Month: June 2012

SL9B: Building underway!

Posted on by Inara Pey

Buidling is now underway on the central SL9B sims, and exhibits are starting to take shape. All exhibitor notifications have been processed and e-mails sent out. Sadly, as the event was over-subscribed with 488 submissions vying for 350 parcels, not every application could be accepted – so if you have not received an e-mail, the organising team offer their apologies, but there really wasn’t the room to fit everyone.

As the official blog post states, this doesn’t stop you joining with other events being held across the grid, or from displaying your build yourself – and there will be room to advertise it and encourage people to visit via the Celebration Hub.

Also, in terms of events – the SL9B Auditorium Booking form is still available.  If you would like to use the auditorium for non-commercial group discussions or presentations about self-help, SL skills, community outreach, health, fashion, news, round tables, technology, etc – then please complete this form ASAP.

In the meantime, here’s a little slideshow, which I hope doesn’t give too much away, showing the building progress on the sims.

(Click here to see the slideshow full screen)

About SL9B

SL9B is being organised by residents, for residents – there is no direct involvement from Linden Lab. Along with the festivities there will be fundraising for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, a charity supported by Dream Seeker Estates.

Related Links

Genie out of the bottle: advanced tools capability used for griefing

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update 11th June: Oskar Linden has provided further feedback on this situation. 

Update June 6th: Oskar Linden has confirmed that the Advanced Creation Tools capabilities that were rolled-out to the Magnum RC channel will remain disabled until at least next week, although no firm decision has been on re-enabling them.

Update June 5th 11:30 UTC: The rolling restarts completed at 03:39 UTC. At present, no further updates have been given on the forum post relating to the restarts, but this may change later during the course of today. Oskar Linden has reiterated that due to this rolling restart, there will be no main channel deploy today and that details on Wednesday’s RC deploys are still TBA. My apologies for late timing of this update; a small matter of real life prevented me putting my nose in front of the keyboard any sooner!

Last week saw elements of the new Second Life Advanced Creator Tools rolled-out to the Magnum channel. As I reported at the time, the tools were issued without the new permissions system, but with safeguards that (it was hoped) would prevent misuse.

Today, however, a party or parties unknown started to use teleport functions of the new tools outside of the Magnum Release Channel as a means of griefing. People first became aware of the issue as individuals and groups started finding themselves randomly teleported around the grid, which sparked speculation on Twitter. Later, messages started circulating in-world among groups, outlining issues, such as this one, sent out to the NCI Citizens Helper Group (with thanks to Raylene Gothly)

Ok to everyone, there is something seems grid wide, we do not know if its a bad code in certain sims or if someone has found a way to teleport grief. But its happening all over, so I’m not sure. however I’d like to let everyone know we are aware of this. Suddenly you are just teleported away, best to log off and relog to get out of it, as it seems to continue to teleport you, I was teleported 3 times when I relogged… Dont be frightened it just seems to be a mess up.

The only regions unaffected by the griefing tool appear to have been those on the Magnum RC (where the new teleport functionality has safeguards) and those sims that had script capabilities disabled. Messages were thus circulated to land holders to disable scripting in their regions to avoid the issue, at least until Linden Lab responded to the situation.

Linden Lab themselves commenced efforts to stop the problem with emergency rolling restarts across the grid, announced via a Grid status update and a forum post:

To solve a security issue with the Experience Tools that were deployed to Magnum last week we are doing an emergency simulator rolling restart deploy. This has already begun.

Regions on the following channels will be restarted with the fixed code:

Main Channel
BlueSteel
LeTigre

Magnum will not be restarted because the issue is not possible in Magnum regions. We will have no rolling restart Tuesday morning. The Wednesday morning RC channels will roll at the usual time.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.

I’ll update here when further information is available.

SL9B: Let the building commence!

Posted on by Inara Pey

The sims for SL9B are now open for exhibitors to commence work on their builds!

Well in excess of 400 applications for spots have been received, and while e-mails confirming the success of applications are going out, it will take time for all notifications to be sent – so if you haven’t yet received an e-mail, give it a little time, the team are working through things as quickly as possible, but the volume means there will be unavoidable delays (so if you haven’t already, why not start work on your build elsewhere?).

As previously mentioned, there are a number of steps successful applicants need to take  / be aware of in order to secure their parcel and start work:

  • You will need to have two free Group slots – one for the SLB Community Group, one for the SLB Exhibitor and Entertainment Group
  • You must join the SLB Community Group in-world (if you haven’t already done so)
  • To gain an invitation to the Exhibitor and Entertainment Group, please request the help of an Exhibitor Assistant (EA) via the SLB Community Group
  •  An EA will IM you (again, there might be a slight delay in this, there is liable to be a high volume of calls being handled initially!) with your invitation to join the Exhibitor and Entertainment Group and other essentials to enable you to get to work on the sims
  • Once on-site, make sure you have the Exhibitor and Entertainment Group as your active tag and everything you place out for your build must be set to the Exhibitor and Entertainment Group, or they will be returned after one minute
Egyptian Mystery at SL9B (credit: Crap Mariner)

Key build notes (please also refer to the SL9B event policies):

  • All builds should be no larger than 32×32 metres or exceed a Land Impact (prim count) of 257
  • Mesh and sculpts are welcome within builds, but please keep the use of the latter to a minimum / to essentials only
  • If possible, please do not use any scripts that require interacting with the region server or an external server/database for information to function
  • Please try to restrict the use of physics-enabled objects and remember that no temp-on-rez prims (aka no temp rezzers) are allowed—this includes holographic rezzers or any devices that momentarily rez a temp structure. Exhibits that utilize the physics engine will be reviewed prior to opening to make sure that they will not cause problems when the regions are filled with visitors
  • All builds must conform to SL “General” rating requirements
  • Selling is prohibited. Free gifts, or “freebies,” are fine. Additionally, displays should have actual content, not just look like advertisements.

About SL9B

SL9B is being organised by residents, for residents – there is no direct involvement from Linden Lab. Along with the festivities there will be fundraising for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, a charity supported by Dream Seeker Estates.

Related Links

Viewer release summary 2012: week 22

Posted on by Inara Pey

This is a weekly summary of changes to all SL Viewers / clients of which I’m aware and which are in popular use across the grid / listed in the TPVD. Detailed links to said Viewers / clients can be found in my Viewer Round-up Page. The links supplied in this summary are either to change logs or to reviews within this blog.

A number of updates last week, including the SL Official Release, Dolphin, Restrained Love, and Lumiya, as well as from the “usual suspects”: Niran’s, Zen and Cool VL.

Updates for week ending: 3 June, 2012

  • SL Viewer updates:
    • Release version: rolled to 3.3.2.258114 on May 29th, which includes the Local Textures option
    • Development: rolled to 3.3.4.258391 on May 30th
  • Dolphin Viewer rolled to version 3.3.8.23798 – May 30th (release notes)
  • Exodus has introduced nightly builds ahead of the next release
  • Niran’s Viewer rolled to 1.39 on the 29th May (release notes)
  • Restrained Love rolled to 2.8.3.2.(3.3.4.23490) on June 3rd (release notes)
  • Zen Viewer released version 3.3.3.7 May 30th (release notes)
  • Cool VL Viewer rolled to 1.26.4.16 on June 1st, (change log here)
  • Lumiya rolled out version 2.0.3 on May 29th (release notes)

Related Links

SL9B: Calling all SLB events and organisers!

Posted on by Inara Pey

As promised, the centralised SL9B sims will feature an events hub that is available for other SL9B events to be advertised. The hub will be located in the welcome area, immediately available to those arriving, allowing other communities and events to promote the SLB celebrations they are holding this year as well.

If you are organising or host an SLB event, then the organisers of SL9B would like to hear from you! Here’s what to do:

  • Create a notecard with all the relevant information on the event: description, date(s) / time(s), venue(s), maturity rating, SLurl and anything else you think will encourage someone reading it to attend your event
  • Create a “poster” to advertise the event. This should be in the form of a texture (no bigger than 256×256 pixels) which can be a photograph or illustration – but which again should include the name of the event and the date(s) / time(s)

Enclose BOTH of these in a notecard, together with a landmark for the event, give the notecard a suitable title (e.g. “Notification of XXX SL9B event”, where XXX is the name of your event), add contact details (in case we need to contact you) and send the covering notecard to Dmom2k Darwin in-world. Please ensure you get the details to Dmom2k on or before June 14th, 2012.

Please do make sure everything you send is 100% correct. We won’t have the time to check SLurls, landmarks or spelling. All received posters will be displayed in Givers at the hub, allowing visitors to collect notecards and LMs for events which interest them.

Let’s work together to make SL9B an awesome grid-wide celebration!

ETA: revised image size for posters. Now 256×256 rather than 512×512. 

Tyrehl Byk and Ultraviolet Alter: Almost Flat Land

Posted on by Inara Pey

I first came across Tyrehl Byk via his SL performance art pieces, Catharsis and Particle Phastasmagoria last year, and was completely enchanted in his use of particle effects and music to create marvellously immersive art shows. Now Tyrehl is back at the Linden Endowment of the Arts with a new full-sim feature, Almost Flat Land, which again uses particle effects, this time in an immersive environment in which you are very much a participant.

Arrival: take heed of the notes

On arrival at the installation, you will find yourself deep in a cavern – a foreword, if you will, to the piece itself. Here are instructions on setting your graphics particle and media settings to get the most out of your experience. High-end graphics do not need to be enabled, so long as you ramp-up the particle count to its fullest extent. You will, however, need both media and sound enabled to gain the most from Ultraviolet Alter’s soundscape – visiting the installation without either enabled with greatly diminish your experience.

Gallery

Once you are set, take the teleport down to the surface, where you will find yourself in the gallery, a hall that appears to have suffered the ravages of some geological event – and possibly something more. Here your task is to find a diary, one which offers a vivid tale of stranded explorers, missing team members and strange creatures from another dimension. It also perhaps carries a stark warning: the final pages incomplete and spattered with blood.

Diary

However, to consider Almost Flat Land a mystery waiting to be solved, would be a mistake. The diary isn’t a narrative device that guides you through a story. Rather it is a means of providing context for the rich soundscape and of encouraging you to explore; to simply stand and cam your way around would be a mistake, and would leave you missing out on a lot. And there is a lot to discover – far more than the water-encroached landscape might suggest, including a hidden portal taking you to another aspect of the piece.

Portal

The installation offers itself to a wide range of interpretations. There are stories to be told here, whether you chose to frame them with the passages of the diary or not. As an immersive experience, it offers images and sounds that will doubtless resonate differently and uniquely for each of us, even when using the diary as a guide for the imagination.

Why not take an hour to discover what it says to you?