Update: Eyana's Commission Vendors

Earlier this evening I updated my affiliate/commission vendor script. There won't be too many noticeable changes for those people using the vendor. Most of the changes are back-end things to better manage vendor tracking for auto-updates. The previous version had no way of knowing which vendors were removed or deleted from the grid. That oversight made it difficult for the updating script to work efficiently because people have had the tendency to rez all the sizes of the vendors and then remove the ones they didn't want.

Anyway, the old vendors should have a message saying that there is a new version available. The new vendors can be purchased for L$1 through the old vendors, or just pop by the main shop to grab them, or just ask me to send them to you. The L$1 fee through the old commission vendor to get the new one is another oversight in the original script where it would not allow any L$0 sales.

Eyana's Ninja Hud 1.3 released

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

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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.

Havok4 Beta Grid

After reading a post on the Second Life Blog about the upcoming physics update I decided to go check it out on the Beta Grid. I don't know much about the technicalities about what they are changing but it was mainly this blurb that made me curious:

"Some slight dynamic changes - avatar movements have changed slightly"

Firstly, the spacebar does not work quite like it did before. Previously, you could achieve a bit of a slide across the ground by using the spacebar or in the air. This—although technically a bug—has been used but quite a number of people as part of their fighting style for C:SI and other similar combat systems. The debate over whether or not it is an acceptable action should come to a grinding halt when the Havok4 physics stuff is on the main grid. Spacebar works only to stop the avatar's momentum. It will not give any sort of speed increase whatsoever.

Sliding along the ground does not appear to happen anymore. This was always an annoyance: tripping over a prim and going sliding across half a sim was just annoying. I have not tested this to my satisfaction yet, but a number of perfectly level floors with a prim added that would have normally caused a slide has yet to cause any sort of sliding.

This is good and bad. I'll just have to rewrite a couple of scripts (probably minor changes) to make them work as intended since they were designed with the sliding problem in mind.

There also appears to be a new llMoveToTarget bug introduced. If the avatar is standing still then a llMoveToTarget simply will not work until the avatar starts moving. I need to do more testing for this, but I think applying a small push will help.

Anyway, I'll post more if I figure anything out.

Couple of Links added

I just added a couple of links under the Tutorial section on the left side of the page. The basic script examples page has several scripts that were written with the intention of teaching some basics about scripting in Second Life. The double tap detection script is an example of how a script can detect a double tap on the keyboard (useful for dash/dodge type things). I'm sure there are ways in which it can be more efficient or accurate, so it might get updated from time to time.

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.

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.