Sitting into Pixel Purgatory for Halloween

I'll start by apologizing--I'm sure someone has asked before, but I haven't found anything.

I am working on a teleporter with a partner and now and then the AV sits and is whisked off to what I have heard called "pixel purgatory". It's generally located right around <0,0,0> in the sim, it's bluish place and it's underwater. The sit animation usually plays, the "Stand Up" button does not appear, and the movement buttons pan the camera. To another AV, the afflicted AV appears to be sitting normally. Sometimes it lasts an instant, sometimes a few moments, sometimes it doesn't end. Sometimes the AV is tangled up with a whole bunch of other similarly cursed AVs.

Is this an evil back room at LL in California? Is LL trying to capture our digital souls for the holiday? Does anyone know the incantation to free the trapped AV? "Trick or Treat" does not work.

Thanks,

Sandi

That's normal behavior. There's usually a delay while a scripted teleport is being executed over long distances, during which your avatar is in limbo. All you can do is watch yourself being twisted into interesting pretzel shapes, and be patient. Unless the sim is really laggy, you usually arrive in a few seconds. As far as I know, you don't have any other choice.

LOL! I guess in a place where you can sex-change, shape-shift, fly, and teleport we can be pretty open about how we define "normal" behavior! It's good to hear that I am not doing anything wrong, tho. Thanks so much for your reply.

One more question if you don't mind. Sometimes after using the TP several times I can't open the script or the notecard that holds the settings without setting the script to "Not Running". I have looked for loops or other issues, but don't see any. Any ideas? Have you ever seen that one before?

It's getting hung up on something, clearly, and can't move ahead. The only way out, as you've discovered, is to stop the script and reboot it. If the script isn't terribly long and if you have made enough observations of its misbehavior, you should be able to figure out just what it doesn't like and then fix it. You might check the part of the code that's reading the notecard, just to see how it handles information if it finds a character where it doesn't expect it, or if it gets to an EOF unexpectedly, for example. Beyond that generic advice, I don't know what to say.

It's frustrating, since everything seems to match up. I've embedded llOwnerSays in the card reader routine and tracked each dataserver call and return. I don't see anything missing and I don't see any way the LSL allows you to explicitly close the connection. It handled the EOF properly too.

It's also odd in that the problem appears to happen randomly. It only reads the card on rez and resets. Then it works fine for a while and then suddenly, after several teleports, I can't open the script or the card. The teleporter works fine, tho.

Thanks for the advice.

Sandi

I've made several items that are notecard-configurable, including teleporters, and never lost access to the notecard or script after use. During debugging, one uses the same scripted object over and over, of course, so I should have seen it if it is a common problem. When you try to open the notecard, what happens, or what message do you get?

An unhandled dataserver or other event would not cause this. Similarly, if the dataserver itself somehow hung while reading the notecard, the script would still be accessible, and the condition would not be cleared by you resetting the script.

It almost sounds like you lose permissions to the object - are you changing any? Perhaps when it is in this state, you can edit the object and see if you still have edit permissions to everything?

Another thing that can cause odd behavior is if you explicitly change states within a subroutine.

Hi Nika! When I open the notecard it looks like a blank notecard. There is no error or message that I have ever seen. The "Save" button is deactivated, and tho I can type in the window the "Save" button never becomes active. The script window is all dark, with just the message window white and looking enabled.



No. I'm not making any changes to the permissions on the object.




I thought that might be an issue, so I put everything into the default state. I still have the same problem.

Thanks,

Sandi

Since you can't see what's in the notecard, this sounds to me like SL having difficulty fetching a copy of the notecard and/or script to display on your screen from wherever it is it caches them. Happens to me now and again, sometimes with TP scripts and sometimes with others, and no usually where there's an opportunity for the script to hang.

I'd always seen it as the equivalent of the script being ruthed and resetting it as the equivalent of opening the edit appearance window to fix the problem, but I'm probably labouring under a massive misapprehension.

""I guess in a place where you can sex-change, shape-shift, fly, and teleport we can be pretty open about how we define "normal" behavior!""

That also describes L.A.

LOL--yes--and anyone who has ever been on a freeway at 5:00 knows the definition of lag!

You may be right--I don't see how the script could be doing it. Beside--I like the idea. It absolves me of any responsibility for bad scripting!