(Semi-long post with a mini-rant against Open Space sims. If you need to skip, skip to the part about What do do. There’s a good tip there.)

SL has changed things over the past (few) weeks – sim performance has generally deteriorated by about 30% ceterus paribus, and there seems to be a lot more script run-time errors and missing script errors too.

This week, Mono is being rolled out, and I’m sure there’ll be more fun things.

But meantime, I’m putting out v4.13.04 HUD with small but critical fixes:

• Your LULU Signature Cuffs dropping off you with that “laggy sim” message?If you’re on Open Space sims (aka low-prim sims), you’d realize by now that they have reduced script performance (see the notes in About Land). What you might not know is how bad their performance really is. Even though my lag mater might state 75 – 100, the actual experienced performance is a lot lower, due to the fact that my meter doesn’t measure chat lag. And chat lag is really bad on these sims.

  Basically v4.13.04 will help 95-98% of the time now – it should respond a lot better in Open Space sims. The remaining 2-5% is due to those sims being sooo slow that they actually drop some of the chat that they can’t process. Dropped = lost forever. Means problems detecting HUD sometimes, especially when you rez all 8 cuffs (= lots of chat traffic). But with the next cuff updates, you can rez cuffs individually, so if you rez just the wrists for example, you’re all set (not that much traffic).

• Script-errors. I’ve also pared down the one script that had the most stack-heap errors. That should help a lot.

What to do:

Just go to the Secret Warehouse, hit the Update Switch. Do the usual, and you will be given an option to get the “HUD only” or a “new box”. New box means a fresh Boxed Set; means setup; re-activate; transfer. Not fun.

Try “HUD only”. Just wear, and start transferring all your gear over from the old HUD. No re-setup. That’s it!

If SL breaks your HUD again, just hit “HUD only” again and avoid re-setup!

Luv, Lulu

(Continuing the preview of new LULU Stabilizers that help smoothen an otherwise bumby SL ride)

LULU Signature gear is among the most complex and secure in SL, and as such, it requires setup.

Unfortunately, SL doesn’t like complex stuff that try to push the boundaries. So sometimes, SL borks the setup process for no good reason. The menu disappears. Or the cuffs/gag would not rez properly on command. So we need to re-setup. The whole thing. Eight pieces if you’ve got one full set of cuffs. Plus the key.

Easi-setup 2.0

Easi-setup 2.0 to the rescue!

I’ve finally figured out how to detect when SL borks certain internal states – so we can fix things on the spot rather than requiring a full-resetup after the fact.

Here goes the major features:

• Speed. Much faster setup – you’ll breeze through each step faster than ever.
• Live-check. Detects when SL borks things, and repeats the last step (instead of requiring a complete re-setup of everything after the fact).
• Anti-stall. Lost a menu? No problem. Clicking the Setup Ball will either advance the step or repeat the last step, depending on where you are.
• Single re-setup. If SL borks a single cuff after setup, you just need to re-setup that one cuff. Not everything again.
• Key, once. You only need to setup a key for each toy once for that particular HUD. Future re-setups for that HUD will omit the key step. (cuffs only atm). You’ll only need to give the key once to your owner too, no matter how many times you re-setup.
• Auto stats. Important HUD settings (e.g. owner list, gender, spacial, command channel, gag Circle!) are automatically in the new HUD when you first wear it. No transfer required.If you are going to HUD v.5 from v.4, cuff and gag positions, colors, etc. will not be auto-transferred (you’ll need to manually “transfer…” as in the past, or just re-adjust the new gear). But when you wear your subsequent v.5 HUD (say, in the next update) – all stats will be automatically in your HUD without requiring you to do a transfer.
• Cuff plugins setups are now two-steps instead of three.

With Easi-Setup 2.0, you can get down to playing a lot faster. I’m already working towards Easi-Setup 3.0, but that’s another story.

Easi-Setup 2.0 will be in the upcoming HUD v.5.

Stay tuned.

(Continuing with the preview of new LULU Stabilizers that help smoothen an otherwise bumby SL ride)

There is a major SL problem that plagues all attachments.

If you crash, or are disconnected (either of which seem to occur just when you think it’s safe again!)… you might lose all your current settings. If you were locked, you might find yourself unlocked. Your color or position settings all gone. Owner settings gone. And so on.

Why? The current state of your attachment (whether scripts state or prim settings) simply does not get saved when you crash. So, when you log back in, your attachment is at a previous state (the last time it was “saved” to the SL asset server, to be exact). So, logging back in, you experience a “roll-back” – your attachment stats belong to an earlier time. Doesn’t matter if the attachment saves data on the prim (e.g. prim description). The prim itself is simply rolled back to an earlier time, before that data was saved.

This has been brought up to the Lindens before, and their happy reply is to always detach your attachment to save all changes.

Hence, the little red dot on the LULU Signature HUD that tells you what changes you have made (e.g. “owner changes”), and reminds you to save your data. But this is quite a silly idea if you’re supposed to be locked in the first place. Detaching stuff and re-attaching them each time something happens. Really elegant.

With the upcoming HUD v.5, we do better.

Auto-save.

Yes. No more detaching. Crash all you want. Disconnect all you want. Log back in, and your settings (and believe me, there’re many stats in there) will be the same as before.

Well, 99% of settings anyway. You won’t lose your Gag Circles (hooray all gag aficionados!) – but, if you were in the middle of a trial, your trial time would still be rolled back.

Why?  Well two reasons. First, I’d have to rewrite the trial scripts. Second, and more importantly, we don’t want to give an unfair advantage to people doing the trials now – after all, all those people on the Gag Scoreboard had to go through all the nice little random crashes and roll-backs to get up there (at a time when there were way more crashes, I might add). It’d cheapen their achievements if we made it too easy!

That said, all other settings and stats should be safe from roll-backs.

Stay tuned for more LULU Stabilizers in the upcoming HUD v.5. Making your SL life a little smoother.

Luv, Lulu

(Continuing with the preview of new LULU Stabilizers that help smoothen an otherwise bumby SL ride)

100% Hack-proof. A key design feature of LULU Signature gear.

So you know that your sub can neither hack them, nor accidentally break them by fooling around. Trust is one thing, but even in Real Life roleplay, would you use cuffs or gags that are easily tampered with? Didn’t think so. No fun for either side.

Why am I confident LULU Signature gear is hack-proof? Well, because they are NO-MODIFY, that’s why. Sub can’t take them apart, delete scripts, drop other scripts in etc.

Okay, what’s this gotta do with Stabilisers? Well, no matter how you try to optimize scripts, sometimes they die (script run-time errors) for no good reason. When they do, you need to reset the scripts.

With MODIFY attachments, this means you need to drop them on the ground, go to the SL menu and hit “Reset all scripts…” and wait for them to reset in turn. When done, you re-wear the attachment. This takes minutes, and most times, settings are lost.

With NO-MODIFY attachments, you can’t do all that by yourself. But the LULU Signature HUD has Smart Reset built in, to selectively reset only those scripts that have died. Smart Reset could also recover the most important settings lost to reset.

Smart Reset 2.0

Now, with HUD v.5, Smart Reset 2.0 goes further (and does it with even less code) than the original Smart Reset:

• super-fast self-check (used to take up to half a minute or a minute for a full check).
• super-fast restore (used to be up to half a minute or more).
• faster, more reliable detection of script-errors, as they occur.
• overcomes a weird SL-bork that occasionally stalls restore in Smart Reset 1.0.
• now all settings are restored with reset, not just the most imortant ones.
• now you can “force reset” to reset everything, for those times when SL corrupts the scripts but they’re not exactly dead. In the past, you had to get a fresh HUD – now there’s another option. Yes, all settings are still preserved after a “force reset”.

Better than SL’s “Reset all scripts…”

Why is Smart Reset 2.0 even better than the SL built-in “Reset all Scripts…”?

• It detects the error as and when they occur. If SL isn’t co-operative, it’ll detect the error soon after. It’ll alert you to the problem, and start the self-fix immediately.
• It automatically resets only the dead scripts, in seconds. Just detach the HUD and re-wear. That’s it. No need to drop on the ground (risk of loss inventory!), rightclick item, select Edit, choose the SL menu item, and wait a minute or two for SL to reset all the scripts, then rewear.
• All settings are preserved – no need to re-enter things, etc. In SL’s default case, all settings are lost.
• If you wish to force it to reset all scripts, you can. All settings will still be restored.

Smart Reset 2.0. Coming soon… in LULU Signature HUD v5.0.

Stay tuned for more peek previews of upcoming LULU Stabilisers.

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* obviously subs can be male or female or in between. I use the feminine here for convenience as there are more female subs around. Those who are bothered by this, please mentally substitute all feminine pronouns with male-female-hermaphrodite variants. 😛