"On" and "off" states versus "running" and "not running"

I'm making a sort of MystiTool wannabe HUD for myself. Many of the features are only needed occasionally so those scripts switch to and from an "off" state in response to a link message, with the "off" state containing only a link_message event to respond to an "on" message.

Having read the Babbage lag thread I've made a script that I can use to manually activate and deactivate the most rarely used scripts in the HUD prim. Would it make sense for me to extend this, so that rather than the scripts having on and off states they are set to "running" or "not running" by the main menu handler as required? Are there any obvious pitfalls I'd need to watch out for if I used this method?

"Not running" means that those scripts will be reset whenever you walk or teleport to a different region. If this matters in yours, go with the do-nothing state.

That's interesting, and it could be useful in some cases and a real pain in others. Are those scripts reset to a "running" state when this happens, or do they stay as "not running" and only reset when reactivated? And do they get the CHANGED_REGION notification when this happens?

The sleeping scripts never find out they crossed a region because they are inactive at the time. When you restart them, they jump right into state_entry as if they were reset in the normal way.

Thanks for those tips, Viktoria.

essentially what happens is they loose the pointer to where they are in the current execution cycle, because it's not transferred by the previous sim since the script is no running.

it's kinda like reading a book, and when the script get set to not running, you are placing a bookmark where you stopped.... except that the bookmark is chained to the table like a bank pen, so when you take the book to a new table (sim), the bookmark gets pulled, and you get to start all over...

note that this DOESN'T happen when the object goes to inventory (the last script execution position is saved)

Stated like it has been so far it does not sound too bad. But it is really a very big gotcha if you are storing data in the script, you loose it all after changing regions.

love the quote

What quote? I saw where people stated that the script was reset and the pointer was lost. You know and I know that if a script is reset then it also looses all stored data. For people new to scripting the connection may not be as clear.

I mean the signature quote =P

Ah OK.

And on that............... Any more news or did they kind of figure out just how badly they screwed up when they tried moving the XStreet forum? Did they just decide to go back to forgetting this one?

I haven't heard anything more about that myself, tough I have read that SL Answers is now out of beta.

I assume like a great many articles in jira... the forums are forgotten for the moment... they'll finish demolishing things the first time a complaint comes across their desk though.

Good reason for us to be very, very quiet...

no point.... somebody will cause some type of stir up in RA eventually....

Well no, that is the part that is even more stupid on LL's part then whenever they shut the forum down. They have a treasure trove of information here that would attract so many more new people and keep them in their platform if they just actually advertised it. There is nothing LL can possibly create that can replace the Content Creation Forums. The forums work because of the caliber of people volunteering their time to actually answer questions. And it extends beyond here as there would be no LSL wiki without those same people. A video of Torley showing you how to open a menu is a very poor replacement.

Yes, I agree. I've become very addicted to this forum, and the people who post here are amazingly helpful. I use the search function here all the time to find things I need to know. I'd be lost without this place. To be fair though, didn't LL say they'd archive this forum and keep the search so we could still use it for reference? Not that it would be as good as what we have now, but it sounds like it won't disappear forever.

I've been reading some of the other wikis that LL has set up and they aren't nearly as good or easy to use. I don't like them much.

Losing this forum will be a tragedy. I don't use the other content creation forums very much, but it's a great comfort to know that they're there. Looking at today's batch of seasonally good-willed posts in the Resident Answers forum, I'm begining to wonder if shutting it down would be such a bad thing after all.

their loss, I certainly wont be using their yahoo answers style blog as forum mess to be helping with scripting... it's just not productive. I know I'm not the only person that feels this way.