So I’ve had a couple things I’ve wanted to add to Reloop lately, but haven’t had much free time to tear it apart & dig in. The main addition is going to be adding textures to the pads, stored in the cartridges & associated to the buttons the same way samples are. Pretty simple to add, and it’ll do a lot for usability when juggling a bunch of different songs around. I’d like to toss in some basic textures as well, if I can work some up, to make it a little easier for cartridge-makers that might not be photoshop wizards (not that I am, but maybe I can win a bet against one or something).

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random updateness:

1) Attention anyone who bought my crutch AO! Someone bought one a while back and managed to get one with absolutely no permissions on it when it should’ve been mod / copy / no-trans. I still haven’t managed to replicate it via alts/friends/etc, but - if you bought one & it isn’t +m / +c / -t, let me know in-world (IM Stella Trenchmouth) and i’ll drop one with proper permissions on you. Be sure you’re logged in as the avatar who actually bought it, mind. I keep a lot of lists ;) I’m gathering up a list of folks to IM just to be sure, but don’t want to get too spammy about it since it likely hasn’t happened much.

Same goes for pretty much anything else I sell - everything to date should be mod/copy/notrans, even the animations (+mod on an animation is kinda silly, but there for consistency). Big fan of that permission set, lets me change everything to fit. I don’t think i own anything that hasn’t been tweaked a little. Yank the braid & ribbon off of Toast Bard’s (can’t remember the name but i’m sure it was awesome & witty, that one that’s kinda shoulder length, with the ribbon in back, black with blond highlights version) hair, and BOOM, instant cutie-hesher. Or stuff straws in the bun of the nice schoolmarm-ish one. Or color the barrettes & headbands. I love that I can do that. Also, I generally obsessively adore anything Toast makes. Just sayin’.

2) Been asked a few times why i don’t post stuff to the New Products SL forums. For two reasons:

- I don’t really want to be a known quantity, same reason I keep my shops somewhat hidden out of view. I just like to hang out & do stuff. The more people with big expectations, the more likely I’ll just churn out generic crap or just never release stuff out into the wild. Granted I already do both in quantity, but still ;p

- I avoid all “public” forums, not just the SL ones. It’s the nature of it, along with blogs (this one included, mind), wikis, and any other “here’s my message to the world” style communication. Sometimes people post wonderful things - great ideas, input on features, explanations of things, actual constructive debates. Most of the time it just instills a stupid king-of-the-soapbox mentality. If, in the middle of a normal in-world conversation, someone said, “that’s fine, but that doesn’t fix [completely unrelated issue i feel obligated to rant about repeatedly],” i’d be more likely to rez a brick wall for them to talk to & wander elsewhere (that’s the original intent of the joke wall i sell). Even the LSL wiki gets dragged into the destructive criticism game regularly. Waste of everybody’s time, even this little ranty tangent. Screws to that, y’all.

3) And yeah, still working part two of the sim stats scripty thing. The dayjob, a messy back injury (or at least the messy meds), and usual pursuit of things more fun have kept me a bit occupied.

4) I really don’t like this whole “posting here as a way to avoid IMs” thing. Not a very appropriate place for it. Bad Stella.

Happy about this one - i was recently given estate manager access to Suffugium, and have pretty much been only playing with the top script usage tools as yet. It’s some pretty neat insight into how nasty some scriptys can get (and should be available to any & all parcel owners on the mainland - miserable old Eldora with it’s 2000+ scripts running constantly, it’d be at least interesting to see why things are so pokey).

So, Reloop being the fearsomely laggy beast that it is, i decided to run some tests. Here’s the average of 10 separate “normal use” runs (via SL 1.10.5(1), and using the big version with speakers containing around 30-40 scripts):

reloop v1.2.6 sim CPU script usage
—————————————–
1) machine rezzed, idle: 0.3-0.4ms
2) cartridge loading (scan/verify): 2-4ms
3) cartridge loading (sample loading): 0.3-0.5ms
4) playback: 0.3-0.4ms
5) playback with active fade in/out: 0.4-1.0ms (~1.0ms with 12 samples fading at once)
6) power off after playback: 0.3-0.4ms

For reference, a completely empty script takes about 0.07ms (i believe, forgot to write that down), most idle vendor scripts run about 0.09ms. I think Suffugium normally goes between 9-15ms of total script time (accounting for the drones & automated cars, holoball, avatars, etc), at any given moment.

What all that means: it’s not half as bad as i thought! The cartridge scanner is a bit laggy, but considering what all it has to do (scan for the cartridge, check all the samples & proper permissions once found, etc), it’s not so bad, and goes away quick once a cartridge is found & loadable.

The biggest script lag comes from fade in/out, which i expected - it’s a logarithmic fade, all looping math, so it’ll suck down all the resources it can when triggered. Even then, it’s pretty tolerable. Fading 12 samples at once in a packed sim would probably be a bad idea, though.

Of course, the real lag comes from the sounds - the sim has to grab the sound files & push them to every avatar standing in range. Not much that can be done about that still.

Anyway. Thought that’d be info worth sharing with other Reloop owners. I’m pretty surprised by the results, and may be smirking a bit.

1) Heartful shoutings-out to Torley Linden for her oh-crap-that’s-me review of Suffugium. Which is now (mostly) open to the public, so everyone in SL can now scooch their avatar butts across my favorite giraffe.

2) Aaand, in reply to Torley’s comment on a past post: The demo is pretty lame, actually a prototype version that i was just messing with a few months back, trying to think up a better way to get one of my songs playable in-world (i can’t stand jukebox scripts). My main HQ being in Eldora, which probably sees more active scripts running per second than avatars in a week, I didn’t want to lag it up with an anyone-accessible copy of reloop (it’s owner-only for a reason :O).

So, in lieu of destroying poor Eldora with more buttons to push, I made a video of myself pushing the buttons. Mind the volume, and the promo fodder at the end. Still not comfy with the whole promotional stuff, it’s still just stuff i make for me. But anyway:

Song by me, and named “cartridge 001″ in the box of junk. Still probably (maybe sadly) the best of the bunch. Here’s hoping someone with better ears will do better :)

Too much time spent:
1) playing with the awesome things in Suffugium (open soon)
2) playing with the awesome things in 1.9.1 Preview (llHTTPRequest()ing my floppy witches hat off under nice lights)
3) playing with Avimator, one of the best things to happen to SL

to have gotten anything *too* useful done. Currently rebuilding the junk shop in Eldora, going for a fitting car trunk shop. Getting a preliminary start on the SL “service” library in php5 mentioned previously, and then deciding it’d be better to wait out any major changes (and there’s no emailing from the preview grid, bit of a damper). Changing my dilation tracker to work for any sim i can drop an antenna in, and thusly breaking it. Generally just picking at things and drooling at others.

So here, I’ve cut you some (of my) slack:

(Just testing video, really. But on the off chance you’re all “GIMME CHAIR NOW,” they’re available in the Pp shops hidden in Eldora & Suffugium).

I’ve also made a set of blingy silver teeth caps, done up as a scripted gesture with a gang sign animation. I should probably be ashamed, but it really was funny the first few times. And that’s what it’s all a-bout, dih-din.