Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

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Mike Lorrey
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Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

Post by Mike Lorrey »

We were starting the OMRG meeting in a legacy residents region today when we were all crashed by Kitely cause they had run out of KC and not noticed it. This is really a rude and clunky way to treat people. I'd like to suggest that Kitely institute two things to make this less rude. a) warn the region owner with messages a few minutes before they run out so they can top up their KC supply, and b) if they dont top up their KC in time, teleport visitors home, don't just crash their viewers.
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Re: Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Mike,

Premium Accounts, which offer Premium Worlds that can be paid for per minute per user instead of using a fixed monthly price, were discontinued in June 2015 (see: https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-ne ... ime-offer/). Only a few remaining people who continued paying for a Premium Account still have that option grandfathered in. Premium Worlds are like a phone call, you buy credits in advance and the call gets disconnected when you run out. In this case, when the world manager's KC balance ran out all the connected viewers were disconnected from the world and the world was shut down (the viewers didn't crash they were disconnected from the server).

I agree it would have been better to give an advanced warning to the world manager that their KC balance is running low and, if we still offered Premium Accounts, we'd add that option. However, as there are now very few people who still have Premium Accounts and as we're not planning to bring back that account option, we can't justify the development work that is required for adding more features to this long-discontinued part of our offering.
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Re: Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

Post by Kat Lemieux »

Thanks for the reply, Ilan. But that isn't exactly what happened. The sim didn't crash, and two of us (the only two premium members, I suppose) were not booted. I'm not sure all the other users' viewers crashed but that does seem to be what happened. Has it really been almost 8 years since those accounts have been unavailable? Wow. I have certainly enjoyed my grandfathered account. Anyway, I'll try to keep a closer eye on my KC balance in future. It would still be nice to have a reminder when it gets low, whether running out has such dire consequences or not.
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Re: Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Thank you Kat.

Premium Account users can visit Premium Worlds without costing the world manager anything (see: https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-ne ... um-worlds/). So, if there were Premium Account owners in that Premium World when that world's manager ran out of KC then they wouldn't have been disconnected, which in turn would have kept the world active. However, all the regular account owners that were connected to that world when that happened would have been disconnected from it as their time was no longer being paid for by that world's manager.
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Re: Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

Post by Tess Juel »

Ilan Tochner wrote:
Sat Jan 21, 2023 2:04 am
However, all the regular account owners that were connected to that world when that happened would have been disconnected from it as their time was no longer being paid for by that world's manager.
The problem, Ilan, is that the disconnect happens with no prior warning or explanation. Would it be possible to add an automatic message to the region owner when funds are getting low and another automatic message to the visitor(s) before they are kicked out?

Also, how about tp'ing the visitors to the Kitely Welcome Center instead of disconnecting them?
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Re: Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

Post by Graham Mills »

I would guess that it would be reasonably straightforward to script a prim with a timer that on the owner's entry and hourly thereafter abstracted (and restored) from the owner's account a sum more than sufficient to pay for the next hour based on likely attendance (say 30 non-premium avatars) and which therefore threw an error if insufficient funds were available before funds actually ran out (assuming, of course, that the owner was present).

UPDATE: not clear to me that this would work using self-pay as this doesn't throw an error afaik. As I don't have an active alt on Kitely to play with I can't test further.

Alternatively you could simply get the script to remind you to check your KC balance on log-in. I've added a delay in case there are other scripts generating onscreen text at startup.

Code: Select all

default
{
    changed(integer c)
    {
        if (c & CHANGED_REGION_RESTART)
        {
            llSetTimerEvent(60);
        }
    }
    
    timer()
    {
        llOwnerSay("Check your KC balance.");
        //llInstantMessage( llGetOwner(), "Check your KC balance.");
        llSetTimerEvent(0);
    }
}
Last edited by Graham Mills on Sat Jan 21, 2023 7:08 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Tess,

As I stated previously, there are so few people that still maintain a Premium Account that we're not going to spend time developing any new features for it. However nothing is preventing you from adding a script like the one that Graham suggested.
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Re: Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

Post by Story Link »

First, sorry this happened to you guys, frustrating I'm sure. Lately any issue brought up in the Kitely Forum seem to be somehow polarizing to the affected folks, and generate great amounts of unnecessary negativity, so we generally just stay out of it, and maybe will regret replying this time, but as one of the "very few old ancient grandfathered accounts" (thank you Kitely - LOVE this option!!), thought we'd weigh in.

We've been in this situation for many many years. Yes every visitor to our worlds costs us $1KC every minute. But our audience members are very generous in helping us not to fall too far into the red each month, we've never hit the black, and certainly never the green! LoL. But still we invite folks always to use any of our regions for storytelling or RP experiences. Please! Come! Have Fun!! (Though we do generally do discourage extended camping - aside from the B&B Library Building of course - after, that's the point of being there!). Regardless, we couldn't be more thrilled with the grandfathered plan. An amazing super bargain.

Kitely is a very advanced and dynamic environment, and certainly learning experience at times. The second time that half our audience suddenly disappeared in mid-story (7 or 8 years ago maybe?), it was shocking and infuriating to say the least, but totally our own doing, and we learned to keep our balance current! LoL

Another issue we have is the one-hour inactivity timers booting people during story sessions, as our folks are not, usually, bouncing around during the event. Ostensibly there is an inactivity warning, but in practice there is often zero warning before they are disconnected (including our own youtube camera man! lol) but this is apparently an internet traffic issue.

For the second issue above we have a scripted object that flashes the screen and types a message in text chat for non-Premium users every 45 minutes during events. Happy to share that if anyone needs it.

For the first issue, and the subject of this post, while we don't have a need for it at this time, Graham's solution seems like a good one.

All the foregoing said... since there appears to be scriptable solutions available, and we are blessed with a plethora of very good scripters here, I personally would prefer to see the Kitely Admin and Tech team focus their efforts and limited resources on other issues. And am very grateful for the superior level of support and care received here.

Thank you Ilan & Oren!
- The folks at Storylink Radio
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Re: Please soften region shutdowns for legacy owned regions

Post by Mike Lorrey »

Graham Mills wrote:
Sat Jan 21, 2023 1:02 pm
I would guess that it would be reasonably straightforward to script a prim with a timer that on the owner's entry and hourly thereafter abstracted (and restored) from the owner's account a sum more than sufficient to pay for the next hour based on likely attendance (say 30 non-premium avatars) and which therefore threw an error if insufficient funds were available before funds actually ran out (assuming, of course, that the owner was present).

UPDATE: not clear to me that this would work using self-pay as this doesn't throw an error afaik. As I don't have an active alt on Kitely to play with I can't test further.

Alternatively you could simply get the script to remind you to check your KC balance on log-in. I've added a delay in case there are other scripts generating onscreen text at startup.

Code: Select all

default
{
    changed(integer c)
    {
        if (c & CHANGED_REGION_RESTART)
        {
            llSetTimerEvent(60);
        }
    }
    
    timer()
    {
        llOwnerSay("Check your KC balance.");
        //llInstantMessage( llGetOwner(), "Check your KC balance.");
        llSetTimerEvent(0);
    }
}
Would be useful to have this networkable, and as part of a donation jar system that was networked, as such legacy premium owners tend to have more than one region, which may not be online at the same time, to store a count down number somewhere else on the interwebs for each device to refer to when it boots up. Then the devices could each know exactly how much has been KC has been put in the owners account, and use hover text to count down the sum as regions get used. Perhaps some code one could run on AWS somewhere could handle the offline data storage.
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