As Akela previously indicated, Havok4 is indeed out on the preview grid. Andrew Linden gracefully donated some of his time answering a few questions and he will be available for office hours this weekend. Should you want to chat with him directly:

Go to the Brampton Linden Stage (Brampton 106/166/25)

This Saturday September 29, 2007 08:00 AM PDT

Tuesdays 21:00 PDT (ongoing)

Thursdays (starting October 4, 2007) 08:00 PDT

Thanks for your time, Andrew!

The stalwarts at Dr. Dobb's Journal remind us that the second ever Dr. Dobb's Life 2.0 Conference in SL is rapidly approaching! From September 15 - 21, you'll be able to chat it up with a great group of knowledgeable folks on all manner of technical aspects of SL. Taking place on Dr. Dobbs Island, the 4-day event will begin with a fantastic 2-day session (from the press release): 'The program will commence with a two-day, eight-hour weekend bootcamp on Linden Scripting Language (LSL) application building, SL-to-web integration, open-source client (libsecondlife), developer tools, and new SL features.'

Now, I'm not clear on this, but the article seems to be saying that you'll need to register via the site (referenced above) to attend the proceedings. The official site has the full list of events for the 4 days. I'm looking forward to 'The Extended Metaverse', which will cover how SL might integrate or play alongside such upcoming technologies as Google Earth. Don't wait; register now!

(Via ddj.com)

This is the fifth in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

I ran into Dale whilst hanging out in Luskwood, in the Lusk sim. It's one of many locations that are a favorite with Furries, though there are also human, robot and other visitors.

Run for the hills! The hills of Intel's island, I mean, where the chip manufacturer will be hosting a series of webcasts, training events, and meet-the-experts shindigs as part of their continued commitment to developing along with SL.

But best of all is the upcoming 'Brainiac Warbots contest, where residents will build their own combat robots with LSL, and compete for, presumably, cash and/or prizes. Watch this space for more details!

(Via itnews.com.au)

Well, okay, not quite so bad as all that - but there is a reason we get updates on a Wednesday rather than on a Friday - it leaves a couple days to fix things if they go sour. Stuff that gets broken on a Friday even generally stays that way until .. well, usually Tuesday.

The broken function is llGiveInventoryList() which gives someone a bunch of objects in a named inventory folder. Most objects that give you multiple items use this function. The breakage occurs in that (since the rolling update today) the function does not now give you the items in a folder. Scripts go into your scripts folder, notecards to your notecards folder, animations to your animations folder, clothing and body parts to their respective folders, and (worse!) are automatically worn!

This alone promises a poor weekend for Residents who spend their time helping newbies.

The LSL Wiki (run by that superlative sweetheart of the scripter set, Catherine Omega) has returned! The LSL Wiki's been out of action for quite a while. Too long, really. While there are snapshots of it in earlier stages, and assorted other LSL documents around, there is no better resource for scripters and would-be scripters than Omega's LSL Wiki.

Arguments with ISPs, inability to transfer the old domain name, a new one purchased. It's a miracle that Omega was able to pull all the old data and get everything going again - however, it is done, and it's all back. The wiki, of course, is a testament to the hard work and cooperation of many, not just Omega's work alone, but she has made this possible, and brought the beast back to life.

We're not talking about a quantum leap here (the smallest possible discrete movement that is still definably a motion), but more like a largish step forward. Babbage Linden reports that the last major showstopper issue with the Mono common language runtime appears to be solved.

Babbage's primary concern was with memory usage of the Mono runtime engine, which kept increasing over time. Normally that memory would be given back when the runtime terminated, but there are always scripts running in a simulator, so the runtime would only terminate when the simulator restarted or shut down (which it would, a good deal sooner with the script runtime continuing to hungrily consume increasing amounts of memory).

LSL stands for Linden Scripting Language. It's a state-based, event-driven language with a syntax common to many languages and a structure that is most similar to ActionScript. While many references describe it as being similar to C or C++ or a bunch of other things, those are misleading comparisons. If you come from an ActionScript background, you'll have a lot less trouble with LSL than if you come from a background strong in C.

What the heck does all that mean? Well, each object in Second Life that's more interactive than your basic plywood cube contains one or more scripts. The scripts wait for 'events' and then perform some task in response. Events are things like being sat on, touched, moved, having someone speak (type) in the vicinity, a certain amount of time passing and so forth. That's what event-driven means. The scripts are inherently responsive to changes in the environment. The scripter chooses what events will be monitored in each state, and when they occur the script can take actions or change into other states.

A state is a sort of 'mode'. When you've got your web-browser open, pressing a key might perform one action (pressing a key is an event), but if you scroll down and click in the comments box below (another event) then the browser changes modes(states), and pressing a key causes it to appear in the comment field. LSL works just like that. Each state lists what events to monitor, and a list of things to do when they happen.

Babbage and Cory linden went off to the Lang.NET Symposium and gave what I think is one of the best talks ever seen on Second Life. It is over an hour and a half of conference joy. You can watch it on the read link. It begins with a high level overview of Second Life, covering old classic stories as well as some new ones I had not heard, and then quickly began to delve into more technical specifics. In this they talk about improving performance and revamping the scripting language.

Apparently the original Liden Scripting Language (LSL) was put together MacGyver style with a Swiss Army knife and some duct tape, and much like MacGyver we could build anything. Little did we know it was a slow and cumbersome anything that could be optimized if only Linden Lab would do something like say covert the code to Mono, an Open Source version of .NET, thus allowing for the use of the Common Language Interface (CLI). CLI would be able to run more efficiently allowing for more complex scripts that operate across sim lines, as well as allow code written in any CLI compliant language to run within Second Life (Like VB.Net, C#, or JavaScript). Lot for this to become part of Second Life soon.

We've mentioned the Svarga project before, with its ongoing mission to create a thriving and autonomous ecosystem. This got me thinking: Would it be fun to have autonomous life as a system-wide feature in SL, or merely annoying?

In other MMOs, such as World of Warcraft, NPC critters tend to be fodder for adventurers looking to make kills for supplies, or possibly to satisfy the conditions of a quest. In SL, AI-controlled fauna would be there primarily to provide ambiance, an attempt at verisimilitude, reflecting RL animals. This could be amusing, if one were to create, say, an African veldt, where residents could go on safari, taking photos of the wildlife, or perhaps a chance to have true pets that would require training and care. Such systems usually require the resources of a dedicated box, a la the Nintendo DS with Nintendogs, a runaway hit. Given the increasing level of interaction and sophistication that SL engenders, I don't imagine that it would be very long before residents began to experiment with rudimentary AI.

Of course, this is merely speculation on my part, as a non-coder... I don't have any experience with the SL scripting language, LSL. I'd like to get some reader comments. Good idea/bad idea?