Finding small objects

I'm trying to hide objects on my land to make them hard to find and am hoping that the only way people will find them is by using the zoom on their camera controls. But I need to know if there is anyway that someone could cheat and find them by using some sort of device or tool other than the camera controls that come standard with SL?

If they know how to use wireframe feature they could see through the land.
I don't know of a way to control people from not going into wireframe unless you had
your SL viewer that feature was disabled and they were willing to download it from
your website..
There is no 100% way to guarantee that people won't cheat that I know of.

You can write scanning scripts which will give the names and locations of nearby objects. These could be used to find these objects.

One way to thwart such scripts, would be to have the hidden objects periodically scan for nearby objects themselves and rename themselves to the name of a nearby object.

Alternatively have all the objects on the sim just called "Object".

Matthew

If the items are scripted, there are "beacon* settings in the client that will very easily point them out.

If they know the name of the item, scanners like Scan Foo can locate them. Same goes for if they know the owner, as long as the item isn't hidden in a pile of other things belonging to that same owner.

In short, no, there's no way to prevent then from cheating.

What you might try is hiding unscripted prims, with specific textured images on them, where only a certain percentage of them have the images that they are supposed to locate, and the rest are rocks, or something else. Then they pretty much have to see the item and visually ID it to locate each one.

Yes

Wireframe is good for finding small and/or odd placed prims.
I have found lost micro prims by going into edit mode and hightlighting large areas and working through the selection bit by bit.

I'm not sure what you are wanting to do, but have you considered using particals? You could hide the scripted prim either by pushing it under ground or putting the script in a common object like a chair or a tree. Just a thought.

Are you trying to hide them completely so that no one will ever see them or are you setting up a hunt of some kind in which the objects are meant to be found, but only after careful searching?

I don't really have any further suggestions - the ones you've gotten have been pretty good - but clarifying whether the objects are meant to be found at all would help in finding ways to accomplish your goal.

And thanks for the tip on wireframe, FD... I hadn't thought of that for finding stuff and it's a good idea.

I'm not sure but doesn't Mystitool have an object finder feature? And then there are other huds for that, which I have seen mentioned on freebie blogs that gave out the locations to hunt-prizes. Not really fair on the hunt makers who spend a lot of time setting up hunts but what can ya do eh?

Disable scripts on the land where the treasure hunt is?

Matthew

With the edit window open, one can easily draw a box around an area in SL and select all objects inside that box, which then highlights them.

If the object is scripted you can use the beacons to show all scripted objects setting.

Yes I am trying to set up a treasure hunting game, where objects are meant to be found, but not by people who cheat to find them. I should have explained that in my initial question.

Truthfully, you really cannot get away from the cheating, but you can make it harder - even disabling scripts will not do it.

Make your object really tiny and then a person will have to be pretty close to find it, whether by camming or via a device.

Make it too hard, and the cheaters will be the only ones who find them. More casual hunters will give up and not come back.

That is definitely true. There have been many hunts that I have given up on because I was just not in the mood for major pixel hunting.