Second Life 0.4 Release Notes[]
Why can't I see my lights?[]
By default, the graphics engine no longer displays the light cast by light objects. This results in a large improvement in frame rate. If you like the effect of lights and have a fast machine, go into Preferences, Display and turn "Local Lighting" back on.
Why does my hair look funny? Why am I bald?[]
You can now have pony tails, pig tails, and longer hair. This change may cause your existing hair to show a few bald spots. In most cases you can fix this by increasing the hair volume and "taper back" by a small amount.
Items are missing from my inventory![]
Inventory is a bag. Dragging an object out of your inventory will MOVE the object out of your inventory and into the world. If you want to leave a copy in your inventory, hold down the Shift key while dragging it out.
Find and recycle trash, make money![]
"Object decay to public" is a major new feature in this release. Many residents have noted that there appear to be a lot of abandoned objects in the system. Perhaps someone lost an object, or a resident has stopped playing Second Life. Until now, there has been no way to clean up these objects.
As of this release, any object on public land will have a timer. When a resident interacts with the object (edits it, plays with it, pays it money, takes a copy, etc), this timer resets. However, once the timer hits 72 hours (three days where no one has interacted with the object), the object is “released” and ownership is set to public.
Objects on owned land do not have timers. So if you want to keep your objects from going public, you can either claim the land underneath them, or persuade a friend to keep your objects on his land.
If you want to see if your object is "decaying to public", hover your mouse over it. If it is going public, there will be a line at the bottom saying "Decay to public: <number>%". When the number reaches 100%, the object becomes public.
Note that the public objects retain their permissions. By default, no one can modify them or copy them. They can only be deleted.
So how do you make money? As you know, all objects have a creation cost. Refunding of creation cost has been separated into two amounts - one for releasing and one for deleting.
Previous to this release, you would get the L$10/object creation cost refunded when you release to public or delete an object. Going forward objects, whether public or private, retain some value until they are deleted.
Here's how it works using some sample scenarios:
- You create a cube and then delete it. Creation cost was $10, deleting refunds you $10.
- You create a cube, release it public, then delete it. Creation cost was $10, releasing refunds you $6, deleting refunds you $4.
- You create a cube, release it public, leave it somewhere and then it's deleted by someone else who cleans up after you. Creation cost was $10, releasing refunded you $6, and the person who deleted it receives $4.
- You create a cube, leave it on public land, after 72 hrs of non-interaction it becomes public. Then you or someone else deletes it. Creation cost was $10, once it decayed to public you receive $4 while $2 leaks back to the economic pool. Then whoever deletes the public cube receives $4.
Finally, scripts don't run on public objects. The script window will have the running checkbox disabled and some text explaining that it can't run on a public object.
More information can be found in the Second Life Forums under "Announcements".
Performance[]
- The rendering engine has been further optimized, for a moderate frame rate improvement in most situations.
- In Preferences, you can completely disable local lighting (light cast by objects other than the sun and the moon). This results in a substantial frame rate improvement.
- Our internal transfers of clothing, inventory, textures and sounds have been optimized. The delay between when you drop and object out of the inventory and when it appears in the world is improved.
- Avatar transition between regions is more reliable. You should see fewer missing regions and fewer crashes when changing regions.
- Rendering speed after teleporting has been dramatically improved.
Chat and IM[]
- Muting - You can mute an annoying resident from the pie menu or hit Control-Shift-M to bring up a list to type in someone's name. You will not receive chat or IM messages from residents you have muted.
- Busy Mode - Select Busy from the world menu to let other people know that you don't want to talk right now. You won't hear what they say nor will they be able to bug you with object offers or other solicitations.
When you enter Busy Mode, an indicator appears on the bottom of the screen. This is so you can tell that you are marked busy even if you can't see your avatar. "Busy Mode" does not persist between sessions, once you log out and log back in, you'll need to turn it back on if you want to be noted as "Busy."
- IM Via E-Mail - In the Preferences dialog, you can supply your email address and have Second Life instant messages sent to your email address when you are not online. Messages sent out on email will have a copy stored in the database, so you can see them the next time you log in.
- Less IM Flooding - The flood of '<user> has left this session.' instant messages is fixed.
- Easier IM Conferences - New IM session participants can be added by dragging their calling card from your inventory onto the panel.
- Chat - You can change the size of the chat text to be large or small. You can also choose how many seconds the chat lasts on your screen before it fades.
- Gestures - Type '/' at any point to get into the chat input line. You can use this to make gesture triggers like '/smile'.
Groups[]
- Multiple Groups - You can now belong to more than one group, but you are only active in one group at any particular time. 'Active' in a group means that you will have the group title prefixed to your name and objects you build will be modifiable by other members of your group. You can easily change which group is currently active.
- Edit Group Options - If you are an officer in a group, you can edit the group options. To edit group options, select 'My Groups...' from the 'Edit', select the group you want to modify, and click the edit button.
- Invite Members - If you are an officer in a group, you can invite other residents as officers or members by viewing their profile and inviting them to join from there. Alternately, you can bulk invite users in the group edit window. To reach the group edit window, select 'My Groups...' from the 'Edit', select the group you want to modify, and click the edit button.
- Groups can now be "open enrollment", not requiring an invite to join. If the group is open enrollment, the group profile contains a "join" button allowing anyone to join.
- Share Objects With Your Group - You can set an object group to match your active group by clicking the 'Set' button in the general panel of the build toolbox.
- Creating a group now has a one-time fee associated to pay for the backoffice staff completing forms in triplicate.
- A "membership fee" may be specified for groups, which is collected when someone joins and is split among the current officers.
- Groups now keep track of who founded them.
- Group directory shows more useful directory entries (name, # of members, open/closed enrollment, fee).
- Double-clicking a group in the group directory now brings up a group profile floater akin to the avatar profile floater, with relevant group info.
- The group profile also contains a list of group officers; double-clicking on an officer starts an IM session to them. This provides a way for folks to request entry to a closed group.
- Columns sort correctly in Groups Directory.
- Minimum group size of five is now enforced. If a group does not maintain a minimum of five members within seven days of founding, the group is automatically dissolved.
Appearance[]
Colored Clothing - You can now tint the colors of all clothing items. Each clothing tab has a color picker. It works just like the color picker in the Object Texture tab.
Accessories (objects attached to your avatar) now work much like clothing and body parts:
- Accessories must be in your inventory to be worn and are marked "(worn)" when you are wearing them.
- When you detach an accessory, it is still in your inventory, but is no longer marked "(worn)"
- Attaching an object that is in the world to your avatar automatically moves it to your inventory.
- You can attach an object by dragging it from your inventory to your avatar. You can also right-click on an object in your inventory to open a menu of attachment points.
- Accessories remember their last attachment point, so when you drag them to your avatar, they know where to go. If you have never attached an object before, it will be attached to your head by default.
- When you put on an outfit (by dragging a folder to your avatar), all of your current accessories are detached, and the objects in new outfit are automatically attached.
- When you create a new outfit, you are given the option to include your current accessories in the outfit.
- You cannot delete accessories while you are wearing them.
- When you create a new outfit (called "Formalwear" for example), the clothing and body parts that are save are named accordingly ("Formalwear Shirt," "Formalwear Jacket," etc.). Note: attachments are not renamed since they may contain scripts can depend on their name.
Notecards[]
Notecards can now contain attached inventory items. This works somewhat like email attachments. For example, you can now send someone an invitation notecard that contains a picture, a landmark, and appropriate clothing for them to wear. To attach a copy of an item to a notecard, start editing the notecard and then drag and drop the item from your inventory into it. You can also drag attached items back into your inventory or into the world.
Double clicking on attached pictures and notecards opens them, and double clicking on sounds plays the sounds. Because attached items are always copies and can always be copied, the attached items must have their permissions set to allow unlimited copying by anyone. You cannot edit attached items while they are attached, but you can copy them to your inventory and edit the copies there.
Inventory[]
Objects Return to Folders - If you select 'Acquire > Take' on an object you have taken out of your inventory, it will return to the folder from which it came.
No More Clones - Inventory clones have been removed. Copying and pasting an item in your inventory makes a new copy.
Sorted Task Inventory - Task contents are internally sorted. When scripting, the order that an item appears in the contents panel is the same as when you access it via the llGetInventoryName() function.
New Icons - New icons have been added for the inventory.
Nothing Underground - If you leave an object underground, it will be automatically moved into your inventory, just like if it went off the edge of the world.
Profile, Account, Leader Boards[]
- First Life Page - Go to your avatar profile and select the First Life tab. Here you will be able to enter your particular real life interests and hobbies to help you meet people online.
- Account History Summary - The account history window now has several views. The summary page shows your last week's debits, credits, and a summary of upcoming taxes. You can review debits and credits for each of the last eight weeks.
- Account History Details - The details page shows a category breakdown of the debits and credits. You can review each of the last eight weeks.
- Sales and Gifts - The sales and gifts page shows a daily list of who gave you money or bought your objects. You can review sales and gifts for each day of the last week.
- Leader Boards - "High Score" has been added to the leader boards. This is a composite of other factors on the leader boards.
- Leader Boards - "Net Worth" has been added to the leader boards. It is based on your cash balance, owned land, and owned objects.
- Leader Boards - "Reputation" has been broken into three categories, "Behavior", "Appearance", and "Building".
- Ratings - When you rate someone, you can independently rate their behavior (like chat, messages, and general helpfulness), appearance (skill with avatar appearance and attachments), and building (skill with construction of objects and scripts).
- Ratings - It costs $1 to rate someone, or to change your rating of them.
- Bug reports can now be filed via the Help menu.
- Abuse reports can be filed via the Help menu. You can click on the object picker to indicate the object you are reporting. A screenshot will be sent. Please don't file false reports; if you do, we will have to suspend your account. We have to do this, otherwise the abuse reporter becomes a way for residents to harass each other.
Scripting[]
If you want to make a scripted object that changes or animates its textures, use the new llSetTextureAnim scripting call. It provides smooth, fast animation and does not increase the amount of network traffic your object generates.
Script sensors work across region boundaries.
New script calls:
integer llGetAgentInfo(key id) - Gets information about agent ID. Returns
AGENT_FLYING, AGENT_ATTACHMENTS, and/or AGENT_SCRIPTED
llAdjustSoundVolume(float volume) - Adjusts volume of attached sound (0.0 -
1.0)
llSetSoundQueueing(integer queue) - Determines whether attached sound calls
wait for the current sound to finish (0 = no [default], nonzero = yes)
llSetSoundRadius(float radius) - Establishes a hard cut-off radius for
audibility of scripted sounds (both attached and triggered)
string llKey2Name(key id) - Returns the name of the object key, iff the
object is in the current simulator, otherwise the empty string
llSetTextureAnim(integer mode, integer face, integer sizex, integer sizey,
float start, float length, float rate) - Animate the texture on the
specified face/faces
llTriggerSoundLimited(string sound, float volume, vector tne, vector bsw) -
Plays sound at volume (0.0 - 1.0), centered at but not attached to object,
limited to AABB (axis-aligned bounding box = 3D box defined by two corners,
north-east-top and south-west-bottom)
Audio[]
- Seated avatars can now hear sounds from scripted objects.
- Speaker config is no longer explicitly set (which should resolve some issues with multi-speaker setups).
Content[]
A small new tutorial region has been added to aid with new resident orientation. It is only accessible to new users of Second Life, and once they teleport off they cannot go back. The goal is to provide a semi-private place to learn how to use Second Life before the "culture shock" of the mainland. The tutorial contains several learning stations which teach movement, chat, etc. Copies of these stations will soon be available on the mainland for residents who want a refresher course or are just curious about what new residents are seeing.