Just a rant on sim-crashing guns

In my admittedly short time on SL, I've noticed an alarming number of "sim-crashing" guns, with this side effect touted as a feature.

It pisses me off.

A "sim-crashing" gun is an abomination, and a prime example of scripting that is either a) downright irresponsible, or b) really, really stupid. If your gun crashes sims, that's a problem, not a feature. If it makes a user relog - also a problem, and not a feature.

Responsible scripting should accomplish its goal - in the case of a gun, either push or reducing a life count to 0 in a damage sim - while using as few sim resources as possible and inconveniencing bystanders as little as possible. Additionally, it should accomplish this within the confines set by the SL world, and not by overloading memory so bad it causes sim/grid/client failures.

If you are not smart enough to break a shield without resorting to excessive, sim-crashing spawning, don't make products. Go back to the wikki, read a little, try actually thinking for a bit, and come back when you're ready to script.

To script kiddies - please, PLEASE stop combining a certain open-source shieldbreaker bullet and a freebie gun script in order to pass this tripe off on SLE. I'm getting awfully tired of seeing those telltale green and blue particles right before my home sim either crashes or lags so bad I have to leave my own lot just to get more than 5 fps. If you've made a really cool-looking gun and just want to make it functional without learning to script, ask somebody smart to help you or find a decent open-source that doesn't spawn an assload of bullets, each of which uses llPushObject a gazillion times in a row.

'Kay. Rant done.

HAHAHAHAHA

Wow...

Congrats, you're the first person to outright say they're pissed at seeing my dear friend Winter's work. (The first I've seen, at least.)

Winter Hatfield invented the said ShieldBreaker gun after being in Second Life for about two or three weeks. The script wasn't that difficult, and it wasn't very clean. And she did not make it hoping that people would love it... She made it with two things in mind:

1. Griefers would purchase the gun, knowing that it could crash sims / cause relogs -> Griefers would use the gun -> Griefers would get banned.

2. The Obscenely-Powerful-Weapons-Race would end, seeing as anyone who didn't have the gun was outgunned, and for those who did, it was a game of "who can pull the trigger first".

Yeah, she made a nice buck off all the griefers willing to pay L$1000 per gun... But that was just a side-effect of the fun. After a while, people started stealing the bullets from the gun (due to her permissions mistake) and selling their own variants. In order to stop them from making money from her creation, she open-sourced it so as to allow anyone and everyone access to the bullet (which, once again, prompted numbers 1 and 2 in the above list to occurr more).

In truth, Winter's script is doing EXACTLY what it was planned to do. The plan was to lag and piss people off and appeal to griefers and to tempt idiots to crash sims and to kill / push everyone within an ungodly range. It was a simple hack-job script, and she didn't care to put more work into it because it wasn't very important to her.

Honestly, she never used the gun offensively... In fact, the only time she ever really fired it was to demonstrate it's effectiveness.

She admittedly was an amateur when she made the script, but that didn't matter. It did what she wanted it to do, and it did it well. And though it has pissed many people off... if each of the people it bothered actually took the time to report an offender for grief, there might be a LOT less griefers in SL.


...


Okay so it's time to admit something:

I am Winter Hatfield.

She was the first Alt I made, having just found Second Life, and I spent my time playing around with scripts. Made a good $300 USD from that ShieldBreaker. Damn proud of it. And glad people are finally getting outraged by it.

Honestly, I despise the people who use my creation for griefing. I despise the idiots who think they can make a buck or two by selling my OPEN-SOURCE script. Thieves and crooks.

And, I personally believe that anyone who uses my gun or any offspring of my gun for any form of grief (e.g. outside a combat sim) should be permanently banned from Second Life.

I'm in agreement with you... The ShieldBreaker is NOT a "tactical offensive weapon"... it is a "griefer tool". And it should go away.

In order to bring about this change... I shall take my gun off the market. Stop distributing the script. I might make a new gun first, one that's a little more elegant and a little less ... grief. But I will take my script off the market.

However, don't expect this to stop the ShieldBreaker war...

It's already been let loose in the wild... has been for almost a year... I don't see it going away anytime soon.


...


And my sincerest apologies to all the people who have been caused grief by my gun. I did not execute the grief, but it was done using my gun... And I didn't really expect it to get this bad.

As I said.. I was a noob when I made it. Two weeks old, and I release the most annoying and deadly script Second Life has ever seen (from what I know).

~G

Oh, by the way...

I did attempt to make the gun obsolete by offering the better scripters a challenge to see if anyone could create a shield that stopped the shieldbreaker bullet. I'd give them L$1000 if they could do it. (Back then, it seemed like a lot of money.)

Of course, people did make better shields, almost all of them involving anti-physics and/or a sit script.

Back when I first made it, there was also the phantom/phase shield running around. I owned and sold both, and by combining the phase and a sit script, you were immortal. So I was already selling the antidote to my evil gun. (And while the GUN cost L$1000, the ANTIDOTE only cost L$10.)

But, alas, they fixed the phantom bug once 1.7 came out.

*shrug*

^.^

Well.

I can't say I was expecting quite that response, LOL.

I try to report sim-crashing griefers whenever I can, but the problem with that is that all PvPs are cleared on relog, so if the sim crashes and kicks me out, I have no way of knowing who to report when I log in.

Plus, I use the Mac client, which is so unsteady a loud fart could knock me offline.

I had attempted to avoid naming the Winter ShieldBreaker specifically (though I'll admit my comments were a bit directed), but it seems there's no point in that anymore.

I think the main problem is not with the bullet specifically, but with the general attitude that, in the creation of weapons, going balls-out is the best policy. The mantra among new entrants to the weapons industry in SL seems to be "More! More! More!" as if there are no considerations other than your av's ability to kill people.

But there are other considerations, and I think it's important we keep those in mind. Huge push fields that push everything in sight, spawning bullets, most nukes, lag guns - these things drive me nuts because the scripting isn't done smart or well, but just in excess; these are designed to accomplish their goal no matter what the cost. Which means Rausch is constantly lagging, and people who go there to develop or fight rather than just nuke everything on sight have to deal with that kind of crap.

I guess the biggest problem seems to be that every random Joe is developing weapons. And while I'd hate to be an elitist (God knows my 4-month SL lifespan doesn't give me the right to be an elitist), that shouldn't be the case. Weapons scripting should be undertaken only once you're fairly certain you know what you're doing.

I can understand why you put your SB bullet on open-source; hell - I picked it up my first week in and studied it to learn about spawning, damage, and push. But at the same time, I'd love to see it fade from the market.

I script weapons, but I don't do guns. Why? Physics isn't my thing; all of my weaons use sensor targeting and mostly non-physical movement. I'm learning, of course, and experimenting, but I'm unwilling to put a product out there until I can make one that effects its purpose without causing huge spikes in sim resources.

I don't see why super harsh penalties aren't put into things like push scripts and damaging weapons. Like a bigger delay after rezzing an object that contains a push capable script (simply placing a script with the push function in it, into an object flags it as 'push enabled'). Same with anything that causes damage.
These 'flagged' prims would have big delays to be rezzed. Also they would be unable to rez objects of any kind (ie the damaging or pushing quality denies them the ability to rez objects).

IMO a weapon of any kind should only be able to fire so fast. If you want to make a gun fire LOADS of bullets then use a particle effect and have more powerful bullets instead.

The delay caused by rezzing a damage/push object would take effect to the whole object that did the rezzing, not just the one script (so copying the script doesn't allow you around this).


Harsher penalties on weapons like these would bring sanity to damage areas, slow firing guns that require some measure of skill to hit with are much more fun than nukes that automatically win.
Not to mention these kind of restrictions would put this type of sim-crashing down for good.

I've said it before, but as long as you can write scripts that do things to other people or affect their environment, you can make an annoying weapon with them. Pushes are just one way of griefing people (and to be honest I find it quite fun using my self-designed push gun on target dummies).

Just from the aesthetic scripting POV though, one shouldn't ever build a gun or other device that causes excessive lag or is even noticeable apart from its intended effect. That means you're bad as far as I'm concerned. If you can't do it better, do it another way or don't do it at all.

But what if the intended effect is to cause kill everyone in a damage enabled sim, or just to plain grief? That's why stricted limits would be best. From a scripting point of view anyone making a 'sane' weapon wouldn't be affected, but someone making a super-lag-inducing-super-weapon-of-grief would be hit hard and find their weapons almost completely useless.

Call me wierd, but I prefer Melee weapons over guns. I've just never liked guns. Takes all the fun out of getting in close to someone. The current incarnatin of the LCK saber I've designed has the ability to deflect incoming projectiles, so it gives some amount of defense, though it requires good timing on the wielder's part to be effective.

I've been lag gunned before and it really is annoying to me. The goal of my LCK defensive method is to send the offending projectile right back at the person who sent it. It does so, right now, about 30% of the time.

I love weapons crafted with elegance and usability in mind, and If I find a weapon to not be "Sim safe" I won't use it. If one of my weapns is as such, I continue to work on it until it is.

Currently I'm working on the Soul Reaver. A little fan project.

But I'm woolgathering, I apologize.

I'm sorry, Ghordon. I like you. You're a good guy, but sadly, I have to say that if a person knowingly creates a weapon that has the ability to bring a sim to a crashing halt, and then release it, they should be held equally accountable as the griefers that use it. Regardless of your original intent, you should not have released this weapon, as I'm sure LL has had quite a few headaches from its use.

I know my own weapons can be used to grief. They have quite a bit of push to them, but never something quite to the point of dropping a sim. No one has ever even been ghosted by my work as far as I know. It's just...As weapon developers, there's just a line that should not be crossed.

I'm glad you've decided to take it down. That's a good thing, but unfortunatly, like you stated, the damage has been done and the weapon is out in the wild. I hope that it doesn't come back to bite anyone in the rear.

Believe me when I say, honestly, that I am in accordance with all of you.

There was no accident in how the gun behaves... Everything it does, it was planned to do. However, in every one of my free bullet vendors, I expressed blatantly that the script could crash sims and cause grief. Basically, what I said was: "Be careful, this gun can crash sims, and can very easily get you banned. Please use responsibly." (If you want to check the wording, the vendor is still on my land in Bretton (look for Winter's Creations in the find menu).

I was also only a few weeks old when the gun was created, and was working with a number of mafias (never joined any, preferred to keep the market open). Sold like hotcakes.

However, I never really enjoyed any weapon that was THAT powerful... I prefer playing with guns that are more realistic and take skill.

Back when I made that gun, I intended for people to purchase the gun, use the gun, piss people off, and get banned. Honestly, I was sick of most of my clients, as all they could think about was fighting other people and who killed whom. So much hate... At the time they all seemed to like me, so I had no real way of getting them all banned unless I threw my shieldbreaker at them. (Yeah, there are exceptions... mafia members that were nice, but none of them ever used my gun.)

So.

It's been a year since I joined...

And I've changed a lot.

Haven't touched weapon scripts in a LONG time... Last thing I made was the HDS (Home Defense System), intended to compete with my mentor and friend Psyke Phaeton's defense systems. (Friendly competition inspires progress! You should see the work he does now.)

Though I might soon be getting back into the weapons arena, I doubt I'll be making anything that blatantly grief-ish. And if I do, it will not be open-source, it will not be free, and it will not be able to crash sims (if I can help it).

Also...

I noticed that some of you have had problems with reporting abuse when you've got to relog... You can still bring up the "View Potential Abuse" menu to see their name and attempt to report abuse before you relog. And, just in case, write down the name and report again after the relog.

Jora, I kind of agree with you, and kind of do not. I believe that people that release weapons with the potential to crash sims are either 1. idiots, or 2. newbies. There are three things to think about here:

1. The gun is technically legal according to the TOS, so long as it is used in a combat sim and nowhere else.
2. I always told people NEVER to use it outside a combat sim. I educated people as to the power of the gun, and how to use it responsibly. I never condoned people using it for grief. Thus, I cannot be held responsible for their actions.
3. I did, however, create the gun with the knowledge that it had great potential as a grief weapon. And despite that, I released it anyways.

I believe that it was irresponsible of me to release said weapon, however I don't believe I can be held accountable for its misuse. Consider... Smith and Wesson creates guns. People buy guns. Sometimes, people shoot other people with those guns. However, Smith and Wesson make sure that every customer knows that the gun is lethal, and they cannot be held responsible. They did not pull the trigger, an idiot pulled the trigger.

I treat my gun in much the same way. I created it and expressely warned people about it and explained how to use it safely. I told everyone specifically NOT to use it in anything but a combat sim. If people decided to disregard my notice, that is their fault and their responsibility. Not mine.

As for delays in scripts due to spawning and/or push... There are already delays in scripts for that. However, they are not implemented properly. For example... When you llRezObject, it is supposed to delay the script for X seconds. However, if you put llRezObject in a for() loop, then that delay is ignored altogether. The for() loop overrides it and rezzes quickly. Were Linden Labs to actually implement the proper delay for the script interpreter, many weapons would be much less dangerous.

Truthfully, I never much liked guns either. They can be fun sometimes, but in general I find them a waste of time. Not to mention that in RL, I am a pacifist. However, there is a market, and when I first joined SL, my focus was on business. (I believe this is the focus of at least 70% of the newbie population.) Since then, this drive has gone down, and I've focused more on enjoying SL. I still make money, yes... But it all goes to tier. I rarely make a profit. Nor do I really care.

So yes, my gun is a nuiscance, and yes, I'd be happy to think of new ways for LL to stop griefers that use such weapons, and yes, I'm going to take the gun down once I have a decent replacement.

And no, I don't blame you for hating the ShieldBreaker. I do too. Always have.

Have a great day!!

Sorry for writing in novels...

Shieldbreaker bullet now used in rezzing as nuke box. Me thinks funny. Sim crash me just relog to different sim. Me hate griefers. Wannabe gaming hitlers is all they are.
Me personally like hell lager gun which focuses on avatar you point it at. I just wish it crash their avatar into relogging instead of lagging. Like a virus or smtin. Hmm me thinks a shield where by reading who hit ya wit script sends virus to logout player from game real good. HeeHee be good against griefers.

I havnt actually witnessed this script personally, and thankfully... But... i'm inclined to ask, isnt creating a script which compramised the stability of an individuals program, causing them to crash out unwillingly... Isnt that of very little difference of a virus?... I'm not trying to pick a fight here, and honestly, i'm not about to start a petition to have people stopped for writing such things... But, it'd have been my impression that these kinds of scripts wernt exactly what the linden staff had in mind for second life. And I'd be inclined to think that the person writing the scripts, was as fault as much as the person buying them... Ghordon even admitted that the point of these weapons was with full intention to be used to grief, and apparently that is their only real function.

Perhaps the reasons were justified... but the process ruins the game for alot of people. Would you bomb a country to kill one criminal? None of this is directed at ghordon either by the way, as I understand if he hadnt made it... then someone else would have, but I still wonder about the morality behind making something like that. *shrugs* anyways, thats jus' my opinion.


PS- hehe, jus' read the rest of ghordon's comments, and jus' noticed my post is kinda irrelevant. So, sorry ^.^

crashing a sim is techincaly a TOS violation, so is writing a weapon that does so. See Section 5.1

I've put in bold the applicable stuff.

there are a couple of problems with pvp in sl:

1. responsible weapons are too slow to be effective.
2. effective AND realistic weapons are too hard on the physics engine.
3. if winning is the goal, it's too easy to make a weapon that violates all real world weapons difficulties (totally unrealistic) and totally pwns all.

4. There are no easy solutions to any of the above.

I tried to make a shield-breaking bullet that didn't do any extra rezzing... have one, that breaks most shields I've tried it on but doesn't work if the av is sitting on something. Not quite sure why.

because sitting on something makes you invincible even without the shield, as long as the something your sitting on isn't physical.

Invincible as in unpushable, or undamagable as well?

I remember someone saying that LL had implemented 100% friction on our butts, so if you sat on something, you stayed sitting on it no matter how hard someone tried to push you off

As in undamageable. at least it was that way at one time. Sounds like it still is.

So all you need for the ultimate shield ever in SL (and I know there are a dozen of those already in existence) is to have a non-physical object that you can sit on and then move around with your controls? Wow. Didn't know I'd already made the Awesomest Shield in SL Ever. Now I can add "SL Defense Systems Scripter God" to my resume.

Me thinks you sound like a griefer. Even if you're fighting griefers, all this does is piss them off and cause more grief, as well as make you a griefer at the same time.

This is untrue. So far, I've never seen anyone stay safe from the ShieldBreaker by just sitting down. The damage still hits you. Even if the prim is non-physical.

Maybe this has changed recently... but I never noticed.

Having looked at the applicable stuff, here are my responses:

(iii) The gun itself does not break any law or regulation.
(v) The gun does not contain any "viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots"... and it is not intended to "damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information". When used in a combat sim, it doesn't lag the sim any more than the "bling" and danceballs and vendors and people themselves present at most parties. (By using the SL client to go to clubs, you are detrimentally interfering with system resources....lag.)
(vii) The gun does not break any of these rules either.

Of course, these views are debatable... but personally I think that the script itself is not what causes the problem. I believe that the idiot using the script outside a combat sim is.

Also, just about anything can be used to detrimentally interfere with systems. Yet at the same time, we can't remove those things from SL or we'd end up ruining some very great achievements.

For example... The push mechanism can be used to make simulated antigravity, create working cannons, and do many creative things... but it can also be used to lag someone's client so bad that it has to relog (no, this is not considered ANYTHING like a virus... if this happens it is because LL hasn't built a client or server good enough to handle the power they give the scripters).

The Eject from Land or Teleport Home functions can be used to keep your land safe and secure... or they can be used to grief anyone who flies over your land.

llSay() can allow for long-distance networking of various scripts, or it can be used to spam the chat channel.

llInstantMessage can be used to alert users about certain things, or it can be used to spam individual users with advertisements.

llListen can be used as a object networking tool (albeit laggy) or it can be used to spy on people without them knowing.

llTargetOmega can be used to make a pretty spinning ballerina prim, or it can be used to make a giant spinning whatsit that knocks people around.

Email functionality can be used as an alternative to llListen and llSay, or it can be used to spam people's email accounts.

llRezObject can be used to make a building that changes itself into whatever you want it to become, or it can be used to rez-bomb a sim.

Pencils can be used to write life-changing poetry, or they can be used to stab the eyeballs out of puppies.

I think you get the idea.

As of yet, there is no realistic way to prevent griefing automatically without infringing on the rights of people to script imaginative things. Putting restrictions on the LSL would curb creativity, while having AI script scanners is just unrealistic. Hiring more Linden staff to police the globe is the only realistic idea I've heard.

Puppies???

*breaks pencils*

^.^

Don't worry, I switched to Safe-T-Pencils years ago... they're like those hollywood knives that have the retractable blade, so that if someone tries to stab someone, the blade just sinks into the hilt. No puppies are gonna die on my watch!

All is forgiven as far as I'm concerned since it seems you learned from it. I still like ya. ^_^