Some questions about training tools

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/23/some-questions-about-training-tools/

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It’s been on my mind for quite some time to revisit the topic, but I was recently reminded of my interest in third-party training tools for the C:SI system when Aimee brought a new one to my attention in a comment to the Jump Slash Difficulties post.

She mentioned one that I’d not yet heard of called "Straight Razor’s Iaido Reflexes", which apparently comes available in a version that has sit pads for people to make use of and seems to provide some pretty good numbers for reaction times.

I use Yasuragi’s original complete set quite frequently, and have since the day that he released them (before I joined C:SI).  I’ve also used his Perfect Timing tool a few times, though not recently.

Eyana Yohkoh also has training tools available that include obstacle courses in addition to slash testing, and I still remember quite fondly when they were set up in the now-defunct Shrouded Isle sim.

I’ve often wanted to make my own training tools for C:SI, though I simply don’t have the time : I have 50,000 things I want to do, and maybe enough time and energy to do two of those at any given time.  It may be that some day I will finally get around to it, or one of the other C:SI devs will do so, but I make absolutely no promises to that effect;  We are all very busy and just can’t do everything we’d like to.

I do often make very crude "tools" for testing purposes, suck as kick and block testers, and use those constantly, but they are far too crude to let anyone else use.

And, to be honest, I think that the third-party interest in (and market for) training tools is pretty darned neat.  I’m betting there are more such products out there, and while I can’t give any sort of "official endorsement" of any of them, I’d surely love to check them out and perhaps write some reviews on them.

So my questions to you are:

1. Which third-party training tools are available?
2. Which ones have you tried?
3. What did you like/not like about them?
4. What would you like to see in training tools that’s not already out there?

Feedback is strongly encouraged

UPDATE - The Final Stand 3v3 Tournament

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/22/update-the-final-stand-3v3-tournament/

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There has been a change to the plans for The Final Stand 3v3 Tournament.  Malachi sent me a notecard containing these additional details (new start date) provided below :

Dear reader,

You’re invited to attend The Final Stand 3v3 C:SI Tournament @ Samurai Edo. In addition to this notecard, for the next two weeks all of the details for sign-ups will be available online at http://csi.thefinalstand.com.

This event is designed for clan vs clan competition. Each team must be submitted by your clan leader and must be comprised of current clan members. There will be no second place. Winner takes all. Matches will be held over three consecutive weekends starting with the first round on March 8th and 9th at 3PM SLT/PST.

This will be an eight spot, single elimination bracket tournament. All but the final match will go for three rounds of no more than 10 minutes each. If your team loses a match it will be eliminated from the competition.

With this event we hope to add some variety alongside the more common 1v1 tournaments. We highly suggest that you read this invitation and the embedded notecards in full. if you have any questions concerning the Final Stand 3v3 Tournament please email us at csi@thefinalstand.com or contact Malachi Rothschild or Atrus Westland in game.

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#  Summary of Tournament Details                           #
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Name:  The Final Stand 3v3

Entry Fee: 100L for 1st 3 roster slots, last 3 roster slots 50L

Match dates:
~Round 1[Sat, March 8th & Sun March 9th ]
~Round 2[Sat, March 15th & Sun March 16th ]
~Championship: Sat March 22nd

Match times: 3pm SLT – PST

For complete tournament rules and signup details visit:

http://csi.thefinalstand.com/

C:SI Jump Slash - Difficulties and differences

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/22/csi-jump-slash-difficulties-and-differences/

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Malachi left a comment on the Myth Busters post this morning and while I was in the process of answering it I realized that my reply was long for a comment, and decided that it would make a decent post by itself.

Here’s Malachi’s original comment:

I’ve heard a lot about the various katana. I don’t know how much truth there is to any of it except for the current Musashi jump attacks requiring more timing. Besides that there is suggestion that certain weapons have a much faster forward slash or faster comboing. I don’t see that so much as I see different animations that may appear faster or slower. Maybe I’m the one missing something but I thought the scripts in the katana were all pretty identical.

My somewhat long-winded reply is probably boring to most, though it does help somewhat to explain some of the differences that people see when jump-slashing with different swords, and why the Musashi has a reputation for being different in that regard:

Small avatars, bounding boxes, and combat

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/21/small-avatars-bounding-boxes-and-combat/

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Not long ago, I was standing around at the House of Blade store on Samurai Island, and there was someone that I was not familiar with there who wanted to spar anyone and everyone who showed up.

He was a decent fighter, not great, but better than many that chose to go against him.  Until Malachi showed up, at least.  The gentleman refused to fight Malachi until he put on a bigger shape, stating that the smaller avatar was "too hard to hit, and it’s cheating".

I tried to explain at the time that it certainly was *not* cheating to have a short avatar, but I’m not terribly articulate at the best of times, and this gentleman spoke English as a second language, so between those two factors I was not able to explain well.

I will try to do so now, and though I will probably fail again, perhaps some people will understand my meaning.

Havok Early Adopter - 6 Fixes

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/21/havok-early-adopter-6-fixes/

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Just announced on the Official Second Life Blog, Havok Early Adopter and Beta Preview Refresh with 6 Fixes (say that three times fast now).

It’s really hard to read at this moment, as the formatting is completely nonexistent, but that will probably be fixed right after I post this, so…

Kudos to the Havok team for getting out regular updates, and for working so hard to get the new physics system working. 

Having said that, I’m very disappointed to report that it doesn’t look like they’ve fixed anything that relates to the Havok problems we are seeing for C:SI.  I see that they do mention particular products by name in some of the Jira issues, so I will try to find some time tonight to write up some more specific C:SI-related issues.  Maybe that will light a fire under their butt, since nothing else has

[UPDATE] - Okay, I created a JIRA Issue specifically for this. I’m still very sick, and having trouble being even reasonably articulate, so the description I provided in the Jira sucks. Bad. Nevertheless, it should be sufficient for Linden Lab to test the issue, and to get it on the list of things “to be fixed”. Please feel free to go and vote on the issue, and provide a better description

Myth Busters - Second Life Edition

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/21/myth-busters-second-life-edition/

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Ever since I released the Wave Katana 2.0.3 update, I’ve been hearing rumors about it that I find somewhat disturbing.  It’s not the content of the rumors that I find most disturbing, however, but rather the fact that only a single good friend of mine is relaying them to me.

The rumors range from the new version being much faster than previous versions, to being able to automatically counter from block, to being able to combo without getting stunned, and now I’m even hearing that some people refuse to fight an opponent with a Wave Katana because it’s considered "cheating".

So far I’ve found very little of substance to these rumors and have been unable to duplicate any of the supposed exploits that have been described to me.  It may be that I’m missing an important detail, or some step has been omitted, or I’m just plain misunderstanding what’s being said, but I’m not convinced.

This reminds me somewhat of a time early in my Second Life when I was talking to a C:SI regular who had been around from day one, and he used a phrase I will always remember to describe the drama that sometimes happens within certain cliques of the C:SI community : "Samurai Soap Opera". 

I think it’s irresponsible to spread false rumors, and certainly doesn’t help the community.  All it does is spread FUD, and to some extent makes the most active rumor-spreaders lose credibility.

If there were truth to these rumors, or even a suspicion that there might be truth, it would certainly be better for all if the one person able to do something about it were told, wouldn’t you agree?

I’m a pretty accessible guy, usually willing to converse, and always willing to test something.  Ask anyone who’s known me for a while, and they will (I hope) tell you that I’m just a regular nice guy and you can talk to me.  Even if someone feels uncomfortable talking to me personally about what they think might be bugs or exploits, there is the official Combat: Samurai Island Bug Reports forum available to everyone specifically so that issues can be easily reported.

I know this has been a rant, and probably sounds much more negative than I intended, but I’m honestly quite disappointed that only one person so far is willing to come to me and say "Hey, dude, there might be something wrong with this update".  I want to know when something is wrong.  And I should think that more than one person would be willing to tell me about it.

Why wouldn’t you?

Notecard is missing from database

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/19/notecard-is-missing-from-database/

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I’ve been thinking about some ideas and comments recently brought up by the conversation on C:SI and animation overrides, and I’ve decided two important things:

1. I’m going to personally switch to the ZHAO-II AO.  I’ve looked at the code, and it’s much cleaner than the previous ZHAO and uses less scripts (which was, of course, one of the goals that the developer had in mind).
2. I am going to customize the ZHAO-II to be more "C:SI-friendly", because assuming that Colin is right, it would at least be a nice thing for me to offer to the C:SI community.  I still don’t expect all that many people will use it, but maybe I will be surprised.  In any case, I want one for my own use, so might as well continue my tradition of offering free goodies to people - I often give away items from my list of personal projects

Ziggy Puff recognized that it can be a pain to edit the notecards, so a free converter was provided by him that will read the data from an existing ZHAO-I notecard and convert it to the simpler ZHAO-II format.  This is a pretty cool idea, and I’m actually making a web-based version that does the same thing, and may at some point actually provide a handy form for enhanced editing.  Either converter could be used, though my thought was that a web-based UI for the notecard converter might allow "fast-and-easy" editing of animation sets like Aimee uses.

But there’s one big problem:

EVERY SINGLE FARKING ACCOUNT I HAVE HAS HAD THE ZHAO NOTECARD LOST.

I’m not shitting you.  My main account and every alt I have that I cared enough about to purchase an AO for gets this message when attempting to open the notecard: "Notecard is missing from the database".

I’m simply flabbergasted.  I’ve lost other inventory due to database hiccups or whatever LL is blaming it on this week, but I’ve never seen (or even heard of) such a consistent inventory loss before.  I wonder how they would even attempt to explain that.

Un-freakin-believable!

Update: Apparently, Vint Falken is experiencing the exact same thing.

Wave Katana 2.0.3 Released

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/19/wave-katana-203-released/

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An update to the Wave Katana was released yesterday.  All owners of previous versions of the Wave will receive the update, of course, as part of the free lifetime updates program.

There’s not a lot of significant changes in this version, other than some tweaks to the control code.  Among those changes, I’ve re-introduced the ability to "autocombo"; Pressing more than one attack key simultaneously will result in between two and four attacks in sequence, depending on which and how many keys were pressed.  This is the same behavior that other C:SI swords exhibit, and was re-introduced to the Wave due to customer feedback.  Additionally, a few quirks of the control system were smoothed out.

For my own peace of mind, I’ve also hosted the C:SI Patch Log and the Wave Katana instructions here on this site rather than as a notecard in the product package.  When customers rez the product box, it will ask them if they wish to navigate to the Wave Katana instructions page, and the sword’s customization menu also has the option to browse that page.  This should allow me to keep the information current, as well as provide better discoverability of this website and the C:SI official website.

I am now able to devote my free time to my new weapon, and I’ve started the scripting on that today.  So far I’m very encouraged by the progress, and I’m trying a few new concepts that I hope will be interesting to people.

New Sword : Quick Update

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/17/new-sword-quick-update/

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I know I’ve been promising a Wave update to all my impatient customers, but the last two days spent on animations and script for the new sword have been so productive that I didn’t want to switch gears.  I’ve mentioned before that I’m not so great at animating, so when I’m actually making progress I don’t like to interrupt it if I can help it.

In any case, I just finished the last of the core combat animations for the new sword.  There’s surely going to be some more tweaking necessary on the ones I have now, but the basic work is done on that.

I do still have to create an animation for the special attack, but I find those to be easier to make because the time constraints on them are not so tight: You don’t have to make a semi-believable attack squeeze into half a second or less worth of animation

Since tomorrow is a holiday, I’ll have another whole day of not being interrupted by billable work to package up the Wave update and hopefully get that out so that I can get onto the last stages of the new weapon.

On a related side note, I’ve started the modeling work on two new weapons, something a little different than a katana this time.  I’m not going to say much about what they are at this stage because I’m just as likely to change my mind as I am to finish them, but suffice it to say that I’m playing with some new weapon ideas.

 

RealXtend joins OpenSim

The post is cross-posted from http://www.daikonforge.com/webtab/2008/02/17/realxtend-joins-opensim/

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Over at UgoTrade and Massively there’s a buzz going about realXtend joining the OpenSim project, and I have got to say that this announcement (and the accompanying screenshots and video) marks perhaps the first time that I’ve gotten truly excited about a virtual world other than Second Life.

Let me start with the goodies before I say my piece :

 

Who is realXtend?

I’ve never heard of them before, but here’s what their website has to say:

Creating an open source platform for interconnected virtual worlds is the goal of realXtend project. We collaborate with OpenSim, OpenViewer and realXtend viewer projects.

Next generation virtual reality development is the core of realXtend project. We focus on interoperability technologies, usability and real-life application support.

The announcement goes into a little more detail about the relationship between OpenSimulator and realXtend:

realXtend is contributing all the server side code for their developments to OpenSim and continues to do so from now on. This collaboration of two projects with a similar vision enables realXtend and OpenSim to focus on common issues, and solve them more quickly - leveraging experience and knowledge from each party. realXtend project manager Jani Pirkola comments on the joining as "I see this as a great possibility to quickly make OpenSim the global de facto standard and to significantly speed up the global technology development in this area. Our common goal is to create the best open source virtual world server platform, and to continue the rapid evolution of OpenSim".

What’s so cool about this partnership?

For the little time I’ve had to learn about this (even more info on the OpenSimulator blog), here are just a few of the things mentioned that get me stoked:

1. OGRE rendering support - Anyone in the graphics and games industry has heard of OGRE.  It’s one of the oldest and most capable open source rendering engines available, and is absolutely packed with features and optimizations that blow Second Life’s rendering pipeline completely out of the water.
2. Real 3D mesh support - Yes, that’s right, this project uses actual 3d meshes instead of just geometric solid primitives!  According to Adam Frisby of the OpenSimulator project: "Meshes behave just like another prim type - you can drag, scale, and rotate meshes around using the same method that you use on primitives and object groups. You can link meshes with other primitives, save them to inventory and use them in pretty much the same way you use primitives."
3. Unlimited Attachments - ’nuff said.
4. Ability to script avatar skeletons - Apparently inverse kinematics is on the feature list, but in addition to that developers will have the ability to script fine-grained control of the skeleton’s bones.  While it may not allow for everything that Endorphin would, it would seem to me that this could provide a great deal more spontaneity and interactivity between avatars than Second Life ever could.   Note, this is not just .bvh animations uploaded like Second Life, we’re talking scripted access to the skeleton!

There’s a great deal more information at the sites linked above (document sharing, collaboration, roadmap, etc.), and I’m far from finished reading and learning about what exactly this could all mean, but it all looks very promising indeed!

If we could get C:SI working on such a system, it would be insanely cool, and I’m already imagining what we could accomplish with that kind of detail and interactivity