Powerful Scripting Update Coming Soon to Second Life - Here's How It'll Improve Interactive Experiences

(1/24) There's a super great upgrade coming to @SecondLife scripting, that I don't think is getting great attention it should. Before I go on forever about why this is great and will fundamentally change #SL please consider a retweet and maybe a like - to help spread the word. :)

— NeoBokrug (@NeoBokrug) October 19, 2022

Longtime Second Life community scripter NeoBokrug (who keeps the legendary roleplay Wasteland regions running), has a meaty and important tweet storm (above) and blog post here highlighting LinksetData, a much-needed update to Linden Script Language. You should definitely share it with the LSL scripter in your life, but if you're not a scripter, the short version is: It'll make interactive experiences in Second Life much more powerful and persistent.

For instance, consider the Really Needy HUD (a former NWN partner), which turns Second Life into a first-person Sims-type roleplay game: 

"I can add a small database to each HUD, going from a static tool to become a more sophisticated system to enable a more enriched roleplay experience," Really Needy developer Grace Ling explains. 

 

"For the 'lifestyle roleplayers' using my HUD, 'realism' means more like RL. The HUD could remember how many times they drank alcohol for example, and build up 'alcohol tolerance' just like RL, so that they don't get drunk as fast. It could remember how many times they caught a disease, and maybe build up immunity over time. It could store a user's Fitness Points for working out regularly in the gym, whereas previously these precious fitness points could be lost due to an accidental script reset or HUD upgrade.

 

"For users looking for a gamified experience, for example 'medieval fantasy' roleplayers, I could add attributes like Strength or Dexterity or skills like lockpicking or alchemy, and create items with properties that are persistent (survives transfer, script reset and object copying). An alchemist (with the right skill or training) could mix certain ingredients to make a potion for instance. The possibilities are endless!"

 

More background here. LinksetData is set to go live across the grid this week. Expect to see some interesting innovations and fun upgrades to in-world games soon after.

Comments

[sirhc desantis]

The data storage bit of the Experience thing was the only part that caught my eye. Played with it for a while, did some custom work for people but too many restrictions.
After various ways over the years in an attempt to store info (its amazing how much fun it is to fiddle with the range of combo values of a prim size/shape/face colour/texture offsets etc etc to see how much you could stuff in - and don't talk to me about abusing all the MOAP data stuff, although that always came with the caveat that the Lab could break that at any time) this new functionality is a great addition.
Already mucked about with it a bit. Could have done with it 15 years back but better late than never.

[Janet Halley]

How about nooo.

[Adeon Writer]

This would have changed the face of SL if we had it two decades ago. It's realy a pity. Everything i wanted to do back then is now possible, we'd have had actual good games that didn't play like jank. But now everyone has moved on.

Second Life really is a sad story of doing things far too late.

This is amazing news but why does it make me feel so angry?

[Summer Haas]

After playing with this for the last week or so I've come to the conclusion that we desperately need a way to convert lists to a compressed string and back. llList2Json and llJson2List just doesn't cut it. All the vectors and rotations get stuck as strings so you have to run additional loops to convert them back. Having a way to store lists that are compressed would make this so much more powerful.

[Iggy 1.0]

As others have said, this could/should have been done long ago. Horse done left the barn…in 2010.

Linden Lab never got it that user-built RPGs are SL’s secret sauce. And they still do not.