Tag: SL News

On Wednesday April 9th, I reported on an error with the Transaction History page on people’s SL dashboards which lead to some upset and confusion after the familiar page was replaced with one that failed to show totals, and which had the familiar .XLS and .XML download options replaced by a single .CSV option. The change lead to forum comments and a JIRA report (BUG-5664).

The page itself was reverted around an hour after concerns were first raised, and Ebbe Altberg stepped into the forum to offer apologies and an explanation:

In an attempt to improve we made a few mistakes and caused some misunderstandings as well. We rolled back the changes and will work on getting it right. The team is looking at feedback and will communicate a plan for how to get there.

On Thursday April 10th, the Lab issued a blog post on the matter, providing further information on the situation, including the fact that they will be seeking input from users on proposed changes to the Transaction History page.

The post reads in full:

The Commerce team have issued a blog post and Knowledge Base article aimed at helping people ensure the clothes they buy will actually fit their avatar.

I’ll be honest and admit that I hadn’t realised that there was a particular issue with clothing that needed any clarification; but I’m also biased in that I’ve been around SL long enough and reporting on it, that understanding the various clothing types doesn’t actually present me with a problem. However, I can understand a new arrival being confused by terms such as “system clothing” or “clothing layers”, and “mesh clothing”, “fitted mesh clothing”, “rigged mesh clothing” and so on, and wondering what the heck it is all about and where the differences lie.

The blog post is aimed at content creators, and is intended to encourage them to define the clothing they produce in terms of three avatar types, and to label their clothing accordingly with icons.

However, to get a clearer understanding of what is being proposed, it is perhaps best to refer to the Knowledge Base article, which provides far more comprehensive information.

Essentially, it has been decided that clothing should be defined in terms of avatar categories. These are defined by the Lab as:

• Classic – Classic avatars are the original default Second Life avatars.  They have a modifiable humanoid shape, and can wear clothing in the form of textures and attachments added to that shape. Most of a classic avatar’s appearance and clothing can be modified by pressing the Appearance button in the Second Life Viewer, but cannot take advantage of newer graphical features such as normal and specular maps.
• Standard mesh – A standard mesh avatar is a classic avatar that is wearing a rigged mesh attachment, usually a full-body avatar, and whose classic body is hidden by a full body alpha mask.  It is classified as “standard” if it was created using the standard fitted mesh model available on the Second Life wiki.
• Custom/branded – A custom avatar is a classic avatar that is hidden by a full body alpha mask and is wearing a customized rigged mesh attachment or attachments that otherwise replace the classic avatar body.  These avatars can come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and each model typically requires clothing specifically designed to work with such an avatar.

Hints to help a consumer determine what category of avatar they are using are also provided,

In addition, the Lab is asking that creators define their clothing as one of four types in order to indicate which categories of avatar it is most likely to be compatible with:

• Classic only – The “layer-based” textured clothing applied directly to classic avatars.  This clothing type only displays properly on classic avatars and is rendered completely invisible by the alpha mask worn by most mesh avatars.
• Mesh only – An attachment that is designed to appear as clothing on a standard mesh avatar.  It may appear to be a layer-based texture, but does not work properly on classic avatars.  Mesh only clothing must be created outside Second Life in a 3D modeling tool.
• Classic/Mesh – Attachments primarily designed for standard mesh avatars that can be made to work on a classic avatar.  In order to be classified as classic/mesh, the clothing must include an appropriate alpha mask designed to hide the affected parts of a classic avatar.
• Branded – A catch-all term meant to encompass the many possible custom avatar designs.  Such avatars can typically only wear clothing specifically designed for that specific avatar; therefore each custom designed avatar and its compatible clothing may be considered a “brand”.  Likewise, clothing designed for a custom avatar shape should not be expected to work properly with classic or standard mesh avatars, or even other custom avatars.

In order to help shoppers find clothing that properly fits their avatars, Merchants are additionally being asked to use one of two label images to use when advertising their clothes, and to update any clothing they have listed on the SL Marketplace so that it is defined by one of the three avatar categories (so that it is defined as being compatible with Classic Avatars or Mesh Avatars or, in the case of a specific custom avatar, it is defined by the avatar’s brand name.

The two logos the Lab are requesting content creators use to denote their clothing are:

Note these are copyrighted stock images, requiring the use of the label, “© Depositphotos.com/i3alda” with each.

Further details can be obtained directly from the Knowledge Base article, which also includes notes on why custom avatar types should ideally have a unique brand associated with them.

The new definitions do appear be to perhaps as confusing as the current terminology (“system”, “fitted mesh”, etc.), as such it will be interesting to see the response to this proposal / request, and how well things work in practice.

Ciaran Laval alerted me to a project which, having been announced on April 1st, might have been considered a joke; it seems, however, that it isn’t.

Posting over on SLU (twice, it seems),  LSL Portal editor and scripter Strife Onizuka, who is spearheading the project, describes matters thus:

Long have we struggled with how to make the documentation more accessible. One of the most common complaints is that is simply too technical and we are hearing this more often than you would believe from one of SL’s more traditional content creators: descriptive writers. So I am proud to announce that after many sleepless nights we have come up with a way to address this. As the core problem is that the documentation relies upon very specific, technical language we have come up with a way to bring more mundane verbiage into the documentation.

To achieve this end we are announcing the LSL Portal Poetry Project! The goal of the LPPP (or LP³ as I like to think of it), is to provide poetry for every LSL Event, Function and Constant. More specifically, the form of poetry we have chosen is Haiku. Screen real estate being at a premium haiku requires the minimum amount of space while packing the greatest metaphorical punch.

It appears that the essential element of the haiku – the five-seven-five syllable arrangement – is key to any submitted verse; the traditional invoking an aspect of nature or the seasons being not quite so important, as with this example for llSetTorque:

Spinning, all a blur…
Small moment of inertia.
They say torque is cheap.

There have already been a number of LSL articles which have gained their own haiku, and people from across SLU (and SL) are being invited to consider putting forward suitable pieces for those articles still lacking a verse.

While haiku is the preferred medium, other forms of poetry are not ruled out. Strike admits the limerick ran the haiku a close second for choice of verse form, and it may be that some LSL functions may be better suited to the limerick or other forms of verse. For example, lSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast leant itself to this limerick Atasha Toshihiko:

I once had a hair full of scripts,
When I wore it, Estate Owners had fits.
The creator, at long last
Learned llSetLinkPrimParametersFast
Now I can wear hair without getting kicked!

Strife also says of the project:

Programming is a part of life. It doesn’t have a holiday. People don’t think to write songs or poems about it except in jest. We treat it as a second class citizen, something utilitarian to be used and ignored. But culture has to come from somewhere, it can’t all be about, love and dancing and taking selfies. Eventually someone has to write a song about cloth-driers and warm socks (Who doesn’t like warm socks fresh out of the dryer?) …

There is nothing about LSL that will sustain it past SL’s death, except maybe some obscure poetry. How many programming languages after all encourage their users to write poetry? It will tell future anthropologist just who we were. Not just about our preference for indentation.

So, you may not be a coder, but if you have an inner poet, and feel you’d like to help enshrine LSL in words of verse, now is your opportunity to do so!