"off-world" storage

I don't know the practicality of this but here's tonight's (err well it's 6am, but it's "night" for me..anyway...) err ahh here's tonight's brainfart:

I have a lot of "crap" in my inventory. Things old, things new. Things I don't use currently, but one day I'd like to fiddle with. Things that make my inventory quite untidy and at startup makes for a lengthy "Downloading Inventory" wait.

How about a storage server that's basically independant of the live servers. Each player would have an allocation of space and ability to create a directory structure on said space.

The player could then "deposit" inventory items into the storage server. Then (optionally) delete it from one's main inventory. Thus freeing up "live" resources and unclutter one's mess of an inventory.

Storage items don't load automatically when you run the game. In game, access to your storage would just be a simple file system like the current inventory is, but without any permission abilities, etc. You'd simply see your stored object names and have options to store/retrieve items.

Heck charge L$1 or something per storage use, or even a small monthly US$ charge. I wouldn't complain to much over a reasonable fee for such a service.

Bos

** deleted **

Yes, I agree. It would be nice to be able to dump everything in one's inventory to a third-party backup storage media, eg dump it to my email each night.

This could work as follows:

Notecards -> exported as ASCII text files with .txt extension
Scripts -> exported as ASCII text files with .lsl extension
Objects -> exported as XML with a list of prims, and for each prim:
- relative pos
- type
- size
ideally, also with texture name, cut, skew etc, but better to have somehting simple that works now than somethign complex that odesnt work
Textres -> N/A since htey are uploaded
Sounds -> N/A since they are uploaded, and anyway are cached locally

For the script/notecard service I'd be willign to contribute 20USD setup fee + 3USD / month for a regular backup service to an email address I specify.

I don't care about backing up my own objects personally but I think a lot of people do and should, and support the idea.

Azelda

I'd like to see this also.

At the very least, I'd like the ability to backup what I do have to text.

Please see my XML example:

/13/22/7827/1.html

One thing that kind of makes me wonder, is why do we wait for our inventory to download at all before we go in-world?

It's clearly possible to be in-world and capable of chatting, navigating, etc, while your inventory is still downloading, so why not just jump straight into it like it does when the progress bar for loading your inventory fills completely?

So far, I've assumed this is becuase LL uses this delay as a deterrent for those who don't keep a tidy inventory. If this is the case, it's not very effective because once you've grown even your tidy inventory to the size that it always "overflows the progress bar", then this detrrent is no longer of any use.

Also, why does our inventory appear instantly when we've made no change to it since our previous login? Is it at all possible to do a "patch" type update to our local representation of our inventory instead of a completely re-download whenever one tiny thing changes?

For now, I've been archiving old things and "junk" into containers in boxes. These are the kind of things that I'd probably delete if I could get an XML dump of them.

I think there are two things that I'd hope to see some improvment on:

- Ability to export in-world objects
- Faster inventory loads at login

the problem with storing things in objects is that everybody has to download them when they visit just because they're in the near vicinity.

i keep copies of important notecards and scripts by pasting them into notepad. it's easy enough to create a new card/script and paste the notepad content back into the world.

it would be nice to store object speicifcations though. it would also be really nice to have an offline editor that would allow us to design locally then upload the finished object. we've talked about that already haven't we.

Are you sure the contents of an object are loaded just by being nearby them?

If that's the case, I wonder why there's always what appears to be a download delay whenever I'm opening the contents tab of an object, in proportion to how many objects are in it?

I don't leave my archive objects in-world anyway, I take them back into my inventory.

Now at least one person has told me that this doesn't help, but I'm pretty sure it does. For a while it kept me from seeing the "Your inventory is still downloading" dialog, where immediately prior to archiving, I was getting it every single time.

I'd even be willing to pay L$ to be able to export/import objects from/to SL.

A storage system in SL is a good idea, I'd like to see this done by LL.

Hmm... what if this wonderful storage area was CLIENT-side? It could be a little ante-chamber to SL. ^_- It'd follow all the same rules as SL, with objects and so forth. You could have as many prims as you wanted in your little room - and then there'd be a GLOWING PORTAL that lead into the REAL SECOND LIFE! (It really should glow, and WHOOSH too - but not that lame teleport noise. Something more epic, maybe?)

When you put objects in your inventory, they'd be left in a pile or stored somehow, and you could tidy the room as you liked. I suppose it might eventually be possible to invite people to visit, but I wouldn't want to see SL vanish into tiny trysts in clutter-filled closets

Still, a visual representation of the clutter in my inventory would be nice. I'd have to get a rusty bicycle with a working bell, a bathroom sink, and about a hundred cardboard boxes

I think the "downloading inventory" is simply downloading information about the inventory items (type, name, etc). I've noticed that when I rez a complicated object out of inventory for the first time, there's a pause before it appears. Consequently, the download time for the inventory depends entirely on the number of items in the lists, so putting things in boxes will speed up the download.

I don't think you could make client-side storage. Okay, you could but it would have to be server-side too or people would find ways to alter their offline inventory items and then bring the new versions into the game.

Actually, that's easy to solve. Just compute a checksum for the client-side data, encrypt the checksum with the LindenLabs private key, then verify the checksum when the data is brought back into SecondLife. Any modifications to the object will be caught and the modified versions rejected (and if that was your only copy, too bad for you -- you shouldn't have tampered with it in the first place!)

If you have mod perms for something, it doesnt matter if you modify it.

If you dont, it should not be downloadable to the client.

Azelda

The private/public key encryption of the checksum would work perfectly, it was my thought as well to offline storage. I would love to be able to archive things. i think teh reason for not modifying it is so people don't accidently (or intentionally) upload objects with bad geometry or settings that could cause the simulator or viewers to crash.

The downsides to LL would be if they change the format of objects now, they can do all the manual work and stuff and tweak until it works. If people have offline storage, they will have to write converters and maintain them... could be messy. And really, really easy to screw it up.. and what a fuss we would raise if all our safe archived objects suddenly wouldn't upload anymore!

As for a portal to your local computer storage.. I can't see that happening any time soon. A lot, and I mean a LOT of what happens in game is done by the simulator servers. They would have to take a huge chunk of that code and put it into the client, and I doubt they will do that. I wouldn't.

Still, some way of saving obects to backup would be great. On my machine or theirs. Maybe they can make a backup database server and have a built in delay to discurage everyday use of it. Maybe it takes 5 minutes to retrieve objects from it so they don't need to spend a lot of money on the hardware for it. That would be fine.. stuff I want to access a lot is better stored in my inventory anyway. Heck, make it 10 minutes.

Theres not much point in locking scripts if you can just download them and bypass the permissions.

One of the reasons permissions works in SL is because it is server-side.

One of the reasons that there are hardly any sounds in SL is because it is impossible to lock them (they are cached locally)

Azelda

So if a script isn't editable in SL, the exporter should encrypt it before it's downloaded.

No, it should not be downloaded at all. Why would you download an encrypted copy anyway? If you're not going to decrypt it, you can't use it. If you decrypt it, you can read it from memory.

Basically if you allow the downloading of stuff you dont have mod rights to, we might as well remove mod rights altogether because they would no longer have any real value.

Azelda

> Basically if you allow the downloading of stuff you dont have mod rights to, we might as well remove mod rights altogether because they would no longer have any real value.

(Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it would be quite discontinuous to add permissions in 1.1, and a whole load of other stuff and then one day turn around and undo that for no good reason when all you have to do is not allow the downloading of non-modright objects)

Azelda

The idea is that if you download it now, you can upload it again at a later date, say, after you accidentally delete it. Further, if it's possible to export objects from SecondLife, it's quite possible to write a converter that will let you render them in a dedicated 3D rendering package, such as POV-Ray.

Copying a no-copy object by downloading it, moving the original out of your inventory, and uploading the saved version can be prevented easily: when the object is saved, the object's permissions and UUID are saved as well. If you try to upload a no-copy object that still exists in the SL database, it doesn't let you. You can't give away the downloaded version of a no-sell/no-give object because it also stores the UUID of the person who downloaded the object. It won't let anyone else upload it.

So don't let people edit objects in their annex. Perhaps this sequence of events:

1. Log in
2. Get inventory info
3. Check a list stored on the user's computer that contains selected keys matching inventory items. It gives positions and rotations selected for those objects.
4. Place them in the annex with the avatar.
5. Do not accept any changes to these objects; they can only be changed when on an SL server. Either this, or when changes are submitted to the SL servers, permissions on the objects' keys are checked.
6. User can go into SL proper from their annex.

So basically, someone could move inventory items into an ANNEX folder and these would become accessable in ANNEX mode. These would become toys, along with objects created in the annex, for the user to move around and edit on their own computer. Changes on these objects would be restricted to at least some degree so people couldn't hack existing objects. The exit to SL proper might appear after everything's loaded all the way. This would allow for some customization before going into SL

Imagine going through marble arches, or a sandy beach, or into a cave... all set on your computer without prim limits. Perhaps some default variations, too. And they'd open up into SL. All this with no real strain at all on SL servers ^_^

Of course, I dunno if this is feasible

Guys, do you understand how easy it is to read memory on your client? There are publically available tools to do this and plenty of documentation.

I strongly oppose making non-mod stuff available this side of the Linden firewalls.

Azelda

Even so, a solution is still salvagable. Let's say the connection was only one way. I could take objects I own in SL and send a copy to my ANNEX. I could move it around there, fiddle with it, break it apart, whatever. Along with that, I could build whatever I wanted in my ANNEX. However, I couldn't upload anything back to SL perhaps, not until a solution was found to keep people from hacking objects. Only problem I could find is people having access to locked scripts. But then, maybe the process of extracting from SL could strip off scripts? hmm.

Honestly, though, I think it'd be better if the connection went the OTHER way. That is, you can't bring things from SL into your storage... but you could build and script in your storage area and drop those items in your inventory, to be updated when you log on. I've heard ppl want to be able to upload stuff they've worked on outside SL into SL - and this would be one way to do it. But this isn't really storage - it's workspace. *shrugs*