Server 1.38 - bigger than viewer 2.0?

LL has just announced the beta of Server version 1.38, scheduled for roll-out in April. Now, why is this great news?

One of the new features of server 1.38 is llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(). It will allow a script in a root prim to control other prims in the link set, without a 0.2 second sleep as the previously available llSetLinkPrimitiveParams imposed.

The great upside of this is that for objects with moving parts (for instance, the Drama Dolls), it will reduce the need for having a script in each prim to do animations. As you can see on the illustration above, its quite a few scripts:-) /me hurts in the head just remembering all that coding.... Fewer scripts means less memory usage, and less memory usage means less load on the server, leading to less lag:-)

In the Drama Queen set, there are 25 scripts that could probably have been replaced with code in the root prim script using this function. That's 1.6 Mb of memory at rez time - not to mention all the work on creating and maintaining all those really small bits of code and the interface between them.

There are a few other nifty bug fixes too, although not revolutionary. What I really like about the 1.38 announcement is the attitude it shows: LL seems determined to fix server side stuff and script functionality to make SL work smoother. So it's not all bells and whistles and big spaceships GUI's, but grinding nuts and bolts too.

And while viewer 2.0 is highly controversial, I have yet to see big protests against the 1.38 features.

We are heading for a more flexible script environment where there will be limitations on script resources on a per parcel / per avatar basis, but where one will also have better control on these resources. It will also be possible to allocate far more resources to some scripts, which may be real helpful.

So, while Server 2.0 is still a long way into the future, its nice to get at least some attention on the server side problems too.

7 of 52 - Breaking Dawn with Vampires

Spent most of the evening reading through Stephenie Meyer's conclusion to the Twilight series: Breaking Dawn. To get in the mood I invited two of my small friends to join me; had to put one of them in a silver cage though as he was just too upset about the behaviour of his Italian relatives, LOL.

I'm a bit ambivalent about these books: For me, they have been real page-turners; It's seldom I am so deeply involved in a book, it compares to the feeling of reading Dan Brows The Da Vinci Code, Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials triologi, and Stephen Kings The Dark Tower series. And I guess that's basically good, even though neither Dan Brown nor Stepenie Meyer matches the other two mentioned authors. The plot is just a little bit simple; the rather overdone romantic relationship a bit over the edge, and there is a fair amount of sexism involved here. But I know I'm not really in the teenage girl group she is probably writing for:-)

I guess books are a bit like music: Lots of hits are easy to like immediately, but the real deep, involving and lasting music takes a bit of work to "get in to". But both can give you good feelings:-)

Excitement, romance and drama apart, there are some very innovative thoughts about the Vampire world as it is described in the books. The author manages to build a kind of believable universe around her characters. And some passages are very well written.

All in all, it made reading more tempting that SL that evening, and that's not a bad thing, really!

Dramatic Vampire

It's always so fun reading people's encounters with their Drama Dolls; Bliss' tale is among the better ones:-) Do click through!