eighty-six the weapon code

several times over the past year people have been banned for weapon use and it's been subsequently stated that weapons are not really needed in second life. i suppose the theory is that weapons generally attract little kid griefer types that wouldn't pay second life a second thought if there were no guns to play with.

ll are caught in the middle of attracting lkgts to feed a steadily increasing player count and the impossibility of fairly enforcing the tos in a world with weapons. so lets tell them what we think. in all fairness, i expect they'll play it safe and go for the numbers. deleting weapons would turn the world upside down and we might not survive. although, we did survive 1.2.

I'm not too much of a first-person shooter kind of guy. To be frank, the whole thing bores me.

But let the gun freaks do their freaky stuff with guns. If they use their weapons to grief, then Abuse Report their punk asses, and go on about your merry way.

- Ace

Guns don't get people suspended. Assholes get people suspended. Unfortunately it's not always the asshole that gets suspended. Oh wait.. that's a different poll.

No. Absolutely definitely no ban on weapons. That's just ridiculous.

Let's ban money too, since so many people are greedy fuckers.

Let's ban textures. People exploit them to express rude sentiments.

Etc.

> Let's ban money too, since so many people are greedy fuckers.
> Let's ban textures. People exploit them to express rude sentiments.

Hmmm, what if we just banned "People"?

That, I'm all in favor of! People SUCK.

frankly, i'd ban money before weapons. not because people are greedy. but because the toy economy, and all the time, effort and press that have been wasted on it, have set in concrete the reputation that second life is just a fly-by-night game that offers no useful functionality to any profession.

I endorse this product and/or service!

Yes, let's remove more functionality from Second Life!

The crappier LSL is, the happier I'll be.

Die, SL. DIE!

I had this dream where SL changed the code around so when people shot guns outside of a damage-enabled area, these little flags would pop out of the barrels and unroll and would have "Bang! (Hippos)" written on them.



Dreams rule.

If they got rid of guns I'd not be able to point and laugh after someone took a shot at me and nothing came outta the barrel. "Hmm, guess it jammed in the chamber. I hope you take better care of your goldfish than you do with your gun."

And if they got rid of guns, would swords follow? Staves? Boards with a nail in it?

Why should it be "useful", and to whom, and why them?

Once you start making those decisions, you might as well write your own software.

SL is pretty useful to me as a way of enjoying myself, and a means of self-expression, and that's more important to me than someone else's mission.

I say don't ban anything except banning things.

Another way where SL issues mimic RL....

I keep a handgun at home. If someone was to break into my house, was armed, and I shot them, chances are I would be in deep s*** no matter what. I would definitely have to hire a lawyer, go to court, and probably even get sued. A no win situation.

To make it worse, the cops and judges are not always necessarily supportive of, or on the side of the victim.

So, if all guns were banned, would the scenario above change? No. The criminals would simply find a different means to inflict damage.

Although I have called for the ban of all weapons in SL before, I now realize that it would do no good, as it is equally annoying to have a griefer use the most powerful weapon of all: his/her mouth. And as we have seen, people in SL get suspended more for what they say than for what they do.

So what is the solution? Unfortunately, like in RL, I don't think there is one, other than go through the proper channels, file a complaint, and hope for the best.

- T -

He! That is definitely the best, Psyra!

- T -

hehe... I like that idea, Psyra.

Another alternative when a weapon is used outside of a damage-enabled area would be to damage enable the shooter-AV, and change the vector of the bullet to vector * -1.0. This would push it squarely between the eyes of the chump who shot.

- Ace

this is really what i'm wondering. do the players buy into flushing lsl functions in the hopes of gaining a better community spirit? it's very confusing to read ll's verbiage of future lsl commands & an api et cetera along with serious talk of developing communities, weapons, vehicles and virtual money. i keep thinking that ll will have to fall on one side of the fence or the other. is this a game or a professional software application? so far they're still trying to both.

this (disclamer totally unscientific /disclaimer) poll clues me to which type of product the forum posters would like for them to pursue.

I think there is a simple solution: add a user preference or a menu setting for whether their avatar is affected by guns. I know there are anti-griefing scripts out there, but just make it so a user can control whether their av is affected by push, damage, or whatever and the problem goes away. I guess you could also do it as some kind of script permission, like animations are now. Couple it with the ability for a script to detect the setting and then you can eject non-combatants from battlegrounds so they don't get in the way.

That's a good idea, Olmy.

Another might be to tie that to the land, so that in addition to enabling damage, you could enable push or not.

I mean if you're on damage-enabled land, and you get damaged, well, that's your own fault really.

But having the option to disable (or even reverse!) push would save people from a lot of hassles. It might be really hard to work that out given the physics modelling of SL though.

I'm a bit of a gun nut. I have a beretta handy at most times (job related), and an assortment of hunting rifles and shotguns in the house (some job related).

In SL I now have anti-push and a modded sim-clearing benelli (in a fetching red) that lets people know who fired the round. (ask for a demo!). I plan to have deployable push-turrets as a defense measure should I need them. So far the only people that give me crap are a) Ben Opal, who's action I'm willing write off as a kid using his account that day, and b)Lynnid, but I think that's an affection thing.

Being a veteran of F'd Company, I'm a nice guy, but step up, and get stepped on.

There are a lot of non weapon type things which rely on push. For example, MegaTower elevators will not work anymore.

this is true and a good example of the quandry ll are constantly having to deal with. "do we add this feature because it'll be useful; or do we not because it's an obvious griefing tool and will damage the community?"

granted they put themselves in this position by maintaining the aura of creating an innovative atmosphere that will eventually gel into a new paradigm of internet-based communication. personally, while i had new investment money, i'd give that up and fork the company into two branches, one to work on the game and one to develop & market a version of the technology as a business application. we would have our amusing community to play with, toys and all, and a platform to host business and educational "missions" as well.

the only weapon function is llSetDamage

What you would have to do to get rid of weapons would be remove llRezObject, and the real enemy here, llPushObject. And i dont think the lindens would remove such usefull functions such as these, they are used in many more scripts than just 'gunz'

> while i had new investment money, i'd give that up and fork the company into two branches, one to work on the game and one to develop & market a version of the technology as a business application. we would have our amusing community to play with, toys and all, and a platform to host business and educational "missions" as well.

Well... it's certainly an interesting possibility. One can argue either way really. On the whole, I'd probably argue that SL are two small to diverge. If they really did fork, it would become two largely disparate development paths, and two very different infrastructures. They would more or less have to split right up to a very high level? (ie Philip/board level?).

What do you reckon?

Azelda

no.

but there should be options for players to be unaffected by (and be unable to use) these functions, and for land owners to disallow the use of these scripts.

i guess i am an Asshole too

Aces, if you'd read the next line down, I was thinking of you when I wrote it...