Doh! Hysteresis

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/29/doh-hysteresis/

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I was reading Shawn Hargreaves blog looking for some tidbits for a current project when I came across his post on using hysteresis in games, and I could have just about kicked myself!

Suddenly, some of the odd behavior I’ve seen from my C:SI combat bots made perfect sense….  They will sometimes appear to lock up and go spastic, and it’s now apparent to me that they were rapidly fluctuating between two conflicting states.

It’s so obvious now that someone has pointed it out to me in coding terms

*headdesk*

New Viewer Authentication Scheme

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/29/new-viewer-authentication-scheme/

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Linden Labs is implementing a supposedly more secure authentication scheme for Second Life (as mentioned on the Second Life wiki).  While several other people (Nicholaz, Dalien, among others) are writing astute posts about what this means and whether or not it will work as intended, I wanted to preserve the following snapshots for posterity

Doesn’t leave one with complete confidence, does it?

Havok 4?!?!?!?!?!?!

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/28/havok-4/

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This is sure to be one of the most talked-about topics amongst Second Life developers in the next few days: It seems a secret Linden Lab project has come to fruition with testing of Havok 4 on the Beta Grid.

From the Official Second Life blog:

It is time to announce the beta testing of “the project you thought would never ever get finished” - one that has been far more complex than we expected. Of course, I’m talking about the long-awaited upgrade of the Second Life physics engine to Havok2… which is now Havok4! The Havok physics engine provides the core algorithms for collisions and rigid body dynamics - anything that pushes, collides or tumbles in-world.

WHAT WILL HAVOK4 DO FOR SECOND LIFE?

This project is all about improving sim stability and reliability, reducing lag in the physics engine, and fixing some bugs that could not be fixed under Havok1. In other words, there are no new features in the Havok4 project, despite the fact that there has been significant work done “under the hood”. Once Havok4 is stable (out of beta testing and on the main grid) we will be able to start adding new features, but the current goal is to get all the current features working with this new version of Havok.

The Havok4 public preview is now open, and you can help us finish testing by downloading the beta installers, logging into the beta, testing the objects in your inventory, and reporting any problems you encounter.

What Should Change With Havok4?

• Reduced simulator crashes
• Less lag in the physics engine
• More reliable prim linkage
• Stacked dynamic objects react when supporting objects are removed
• Improved collision management - uniform spheres collide as spheres, rather than as faceted shapes
• Penetrating dynamic objects will be automatically pushed apart by Havok4’s collision solver
• Vertical simulation extent has been increased to 1024 meters
• Some slight dynamic changes - avatar movements have changed slightly

I’m not ready yet to fall all over myself with excitement, we’ve seen other things in preview and on the Beta Grid that still haven’t "gone main" yet, but it’s very interesting news nevertheless.

I can’t wait (till I can get back in-world) to see what this does to swords and other weapons…  I hope it’s all of the good and none of the bad.

Linden Lab Killed AjaxLife

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/27/linden-lab-killed-ajaxlife/

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For those of you not following along with Katherine Berry’s AjaxLife project, it’s basically a web-based Second Life viewer that allows you to log in, send instant messages, chat, teleport, and a few other limited things.  It was one of the cooler RL <-> SL projects (along with PHPSimCaps) I’ve seen thus far, and Katherine is to be commended for making it. 

Unfortunately, it seems that LL killed AjaxLife by closing down or breaking the MapAPI part of their site that allowed third-party developers to display maps of Second Life areas on their own websites.  This was a tremendously useful bit of functionality for several projects, some of my own unreleased projects included, but was perhaps displayed to best effect by AjaxLife.

It is incredibly frustrating that Linden Labs so regularly and spectacularly breaks or removes functionality that affects third-party developers - both in-world and out.  Without content creators and developers Second Life would be nothing more than a poorly rendered 3D chat room, so it would seem logical to me that they’d have a bit more care and better testing procedures in place.

Alas, as disappointing as this is, it’s par for the course.

Sorry to hear about all your hard work broken by LL’s inability to communicate or even to imagine the simplest consequences of their actions, Katherine

Second Life + Vista = Suckage

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/26/second-life-vista-suckage/

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Well, I tried to get in-world today so that I could watch the Shadow Samurai vs. Yakuza tournament, but I STILL can’t stay in-world for even 5 solid minutes.  I crashed three times while hanging out in Samurai Edo and trying to find out from Doll Kabuki or someone else there where the tourney location was.

I never found out, as after the third crash I gave up in disgust.

I’ve tried the official viewer, the "experimental" viewer, the Nicholaz + official viewer combo, the Nicholaz plus "experimental viewer" combo, nothing worked.  Even when I am in-world, everything flashes randomly and it drives me freaking nuts, since I’m highly sensitive to flashing (It’s a migraine trigger for me).  I was really hoping the Nicholaz viewer could redeem my Vista experience (he’s been working on detecting "redmap situations", and his viewer is generally much more stable), but alas: not in this case.

I give up.  I’ll either wait until I can get my Windows XP running well again, or set up a dual-boot with Ubuntu (like Colin did), or Linden Lab fixes this stupid crap.  There is absolutely nothing about Second Life that’s compelling enough to make me put up with this crap, and I’d so much rather enjoy my real life than torture myself with that kind of experience.

And speaking of enjoying my real life, I’ve got a new weapon under development, and I’m using my "can’t get into Second Life" time to create some new animations and do some texturing work, as well as play around with sculpties to see if I can make anything that’s suitable for a weapon

So far, I’ve yet to find anything that I can do with sculpties weapon-wise that works well enough, since apparently sculpted prims are far more suited to making cool Ice Caves than weapons.  But I’m stubborn, and have some time, so I’ll keep at it, haha.

Unofficial Tournament Updates

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/22/unofficial-tournament-updates/

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I did make it to the PodCast Mafia Katana Tournament today, but it was mostly a very frustrating experience for me since I wasn’t participating, didn’t know anyone there, and crashed no less than 6 times during the one-hour tournament.  Nevertheless it was good to see people "getting into it" and shouting encouragement to their friends :) 

Got yet another ShadowSamurai vs. Yakuza update:

Hello Samurais,

Tourny has been cancelled today due to miscommunication with Yak and is rescheduled on Wednesday 26th 7:00pm s/l time, next week.

One for All, All for One

I’m thinking at this point that there’s not much point in following the unofficial tournaments here on the blog.  I haven’t got many readers in the first place, and there’s only a few clans that I still get group notices from now (stupid SL group limit makes me angry), so even if I continue to follow clan tournaments would be heavily biased towards clans that I’m still a peripheral member of, and that number shrinks every time I have to join a new group in order to open another store.

I know that Ayame Musashi is currently reworking the official C:SI website, and from what I understand from Esprite there will be an event calendar and better clan support soon.  That’s really the correct place for this kind of info anyways, I was just attempting to provide a "stop-gap" measure for the short term.

Update: Shadow Samurai vs. Yakuza Tourney

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/22/update-shadow-samurai-vs-yakuza-tourney/

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Just got this in my email, and wanted to post it for those who are following along:

Group Notice From: Kenneth Susenko
Hello Samurai,
Tourny is tomorrow 2:00pm s/l time with Yak clan. plz come and meet at dojo. Have a good fight!
One for All, All for One

Also, a reminder about Stuart Warf’s Katana Tournament, which is being held today at 5:00PM SLT on the Nowhereville sim.

I’m going to do my best to show up for both, though I’m not completely confident that I’ll be able to stay online long enough to see an entire tournament.  For whatever reason, since last Wednesday’s grid maintenance and subsequent mandatory viewer upgrade, I’ve only managed to remain online more than five minutes once.

Fortunately, that one time was on Samurai Edo, where I got to see the progress that Esprite and Archanox are making on the sim rebuild.  It looks pretty nice so far, and Esprite mentioned to me several of the things they are taking into consideration in the build to reduce lag (to the extent that SL allows you to do so) as well as create appealing community spaces. 

Hopefully we’ll be able to schedule a full-on official tournament when the rebuild is complete

My first experiences with ZBrush3

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/17/my-first-experiences-with-zbrush3/

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After months of sitting on the fence wondering if it would be worth the considerable price tag for someone like me with a small budget, I decided yesterday morning to bite the bullet and purchase ZBrush3.

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I was as I filled out that form, paid my $610USD, and anxiously awaited for the download to complete.  Man!  I can’t tell you how excited I am that someday I may even be able to get it to start up!

Yeah, that last sentence was sarcastic.  I’m actually in a blind rage right now, because ZBrush crashed when doing the online activation thing that software makers seem to be so very fond of these days, and almost universally do very poorly.  Right when it went to activate, it crashed with some message about tablet-something-or-other.  Well hell.  I have a Wacom installed, but it wasn’t attached, and I can’t imagine that would cause things to blow up.  Would it?

I tried restarting ZBrush several times, and each time it would just crash instantly to desktop after the splash screen was shown.  Naturally enough, I decided that this was a good time to reboot and re-install the app.  Now, however, I just get a message saying that something was wrong with my license, and asking if I would like to recover.  Damned right I would!  Who wouldn’t want to actually use the product they spent so much money on?  So it tells me to call customer support and give them this code….  Okay, well….  They aren’t open on Sunday, better wait until Monday.

That’s frustrating enough, but then Monday finally arrived and I’m getting all excited again thinking that customer support can help me out, right?  Wrong.  The guy apparently has "seen this before" and throws up his hands in defeat, asking me to send an email to the support team (which I did yesterday for f***’s sake) and they will get back to me in 24-48 hours.

Um…  What?  I have to wait yet another twenty four to forty eight hours for them to "most likely" get back to me?  What the hell kind of customer support is that?

So far I’m completely unimpressed, Pixelogic.  You fail for customer support

Internet Explorer exploit can be used to hack Second Life accounts

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/17/internet-explorer-exploit-can-be-used-to-hack-second-life-accounts/

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This was already blogged about at Second Life Insider and Your2ndPlace, but is important enough even for a "me too" post: There is an exploit reported by GNUCitizen that describes - in detail - how a properly formatted web page can be used to trick Internet Explorer into sending your Second Life login credentials to a third part website for capture and analysis.

At first glance it appears that this has to do with Second Life client’s autologin command line option and its integration with the system (which allows SLUrls to be useful, for instance), and takes advantage of the fact that many people will allow the Second Life client to remember their password, which is then used in the autologin process.

I’ve always thought that was a bad idea, and here’s a pretty concrete demonstration of why….

Katana Tournament: The PodMafia Podcast

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2007/09/14/katana-tournament-the-podmafia-podcast/

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I just ran across this in my RSS feeds: Stuart Warf’s Katana Tournament

Click the link for details from the original source, but I’ve reproduced the event notice here:

Stuart Warf’s Katana Tournament

Date - 22nd September at 5pm SLT

Details - The Katana Tournament is the first in a hopefully successful series of tournaments. Anyone can show up and freely combat without fear of getting Abuse Reported as long as they use the Combat Samurai Island katanas. Which are typically L$800 in cost.

This event also features the rematch of Stuart Warf VS. Yxes Delacroix, which sparks back to a comment made by Yxes causing the first fight.

Prize - The prize for the event is L$1500 with no buy in (due to Second Life’s recent restrictions) and also a Trophy.

Location to the Event - Nowhereville - SLUrl

They also talk about it a bit in this podcast, among other topics such as OpenSim.  Interesting listening, definitely worth checking out. 

[EDIT] This is a new site to me.  Looking over the previous podcasts, it seems that "Katana Fighting" is a common theme :)  Yay!