Thoughts on SL, its UI and tool set

SL's interface seems to merely expose the basic functionality and inherent limitations of its engine. A good tool is designed with productivity in mind, creating the necessary layers of abstraction between user and system.

Say I want to make a big old Borg Cube. Why should I have to manually drag prims back and forth, just because your engine does not handle shapes larger than 10 meters?
Something like Xylor's XyObject or Cadroe's ShapeMaker tool should be built into the UI.

What if I wanted to make a crater? How does the average user build an approximately spherical depression into the terrain mesh of his parcel without wrestling with math and scripting? Or even something as simple as a 30 degree slope?
Raise, Lower, etc, are atomic operations of your engine, rather than tools that get work done in a productive way.

I just rezzed a cube. How do I know its key without taking it into my inventory or making a script?

Why can I rename a notecard in an object's inventory through the UI but not through scripting?

Why can I read and write parcel descriptions and access lists through the UI but not a script?

Where in the UI can I see the number of sides, link number, mass, velocity, acceleration in an object?

Why does the average user need to rely on scripters to make simple particle systems and texture animations? Programmers are often horrible designers, and good designers often don't care about these silly technical scripting things.

Guys, it's just a dialog box. It would take all of five minutes to code. Throw us a bone here

Personally, one of the things that's bugged me the most about the build window and LSL is that you can do some things with the build tools and some with LSL, but neither does it all. It would be nice to harmonize the LSL functions and build tools so that both were capable of doing everything you can do in both.

(Yes, I understand that animations and particles may be prohibitively complex when it comes to adding an editor tool in the client, but at least being able to handle some of the other things would be nice.)

Eggy, I don't know that you've ever made more sense than in this post. I agree - very much so!

Especially little things that would be SO easy to add, like having the key of the selected object visible in the edit pane. As you say - five minutes to code some of that! And would be SO helpful.

I agree with all of the above.

I think some UI need an overall remake, like the Edit window is looking pretty cluttered and messy (such as the Grid Options button and the drop down for selecting which grid to use (which feels like it should be radio button selection rather than drop down)).

Also some things just need to be explained better or made more apparent. Like the Reference grid, honestly how many people know Shift+G sets the selected prim to be used as the reference point?

Also, why can't you use a cylindar the same way you can a tube? They seem basicly the same to a novice, ones just a hollowed cylindar... so why does it have more options to fiddle with in the Edit menu? (I know that each one is actualy a different "mesh" or whatever you want to call it in the system, but c'mon)

There are alot of basic things missing from the Script editor as well, search and replace being the biggest in my mind. And using the drop down to select functions and states is so annoying I practicly never use it, instead I look stuff up on the wiki.

There are alot of tricks to getting stuff to work just right how you want them too involving the UI, such as the Animation window, selecting the loop out (on the right) when you have 99 in the loop in and 100 in the loop out, will make it stay on the last frame, but selecting the loop in, will make it loop the rest of the frames. This is either a bug or some magical trick that hasn't been explained much.

We users could help out a little too. There is a Support Wiki https://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=HomePage where such things, tricks, quirks, could be posted.

However there are also things that really should be changed rather than explained why they are the way they are.

SL's client is definitely not consistent in some issues - like the many discrepancies Eggy points out between LSL and the UI. Theoretically at least, you should be able to get all the UI data from LSL and vice-versa... I also can't understand why this didn't happen (yet). From my point of view, the big effort has been made to provide for that data to be available at all; writing the UI and/or the LSL part of it should be easy.

If I may make another suggestion... have animations work with Gestures, no matter if they are copyable/transferable or not. I cannot understand why this was overlooked and never fixed! Gestures are incredibly simple to "program", even for a non-programmer. Things like animation overriders, dance bracelets, gesture overriders, etc. are really just exploring a market niche - broken UI, once again (and I'm speaking against myself, since I do explore that niche myself!). Imagine the power at your fingertips if you could interface with LSL inside Gestures (or activate Gestures from LSL...). Non-programmers could tweak the gestures while you keep the LSL code private - no need to play with notecards or any other non-intuitive "configuration system".

Also, in these laggy days where everybody has at least 4 or 5 simultaneous items attached, all listening to open channels (for while they're attached, there is no easy way to interface with them other than with voice...), having the Gestures become useful, would be an advantage to reduce client-side lag.

But it's not only Gestures. It's the way LSL and the UI have apparently forgotten each other. I imagine there are two completely different teams working on that Sometimes it's great if they would meet together Better still, let them meet together in-world, and invite us to join them for some more extra comments

I don't think that it's impossible to make a usable particle interface. Take this example from Motion:



A nice panel of widgets, to me, is a lot easier to fiddle with than an almost-inscrutible orgy of LSL. Doubly so for a newbie. The example image above doesn't have exactly the same elements as SL particle systems, but I think it's a reasonable approach to making particles as accessible as wooden cubes.

In what way? How will it be designed? Dialog boxes? Ranges?

Also, what's to prevent someone from just rezzing 15,000 cubes at once using XyObject, every time? If we have a cutoff point... what's the cutoff point? Isn't that rubbing against the whole point of adding this into the UI?




Why would anyone but a scripter need to know the key of a freshly-made cube? Why would you clutter the interface up further with something perhaps 2% of the population needs?



I think because it would be creating an asset key, and the Lindens have a policy on not letting that become an easy, trivial task (ie it would break the asset server)



Same reason maybe?



Again, who but a scripter would need to see these numbers? And if you're a scripter, you can make your own script to report these values back to you (aside from sides, but that's a visual thing.. even a pyramid has 6 sides. A cylinder has "a lot" )



Do you really want the ability to make bling to fall into the hands of 40,000 people at once? You do realize that your client would choke and die, right?



Most users don't care about the silly technical scripting things either; it needlessly clutters the interface.



And the resulting network code to execute your requests, and coding in limits to prevent abuse, and a retooling of the asset server...

LF

Linden Lab could use a dedicated tools developer / integrater.

I totally agree with this. The UI needs an overhaul, BADLY. It's made several but only subtle improvements visual wise. Even though i'm not a scripter, several interfaces can be put together to make things easier to use. An example would be the particle system. Lots of things can be integrated into the interface which would make life easier on all of us.

Thanks Eggy for pointing that out.

I've been watching and helping my daughter build with The Sims 2. That is far more task oriented than the "expose the basic parameters" dialogs.

Unfortunately, in my experience, developers, even very good ones, are typically not versed in Human Interface Design and simply cannot see the forest for the trees. Their mental model of the function is too close to the implementation and so merely exposing parameters makes total sense to them.

I'm sure Maxis has spent big bucks on refining their UI, but it's not as if taking notes from their work would be a crime (literally and figuratively). For example, everything in Sims2 is gridded and locked to height, four walled rooms can be dragged out like a selection box. Sure, there are plenty of reasons for wanting non-gridded manipulation once you've got the basics, but as SL expands to a broader audience, tools that work a level or two up from bare prims would be very useful; indeed, most builds look gridded even if eyeballed.

However, as I've noted elsewhere, it seems quite clear that SL1 is probably not going to evolve significantly. Let's hope SL2 has a good HID on staff.

I agree with Lordfly, the majority of request have a small population that would even care. Rest seem to be asset server related.

Only thing I'd LOVE to see changed, which I haven't seen changed since beta, is the script editor :P

Even Notepad is lightyears ahead in technological advances and abilities. I want to use an editor IN the UI, not outside it.

Find/Replace.
Font size/type.
Save/Load To/From My Harddrive This'd free up a TON of inventory crap, plus give a sense of security in case of a server burp.
Separate lists for functions, events, and constants.
Updated tool tips :p
Tab completion on keywords, tab-"fill" for params
eg: llLis<tab> == llListen(<tab> == llListen(integer channel, string name, key id, string message); // presto!
And other stuff I can't think up cuz it's 6am and I should go to bed.

Bos

God yes. I would very much enjoy having all of these in the script editor, but particularly Find/Replace.

Good god, yes! That would be killer.


Hmm- I suppose someone could make a 3rd party program that would output the list for a particle system? It wouldn't be able to update the particle system real-time (obviously), but it would be handy.

I'm pretty sure there is something like that in world already.

B.U.R.P.E.D. is under development and coming along nicely (tossed out its first particles a few hours ago). Swing by to have a look if you're curious (do a Find/Places.. search for "Boso")

Bos
p.s. BURPED = Bosozoku's Universally Ridiculous Particle Emissions Device -- a particle computer for the scripting challenged.

p.s.s Thanks for posting the above image, it's what got me working on this in the first place. Just wish BURPED was as clean looking... alas.

coming along...
Still not finished but she's getting closer!

Nice, reminds me of Saaz Roentgen's and Xylor Baysklef's particle editors.

Looks very nice, reminds me of something Spock would use in the first Star Trek series...

The problem though, is that in one respect it emphasises Eggies point... yet another skilled developer/scripter wasting his/her time creating something that should aready be in the UI.

Though on the other hand the Lindens would argue that they deliberately intend developers to create things like this, thus keeping the UI simpler.

OK, I'm definitely making a touch-menu particle editor.

Another one?

If it was a waste of time, I certainly wouldn't be doing it. For me, just making it is why I'm in SL. I sorta agree, perhaps limitations of the UI are by design -- although I'd wager it's by lack of any dedicated team (or indivigual) to enchance said UI. I like a hands-off approach in general, let the players make it. (Linden's hosed player based travel (by creating telefloppers) that put, for example, the James Miller Taxi Service, amoung other travel services, out of business).

I do, however, wish they'd make a decent UI. XML customizable perhaps, like the majority of mmogs use.

If it's true that Linden Lab deliberately hobbled the UI and build tools so that players would step in to build them up, I think they either made a mistake or didn't go about it in the best way.

For one thing, it lowers the bar for creation in SL by forcing the most ambitious people to spend time building simple tools. I'd rather see what a lot of people in SL can do with an accessible particle system rather than what a few people can do with an inaccessible one, even if it's technically impressive what the latter accomplish. Linden developers are in an immensely better position to add basic building tools to the UI than players, and leaving it to players leads to inevitable duplication of effort. Even if a good tool is built in-world, it forces new players to spend their capital just to be able to create. LL seems to be very aware that they need compelling content to sell their world. They already decided to leave that to the players, so I think they're only doing themselves a favor when they give the players the best possible tools to create content for them.

But if they did expect players to extend the toolset for them, I think it was a mistake not to provide better documentation, extensive sample code, and a more complete API, among other things.

(I'll have to remember to say something nice about LL in another thread soon. I always feel like a party pooper when I write negative posts)