Back to the Guide!
February 18, 2010
I thought I was done with the Guide. Not so, not so!
Radegast, which has largely replaced the Guide, now has RLV support in the works. YAY! This is the best of both worlds.
So now I am going to work on a Radegast-optimized version of the Guide. I don’t know yet exactly what that will entail: I have to work with the Radegast users to see just what features they still want and use, and what is just so much extra junk.
Here’s the thing: I took the HUD version of the Guide to a region where I am an Estate Manager and did some looking at the script time. The HUD is taking up .03 milliseconds. I’m not crashing the sim with that, but I feel that I can and should bring that down.
Here’s a few tentative ideas for how to optimize the Guide for Radegast. Input most welcomed!
- The most requested feature to date is tp. The current TP works fine, except that all the destinations are stored inside the script. When I first coded tp, that made sense: users could not edit notecards OR scripts, so someone would have to assist them either way. So, I avoided the need for a dataserver event by just defining a short list as a variable. Radegast now permits users to edit notecards, but not scripts. So, tp needs to have notecard support.
- The Clothing stuff can largely go away. Radegast has clothing and attachments support. Unless anyone has a serious objection?
- Slurl strikes me as largely unneeded, now.
- Do we still need who, what, and where? I know that Radegast supports most of these functions client-side. If they went away, would we miss anything? The biggest thing I can see would be the loss of Region Rating–or is that included? We could eliminate most of an entire channel, here. facing should stay, but what of the rest?
- go and follow are still used. face, sit, and possibly stand are desired. Sit is usable with Radegast, but if you know the name, using the script is MUCH faster. face is, to my knowledge, not replaced by Radegast.
- inv can go away. replace, add, remove, clothing, all go bye-bye. time–does Radegast give SL Time? (Yes, it’s Pacific, I know.) Can you view profiles with Radegast? If so, then profile is done.
- help It takes three scripts to do help, and it’s a lot of work whenever I have to update it. Would anybody be too upset if I just replaced that with a notecard? They are accessible, now, so I don’t feel the urgency to maintain a command-line help.
Anything I have missed? Hopefully I can improve the user experience while filing down the Guide to something smaller and easier for me to maintain.
Comments appear with a * in front of them.
1. The most requested feature to date is tp. The current TP works fine, except that all the destinations are stored inside the script. When I first coded tp, that made sense: users could not edit notecards OR scripts, so someone would have to assist them either way. So, I avoided the need for a dataserver event by just defining a short list as a variable. Radegast now permits users to edit notecards, but not scripts. So, tp needs to have notecard support.
*Definitely modify this script. It’s more a convenience, but I know I’ll use it, and I imagine others may, as well.
2. The Clothing stuff can largely go away. Radegast has clothing and attachments support. Unless anyone has a serious objection?
*No objection. Bye-bye to all the clothing commands.
3. Slurl strikes me as largely unneeded, now.
*Don’t need SLURL or MailTP anymore. I can set landmarks, and snag info I need from those to add to that list of TPdestinations.
4. Do we still need who, what, and where? I know that Radegast supports most of these functions client-side. If they went away, would we miss anything? The biggest thing I can see would be the loss of Region Rating–or is that included? We could eliminate most of an entire channel, here. facing should stay, but what of the rest?
*We need wear, but not who and what.
5. go and follow are still used. face, sit, and possibly stand are desired. Sit is usable with Radegast, but if you know the name, using the script is MUCH faster. face is, to my knowledge, not replaced by Radegast.
*Keep Go, Follow, Face, Sit, and Stand. Now that I can, I use the Sit and Stand scripts. Faster when I know the name of an object to sit on. Face is not supported in Radegast very well, if at all, so we need to keep that.
6. inv can go away. replace, add, remove, clothing, all go bye-bye. time–does Radegast give SL Time? (Yes, it’s Pacific, I know.) Can you view profiles with Radegast? If so, then profile is done.
*Everything but Time can go. I still use Time. There’s no way to check the time with Radegast. I can view profiles, as well. A good thing, or I wouldn’t be able to do my job at Callahan’s, mainly hand out drinks.
The only way I know to do that is to get into someone’s profile and hit the Give Inventory button.
7. help It takes three scripts to do help, and it’s a lot of work whenever I have to update it. Would anybody be too upset if I just replaced that with a notecard? They are accessible, now, so I don’t feel the urgency to maintain a command-line help.
*I like the idea of Help on a notecard. Easier to maintain and send out updates to, if there are any.
Anything I have missed? Hopefully I can improve the user experience while filing down the Guide to something smaller and easier for me to maintain.
*A separate object for allowing auto-teleports from people.
Combine who and what into find where it takes an argument. Radegast handles the lists of who and what is around you.
One thing we both overlooked: you can’t go into objects and work with the contents yet. So, you *still* cannot edit destinations in TP, even if they are on a notecard. That notecard has to be in the object with the script.
I am going to enable this anyhow, as we know that support is coming. Too, you could *write* the notecard, and someone can help you replace it for now.
One thing we both overlooked: you can’t go into objects and work with the contents yet. So, you *still* cannot edit destinations in TP, even if they are on a notecard. That notecard has to be in the object with the script.
I am going to enable this anyhow, as we know that support is coming. Too, you could *write* the notecard, and someone can help you replace it for now.
*That’ll have to do, yes.
I guess I had thought you cold have it look in a different directory, not in the object.