Category: News-Opinion

AO, AO, it’s off to walk we go…

Posted on by Inara Pey

AOs – Animation Overriders – have been part and parcel of Second Life since not long after the dawn of time (or at least not long after someone figured out how to lose the duckwalk by one means or another).

Today, AOs are a fact of life in SL and come in many forms: some just handle the “basics” – walks, sits, stands; others combine functions, providing a one-stop solution for walks, sits, stands, dances, poofers and other little toys. Most run through scripted HUDs, some run via the client itself. Some handle just one set of animations, some can be configured with multiple sets of animations, driven by notecards; some even allow drag-and-drop. Beyond this there is a whole range of scripted attachments which may also contain a wide variety of animations, often for specialised use, but which also might contain walks, sits, and the like. Finally, and most recently, we have the rise of client-side AO systems, some of which have differing capabilities to one another.

It’s a bewildering plethora of approaches – although in the case of HUD systems and client-side AOs, most use the same core system of animation interpretation, the famous ZHAO (2) format.

As to advantages and disadvantages, all systems suffer from them to one degree or another. Client-side AOs for example, can override scripted animations, resulting in an avatar appearing to jerk around or behave strangely as the two animation clash.  Some AOs can be script-heavy – at least in terms of the number of scripts they contain; this can lead to finger-pointing by those with an eye on public or client-side script counters, regardless of how  efficient the scripts may actually be in terms of resource use.  Recent developments in Client-side AOs mean that drag-and-drop is fully supported – no need to send time and effort configuring notecards; the downside is, each TPV supporting the system tends to require a dedicated set of links within your inventory – so if you do swap between Viewers (using one for RP, another for photography, for example), then this can become a source of annoyance.

Now it appears that Linden Lab are considering the question of AOs, and whether to develop an approach of their own. This has been hinted at in the number of user group meetings, and is now the subject of debate over on the SLU forums.

Some have taken LL’s interest – expressed through Oz, as a sign that the Lab are looking towards a client-side implementation of some form of AO (perhaps animation controller  might be a better description) with the Viewer. However, as Adeon Writer notes in opening the discussion, LL have both the client and the server at their disposal, so are relatively free to approach the issue from any number of angles without being exclusively tied to a client-side solution.

A variety of ideas have been suggested in the SLU thread – some of which run very close to capabilities found in the latest client-side AO system; whether this is because people are happy with that system and wish to see it replicated, or whether it is because some are unaware of the client AO capabilities, is unclear. One idea that has gained support is for having a “wearable” attachment that allows animations to be associated with specific avatars have also been put forward (so you have one associated with your “normal” avatar, another if you have a “pixie” avatar, another for your “tiger” avatar, and so on), with an edit capability similar to any other wearable editor.

The problem here, of course, is that not only are there many potential routes towards a solutions – there is also the veritable minefield LL must tread simply due to the widespread use of scripted AOs and HUDS.  If they are seen to be doing anything that is  perceived to be about to “break” or “compete” with existing content, regardless of how wrong such perceptions might be, they are liable to find themselves being chased up a tree faster than a cat with an oversized dog on its tail…

Those at the Lab are obviously aware of this and it’s liable to be a reason why the matter hasn’t been dealt with before; despite claims to the contrary, the Lab is actually loathe to knowingly break content. It’s also most likely why Oz is taking time to understand the flavours of client-side AO used by TPVs in order to find out what works, what doesn’t, and how LL can work alongside existing HUD systems.

However you look at it, it is fair to say that something needs to be done to improve the current means by which AOs – client-based or HUD-based work. Neither is, from the perspective of the new user, a particularly elegant solution and requires something of a learning-curve in order to understand. Developing an alternative that is both easy to grasp, and which offers a high level of functionality for the sophisticated user, however, isn’t going to be a simple matter – if only because we all have differing needs from an AO, and the needs of the novice user don’t always sit well with the needs of the seasoned user.

For my part, I long ago gave up the use of an AO HUD in favour of a client-side solution, as the latest AO found in most v3.2-based TPVs offers me the greatest flexibility, occasional clashes with scripted animations notwithstanding. However, I do have the advantage in having several pre-prepared ZHAO-2 notecards, so switching over to (and switching between) client-side AOs is relatively simple. Given that the AO also supports multiple configuration cards, switching between sets is also easy. Which is not to say this approach is perfect; two of my irritations with it remain:

  • There’s the aforementioned inventory bloat when dozens of duplicate links are added to my inventory each time I opt to use an AO notecard with a Viewer equipped with a client-side AO
  • There is no persistence between relogs when running multiple AOs – the client will default to the first AO notecard / set in the list, regardless as to whether I’ve set a default or not.

Personally, I’d like to see a well-implemented animation control system from LL; they have the resources at their disposal to develop something that works fast and well and can meet the widest range of requirements from ease-of-use through to minimal resource demands. Perhaps even one that is extensible and takes into account purpose-based uses such as within combat environments (although that might well tread on a lot of toes). It’s not going to be an overnight thing – again, full kudos to Oz for feeling matters out on the technical side. It’ll be interesting to discover what – if anything – does develop down the road, and whether we will see anything emerge from LL in terms of AO system development / implementation.

ANS launches: “I have some good news and some bad news…”

Posted on by Inara Pey

The good new is… Automated Notification of Sales (ANS) rolled out yesterday for Direct Delivery. ANS allows information on sales to be forwarded to an external URL, allowing merchants to not only track sales, but to perform a range of different analyses on their sales and customers, in order to provide things like more focused support, identify product trends and so on.

Originally, it had been hoped that ANS would form part-and-parcel of the overall Direct Delivery roll-out, and many merchants were disappointed that this was not the case, with ANS being delayed for reasons unknown.

Yesterday’s announcement that ANS is now available came with a highly-informative user-written wiki article on how to make use of ANS. This is extremely well-presented and spells-out exactly how ANS data can be received and used.

However, it’s not all good news, sadly, as Darrius Gothly reports in the forum thread making the announcement:

 Sadly the ANS for Direct Delivery has a Severe bug and IS NOT SAFE TO USE YET!! The ANS Transaction being sent via the Marketplace service is duplicating the Item ID# (the numeric part of the Product’s listing page) into the Location field. The Location Field is supposed to have the Order Line Item ID number instead, showing which line item in an Order correlates to the ANS Transaction. As long as that field contains the wrong data, you CANNOT track an ANS transaction back to the specific line item in an Order.

Darrius has raised a JIRA on the matter, and merchants who use ANS / have an interest in using ANS are urged to log-in and WATCH the JIRA.

SL9B: end of an era?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Linden Lab have issued a call to help with SL9B celebrations, which reads in part:

Second Life’s 9th Birthday is coming up in June! This year it’s all about you — the denizens of the grid, the sultans of Second Life  and connoisseurs of creativity— and we want to highlight the many unique and innovative ways the community has made Second Life their own.

This year we will focus the spotlight on community events.  No one throws a better event or party than the Second Life community! If you’re having an event to celebrate Second Life turning nine, we want to know about it!

On the surface, this sounds great – until one realises that what is in fact being announced here is effectively the end of an era.

In previous years, Second life’s birthday has been marked through a coming-together of the community as a whole on a set of regions supplied by Linden Lab, to create a glorious theme park of builds and ideas created around a central theme, and in and around which parties and celebrations can be held. While not always free from controversy and acrimony, this approach provided a focal point for events and activities marking SL’s birthday, and helped to bring together residents from across the grid.

SL8B sims – not this year

Well, not any more.

Hidden within this announcement is the fact that this year there will be no large-scale provisioning of regions by LL; no central place to explore (lag and all) and see builds great and small and enjoy the thrill of celebration and discovery.

And this is a shame.

The SL8B events have traditionally been a marvellous way for the many talents and groups across SL to showcase their work, their talent and their vision. It’s hard to see how such an infinite diversity of ideas and vision can be replicated through a process of complete de-centralisation; one cannot imagine sim / estate owners  / groups developing large-scale builds specifically for SL9B, especially with so broad a theme as has been offered.

NY HealthScape roller coaster, SL8B – just one of the amazing and informative builds

I’ll personally miss the great gatherings like SL8B and its predecessors. I’ll miss the ability to wander through sim after sim of incredible builds, meeting talented content creators and designers and learning about the unique work of groups such as NY HealthScape.

Why LL have chosen to go this route is hard to fathom. Certainly, as mentioned above, previous SLB events haven’t been entirely free from controversy or headaches – but such upsets have rarely intruded into people’s overall enjoyment of the events themselves, and it is fair to say that where drama has occurred, it’s been somewhat confined to those involved, going largely unnoticed among those from across the grid who have attended events within the SLB sims and spent time exploring the exhibits.

As it stands, this announcement in some way reads less like a call for celebration and more like a renouncement of involvement in a key event in SL’s annual calendar.

And at the risk of repeating myself, that’s a shame.

When putting the “lab” back into “Linden Lab” might need more consideration

Posted on by Inara Pey

The recent Marketplace issues are not precisely news any more. LL are working to resolve matters, but in the meantime are coming under increasing backlash from users as in response to the overall management of the situation, both in terms of the manner in which the company has handled open communications with merchants on the matter and in the way the Marketplace as a whole has been handled over the years – which frankly, has been far from stellar.

My thoughts on LL’s handling of communications on the core issues is a matter of record here. Others feel the same way, so much so that a vexed comment from Sera Lok on Twitter lead to a response from Rodvik:

On the one hand, the honesty in Rodvik’s response is to be applauded. Free from BS, it speaks to the heart of the matter in many respects. However, it has to be said that one apology via Twitter isn’t actually enough.

Not One-off

The problem here is that the current Marketplace issues are not a one-off situation; the fact is that the Marketplace as a whole has effectively lurched from controversy to controversy ever since XStreet, its progenitor (so to speak), was purchased by Linden Lab back in January 2009. Indeed, some of the problems being experienced today are as a result of issues relating to the re-coding / relaunch of XStreet as the SL Marketplace back in 2010, as LL themselves note in updates to their forum posts on problems.  As such, it has caused merchants and SL commentators to give voice to the widespread sense of frustration many feel towards LL and their management of updates and changes:

And herein lies the rub: one can well understand the managing, maintaining and updating a beast such as Second Life, which has had an organic growth over its 10-plus years of life,  to be nothing short of a major headache. It’s a difficult and complicated monster to control without sometimes breaking things; but the same cannot be said of SLM. This is a product that was originally purchased  as XStreet in a reasonably robust and working form, thus LL had no reason to rush through its redevelopment  and implementation  – yet that appears to have been precisely what happened in the drive to replace XStreet with SLM.

There can be no excuse here: the entire process appears to have been mishandled from start to finish, frequently with deadlines seeming to come ahead of consideration as to whether code was ready and often missing critical functions.  Even the recent roll-out of Direct Delivery trod this all-too-familiar route; while merchants openly pleaded with the Commerce Team not to roll out DD without ANS (Automated Notification of Sale) with some even posting precisely why ANS is vital to many merchants. Yet, when launched, DD brought with it the statement that ANS would be enabled in “next couple of weeks” (a time frame which itself, unsurprisingly, has slipped given the ongoing problems).

“Putting the Lab back into Linden Lab”

In a recent interview with Games Industry,  Rod Humble indicated that one of his goals from the start of his tenure as CEO was to “put the ‘lab’ back into Linden Lab”. Well, the mark of a good lab is its ability to rigorously apply robust and consistent processes and procedures to the work it carries out. At the moment, particularly with reference to the company’s management of the Marketplace, it would appear that much more needs to be done before the “Lab” is anywhere near being back in “Linden Lab”.

While it is very good to know the team is “crunching hard” to resolve issues, one very much hopes that the outcome will be more than a simple “fix it and move on”, leaving the door for the same mistakes to again be made in handling future Marketplace updates. Rather, one hopes that a long, objective look will be taken as to how things are being managed and the necessary checks and balances implemented to ensure that product roll-outs are no longer subject to the poor level of quality that  – as Tateru points out in her Tweet – users have been forced to expect and accept over the years.

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LL: reaching out creatively

Posted on by Inara Pey

Back in the mists of time, I wrote several pieces centred on Linden Lab, one of which in particular, Business, Collaboration and Creative Growth, focused on the Lab’s relationship with the pool of talent it has at its fingertips: the user base.

In that piece, I bullet-pointed a number of ways in which engagement with the community could directly help market and promote Second Life as a whole, noting in closing:

“In short, Linden Lab needs to start collaborating with the user community once more and thinking more holistically about their product. Doing so isn’t going to solve all of SL’s woes (would it were that easy); but it will represent a major step in the right direction.”

Well, it appears that at least some of the holistic thinking is taking hold at the Lab, as the SL website log-in / splash page has been quietly undergoing an overhaul of late.

For a good while, the screen comprised a series of images that fell somewhat short of enticing – if not outright ugly. Perhaps the most famous of these was the “vampire in a snowstorm” image.

Camp-ire: the vampire-in-a-snowstorm log-in page image

Several commentators took LL to task over the images selection – which could at the time best be described as “vapid” – and earlier this year things started improving, with crisper images of avatars appearing, together with picture credits.

Now LL have gone the extra mile and not only engaged with some of best photographers and artists in SL to produce some really outstanding images for the log-in screen, they would appear to have started working on a theme-based approach to advertising SL through the splash page – the current theme being music. I caught sight of the new pages while browsing Strawberry Singh’s blog, but got sidetracked away from the new art by things like Havok sub-licencing and Marketplace updates, which became the focus of recent blog posts.

Strawberry is one of a number of SL artists who were asked by LL to produce music-themed images a few weeks ago, the other being Harlow Heslop, Miaa Rebane, siXX Yangtz and Harper Beresford, and Ivoni Miles. The results are simply spectacular.

Strawberry Singh’s SL log-in page artwork, featuring herself and Prad Prathivi

All of the images capture the heart of music entertainment in SL in all its diverse forms, with Strawberry’s in particular hinting at more – friendship and relationships. This is a fresh move from Linden Lab in combining user-generated images on a thematic basis to help promote SL and it is one to be applauded – and one I hope we’ll see more of – for how better to capture the rich diversity of Second Life other than by working with those intimately involved with it?

With efforts like this, it would be nice to see some kind of Destination Guide tie-in as well: perhaps with a special sub-category of “What’s Hot” appearing on the log-in screen carrying information on locations directly related to the image theme: in this case, a list of the currently hot live music venues in SL.

Harlow Heslop’s evocative image

After all, if music is being used to promote SL – then it makes sense for LL to provide the follow-through and help those drawn to SL as a result of the theme to actually  connect with the in-world music scene – or whatever the chosen promotional theme is.

Of course, this isn’t the first time LL have sought to work with members of the community, and it would be unfair to cast it as such. But given the way in which LL has been perceived to be retreating from direct engagement with the community over the last few years – a perception they have contributed in no small part themselves – this move is to be commended. Hopefully, it’ll be the first step along the way to the Lab working more directly with members of the user community to better promote SL and reach out to potential users. Certainly, there are many powerful tools that can be used in this regard – such as machinima, something I’ve again discussed elsewhere – and the talent to leverage those tools is rich within SL itself. I’ve little doubt that were this talent to be harnessed, the results would be beyond anything LL have themselves been able to produce using this incredible medium.

In the meantime, credit and thanks must go to Strawberry, Harlow and the other contributors to the artwork for their time and effort. So why not take a look at their work for yourself? (Remember you’ll have to log-out of the SL website in order to display the log-in / splash page and see the images.)

With thanks to Strawberry Singh.

Marketplace: LL updates further, but communications hardly “regular”

Posted on by Inara Pey

Linden Lab has issued a further brief update about the on-going Marketplace issues, to whit:

Today we updated Marketplace to address two of the top three outstanding issues:

  • WEB-4580: purchases are now delivered to recipients with the inventory name (which does not allow unicode characters). This will prevent future orders from getting stuck in the Being Delivered state due to this issue. In addition, all orders affected by this problem have been pushed through.
  • WEB-4587:  updates have been made to support updating store search results, which we will process over the next week; we continue to work on the issue related to mismatched data on listings. We do know that this issue has existed since September 2010 (during the migration from Xstreet to the Second Life Marketplace).

We continue to work on the other Marketplace JIRAs and will provide additional updates as soon as possible.

Menwhile, Rodvik has stepped in to defend how matters have been handled in terms of communications, stating on Twitter:

While it is true that the Commerce Team clearly engaged with individuals experiencing problems through the medium of e-mail exchanged, it is nevertheless also true that feedback on this matter in the broader sense has been severely lacking from the Lab, with little or nothing being posted to either the main forum thread on the WEB-4587 issues or the JIRA itself. This left many merchants both frustrated and feeling as if they’d been abandoned, while those who had received some feedback from the Lab via e-mail tried to pass on the information to a wider audience in lieu of LL doing so.

It is good that progress is being made – but equally, it would be nice if LL would do more to keep users openly informed. As those responding to Rodvik’s tweets note:

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