Ace’s Short Stuff

I finished up my creepifyin’ hut. Hopefully it all works properly. It’s a fun thing I made that cost nothing- no texture uploads, because it is all library textures. Just a little experiment in making things

It’s out on sale (for 0 L$) just in time for halloween. Phew!

I keep seeing things in one of my houses I almost finished (I even got it into rezzing form) that aren’t quite right. Gaps here and there, stuff like that. Sigh. I made a little progress on the other one, but it’s another foolishly awkward bunch of shapes (note to self- stick to right angles) so I started noodling around with a new design, expanding on one of my beach hut designs (That worked nicely for ODOO/ODEN).

I haven’t gone into my script either, though I would like to get some testing done. I think I may make a small cabin, put the new scripts in, and put it out for free for a limited time, see if I can get some feedback on the scripty stuff.

Polite reminder- if someone doesn’t want to do business with you on your terms, just walk away. Don’t waste your time calling them a moron or whatever. I swear the biggest roleplayers in SL are the ones who pretend to be the most professional.

My script update is 95% done, but that last 5% is proving awkward. Also I have a few new cool ideas that sadly won’t work with the updater box so I can’t roll them out because it would cause headaches for everyone. To be honest even the updater box could lead to problems with some houses out there- I don’t know, with all the modifications and stuff, I may have to disclaim it’s use in those cases. But that won’t stop the pleas for help.

I have two houses pretty much done, that I’d been sitting on or delaying while I get this script update done. I think I may be better off releasing them with the current system, but I hoped to have at least one of them be the “new generation”. I spent a lot of effort keeping the scripts backwardly compatible, maybe too much, but there you go.

My goal then, is to get a house released this week, new script or no.

If SL has been flaky the last few days, that might have been me logging in and out on my alt testing something new and shiny.

Finally, after redoing my houses to the 2.5 version which included some stuff to make future updates possible (over a year ago, in fact) I’m almost ready to try releasing the sem-automatic updater system. I found some problems in practice, and some from lack of foresight that mean the upgrade method isn’t as smooth as I’d like, but it seems to work.

What I need now, are people with 2.5 version Ace’s Spaces houses, who are willing and able to experiment with the updater, and maybe who can step in and manually replace scripts if needed.

What’s the benefit to being a lab rat you might ask?

Notecard access list support, and click button support that gives the house menu exactly as if you’d called it by chat. From anywhere around the house, even outside of chat range potentially. Woo!

Send IMs to me in world if you’d like to play with the new features and the updater system!

I made a button.

A Magic Shiny Button.

A what? I little round button, a single prim. It has a simple menu so you can click it and control doors, windows and lights in my Ace’s Spaces houses. It works as either a button rezzed anywhere around the house, or even as a HUD attachment.
Now before you all squee with delight, I need to make a few points:

• It works on houses set to Group Access only
• Anyone in the group can click the button and work the stuff
• It uses a simple menu with on/off menu buttons for the basic features
• It doesn’t include any advanced setup options.
• Only the button owner can configure the menu channel used to talk to the house

So mostly it will be useful for people who use a land group for their friends/family. Not so much for rental landlords unless your community is sensible enough that you don’t worry about group members messing with each others houses, because any group member can use it.

How does it work?

I had a minor brainwave about my group access option in my houses. The “Group On” option uses simple LSL functions to check the group of whoever (or, importantly, whatever) is calling the menu. So I made this button. It basically bypasses the house menu, and calls the house chat commands directly, from its own little menu. So when you click the  “Blinds On” menu option, the Button sends a chat saying “/101 blinds on”, and because the house is set to allow any group member (including objects set to group) to work its gubbins, you get your windows tinting.

Neat!

One side effect, as with any object that receives instant messages (the Button is the one calling the house, not the person clicking it, so the house response IMs go to the button) is that if you have IMs set to go to email, you’ll find your inbox filling with house messages. You can set the house in “quiet” mode to stop most of this, though. The owner can use a chat command for the Button to make it talk on the right channel for the house (like if you moved your menu channel off /101).

Ace’s Magic Shiny Button 1.0 does not currently work with Parker’s Park Life or BLIP houses

Ace’s Magic Shiny Button 1.0 is available free with copy permissions to anyone who wants one and sends me an IM- it’s currently being used by only one person in all of SL so more guinnea pigs volunteer early adopters are welcomed!

Big and open, and all cosy textures, it’s been sooo long since I finished a house, so hooray for finally getting one out.

You might not know about the “Nicholaz” SL client- a modified version of the SL viewer by Nicholaz Beresford.

It contains bug fixes and new (or old!) options compared to the official client- something a lot of people are interested in, is how it puts back the old friend list/IM windows so you can get some of your screen view back.

The downside for Mac peeps was that it would only patch the windows version, but now Barney Boomslang has made it all work on OS X too, so yay!

You can find out more about it here

No piccies or anything but here we are!

Yay!

Well the GLOW lights seem to be working ok- no IMs at all about not being able to get them working or anything, so yay! To celebrate, I made two more styles of lights. KOLA is a simple hanging light, like GLOW, but with a round bulb and a cone light shade, like a more typical indoor light. HALO is a wall light, a suggestion that I thought was a great idea. Both styles of lights are available in the 5 Points interiors store at Deco, and come in the same increasingly discounted packs as the GLOW.

I made some simple low-prim stores a while ago, that I finally got time to package up for sale. They come in boxes of two, in four styles, with a multipack discounted 25% for the whole set of eight-available from the yellow commercial boards at our display n sales platforms

I was sent a landmark to another copy of one of my houses for sale- ONUS this time, in a change from the counterfeit ARGEs. It was different in some ways, but the guy had even recreated the upstairs  wall prim detailing, the vaguely Mondrian stlye accenting I’d used in the original. Well, they say mimicry is flattery, or something. I don’t understand it. It’s not really so hard to make an original design when it’s simple.

Rodents Required! Lab rats, or dramatic prairie dogs- I’ve been kind of sitting on a script update for a while now- it allows an access list based on notecards, just like Parker’s funky new ParkLife builds do. If anyone wants to test it out before I make an official updater gizmo, then let me know with an IM

Works in progress- mahoosive house and script update (very complicated, makes my brain hurt), a funky angular house that’s breaking my will to live, and a kind-of-modular home- I made a small chalet thing that could squeeze onto a 512m2 plot, then realised I could stick some more onto it to make a proper home. The idea is if you get the home, you get a cute chalet pretty much for free.