Several things!

Hello there all!

This will be the first time actually I'm posting on the forums for ideas on how to improve SL. Hopefully some of these ideas will of course be put to use.

1) Revamping the gesture system.
I don't understand fully why animations and sounds with any kind of blocked permission cannot be used into a gesture. I had heard this had something to do with people abusing gestures to sell animations that were set to No Copy etc in the past. If so, why was it changed to limit animations/sounds instead of automatically putting the gesture to 'No Copy' status etc as well, just like prims work. Nevertheless, I would personally like to be able to use all the animations and sounds I get in SL inside a gesture I make.

2) Scripts and gestures.
More on gestures here: There doesn't seem to be any way for a script to read a gesture.
For a possible gesture vendor to be made for instance, the animations and sounds need to be hard-coded into the script by triggering the animations and sounds at the same time. Basically rewriting a gesture again in the script itself.
It would be a whole lot easyer if script could just recognise a gesture imho.

3) Busy mode
When entering busy mode, you change a couple of settings - You will not hear messages from groups anymore, you will not see any message pop ups in your screen anymore, you will be able to leave an automated message when someone Instant Messages you and on top of that, you will automatically delete any filesend you receive.
I like 'some' of these functions, and for that reason I use Busy Mode. However, a lot of these functions are annoying beyond believe.
It would be a nice feature imho if we could toggle (most, if not all of) these functions on/off without having to resort to Busy mode.

4) The yellow/blue/white lines you see when editting an object.
Often nice to have, but at other times very anooying (Especially when editting small textures on a detailed object with lots of small prims).
I was searching for a way in the Debug menu to turn them off, but it seems there's no such thing. Thus, please add such a feature.

5) Sharing Dwell in a group
Okay, I am not exactly sure how to explain this, because I am not entirely sure how the original system works.
We were/are having a lot of linked parcels in a sim in SL that are set to a group. At the moment, we have a shared total prim allowance because the parcels have been linked, however, the dwell amounts of these parcels are counted seperately. I was wondering if perhaps a total dwell could be calculated for all parcels linked to a group.

6) Inventory/Body annoyances
Multiple things here:
- A way to delete an object without it going into the trashcan, purging it on deletion.
- Items that are dropped from your inventory and/or body going back to the directory from which they came, instead of the Objects folder
- Being able to put limited permissioned items into worn objects without having to put them on the ground first.


That's all for today.

Working as a dancer, it's terribly annoying that taking off or putting on clothing automatically makes me jump off a dance pole, yet attaching or removing attachments doesn't.

In real life, taking off my "undershirt" while dancing doesn't throw me off the stage, and it's kinda silly that I have to stop dancing in SL to do this. This goes for any pose ball in second life from couches to dances. Please change this behavior.

+1 On changing Busy mode around a bit. I don't like the fact that when I go into busy mode, I cannot get any im or chats. What I think would be awesome if I could go into busy mode, and then select the people that I want to talk to. That way I can talk to who I want to, and everybody else would see me as busy.

Wowzies, three new posters to the SL Forums... a warm welcome, Sandling, Andrea, and Brent!

Here are a few scattershot, lateral thots:

Sandling:

1) The Gestures window has a number of quirks about it. I sometimes think of it as a universe unto its own. Ever notice how you have to hit Enter after making a new step of Chat or else it won't save? The fact that gestures must contain fully-permissive animations and sounds is unfortunate because it's not immediately apparent, and it's confusing--I bet you had to ask or dig around for info before finding out, eh? I think the Gestures window will sensibly need to be overhauled to be in lockstep with so many other things.

3) Better control of (BUSY) mode relates to "chat invisibility" or "show as offline"... you may have seen it while doing some SL Forums searches. I agree there are times when you want to be (BUSY), perhaps even collaborating, and need to pass objects back and forth!

4) I don't know a way to toggle "glow" when editing an object, but as you prolly know, particles can be hidden via the VIEW menu ---> BEACONS. Camera zooming is also a big boon--I'm thankful for my mouse wheel--and you can also tap Ctrl-8 to really get in close to small prims, and Ctrl-9 to default zoom.

5) Different parcels don't receive shared traffic (it's fascinating the former term "dwell" is still popular today!). If you want to receive joined traffic, then you can join the parcels into one big one (CTRL-5 and look for the JOIN button after you've selected all the land), provided they are adjacent to each other in the same sim.

6) Unfortunately there've been too many cases of Resis trashing stuff accidentally and never getting it back. Some have even suggested a "Are you sure?" cautionary message before Empty Trash. I suppose a complicated shortcut to do what you describe may be deterrent enough. And objects rezzed inworld from a folder which are taken back should appear in the same folder they originally came from--if this isn't the case, please write an exact repro, because there are some conditions under which they don't (I can't remember offhand). And that last point has been around a long time... there used to be some other limitations which were subsequently fixed in 1.6 and 1.7, so more to come...

Andrea: One of my first, similar memories, was sitting in a chair and then standing up from that chair and getting launched. Or exactly what you describe. I'm not sure why the technical reason why it happens, but is ungraceful when you're dancing. I think one of the reasons is related to the way Appearance is keyed is to put you in a standing, arms-and-legs-slightly-apart position so you can view your whole avatar. Even if Appearance doesn't show when you double-click on new clothes, it may need to go through a similar process. But yes, disconcerting compared to offline.

Brent: You can still get IMs in (BUSY), they will just be hidden and you'll have to click the button on the lower-left of your screen to show them. And click Chat History button too.

Also... I also recommend checking the Feature Voting Tool to see if any of your faves are in there. Thanx for sharing! =^_^=

O, BTW... one addition that saved my skin on more than a single occasion: if someone sends you schtuff when you're in (BUSY) and it declines, just look in your Trash. It should end up there.

Thank you for the replies Torley! ^.^

4) The 'glow' indeed is basically the outlining of the object when you edit it. Yellow for the main prim and blue for all the child prims. It's getting on my nerves every so often because all the child prim lines shine right trough everything, obscurring visibility at times.
Don't get me wrong though, it's incredibly handy as well a lot of times, but I would prefer it to be turned off at other times.

5) Do you perhaps know the reason for why shared traffic (or dwell then ) does not share for grouped parcels in the same sim, while the total prim amount does share ?
Just noticed a bit of inconsistency here that I found a bit weird. Perhaps because I would like to be able to still play a seperate stream of music in one of our group parcels while still having it counting towards our traffic.

6) I was personally thinking about holding shift or something when clicking on delete, or something along that line. Definitly not part of the pie menu though!
Oh and for objects returning to the Objects folder. This indeed happens when you drop an attached object from your body. I have started to get used to first detaching the object nowadays in order for it to return in the same folder, however I feel that it should return to the same folder when dropping it from your body as well personally.

Welkies Sandling! Sadly, I don't know a way to hide these effects, as they can't be turned off like particles. Good that you chimed in about that--it's fascinating, the glow actually used to be dimmer; it's since grown to quite a vivid aura.



I don't know the end reason for this... and it dates way back, but it's a good question! I think it may have to do with how the system was established before and built up atop of with different features. Maybe too hard a thing to change now, I don't know, but I do know that with SL's progressive change (and looking back to a time when the land system was completely different), more changes are in store. The separate music stream thing is a good point. I know some Resis who set up theatres, each parcel showing a different movie--but wondering why it couldn't be counted as a whole "cineplex".



AHHH yes. That sounds like a bug! It doesn't make sense to me either, because the object did belong in a folder right before you dropped it--why make it hard to remember where it came from? Please send a bug report about it... inworld HELP menu ---> REPORT BUG. I will too--this was on something I was checking out... I think it's been around awhile too but it's worth a go.

Take cares!

I asked about the being unseated when changing clothing thing, got a good answer from Andrew.

It seems in every game I play, (or have played), I've dropped lists like this. Some of these are asked for by others. Probably most of them.
My wishlist.

Prim subtraction AND heirachial listing of prims.
If we have prim subtraction by itself, how does the subtraction prim effect other prims it comes into contact with?
If the prims are heirachial, it gives two advantages, first, it means you can make objects from components, (floor, walls, roof, each door,) then link them, with the ability to unlink the components, without unlinking the constituant prims from the component. It also gives the ability to set rules for prim subtraction so the subtracted prim, doesn't interfere with other parts of the object. Give the listing for prims access to parenthesis.

Something else prim subtraction could do would be to allow us to temporarily dig holes on our land beyond the limits of terraforming. Drop a prim as a subtraction prim on the ground itself and have a prim shaped hole to put your basement in.

On prim subtraction. Obviously, the subtracted prim should be invisible, but it should have (a) texture(s) anyway. This (/these) texture(s) would be applied to whatever surface the prim was removed from, in reverse. Since the parent prim wouldn't have a surface number for the subtraced space, the texture, (and bumpmapping,) could be taken from the subtraction prim instead.

On textures.
A larger cache for textures.
Why must I have only (slightly less than) one gig of textures on my machine? I'd like to go ahead and have 2 gigs, or four. I have the space, why not let me use it.

alternate, ("low rez", textures.
Allow each prim to have two textures assigned per surface. One the creator may import from their own sources, (or buy from others,) and one that MUST be a library texture. In this way, when I'm zoning in, I don't see grey on everything, but rather see the library textures until my machine can catch up and download all the custom textures.
(edit) "Allow each person..." changed to "allow each prim to have two textures..."

How about allowing people to assign another texture, (for a third, including the suggestion above,) that is used EXCLUSIVELY for bump-mapping? I probably wouldn't mess with it, but I would love to see what others could do with it. I could see people doing some interesting things with bump-mapping that now have to be done with more and more prims. Such as, oh, stairs come to mind. (A bump map for steps put over a ramp.) Keys for a keyboard, (one texture for the keys, another for the key height and shape.) A "low prim" mask, (one image for the face, and another for the depth, allowing for a single prim to be shaped into a textured mask.) Just about any piece of jewelry, including wrist-watches, broaches, belt buckles, etc.

On code.
An external capable editor for code, that can compile and debug it. Possibly even test it, (preferably test it.)

Step over, step through, watch expressions, and more verbose debug messages. Please, color coding alone isn't really enough. I spent probably 4 hours a few days ago trying to find (if (x = y) ), and had to cobble my own watch expressions together from llTellOwner calls before I realized I'd been assigning x and that's what kept causing it to do odd things.