RingGen - a new model of RingMaker

I finally took the time to create a new version of RingMaker, which I'm calling RingGen. This new version makes use of a seperate component for controlling sets of building blocks, which I hope will make it easier for other people to build tools (but that belongs in the scripting forum). There are several new features in RingGen:

- Settings always displayed in text above tool
- Chat from tool now heard only by owner
- Set color on specific side as well as all sides of blocks
- Set texture on blocks, on specific side or all sides
- Set texture scale on blocks, on specific side or all sides
- Not a strangely colored cone.

Another change is that now the ring won't change shape until you use the "ring" command. This allows you to change several settings without waiting for the ring to change after each one, but it means an extra step when you make a single change (e.g. thickness).

RingGen is currently available for L$1 at Ohno (91, 80, 96), but feel free to give away copies. It's in beta right now. Read the README inside.

BUT what about ShapeMaker???? Hopefully ShapeGen will be coming along soon. ShapeMaker actually makes spheres and tori out of rings, so it makes sense to get things working with RingGen first. When ShapeGen is done, RingGen will just be a part of it, and RingGen will be obsolete.

These tools are awesome, Cadroe!

One thing though--I'm having trouble with the syntax on the texture commands. This is how I thought it worked, but I can't find the permutation of commands to make it right.

/16 dxxxf82eb-fac5-dcd6-f707-7c6e0421edaa front

Also, both this and Prim Array require you to reset the script before it works. Thanks for your insanely cool tools.

Hey Falcao - I'm glad you're finding them useful. Thanks for pointing out the need to reset the scripts. I'll try to fix that (it's probably something simple and stupid).

First, about RingGen. I can't get in-world right now (I'm waiting for my discrete math class to start) so I might be wrong, but I think you want:

/16 texture dxxxf82eb-fac5-dcd6-f707-7c6e0421edaa front

But what you might want to do is go to my property in Ohno and find the ShapeGen beta. This is the current new version of ShapeMaker, so it makes rings and spheres (but not tori yet). The syntax for setting block properties is slightly different, but the advantage is that it remembers the settings from rez to rez. With ShapeGen you would do something like this:

/17 set texture dxxxf82eb-fac5-dcd6-f707-7c6e0421edaa front

Notice the extra "set". (I made up the channel number, I don't remember it, but it should say in the object description). I wish my work on these things wasn't so haphazard, but it's hard to find time and I do it in bursts.

By the way, what do you think about the tools using a predetermined private channel? When I first started doing these things I used the open chat channel and you had to start a command with the name of the tool, so it would know you were talking to it. But I didn't like polluting the open chat, and changed it to a private channel. I could let the user change the channel, but I've been afraid they would forget it and that newer folks would have trouble understanding about resetting scripts. But maybe not. I'm not sure how other scripted object makers handle it. I guess I could let the user set the channel and have it displayed with the other attributes in the object text. Anyway, if you or anyone else has some feedback, I'd be glad to hear it.

Have fun.

Oh, so ShapeGen subsumes the Ring Gen functions? I've been going into SL in bursts also just to try things out. I'll have to go in to test that.

I think the specified chat channel is the best solution. If you're building in a sandbox and you have Channel-Zero commands, it'd completely fill the tell with commands. And yesterday just before I wrote this I saw a huge build by you at the Anshe sandbox. Imagine the chat area around that if your tools were open-air command! (Nice orbital station btw)

Just for posterity and not for any reason that causes even the slightest bother, I should note that there's another quirk in Ring Gen--if not others. Shapes that rez touching land stop obeying once they intersect the land beyond a certain percentage of their volume. At least so it seems.

I'm having a ton of fun with these tools. HUGELY useful, Cadroe!

Ah, ShapeGen is no copy/mod, so there's no opening/reading the 'read me.' Could you copy and paste that here or in a separate thread about ShapeGen? Thanks Cadroe!