Attachment to Defeat Idle Logout, How the Heck Does it Work?

I acquired an anti-idle attachment(!) today. Works great keeping me online for hours but things like this, stuff I can't figure out, bother the hell out of me. It's not physical and doesn't request animate permissions (or any other perms). Just attach and go. The object is a single prim with one script. Every 30 seconds or so my avatar goes slumped over AFK but loss of focus nor any other effect can be seen to directly effect the client.

Anyone have an idea how this nifty attachment works?

You can use llStopAnimation("away" which will not only stop the away animation but also undo your away status. I didn't think that would actually stop you from being logged out though. Does your avatar slump over and then straighten out, undoing your away status?

I guess I'll have to test that.

It sounds like you purchased my new script. Aside from some permissions checking and miscellaneous stuff it really boils down to running a timer with llStopAnimation("away"; except that mine actually does llStartAnimation("away"; llStopAnimation("away"; which is why you see yourself momentarily slump over and come back awake. My initial thought is that you would actually have to trigger an animation state to keep the server thinking the client is doing something, I'm not sure if it would work with just the llStopAnimation or not. I kind of rushed it out the door and it has a very short timer (15 seconds) which could be expanded to at least a minute probably. Once I answer my first question I'll release a new script, but it will really take another dev about two minutes to rewrite the whole thing so when that happens I'll open source mine .


Near everything I write or create in LSL I set full permissions on and attach a Creative Commons attribution license to, but now that I own land I wanted to create a couple of things I could package up and sell to offset my expenses.

Ahh, so that's how the hack is done, neat.

Right on, you should end up selling a good number I'd think. Best of luck.

Hmm, perhaps it does work. I just tested this while I went to lunch. I was away with window focus not on SL for over an hour and didn't get logged out.

Drop this script in an attachment and reattach it.

There's a possibility the script had nothing to do with it. I've had experiences before where I was idle without being logged out for much longer than supposed to.

All the script does is turn off the "away" animation every 10 minutes.

default
{
    changed(integer change){
        if (change & 128){
            llResetScript();
        }
    }
    
    attach(key id){
        if (id != NULL_KEY){
            llRequestPermissions(llGetOwner(), PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION);
        }
    }
    
    run_time_permissions(integer perm){
        if (perm & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION){
            llSetTimerEvent(600);
        }
    }
    
    timer(){
        if (llGetPermissions() & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION){
            llStopAnimation("away");
        } else {
            llSetTimerEvent(0);
        }
    }
}

That's virtually the same thing I wrote and I can confirm that it does work. The only thing I have different is that people have been requesting their avatar never go away, so I sped up the timer so there is no AFK overlap.

great now drop it in an AO and replace it with a animation of somone shambling around aimlessly and a little sign that pops up and say "I am a zombie, please shoot me in the head, or I'll eat your .... processor cycles" =)

Okay here is what I did.

1.) Copied the code above.
2.) Pasted the code into a script file in SL
3.) Put the script into an object I created
4.) I attached the object to my character
5.) Minimized Second Life into the Task Bar
6.) Walked away from my computer
7.) Came back 35 minutes later and found myself disconnected from SL due to Inactivity.


... why?

Apparently, it doesn't work if SL is minimized. So I was told... It does seem to work as long as you don't minimize the window though. I've used it while being away for almost 3 hours once and was still connected when I came back.

What about having the window just being out of focus, but not minimized. Will that work?

Indeed, it does.

Until LL decides to nerf this trick anyhow.

This is the kind of trick I wouldn't have thought of trying, because it wouldn't have occurred to me that LL would base "away" timeouts on the animation you were in.

This reminds me of the time someone came to me because they thought they'd found a security hole in UNIX. In UNIX the shell changes the prompt to a pound sign when you're the super-user (root) to remind you that you're in "god mode". They changed their prompt from "$ " to "# " and thought that made them root.

Alright, here's the obligatory "don't do this" post.

Don't do this, folks.

There's a reason the idle timeout is there, and it's not just to annoy you. This kind of thing exists in lots of games to prevent you from taking up server resources when you're not actually there to enjoy the game. In SL, this is even more important, because your client takes up a lot of resources on the server even if you're simply just standing there! Beyond all the code to send you updates for every object around you when it changes, there's the fact that most people wear a fair number of scripts on their avatar. This takes much more significant of a bite out of a region's script processing time than you might guess, as I've seen in my own private island. If I saw someone using a script like this, I'd eject them, because I need the script time to run our ambient effects. There's also the fact that rendering other avatars is really hard on the client, so you're making everyone lag.

The other half of this is: why do you want to do this? I discovered this trick well over a year ago. It was a complete accident; I was just using the away-slump animation in a script because I thought the animation was cute... then I discovered that while I was wearing the script, I didn't idle off. I only use this script very rarely, for example in cases where the login server is dying, but once I'm logged in, SL works just fine. I can't think of another use for this, especially since dwell is going away. And if you're using this for camping chairs (which will probably also go away soon), think about this: you're degrading everyone else's performance for that L$50 you earn in 3 hours of idling. Kind of selfish.

People already do, which is the...

...oh, I don't really need to go on a camping rant in this forum as well. I've done that enough recently.

This is just barely on topic since it has almost nothing to do with scripting, but the people using this product are not in violation of the TOS and are paying the same amount to play as you are, so beyond that it only gets in to a "my use of my time in the game benfits [me/you/the world] more than your use of your time in the game" argument. That last three hours you spent in the sandbox designing particle effects is degrading everyone else's performance worse than someone sitting in a camping chair. If people want to idle in a chair making 25 cents a day, I suppose that is their choice. Camping chairs are not going away for the simple reason that it's dirt cheap advertising. You don't see camping chairs in the middle of a desolate field, they're in the center of malls and casinos.

Also, here's some actual math on camping chairs since people throw a lot of random dollar figures out. A large percentage of the people buying my anti-afk script are buying it four at a time, so we can assume they have three alts. If four avatars sat in $L3/10m for the part of the day they weren't playing SL, lets say 14 hours if you play eight hours a day, that's $L1008 a day or $L7056 a week. Over 14 times more than a premium member stipend, for leaving your computer running (which is free if you're a college student or renting a house/apartment where electricity is included). If someone had two computers they might also have three alts running 24/7 on the other computer, and the fourth only camping 14/7 giving them $L8064 a week, or USD $26.88 that the computer makes for them.

I think it should be up to the individual land owners to decide their own rules; if someone posts a notice that says "don't use anti-idle scripts on this land" and you do, no hard feelings when you are ejected. But if it's not against the TOS, the land owner hasn't said "you can't do that here", and you are just as much a member of Second Life as the next guy taking up CPU cycles then I'd say go make your money.

Uh oh... They're on to me. And how did you know I run 4 computers?

I camp higher paying places and shut down at night though. Maybe you missed that part.

Can this be used in conjuncture with other animations, or will that mess with the llStopAnimation("away" part?

You can use it with other anims, yes. One problem with making it play a different anim in place of the away anim though is that it actually disables your away STATUS, so there's no way for it to tell when you're back. Although, one idea would be to have it detect when you go away, set the anti-idle loop, play the replacement anim, and make something appear over your head saying "i'm away", which you could click on to reset.

As to the moral issue here. I dunno... I don't have a problem with people staying logged in without actually being there.

Personally, the only use I see for this is if I'm at my computer, but am working on other things. I want to be "available" in SL, listening for IM or typing sounds, though I'm not doing anything in SL right then. I used to just do the, "move mouse in SL window every now and then," thing, but ya know, sometimes you forget and get logged out.

Which brings up another thing... I don't recall if the idle warning has the sound, or if the sound is only after it actually logs you out. If it's the former, then the idle warning must be coming about TWO SECONDS before actually being logged out. Either way, the idle warning is USELESS to me.

That's debatable, and so I shall debate it:

5.1 (viii) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Service;

The idle time out is a procedure and policy of the service. By disabling the idle timeout you uare interfering with that procedure and disobeying that policy.

Furthermore, here's the Community Standards, which are just as binding as the TOS:



My emphasis.



But that's not the full of it, because your idling in SL benefits you at a tangible cost to me. On my old computer, one extra av onscreen really did lag me more than not having that av there, and if that av is simply doing nothing more than idling for hours on end, that's an unfair degradation of my experience.

And now just to continue addressing this in the reverse order:



This is very much on topic. As scripters, we have an obligation to consider the ethics of the things we script. We have the power to distribute scripts which severely tax servers or clients, but my feeling is that we have the obligation to figure out how to minimize our scripts' impact.

...but I could be wrong. Maybe an idling av doesn't tax the server or clients noticeably. Shall we ask on the hotline?

The point I was making is that idling avatars are using the service. They're using it to make money just like all the scripters and builders and texture designers who are also logged in and taxing server resources. It could be argued that anyone logged in at any time is gaining an intangible value of enjoyment or a tangible value of R&D, marketing, etc. which is always at some form of cost to every other person playing at that same time. Where would the cutoffs be set? You are allowed to be logged in to SL as long as you physically move your mouse every couple minutes? Does a "sweatshop" (quotes emphasis) worker moving the mouse every couple minutes tax your client less than an automated solution?

The violation of the TOS or Community Standards argument might be valid though, I'd be interested to hear an official stance on it.

Maybe avatars should get undressed before they use this, so their bling, prim hair, etc. does not bog down the server. A naked avatar should put less load on the server.

Well, pretty clearly we could go back and forth on this one, and the Lindens have given a somewhat ambiguous response, so I'll bow out now. I just wanted to make my displeasure known, and it seems like I've accomplished that. Obviously it's not a completely cut and dry issue.

Whether the av is idling or not, the sim has to do all the work to bundle up and deliver to the client every change to every prim in draw distance every frame.

That's why avatars are the things a sim can support the fewest of, with the possible exception of jointed physical objects (and they're being phased out!).