"port to me" should be toggle-able

Since 1.8 preview is out and P2P is being implemented, now is the time to fix "port to me".

I suggest:

1. Allow landowners to toggle on/off "port to me" on their land.
2. If enabled, "port to me" can be set to work like the current "port to me system" (arriving right at the avatar inviting) OR to work just like P2P is planned to work in the new system - by sending them to the nearest landing point.
3. If disabled, "port to me" will send them to the nearest telehub / landing point.
4. Perhaps to make it clear to the user, if "port to me" is disabled, a pop-up saying "person will be ported to nearest telehub" will appear with a confirmation yes / cancel. - so people don't "port to me" without realizing that it's disabled.

see this thread for the original discussion with broader topic:
/108/79/75104/1.html

see my blog for my full ideas about P2P and telehubs:
http://secondtense.blogspot.com/2005/12/point-to-point-teleport-and-telehubs.html

How many Post are you going to make on this subject.

The People Voted, and Linden Labs listened and now We have Point to Point Teleporting.

Sorry, the first post was getting off-topic and I wanted to narrow in on this subject.


The voting system does not allow for:
- "no" votes
- editing of the original proposal
- elaboration of the original proposal other than the discussion in forums -- which is precisely what we're doing.


Like anything in preview, we test it out, add comments and feedback, and it's revised until it's something that works as best as it can.

We should look to improve the new P2P even more. Altering "port to me" would help gaming in SL, landowner rights, privacy, and other aspects.

Whilst I agree that another thead on this wasn't needed, your inability to see further than your own narrow interests blinkers you to the subtelties of what people are talking about. This isn't about the new P2P teleporting, which if you'd actually read the post, rather than just seeing the word P2P, you'd of understood. This is about the "port to me" facility which has long been a bain for those engaged in creating content that requires, or is improved by, a more linear arragement. For instance games with a start and finish point.

maybe he likes this subject.!!

Multiple threads to make a point = conclusion your point can't draw enough attention/support to survive on its own merit = (yawn)

All the more proof SL isn't meant to be a game, in any sense. No surprise here.

I don't want Magnum porting directly into my kitchen in Indigo while I'm building, dammit! I'm with Hiro on this one.

Erm, I'm talking about games within SL, not about SL as a whole being a game.

I know that. It changes not the conclusion.

Well your conclusion, maybe. I guess my conclusion is pretty different having been involved in game production in SL and LL running their own game dev competition for the last 2 years. Oh and the prevelance of games such as Tringo etc. throughout the world. Oh and LL making their own version of Bejewelled. And Darkwood and Sim Horror and China Town etc. etc. etc.

I guess I must be missing something obvious. Still, you haven't actually expressed an opinion on the substance of the thread through, just told Hiro off for posting another thread and made a sweeping statement about SL not being a game. Care to offer anything constructive?

How did you know I was porting into your kitchen and raiding your Fridge???

I consider it somewhat a pointless endeavor. First and foremost because you make it clear from your posturing that you don't think I have anything constructive or productive to offer.

Secondly, because I really have no interest or need to rub your nose in the reality that you're quite incorrect.

Thirdly, because arguing on the forums doesn't actually solve anything.

Fourthly, because choosing to miss something obvious as you have this is a sign of deliberate blindness and I find attempting to make someone see something they choose not to tends to be a pointless and futile endeavor.

You're more than welcome to draw more incorrect conclusions about my thoughts (or lack thereof, in your opinion).

But ok, let's assume you really are as unaware of your own selective vision as you are my point. Here is a tidy summary from which anyone choosing to think must garner all the correct conclusions:

A game designer isn't obliged to consider game designers internal to their product. A platform developer would, on the other hand, find that an obvious and pressing responsibility.

I don't care what the marketing fluff says, or what some people choose to think. SL is a game because LL treats it like a game. Period.

If you still don't get it, just say so.

I was wondering where my cookie dough went!

I'm going to quite pissed the first time I accidentally port into the middle of an orgy without lube!

Cienna: Platform. Game. Tastes great. Less filling. Its old, let it go. People who cry "game" are typically just seeking attention and a flame war. Its TIRED.

-Flip

No, I asked if you're like to offer anything constructive, that's not making a value judgement on what you may or may not subsequently offer at all.



Please, if for no other reason than to humour me. Quite why you think it would be rubbing my nose in it, I'm not sure. If I'm wrong, I never mind knowing why.



Couldn't agree more there, but then I always like to explore the options.



OK, what is my "deliberate blindness" because you've got me stumped. Seriously, straight-up, totally honest, what is the something obvious that I've missed?



I prefer to have something solid on which to base my conclusions. You're not really offering me anything. Come on, throw me a frickin bone here!



OK, but you previously said SL isn't a game, which makes it a platform (I presume, following your logic) in which case they
must find an obvious and pressing responsibility, no? Whether they do anything about that or not immediately, is moot. That they understand that as a platform it is something that they will have to do something about is the important point. And I argue that because they stress the importance of having games in SL themselves, through things such as the game dev competition, that they do understand this.



You said SL wasn't a game earlier on this thread. And here you're saying it is. Which do you believe it is?



I'm not sure what it would achieve, although, no, I don't get it because you seem to be giving out contradictory statements.

If someone wants to cheat at a game like that, there are so many ways of doing it that "port to me" is irrelevant. Basically, any kind of restrictions on an av's actions are pretty much on the honor system.

What you *can* do in 1.8 is to have a script detect an av at the finish who didn't start at the start and add them to your ban list. Isn't that good enough?

Um. How is someone going to port directly to your kitchen using "port to me" if you don't invite them?

Oh I know, as I said on another thread there are other ways to cheat, but does that mean that something shouldn't be done about this? It seems to make sense to me to tackle things one at a time, and as teleporting is having a big overhaul, doing something about port to me now would seem to make some sense.



It certainly gives a little more control, and allows it to be coded around to an extent, but it doesn't give the kind of absolute control that simply disallowing port to me's on a parcel would. That would seem to be a rather excellent solution to the problem and it would be purely optional for a land owner.

"Port to me" is one button easy, though. The sitting long distance is another issue that needs to be corrected, and there needs to be more controls on who can use what scripts, sure.

But you can't just say something shouldn't be improved because it doesn't solve a problem entirely. With that logic, there's no point in doing SL at all because there is a remote possibility of it crashing occasionally.


It's not adding global restrictions.

What it is in fact is adding more power in property ownership rights to land owners to control the flow of people into their land.


Script sensors are highly laggy.

Other methods are clunky and difficult to code.

And the simple scenario you present is only part of the problem. What if it were a game where knowing what's ahead would spoil riddles or the plot of the game? Then the cheater could go tell everyone and deflate the fun of being the first few people to beat a game.

No ... simply adding to ban list is insufficient. It needs to prevent the cheating before it happens.

Not at all contradictory. You're reading more than I've written. I have never said SL is NOT a game. Indeed, I persist in saying they are quite that and nothing more.

I said: "All the more proof SL isn't meant to be a game, in any sense. No surprise here."

If you read that literally, it merely says that (LL) doesn't intend SL to be a game. Not that *I* think it isn't a game, but that *they* say it is not meant to be.

Problem is, LL isn't consistant. Ever. In any way. Hence problems like the one that sparked this thread.

They do not understand the difference between not being a game and supporting game development in their product. If they did, things like usability and custom coding and all the stuff that makes a platform a good platform would be 'no brainers'.

They say this isn't a game. Yet they have the ToS of a game, they treat their customers like gamers, and they refuse to implement anything more than basic gaming constructs or provide the real support that their customers require to make it what they claim it is....

Conclusion: SL is a game and LL just can't afford to admit it.

Life goes on.

Cienna,

You're making too many leaps in judgement and cognition. You're so wrapped up in what you think LL really think, that you probably don't actually recognise what LL are actually thinking, just what you think they're thinking. Which I'll take with the huge pinch of salt that position deserves.

I'll base my opinion on what happens. And that, Cienna, is a company that pushes for gaming in Second Life, by their actions and their encouragement.

And for what it's worth I don't believe SL is a game. It's an environment that let's you produce games, amongst other things.

You can read this thread, and the issue at it's heart, as LL being inconsistent, which you appear to be doing, or you can read this thread as asking LL to evolve in some small way to make it easier for those who do wish to develop more linear environments (games, if you wish.) You're taking it as failing of LL, I'm taking it as an opportunity to evolve the system in a way they most likely didn't realise at the time the current functionality was initiated.

Maybe they're learning as they go on as well, as novel an idea to you as that obviously must be.

At most, I think you should be able to route "port to me" teleports to your parcel landing point. If you aren't going to provide a landing point, then it should work normally.

I certainly see no reason to force people to land at a hub potentially several sims away. That just puts us right back where we are in 1.7, and worse ... if too many landowners (especially large ones) do it, it effectively circumvents both getting p2p put back in AND "port to me", by reducing the availability of the features and the consistency of their behavior to the point of frustration and thus irrelevance. Sort of a scorched earth tactic, IMO.

Ultimately, this whole topic is a discussion about control. Teleporting to your friend or to a landmark or to a point on the map enables user control over where users can go, how, and when. All of these requests for various ways of turning it off or changing its behavior reduce to landowner control over where users can go, how, and when.

There are certainly valid reasons for landowners to restrict that (for example, privacy). But neither side can have absolute control, because movement in the world depends both on users and on landowners. There must be compromise, as we've already seen with the privacy issue.

I think the current way in which sims are initially allocated to landowners (with relatively minor and not terribly useful infrastructure for facilitating user movement) -- as well as the fact that any one landowner only controls a small fraction of the world, wheras users have to deal with the consequences of such control worldwide -- counters any argument that simply paying for land should particularly weight things in favor of landowners.

Personally, I think that if you don't want people landing on/near your property, you are effectively saying you don't want them ON your property, so you might as well just ban them and be done with it (and if the ban tools aren't good enough, lobby to improve THOSE, not hamper these).

You build in your kitchen? I THOUGHT your stuff tended to smell like Miracle Whip.

P2

I don't honestly know why you keep gunning for this feature, Hiro. There is nothing wrong with it - it has worked perfectly fine since implementation. P2P does not change it at all. You already started a thread about this, didn't get what you wanted so you thought you would repeat it?

Hiro,

Why do you keep gunning for this feature? It has worked fine since implementation, and P2P does not change the dynamics of it at all. Why the fixation on it?