Planning for HUD Disasters

Planning for HUD Disasters 120506

HUD disasters happen. Here are two examples I know:

In one case a very experienced dance leader rezzed her HUD and it disappeared. Linden Lab said it was a bug but the HUD was lost.

In the second, a DANCE QUEENS member logged off on one sim and simply logged on to a different sim. When she did, her HUD had no scripts in it. All the dances were there. After a day or two of panic, she found the scripts in a folder in her inventory and restored her HUD.

I know every problem has a cause, but WOW in SL you do not always know why. Imagine losing your HUD. This note is to help you avoid this event and if you do lose it, what you can do.

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BE PREPARED - COPY ALL YOU CAN

I will use the Huddles HUD as an example, but most of this applies to all HUDs.

The Huddles HUD is copy. When you get it, make at least one copy and keep it up to date with upgrades. You might consider making two copies, since at some time you may want to use two HUDs at one time.

If you already have your HUD filled with dances and cannot make a copy of it, make a copy of the scripts in the HUD and put them in a folder in your inventory. This would have solved the second problem described above.

A second thing you can consider is to buy only copy dances. Sometimes, these are more expensive or not available, but with copy dances you can make two identical HUDs. If one is lost you can use the second and make an additional copy. There is a trade-off with this idea. Not all good dances are copyable, so you may not be able to dance all the sexy dances you want in SL.

A third thing is to use the test grid to copy your HUD and have your inventory there available as a source for restoring your HUD. See here for how to do this.

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MINIMIZE RISK

Rezzing your HUD is the riskiest operation you can do with it. I try to do it on open land where I can rezz, where I know the owner if something happens, and with a direct not wireless connection. The contents of my HUD cost me about USD 5000 and maybe 5000 hours of work. It is really valuable to me. Yours will be too, so protect it. When you are going to rezz your HUD, plan in advance exactly what you will do.

Once you have added the notecard and/or dances to your HUD, close the editing window, take your HUD back to inventory and wear it. DO NOT WEAR YOUR HUD DIRECTLY FROM THE GROUND (see http://imakehuddles.com/wordpress/tag/lost-inventory/).

You have to rezz your HUD to add dances, but not to make changes in your Notecards. I edit the HUD while it is on to only edit Notecards. This lets you see the contents, but you cannot add or remove items from the HUD contents. However, you can change the contents of a notecard. I keep a master copy of my HUD Notecards in my inventory. What I do is copy to the clipboard the contents of the master notecard in inventory, and replace the contents of the notecard in the HUD. You have to be careful to do this right or you will erase both notecards and be in crying mode.

Sometimes, it takes about 5 minutes for the contents to open for me since I have so many dances in the HUD.

Once you have copied the notecard contents from your inventory to your HUD, close the inventory notecard, stop editing your HUD and reload the notecard using the diskette icon.

One further thing you can do as a DANCE QUEENS member is to rezz your HUD on your own estate or region or at DANCE QUEENS - Dance Central. The reason for this is that sim owners have what is called concierge service from Linden Labs. As a sim owner I can get very quick help with problems by phone or chat. during Linden business hours. I have used chat many times to solve problems. Before I was a sim owner, I found Linden Lab technical support to be very slow and ineffective. Now I find it to be much more responsive. If you lose your HUD on my sim, for example, tell me and I will go directly to Linden Lab to try to solve the problem including asking for a rollback. I cannot promise this will solve every problem, but it will definitely be a higher level of service than most people get.

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DISASTER STRIKES

Oh no. All the  preparation and risk management still may be insufficient to avoid disaster. Disasters come in three types. Here is what you do:

1. The HUD doesn't work right or doesn't work at all - This is fairly common. First, enter in chat '/99 reset' to reset the HUD while wearing it. If that doesn't work, detach the HUD and reattach it. Next, try relogging or restarting your computer. If it still doesn't work look at the Huddles help webpage at http://imakehuddles.com/wordpress/ for help. Also, you can IM me or Keiki Lemieux. I like to know of problems so I can share solutions with the DANCE QUEENS group.

2. Part of the HUD contents are missing - If you copy your HUD or the scripts, this problem should be easy to fix. If you have not, contact Keiki Lemieux and request a replacement of the missing parts. The Huddles HUD is no transfer so others cannot give you the replacement scripts.

3. The HUD is gone - First look for it in your inventory:
a. Check the folder in your inventory where you normally put your Huddles.
b. Check your lost and found folder in your inventory.
c. Check your Trash folder in your inventory.
d. Search your inventory using the term 'Huddles'
Next, look for it on the sim where you were:
e. Use Ctrl-Alt-T to highlight your rezzed items at the location where you lost the HUD. This may make it visible.
f. Click on the Build capability button to open the Building Window. Click the middle button on the top of the window. Then, place your mouse cursor near the location where you think you lost the HUD, click the left mouse button and make a rectangle around the area. This highlights any itmes you own within the rectangle.
g. Talk to the sim or parcel owner and ask her/him to look at the objects on the sim. The owner can see objects owned by you and return them to your lost and found
h. Go to Linden Lab and request assistance. If you have a copy of your HUD on the test grid, ask to have it copied and placed on the SL grid for you. If not, a roll back is the ultimate option. This is an operation that restores the sim to a previous time.

A helpful Wiki article is here.

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Please send any changes or additions to Nottoo Wise.

xxxx
Nottoo

Empty Lines in Huddles Notecards

Empty Lines in Huddles Notecards 111227

For those of you who use the Huddles HUD, be aware of the importance of using a space-bar space on empty lines. If you want to put a line between dances or sequences so that you have a blank entry in the Huddles display, you must put a space-bar space on the blank line. If you don't Huddles may skip the following line.

xxx

Nottoo

Using Your HUD as a Group Dance Machine

Using Your HUD as a Group Dance Machine 111024


The Huddles or Fleursoft HUDs are designed for you to wear as a HUD (Heads Up Display) so you can control your own dancing and lead others if you want. Included with the Huddles is a copyable dance ball which let's others add themselves to your HUD. Although the Huddles and Fleursoft HUDs are designed to be worn, they can be used another way ... as a Group Dance Machine.

This notecard describes how to set up the HUDs as a Dance Machine that works whether or not you are online.

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WHAT YOU NEED

To make the HUD into a Dance Machine you need the following:
1. A copy of the Huddles or Fleursoft ... not the one you wear yourself
2. Copyable dances

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MAKING THE GROUP DANCE MACHINE

Rezz the HUD on the ground (IMPORTANT: this is not the one you wear, but a copy). Select the HUD and Edit it. Check the Stretch box and be sure Stretch Both Sides and Stretch Textures are also checked. Grab one of the white boxes and enlarge the HUD to the size you want for your home or club. I made mine large enough that is is easily visible on my club wall. Click the Positions radio button and place the enlarged HUD where you want it. Click the General tab and set the Group to what you want. Then, stop editing. This is your Dance Machine.

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LOADING DANCES AND NOTECARDS

Since you probably have a lot of copyable dances in your inventory, just load them to your Dance Machine. You can also make notecards for your Dance Machine.

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USING YOUR DANCE MACHINE

Anyone can use it. They need to add themselves to the Dance Machine. It works just like a dance HUD in that it's useful for group dancing, but anyone can lead. I still will use my normal HUD for dancing and leading, but this Dance Machine let's others see the fun of dance leading and it offers a good learning for how the HUD works.

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SEE A SAMPLE

A sample of both the Huddles and Fleursoft Dance machines are at DANCE QUEENS - Dance Central.

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xxxx
Nottoo

Rezzing Items with the Huddles HUD

Rezzing Items with the Huddles HUD 111019


This question was asked about rezzing items using the Huddles:

"Can you explain in a little more detail how to add rezzing objects like the shower into a NC so the Huddles does it automatically as part of the dance? I am NOT mathematically inclined, so a very simple explanation (if that is possible, lol) would be appreciated. I am assuming the numbers after the object name have something to do with their placement - how do you determine that ahead of time?"

The Huddles website mentions this capability very briefly. I have used rezzing as an option in a number of Dance Sequences, e.g. 184 rezzes a shower, 226 rezzes a table, 229 rezzes a dance pole, and 253 rezzes a bouncing tube.

Rezzing requires that the item you want to rezz be inside your Huddles HUD. Make sure the item is copy or you will only be able to rezz it one time. You add the item to your HUD just as you add a dance.

The format for using the rezzing command is:

[rez:x:y:z]Name of Item

The x, y and z refer to the distance in meters in the directions of x, y and z relative to your avatar's position. For example, to rez the bouncing tube I used:

[rez:2:0:1.8]DANCE QUEENS - Bouncer

This placed the root prim of the bouncing tube 2 meters in front of me (x direction) and 1.8 meters above me. There is no capability in the script for rotating the item.

There are several things to keep in mind when designing where you want the object to rezz.

1. First is figuring out your position, which is where your pelvis is located. The object's root prim is rezzed relative to your pelvis' position. If you want to figure out what your avatar's position is relative to the ground, you can do so by rezzing at Linden water a DANCE QUEENS - Dance Ball Individual for Group (found in the Free Stuff Box). Edit the pose ball then hop on it. This lets you move the pose ball and your avatar at the same time. Adjust the height of the pose ball in the vertical (up and down) direction until your feet or shoes just touch the water. Look at the z position of the pose ball and subtract 20 (almost all Linden water is at 20.00 m). This gives you your z position relative to the land you are on or the top of the object you are standing on. Keep in mind that those sexy, really high heels increase your height, so the z position depends on the shoes you are wearing.
    
2. Second is making the object rez in the orientation you want it. Nothing is worse than rezzing an object like a chair and it is upside down. What I have found is the best way to be sure is trial and error with the HUD. Put your original object in the HUD and rezz it. If the oreintation of the rezzed object is wrong, you will have to change the orientation of the original object that you put in the HUD, for example turning the original object 90 degrees before you take the original and place it in your HUD.
    
3. Finally, you can calculate where you want the object to rezz. Face your avatar directly East. Plus numbers on the x coordinate are in front of you. A zero on the x is directly on you and minus x numbers are behind you. Y numbers are negative to your right and positive to you left. If you want to calculate it exactly, rezz the pose ball, edit the pose ball and hop on again. Rotate the pose ball to face exactly EAST.  Now, place the object where you want it to rezz. The difference between the x coordinate of the pose ball and the object gives you the x number and the difference in the y coordinate gives you the y number.

You can use trial and error all the way if you want. Rezz the object. If, for example, you want it further in front of you, increase the x number. If you want it more to the left, increase the y number.

One thing to keep in mind is the object won't rezz, if the distance of the root prim is more than 10 meters from you. Also, if you are leading a group, the object only rezzes for you.

xxx
Nottoo

Making a Notecard for Huddles

Making a Notecard for Huddles 111003


Notecards are used in the Huddles EZ Animator Delux to do two things:

1. Put dances in the order you want them
2. To make choreographed Dance Sequences

This notecard is to help you make your first notecard to put dances in the order you want them.

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HOW TO CREATE A NOTECARD

Open your inventory by clicking on the Inventory button in the bottom of your screen (Firestorm). Select the folder in inventory where you want to place the notecard. I use the same folder as my Huddles HUD. Right click on the folder name and you see a drop down menu ... select 'New Note.' This opens a note and selects the note in yout inventory so you can name the note. Let's use the name 'PRACTICE 1.' The name is important since this is the name that you will see in your HUD.

Once you have named your notecard, you see the notecard on your screen and it is blank. The top line is the title and I usually title it the same at the notecard name 'PRACTICE 1.'

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DESIGN OF THE NOTECARD

Since the notecard lets you arrange dances in the order you want and lets you use dance sequences, the first thing is to think about how to organize the card.

One dance or sequence is used per line. Since your Huddles HUD displays only 10 dances or sequences at one time, you need to think in terms of groups of ten.

I have put my HUD in the general order of SLOW, MEDIUM, FAST for the dances and sequences. Since I have so many dances I even put the speed on each display page.

In each group of ten I put four things:

1. line 1 - Sultry Down body - this is the transition dance to be used between dances that don't match well or at the end of a song
2. line 2 - I put the words SLOW, MEDIUM or FAST here with a modifier sometimes like MALE or SPECIAL. This helps me know what kind of dances are on the display page.
3. lines 3 through 9 - Here I put dances or sequences, which are discussed below.
4. line 10 - Here I put rythm6 which is my between songs dance.

At the DANCE QUEENS Free Stuff Box you can get a copy of a Notecard without the dances in the 3 through 9 position so you can see what it looks like ... it is 'DANCE QUEENS - Notecard Sample 1A for Huddles.'

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LOADING YOUR FIRST NOTECARD

Put 'DANCE QUEENS - Notecard Sample 1A for Huddles' in your HUD and take a look at it. To do this, DETACH your HUD. Rezz it on the ground. Edit the HUD and select contents. This is the same process you use to add dances to the HUD. Rezzing your HUD is the riskiest operation you can do with it. I try to do it on land where I can rezz, where I know the owner if something happens, and with a direct not wireless connection. The contents of my HUD cost me about USD 4000 and maybe 4000 hours of work. It is really valuable to me. Yours will be too, so protect it. I've set up a spot at Dance Central for you to do this.

Once the contents show, click and hold on the notecard and slide the cursor to the contents area of your HUD, then release the mouse button.

Once you have added the notecard and/or dances, close the editing window, take your HUD back to inventory and wear it. DO NOT WEAR YOUR HUD DIRECTLY FROM THE GROUND. You have to load the new or revised Notecard using the diskette button. Clicking this button gives you a listing of notecards. Select 'DANCE QUEENS - Notecard Sample 1 for Huddles' and the notecard loads in your HUD.

The default position is the first ten lines, which should display Sultry Down Body on the TOP line, SLOW as the second line, and rythm6 at the bottom.

Some important points:

1. Keep a copy of your notecard in inventory. I make changes in the inventory notecard and load or change the notecard in the HUD by copying the notecard from inventory.
2. Use different notecards for special situations. I sometimes host an event called LATE NIGHT SOMEWHERE. I have a notecard for this event with only dances that look like I am singing on a stage. I have a separate notecard for DANCE QUEEN demos. I actually have about 10 notecards loaded in my HUD ... all with different names.
3. If you click on the second line which has the name of the display group, you will see in Green in Chat the name, for example, SLOW. The HUD does this when it cannot find the dance with the name.
4. Look at the notecard in inventory. Notice that each blank line has a space bar space. This is necessary for the HUD to recognize the blank line as blank. If you do not put anything on the line, the HUD interprets it as nothing. This messes up your dance order. To be sure my spacing is correct I check the last display page to be sure Sultry Down Body is at the top.

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LOADING DANCES

Putting dances in your HUD is just like putting in the Notecard. You must have the dances in your HUD for the HUD to play them. One exception to this is the group of SL internal animations. They do not have to be in the HUD. There is a separate note that explains using the SL animations.

The next step is to put the dances in your notecard. First you need the name of the dance. I get the names by opening the properties of the dance. With very few exceptions this gives you the correct name for the dance. THE NAME OF THE DANCE MUST BE EXACTLY RIGHT IN YOUR NOTECARD. Watch capitalization and extra spaces. Exact means exact.

Next, I decide which dances are slow, medium and fast. This is arbitrary, but is a good first division. Then, I put the dance names in the HUD one per line. I make sure the extra space that I had put in the line as discussed above is eliminated. If I need more room for my SLOW dances, for example, I just add a new group of ten spaces with lines 1, 2 and 10 as described above. Then, I add the new dances.

Now I have the notecard in inventory with the list of dances in the approximate order I want them. 'DANCE QUEENS - 1B Notecard Sample for Huddles' shows an example of a notecard with dances included. This is available at the DANCE QUEENS Free Stuff Box.

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CHANGING A NOTECARD IN THE HUD

There are two ways to do this.

The first way is to load the notecard like you load a new dance. This requires that you put the HUD on the ground and I don't like to do that except when I have to. It also means you have to remove the old notecard with the same name.

The second method is easier. I edit the HUD while it is on. This lets you see the contents, but you cannot add or remove items from the HUD contents. However, you can change the contents of a notecard. What I do is copy to the clipboard the contents of the notecard in inventory, and replace the contents of the notecard in the HUD. You have to be careful to do this right or you will erase both notecards and be in crying mode. Sometimes, it takes about 5 minutes for the contents to open for me since I have so many dances in the HUD.

Once you have copied the notecard contents from your inventory to your HUD, close the inventory notecard, stop editing your HUD and reload the notecard using the diskette icon.

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POLISHING YOUR NOTECARD

As soon as you have your dances in your HUD, try them. Right away you will see some that you like together and others that don't fit. At this point I start changing my inventory notecard to make the order I like best. This is a never ending process. When I am happy with the changes I have made, I put the inventory notecard contents into the HUD like described above.

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Now you can put dances into your notecard and use it for Freestyle Choreography. Next, take the class on how to do Freestyle Choreography and how to do Sequenced Choreography.

xxx
Nottoo

Navigating in Your Huddles HUD

Navigating in Your Huddles HUD 111002



THE ALL BUTTON

When  I started dancing in SL using the Huddles HUD, I did not use a notecard. I simply used the All button. This listed all of my dances in alphabetical order. What fun :-)

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NOTECARDS FOR DANCES

The ALL button was sufficient until I got to about 50 dances in my HUD. At that point I learned about Notecards and how they allow you to arrange your dances in order. WOW! What an improvement. I could put the dances in the order I wanted and began to think about how to arrange them.

This led to arranging dances by speed. It also led to thinking about how to transition from one dance to another and what to do when the music stopped. My early Notecards looked something like this ...

Sultry Down Body
SLOW
stripper
strippers2b
strippers2c
swoon
danish
dip me in chocolate
crimson breeze
rythm6
Sultry Down Body
SLOW
erotic dance12b
Abranimations - Soft Wiggle
Slow_Seduction
Seduction 1|27|Sultry Down Body|2.2|Seduction 2
Sexy Dip - Abranimations
Sexy Bend - Abranimations
MDHUupdnHBD|12|Dance46|7|Dance38
rythm6
Sultry Down Body
MEDIUM
dizzy orchid
grinding nutmeg
precious morning
milk and honey
crystal roses
firefly
honeysuckle
rythm6
Sultry Down Body
MEDIUM
red chilli sheen
flaming sambuca
carnival
gimme gimme gimme
caramel|25|Sultry Down Body|2|Spirited Twirl - Abranimations
strawberrys and cream
jumpin
rythm6
Sultry Down Body
FAST
Abranimations - Clubbers 8
LETSGOCRAZY by OWENIMATIONS
I am on fire
this joint is jumpin
flapper
crazy legs
orange squash
rythm6

In this notecard I arranged my dances in order from slow to medium to fast. I put my transition dance, Sultry Down Body, on each page in the first slot (lines 1, 11, 21, etc), the speed on the second slot (lines 2, 12, 22, etc), and my waiting dance, rythm6, in the bottom slot at each page (lines 10, 20, 30, etc)

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NOTECARDS WITH SEQUENCES

When I got to about 200 dances in my HUD, I began to realize that I could not click through the 20 or so pages fast enough to easily switch between dances. This led to learning how to make sequences of dances that I often used together. A sequence is described in other DANCE QUEEN notes and looks something like this:

stripper|42|strippers2c|81|Sultry Down Body|1.8|swoon|45.5|danish|37|crimson breeze|25|dip me in chocolate|29|swoon|45.5|danish|23|Sultry Down Body|2.2|strippers2c

At first I used both individual dances in a Freestyle mode and a sequenced mode. As my number of dances grew, I realized that I had to start using only sequenced choreography and removed the individual dances from my main notecard. There are just too many pages to click through otherwise.

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ANOTHER SOLUTION OR THREE

Now, with the number of sequences approaching 325 and well over 4000 dances in my HUD, I am finding that another improvement in navigation is needed.

There are three ways to do this:

1. One is to use separate notecards and navigate among them. With the Huddles HUD this means that I stop dancing while the new notecard loads. With large notecards this can take several minutes, which is not a good general solution. Other HUDs, e.g. Fleursoft, have much faster notecard switching and alleviate this problem.
    
2. Another option is to use the feature of Huddles that lets you find a macro by entering in chat '/99n name of macro.' A macro is any dance sequence that uses the [NAME] macro, for example, Dance Sequence 120. Since I named Dance Sequence 120 in my notecard as 'Urban Killer' this lets me simply type in chat the following:
    /99n urban killer
    With this approach I can make a separate notecard listing all my Macros and copy and paste into chat. I can leave the HUD on one page, for example my page of Waiting Dances Between Songs. The notecard can be open and minimized in the lower left of your screen, then maximized when needed. Here are what some entries in the notecard might look like:
    SLOW DANCES
   /99n DD Slow
   /99n Heat Wave
   /99n SLOWnWETMEDIUM DANCES
   /99n Urban Cool
   /99n Urban Killer
   /99n Pearl's a Singer
    Each line represents a macro in my active Huddles Notecard.
    
3. A third solution is to use two HUDs at one time. I wear one in the upper left and one in the upper right (in the Firestorm viewer).

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MORE ORGANIZATION

The more I dance the more I realize that there is a lot more than speed that I use to decide which sequence to play with a song. I use something that I call feel. You may use other terms. Feel to me is like the strength of the beat. I defined three categories of feel: soft, moderate and hard. So I combined this with speed to get more categories in which to place my sequences, for example, MEDIUM-SOFT, MEDIUM MODERATE, MEDIUM-HARD. Of course there still are special categoreis like Macarena or Line Dancing or Rap, but for the vast majority of songs, this additonal categorization lets me do a better job of quickly choosing just the right sequence when I hear a song.


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NOTECARD CAPACITY

Although I use dance sequences almost exclusively for dancing in clubs, I still keep a long list of individual dances in a notecard. These are the dances that I plan to put in a sequence someday. I have the individual dances categorized as described above. Unfortunately, the maximum size of a notecard is 65,536 bytes, so, if you have a really big main notecard like I do, you have to put your dances for development on a separate notecard from the dances that you use regularly.

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If you have more ideas about navigating in your Huddles HUD, let me know.

xxxxx

Nottoo