llTakeControl issue and the Horizons Experience

Posted on by Inara Pey
Horizons Experience may have robots on the loose, but stopping them is proving a bit harder for some than was intended
Horizons Experience may have robots on the loose, but stopping them is proving a bit harder for some than was intended

Update, November 24th: This issue now has a fix, please refer to my update article.

Note: this issue was discussed at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday, November 18th, together with wider issues around llTakeControl. You can follow he full conversation via the meeting video, between the 10:16 and 36:22 marks. In this report, I have attempted to focus solely on the Horizons Experience issue.

The TL;DR short form of what follows is that if you playing the Horizons Experience using a TPV, you may find the gun required for Quest 3 in the game  – the forest shoot-out with robots – doesn’t work (Firestorm and Alchemy have the issue, for example). If so, you’ll need to switch to the official viewer to complete that Quest. When you have done so, you can then switch back to using your preferred viewer.

For those interested in the background, as in as small a nutshell as possible: the function llTakeControls has a long history of not behaving well. One of the issues was that it prevented interaction (left-click touch) with objects when in Mouselook, prompting SVC-7532 to be raised.

A fix for this problem was implemented in February 2016. However, while it fixed the left-click touch issue, it broke many weapons systems (see BUG-37693) as well as causing other problems (see BUG-11602). As TPVs tend to be a used a lot by people involved in SL combat environments, some – such as Firestorm and Alchemy – didn’t implement SVC-7532.

The Horizons Experience gun used in Quest 3, however, is designed to work with the SVC-7532 behaviour change, and so may not work for everyone using a viewer which does not have SVC-7532 implemented. Note the “may not” there. If you happen to be on a TPV viewer without SVC-7532, but are wearing an attachment already using llTakeControls when you enter the Horizons Experience, then the gun might work for you (this has been my own experience).

The problem now is what to do. Rolling back the behaviour change implemented in SVC-7532 is not seen as ideal, as it breaks expected functionality elsewhere. Similarly, any “blanket” implementation of SVC-7532 is going to completely break a lot of weapons systems, which the Lab would rather avoid. There’s also the fact that this is one issue among a number caused by llTakeControl (see BUG-8265 for other issues with it), so the Lab is going to have to spend time in further investigations to determine how they’ll handle things going forward.

At the moment, two possible short-term solutions for the “Horizons gun problem” were suggested at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday November 18th (video):

  • Re-scripting the Horizons gun / shooting system
  • Implementing some kind of toggle via the Advanced or Develop(er) menu so that users can switch between the two llTakeControl behaviours depending on the weapon system they are using.

At present, the Lab might be leaning towards the second option. However, and as noted, no decision has been made as yet.

In the meantime, if you encounter the “Horizons gun problem” when using a TPV, you’ll need to switch to the official viewer to complete Quest 3.

With thanks to Whirly Fizzle.

Published by Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

6 thoughts on “llTakeControl issue and the Horizons Experience”

  1. Is this issue in Firestorm 4.7.9? Because I had it on Firestorm 4.7.7 64bit, but when I switched to Firestorm 4.7.9 64bit the gun in the 3rd quest worked for me.

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    1. I was informed that the problem should affect all Firestorm users – after I’d actually completed the game three times using Firestorm 4.7.10. In my case, it appears that I had an attachment already using llTakeControl, which enabled the gun to work; when I removed that attachment (a ring with an RLV locking script intended to prevent it being knocked off my hand during outfit changes), the gun ceased working for me.

      Could it be you changed outfit between trying the game with 4.7.7 and 4.7.9, and in the latter situation, you were wearing an outfit with an attachment using llTakeControl?

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      1. No, it was the same outfit. I simply logged off, switched to Firestorm 4.7.9 and logged in with it. I don’t think I had an item using that function (at least I’m not aware of that), but for sure RLV was not enabled in my viewer. To be sure, now I tried it out the quest again, removing every scripted attachment. The gun still works. Viewer version is Firestorm 4.7.9 64 bit Linux

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  2. This could suck big-time for Linux users.

    The “official” viewer for Linux is still classed as a beta, and I cannot get it to install on Mint Linux, a fairly common Ubuntu derivative. I can think of several possible reasons, but since it’s a Beta, no support. I am disinclined to change a system that, other than this, works. I do have another Viewer, which worked under Windows, that loads with WINE, but the SL Viewer doesn’t.

    (The bear, being of a sober disposition, has planned a HALO drop of an assault team onto the objective, with NGS from a Naval Syndicate cruiser off-shore. There are times to be sneaky, and times to blow shit up with overwhelming firepower. Some may think this boring. but the bear could watch triple six-inch turrets firing salvoes all day.)

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