ODJ Titler

Today we are presenting a new product specifically aimed at Second Life® DJs. The ODJ titler will allow you to display the song title and artist currently playing on the parcel stream as a nice hover text with scrolling effect.

It is HUD controlled and features a complete configuration notecard allowing you to customize the hover text, its color, the channel it updates on, and the scrolling speed.

It does not fetch the song information from the stream server but instead gets it from the viewer, by taking advantage of a viewer feature where the song title and artist is spoken on a private channel. That way you don't have to give access to the stream server itself.

Please see this picture to learn how to activate the required feature in your viewer.

As a bonus, the controlling HUD also offers a nice feature where you can enter the first few letters of an avatar legacy name and shows their display name (you can read about the SL names in this article). This is very useful if for some reason an object (like a tip jar) reports avatar by their legacy names and you want to address them by their display names.

The ODJ Titler is now available at Oggy's Scripted Items marketplace store and also in-world store.

Theme-O-Matic v2.1

I am pleased to announce that a new revision of the Theme-O-Matic was just released today, along with a brand new dedicated website.

This powerful theme system allows Second Life™ creators to define themes (sets of parameters for their objects and prims) that can be applied by their end users or another script: menus, touching, from AVSitter™ or another product, when a specific event happens. Thanks to the preloaders introduced in version 2.0 applying a theme can be almost instantaneous where other products would take a very long time for complex themes.

This new version can be considered as a minor revision but one important bug was fixed (and others less important) where the preloaders could report a valid theme as corrupted in rare situations. Themes created with older versions remain entirely compatible though.

Here is the list of changes introduced in version 2.1.

• Bug fixes and optimizations;
• new utilities menu to allow setting of properties not available from the viewer's interface: hover text and omega (for any prim, not only for the whole object);
• "Test theme" in the preparation menu no longer caches the notecard names at startup. This enables to avoid a stack/heap collision error in case of a very large number of notecards (reported by Krsna Cham);
• When adding (or removing) a face to (from) the face filter, the face number can be -1 or * to mean "all faces on this prim". Example: 4/* means all prim #4's faces (suggestion by Frasha Boa).
• New dedicated website replaces the old PDF documentation;
• More standard clients and interfaces provided (most of them requested by users of the Theme-O-Matic). In addition to those included in earlier versions:
• Remote control: allows you to control the Theme-O-Matic from another object (like a HUD or an independent object) or from another prim in the same object (like a switch on a wall) ;
• AVSitterMenu: manages a dedicated menu from AVSitter™ (or possibly another product) - more versatile than the "direct" interface ;
• SetThemeOnPose: small script that applies a theme when a given pose starts in AVSitter™;
• [Zed]~MPS~Multisit Pose System™ interface: control the Theme-O-Matic from custom buttons in the MPS.

All details and documentation is readily available on the new Theme-O-Matic website. And of course, reasonable requests are always considered, constructive criticism is welcome and recommendations are even more welcome!

Need help? Have questions? Contact me!

TerraMerhyem presents: Orpheus & Eurydice - Opening

Today I just wanted to share a very nice video made  by my friend Terra Merryem. This was filmed during the opening of her exhibition in Second Life® / LEA13 on September 3rd, 2018.

It was a great event on the Orpheus & Eurydice theme showing wonderful creations and a great atmosphere.

Thank you Terra, and happy birthday again!

Portal of Dragons: the video!

Here is a little video I recently edited to show our Portal of Dragons in Second Life®. A few words about the configuration hopefully show the whole thing is very easy to set up.

The details of this product are mentionned in this previous post.

Comments are welcome!

ChainDance HUD

The ChainDance HUD is a device that attaches to your Head Up Display and lets you play animations in a "chained" way, meaning that you define for how long an animation (dance, pose, etc.) will play before switching to the next animation.

The order and duration of each animation is defined in a very simple notecard inside the HUD. This lets you create sequences very easily by editing a notecard such as this :

// comments begin with 2 slashes, they are ignored
// use comments to enhance readability if needed
BellyDance 1:20
boxing:30
Russian Dance:10.3

In this example, the "BellyDance 1" animation will play for 20 seconds, then "boxing" will play for 30 seconds, then "Russian Dance" for 10.3 seconds. After that, looping occurs and the HUD will play BellyDance again.

The only requirement is that the animations are placed inside the HUD's inventory along with the notecard (you cannot specify an animation by its UUID, unfortunately - SL limitation).

The ChainDance HUD automatically detects changes in inventory and reloads the configuration as required. To activate the sequence, just touch the HUD (and watch it spin!).

This applies only to the wearer of the HUD. If you need a device to animate several avatars, then you can have a look at the OAnim HUD !

The ChainDance HUD is completely free and available at Oggy's Scripted Items marketplace and in-world stores. Check it out!

Theme-O-Matic v2.0 with preloading!

Today we released a very important update to the Theme-O-Matic System. For new customers, let's recall that this system is designed to store themes, that is sets of parameters for an object, its prims and faces, into notecards and later activate them.

This new release mainly addresses the first drawback of the previous version 1.1 : speed of theme activation.

Indeed, the "old" way of activating a theme is to read the notecard and apply it "on the fly". This is fine if you only have a few parameters to change, if your notecard only contains a few lines. However, for large themes (where you change the textures and materials of many faces on many prims for example), this is slow as the SL server may take time to feed the scripts with notecard lines.

While this way of doing things still is supported, this new version 2.0 introduces preloaders to solve this problem. If you do not want to wait for theme application, you can just "preload" them into script memory with the help of additional scripts - called preloaders.

These new scripts are an arbitrary number of copies of the same script - drop as many as you need into your object. They will, at your command, preload a theme notecard and have it ready for, later, almost immediate activation. You can even skip the explicit preload command by naming your theme notecard suitably thanks to an automatic preload feature - great for an AVsitter interface without using an additional command script!

While this principle sounds simple, under-the-hood mechanics tend to be quite complex, but the Theme-O-Matic takes care of the numerous details there. Just define your themes - themes created with earlier versions remain compatible - and decide how you want them activated : with or without preloading ? by simply clicking the object ? using a full-blown menu ? interfaced with another system (instructions are provided here for interface with AVsitter, Wearpose System and MvtPlayer) ?

When you prepare your object, you have to equip it with the "T-O-M Core" script, as many copies of the "T-O-M Preloader" script as you need, and maybe a standard command script, or one of your own...

Speaking of standard command script, 4 of them are provided:

• T-O-M-SC SimpleCycle : theme activation without preloading, at the click of the object,
• T-O-M-SC AutoMenu : automatic menu without preloading,
• T-O-M-SC QuickCycle : theme activation with preloading at the click of the object,
• T-O-M-SC PreloaderMenu: with preloading, full configurable menu.

All of them are full perm, and full instructions on the API in the documentation allow you to create your own command script. Of course you may always contact us for help.

An example of an object using the PreloaderMenu is rezzed in our inworld store ; check it out!

Here is the list of changes in this new version:

• New preloader system allows for dramatic increase in theme activation speed.
• Auto-load feature for preloaders to automatically preload suitably named themes.
• Hover text and Omega are now prim properties, as opposed to object properties: you can now set them on every prim individually and not the whole object only.
• New object property: Physics.
• New prim property: Physics shape.
• New "prim2" menu in preparation to allow selecting the extra prim properties
• Much much richer API. Now scripts can gather much more information from the Theme-O-Matic and usefully dialogue with it.
• Asynchronous Core operation: while a theme is being applied, the Core continues to answer script requests.
• Applying (or preloading) a theme can now be aborted.
• Many optimizations and fixes.

Full PDF documentation in English and French is available by clicking here.

As usual, reasonable requests are always considered, constructive criticism welcome, and recommendations even more welcome :) Feel free to contact us!

Spread the word!

Portal Of Dragons

New at Oggy's Scripted Items for you pyromaniacs is the brand new Portal Of Dragons !

Are you looking for some impressive addition for the entrance of your clan, club, roleplay sim or anything else? Do you like dragons? Do you like fire-breathing roaring dragons? Then this Portal Of Dragons is for you! :)

Rez the portal and witness the mighty beasts guarding the animated flames. As you approach, see your own profile picture appear inside the flames and be asked for the password! Watch your tongue as the dragons will ruthlessly burn you to ashes if you are wrong!

Luckily you did know the password, and now the portal is opening! Watch the magic operate with light and sound!

Did you just want to touch an object or a HUD to open the portal, or maybe trigger it from another object ? Two types of full-perm remote control scripts are provided to do just that, and 4 examples of remote control using them are provided. Everything is documented so that you can interface them with your own objects and scripts.

A scripting API is also included so that you can synchronize your own scripts with the portal when it detects someone, when a password is provided, when it opens etc. Details are inside a dedicated "Scripting" notecard shipped with the portal.

The whole thing is configurable through a very simple configuration notecard to :

• define the password ;
• set the channel to listen for the password (may be public chat without causing lag) ;
• activate or deactivate dragons breathing fire at intruders ;
• set the detection range for the mirror in flames ;
• define how long the portal remains open for visitors to cross ;
• customize the messages : password prompt, "access granted", "access denied", with codes to include the visitor's name inside them ;
• mute sounds ;
• define remote control parameters.

Inpiration and artistic direction by Carisma Alex
Building by Carisma Alex and Oggy Fink
Scripting, documentation, packaging by Oggy Fink

This work uses sounds released under a creative commons attribution licence, details are in the "Installation" notecard.