Duncan Jones has high expectations for Warcraft film originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

True Games Interactive sues Petroglyph for Mytheon source code originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 11 May 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In a sense, script memory limitations aren't coming to Second Life; they already exist.

What's going on is the process of Linden Lab making those limits predictable, and setting things up in such a way that script memory usage doesn't cause simulator processes to thrash madly (from paging memory to and from disk).

There's some interesting side-effects emerging from the overall prototype implementation, however. Mono (and, eventually C# when or if it becomes implemented as a scripting language) look like the losers.

Continue reading Second Life script limitations to prejudice against Mono?

Second Life script limitations to prejudice against Mono? originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence project has released version 1.2 of their Second Life viewer. Imprudence is one of our favorite after-market Second Life viewers, and after some months in beta (and a couple of false starts), the latest release version of this viewer is available.

There are some user-interface changes this time around, the ability to backup and restore your own intellectual property, an improved radar/minimap, improved third-party simulator support, RLVa support, optional vertical IM tabs, double-click go-to and teleports, more world map data and a host of other tweaks and features.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.2 viewer for Second Life

Imprudence 1.2 viewer for Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence project has reached the end of the second release cycle for their Second Life viewer. Imprudence is now in official release. Imprudence is one of our favorite Second Life viewers.

Context (pie) menus have been reorganized again, there's improved support for sound and streaming media through gstreamer, some backported fixes from the official 1.22 viewer, and confirmation popups have been added for a number of operations. There's also a Mac version, which last year's 1.0 release lacked due to hardware and development constraints (though only for Intel-based Macs, unless there's significant demand for a universal binary.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.1.0 for Second Life

Imprudence 1.1.0 for Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab founder and chairman, Philip Rosedale, yesterday announced changes to the open-source Second Life viewer program that would enable the fast-tracking of user-contributions to the code-base. The viewer source-code was originally released just a little over two years ago on 8 January 2007, and spurred an immediate surge of development, spurring developments of a variety of software including third-party server opensim.

The procedure for actually submitting patches to the codebase however was clunky, and some contributors abandoned their development efforts after contributed code (some which corrected egregious problems) was left to languish for many months without approval. The new scheme seems set to fast-track user-contributions and eliminate that particular problem.

Continue reading Linden Lab ramps up open source viewer program

Linden Lab ramps up open source viewer program originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Over the last few months, there's been an increasing amount of talk about the modified Second Life viewer being used with Open Life Grid (a third-party virtual environment based on reverse-engineered and open-source systems and protocols). Most of the talk centers around copyright infringement -- or license violations, if you prefer.

It's claimed that the operators of Open Life Grid are failing to comply with the source-code licenses (the GPL with FLOSS exceptions) under which the Second Life source code has been made available. Now, while the issue has been reported to Linden Lab's license-infringement hotline, the issue is actually a bit trickier for the Lab than it would first appear.

You see, the viewer code contains contributions from a number of third-party contributors, each of which retains their copyright, intellectual property and rights to their contributions under the terms of the contribution agreement. All of whom have the right to commence their own actions.

Continue reading Linden Lab's collective copyright conundrum

Linden Lab's collective copyright conundrum originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence Project has a release new candidate viewer for Second Life available. Imprudence 1.1 RC2 (unlike Linden Lab, the Imprudence Project counts starting from one, not from zero) features a number of improvements and fixes over RC1.

This release candidate has a new storage allocator for Windows which improves frame-rates, reduces memory-usage and is all-around more efficient. Several crash-bugs have been fixed, and support has been improved for Linux systems that use the PulseAudio sound server. A few UI tweaks and inconveniences have also been tidied up. Unfortunately there is still no version for the Mac as the Imprudence Project is starving for a Mac developer to handle that side of the code. Full release notes are after the jump.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.1.0 RC2 available

Imprudence 1.1.0 RC2 available originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence Project has a release new candidate viewer for Second Life available. Imprudence 1.1 RC1 (unlike Linden Lab, the Imprudence Project counts starting from one, not from zero) features a number of substantial improvements over 1.0, including openAL and Gstreamer support for general sound, as well as audio and video streaming.

This release candidate also features updates to the user-interface, arithmetic expressions in the build floater's texture and object tabs, quick-filtering for the inventory and more. Unfortunately there is no version for the Mac as the Imprudence Project is starving for a Mac developer to handle that side of the code. Due to licensing issues, Imprudence cannot ship with voice components, but you can add them yourself very easily. Full release notes are after the jump.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.1.0 RC1 available

Imprudence 1.1.0 RC1 available originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence project has reached the end of the first release cycle for their Second Life viewer. Imprudence is now in official release, and will soon show the first of their 1.1 series of viewers, sporting sound and more extensive modifications.

As is proper, there's very little difference between the release version and the release candidate. Pretty much just a couple fixes for memory leaks, and some minor tweaking. OpenJPEG 1.3 removes issues with transparent skirts.

Aside from the temporary lack of audio, this seems to be the smoothest and most reliable viewer presently available based from the 1.21 code-base.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.0 released for Second Life

Imprudence 1.0 released for Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence project now has its second release candidate viewer for Second Life available. Building on the feedback from RC1, Jacek Antonelli, McCabe Maxsted and team have churned out a whole slew of bug-fixes for the already tasty RC1.

Crashes when clicking on some hyperlinks have been fixed (the problem was traced to the Linden build system pulling in the wrong library), the debug console window has been hidden away (as it should be), the search interface no longer clears results between invocations, a prospective fix for issues with palletized textures (which could be related to a lot of minor issues) and more. The transparent skirt issue will be fixed in the next (and likely final) release, but you can fix it yourself now with a fresh library. Full release notes after the jump.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.0.0 RC2 available

Imprudence 1.0.0 RC2 available originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Imprudence project now has its first release candidate viewer for Second Life available, and far sooner than we expected. It's impressive work for a first release candidate as well. We've not had such a fast and smooth viewer experience since Nicholaz "The Mad Patcher" Beresford's series of Second Life viewers. Indeed, many of Beresford's patches are also a part of the Imprudence project.

Imprudence necessarily replaces proprietary fonts with Liberation Sans and Bitstream Vera Mono, which look a little peculiar the first couple of times out, but score high on improved readability. There's no audio either, yet, as the proprietary FMOD audio system has yet to be replaced with OpenAL, but that is coming soon, we understand. As for the change from Kakadu/KDU to OpenJPEG -- this is supposed to be fractionally slower, but honestly, the whole experience was so smooth we never noticed.

Continue reading Imprudence 1.0.0 RC1 available

Imprudence 1.0.0 RC1 available originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Avatar puppeteering has unexpectedly turned up as a source-code branch in the Second Life viewer source repository. This is still a largely abandoned feature, but the code is being put in front of open-source developers to see if they can actually do anything with it.

It is important to stress that the code is far from complete or fully-tested. There is a simulator on the Aditi (preview) grid which has some matching code written for it (the simulator is called Puppeteering - and may only be accessible by logging directly into the sim). The simulator code is also unfinished, insufficiently tested, and likely not stable. If none of that dissuades you, and you'd like to play with this code, then good luck!

Learn more about Avatar Puppeteering.

Avatar puppeteering code has strings attached originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Jacek Antonelli has released a new version of her Blender animation exporter that allows use of Blender's sophisticated (and free) animation suite to create animations for Second Life.

This release focuses primarily on the user-interface, improving the layout to make things a whole lot easier for those who are not already Jedi-masters of the Blender package; and a mighty good change it is, too, as you can see above.

Continue reading New release: Blender animation exporter

New release: Blender animation exporter originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab is tinkering with a set of Second Life graphical improvements for high-end graphics hardware. Dave Parks, software engineer at Linden Lab has been working on a set of features tailored to the Geforce 8 set of GPUs. Users without the required hardware would not suffer any performance reductions as a result of the new features.

The featureset (which is available as an experimental branch called shadow-draft in the viewer source repository, for the curious), includes hard Sun-shadows, per-pixel lighting, support for an uncapped number of point-lights, and lighting costs based on screen coverage.

Continue reading High-end graphics features planned for Second Life

High-end graphics features planned for Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 29 May 2008 02:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of the more sophisticated animation tools out there is Blender, a cross-platform, free suite of 3D creation tools. Blender allows a lot of animation tricks that are normally only found in packages costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.

The eclectic, artistic, and highly-animated Jacek Antonelli has released a script, scene and animation skeleton that allows users to create and export high-quality animations from Blender into the BVH format used by Second Life.

Continue reading From Blender to BVH via Antonelli

From Blender to BVH via Antonelli originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading A look at METAbolt -- a non-graphical Second Life viewer

A look at METAbolt -- a non-graphical Second Life viewer originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 09 May 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

CCP responds to EVE source code concerns originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

EVE's source code has been stolen and seeded originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Nicholaz Beresford has released one final viewer. The EC-e "Eye candy" release is designed to run against 1.19.1(4). This version plugs a key memory and changes the viewer icon.

As one happy user said to us today, "The worst edition of the Nicholaz viewer is better than the best viewer Linden Lab has ever released." -- Many would find that hard to disagree with, including a few Linden Lab employees.

Continue reading Mad Patcher's final fling

Mad Patcher's final fling originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The source code for llMozlib2 (an essential piece of glue library enabling in-world and in-viewer HTML rendering for Second Life) is now available on Linden Lab's public subversion version control system, and is now the single source of the code, rather than having a second (possibly divergent) version tucked away in an internal repository.

Linden Lab so far is continuing to release source code for both viewer and server-side components progressively (a process initially announced in late 2005 and given an expected timeline of several years), despite some fears that the process might suddenly cease after the departure of Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka. While only a few server-side components have so far been released, there is no sign yet that that process will be or is being stemmed.

llMozlib2 source code now available originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sourceforge - billed as the largest open source website in the world -- is now host to the source code project for the RealXTend viewer (rexviewer) for Second Life. RealXtend claims to have replaced all of the license encumbered portions of the viewer with GPL-friendly alternatives, though they are still having some issues decoupling FMOD from their VoIP solution.

The project website remains at rexviewer.org, while the project page and source code (available via subversion) is now on Sourceforge. Rexviewer is only in alpha at present, but has a number of distinctly interesting technological features, and more planned.

RealXtend viewer now on Sourceforge originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Barely a fortnight after their initial version 0.1 software, Finnish developer RealXtend (in conjunction with OpenSim, Admino Technologies and LudoCraft - I think we might have to just start calling it the 'RealXtend Project' in future to save on typing) has released the next version of their software. An avatar portability system that allows your avatar to be transferred to any compatible world where you have an account is definitely a handy feature now that additional Second Life style grids are starting to spring up all over.

"We have been testing and fixing bugs as much as possible and we have a few new major features. One of the new features is the Avatar system, under RealXtend your avatar has been completely redesigned to support transfer between virtual worlds. Earlier avatar systems used by other virtual worlds have been tied to one world or grid only and could not travel with the user," said RealXtend project manager Jani Pirkola.

RealXtend's viewer is licensed under the GNU GPLv2 (sans quicktime components), and all the server-side code as a part of OpenSim is under the BSD license, which is a very broadly permissive open source license.

RealXtend releases updated software originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Chet Murphy, experienced distributed systems developer at IBM is to collaborate with Linden Lab and open source developers on the Certified HTTP project, one of the next generation technologies that will underpin the new Second Life architecture, and potentially be incorporated into many virtual worlds and MMOs in future.

IBM has a solid history of participating in and contributing to open source projects of various stripes, and this marks the first direct, practical collaboration between Linden Lab and IBM since the announcement of their collaboration on virtual worlds standards approximately one month ago.

Continue reading IBM's Chet Murphy joins CHTTP team

IBM's Chet Murphy joins CHTTP team originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.