Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Vote to Improve Dancing in SL


Vote to Improve Dancing in SL 120808

You have a chance to affect the improvement of dancing in SL. This note explains the details. Please vote (follow each link, select 'More Actions' and click 'Add Vote' - NOTE: you may have to log in) as Racheal recommends and ask your friends to do so also. I will soon send an in-world notice with all this for you to send to your friends.

xxx
Nottoo

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Racheal Young sent the following note to members of her group today ...

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Hi I'm Racheal Young. I developed the Barre Dance HUD. I would like to ask you, the dance community for your help. If we band together we can influence the direction of development to benefit our community and SL. I urge you and your friends to visit the following links and vote. This will help in making them a priority and gain the attention of Linden Labs.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SCR-73
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SCR-13
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SCR-10
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7792
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-6867

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I followed the links and read what was there, but I still had some questions as to what this was all about, so I asked Rach. She was kind enough to reply quickly and and here is what she said:

1. I am unfamiliar with this system. Is it for identifying script capabilities that are desirable in SL and helping LL set priorities for improvements?

A) The vote allows us as a community to place a priority on improvements or fixes to our SL.

2. Who manages this board?

A) The Lindens manage this system to help us report bugs or issues. It is used to help in prioritizing the direction of development.

3. How did you decide on the five proposals that you identified?

A) After careful review... With the thought of how this will affect, how it will help dancers, and how it will help scriptwriters. While we have had forward movement and improvement in script functions, some focus seems have been lost at a core need in SL, that being animations. These issues as a whole are directed at the needs of a HUGE community in SL.

4. Can you BRIEFLY explain why each is important. I can get most of that from reading about them, but I want your opinion.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SCR-73 Asks for the development of a llPreloadAnimation() scripting function. This would allow script writers to preload animations without the script user needing to dance them before hand. This would give us an instant start and not have a delayed start, as it is currently for animations that are not cached on a region.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SCR-13  is requesting the llStartAnimationSynced command be added to the function library. Although in its current requested state, it would be difficult to implement. The effort would be directed at finding a method that would work. In theory, this would give script writers the ability to sync animations at the same time. Currently a command is sent to multiple scripts and you hope that execution is triggered at the same time. Further more, changes in the server software have decayed the ability to sync a group as accurately as we would like to see. 

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SCR-10 Currently scripters have to go through a process of checking if the avatar is there before issuing a stop or start command for animations. This process eats up script memory and precious cycles. What is being proposed here is an event that is triggered when a change in the condition of the avatar has taken place.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7792 This one has a fix pending, however I want to draw interest to it. It is important because it affects how a HUD is treated. Currently this causes HUD lag and this fix will reduce that.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-6867 Here we are looking at a generalized request. It supports other issues and in voting for it you are promoting the development of a better animation engine.

5. BRIEFLY, what are the negatives of these changes if any?

A) There are negatives... Yes, in making these requests of Linden Labs we pull them away from other projects. But in the end we, the dance community will be given some much needed attention. While other things have been improving in SL, the dance community and animations in general have fallen to the wayside. Even the abilities of some scripted dance tools have lost potency due to other projects affecting them. We need to become more of a priority. It is time for the dance community to have our "important" things addressed. It is far from my intent to stir a hornets nest, simply a nudge to get our needs addressed.

When you vote you will need to log into your Second Life account. There is a login button on the web page. Then just click "vote" on the pages listed below.

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It takes about three minutes to vote on all five. Do it NOW so you won't forget.