LSLEditor on a Mac!

Finally!  I've managed to get LSLEditor to run properly on a Mac!

By using Wineskin Winery with the wrapper Wineskin-2.6.0 and the engine WS9Wine1.7.21, I was able to make this work.  I told it not to use Mono, but instead installed .NET 2.0 with Winetricks.

And it's working!  So far, the only odd bit I've found is that when autocomplete is turned on, as soon as you type the first l in llSay(), the app steals your focus away and you have to click to regain your focus and continue typing.  That's rapidly going to become annoying.  But still, it works!  The other big drawback is that LSLEditor.app is 500mb.  That's a lot of fat.

After that, I installed the command-line version of Wine with Mac Ports.  Some people prefer Homebrew, but I don't know if it really matters as long as the tool does the job you're after.  When it was finally done, I had Wine 1.6.4 installed.  I then installed winetricks with ports, and added dotnet20.  I did not install Mono.

From there, I could run: wine LSLEditor.exe

I had to run it twice, but it ran just fine after that.

I should also point out I'm on OSX 10.9.3 and before I'd always tried on 10.8.x, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it.  And this version is 274mb, but it doesn't have to be the only Windows app in the Wine installation.

WineBottler does a similar trick, reusing Wine configurations, including the .wine one I just created in my home directory.  And it has the added benefit of letting you run .EXE files directly from Spotlight.  In my experience, it's also done a great job of extracting the correct icon for the app.  It's my favorite setup, but can be difficult to configure.  Wineskin's configuration tools are a lot clearer to understand.

=^.^=

Supporting Tantra Total Woman HUD 3.0

Hiya, just a quick announcement to say that both my Tinkler and my Female Pheromone Detector now support the Tantra Total Woman HUD, version 3.0 as well as Mama Allpa.  My Early Pregnancy Test does, also, but because the one Tex makes with his Tantra HUD is much nicer, I'm not going to put the Tantra logo onto it unless I improve the product.

Roleplaying - Some Basics

“Opinions are like assholes; everyone's got one.”

-P. T. Barnum.   

I wanted to write a couple of blog entries on roleplaying.  And these articles are my opinion.  Everyone has their opinions on the right and wrong ways to do it.  So, what makes me an expert?  I’ve been roleplaying for as long as I can remember.  Starting with Dungeons & Dragons in my pre-teens, MUDs in their heyday in the 90’s, various MMOs (Everquest, Anarchy Online, Neverwinter Nights), and Second Life.  I’ve seen most styles in my 25 years or so on the ‘Net.

What’s Your Type?

There are a few different types of roleplayers out there.  For the most part, I’ve only seen three major categories.

Mmmm...

We’ve all run into them.  The Mmmm’ers.  The masters of monosyllabic communication.  If you’re lucky, you might get a “oh baby u so good”.   I don’t know if they’re so busy with their other hand that typing is just too difficult for them, or what’s going on.  I like to think I was never this bad, but I may have been.  It’s my hope that they just don’t know and want to learn.  Sadly, many don’t seem to improve over time.

Para-RP’er

What on earth is a para-RP’er?  Let’s break it down.  We know what RP is.  But what’s the definition of para?

• PARA (noun)

 The noun PARA has 5 senses:

1. (obstetrics) the number of liveborn children a woman has delivered

2. 100 para equal 1 dinar in Yugoslavia

3. a soldier in the paratroops

4. an estuary in northern Brazil into which the Tocantins River flows

5. port city in northern Brazil in the Amazon delta; main port and commercial center for the Amazon River basin

I doubt they mean #1.  #2 is highly unlikely.  #3, hmm...maybe.  Not #4 and certainly not #5.

Digging a little deeper, I found:

As an English prefix, para-,  may have any of these senses; it is also productive in the naming of occupational roles considered ancillary or subsidiary to roles requiring more training, or of a higher status, on such models as paramedical,  and paraprofessional:, paralegal; paralibrarian; parapolice

Does a para-rp’er have more training than the rest of us?  No, that’s not it either.  What it means in this case is paragraph.  These folks like a lot of text in their RP.  They are a bit of an elitist group and I personally feel they go too far with this theme.  Rather than typing something like:

Kittin waves. “Hello!  How are you?”

a para-RP’er is more likely to type:

Kittin takes a sip from the cup of tea she had sitting on the table beside her.  Her eyes move from the book and spy you.  With a smile, she quickly puts down the cup and marks her place in the book with a finger, folding it and standing up.  She smiles and offers a hug.  “Hello!  How are you?”

While the second example is far more interesting to read and adds life to a scene, if the typist is a hunt’n’pecker, you may wait 5 minutes to see it.  And since they start everything with an emote, you don’t always get that “Kittin is typing...” message.  

TIP:  If you’re using Firestorm, turn on the option to use : as your emote character.  It has the advantages of being shorter to type (just ‘:’ instead of ‘/me’) and it will show the “Kittin is typing...” message.  Firestorm also lets you do chat bubbles when typing, but not have to show the final message in the bubble.  That way you can see people typing, but your screen doesn’t get cluttered with chat bubbles everywhere.

Everyone Else

So that leaves the rest of us.  I place myself in this category.  I like to borrow a little from the Mmm’ers when appropriate.  I also like to spend the time the para-RP’ers do.  Mostly, I try to keep a balance between the two so that the dialog keeps going.  A typical stream of text from me looks something like this:

Kittin looks up from her book and sees you.

Kittin: Hello!  How are you?

Kittin marks her place and puts her book down, standing and offering you a hug.

I’ve found this style to be more interactive.  The drawbacks are you sometimes step on another’s toes if you dont’ strictly follow the exchange of you say something / they say something.  Overall, I think it’s worth it because no one likes to think they’re being ignored.

In my next article, I’m going to talk about Empathy and Viewpoint.

Calamari - yum!

For years, I've been using sl_proxy.  But lately, it doesn't work so great with Third Party Viewers.  I've been forced to not only use Firestorm, but have to compile my own special version to force Firestorm to think I'm on the main grid rather than an OpenSim grid.

Now, I like Firestorm, but I don't like being forced to use any particular viewer because of my lame ISP.

Why do I use sl_proxy?  Because of the texture cache.  I have  limited bandwidth and slower network speeds than most people.  Since textures don't change, I want to be able to keep them locally.  If I can do that, then I can load them quickly if I revisit a place I've been to before.

The other day, I was browsing around and came across this article and decided to try it out.  So far, it's working great!  And it seems much faster than sl_proxy.  The big test comes with Mesh, tho.  I have had nothing but trouble trying to see mesh with sl_proxy.  I can see it fine when I connect directly.

RealLife's been too busy for me to really test it yet.  So, I'll update this post once I have a chance to see someone decked out in a mesh avatar.

=^.^=

Lumiya - My second favorite Second Life Viewer

I can't believe I haven't blogged about this already.  For about the last six months, I've been mostly living in SL with Lumiya, an Android-based Third Party Viewer.  I love this app.  It has quite literally changed my Second Life because I can be there more often.

Lumiya is written by my dear friend Alina Lyvette.  She's done some real magic here, tackling that huge Second Life viewer and making it work on a smartphone.  I mean, real magic.  Lumiya runs on devices as old as my original Droid from Motorola.  I just recently upgraded to a Droid RAZR M, and Lumiya purrs along, smooth as silk. 

New World Notes has a nice article on it, with some recent screenshots as well as a video clip so you can see how animations look.  New World also links to Inara Pey's blog on Lumiya.

Lumiya doesn't do everything, yet.  It doesn't show group invitations, for example.  You can't voice with it.  But, you can stream media.  Alina is actively working on it, making it better with each release.  And, it's just her!  No one else works on it.  Simply amazing.

If you have an Android smartphone, and you like to be in SL when you're away from your normal viewer, get Lumiya.

If you have a QR scanner, you can just scan this to get your copy!  Otherwise, look for it on Google Play.  If you need help with Lumiya, please email support@lumiyaviewer.com and join the Lumiya Support Group in SL.

Lumiya Viewer on Google Play

MLPv2 Chains Plugin done!

Yay!  I finished it last night.  Well, maybe "finished" is too strong of a word.  I got all the planned features working and there doesn't appear to be any big problems with it.  I'm sure there are bugs and I'll have to figure those out.  It's a little more chatty than I like and I'm hoping to reduce that.

Next, I'll be adding some RLV support and sounds.  The devPose toys I've seen have a nice little chain sound when poses are changed.  I made one for mine, too.

I might be able to use the RLV plugin for MLPv2, but I haven't really reviewed it yet.  It looks pretty complete at a glance, so that's encouraging.

After that, it's off to spend money on animations and build in a couple of toys.  The first two will be a pair of suspension poles for one and probably a St. Andrews Cross.  Once those are done and I decide how I'm going to handle updates, I'll put my Pocket Dungeon up for sale.

Prim Count Halver - COOL!

My friend Sei and her pet Angel have released one of the coolest things I've seen in SL.  It's a Prim Count Halver that does some really neat voodoo magic and can cut a linkset's prim count down by up to half.

The script Sei sell is copy, no-trans.  You simply drag a copy of the script into your build and *POOF* it's about 1/2 the prims on your land.

Sounds too good to be true?  Well, everything has a catch, unfortunately.  Two things happen to the linkset that are unavoidable.

• The linkset becomes phantom.  The root prim can be set non-phantom, but the rest of the build is phantom.
• No scripts may exist in the object.  None.  Zip.  Zero.

 Another thing to note is that the prim savings you won't see in the object.  The library chair, for example, reports it's 21 prims before and after.  But, if you look at the land use of prims, that's the number that magically goes down.

This script is perfect for those who are trying to save prim counts on static objects, such as walls or store fronts.  Remember, the root prim can be set non-phantom, so it's possible to put an invisible solid box around whatever you've made to keep people from walking thru it.

How to turn on RLV in Firestorm

 Several people have asked me how to turn on RLV in Firestorm.  It isn't on by default.  There are a couple of ways to do it.

If you find this page helpful, please click the +1 button at the bottom.  =^.^=

Quick
From the menu, Avatar -> Preferences -> Firestorm -> General -> Allow Remote Scripted Viewer Controls (RLVa), then restart Firestorm.

Advanced

1. Turn on your Advanced menu.  You can turn them both on by going to Avatar -> Preferences -> Advanced and then check "Show Advanced Menu"
2. On your Advanced menu, near the bottom, tick "RestrainedLove API (RLVa)".
3. Near the middle is a section for RLVA and if you expand out that menu you can:

•  List restrictions
• Enable objects to give to your #RLV folder (great for traps, being forced to wear items, etc.) -- some traps will give you an outfit and force you to wear them.  One that comes to mind is in Kitten's Castle where you're turned into a marble statue.
• Show debug messages - this is really useful when writing RLV scripts.  It's also nice to have on just so you know when something RLV is being done to you by either a person or object.

A quick and easy way to check if you've got RLV enabled is to ask someone to IM you with just the text: "@version" (without quotes).  If RLV is enabled, you won't see it, but they'll see something like:
Kittin Ninetails (busy response): RestrainedLove viewer v2.7.0 (Firestorm 3.0.1.22566 - RLVa 1.4.0)


Remember, you'll need a relay to interact with objects.  Take a look at my Quick RLV tutorial.  And if you want to try something really fun, go to Marine's maze and try to find your way out.  And don't cheat! =^.^=

Also, here's a link to a video for Installing and Activating RLV in Various Third Party Viewers.  The first part of the video covers installing Marine's RLV on Windows and how to copy the voice files over.  If you install my Linux or Mac builds, these are installed for you.  At about 7 minutes into the video, Trix explains how to turn on RLVa in Phoenix and Imprudence.  Trix has another good video on the #RLV folder.  Actually, Trix has quite a lot of good videos, but those are the two I saw that relate to this page.

Thief!!

Ok, I don't normally like to point fingers. It degrades into a "he said she said" useless argument that no one can prove. But, I've been scammed and I want to warn everyone I can about it so they're not ripped off, too.

In April, 2011, I asked this guy to do some graphic work for me. We did some discussion of design and price and we agreed on L$3000 to come up with a heart-shaped locket I could use for a logo for my Ninetails products. He asked for 50% up-front, which I thought was reasonable. Needless to say, he never delivered. My dear friend Sei ended up making the logo for me, where I showed it off in A Makeover.

I wouldn't even bother mentioning it, except Sal has returned to SL and, after defriending me, has made it pretty clear he does not intend to return the money -- but moreover comes to the areas I go (specifically Shy Submissives) to and wants to "play" with me as a Dom.

I think not.

Well, it's only my word against his and it's my own damned fault for giving him any money. But I wanted to post this so others would be, at least, made aware that there is a dodgy situation regarding him. Please don't get taken like I did.

RLV - A Quick Tutorial

(updated 9/8/2011)

If you find this page helpful, please click the +1 button at the bottom.  =^.^=



What is RLV?  
RLV stands for Restrained Love Viewer, which is Marine Kelley's enhancements to the Second Life Viewer.  A few years back, she wrote a great overview here.  RLV features are also in Phoenix, Firestorm, Imprudence, and several other viewers.  Marine is the owner of the Restrained Love API and, naturally, her viewer will always have the latest RLV features.  The other viewers may or may not choose to implement the latest RLV specification.


What do I need to run RLV?
First, you need a viewer that has RLV (or RLVa) built into it.  You can only get this in TPVs (Third Party Viewers) such as Marine's, Phoenix, Firestorm, Impurdence, etc.  Be sure you look to see if the viewer you choose has it.

Second, unless you're using Marine's RestrainedLove Viewer, You will need to turn RLV on.  I've written a short guide on How to Turn On RLV in Firestorm and at the bottom of the page is some information on how to do it for other viewers.

Once you've gotten this far, some RLV things will work.  Specifically, any RLV item that you own can place restrictions on you.  Collars fit into this category.

But the real fun comes when you add in a Relay.  Without a relay, the viewer won't listen to objects in the world.  It's the job of the relay to pass on requests from in-world objects to your viewer to apply or remove restrictions.  Your relay will typically give you all sorts of choices here as to whether to trust the landowner, to ask first before imposing a restriction, etc.  A relay is needed for if you want to be able to be trapped by something such as a cage or tied to some piece of furniture.  There are several free items in Second Life that will do the job of an RLV relay.  The ones that immediately come to mind are:

• OpenCollar - The collar has a relay script inside of it.  Just turn it on.
• ThinkKink - They offer a free relay HUD.
• Susan's RLV Relay Ring - One place to get this is to find Marine's little shop in my profile picks.  Susan's shop is just behind Marine's.  You could wear the ring on your finger, or use it as a HUD.

Who should run RLV?
Submissives who would like to get an extra thrill by feeling the restrictions is "real" in the context of Second Life.  Dominates should learn how to use the RLV tools that exist for them in Second Life.

But I'm scared!
Don't be.  There is nothing anyone can do to you that you can't undo.  Sometimes, it may take a bit of clever thinking to get out of your situation.  Often, a friend can help you because you're locked out of a menu byt they may not be.  Many relays and collars support the idea of a 'SAFEWORD' that will instantly remove all restrictions.

But, I have to ask you...where's the fun in that?  Personally, I love to be tied up and role-playing the situation.  The only time I break out of my bonds unfairly is when someone has caught me and tied me up for some ridiculous amount of time -- like setting a timed lock for a month.

If all else fails and you don't want to be under the restriction anymore, simply turn off RLV in your viewer or log in with the official Second Life viewer which doesn't support RLV.    I think only once in three years did I ever get caught in something so badly I had to turn off RLV to get the thing off of me.

There is a RestrainedLove Support group that's free to join that you can ask questions in.

Patch for sl_proxy 1.9.3 for Mac and Cygwin

If you're comfortable with patch and make, you shouldn't have much trouble installing this. The instructions to compile are the same on both Mac and Cygwin. Linux users shouldn't have to make any changes, since this software was originally written for linux.

1. Download sl_proxy-1.9.3 from Network Solutions Laboratory. It's the little 3.5" floppy disk icon.
2. Extract the sources to a temp folder. I do this from a terminal command prompt:
• mkdir -p ~/tmp/slproxy
• cd ~/tmp/slproxy
• tar xvzf ~/Desktop/sl_proxy-1.9.3.tar.gz
3. Download my sl_proxy-1.9.3-mac-cygwin.patch from here. (The .patch extension might be hidden)
4. Test applying the patch, just to be sure you're in the right spot.
• cd ~/tmp/slproxy
• patch --dry-run --strip=1 -i ~/Desktop/sl_proxy-1.9.3-mac-cygwin.patch
  
5. If that works, apply the patch.
• patch --strip=1 -i ~/Desktop/sl_proxy-1.9.3-mac-cygwin.patch
6. Make the junkbox library.
• cd ~/tmp/slproxy/junkbox_lib-1.2.4
• autoreconf -f && ./configure && make
  
7. Make the sl_proxy programs.
• cd ../sl_proxy-1.9.3
• autoreconf -f && ./configure && make
  
8. Install them. On Mac, remember to 'sudo' the install command.
   
   • make install

Assuming that all worked, next you start the processes up. These apps are designed to be running as services or 'daemons' all the time. I haven't bothered to do that under Mac and it's more trouble than it is worth under Cygwin, so I simply start them by hand. If you want to explore them running as a service, feel free.

I recommend using 'screen' to run them. At the least, you'll probably want 3 terminal sessions. I set up some bash aliases to run them in my .profile, so I can just type sl1, sl2, and sl3 -- one in each terminal session. The sl_cache process, sl2 in my aliases, takes a bit to start up. It takes longer each time as you collect more and more textures. This is why I recommend screen if you leave your PC or Mac on most of the time -- because you can detach the session and log out and the apps will keep running.

Starting the apps by hand
On the Mac, you'll need to prefix each of these with 'sudo' because they run as privliged processes.

1. sl_info -v0 -l -f1 -d
2. sl_cache -v0 -l -lx -xpr 90 -d
3. sl_relay -v0 -ci -cs -d

You should read the Network Solutions Laboratory's website for what each of the parameters mean.

In my .profile (or .bashrc, depending), I set up aliases as follows:

• alias sl1="sl_info -v0 -l -f1 -d"
• alias sl2="sl_cache -v0 -l -lx -xpr 90 -d"
• alias sl3="sl_relay -v0 -ci -cs -d"

Pointing the Second Life client to your proxy
In order to start caching textures, you need to have your Second Life client talking to sl_proxy, and not directly to the Second Life servers.

Windows:
You can do this by putting the IP of your sl_proxy computer in the shortcut. Just copy your Second Life shortcut and perhaps rename it "Second Life - cache". Change your target to add the --loginuri parameter outside the quotes of the exe. For example: "SecondLife.exe" --loginuri http://computer:8100/cgi-bin/login.cgi
Make sure you replace 'computer' with the IP of the sl_proxy machine or use 'localhost' if it's on the same pc you'll run Second Life from.

Mac:
(instructions shamelessly stolen from the Opensimulator site)

• Make a 'secondlife.sh' file, and put this in it:

#!/bin/bash
/Applications/Second\ Life.app/Contents/MacOS/Second\ Life -loginuri http://computer:8100/cgi-bin/login.cgi

• set it to executable
• run it

Good luck and I hope this app helps you out as much as I have. Those of you with FiOS and super-fast connections probably won't get anything from this. But people with slower connections will see things quicker as they move around in places they frequent.

SL_Proxy 1.9.3 on Mac and Cygwin

In my old blog, I talked about this app a lot. It really saves my butt with my ISP. I just upgraded it yesterday and needed to patch the source again. So, I thought I'd write up what I needed to do.

First, here are my old posts on the subject:

• Saving Private Bandwidth (good background, but out of date)
  
• Saving Private MacBandwidth (no longer needed in 1.9.3)
• Upgrading to sl_proxy 1.9.1 (sort of the same stuff below)
• Compiling sl_proxy for Cygwin (again, more of what's below)
  

This gets a little technical, so I apologize to those who don't quite follow along. Making a patch file for these is pretty easy, but the last time I did it, I didn't put in the version number. Unfortunately, my old patch file won't work on this source. I plan to make a new patch file this weekend, but I thought I'd write down what I did first.

For Mac:

• Edit each of these Makefile.am files, changing all the instances of 'chown' from "chown nobody.$GRP" to "chown nobody:$$GRP"
  • sl_proxy-1.9.3/sl_info/Makefile.am
  • sl_proxy-1.9.3/sl_relay/Makefile.am
  • sl_proxy-1.9.3/sl_proxy/Makefile.am
  • sl_proxy-1.9.3/sip_forwarder/Makefile.am
• autoreconf && ./configure && make

For Cygwin:
The problem is there's no yp headers in Cygwin. All one has to do is remove the checks, surrounding them with #ifndef __CYGWIN__ blocks.

• junkbox_lib-1.2.4/Lib/password.h @ line 38
  

#ifndef __CYGWIN__
#include <rpcsvc/ypclnt.h>
#endif // __CYGWIN__

• junkbox_lib-1.2.4/Lib/password.c

@line 58

#ifndef __CYGWIN__
// for NIS
pw = getnisnam(user_id);
if (pw!=NULL) {
strncpy(pass, pw->pw_passwd, LPASS);
free_pw(pw);
return pass;
}
#endif // __CYGWIN__

@line 74-164

#ifndef __CYGWIN__

/**
struct passwd* getnisnam(char* usrid)

(lots of code)

free(nis);
return pw;
}

#endif // __CYGWIN__

/**
void free_pw(struct passwd* pw)

These processes won't auto-start on boot, even if you run 'make install'. It will place the executables into /usr/local/bin and make some inet.d changes in /etc, but they aren't honored on boot. I always start them by hand, using 'screen' so I can easily disconnect or reconnect to see the logs. Like I wrote in my earlier posts, I create a screen console for each process and run these commands (on cygwin, you don't need to 'sudo'):

sudo /usr/local/bin/sl_info -l -v0 -d -f1
sudo /usr/local/bin/sl_cache -l -v0 -lx -xpr 90 -d
sudo /usr/local/bin/sl_relay -v0 -cs -ci -d