Union Micro

Creep over to Union Micro between 2pm and 8pm SLT on October 31st for our Trick or Treat Elevator Sale! We’re gearing up for big discounts on our big ticket elevator items! Grab yourself a generation 1 “Lite Elevator Kit”, standard “Elevator Kit”, any generation 1 car, or a generation 2 “Script Package” at 50% off regular price! If you’ve been waiting to buy an elevator or update to generation 2, now is the time to do it, with huge savings!

IMPORTANT: Sale will begin when the “sale” badges are placed on the vendors at or near 2pm SLT on Oct. 31st. You MUST have the “Union Micro Support” group tag ACTIVE to receive the discount. The Union Micro Support group is free to join.

I’ve began Mono testing for the v2 elevators. I’ve been generally successful with it but did come across some things that need further researching before I push out a Mono update. I don’t expect to see much of a performance increase since most of the critical and/or slow operations in the system rely on things that are not related to Mono – physics (Havok), notecard loading (asset server).

However, due to the computational speed benefits of mono, you may see faster floor queue calculations for elevator systems that have many floors – but that remains to be tested.

I have no ETA for this release as there are some other bugs that I will need to look into and get fixed before I really consider releasing the mono version of the scripts.

Just in-case anyone was wondering, I’ve been taking a break from SL lately. I still login when I have to (when business requires), but current projects are on hold. I haven’t put out any v2 elevator updates because I haven’t received any solid reproduceable bug reports – just reports of “things breaking.”

I’ve been keeping myself busy in the real world with various things (i.e. a new job) and should return to full-swing in the near future – how near remains to be seen. Feel free to IM me with any requests, etc.

I’ve released a new affiliate kit! This new kit contains the latest version of the affiliate vendors, a new vendor design, and a set of vendors for generation 2 elevators. The signs have been updated and are now a requirement for elevator affiliates. Also there is now a set of elevator holo displays included!

Current affiliates will expire in one week so you will have to update your current affiliate vendors with the latest kit.

I’ve placed a survey near our elevator vendors in an effort to improve customer satisfaction. The survey consists of 13 questions pertaining to elevators and you will receive a free elevator poseball upon completion. We’d appreciate it if you could drop by and fill it out whether you’ve already purchased an elevator or are considering it.

We are very pleased to announce that our generation two elevators are now available for purchase at Union Micro! We’re still working on setting up demos and updating the builders kit, but that will all be coming soon! For the next 24h (until 9pm SLT tomorrow) the Script Package vendor will refund 20% of the purchase price to all members of the Union Micro Support group!

See detailed features after the break!
Continue reading “Version 2 Elevators Released”

Well, I was originally planning on releasing today but I’m not quite done with it yet. The elevator has already been through a round of testing which caught about a dozen bugs that have been fixed. I’ve since ran an automated test of over 1500 consecutive stops without major issues!

So right now, what I have left to do is send it out for final testing, finish the builders kit support, do some last minute tweaks, and write the documentation. I will also convert the 1.x cars over to 2.x for those people that want to replace their 1.x elevator with a 2.x one, and they can just drop in the new parts. I will not be converting the Cyclone and round doors at this time as they have proven to be a pain in Havok 4 – at least they won’t be ready for initial release but will likely be available in a future update.

With that said, 2.0.0 may see release before the weekend. *fingers crossed*

As for pricing, that is not completely decided yet but I have an estimate. You can expect to fork over more money on initial purchase for 2.x vs 1.x, HOWEVER, when purchasing extra doors and cars there will be CONSIDERABLE savings.

Update: There are at least two JIRA issues reported about this bug. Check them out below and vote on them so they will be fixed:
SVC-2060 and SVC-2112.

It seems that often when an elevator is in a region that is prematurely reset or crashes, the elevator stops working until a new one is rezzed. With the region outages today my two main elevators stopped working but my demo elevators did not, so it seems like it MAY be tied to the number of floors. I haven’t been able to track down the cause and I am unsure if it is a problem with the elevator scripts or that the region is corrupting the scripts in the elevator when it crashes.

So if you come across your elevator just not moving period – such as it will do the install, and start to make noises, but just sits there, you will need to rez a new one. This isn’t as bad as it sounds because you don’t actually have to rez a new car from your inventory. Just edit your car, hold shift, and drag on one of the X, Y, or Z axis to create a copy. Keep in mind that the NEW copy will be rezzed in the ORIGINAL location and that you will have moved the original car so delete the car that has been moved out of the shaft.

Now all of your notecard settings are intact and you just have to reinstall the car.

I’ve been monitoring one of my cars with a chat listener to see if the car has any scripts that crash (stack-heap collision) and after it stopped working there was no evidence in the log of a script crash. So if anyone can possibly reproduce this scenario I would be entirely grateful.

I’ve updated the elevator frequently asked questions.

Preliminary results for Havok 4 seem to be good. I’ve received no major reports of problems from anyone.

One thing I did notice in my own testing was that clearance in Havok 4 seems to be less forgiving. In Havok 1, if a car was slightly colliding with a wall, it would simply keep moving at a much slower speed. In Havok 4, it seems that the car stops dead in its tracks with even the slightest collision. So if your car is getting stuck all of a sudden you will need to increase the gaps between your car and all objects it passes by.

I have started a forum topic where I will post all Havok 4 issues I come across as well as any workarounds. Check it out here.