Learning to Script and Build
Posted by penguinpiek on September 1, 2007
I’ve been working on getting the ITRT Retreat ready for primetime, and in the process, I’ve learned a lot about the more technical aspects of this vast new world. We needed a bridge, and I could not find one that wasn’t either too high prim or just too fancy for a woodsy setting, so I decided to try my hand at building. My first stop was Ivory Tower, a very impressive site containing numerous tutorials and examples for using the building tools already available in Second Life. After spending a couple of days with those lessons, I was able to create a bridge that I think will work out just fine.
Next came some exploration with the SL scripting language. We wanted to allow avatars to choose from a list of landmarks when they click on a prim rather than just giving them a dozen landmarks one after the other. I finally found an example that changed the chat window colors using llDialog, so at least I knew what the proper function was. After a few visits to the Linden Scripting Language Portal, I was able to create a dropdown type box with the choices as button labels. After that little adventure, I found that I had a wealth of free scripts from various sources that were easily edited to meet our needs. Many thanks to the SL community for doing an outstanding job of commenting and documenting every script I have opened.
Finally, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so it was time to lighten up a bit. We put two innertubes in the creek for folks to ride. The script had to be altered to allow everyone to ride, not just the owners, but it works now! I found a plastic float that I placed under the waterfall. You never know when you just need a nice relaxing float trip under a cool mist. In the Recreation Center, there is a tictactoe board on the wall, a beach ball that responds to touch, and a trampoline that bounces you up to the ceiling. There are other goodies free for the taking in each cabin and hidden in one of the caves.
OK, back to scripting….but I’d much rather be relaxing underneath that waterfall!
