Ducks in a Row - The End of Chasing my tail

I think, I have been hinting a lot recently at the fact my efficiency drive is now reaching its end.

VSX now offers one of the technically most advanced products on the market, while doing it all with the most insanely small scripting costs.

vStrings too are in constant development and of course we have been releasing the Unlimited 3 upgrades in to the Beholder store and the Boot selection.

I think from my point of view, this efficiency project has been an ongoing war now since 2010 – my infamous “Project Chase your Tail”.

And as I have probably ranted about previously, the majority of this has been down to Linden Labs script limit project. I will say, it is fair what they did and I understand why, although with the usual flair and gusto that befits Linden Labs, they neglected to bother telling anyone or making this public knowledge (that I could find at least).

The first part of the massive clean up operation was the introduction of Unlimited 2, which thankfully solved 98% of the problems although it did come with its own set of issues.

However, with ever increasing script limits, and the quite surprising move of many sim owners to hammer people who had too many scripts on (in their eyes and quite heavy restrictions I may add), over the last few years, even Unlimited 2 was starting to struggle.

Over the last 18 months, we have been working on what would become Unlimited 3 although it has been a staggered development as effectively U3 has been developed for very specific products.

Its first incarnation was released on vStrings as a single usage “Designer HUD” and back in July this year, U3 made its second appearance on VSX and VSXM.

For both of these products U3 brought massive advantages in script reduction, and additional functionality.

Unlimited 2 model vStrings compared to Unlimited 3 went from 7 scripts, to just 1 script, which is obviously a massive reduction when you look at a broader picture.

From there, the job was started of making Unlimited 3, actually more unlimited.

While production of this full version was carrying on, production U3 systems were build for Beholder and our Boots selections (lets just be honest, you can only ever wear one set of eyes and one set of boots).

Again, the advantage of U3 is obvious. On Beholder Eyes, they went from 18, to 3 scripts while offering vastly superior functionality.

One thing we were investing alot of time in though was as I said above, making U3 more “unlimited”. And this job proved to be alot harder than we anticipated, actually taking two months more than originally expected.

All of this work, just for two little buttons – Synch and Pick.

Much like U2, you can choose which items you want to effect. So if you have from the demon studio as an example, Horns, Tail, spikes hooves and ears on, you can press Synch to load up the items you are wearing, however unlike U2, this doesn’t automatically default to just one item. The Pick button will allow you to choose which item you want to affect, but with a much better advantage, you can also now select “All”, to blanket change every item you have on. This system gives massive flexibility.

The second great advantage of Unlimited 3 is how it operates. This was something that bothered me on U2, which did and will continue to do a good job but didn’t do it “just right”.

Unlimited 2 created a Universal HUD and individual products. In other words, the HUD was nothing more than a conduit to do the work, and inside the individual products was all the data and information needed to change things.

Unlimited 3 changes that in a subtle way, but with massive effects. Now, rather than the HUD and the data being separate, they are actually one, with the products simply containing the conduit, hence you set the products up once, and you never have to touch them again.

What this means is, if I do end up getting an itch to do new textures, I simply build up the updated HUD, and customers can come to store, and grab the free copy of it and you are ready to go.

Simple!

The final advantage of Unlimited 3 is the actual product cost, script wise.

I will use an example – a Set of Vishpla Horns from the Demon Studio.

Under Unlimited 2, there is the master listener script, 2 prim control scripts (Vishpla are quite large prim wise so need two), a master Resizer script, and then the data scripts of which there are 4 (Bone, Cross, Gems and Metal).

That means there are 8 scripts in Vishpla under Unlimited 2.

Now that is quite easy to look at and honestly they are really light on scripts.

However... if you end up wearing 10 Violet Studios products, and I will give an average here, but actually on the Avatar, you will have 80 scripts on.

From what I know, the rough limit for scripts on an avatar before things start to break badly, is 224, so its well within limits. However many sim owners put a limit of 100 scripts per avatar before they get snooty with you, and I have see games sims ask for as little as 30 (which honestly I think is a little over the top, but their sims, their rules).

Working with Unlimited 3, the figures regardless of the product, are simple – A Master Script, and if required a Resize Script (Rigged mesh doesn’t require resize). That means at absolute maximum, you will only have 2 script per product.

That means, comparatively speaking, you are wearing 10 items you should have under 20 scripts on from the Unlimited Perspective.

Which now brings me back to the title. Ducks in a Row.

With the Demon Studio and the Cyber Studio all now running on Unlimited 3, this now brings me full circle.

In 2009 and 2010, Violet Studios was a power house of design and development with new products almost pouring in to store on a weekly basis. For those that remember though, the torrents of new products slowed until they effectively stopped.

Part of the reason for this was the ever increasing technical nature of the products I was building, taking more time to create, but the majority of this was down to the fact I was having to constantly revisit prebuilt products thanks to script limits.

Between the learning curve of mesh, VSX optimisation, vString development, and the constant battle of trying to make my “unlimited” products perfect scripting wise, my time was monopolised.

Today, vString is now stable & efficient and the calmer and more sensible development of vString 4 is quietly and in a controlled way happening in the background.

VSX is now down to extremely low scripting costs and is effectively a stable final release and has even been superseded by the VSXM series.

Finally, the Script Limit war is over, with Unlimited 3 fully deployed in store with the threat of having to revisit these products again gone forever (as the HUD does the update, not the products). And let be honest, if 2 scripts it too many, then SL really is it trouble.

Hence the title. All my Ducks are now in a Row.

Project “Chase your Tail” is over. I cannot improve the older generation of products any more outside of tiny amounts of what would be effectively Petty Tweaking and even if I did that, I couldn’t make further script reductions – its simply impossible.

It seems to outsiders, odd that I would devote nearly 3 years to an efficiency drive and I will even admit, I do at times wonder if I am bonkers to obsess over this so much.

I will say though, this wasn’t about the actual products, but it was about the future.

I could have easily shrugged this off, and carried on building new products, however what that would have meant was there would have been even more products in store to clean up, and customers would not have got the very best from me.

Today, the timing of the end of Chase your Tail does coincide with several new technical developments on SL. My knowledge of mesh work gets better by the day, the so called Liquid Mesh is on the table and is due out soon (although learning about this is giving me a headache). I have dozens of new products on the bench at the moment, between myself and Juggz we have developed a quite frankly stunning series of scripting tools within vString, VSX and Unlimited.

Finally, there is one final part of 2013 which will see a whole new aspect to Violet Studios future product lines appear in the Demon and Verotic Studios as the long awaited ADV Skin system finally gets released hopefully before Christmas. Expect more on that soon.

I think it fair to stay, Violet Studios is now stable and all in order, and 2014 will be a very interesting year for myself and customers.

Dare I say the flood gate are about to reopen.