1.1 Preview Thread (10-07-03)

This test today has been the most trouble free of the ones I have done so far, I wonder why some arent able to play at all or crash repeatedly?

If you did have problems, make sure you report them and/or post here, so Lindens can get it fixed!

Thank you for putting in a shortcut to turn on/off the minimap. Shame on you for not putting the trackers back in the minimap (you can keep them in the nice map too!) that most everybody seems to like.

I can finally read names above people and see everyone's textures, a major improvement over the last preview. I was also able to stay in this preview, and even play with the new scripting and particle system features, as I didn't lag to hell or crash out.

I still wish there was a shortcut for the IM window. And I didn't check to see whether Ctrl-G would close the Gestures window as well as open it.

I played around with group settings, neat that you can deed land and objects to groups. You can even join together two group-owned land plots when deeded!

I didn't get to check as to whether group objects and land are officer-mod only.

The recall, election, and proposal tabs were very nice.

Now for the unfortunate parts of the expanded group stuff I noticed:

- Groups can't disburse funds. If groups can't disburse funds, how do they buy land? I would guess we'd give some money to a group member, who buys the land and deeds it to the group. Perhaps withdrawing money through a 2/3 approval of the officers' board?

- Still only 'officer' and 'member' tiers for groups. Not expanded?

- Going through the Money tab, I see Object, Light, and Land taxes. And then I see a Group Tax. What is this?

- I also notice that there is an 'Individual Share' in the Money tab. Does this automatically kick in if the group not have enough money to cover its expenses for the week?

Sorry if this is long, but it's nice to clarify new features or changes, especially if they can be further tweaked before finalization.

Wish I made it in, I woulda shown off my particle stuff!

ctrl-g does indeed close the gestures window

Group tax is your portion of land tax deeded to groups I would imagine.

Why did you miss it? I mean its still up (I just logged in).

fixed (had a virus, yikes!)

Are we supposed to report all those maps?

Other than that, don't you just love the ability to be harassed all day long by not only a shower of calling cards, but now also teleport offers, 'talk to' demands, etc. etc. each of which distract you from whatever you were doing?

Graphics are great, interface we'll get used to, still not sure if I was supposed to report those maps...

That 1.1 download must still be badly bugged. It crashed before the viewer could even attempt to load. Frankly, Lindens, at this point I hope you take the time to fix this and don't cut off people like me from simply continuing with the regular game.

Okay, I love that they've tried to improve llSetPos, but it's my only real pet peeve from my time in the Preview.

The current functionality of llSetPos is to instantly change an object's position from one location to another that is less than 20 meters away. This is great for making things appear out of thin air, when in actuality they are popping out of the floor... You just can't see it because it is so fast.

In the current 1.1 preview, the underlying system call that llSetPos makes has changed. And the script function isn't the only thing that uses it. If you change an object's Z value in the numeric field of the edit menu, say by adding 10 to it, you will see the object move and not just snap. So something that was scripted to pop out of the floor will now seem to SLIDE up out of the floor, ruining the illusion.

Now don't get me wrong, I do like the way it looks when editing and so forth -- mostly -- but we still need the instantness of the old llSetPos to make some scripts work the way they were supposed to. Changing the way the system handles the re-positioning of objects is great, I'm not against that, but now llSetPos should be changed from using that new default behavior, and should be scripted to duplicate it's old behavior.

A NEW function can be written to use the new default style of positioning. llChangePos or something.

Besides, the current llSetPos in the Preview is buggy (I reported it) in that it will sometimes (more often than not) retain a random velocity after reaching its target destination. This, I am sure, is a very simple bug to fix... But I, personally, and, I'm guessing, a lot of you other players, would like the old llSetPos back in addition to this new llSetPos.

Oh, and since I'm in the general area here, I'll once again ask for a linear motion function for non-physical objects. It would be SO useful to be able to move an object from one place to another smoothly and at a constant speed. It would reduce the number of physical objects in the world, as that is the only way this sort of motion can be simulated, and even then not very well. I mean, we can ROTATE non-physical objects with a constant speed, why can't we have a way to MOVE them at a constant speed too? Damping is cool, but not needed OR wanted in every situation. Options are good. Creative options are what SL is all about.

Herald its an old gamer joke.

Ananda have a little faith.

Tiger did you ajust dampening/tau?

Ok I'm not sure that it accomplishes it, but I was under the impression that the smooth movement of llSetPos was a responce to the desire for smooth movement without being physical? Maybe I am missing something. To me it seems llSetPos is now a "linear motion function for non-physical objects."

Everytime something changes, it will break some things and fix others. All the damped movement and scale and stuff is a huge improvement in almost all cases, it maintains the "suspension of disbelief" better and just generally looks so much nicer. This is a tradeoff with the small number of things that depend on the old behaviour.

There are other ways to accomplish the instaneous apperance effect, just off the top of my head, one way would be to rez the object instead of storing it under the floor, another would be to set it alpha and phantom until needed.

Damped stuff == doubleplusgood.

Also, the latest preview of 1.1 was unuseable for me, I could get in, but quickly crashed out. I sent a couple of crash logs.

I notice people have had a reverse compatability with this latest preview. The last preview I had lots of crashes in thow generaly was connected. In this one I only crashed out when I hit the windows key or otherwise minimized the program and tried to restore it.

There's no damp parameter for llSetPos.

And in my ride, the player is sitting on the object moving. Instant snaps let me simulate major room changes, teleportation, time travel, etc. But damped movement will let the player see the motion (passing through walls). Besides, the new behaviour only eases into the destination, it doesn't ease out of the starting position. It's not that pretty, really. Nice, but not perfect, and not what I need anymore.


I'm perfectly fine with keeping the new llSetPos, if we can have something like a llSetLinearPos with these paramters:

vector pos, // position to move to
float seconds, // time to take to move
float start, // percent to ease out of start position
float end, // percent to east into destination

So if you set the pos to be 10 meters away and the seconds to 5, with the other two values zero, the object moves at 2 meters per second towards the destination and stops. No speeding up or slowing down. The whole 5 seconds of motion is at 2 meters per second.

A speed of 0 will simulate the old llSetPos behavior of instant teleportation.

If the start parameter is 1.0 and the end is still 0.0, the object will ramp up to full speed in the first 2.5 seconds, then travel at a constant speed (greater than 2 meters per second this time, to make up for the time spent accelerating) to the destination, and stop.

With both start and end set to 1.0, the object accelerates for 2.5 seconds, then decelerates for 2.5 seconds.

With 0.5 in both, the object would accelerate for 1.75 seconds, hold speed for 2.5 seconds, then decelerate for another 1.75 seconds.

This function would give a ton of non-physical movement possibilities. ...I want it SO bad!

Ok, please forgive a newbie who has *no* idea of how to use scripting... you all make me feel so uneducated! lol

Just a quick question about the preview: I had read that 1.1 was supposed to address the DirectX issue with SB Live! cards.. but I still appear to lose sound after a few minutes. Is anyone else still experiencing the sound problem? My drivers appear to be as up to date as they can be. Wind can get terribly boring after a while!

Btw- 1.1 is looking GREAT! Other than my avies looking a little strange, the rest of it looked and worked wonderfully.

JM

I still have sound issues. Seems like no progress towards addressing the soundblaster problem.

I purchased a brand new laptop for SL which came today, and I experienced something interesting. Yesterday, using the preview on a laptop with a Geforce FX 5200 with 32 mb of memory, it crashed constantly - sometimes every few minutes. The two previous previews did not crash at all for me on that laptop. Today, using the preview on a new laptop with a Geforce FX 5600 and 128 mb of memory, I have had no crashes, and a framerate at times of close to 45, dropping to around 30 with heavy geometry around. The preview has a much higher framerate for me than the release does. I hope the difference in cards helps to shed a little light on the crash problem, although they did both have the same driver.

I have to agree with Tiger that there should be two functions for movement - why is it necessary to replace the existing one? I am all for smoother, more realistic movement, but not at the cost of removing existing functionality completely. Not only is it annoying for the effects that it does break, it is taking away an option, and is bad programming in general to change the functionality of an existing function to the point where it "breaks" previous code that uses it. The new movement functionality is not appropriate for every situation - why limit someone's creativity if you can support both?

In their defense it looks like they didn't change the function itself, but instead made a change to the system at a low level, which this function uses. The llSetPos code is probably identical to what it was in 1.0.

I'd just like Linden Lab to know that the one change has had repercussions in the scripting language... Which needed some upgrading anyway, so now's the time to do it.

Programmer dude that has the scripting language on his task list... This is for you! I support ya, but I make this humble request...

Theres a new version of the 1.1 instalelr out, the preview page has been updated, and the game is only open to lindens atm, get ready for another test in about 14 minutes.

OMG Ripple Water is SUCH an awesome feature!! IT LOOKS LIKE REAL WATER!!

Too bad it's all green with my card.

Maybe the Cat 3.8 fixes this?

Water on my laptop is green, water on my desktop is non existent.

Shouldn't the servers be back up again?...

Yes, they should be, wonder what's going on. John Linden told me they should be up.

Should I be able to log into 1.1 right now?

I've downloaded and installed today's version, but I'm still getting the message that SL is only open to employees.