User:Andrew Linden/Office Hours/2008 07 17

Transcript of Andrew Linden's office hours:

[17:02]	Andrew Linden:	Hey Arawn
[17:02]	Arawn Spitteler:	Hey, Andrew. I was wondering, what other people knew
[17:02]	Andrew Linden:	? knew about what?
[17:02]	Arawn Spitteler:	Don't we normally find people here, by now?
[17:03]	Andrew Linden:	yeah, but it varies I think
[17:03]	Andrew Linden:	also, I doubt my office hours are very exciting these days with Havok4 mostly done... but bugs to complain about
[17:03]	Arawn Spitteler:	I don't think I've seen it so spare, since you showed up on New Years
[17:04]	Arawn Spitteler:	Have you driven the roads of SL, yet?
[17:04]	Andrew Linden:	Yeah, I think there was one or two meetings that started with only two or three
[17:04]	Andrew Linden:	No I haven't used the roads lately.
[17:05]	Andrew Linden:	I suspect they don't work well, or are in horrible states of disrepair.
[17:05]	Arawn Spitteler:	They don't require much maintenance, but its easy to get Lag-Orbited
[17:05]	Andrew Linden:	I've been meaning to get back to fixing some vehicle bugs that will make them better
[17:05]	Andrew Linden:	but these horrible emergency bugs keep falling onto my plate
[17:06]	Arawn Spitteler:	I ofen find myself wandering about, wondering if I'll be back in my vehicle again.
[17:06]	Andrew Linden:	I successfully passed one off to another developer yesterday
[17:06]	Andrew Linden:	but today I finished this one bug in the latest simulator we wanted to deploy that took me two days to find
[17:07]	Andrew Linden:	so that was two days where I couldn't work on Havok4 bugs (like vehicles) :-(
[17:07]	Andrew Linden:	Hi Rex
[17:07]	Arawn Spitteler:	Take a ride on the roads of SL, sometime, just to relax, at hundreds of meters altitude.
[17:07]	Rex Cronon:	hello andrew, arawn
[17:07]	Arawn Spitteler:	Rex has ants in his pants
[17:08]	Andrew Linden:	alright Arawn, I'll try to follow your advice
[17:08]	Arawn Spitteler:	The road from Neumogen to Hector, is lots of adventure.
[17:08]	Andrew Linden:	Was that an avatar animation bug you were trying to show me Rex ;-)
[17:08]	Rex Cronon:	i have ants?
[17:08]	Rex Cronon:	that is llmovetotarget going crazy
[17:08]	Arawn Spitteler:	Your animation seemed agitated
[17:08]	Andrew Linden:	your avatar was twitching between two different stand animations
[17:09]	Andrew Linden:	ah... then toggling between walk and stand animations probably
[17:09]	Andrew Linden:	what do you use the llMoveToTarget() for when walking around?
[17:09]	Andrew Linden:	is it a push sheild of some sort?
[17:09]	Rex Cronon:	llgetpos+<0,0,001>
[17:09]	Rex Cronon:	yes a shield:)
[17:10]	Rex Cronon:	btw, that llvolumedetect doesn't seem to work with attachments
[17:10]	Rex Cronon:	the cubes were colliding with me
[17:10]	Arawn Spitteler:	Didn't they used to?
[17:10]	Andrew Linden:	Ah, non-attached cubes were firing?
[17:11]	Andrew Linden:	I wonder how they ever worked for attachments in Havok1
[17:11]	Rex Cronon:	i was dropping them, but the collisions registered were with my body
[17:11]	Arawn Spitteler:	llVolumeDetect is the kind of bug a junior could be trained on.
[17:11]	Andrew Linden:	Sorry, my brain isn't working very well today... could you summarize that bug in one or two sentences?
[17:13]	Andrew Linden:	Ha! llVolumeDetect is a complicated implementation that threads its way through some pretty messy code (linked objects)
[17:13]	Andrew Linden:	and looks like it may also need to be threaded into attachments stuff too
[17:13]	Rex Cronon:	it would certainly maky like esier for shields
[17:14]	Andrew Linden:	how so Rex?
[17:14]	Rex Cronon:	right now have to scan like quite a few times a second the surrounding area
[17:14]	Rex Cronon:	and that is not easy on the sim either
[17:14]	Andrew Linden:	trying to detect what? fast bullets or slower smart bombs?
[17:15]	Rex Cronon:	imagine more than 20 avatars each onel with their shield on
[17:15]	Arawn Spitteler:	VolumeDetect should be something useable for otherwise phantoms, and it would be nice, if it could detect phantoms, but those aren't on the physics engines.
[17:15]	Rex Cronon:	anything that intersects your avatar pos
[17:15]	Andrew Linden:	so an ideal shield would be a large cube or other shape that spans out far from your avatar?
[17:16]	Rex Cronon:	mine is on only for moving objects, but others push, even attach other avatars that get closer
[17:16]	Rex Cronon:	yes, like shpere
[17:16]	Andrew Linden:	s/attach/attack/ ?
[17:17]	Rex Cronon:	if something that is moving enters than the shield can take different actions based on what its owner wants
[17:17]	Rex Cronon:	yes attack
[17:17]	Andrew Linden:	well, in Havok1 the VolumeDetect used what Havok called a Havok::Phantom
[17:18]	Andrew Linden:	however, in Havok4 we had to change it because of some detail I can't remember... we couldn't use the Havok::hkPhantomWhatever class
[17:18]	Rex Cronon:	possibly using volumedetect will make shields faster to react
[17:19]	Andrew Linden:	so instead we do it using the regular object's RigidBody plus a special collision group, with a hkCollisionListner in place
[17:19]	Andrew Linden:	that figures out when to fire the collision_start() and collision_end() calls
[17:19]	Andrew Linden:	in short... the Havok4 implementation is significantly different from the Havok1... and requires an actual collidable RigidBody in order to work
[17:20]	Andrew Linden:	... and attachments don't have RigidBody's
[17:20]	Andrew Linden:	I'm not saying it is impossible, just thinking out loud, and wondering if it can event be done... how to do it?
[17:20]	Arawn Spitteler imagines: Someday, we could have attachemnts with ghost prim followers, to carry riders and register collisions.
[17:21]	Rex Cronon:	hmmm
[17:21]	Rex Cronon:	what if u can specify that only some attachments can detect things that enter their volume
[17:22]	Rex Cronon:	if u do that, their volume is added to the collision body of the avatar
[17:22]	Arawn Spitteler wonders why http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2625 got so little attention: I've another physical object, that looks phantomish, when not phantom.
[17:22]	Rex Cronon:	any object that enters that is checked if also is inside any attachemnts
[17:22]	Andrew Linden:	well... the avatar is a single-prim shape that has its own collision group
[17:23]	Andrew Linden:	if we could allow multi-prim avatars with per-prim collision groups then maybe attachments could be statically connected to the avatar somehow (that is the current animation state doesn't necessarily determine the attachment's world location)
[17:24]	Rex Cronon:	can the single prim shape used for avatar, have any shape?
[17:24]	Andrew Linden:	however... there are difficulties in making the avatar a multi-prim object... what to do when the avatar sits... we already make assumptions in the code that the sitting avatar contributes only one prim to the seat when it sits
[17:25]	Andrew Linden is tired... maybe I need caffeine
[17:25]	Andrew Linden:	well, I'll think about it Rex
[17:25]	Rex Cronon:	sure, as a mind exercise:)
[17:26]	Andrew Linden:	fixing that bug (resurrecting the feature) doesn't sound easy... I don't know the solution yet
[17:26]	Andrew Linden:	sometimes I can understand the solution and estimate the amount of work that it would take to implement
[17:26]	Arawn Spitteler:	It must have upset a lot of shield buyers
[17:26]	Andrew Linden:	but in this case I don't even know of a viable solution yet
[17:27]	Andrew Linden:	That and that other bug where shield llPushObjects() would integrate their forces before the objects own scripted actions
[17:27]	Rex Cronon:	it isn't usefull only for shields. imagine a sword, an warhammer, and shield, that can detect when it was hit:)
[17:27]	Andrew Linden:	that bug also broke a lot of effective shields
[17:28]	Arawn Spitteler:	Are Lightsabers still functional?
[17:28]	Andrew Linden:	ah right, event driven game elements
[17:28]	Rex Cronon:	i bet there are other uses too
[17:29]	Andrew Linden:	Yeah, that is how a lot of these features work. Someon clever out there can always come up with a new use.
[17:29]	Arawn Spitteler:	Does the physics engine se the primatar as anything but that basic zombie stance?
[17:29]	Rex Cronon:	but what it be even more interesting is if it would be possible to animate linked sets the way that avatars are
[17:29]	Rex Cronon:	i belive is call puppeteering?
[17:30]	Andrew Linden:	Yeah, the puppeteering project got shelved
[17:30]	Andrew Linden:	however, some puppeteering discussions were flying in the LL internal email lists a few weeks ago
[17:30]	Rex Cronon:	that is bad
[17:30]	Andrew Linden:	We'll probably implement it a different way.
[17:30]	Rex Cronon:	u see the thing on my shoulder?
[17:30]	Andrew Linden:	Too bad Richard Linden doesn't hold office hours
[17:31]	Rex Cronon:	it needs a script in each link in order to move
[17:31]	Andrew Linden:	he was the guy, as I recall, who was kicking around ideas on how to do puppeteering
[17:31]	Rex Cronon:	and quite a few times the parts are out of synch
[17:31]	Andrew Linden:	and he wrote most of the animation code, so he knows how it currently works
[17:32]	Andrew Linden:	hrm... are you talking about animations for attachments?
[17:32]	Sindy Tsure:	hiyas
[17:32]	Arawn Spitteler:	He looks like a trademark violation, from somewhere. How does he go out of synch, when his parts all get the same LinkedMessages?
[17:33]	Rex Cronon:	hi sindy
[17:33]	Andrew Linden:	That is, keyframed sequences of transfoms for the various bits that make up an avatar's attachment suit?
[17:33]	Rex Cronon:	no
[17:34]	Rex Cronon:	that thing on my shoulder is still one linked object even if is attached to me
[17:34]	Rex Cronon:	it would work the same way if it weren't
[17:34]	Andrew Linden:	Rex, so the idea you're suggesting is animations on the pieces of a linked set?
[17:34]	Rex Cronon:	yes
[17:35]	Rex Cronon:	i actually heard that at qarls office hour
[17:35]	Sindy Tsure:	oh.. that's using the Puppeteer Player scripts..
[17:35]	Andrew Linden:	Would the positions of the sub-prims be "real"? That is, would they collide appropriately after moving if they were NOT attachments?
[17:35]	Rex Cronon:	i have no idea
[17:35]	Sindy Tsure:	oops
[17:36]	Rex Cronon:	i think they r relative to the root prim
[17:36]	Rex Cronon:	and i am not the root prim when is attached to me
[17:36]	Andrew Linden:	Right, but if the feature works for attachments... it would also work for non-attachments, right?
[17:37]	Sindy Tsure:	cartoonimals makes heavy use of the script that rex's thing uses.. some very cool stuff at their store - worth seeing if you haven't been
[17:37]	Rex Cronon:	when u say feature, u mean "the ablity of prims in a linked set to move in synch"?
[17:37]	Andrew Linden:	Yeah, or move accorrding to some scripted sequence.
[17:38]	Rex Cronon:	what is catoonanimals
[17:38]	Rex Cronon:	?
[17:38]	Kooky Jetaime:	Hey all....... I got a question, sorry I'm late, but I'll wait till your done with the topic or topics of the day.
[17:38]	Rex Cronon:	hi kooky
[17:38]	Sindy Tsure:	it's a really cool store.. they just got a sim - search the map for cartoon and you'll find them
[17:38]	Sindy Tsure:	hi kooks
[17:38]	Andrew Linden:	We're just rambling Kooky. Go ahead and mention your question/topic.
[17:39]	Rex Cronon:	just talking about puppeteering:)
[17:39]	Kooky Jetaime:	The sliding ground
[17:39]	Kooky Jetaime:	I see we're not fall-floating anymore
[17:39]	Kooky Jetaime:	but ground slide seems worse than ever
[17:39]	Andrew Linden:	we-ell... the word "puppeteering" has special meaning in an SL context
[17:40]	Andrew Linden:	we were working on some real-time animation override features for a while... a year or two ago
[17:40]	Andrew Linden:	and we called that project "puppeteering", but it was a very avatar-specific feature
[17:40]	Andrew Linden:	it did not apply to normal linked objects
[17:41]	Andrew Linden:	oof, ground slide is broken again?
[17:41]	Sindy Tsure saw a video of it recently..
[17:41]	Andrew Linden:	this is the first I've heard about it (sigh)
[17:41]	Kooky Jetaime:	Like standing on rollerscates
[17:41]	Kooky Jetaime:	I can't even stand on my roof
[17:41]	Andrew Linden:	Kooky, if there are any jira items filed about it... I'll be needing instructions on how to reproduce the problem
[17:41]	Kooky Jetaime:	Uhm
[17:41]	Andrew Linden:	sometimes that means a specific location or collection of content
[17:42]	Kooky Jetaime:	Give me one second.. I don't know about jiras but its happened in a few places
[17:42]	Kooky Jetaime:	My roof for one
[17:42]	Kooky Jetaime:	Another sim that we're setting up, private island, did it too
[17:42]	Andrew Linden:	well, your roof might be a good example of some content that reproduces the problem
[17:42]	Andrew Linden:	where is your roof?
[17:42]	Kooky Jetaime:	one second, brb
[17:42]	Rex Cronon:	your roof has to be impounded for testing purposes:)
[17:42]	Arawn Spitteler:	I had a recent slide problem, when I was at redued weight.
[17:42]	Kooky Jetaime:	I'll go grab a copy of it
[17:42]	Sindy Tsure:	hopefully it's not one of the rainy sims
[17:42]	Kooky Jetaime:	then we can see if its multiple sims
[17:42]	Andrew Linden:	If there is a jira item on the sliding, if you could add a comment about it happening on your roof, and the location, that would help me fix it.
[17:43]	Arawn Spitteler:	Is Physics still turned off, in this sim?
[17:43]	Kooky Jetaime:	brb
[17:43]	Sindy Tsure does not think so
[17:43]	Sindy Tsure tests by saying frog
[17:43]	Andrew Linden doesn't see any frogs
[17:43]	Sindy Tsure:	woah.. that's weird
[17:43]	Sindy Tsure:	ack!
[17:44]	Sindy Tsure:	don't say the plural!
[17:44]	Arawn Spitteler:	Looks okay, we were marvelling at an unfalling ball, a couple weeks ago
[17:44]	Sindy Tsure:	the plural gets you a rain of them.. usually anyway
[17:44]	Kooky Jetaime:	ffeff
[17:44]	Sindy Tsure:	is there some weird physics stuff running here?
[17:44]	Sindy Tsure:	the one frog i saw was pretty weird
[17:44]	Kooky Jetaime:	how much of a grade is too much for you to expect to slide?
[17:44]	Andrew Linden:	not that I know of Sindy
[17:45]	Sindy Tsure:	oh.. rex has a shield
[17:45]	Rex Cronon:	sorry
[17:45]	Rex Cronon:	i forget about it
[17:45]	Sindy Tsure:	no worries.. just wondered what was up with the poor frog..
[17:45]	Andrew Linden:	oh right... the shield we were just talking about
[17:46]	Kooky Jetaime:	Yep
[17:46]	Rex Cronon:	there needs to be a fast way to find what objects are moving in given area or radius(whatever is faster/easier)
[17:46]	Kooky Jetaime:	slides here too
[17:47]	Andrew Linden:	I'll try that out Kooky
[17:47]	Kooky Jetaime:	ok
[17:47]	Kooky Jetaime:	apparently I got a crappy script somewhere
[17:47]	Sindy Tsure heard that andrew put tape on his shoes.. he cheats
[17:47]	Arawn Spitteler:	Looks like it's just Kooky
[17:47]	Free DCS Kung Fu Attachment WEAR ME: releasing controls
[17:47]	Andrew Linden:	kooky, are you using any odd attachment pusher? or anti-pusher?
[17:48]	Kooky Jetaime:	must be
[17:48]	Kooky Jetaime:	racka frack blood..grrr.
[17:48]	Andrew Linden:	I'm not sliding
[17:48]	Rex Cronon:	try taking off everything
[17:48]	Rex Cronon:	don't need to takes clothes off too:)
[17:48]	Andrew Linden:	Arawn was sliding
[17:48]	Kooky Jetaime:	I'm not now
[17:48]	Sindy Tsure:	i do a little when i turn but not as much as kooy
[17:49]	Arawn Spitteler gave you Wings Flap.
[17:49]	Arawn Spitteler:	Andrew now needs a copy of my wings
[17:49]	Kooky Jetaime:	Now I'm not
[17:49]	Andrew Linden:	yeah, Arawn's wings make me slide
[17:50]	Kooky Jetaime:	I'm back to my default attachments
[17:50]	Arawn Spitteler:	They're just llSetBuoyancy, as frar as I recall
[17:50]	Andrew Linden reads the script...
[17:50]	Arawn Spitteler:	I don't know how they effect buoyancy, before the flapping was activated.
[17:51]	Andrew Linden:	the wings script use a partial buoyancy
[17:51]	Andrew Linden:	the buoyancy feature is what I call an Action... it applies a force every step of the physics engine
[17:51]	Sindy Tsure:	hi creem
[17:51]	Rex Cronon:	i have seen somebody using an attachment that was affecting physical prims, might be related to this
[17:51]	Creem Pye:	hey guys
[17:51]	Andrew Linden:	and it is those pushes that are keeping the avatar body active
[17:51]	Andrew Linden:	hrm...
[17:52]	Creem Pye:	weird, Andrew doesn't show up on my radar
[17:52]	Rex Cronon:	hi creem
[17:52]	Kooky Jetaime:	Must be in god mode
[17:52]	Sindy Tsure:	lindenz is stealthy
[17:52]	Rex Cronon:	he is in god mode
[17:52]	Kooky Jetaime:	so he can look at the scripts
[17:52]	Creem Pye needs to figure that hack out
[17:52]	Andrew Linden:	that is because Andrew is always in admin mode
[17:52]	Kooky Jetaime:	what hack?
[17:52]	Creem Pye:	being invisible to LSL sensors
[17:52]	Sindy Tsure:	get a job at LL!
[17:53]	Kooky Jetaime:	thats not a hack
[17:53]	Creem Pye:	hehe
[17:53]	Andrew Linden:	LSL sensors will ignore Linden avatars that are in admin mode... unless the object is owned by them.
[17:53]	Andrew Linden:	thanks for the use of your wings Arawn
[17:53]	Andrew Linden:	I wonder how I'll fix that bug
[17:53]	Arawn Spitteler:	So, it's just the action, that makes us activish?
[17:53]	Sindy Tsure:	oh.. before i forget.. i mentioned a forums thread last week.. llTargetOmega stuff.. the latest RC viewers apparently fix the problem
[17:53]	Kooky Jetaime:	did you get the boyancy sink bug fixed?
[17:54]	Kooky Jetaime:	that was affecting the subs?
[17:54]	Arawn Spitteler:	We pull up Kooky's inventory, and type Worn
[17:54]	Andrew Linden:	yeah, any attachment that is making constant pushes to the avatar will keep it active
[17:55]	Andrew Linden:	please observe that Rex's rolling sphere eventually settled down and stopped
[17:55]	Kooky Jetaime:	ok
[17:55]	Andrew Linden:	I had to manually tweak things so that those implicit spheres would actually slow down
[17:55]	Andrew Linden:	they used to roll... forever
[17:55]	Sindy Tsure:	sounds like it might be fun!!
[17:56]	Sindy Tsure:	maybe not as the default behaviour, tho
[17:56]	Rex Cronon:	should a cube slide on a acute angle?
[17:56]	Kooky Jetaime:	still got the floating problem
[17:56]	Gravity check:	Touched.
[17:56]	Andrew Linden:	yeah, it was kinda weird... in a little bowl in the terrain the balls might orbit inside the bowl with uncanny lack of friction
[17:57]	Sindy Tsure:	space sim!
[17:57]	Andrew Linden:	use a flatter box Rex, so it doesn't tumble
[17:57]	Andrew Linden:	are you trying to measure the coefficients of friction?
[17:57]	Kooky Jetaime:	who?
[17:58]	Rex Cronon:	just to see if it works
[17:58]	Andrew Linden:	I was wondering what Rex was trying to demo.
[17:58]	Gravity check:	Touched.
[17:58]	Rex Cronon:	i wasn't trying to demo. i was trying to see what happened
[17:58]	Rex Cronon:	:)
[17:59]	Gravity check:	Touched.
[17:59]	Rex Cronon:	works
[17:59]	Andrew Linden:	btw, the aforementioned bug I was trying to fix on Tuesday was fixed this morning... the next simulator deploy will probably be pushed out to a hundred or so regions tomorrow and then sit over the weekend with the rest of the deploy happening on Mon and Tues
[17:59]	Andrew Linden:	that's the plan anyway
[18:00]	Sindy Tsure:	then 2 weeks until we all get mono?
[18:00]	Gravity check:	Touched.
[18:00]	Andrew Linden:	Yeah that is also the plan ... 2 weeks to MONO
[18:00]	Arawn Spitteler:	Oh, Has there been a glance at this? http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2625
[18:00]	Kooky Jetaime:	Just in time for our opening
[18:01]	Arawn Spitteler:	As a megaprim bug, it's low priority, but I'm also noticing a normal sized draw-bridge with undocumented phanomness.
[18:01]	Andrew Linden:	No, I haven't seen that bug yet Arawn.
[18:01]	Andrew Linden:	When you say the megaprim remained phantom... did you ever walk completely out of the megaprim?
[18:01]	Sindy Tsure:	when avatars are involved or in-general?
[18:01]	Andrew Linden:	Or did you wander around on the inside only?
[18:02]	Arawn Spitteler:	Yes, and walked back in, through the side
[18:02]	Andrew Linden:	Hrm... yeah that sounds like a bug
[18:02]	Andrew Linden:	Arawn, if you come up with a consise and reproducible recipe for causing the bug, perhaps you could enter it as a comment in that jira item.
[18:02]	Arawn Spitteler:	It's a hollow- profile cut- path cut tube, but the only fix for its phantom behaviour, was to leave the sim
[18:03]	Andrew Linden:	I'll be needing to know how to duplicate it... and it isn't clear what the megaprim looks like exactly.
[18:03]	Creem Pye:	for your avatar?
[18:03]	Arawn Spitteler:	I just pushed myself through the bridge, with another prim, that somehow did not become phantom
[18:03]	Gravity check:	Touched.
[18:03]	Gravity check:	Touched.
[18:03]	Gravity check:	Touched.
[18:03]	Gravity check:	Touched.
[18:04]	Creem Pye:	try a script with something like llSay(0,llList2CSV(llGetPrimitiveParams(PRIM_TYPE))))
[18:04]	Creem Pye:	to get all the exact parameters together
[18:04]	Andrew Linden:	Well, I'm going to have to run.
[18:04]	Andrew Linden:	thanks for coming
[18:04]	Rex Cronon:	bye andrew
[18:04]	Sindy Tsure:	cya, andrew! ty!
[18:04]	Creem Pye:	have a good evening
[18:04]	Rex Cronon:	i am going too
[18:04]	Kooky Jetaime:	bye Andrew
[18:04]	Sindy Tsure:	bye, folks
[18:04]	Rex Cronon:	bye everybody
[18:05]	Kooky Jetaime:	Bye Andrew, sorry for the false alarm