Probably the most fun thing about SL is coming up with ideas of stuff to do. Putting all the parts together is great too, but it’s the designing & prototyping that rocks it for me. Trying different interfaces, discovering quirks & limitations and working around them with script tricks, all that. As such, there’s 12-15 “open projects” running around here right now. Need to organize ideas, make lists, and generally talk to myself out loud to keep them from leaking out of my head.

So that’s what this is. More post-it note to self than telephone to communicate with others. It fits, it works, and by opening it up for others to see it pushes me to get stuff done. Getting stuff done also rocks it.

On to the note-taking then. The project of the moment is a 16-track loop sampler. Really kinda amazed that I haven’t seen a loopbox in game yet, all the llPlaySound loop functions are begging for it - though I did finally find the virtual music studio (by… Octal Khan, i think), and it’s pretty spiff. Great layout, great sounds, and placed in a nicely done house. The Cubase SX screenshot on the monitor is bonus points.

(If anyone reading happens to know of a similar loopbox in-game, lemme know! Not like, “scoping out the competition” or whatever silliness, just want to play it.)
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Finally got a big version of the MPC-wannabe up and running. 16 1 x 1 x 1.5 speakers (with library textures, but it works for now), for a grand total of not quite 50 prims. Which kinda sucks. But the sound definitely hits a wider radius, and up close it’s pretty darn loud.

Tried enlarging the speakers more, for a giant (think wall-o’-sound full stack JCM800s lining a stage) setup, but hit link distance limits on the last set of 4. Messing about trying to find a workaround for it, but outside of making the control box larger, I doubt it’ll get much larger than it is. Could maybe make *some* of the speakers larger, and leave some small, but that would put some tricky rules on cartridge making, would have to decide which samples get to be loud & which don’t.

Then again, that might make it a bit interesting… Maybe even change a couple of the speakers to limit their radius to a 45-90 degrees and have them rotate for doppler effects… Maybe a custom version, would suck to find it would throw the base melody of an existing song completely out of tune. Would still be fun though :)

Anyway. It’s amped. I’m amped. Should probably pack it up and let people start playing around with it someday soon, once the other lives let up a bit. Would love to get a few more cartridges assembled first, and get some real textures on the beast, and… meh. It’ll happen eventually.

Playing with webstuff while the loopy-whatsit simmers (great way to test: let it lie dormant until i forget what it does, then see how it works. mmm, efficiency), and discovered SL’s map API - the SL version of google maps. So I decided to start stalking myself.

I’ve got a nifty email-interceptor message queue set up for tracking several applications already, so i made an avatar attachment that’ll shoot a message to it with my coordinates every 5 or so minutes. The coordinates eventually end up sorted into a little database, which gets thrown at the SL map API, resulting in a nice look at where I’ve been in the last day -> see it here.

Only took an hour or so to set up, and another couple to get the API to play nice, but it’s already hella useful… I can toss on the attachment when i’m in wander-mode, and not worry about forgetting to create a landmark/pick to the neat build / gallery / whatever i came across, i can figure it out from where i’ve been & how long i spent there. And it’s slowly picking up a list of sim names, which could be pretty handy. And all the little curiousities, like what sims do i tend to visit most (pretty obvious considering i rarely leave Eldora, but still), what areas of SL i have yet to visit, etc etc.

Totally unimportant and entirely done for my own absent-minded sake, but thought it was worth noting. Feel free to chase me around, but keep in mind the live map runs about 5-10 minutes slower than i do :)

Eldora is a pincushion.

-st

So, some of the more wonderful Eldorans got their own sim, and invited me to toss up a Pp (still pronounced “Ppp”) storefront there. That’s awesome thing #1. The sim is pretty heavily themed, and setting up the store as something like an abandoned package liquor store seemed like a pretty good idea. Abandoned package liquors, that’s awesome thing #2.

On top of being themed, the sim is being / has been decorated to an insane level of detail, and it’s gorgeous. That’s not awesome thing #3, because i’m lucky if i can draw a straight line with photoshop’s line tool. But after a few days of aligning prims & texture tweaking & watching my brain leak out my ears, I’m pretty darn happy with how it’s turning out (and hopefully nobody will kill me for posting pics):

Whoo, i almost feel like a real builder now. Those pics were taken before adding the Pp bits - a nice teleporting moldy walk-in cooler in the back, with all my Pp junk in the cooler. Very psyched about it. Not the shop itself (though it’s insanely cool & i owe these folks big for giving me all this space to play with!), but more that i managed to spit something like that out. I think i might actually be getting the hang of this SL stuff.

Updates on other things:

Still no finished / released version of reloop. It’s awfully complicated, and writing documentation for it is even more so. Writing, rewriting, deleting, rewriting, etc. Hopefully I can get it down soon, the few people i’ve shown &/or given copies to thought it was pretty neat. Not entirely original, but at least the cartidge system seems intriguing.

And playing a lot with animations. I made a nifty brick wall with a gag animation and decided it was worth selling. It’s on display in Eldora, feel free to sit on it & see. Also working on some more generalized animations… I’ve been obsessing of creating my own AO anims from scratch, and they’ve been working out pretty well. Not sure if i want to put them out into the world just yet, but we’ll see. Also have a particle nosebleed that i keep hidden in my av’s hair, that i might recreate sans hair, and other particle/animation combo goodies in the works. I heart gadgets.

Says Zero Linden:
key llHTTPRequest(list request, string body);

httpresponse(key id, integer status, list headers, string body) { ... }

Says me: Things could get pretty awesome.