims. I didn’t want anything complicated. I had a vision. I had a script I used for work. So I got up, logged in, headed to Frenis, the ducks and the beach and began shaping a prim. *grin* It was great. I did what I wanted. Learned a bit. Built my transporter. Chadd dropped in just as I finished and helped me test it. It works!!!! I did have one typo which I fixed. There is something I want to add to it as well, but that is a “bell and whistle” as the saying goes. I do have one question about something, but I think I KNOW the answer – I just need one of my script masters to come around so I can confirm my theory. Or learn the real answer.

Here is Ahuva’s teleporter. Each color takes you to a different location on my property: the pool, the beach, the back yard, the front door. There is a teleporter at each of those locations, although some are less easy to find than others. *grin* I have my reasons. But I did it. A great way to start my second year in SL. Building, scripting, doing it myself.

Building “Do”s and “Don’t”s

This morning I was set to declare that perhaps I do indeed have a bit of a builder in me. Tonight….*grin*….another mishap that sent me IM’ing to Bailey! Bailey is simply wonderful. So kind, so patient, so helpful. No matter HOW many times I try to destroy my house, she is there to help me get it back.

Return with me now, however, to happier times. I need an office for a demo next week to my manager. I’d hoped to use an existing office in an existing world. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, that option no longer seems viable. I looked about at all the worlds in which I move and my eye fell on Bedrock Boutique, my mall in OpenSim. The economy has been tough on everyone – we still have empty stores in the mall. I decided to build an office in one of the empty units. Only one little problem: I don’t have any furniture in OS. Actually, I don’t have much of ANYTHING in OS. LOL. Ah, but I DO have hair!! Anyway, I contacted a friend and asked if he would allow me to move his furniture into my store and he graciously agreed. So I set up a table with chairs, some sofas and end tables, put the corporate manual on the table along with a cup of steaming coffee (or whatever). But the setup seemed a bit stark, not to mention too public. I thought that what was needed was a way to indicate that this unit was not open to the public, not for general admittance. I decided that posts and ropes and perhaps a sign were needed. I had a few false starts thinking about the rope, but the posts were a breeze. As was the sign. All in all, creating the posts, rope and sign took me less than 30 minutes. For someone who doesn’t know how to build and has darn few textures, I was quite satisfied.

Now we all know that you shouldn’t work on things when you are tired. I should REALLY know not to try to edit items in or near my house. How many times now have I managed to TAKE my house and have to get it restored??? Two? Three? I think that Hell, Bailey and Shenlei have all had to restore my house at one point or another. Well, some people (me) never learn. I was floating in the pool in one of the inner tubes (hey – it’s HOT here – temperatures were over 90 for the last 3 days) and working on scripting a book. The book was on the side of the pool. All of a sudden – the book was in the water. The pool was twice as big as normal. What??? A very long story short. I “missed” when I was clicking on the book to rotate it. *grin* I clicked on the concrete around the pool and flipped THAT. I KNEW that I’d messed up the rotation of SOMETHING. I IM’d Bailey to ask advice. As we talked and I tried to explain what I saw – that’s when I understood what I had done. In other attempts to undo that, I had also managed to flip the entire pool section upside down. *grin* No, I didn’t get a picture. Silly me. It was actually quite funny. And I’m not about to do it again just for your entertainment. You will have to take my word for it.

And now for the lessons I am learning. First – I simply do not understand rotation. I have a plea in to the script wizard to explain to me WHY what worked for a door does not work for a book. llGetPos, llSetPos, llGetRot, llSetRot. I have used these functions in nearly every scripting assignment from Hell. And STILL I can’t make them do what I want. Grrrrr.

I also learned something important about llRezAtRoot. I don’t know why I thought llRezAtRoot lined up the new prim with the bottom of the existing prim. No, it lines up the new prim with the geometric center of the existing prim. For simplicity – I have a 4m x 4m square. I want to rez a .3m sphere in the upper-left corner of that square. *grin* Should have been very simple. If you read documentation, that is. I, of course, just kept playing with offsets and such. I think my coworker found this approach a bit maddening. 🙂 But I got the answer (geometric center) just as he found that in the wiki documentation. Cheater! Honour is always telling me to learn by trying. 🙂 Is THAT what you meant, Honour? So much of this rezzing/scriptig is math. All formulas and calculations. I’m lucky that my coworker is EXTREMELY good at math. I tend to make careless mistakes. Gee, I do that editing also. *grin* Must be a character trait. But I have to say – it is fun to finally make the prims appear where and when I want. I wish I could have that power in RL too. 🙂

Just for fun….. here I am in OpenSim:

Scripting Class

I really do take scripting class. Natalya joined our classes near the end of December. Then we all took a break through the holidays and the start of the new year. But we got back into it today. I started nagging Hell, because I have so many projects piling up and I need to get some of them underway. 🙂 Isn’t that a wonderful problem to have? I have real work to do. I’m being paid to login to SL. Work can’t get any better than that. Let me say yet again: I have the most wonderful friends, incredible management, and great coworkers. Oh yeah – and a really cool teacher.

So, I sit and listen to Hell as he lectures and demos and I try out the sample problems he gives. I’m working on a project to improve a dance floor. /me waves hi to Shenlei! So we reviewed things like linking prims, how distance can prevent linking, positioning objects when they rez, getting their local position. I’d missed a key notion about linked prims. I find that is often the case for me. I’m told something the first time. It seems to make sense and I think I know what is meant. But later it comes up again at a time when I have more knowledge and experience. And I realize that what I THOUGHT I knew was incorrect. Little incremental shifts in focus and knowledge. It’s incredibly exciting.

So we all agreed on what the first step of this project should be. I went over my notes. I know what I have to do. Then I asked them to test out something that I need for one of my RL projects. It was in the house so we left the beach and headed in. I was quite pleased to see that I did indeed know how to work the projector. Quite satisfying, actually.

Then *I* turned my attention to work – fielding emails, checking on other issues. I could hear laughter in my headset. Looked up to discover myself being knocked down the stairs of my house. Hell was attacking me with a beach ball. I ask you: Is this proper behavior when you are a guest in someone’s home??? No, of course not. No matter how funny it may look. 🙂 (Look carefully to the right of the open door – you can see my doorbell!!!! 🙂 Remember the doorbell? )

So I found myself on the first floor, which became inundated with beach balls. I’m sorry to say that Nat got led astray and was joining in the trouble-making. I was attempting to work while they filled the house to bursting with beach balls. Beach balls bursting through the walls and out the front door. Filling both floors. THEN sporks appeared. Now I know why I keep the first floor empty. I need a playroom.

Next to rez was a carrot gun that shot carrots, of course. I rezzed one of my lucky-chair couches so we could test the pose balls, hoping that might settle the high spirits. No such luck. Next was a truck. It started as a cute little truck and grew and grew and grew into a monster truck. I jumped onto the couch to avoid it while Nat sat on it to avoid being run over. Again I was forced to tear my attention from IMPORTANT work when I heard “I don’t think she’s looking”. LOL. It was like having little kids playing in the next room. “She’s not looking – I think we can get away with it now.” So I looked. Discovered the truck parked on my derriere. Now look. I admit that I am curvy. But I am not SO curvy that you can park a truck on me!!!!!! Sheesh.

I had to remove the couch when Hell started spinning me in circles. I really did NOT want to puke all over. Does NOT pay to give some people privileges, that’s all I am going to say about THAT. So I went back upstairs, hoping to avoid the children. Or perhaps I went back upstairs following an errant truck. Whatever. I stretched out on my bed and tried yet again to focus on work. Only to look up and find magic crayon marking all over my art work, my bed, my walls. Sigh. Finally the miscreants were caged in their own pencil drawings and I could get back to work. 🙂 Can’t wait for our NEXT class!