Month: July 2014

The Experience Keys project viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey
The cornfield (game play area iuses a much darker and more atmospheric windlight)
The Cornfield: the Lab’s Experience Keys demonstrator (game play area uses a much darker and more atmospheric windlight)

On Monday July 14th, Linden Lab issued the Experience Keys project viewer alongside the launch of their Experience Keys demonstration game, The Cornfield, which I’ve reviewed separately.

As a quick overview for those not in the know, an Experience in Second Life can be almost any immersive / interactive environment within SL where the user needs to provide permissions for objects, etc., to interact with their avatar. Experience Keys mean that anyone wishing to participate in any activities suited to the use of Experience Keys need only give their assent once, thereafter, actions within the Experience which affect their avatar happen automatically – teleports, attaching a HUD or item of equipment, etc. – without any need for user approval (although notification of so actions may still be displayed in the viewer window).

The Experience Keys project viewer – version 3.7.12.291846 at the time of writing – is available from the Alternate Viewers wiki page, includes a number of key UI updates which are used alongside experiences in Second Life, and which apply to those creating experiences, those using experiences, and those who allow experiences to run on their land.

Please note that until server-side support for Experience Keys is fully deployed across the main grid (Scheduled to complete on Thursday July 17th, some elements of the viewer will not function on BlueSteel or LeTigre RC regions  – for example, searching for experiences will not return any result if you are on a region running on either of these two RCs).

The Experiences Floater

Within the Experience Keys project viewer, this is accessed via Me > Experiences (no toolbar button or keyboard shortcut with the project viewer), and provides the means for users to locate experiences in Second Life, manage the experiences they have encountered during their travels through Second Life or which they have created or contributed to, and also check any actions any given Experience has performed on their avatar. It comprises five individual tabs.

Search

Allows you to locate experiences in SL by all or part of their name and filtered by maturity rating. The tab also includes an option to view the profile for an Experience (see below).

The Experience floater is accessed via Me > Experiences, and comprises 5 tabs. Search allows you to search for SL experiences
The Experience floater is accessed via Me > Experiences, and comprises 5 tabs. Search allows you to search for SL experiences

Allowed / Blocked

These two tabs allow you see those experiences you have either allowed – that is, you’ve granted permission to – and those you’ve blocked. A blocked experience is one in which you have refused to participate and have blocked it so that you will no longer be prompted to join it whenever you visit a region / parcel where it is active (until such time as you choose to revoke the block).

Each tab displays a list of experiences by name. Clicking on a name will display the relevant Experience Profile (see below).

The Experiences Allowed tab displays a list of experiences in which you have participated. Click on an experience name to display the associated Experience Profile. The Blocked tab is similar in nature, but displays all experiences you have blocked from bothering you
The Experiences Allowed tab displays a list of experiences in which you have participated. Click on an experience name to display the associated Experience Profile. The Blocked tab is similar in nature, but displays all experiences you have blocked from bothering you

Admin, Contributor and Owned

These three tabs respectively display:

  • Those experiences for which you have been made an administrator of (via a special group role called Admin). Administrators are those people assigned by the creator of an experience who can edit the Experience Profile
  • Those experiences for which you have been made a contributor (via a special group role called Contributor). Contributors are those people assigned by the creator of an experience who can contribute scripts and objects to an experience
  • Those experiences you have created and own. While an experience can be a collaborative piece – hence the Admin and contributor roles – one avatar must be the designated owner of an experience and hold overall responsibility for it.

Events

This tab allows you to see the actions (events) taken on your avatar by any experiences in which you’ve recently participated. It includes a number of additional options:

  • Notify: turn-on on-screen notifications for a given event – so if you wish to be notified each time your avatar is animated by any experience, for example, you can use this button
  • Profile: display the Experience Profile for the experience associated with the event
  • Report: will open the Abuse Report floater, which has been pre-populated with the relevant information, allowing you to instantly file an Abuse Report against an event / object which is causing grief  / harassment
  • Notify All Events: checking this will cause all on-screen notifications for events within any experience to be displayed by the viewer
  • Days: the total number of days history of events you wish the tab to display
  • Clear: clear the event list
  • < and >: page through the list.

Experience Profile

The Experience Profile floater
The Experience Profile floater

The Experience Profile provides the following  information on any given Experience:

  • The experience name
  • A short description
  • An image (if provided)
  • The maturity rating for the experience
  • The experience owner
  • The group associated with the experience
  • A link to any associated Marketplace store

In addition, the Profile contains four buttons:

  • Allow: will add the Experience to your list of allowed experiences without you having to actually visit it and agree to participate. When visiting experiences allowed in this way, you will not see any invitational dialogue boxes displayed, because the system will already consider you a participant. Note that if you have already participated in the experience, this button will be grayed-out
  • Block: will add the Experience to the list of those you have blocked, so that you will not be bothered with any invitational dialogues when visiting regions / parcels where it is running – although you also won’t be able to participate in it until such time as you unblock it. Note that if you have already blocked the experience, this button will be grayed-out
  • Forget: If you have previously added an Experience to either your Allowed or Blocked list, this button will remove it from whichever list it appears on. This means that for a previously allowed Experience, you will have to once again agree to participate in it when you next visit, and for a previously Blocked Experience, you will receive invitational dialogues on visiting it once more, allowing you to participate in it, if you’ve changed your mind.
  • Report: opens the Abuse Report floater, which has been pre-populated with the relevant information, allowing you to instantly file an Abuse Report against an event / object which is causing grief  / harassment.

Continue reading “The Experience Keys project viewer” →

SL projects update week 29/1: server, viewer, Experience Keys

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 29

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest status / updates / issues.

Main (SLS) Channel

On Tuesday July 15th, the Main channel was updated with the Experience Keys project, which had previously been running on Magnum. This roll-out coincides with the release of the Experience Keys project viewer (see below) and the release of the Lab’s first Experience Keys demonstrator game, The Cornfield.  Please refer to the release notes for further information.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday July 16th, the Magnum RC should be updated a new infrastructure project that adds support for the upcoming changes to the Skill Gaming policy. This would appear to be the changes required to support the new Skill Gaming region type. Release notes.

On Thursday July 17th, BlueSteel and LeTigre will both be updated with the Experience Keys project, but will otherwise remain on the same  server maintenance project as week 28, which addresses a JSON-related bug, an interest list related race condition, and to improve L$ transaction logging for payments made by scripted objects. See the release notes (BlueSteel) for details, and part 2 of my projects update for week 28.

SL Viewer

As noted above, the Experience Keys project viewer, version 3.7.12.291846, was released on Monday July 14th. This provides viewer-side support for accessing and managing SL experiences using the new Experience Keys permissions capabilities.

The Search tab on the new Experience floater - part of the Experience Keys project viewer
The Search tab on the new Experience floater, accessed from the Experiences option in the Me menu in the Experience Keys project viewer

This viewer can be used in conjunction with the Lab’s Experience Keys demonstrator game, The Cornfield, and with other experiences as they are opened to public use. Please keep in mind that the viewer may not behave correctly until after the server-side deployment of Experience Keys support has completed on Thursday July 17th.

For further details on Experience Keys, please refer to the following:

There are also some further notes from Dolphin Linden on the subject, below.

Yet More on Experience Keys

Dolphin Linden at the Simulator UG meeting
Dolphin Linden at the Simulator UG meeting

Dolphin Linden again attended the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday July 15th, where he answered more question on the Experience Keys project.

Lucia Nightfire offered up a couple of points of feedback which appear especially relevant to the new capabilities:

  • An estate / parcel setting to disable all non-experience scripts. This would be useful in game experiences, as it could prevent participants cheating by using non-game scripted objects
  • An estate / parcel setting to block all grid-wide experiences from running on an estate / parcel. Currently, any grid-wide experiences which come on-line have to be explicitly blocked by name, which means if an estate / parcel owner didn’t want any grid-wide experiences running on their land, they’d have to keep adding them to their block list as and when they become aware of them. A single check-box option would eliminate this.

Feature requests are to be filed on both of these points, which the Lab have agreed to look into.

Other Bits

Sim Crossing Hiccups

There have been renewed reports of region crossing issues which seem to be occurring regularly, but only between certain regions when tested. The issues mainly appear to affect vehicles and take the form of the avatar taking an exceptionally long period of time to cross between regions – with the vehicle the avatar is say upon taking up to 30 seconds longer. When this happens, the avatar appears to be visually unlinked from the vehicle, but the vehicle itself fails to get auto-returned, as the simulators appear to consider the avatar and vehicle as still being linked.

Motor Loon provided some specific details on the issue, and has indicated he will raise a bug report using the information he has, as the Lab are unaware of any specific problems which may cause this. However, while it has yet to be confirmed, it was also reported at the meeting at a similar issue on a region crossing between two regions was resolved by restarting them in a specific sequence.

A run through The Cornfield and the new Portal Park

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Portal Park offers access to The Cornfield, Linden Realms and other experiences, as well as places of its own to explore
The Portal Park offers access to The Cornfield, Linden Realms and other experiences, as well as places of its own to explore

On Monday July 14th, the Lab announced the opening of their new Experience Keys activity – The Cornfield. I didn’t have much of a chance to look at things myself at the time, but simply had a quick nose around. This being the case, I hopped back when time allowed and took a closer look.

First, the new Portal Park. Whereas the Linden Realms Portal Parks were fairly minimalist, being intended purely as waypoints to get to that game – which, I understand, the Lab has plans to update at some point in order to take advantage of Experience Keys – the new Portal Park design is far more of a hub, and so has a richer design.

The Tea Party glade in Portal Park1
The Tea Party glade in Portal Park1

A central landing point offers a paved area with seats, flowerbeds and access to eight areas reached by short paths. These are: The Cornfield, Linden Realms, the Premium-only Magellan Hunt, the Wilderness Experience (which I missed noting during my brief visit on July 14th), what appears to be an as yet unnamed entrance to a sci-fi / post apocalyptic experience (not currently open), a social area, a Gnome Village and a Tea Party glade (where the LDPW and members of Linden Lab were enjoying themselves following the opening of the Park on July 14th). Whether these latter two are intended to become the entrance-point for future experiences or simply places for users to meet and chat, I’ve no idea.

Each of the active games has a dedicated teleport portal, and the area in which the portal stands is themed on the game itself; so The Cornfield has an old barn containing its portal, for example, and the Linden Realms portal sits in a little meshy / cartoony space.  Only The Cornfield is currently Experience Keys enabled – Linden Realms, the Magellan Hunt and the Wilderness Experience are all pretty much as they always have been since each opened in SL.

The sci-fi area of the Portal Park - the location for accessing a future Experience?
The sci-fi area of the Portal Park – the location for accessing a future Experience?

An interesting point of note with Experience Keys is that until such time as the viewer-side updates have filtered through to all viewers, you don’t actually need to run the Project viewer in order to participate in an experience; any viewer is capable of receiving an initial invitation to join and Experience, and will allow you to do so. However, as the Experience Keys project viewer provides a lot more information about any given Experience and allows you to see what is happening with your avatar, it is perhaps preferable to use it until the viewer-side code is more widely integrated into viewers.

The Cornfield

As you approach the teleport portal for The Cornfield, a dialogue box is displayed, asking if you wish to participate. The information displayed by this dialogue box will vary, depending upon whether you are using the Experience Keys project viewer or not.

If you’re running the Experience Keys project viewer, clicking on the name of the Experience in the dialogue box opens the Experience Profile, allowing you to find out more about it.

An Experience dialogue box. On the left, as it appears in an Experience Keys enabled viewer, with options to display the Experience Profile (by clicking the Experience name link) and to accept / refuse the Experience and to block the Experience (so you'll never see a prompts anywhere for it again) or to block just the current inviter. On the right, how the same dialogue appears in a viewer that is non Experience Keys enabled - you can only opt to accpt or refuse the invitation
An Experience dialogue box. On the left, as it appears in an Experience Keys enabled viewer, with options to display the Experience Profile (by clicking the Experience name link) and to accept / refuse the Experience and to block the Experience (so you’ll never see a prompts anywhere for it again) or to block just the current inviter. On the right, how the same dialogue appears in a viewer that is non Experience Keys enabled – you can only opt to accept or refuse the invitation

Allowing the Experience via the dialogue box will permit you to pass through the portal and be delivered to the start of the game area, inside another barn. Here you’ll find yourself equipped with a large basket, some basic armour, a large plank of wood, and a HUD. Clicking the “?” on the HUD will deliver the game instructions to you.

The Cornfield is, at its most basic, very similar to Linden Realms – you spend your time running around, avoiding monsters (mutated “griefers” in this case), collecting corn cobs, jars of moonshine, and coins, rather than different coloured gems. However, there is also a lot more going on here.

The Cornfield game area (the game itself uses a darker windlight to enhance gameplay; the lighting used in this short is simply to show the location
The Cornfield game area (the game actually uses a darker windlight to enhance gameplay)

Continue reading “A run through The Cornfield and the new Portal Park” →

The Cornfield returns – as an Experience Keys demonstration!

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Portal Park offers access to The Cornfield, Linden Realms and other experiences, as well as places of its own to explore
The Portal Park offers access to The Cornfield, Linden Realms and other experiences, as well as places of its own to explore

On Monday July 14th the Lab announced the opening of a new Experience Keys demonstration game, featuring a return to the The Cornfield.

The blog post announcing the new demonstration reads in part:

Experience Keys are a new tool in Second Life that make it so you can opt-in to an entire experience made up of numerous scripted objects, rather than having to grant avatar permissions to every individual element of that experience. In other words, they allow creators to make experiences that are more immersive, because they’re not interrupted by permissions dialogues. Additionally, with Experience Keys, each of the scripts in the experience has access to a common private database that stores information across user sessions and simulator restarts; a powerful new capability for scripters.

Experience Keys are part of the Advanced Creation Tools the Lab has been developing over the last few years, and a special beta programme was recently opened to allow content creators the opportunity of trying-out the capabilities in their own experiences.

An old barn contains the portal leading to ... The Cornfield
An old barn contains the portal leading to … The Cornfield

The Cornfield (reached via a Portal Park), created by the Linden Department of Public Works (aka the Moles), is based on a piece of Second Life history familiar to many long-term residents.

The special trailer video below provides more information on the game.

To try-out The Cornfield, you’ll need to download and install the Experience Keys project viewer. – and I’ll have a more detailed looks at this viewer available soon.

Like Linden Realms, the SLurl initially delivers you to a Portal Park, which has been updated from the originals, and offers a number of places to explore, as well as the portals to both The Cornfield and to Linden Realms or the Premium-only Magellan Grid Hunt (neither of the latter appear to have yet been updated to use Experience Keys).

As the trailer suggests, The Cornfield is something of a shoot-’em-up, but with elements which will be familiar to anyone who has played Linden Realms – and there are wider game choices players can available themselves of as well.

So if you’re in need of letting off some steam, grab the project viewer, install it, and head over to the The Cornfield and give Experience Keys a go!

Related Links

Viewer release summaries 2014: week 28

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending: Sunday July 13th, 2014

This summary is published every Monday and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release updated to version: 3.7.10.291265 July 8th – formerly the Snowstorm viewer – Windows XP users, please note that you must have Service Pack 3 (Win XP 32-bit) or SP 2 (Win XP 64-bit) in order for this viewer to install (download page, release notes)
  • Release channel cohorts (See my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • SL Maintenance RC version 3.7.12.291824 released on July 10th – almost 40 MAINT fixes from the Lab “to make your Second Life smoother”  (download and release notes)
  • Project viewers:
    • Project refresh viewer version 3.7.12.291799 released on July 10th – contains an update to a large set of libraries used by the viewer to provide security, stability and consistency improvements to this and future viewers (download and release notes)

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

  • No updates

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer updated on July 12th – Stable release to version 1.26.12.7 and Legacy version 1.26.8.65 – core updates: please refer to the release notes

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

An equine roleplay in the name of conservation

Posted on by Inara Pey

Matoluta Sanctuary, Sartre; Inara Pey, July 2014, on FlickrMatoluta Sanctuary, Sartre (Flickr)

Matoluta Sanctuary is a newly opened role-play region with a difference. Offering people the opportunity to engage in equine role-play (i.e. actually taking on a horse avatar), the focus of the region and the community behind it is to raise awareness of the plight of the Colonial Spanish Horse on the North American continent.

These horses, perhaps more familiarly known as Spanish Mustang by some although there are in fact several strains and sub-strains, are  descendants of the original Iberian horse stock brought to America from Spain, and are one of only a very few genetically unique horse breeds worldwide.

Matoluta Sanctuary, July 2014
Matoluta Sanctuary

As with other breeds of horses introduced to the North American continent from Europe, some Colonial Spanish horses escaped into the wild, where, due to their nature and abilities, they became the preferred mount of the Great Plains tribes of native Americans. In more recent times their numbers have greatly reduced,  and the breed’s extinction status is regarded as critical.

The arrival area in the region in located overhead. Here you can obtain visitor information on the sanctuary, and background on the herd itself – which is modelled on a genuine herd of Colonial Spanish horses in Oklahoma.  You can also join the Sanctuary’s access group here. The fee is L$250 to join  – and is required for access to the region below (although there will be free access periods – check the calendar on the Matoluta Sanctuary website). Rezzing rights on the region cost L$500, and all fees go directly towards the upkeep of the region, events, etc.

Matoluta Sanctuary, Sartre; Inara Pey, July 2014, on FlickrMatoluta Sanctuary, Sartre (Flickr)

Note, as well, that visitor access is restricted to 10:00-20:00 Mondays-Saturdays; casual visitors arriving outside of these hours will be deposited at a corner tile on the region and will not be able to proceed further. From 20:00 through 10:00, access to the region is for members of the roleplay group and bloggers / photographers only. The latter can apply for special access by e-mailing matolutasanctuary@gmail.com with their credentials and then apparently going through an interview process. I’m not entirely sure how this works, as I e-mailed, but have yet to actually hear anything in reply, so am just quoting the information note card.

A teleport disc takes visitors down to ground level, and to one end of a watery canyon. Follow this down under the rocky arch and you’ll come to the sanctuary proper. Here a river flows outwards from distant falls and splits the land in two. On the left lays the open lands of what had been the Haskell Ranch, lost to a tornado in the 1900s, and now with only the broken remains of a windmill standing in memory of its passing. Across the water sits The Dark Glen, a place of tall trees and long grass, where many of the herd can be found.

Matoluta Sanctuary
Matoluta Sanctuary

The entire landscape has been designed by Mz Marville and, together with the sim surround, is somewhat evocative of the old American West, and is very photogenic. Wildlife is very much in evidence here: bears hunt fish in the river, eagles soar over the rocky outcrops, geese occupy a section of one river bank, while further inland sheep and deer can be found, as can, for the keen-eyed, badgers and beavers. And, of course, there may well be members of the herd roaming the landscape.

Those interested in joining the herd for role-play can do so by contacting Ursus Broono (also known as Manatou, the herd leader). When on-line, he can often be found up on the rocks overlooking the falls, near Badger’s Gap. There’s apparently a fair degree of etiquette involved in the role-play, so a chat with him beforehand by the curious might well be in order. Role-play on the region is entirely optional for visitors, although they are encouraged to join-in with the spirit of things if members of the herd are present. The welcome package includes a role-play attachment, and any animals visiting the region are encouraged to use the animal channels on the attachment for discrete chat.

atoluta Sanctuary, Sartre; Inara Pey, July 2014, on FlickrMatoluta Sanctuary, Sartre (Flickr)

This is an interesting concept in role-play and conservationism, and further information and news on activities and events can be found on the Sanctuary’s website, which also has information on a special photography contest being run to mark the opening of the region.

Related Links