Galaxy Generator Coming Soon

I've made a galaxy generator that cycles through about 40 presets or generates galaxies at random. I have the poster finished, but I don't have the instructions written, so it won't be available until tomorrow.

I think they look much better in motion than they do as still images, but here's a few snapshots of some presets and randomly generated galaxy effects:

Double tap to initiate running

LL is trying to push for a double tap on the forward key to start running. This conflicts with many, many products across the grid and makes adjusting your avatar's position slightly difficult since a double tap might send you running instead of taking that half-step you wanted to take. Vote on this issue to attempt to keep LL from implementing this change.

Eyana's Ninja HUD version 1.4

I have an update for the Ninja HUD available (finally!). Included in this update are some bug fixes, a new layout and icon style for the HUD to make it more intuitive and take up less screen space, and also a Sky Walking gadget was added.

Unfortunately I cannot get in-world to finish testing the update server and update all my single prim vendors because LL has disabled logins:

"Resident logins have been disabled until our toplevel routing issues have been resolved.

We deeply regret the inconvenience, and we’ll keep you posted."

I'll update this post with a list of bug fixes as soon as I can get in-world and access my notes.

Eyana's Ninja Hud 1.3 released

Version 1.3 is released to address a few bugs and add a new button.

------

New to the HUD:

Options button added to projectiles menu to allow varying the speed of kunai, shuriken, and hook. (The projectile speed was too slow to be registered by a few combat systems.)

Bug Fixes & Revisions:

Some scripts combined to eliminate unecessary extra scripts.
Dust cloud no longer automatically active when first rezzed.
Permissions inefficiency and weirdness with jump assist and projectiles addressed.
Jump assist calculations now take avatar mass into account properly.
Shurikens should successfully collide more consistently.

Eyana's Evasion HUD released

The Evasion HUD is ready and for sale in-world and at SLExchange. Click the vendor in-world for a notecard or visit the SLExchange item listing for details.

Also, join the group "Eyana's" for product announcements and freebies and stuff!

Dashing and Double Taps

Projects have been coming along the past few weeks until yesterday when I started and finished the basic working bits of a new project. I made a dashing system. It is somewhat similar to dashing and dodging found on SL already in other combat systems, so it's not an original idea.

I started doing this to finally figure out how to detect double taps without needing to use complicated timers. Currently, I have the double tap detection function with a maximum of a half second delay between button pushes. Originally I had it at two-tenths of a second, but after handing a test version to someone it was apparent that would be a bit too fast for some people. I may, or may not add a customizable option for the delay speed so people can set their own preference.

The only thing it truly needs right now is a limit. Right now it can be used infinitely which—although it's really fun!—is not exactly fair and balanced for use in certain combat systems.

It works in mouselook mode and the default third person camera mode, but it is designed with the mouselook mode user in mind. Dashes are done on a horizontal plane while on the ground, but if the person using it is in the air then they can dash at any angle. This seems like it could be a lot of fun for sword- and gun-play.

Not only do I plan to include this with my swords (when I finally finish making animations—ugh!), but I am going to package it with any guns I make. There is a chance it will be added to the Ninja HUD, but I'm somewhat worried about including it in something that does not attach to a standard weapon spot such as the Right Hand attachment spot for most swords and guns. The reason behind this is that it could be misused as a sort of cheat while sparring with any combat system that has a similar dash or dodge capability. I tested with one of my C:SI swords and sometimes would get a C:SI dash and sometimes my own and sometimes both. It would be pretty obvious if someone was using this in combat: the sound is different and the movement speed is different, as well as the distance traveled (I think).

I have a few more ideas that I may try to get working if I can figure out the mathematics involved. Math is by no means my area of expertise. I'm more into classical rhetoric than crazy math. The ideas I have that I want to do are definitely beyond my current understanding and I don't know if there will be an easy way to cheat through it by guesswork. Then again, while I worked on the dash script I was nearly pulling my hair out from attempting something so overly-complicated and unnecessary when there was a much, much simpler way to approach the whole thing.

Actually, now that I've typed all that mess about not being able to figure out how to do what I want I think I have a half-baked idea on how to do it. I'll have to try later tonight.

On a side note, some of the gadgets from the Ninja HUD will be available for sale singly, possibly with more features and options. Namely, the Water Walking gadget and Smoke Bomb Escape will be made separately.

I think I will make a double tap detection template script for my LSLWiki page.

Eyana's Ninja HUD Released

The ninja hud is finally finished and for sale.



Click this link to view the SLExchange listing.



Here's a brief list of things it has:

• Jump assist (variable assist levels)
• Landing cloud
• Teleport poofer (cloud of smoke)
• Smoke bomb escape (teleports to camera position)
• Smoke bomb poof
• Kunai
• Shuriken
• Caltrops
• Foot trap
• Water walking
• Free updates!

Poofy Color Cloud

The poofy cloud thing is released. It turns on a cloud when you fly and turns it off when you land.

Poofy Color Cloud on SLExchange

Grappling Hook Price Cut

I decided 650 was just too high, so I dropped it to 450.

Grappling Hook Gun Released!

Finally, finally, finally! I pulled a kind of all-nighter to get this thing ready for the weekend. My goal yesterday was to have it ready by Monday, but I managed to get ahead of myself.

The grappling hook gun is fun. Yes. Very fun. I'm really hoping that it gets a few sales and people choose it over the other couple grappling hook options because of the increased range on this one. Earlier tonight I managed to have an 832 meter grapple successfully. I shot at a raised angle from one corner of a sim and managed to hit a sky box out of sheer luck. ^^

I put the gun at L$650. I think it's a fair price considering the amount of headaches I got from working on it. For more information, IM me (Eyana Yohkoh) or check out the notecard that comes with it that I posted in the description on SLExchange.

<3

grappling hook controls

Okay, so the passthrough thing was something I was overlooking. I figured it out. The gun works. Now all that is left to do is make a hud to switch between short and long range modes (short range mode is 100m, but moves the avatar to the target a bit quicker because of the less steps taken), make some animations and/or poses, and do a little re-texturing.

Grappling Hook Update Update (whee redundant)

I searched the SL forums and apparently there's a problem with multiple attachments taking controls or releasing controls (thread). A fix was to allow it to be passthrough controls or something which of course I've never done nor do I know what it means. A quick wiki search returned zero help as well. Meh. Guess I'll do some more searching.

Grappling Hook Update

The basic grappling hook is a fairly simple script up until a certain point. If you want your grappling hook to move the avatar more than about 65 meters you have to add a bunch of frustrating math and loops to the script. The limit of using llMoveToTarget was my first hurdle to overcome. It took several tries to get it right and I kind of got it right by mistake. Whee!

So getting around the llMoveToTarget limit raised my grappling hook range to 100m, the range of a shout. More bits and pieces were added and now I have it not relying on shout, but the actual grappling takes a slightly longer amount of time to start moving the avatar, so I think I'll add a short range bullet and long range bullet version to it.

Anyway, it definitely works. I grappled successfully to a distance of over 400 meters so far. Of course, it won't work across sims, but it is definitely sim-wide.

Another problem I have is with permissions—I think. If I start flying with my flight assist enabled it completely overrides the grappling hook permissions or something. Basically the problem is the gun loses functionality after flight assist is activated. I tried having it request permissions again after holstering and unholstering again, but that doesn't seem to work. I guess it's going to take some more guesswork and testing different options to see what will make it keep working.

New Items and SLExchange!

I finally took snapshots and made vendors for my jumpsuits. I'm not sure why I'm calling them jumpsuits instead of catsuits. Oh well. I suppose it doesn't matter. They're sold individually or in a special E-Pack that contains all of them at a discounted price.

I've also put my items for sale on SLExchange. I'm glad I finally did it. It was relatively easy to set up, but it did take a bit longer than I expected it would to add images for them all. I don't shop on SLExchange very often since it's difficult to find something unless it's a very specific item and having to browse through so many things is very, very bad for my pocketbook.

On a side note, SheOfTheSourSnailsSuckers Sellery released her Moonlit Pond katana for the Shunrai Combat System. It is a very well-crafted weapon and just looks fantastic!

If I can find a link to it then I'll update the post so everyone can go get it.

Obstacle Course Obstacles (awful title)

Yesterday evening and night I spent most of my time on Second Life working on an obstacle course. I doubt it'll end up being useful for any sort of training, but it is kind of fun. It's mostly finished, apart from texturing. By "mostly finished" I mean that the basic course is almost ready for use. I'm going to add some checkpoints and time tracker scripts so it'll report your time. Eventually I'll have a time tracker for each of my courses and a top ten list and... ugh. There's too much stuff I want to do.

The most annoying part thus far has been getting the falling bridges to work properly. In theory it seemed a great idea, but it's really quite a pain to acheive any sort of consistency with it. The prims used for the bridge become physical when an avatar runs over them. That sounds easy enough, right? The prims can't be flush against each other though or Second Life counts them as 'interpenetrating' which essentially means it won't enable physics. Okay, so I thought the easy solution for the bridge was to simply put a very small gap between the prims. That works insofar as enabling physics goes. If the bridge is a perfectly horizontal bridge the one millimeter gaps cause the running avatar to trip and go hurtling forward uncontrollably.

Argh.

I ended setting the bridges at a ramped angle. The sliding issue doesn't seem to occur quite as frequently, but it still happens often enough to be an annoyance. Another thing that occurs is sometimes when the avatar jumps off of one of the falling prims, for some reason, the jumper flies very far up into the air gaining at least an extra fifty meters or so higher than a normal jump. I suppose that's just a quirk of Second Life physics and nothing can be done about it.

I could change the falling bridges to just change positions after collision and not enable physics at all, but where's the fun in that? In the earlier tests of the script I had something like that and discarded the idea.

How badly broken will the the falling bridges be when I log on to Second Life today? There are a couple kinks in the resetting script (I think—I couldn't see why it wasn't working completely last night). Sometimes the prims reset to the incorrect positions. Oh well. Another thing to figure out.

The rest of the obstacle course functions fairly well. It's fun being smooshed by the chompers and flying off the course. I need to add some particle effects and squishy sounds for that.

That will come later. I had enough stress today that I don't want to look at scripts yet. I think I'm going to go see if I can find something to chop.

Chop chop.