llDie() and Parcel Prim Limits

Hi,

I'm a professional programmer by day, new to LSL but really liking it so far.

Here's my question:

I'm making a game that Rezzes objects that contain 9 prims each. The game itself is 6 prims. These objects are set to llDie after 5 second, or if the player shoots them. When shot they communicate back to the game that they are shot through whisper. They are not linked to the main object.

Everything works fine in a big sandbox, but on my 512 parcel with the 100 prim limit, it hits the prim limit much more quickly than expected (after only a few objects rez and die, with no where near 5 or 10 of them rezzed at once, which would be the expected limit).

The bullets they are shot with don't seem to be the problem, they die on impact reliably, and I can sit on my parcel and fire the gun with the game not running forever and not run into the prim limit (no cyan pixels in the map showing lingering bullets either).

Is there a delay between when an object llDies and when the prims get "returned to the parcel"?

Is there any way I can probe the availble/used prims in the parcel the object is in? At least it would make debugging things easier. At best it would let the game go into a lower prim mode in a limited sized parcel.

Make the objects 'temp on rez'. That'll give them a usable life of about 1-2 minutes, before the sim will auto-kill them. If they're dying after 5s anyway, that's a non issue. Temp on rez objects don't count against the parcel's prim limits. If your bullets die on collision (with object or land), make them temp on rez too.

You can do this by checking the 'temp on rez' box in the edit window (object pane, I think) before you put it in the rezzer's inventory, or you can set this property from within the script.

Excellent, that cleared the problem right up. Exactly what I needed. Thanks.

Ziggy's already given you the perfect solution, but just to answer this question specifically:
Yes - there does seems to a scheduled prim recount somewhere in the system. I haven't seen official Linden comment yet, but enough resis have noticed this behaviour to confirm it.