llEmail Delay

I was wondering if anyone had any hints as to how to speed up a script using llEmail. I've tried using a link msg before the email call and then having another script use resetotherscript but it seems it wont reset it until after the 20 second sleep is done. Since emails are now bounced after 100 emails, I'm not too sure why the delay wasnt lowered. I don't intend to do anything malicious with it, but 20 seconds is rather limiting. Thanks in advance

The easiest way is to use multiple child mailer scripts, and send a linked message to the appropriate child mailer script for each email you want to send.

For fast emailing, I use 10 child mailer scripts, which gives a throughput of one message every 2 seconds, or much faster than that if you are sending less than 10 messages...

- Jon

Do you really need reports that rapidly or could you batch the data up and send it periodically? Yes, there are ways to work around the delay, but the delay is there because llEmail is expensive and tends to slow the entire sim.

I know of only two reasons that people have wanted high-rate e-mail: 1) sensors for something that allow someone to pounce on something or 2) some kind of e-commerce. If your reason is (1) it's kind of rude to make everyone pay in performance for your advantage and if it is (2) you are using a very weak mechanism and are better off using XML-RPC. If there is some other reason, I'd love to hear it (at least in general terms, I'm not looking to steal a concept).

Bear in mind that the delay exists to limit the number of emails a sim has to process out at a time. LL carefully consider feature limitations in terms of several people sharing a server's resources. If you're the sole owner of land in the region, working around the limit is reasonable. If you're sharing the sim with other avs, you may slow the server to a crawl and damage everyone's experience.

I use it in my race server, to communicate with the checkpoints on the race course. In that case, there are 15 checkpoints, so using the standard 20 second delay would result in a five minute delay to talk to all the checkpoints, which is completely unacceptable when you're trying to run an event. As it is, it takes just over 20 seconds, which is reasonable. The race server has to email each checkpoint with the key of the person who is about to race. At that point, the checkpoint sets up a fast sensor, which is probably significantly worse on sim performance than a few emails.

The checkpoints email the server when a racer passes, but since each checkpoint only has to send a single email at a time, having a 20 second delay there is not a problem. The checkpoint also shuts off the sensor as soon as that happens.

Obviously, you have to be responsible with how you use LSL functions, and how you "get around" certain built in limitations.

- Jon

I built a system to manage kart races. I didn't use e-mail or XML-RPC

I made the checkpoints walls with volume detect and communicated through collisions into the drivers helmet (which has it's key registered into the race) for each driver to see their progress and had the leaderboard linked to the start/finish line. Don't quote me on this, but I would imagine a listen on a private channel during the race would be quite a bit less strain than emailing every half a second.

That's a cool system, but I don't think you understood what I was saying (or maybe you did, and the above doesn't apply to me).

The server sends a single email to each checkpoint at the start of a lap (the laps are timed). When the racer passes a checkpoint, the checkpoint sends a single email back to the server indicating the racer has successfully passed the checkpoint.

So the checkpoint has two things going on: an email timer, running every 2 seconds, to check for incoming email, and a sensor, running every 0.1 seconds. I thought about replacing the sensor with what you described with a wall and collisions, and may end up doing just that.

I'd be really interested in seeing your kart racing system -- I'm in the middle of building a custom gokart for Megz for her racetrack at Enchanted. Your system sounds like it might be perfect for what she's trying to accomplish...

- Jon

How bout something like this. Before the start of the race have all the checkpoints email the starting gate thier Key. Then have the starting gate email all the keys to a server. Then use XML-RPC to poll the checkpoints every couple of seconds until the race is over. When you send an XML-RPC messege from an external server, it can recieve a reply from an inworld object. Thus you can sit in a loop and poll objects for thier status.

So every couple seconds the XML-RPC sends a status messege to each checkpoint and they each reply with whatever kind of information you want the server to know.

I've shy away from using XML-RPC polling like this, because it doesn't seem very friendly on the servers. But if it's only polling during active races that doesn't seem so bad.

Well, two problems with this:

1) I don't know what all the keys will be during a race - the concept is sort of like a drop-in race, not one where people have to pre-register. Since the laps are timed, we can spread the "race" over a couple hours, and thus reduce load on the sims.

2) I don't have access to an external server, so XML-RPC is out of the question.

- Jon

Ahh, my system was setup for registered karts. I still think that a listen on a private channel would be more efficient than emails, especially if you eliminate the sensors.

And I think I may have deleted most of my system. It was supposed to be part of a GDC entry but my partner disappeared without completin the entry info. I got frustrated and deleted it all. I may have earlier copies of stuff though.