Category: Combat User Group

Linden Lab promotes updated SL Combat System 2.0 with video

Posted on by Inara Pey
Combat 2.0, courtesy of Linden Lab

As regulars to these pages are probably aware, I covered the Combat User Group meetings from February 2024 through until late July, 2024, during which Rider Linden worked with members of SL’s widespread community of combat enthusiasts on an initial overhaul of Second Life’s combat system (SLCS). The aim was not to develop a new combat game or combat system, but to provide combat enthusiasts with a much improved box of tools (scripted capabilities) for better, more immersive combat experiences within Second Life.

Details of what many hope will be the first phase of the Combat 2.0 project can be found in my Combat User Group summaries.  However, two spin-offs (so to speak) of this work have been the Combat Partnership, and the return of three much-loved combat regions (which were originally part of the Teen grid): Concord, Lexington and between them, No Mans Land, with the promise that the latter would undergo a facelift and act as a new nucleus to help encourage combat enthusiasts – both within Second Life and those who may have departed the platform – to give the new and updated capabilities a go.

An inaugural (and informal) meet-up within the regions was initially held on July 25th, mainly featuring those combat enthusiasts who had participated in the user group, the session being to mark a wrap on the first phase of work and to put the Combat User Group on hiatus for a time.

Combat 2.0: Concord (with personal EEP setting)

Now the facelift work on the three regions has been completed, and on September 5th, 2024, Linden Lab launched a new promotion for Combat 2.0 utilising a video produced by Vrutega‬, expressly aimed at encouraging people to come back into Second Life and give things a go. And going on preliminary responses, it has been well-received. 

Concord and Lexington act as the base locations for two teams for those wishing to engaged in team-based combat, but the regions are also open to more general player versus player (PvP) or player versus environment (PvE) combat. They each have  dedicated landing point:

No Mans Land is the epicentre for combat. It includes a network of WW1 style trenches, open land, for PvP and cover for PvE against the roaming armed aerial drones. For team-based combat, Red and Blue flags are also located in the region, ready to be attacked / defended. Nor do those wishing to join in have to equip themselves before joining in – those who are new to Combat in SL or are making a return out of curiosity, can obtain various free weapons, generously provided by creators with the Second Life combat community. These can be found within the hangers at Concord and Lexington, and some might be floating around elsewhere.

As well as the showcase regions at Concord et al, the updated Combat 2.0 capabilities are available to all combat regions holders in Second Life to leverage. As a very, very small thumbnail of the updates, the following are now available with Combat 2.0:

  •  Damage events (llDamage) and healing (incl. objects having health).
  • Better control over what happens on death.
  • Spawn points.
  • A new and dedicated combat log – “Brigadier Linden” combat region owners can leverage in administrating combat in their regions.
  • region-wide settings available to combat region owners.
  • new LSL functions and events.

All of these are covered in much greater detail via the dedicated Combat 2.0 SL Wiki page, which also includes links to specific information on things like the Combat log and updated / new LSL functions.

Combat 2.0: No Man’s Land (with personal EEP setting)

Combat Partnership

With Combat 2.0 becoming available, Linden Lab has announced the Combat 2.0 Promotion Partnership Programme has been launched.

  • The intention behind the Promotion Partnership Programme this is to give those actively involved in combat activities in Second Life the “opportunity to help us spread the word across the grid about Combat 2.0 in Second Life”.
  • Participants will have their regions / communities included in a Combat section of the Destination Guide. There may be other benefits for participants as well.
  • Those interested can sign-up via this Google form.
Combat 2.0: Lexington

So, if you’re curious about combat in Second Life, why not hop over to Concord or Lexington and have a look around.

SLurl Details

The showcase combat regions are rated Moderate

Second Life Combat User Group: July 11th, 2024 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Credit: Rider Linden

The following notes were taken from the Thursday, July 11th, 2024 Combat User Group meeting. They form a summary of the core items discussed and responded to by Lindens, and are not intended to be a full transcript.

Meeting Overview

  • The Combat User Group exists as a forum to discuss improvements to the Linden Lab Combat System or LLCS to better support combat in Second Life.
    • The core idea is to provide additional events and capabilities which sit on top of LLCS to provide combat creators with better tools with which to create better combat systems for their specific scenarios.
    • It is not intended to be a complete combat system in and of itself.
  • The meetings are the result of a proposal document on improving the native damage system in SL, written by Rider Linden, and which is the focus for both the meeting and any work arising from them.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • By Rider Linden, with the support of Kyle Linden.
    • On alternating Thursdays (rotating with the Content Creation User Group) at 13:00 SLT. Meeting dates are recorded in the Second Life Public Calendar and at this location.
    • In local chat.
  • Discussion topics, requests, etc., can be found on the SL Feedback Portal Combat Board.
  • Additional details are available via the SL wiki Combat2 page.

Work In Progress

  • The current iteration of server-side Combat 2.0 support is due to start deployment to the Bluesteel simulator RC on Wednesday, July 17th as a part of the Summer Fun simulator update.
    • Linden Lab has carried out some testing to ensure regions which do not have the Combat 2 updates will continue to operate the same way they do now.
    • Rider Linden is going to have the Concord and Lexington Combat regions moved to the Bluesteel RC so they are available for testing after deployment of the update.
    • Issues / feedback should be reported via the Support Portal Combat Board.

Feedback: How to Help New Users Discover Combat Opportunities in SL

Product Manager Kyle Linden asked for suggestions on the kinds of questions new residents might ask to in order to discover and participate in SL combat activities.  Reponses included:

  • The basic questions: can combat / war games be played in Second Life? What kinds of combat are available? How do I find out more about them? How do I enrol? Where can I obtain weapons?
    • It was suggested a themed welcome hub with a selection of free weapons and some portals to newbie friendly combat regions could help solve some of these questions.
    • A themed welcome Hub might allow Combat Communities to apply for Community Gateway status and direct users signing-up through them to the “Combat Welcome Hub”.
  • A further suggestion was to have Combat added as a Search category.
  • Kyle Linden indicated LL was considering some newcomer friendly enhancements to linden Combat regions: teleporting to a safe parcel within them, where users might find a basic free weapon kiosk or random weapon spawner.
    • In support of this, it was suggested Linden Combat regions include a basic “Combat Experience” to ensure all permissions requests are either suppressed and / or correctly set and ensuring things like gestures for reload, semi/burst/auto, etc., are available.
    • It was also suggested that all entering the regions be required to accept the Experience in order to exit the safe parcel and participate in combat within the Linden Combat regions.

In Brief

  • As the initial Combat 2 updates have reached deployment, Rider considering folding the combat User Group meetings into the Tuesday Simulator User Group meetings.
    • Given there is already a lot of cross-over between the two, this makes sense.
    • The suggestion was made to conclude the Combat User Group with a combat meet- up on the Lexington region once deployment has completed. This would be the meeting currently scheduled for Thursday, July 25th.
  • It’s been reported that there is issue in which a damage object (generated by llRezObjectWithParams) collides with a non-avatar in the same frame, it does not actually do damage (see: Damage objects should send damage to the nearest recipient).
    • This is seen as a collision order issue (e.g. damage is always delivered to the first thing it hits – so this is a question of which gets the collision first).
    • Rider is aware of the issue, but is unsure how best to address the problem.
  • Additional Canny tickets:
    • Damage Over Time  – this raises potential shortfalls with applying damage over time. This is currently marked as Under Review, pending consideration for future implementation.
    • Rezzing delays affect all scripts in an object – this is not limited to being a Combat-specific issue. This is being tracked, and it is hoped LL will have a fix available in a near-term simulator maintenance release.
    • Improved Mouselook for Combat and Immersion – this has been a topic of discussion at several combat meetings. As has been noted, this requires a pull request / code contribution from NiranV Dean (Black Dragon developer), who has stated he will endeavour to do so, once he has had the time to fine-tune and bug-fix the code some more.

Next Meetings

  • Simulator User Group: Tuesday, July 16th
  • Combat User Group: Thursday, July 25th (final group meeting)
    • This will be a Combat get-together in the Lexington combat region.
    • Those with weapons and HUDs they are willing to share are asked to bring them to the meet-up.

Second Life Combat User Group: June 13th, 2024 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Credit: Rider Linden

The following notes were taken from the Thursday, June 13th, 2024 Combat User Group meeting. They form a summary of the core items discussed and responded to by Lindens, and are not intended to be a full transcript.

Meeting Overview

  • The Combat User Group exists as a forum to discuss improvements to the Linden Lab Combat System or LLCS to better support combat in Second Life.
    • The core idea is to provide additional events and capabilities which sit on top of LLCS to provide combat creators with better tools with which to create better combat systems for their specific scenarios.
    • It is not intended to be a complete combat system in and of itself.
  • The meetings are the result of a proposal document on improving the native damage system in SL, written by Rider Linden, and which is the focus for both the meeting and any work arising from them.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • By Rider Linden, with the support of Kyle Linden.
    • On alternating Thursdays (rotating with the Content Creation User Group) at 13:00 SLT. Meeting dates are recorded in the Second Life Public Calendar and at this location.
    • In local chat.
  • Discussion topics, requests, etc., can be found on the SL Feedback Portal Combat Board.
  • Additional details are available via the SL wiki Combat2 page.

Work In Progress

  • The current iteration of Combat 2.0 support on the server-side is due to be included in the Summer Fun simulator update, which is looking to be deployed some time after SL21B.
    • Those wishing to test the system can do so on Aditi on regions Gallipoli and Thermopylae.
    • Issues / feedback should be reported via the Support Portal Combat Board.
    • As noted in my previous update, this will very much be a release to find out exactly what works and what doesn’t for the Combat community/ies in Second Life and will be iterated upon going forward.
  • Rider is looking at avatar rotation / aiming and improving llRotateAvatar, but as the former are controller viewer-side and the later in simulator-side, is making this is proving to be an issue.
  • Rider has also been looking at improving hit boxes / hit box adjustments. However, this work is liable to be in follow-on updates to the initial release.

Comments and Requests

  • There was further request for Linden Lab to adopt the first-person shooter improvements found in the Black Dragon viewer. However:
    • As noted in my previous summary, this can only be done if Black Dragon’s develop provides the code to Linden Lab as a code contribution / code pull request, indication LL can consider / adopt the code.
    • The developer has indicated he can do this, but he might require time to do so for various reasons, including the fact it will probably need a lot more fine tuning and bug fixes.
  • The the above led to a discussion of using some form of IK update or scripted attachment added to hand-held weapons which could act as an animation targets for moving avatar hands to grips, magazines, etc. Some sample weapons have been put out on the combat regions on Aditi, and some sample scripts will be added to the SL wiki Combat Page to allow people to play with this idea.
  • As noted in my last summary, there has been a request made to add a “fast” parameter to llRezObjectWithParams to allow objects to rez at a reduced delay to allow things like higher rates of fire for some weapons without the need for additional rez nodes.
    • There is a potential griefing vector with this idea, so it was suggested that the parameter could be managed at region owner / estate level (e.g. so only enabled where specifically required).
    • At this meeting, Rider noted that implementing it would be a non-trivial task, because script delays are built into the function definition in the virtual machine, and so would require considerable update.
    • He also noted that even with an estate level control to counter issues of griefing on region that do not need it, such a parameter could result in the simulator’s rez queue being swamped by requests. However, it was suggested that this would be avoided because rezzers with too high a request rate would hit the grey goo fence.
  • There was a general discussion on llSensor and searching damageable types, with Rider noting the DAMAGE parameter searches for objects that either process on_damage, final_damage or have a health value, and when used, should combine both ACTIVE and PASSIVE, as it filters results.
  • In terms of damage, Rider noted that negative damage should be unthrottled and not trigger the region damage cap or contribute to the individual call throttle.
  • It was suggested that as a well as damage controls, there should be healing controls as well (e.g. a healing toggle and healing throttle) so as to prevent people making themselves “immortal”. However, it was noted:
    • It would be easier just to reduce all damage to 0, not matter what hits the avatar.
    • Either way, people abusing the system like this would show up clearly in the combat log, with combat region owners to potentially write a monitoring relay that will teleport anyone cheating in such a manner to be teleported home with a warning.
  • During the previous meeting it was asked if the former combat-enabled regions on the old Teen Grid – Lexington, Concord and No Man’s Land – could be brought back.
    • During that meeting, Madori Linden was able to bring back Lexington and Concord, but scripts on both were turned off – as of this meeting, scripts on both regions should be enabled.
    • It is proving difficult to recover No Mans Land, due to the lack of a good archived simstate.
    • A further request has been made to relocate Concord and Lexington to the Combat Sandbox red team and blue team regions, and make both combat sandboxes.