Friday, May 8, 2009

Using Smart Scripts

Written 8 May, 2009

Using Smart Scripts

I wanted to make the point that I'm not opposed to scripts in wearable. A few scripts can spice things up-- but I would certainly say 500+ scripts in a single piece of jewelry is excessive!

There are a number of ways to keep scripts under control. One is simply to use fewer of them. A second is to make them efficient, using, for instance, timers instead of sleep statements and linked messages instead of listens.

I've bought jewelry that will let you resize and otherwise alter itself, and then, at your option, kill its scripts. They delete themselves, and are just gone. When such jewelry is possible, the buyer can keep an original on hand in case future alteration is desirable.

When listening is desirable, the listen event can be triggered by, say, a touch, and remain open only 30 seconds or so. To their credit, most scripters do this.

An exception is poseballs, which typically hide themselves. You can't very well touch them to make them reappear, now, can you? (Well, you can, by highlighting invisible, but many people don't know how to do that).

The longer I'm in Second Life the more I realize that the very things that this world so desirable--complex scripts, beautiful objects, being able to get large numbers of people together at one time in one place-- can degrade the very experience they are meant to enhance.

So please, fellow jewelry makers, keep your script usage to a minimum, huh?

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