Scripts getting out of hand?

I totally expect to get ripped a new one by some people for this but lately I've seen several instances of almost totally vacant sims (like 1-3 avs at best) running less than great because the runtask time was pretty high. And then today, in the sim I'm building in, I saw the runtask time jump up and the sim FPS get chopped in half in a matter of hours... it's still running well just not the beautiful 4 digit numbers it used to pull down. Anyway, I don't know if it's just that I'm noticing it more these days or if it's just a few isolated incedents or whatever but I was thinking that while there's strict prim limits established that kinda force responsibilty on residents regardless of whether or not they understand why those limits are there, I tend to think that maybe a significant number of residents don't realize they cant just slap 20billion scripts in everthing without consequence. Of course this is compounded by the fact that not all scripts are written to use as little resources as possible. :-/

So I was just wondering if anyone else has noticed this or if it's just me? I'm not talking about malicious scripts that are designed to lag out the sim or anything like that... just an increase in the number of scripts that I guess are left running 24/7 and constantly draining sim resources. I'm also not offering or requesting suggestions for how to limit script usage... just wanna know if I'm alone on this one.

-Meiyo

There was a memory leak a while back that would cause runtasks to spike and SimFPS to drop. Seacliff, which normally runs 1000-2000 FPS would hit 0, while the runtasks would hit 230ish.

It COULD be something other than scripts. It's not likely, but it is possible. Bug report it.

I thought of this once before... That since scripts run in timeslices, it would be concievable to throttle how much of a timeslice each gets by the object's owner's land allocation in that sim. The more land owned, the more of the total script runtime you get. If you only own one square, a single script will run fine, but if you have 50 scripts there, they will run much slower than all the other scripts in the sim. Likewise, visting avatars with attachments or vehicles can run their few scripts just fine, but if they tried to script-bomb the sim, only their scripts would slow, not the sim-native scripts.

idle scripts don't impact the region any more than the memory to store them. however, the biggest problem is a lot of people have no idea how to make a script idle when it's not required . You wouldn't believe how much a bunch of timers can slow a region down.

Taking this a step further, the biggest problem is that there are a lot of people writing scripts that really don't know much of anything about software development.

It's like having a website on a shared hosting plan where everybody has a certain amount of scripting/CGI/development access. One dipshit that doesn't know what they're doing creates their own custom memory leak and 20+ web sites that have been running fine for months/years come to a screeching halt.

while scripts are a big part of it, they are not the only part of it.

LL has never decomissioned a simulator. There are sims still goin now that are more'n two years old.. and they are between 6-10x slower than the latest hardware. A single sim crash cycling can bring you from 1800 fps on a new sim... to 200 fps on an old sim.. or worse.

that said i have a little tool that sniffs out active scripts and can help as an objective demonstration to the owner of said things, that they are doing something wrong.. IM me in world if ya want one.

the biggest problem i would say tho isn't non scripters causing mistakes... its VERY well known and well versed scripters selling 'impressive' toys to people who really don't understand what they do or how to use them in a non-sim hurtful way.