New Beacon Limitation

I was pretty excited about the new beacons.... I was looking forward to the ability to tell who the owner of "particle systems" were as one next step in my ability to combat grief.

Here's the problem though.... the particle system beacon only points back to the originating object that held the script for the particle system.

A C4 bomb, which is a common griefing tool, gives off enough explosion particles to fill a room - nearly blinding everyone. Not too long after the bomb goes off, it calls an llDie(). Now the object is gone without a trace.

In this case, particle system beacons are absolutely useless - because the object no longer exists.

I ran a test in the sandbox on the preview grid.... I created an particle system with the maximum particle life, turned on particle system beacons, and then deleted the object. When the object deleted, so did the beacon..... but particles were still moving happily along, even though the parent object was deleted.

I understand that *beacons* identify objects. I just hope you understand that offering this beacon has limited use for combatting grief. "Disable Particles" is a nice feature - that's gonna help. But in a crowded room in the midst of being C4'ed, asking everyone to disable particles is about as ineffective as asking 30 people to turn a griefing "shouter" on ignore. In my experience, most folks just leave out of the hassle factor.

Hmm, this is a good problem. I personaly can't think of any solutions other than limiting particles to only exist if the object the script is in does as well, and once its deleted the particles go away too... but this would hurt legit uses for these particles.

Have any ideas on what else to do?

Perhaps allow some granularity in controlling scripts on a parcel, like a setting to disable the particle system per land plot. That would allow 1 person to shut them off in case of an attack, instead of trying to coordinate 30 or more AVs to do so.

IMHO - this is the best option. Checkboxes on the parcel that dictate what can and cannot be run on the parcel - Similar to the "No Fly", "No Build", or "No outside Scripts" checkboxes.... but more granularity, such as:

--Disable Particle Systems
--Disable Sound Effects
--Disable Script-Physics (Push)

To me, having the ability to shut off items that "dont belong" on my parcel, is the most proactive approach possible.

Travis

Guys,

Thanks for the comments on particle source beacons. I wrote that reusing some object beacon code we already had, which made it both easy to build and to test. I understand, though, that long-lasting particles can outlive their source object.

The easiest way for per-parcel particle controls to work would be to prevent them from starting. Once the particles are spawned, I don't have a lot of control on the client other than to turn them ALL off. Do you think it would be sufficient for a land parcel "No particles" option to merely block the spawn call?

Also, can one of you guys give a C4 object to James Linden? I don't have one to play with and I'd like one.

Thanks!

James Linden

In my experience, more options = better.

In fact, I can think of at least one plot of land that I'd like to disable particles on . If it's (relatively) easy to implement, I'd love to see it. Rogue sounds from worn objects, as Travis mentioned also in his post, is my biggest pet peave at the moment, with particles being next.

--Jack Lambert

As particles are a client side function would it be incredibly difficult to include a hot key in the interface that simply killed any active particles?

C4 bomb explodes, room is filled with particles, C4 bomb self distructs leaving particles, user presses <insert desired hot key here> reseting the particle code in the client hence deleting all the particles left by C4 bomb. Any legit objects producing particles would continue to produce them.

Debug -> Delete All Active Particles

It's in the debug menu already, one of the Render Types I think. All I know is the key command is Alt-= to toggle particle rendering.

what are legit uses for particles that have been created by a deleted object? Why would you have to delete the originating object if the particles are "legitimate"??

Champie

James.... for the uses I'd use it for - yes, having a land option to disable Particles or Sound effects from starting would help a *ton*. I'd probably just leave it checked all the time.

The proportion of my customers that like "poofing particles" are much less than the ones that complain about them. For a lot of folks, Particle Systems just cause unneccesary lag - some even crash on sight.

While it would be ideal to be able to shut down particles on demand - just the ability to 'prevent' particle systems would be a huge improvement for me.

As far as the C4.... I think they're common in freebie areas, but let me see if i can find one.

If someone out there has an especially nasty variant of C4 they'd like to share with James... that'd help too

Thanks!

Travis