Babbage finally blogs about script limits

Some of us might remember this coming up something like a year ago (before the homestead fiasco.) And lately, rumors have been flying.

But now, Babbage has finally blogged SL's intentions--which pretty much match what I remember from his office hour transcripts.

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/technology/blog/2009/12/15/script-limits

It gets a mention almost every office hours. The only real information comes from there. This blog is just because a twat told all the non-scripters they were going to go out of business and none of their scripts would work any more. Caused a huge rush of postings in the commerce blogs but there's no new news

To me as a non tech that looks like a cheap way of making sl work without having to buy more hardware to handle the demand....

Im sure they'll have a rethink when people are forced to peel off their beloved attachments before being allowed into a region.

To me its sounds very like crashing in a vehicle because the parcel is full of prims.

I find this part a bit laughable given their history of paying any attention to resident feedback on their 'already decided' course of action.

Now we know why they dont allow you to delete unwanted library items...

...very soon its the only stuff that will be any use to you

I see SL moving the direction of wearing what Lindens want you to wear, looking how lindens want you to look and living how lindens want you to live.

I cant see even the most loyal of lindens followers wanting to live in that environment.

Awesome - we'll all look like the Stepford Wives:

Per-parcel script memory limits will seem terrible at first, but IMHO they'll be a boon to us all, because we willl no longer be at the mercy of others on the same server who burn memory like there's no tomorrow.

I can't even really blame those who burn memory, because there's hardly a good way to know how much script memory we're using.

So, putting measuring tools in place first is an excellent thing, assuming they're efficiently implemented and don't bog the system trying to measure it.

While I think that LL really popped a pie in their own faces over the XStreet fiasco, by using thin excuses rather than being honest and forthright, I have more confidence that this effort will be handled better. Babbage *does* listen. Too bad we can't have folks like him in the hot seat for more SL issues.

However, here's a prediction I'm sure of. Even if they do the best possible job, they'll be reviled as evil, incompetent, money-grubbing back-stabbers. Change causes upset, even when it's change for the better.

Actually youre being to ambitious....here are the proposed new avvys Lindens are preparing to offer us...


http://www.amandawilliams.com.au/blog_images/post0020_a.jpg

Of course - back to the beginning. I should have known.

Maybe they will be nice enough to offer color and a bit of variety in shapes:

They have to do something about per-avatar script usage, I just hope it's not Draconian. I hope they hustle monitoring tools out the door a LONG time before they actually impose limits, so that content creators and sim owners can evolve instead of panic.

With IBM and other companies attempting to hold large meetings in SL, LL must scale the number of avatars per sim. However, I doubt that gridwide limits on scripts and prims will do it. I think that SIMWIDE limits would be very useful; effectively, that would allow education and corporate sims to limit avatars enough to accomodate very large groups.

I'm in favour of script limits, generally speaking. For two reasons.

First, a person posted elsewhere that she had recently bought around half a sim. Soon after, somebody put in a sheep farm or some other scripted fake animal thing in their own parcel, which has since caused her sim to lag horribly to the point that she won't go there anymore. And good luck selling it.

Script limits will force people to be cognizant of the sim resources they consume. In that they will not be allowed to consume more than their fair share.

Secondly, it will hopefully put a stop to this stupid no copy/no mod/no rez nonsense. Or more generally, resize scripts. Hopefully.

Having said that, I'm obviously worried that LL with mess it all up. Introduce limitations without really solving the problems. But we can hope!

As for claiming that this is just a means of not buying larger hardware, remember that a script of only a few lines can be written to seriously lag out a sim. And it would for any hardware.

Oh, and I fully expect it to effectively break existing scripts.

Good.

Poorly written scripts ruin everybody's SL experience. Time to clean up laggy scripts.

Well, the Lindens have a long standing policy of deciding what they want to do, asking us what we think, ignoring our protests and then doing what they please.

That being said, I think script limits are probably a good thing over all. Not that I don't have some concerns.

This, in spades !!!!

Yes, limits are a good thing. However, we all know from experience that, these days, if LL touches it, we usually like the result worse.

If I own a region and set it to only allow me in there, will I be able to wear more-heavily scripted stuff than I could elsewhere? Or will I be limited to not exceed the lowest common denominator on the grid?

With mainland being maxed at 40 people and private islands allowing up to 100, how will they determine the max an avatar can have? Will it be based on the max allowed in the region? What if I have 20 non-traffic bots? Does that lower the max of non-bots, even if I know the bots will never wear scripts?

Without my tail swishing script it would not feel like "me" entering a region anyway.

Hands off my Mysti too!!!

So are the new houses made of ticky-tacky?

I'll make one prediction.... inexperienced scripters will go into serious decline, scripted systems from larger sellers will become the norm and the grid will become much more homogeneous.

why?

inexperienced scripters use more scripts and more memory than experienced scripters (who know most of the memory saving tricks already). people will only want to buy from the experienced because of this. this will increase the learning curve for newer folks and probably weed out many with frustration.

because of mono's shared code ability, scripts that are the same will cost less resources. which means less unique scripts to gain that benefit. the big sellers will profit from this by sharing code base between many scripts in a system designed to leverage the extra savings across multiple product lines. the smaller folks will have to compete against the variety and integration, so either step up their offerings, or be muscled out.

systems will become popularized by their integration, creativity will falter, and the grid gets a little more bland.

I'm not willing to be quite so dire, but your fear is why I favor a high gridwide limit and the option for sim owners to set them lower. If they set a gridwide limit that allows large gatherings, then it wouldn't be possible to have small gatherings with with ... I dunno ... furries doing combat in scripted jewelry while wearing a dance HUD and texture-changing, resizable hair that droops when it's wet?

Well, you get the point ... I think a sim owner should be able to run a script-intensive sim if they want to!

Those who are inexperienced at scripting and who want to learn and improve will add memory efficiency to their set of scripting skills.

Easier said than done.. The trick will be to keep those people going long enough to get over the bar.

Since this effort seems to be run by Babbage & Kelly, I'm not quite as wary about it as Void is. Not that I'm not concerned, just not as much.

The problem with the proposed solution is that it only "punishes" end-users rather than the creator of a script (or seller of a scripted end product).

Anyone will stilll be able to create a horribly inefficient resizing script in each prim, along with a texture changing one and a few random bling ones, drop it all into a 100 prim necklace - as an example - and people won't realize that they bought something they can't use until after they've paid and received it.

LL really should undo the change that made it impossible to still delete the contents of "no modify" objects so that if you buy/bought something you'll at least have a way to get rid of the scripts.

Not only that but I'm guessing it only complains when you go over the limit.. So maybe the ubernecklace just by itself is under the limit but it brings you so close to the limit that you can't wear anything else that's scripted.

What will we hear people saying then? I'll tell ya!! We'll hear "my necklace is the only thing that reliably works - everybody should buy this!!!1!"

The way Babbage said whatt is going to be done will be on this kind of timeline:

1) Server v1.36 - the ability to see script resource usage will appear in the server; the next version of the client that follows will have the UI to display it.
2) Server v1.38 - new efficient script functions (llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(), with no delays, for example) will be introduced.
3) Initial script limits for certain parcel sizes will be brought up in a document, probably on the wiki, and linked to a blog post.
4) Some months of discussions and testing will follow, also giving scripters time to implement the new functions / clean up their scripts.
5) Some server version after that time will have the controls in it, but not yet turned on.
6) EMs will be able to selectively turn on script limits for their regions. For Mainland, LL will turn on script limits.

Thus, what this means if you own a parcel in a region where script limits are turned on is that you'll be prevented from loading/running any scripts which exceed the limits. This includes avatars. They simply will act like you entered a no-script area, and the owner will likely get a notice to that effect when it happens.

For owners of entire (full) regions, you will be able to run whatever you want, subject to whatever limits you enable. In addition, there will be some limits which certain types of regions (Homestead/OpenSpace) to which they will still be throttled, due to the shared-CPU nature of those sims. Owning a mainland region means you will likely be subject to the limits since LL is the EM, but you will have access to all the resources for the entire region, unless you parcel it up; then the limits will apply per-parcel.

Some of the latter is a bit speculative, since it is far to early to know exactly what form the script limit implementation will take, but that's probably not too far off from the likely implementation details. Only time will tell, though, and feedback about the issue(s) will be important.