Particles

[GothixGrafx Utherwurldly]

We're working on it. We don't need more input about what doesn't work about them but if you can give us examples where particle textures still work then that can help us in our investigation.

Two torches still working at the landing location of the Crematorium 128/128/24. They're old and have been there since the beginning.

[Kayaker Magic]

If no texture is specified in llParticleSystem(), a default texture is used, presumably provided by the viewer. It's a kind of very blurred circle, often pretty useful.

This is a very well known behavior, but I am at a loss to figure out where I learned this. The Wiki does not mention it. (Perhaps it was removed at some time in the past?) I tried looking it up in the old dead "LSL Wiki" http://lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wa ... icleSystem but the default texture is not mentioned there either. Despite the fact that it is no longer documented, if the default texture stopped working then thousands of extant scripts would fail.

llParticleSystem gets its parameters as a list. There are dozens of parameters that you can send to it, it is well documented that you do not have to send every single possible parameter pair in every call. You don't even have to send them in any order. The function has to be robust and have default values for missing parameters.

[Kat Lemieux]

Working particles are on the Steampunk boat in Mega Sandbox (Hidden Valley dock), and copies of same at Kat's Cabin, as well as the chimney of the sauna cabin on that sim. Another texture in the same sauna build is white squares, though. With the boats, the particles that work properly are the ones that run continuously, but if the boats are operated, the "wake" particles are white squares. This appears to follow the pattern of continuously running particles being fine, but restarted ones are borked.

There is more discussion on this topic at http://www.kitely.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&p=12609

[Handy Low]

This is a very well known behavior, but I am at a loss to figure out where I learned this. The Wiki does not mention it. (Perhaps it was removed at some time in the past?) I tried looking it up in the old dead "LSL Wiki" http://lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wa ... icleSystem but the default texture is not mentioned there either. Despite the fact that it is no longer documented, if the default texture stopped working then thousands of extant scripts would fail.

For one thing, that Wiki is not official documentation, and has never claimed to be. It's mostly a community-built effort, with occasional input from LL and at heart is descriptive rather than proscriptive. Any one of us could edit that page and add in a description of that behaviour now - it's just that nobody has (although perhaps one of us should do that!).

In fact, the nearest thing we have to the official documentation in this case is the viewer code. I checked that yesterday, and it does incorporate the loading of "pixiesmall.tga" (the name for the blurry circle texture) as the default texture for particles in several places.

Luckily, as you say, LL have a policy of not breaking content wherever possible[1]. You can be certain (based on the viewer code) that the default texture behaviour was intended, and equally certain that the behaviour will never be revoked (based on LL's often-stated policy and their track record).

As for where we all learned it from in the first place, I suspect that many of us cut our particle-scripting teeth on the Example Particle Script (hosted there on the same Wiki) that dates back to 2004. I know I did. As supplied, this script uses the default texture while leaving a place for people to provide a name or URL. I would estimate that perhaps half of the particles in Second Life are generated by variations of this script; it really is nearly everywhere.

[1] In case anyone is reading this and wondering: for an example, look at llSetLinkPrimitiveParams() and llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(). The former came first and incorporates a slight delay (a measure against either griefing or copying); not long after, LL decided the delay wasn't helpful. Rather then simply remove the delay, they created a new function in order not to change the behaviour of code using the original function. It's quite likely that it wouldn't have harmed any scripts at all, but they decided not to take that chance.

[Keith Selmes]

I just briefly checked Quayside.
In line with other comments,

1) two chimneys with smoke that have been running for some time are working properly.

2) A cannon which produces a new smoke cloud when fired is giving a sort of two dimensional solid white cloud shape, which then correctly drifts downwind and
eventually disperses. The cloud looks very much like a cartoon drawing of a white cloud.

[Kayaker Magic]

I logged in using Imprudence (to import some builds) and noticed that this viewer is not displaying any particles at all!
Whatever is causing the problem is making Imprudence display no (or transparent?) particles instead of those white rectangles.

[Ilan Tochner]

We fixed the problem in our lab and will be rolling out an update tomorrow.

Regarding Imprudence and other ancient viewers. I would recommend people stop using them with Kitely, they use a lot of UDP for things we've optimized for HTTP and they lack support for many features people rely on (e.g. mesh).

[Shandon Loring]

WOOT!! Way to go Boss!!

Aside from using Imprudence is there a better, or any, way to import .xml files into Kitely?

[Ilan Tochner]

Firestorm has its own (better) import/export functionality. See: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_import_export

[Selby Evans]

WOOT!! Way to go Boss!!

Aside from using Imprudence is there a better, or any, way to import .xml files into Kitely?

See my article:
Intergrid transport: Move stuff from one grid to another
http://virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com/ ... sport.html

You can move stuff (if you are the creator) from SL to Kitely in Firestorm.