From the Wyverns nest

The Babylon 5 Experience

Babylon 5 was one of the major Science Fiction TV series of the 1990’s. The show was set on a 5 mile long space station populated by 250,000 humans and aliens. It featured a five-year-story covering the events leading up to and immediately after a major galactic war.  For the time the show featured groundbreaking CGI technology.  However, it isn’t possible do a fair and just description of the station and the plotline, so I would recommended watching the series on DVD instead!

The Babylon 5 Experience is a partial reconstruction of the station and is a roleplaying area (although they do make non-roleplayers welcome).   It shares a full sim with another roleplaying build - the Wheel of Time.  With the Experience being located above 2000m in the sim.

The build features 11 levels to explore, including residential areas, shopping areas and clubs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Returning to Whence it came…

On the 18th of June 2008, Abalus rose from the deep.  Sometime towards the end of December and early January 2009, Abalus will be returned to the deeps.  This is the unfortunate consequence of a policy change by Linden Labs in which the cost of the Open Spaces product has been dramatically increased and severely limited.  I can’t stand here and say that we had been perfect and the sim had always been a true open space, but rules are usually there to be bent and subverted.

Linden Labs are probably acting within what they feel the market will support. Even with the new limits, the Open Space sim is still the most cost effective product in terms of Land at ~L$5 per 16m² per month. Contrast that with the raw cost (sans premium fee) of a small 512 m² plot of mainland which will cost ten times that in tier.  If you need prims however, it is probably the worst product to have. Even the new Homestead sim is not exactly poor value in terms of L$ per prim, being less costly per prim then a 4096 m² mainland plot - the main difficulties lie in the yet to be disclosed scripting limitations that Open Spaces and Homesteads will be subject to.

However, Abalus can not continue as is in the form of a revised Open Space or a Homestead, and by itself it does not generate enough revenue to be a full sim.  Therefore the decision has been taken to merge Abalus with our close neighbour and friend to the east, Equus.

Currently Abalus has it’s winter coat on and is a fairly pretty place to see.  After Christmas I will most likely start picking non-copy objects off the sim and towards the end of the year I may empty it.  So it’s probably best to come visit whilst it is still here.

It’s an event…

Sometimes weird bugs creep into scripts especially those that have morphed and grown over time.  I was having a problem with settings not getting stored by the object and getting reset to default or stuck on an old value.  I was wondering if I had found a weird SL bug, but it turned out I had been unintentionally using a workaround that was no longer working in the latest server version and I had a basic script mistake that I was working around with some over complicated functionality.

My problems stemmed from the fact my scripts often contain the following statement:

default {
on_rez(integer start_param){
llResetScript()
}

I primarily do this in any script where I use llGetOwner() in order to ensure that any listeners or other functions depending on the users key are set up correctly.  However, resetting the script means that it sets any variables used back to default values.  My work around for this was to store the variables in the description field of a child primitive, a technique known as primitive parameter overloading.

If my objects were just rezzed on the ground, I would of been OK at that point.  But they are not, they are worn attachments.  Attachments don’t tend to easily let you edit there description fields when worn.  If the description is blank, it seems to let you write it once or twice, but not always.  Attachments will revert any object name changes on being un-worn, it looks like the description field gets reverted as well.

However, after a little advice from a friend who mentioned that I was probably doing something fundamentally wrong and I that shouldn’t be using llResetScript() in the on_rez event if I wanted to persist data, I decided to go back and revisit events and how they are triggered.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stargates!

When Abalus was first set-up, one of the first things Nimbus rezzed was the Stargate at the sim entry point.  This gate had all the functions you might expect, flashing lights, noises, event horizon and a kawooosh!

When I first came into SL in 2006, I remember stumbling across the Cleary region and finding a stargate there.  I took one of their free stargates and placed it at my home in Jsindo.  At the time I was on a 512m² plot and a stargate ate badly into my prim allocation so I removed it and thought nothing more.

The Stargate looks cool and serves as a nice central item for the sim rez point in Abalus.  It also provides a link into a network of other gates.  But does it have any other uses?

Read the rest of this entry »

Sim Building!

Following the terraforming of Abalus by Daryth and a few minor adjustments by me and Nimbus, the next task is to decorate the sim.  We have 3750 prims on the sim of which we want to reserve 750.  This leaves 3000 prims to do our own builds and for general sim landscaping.

I don’t have the time or skill to build everything a sim needs, so time to go shopping!

Read the rest of this entry »