The Springtime of Fail
However since then
(i.e. staying home below 80m and having recompiled to LSL, etc.)
the show has been full of win.

Back in the spring we had two shows one after the other that were absolutely chock full of fail because lag prevented everything from working. They just about killed me, I have to say. One was at Ragland Shire and the other was at Earpoint. Both were very high in the air. Before we began performing for the year I had recompiled everything to Mono, and used the same compilation for duplicated scripts (like the flames Phoebus sets off). For both those shows (I think) Enj was using the megaprim hack for avatar invisibility. I distinctly remember Zayn saying, "Take off all your scripted attachments," and one Tiny wag saying, "Zayn, I'm ALREADY COMPLETELY NUDE."

After those bad experiences I thunked a bit, recompiled everything back to LSL :( and lowered the Airship Theatre to be within the group-only-scripts limit and stopped touring (again). The megaprim hack was on its way out anyway, and since I was using an RC viewer and could see the avatars who thought they were invisible, Enj changed back to invisiprims (somewhat hastily and with one performance at least where it was one crude giganto-invisiprim).

There are a number of issues, I suppose, and I don't have my finger on the pulse of anything, however from the perspective of a non-coder trying to direct live performance in SL it seemed to boil down to:

• There are possible issues with rezzing/derezzing objects with Mono-compiled scripts.
• There are issues with people TPing in/out of a region that have to do with more than just scripted attachments.
• People wear too many scripted attachments, resources are finite, and runtime permissions are the debil (in this case only) - especially when detaching the attachments may cause a lag spike (i.e. TD will drop to near-nothing for a short time), however only a few (including me for all the show effects) would've been rezzing/derezzing Mono scripted objects.
  
• Performing high in the air mucks around with sit targeting, should help a certain amount by removing a lot of unnecessary textures and geometry from within the draw distance, places the audience outside any "group-only scripts zone - a mixed bag, in other words.
• The mega-prim hack always made me uneasy, and even though it may not've been a problem, I'm glad it's gone.
• The group-scripts-only setting works below... uh... I think 80m only, and only works on a very, very few things now, but it's still worth it because every little bit helps.
  
• There have been ghost script reports that indicate that the scripts in deleted objects sometimes continue to use memory - but I don't know if that's (or still) a valid issue, or what the details are. It was purportedly something like this (made up example): "ZOMG I fired 800 bullets and now the bullets are gone but 800 bullet scripts are driving the sim to its knees and only a restart can save it." I'm ignoring this since even if it's true I have no way to either check it or fix it.
• I did try asking people to remove things, ages back, but stopped wanting that, which may've been a good thing if removing the attachments also spiked lag by temporarily lowering TD.
• There is no way of knowing what the other sims on the core are doing, so results will vary greatly, I would imagine.
• I was reading something recently that talked about LSL scripts "It should also be noted that Mono scripts, to my knowledge, require internal recompilation from the assembly code every time the script gets moved to a new sim, unlike LSL which I think simply gets serialized and run. Also, LSL gets serialized in one chunk, while I believe Mono scripts, due to the possible size, require several"* and there was another bit too, but it's too hard to find it using a crippled computer so I'll leave it for now.

* I have no way of knowing how accurate that statement is.

Labels: TSMGO