Category: Uncategorized

Modified Theme

As you can see, I’ve stretched the page out to be wider and modified a lot of subtle things to give the site a better feel. The menus on both sides have the style from the header (change colour on hover, etc) and I’ve modified the blog entry separators.

I’m at it again! Elevator updates!

I, NEVER being content with anything, am in the process of adding MORE stuff to the elevator system. I’ll keep this post short and sweet… features being added:

  • Owner menu’s for doors and controller.
  • I’m adding a menu to the doors and controller similar to the one in the elevator car.
  • Allows me to access information for the doors and controller and verify settings.
  • Owner menus have a back door that allow me to pull up the menu.
  • Communications Test.
    • Select “Test Comms” from the controller to verify communications of all doors and cars.
    • Allows you to quickly find items that aren’t communicating with the controller.
  • Teleport.
    • You’ll be able to right click the arrow buttons on doors to teleport to the floor above and below your current floor.
    • Now you get the best of both worlds!
    • You get the style of an advanced elevator with the ease of teleporting on those lazy days.
  • More statistics.
    • Doors and the controller have a status button that will show you stats such as is in the elevator cars.
    • Controller will tell you how many commands it has processed.
    • Doors will tell you how many times they’ve opened.
    • Let’s you roughly estimate which floors are the popular ones.

    Continue reading “I’m at it again! Elevator updates!”

    Progress report

    The elevator updates are coming along nicely. It’s taken me the best part of the last 2 days to recode the logic of the elevator! And you thought elevators were simple… Anyway, it seems to be a lot smarter with its path-finding routine now than it was before, and since it now uses 2 scripts instead of 1 it might be a little faster too!

    I’ve implemented the first feature update which wasn’t even mentioned until now… there are now 2 different door opening modes. Mode “1” is the default with the doors both sliding into the same side, mode “2” now has the doors part separate ways and position themselves on either side of the doorway. Thanks goes to Robbie Riptide for the suggestion.

    Also (I’m quite proud of this) there are new sounds! The elevator car start and stop sounds have been replaced, and the door opening sound has also been replaced. But wait, there’s more! There’s now a looping sound in the elevator car while it’s moving! These sounds GREATLY enhance the experience of riding the elevator.

    I’m still debating on how I want to package the new cars with the direction markers and LED numbers inside of them. I’m not sure if I want to replace the current cars with them and continue including 2 cars in each package, or include all 4 cars in each package. The only problem with the latter is that I have to update 4 cars multiplied by how many different packages I have every time I release an update – a logistics nightmare! I’m considering just doing the replacement and offering a basic low-prim car for the people worried about prims – this car will of course be cheaper than the other, more detailed cars.

    On a non-elevator related note there are some changes coming to the Union Micro site as posted below. I’ve designed a new logo which looks SO much more professional than the current “Photoshop n00b Logo” that I use currently. As I update vendor posters with the updated logo I will be DRASTICALLY CUTTING prices on older products. I have a lot of products that are starting to show their age and are no longer priced reasonably as competitors have put out better products. So I will cut my prices to try to offer a bang-for-your-buck product. As you can imagine some of the newer and more popular products such as my elevators will remain unchanged – you get what you pay for and what you’re getting is the most advanced elevator in Second Life! 🙂

    Major elevator updates and features on the horizon!

    I’ve been back in the Second Life swing lately so I’ve been making some progress on some elevator updates. Firstly, I released a new elevator car called “Rhino,” which is a smaller car in comparison to the Pacifica and it has a glass enclosure. I’ve also completed an industrial-themed car called “Mule” along with some industrial doors to accompany it. These are still waiting to be released because of the current updates I’m doing to the core elevator code.

    Concerning the elevator code, I’ve found some more logic errors after I created a 5-floor test setup and pushed as many buttons as I could. Well, the elevator didn’t fair so well! But don’t be concerned, this is an extreme situation and to be honest, your elevator car will not usually see more than 2 people trying to use it at the same time. It will deal just fine with only a couple people trying to use it, and besides, it won’t break it will just be inefficient and somewhat random. I’m fixing this by separating the queue system from the main script and putting it inside of its own script and then redoing some of the logic to make more sense. I’ve considered implementing “Up Peak” and “Down Peak” logic but I see no need for it with the low volume of traffic it will receive in Second Life.

    Anyway on to the new features… I have not 1 but 5-ish features planned! These may not all make it into the next release but I have the next 3 days to try.

    • Direction arrows inside cars.
    • LED displays inside cars.
    • Collision detection.
      • The car will try to tell you what it’s colliding with.
      • Not very feasible. Avatar is continuously colliding with the car.
    • Re-centering doors.
      • Doors will re-center every so often. Prim-drift likes to gradually shift them across the room.
      • Not an important feature. Prim-drift is pretty minimal.
    • Add “ding” sound to low prim doors.
      • This isn’t really an added feature but they were missing this.

    The first 2 features will be in the form of a separate car for each package. This is for people who use the 20-floor cars because I will have to remove floor buttons to get the prim count at or below 31 (SL limit for physical objects).

    After all this is done I also want to redo this site. I like WordPress because it’s so easy to use but I want something more custom – or I may just try and find a new template. The main reason for this is that I want to have my own catalog instead of linking to SL Exchange and the reading pane is so skinny.

    Just an update

    I’ve been busy lately working a lot of weird hours so I haven’t had much time for Second Life. By the time I get home from work at 2am I end up doing nothing and relaxing or playing a different game on the computer to wind down. But don’t worry, I’m still receiving and trying to reply to tech support problems (99% elevator related lol).

    I haven’t released or worked on any elevator updates in quite a long time… I think it’s reached maturity and is quite a stable product. And it figures that it becomes stable after I spend quite a bit of time programming the update disks for it. I still receive a lot of support requests about things that are addressed in the FAQ and/or the instructions. I can’t stress it enough to READ THE NOTECARDS! This is BY FAR not an easy thing to get working so you have to realise that and take the time to read the instructions step-by-step and in detail. I’ve tried to sit down and figure out another way to install it or rewrite the instructions but I can’t find any clearer way without making a complete video tutorial.

    I’d like to start working on some more add-ons for the elevator system like different cars and I even envision a dual-car system – 2 cars side-by-side that communicate with eachother and work together to move people efficiently. This is just a fun thought though as I don’t think there is anywhere in Second Life that has enough foot traffic to require such efficiency.

    Anyway, as a closing note don’t be afraid to IM me in-world and suggest features to me or even completely new products. If it sounds cool enough I’d be happy to create it.