Emma vs. the Subway

Emma vs. the Subway
Originally uploaded by Emma Nowhere.

I meant to post this earlier... I took this picture at Downtown on the day it opened to the public. I can't say enough how beautifully crafted this place is, or to do justice to the emotions it provokes in those who visit it. I really wish I'd saved this picture to disk as a high resolution file rather than as a 512x512 texture, but I still love it. I really wasn't sure what would happen when the car hit...

Twittering from SL

I've read a number of blog posts by Ordinal Malaprop, Kisa Naumova and others about using Twitter from SL. Very cool stuff! The great thing about Twitter, from a scripting standpoint, is that if you just want to do updates from within Second Life, you can do it with just a few lines of LSL code and post directly to the Twitter servers. Here's a simple example that I hope you'll find useful:

//put your Twitter username and password here
string twitter_user = "";
string twitter_pass = "";

updateTwitter(string update) {
    if ((twitter_user != "") && (twitter_pass != "")) {
        string url = "http://" + twitter_user + 
            ":" + twitter_pass + 
            "@twitter.com/statuses/update.xml";
        llHTTPRequest(url, [HTTP_METHOD, "POST", 
            HTTP_MIMETYPE, 
            "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"], 
            "status=" + llEscapeURL(update));
    }
}

default {

    state_entry() {
    }
    
    touch_start(integer num_detected) {
        updateTwitter("Hello from LSL");
    }

    http_response(key request_id, 
        integer status, 
        list metadata, 
        string body) {
        //always returns a 415 error
        //unless it fails, in which case
        //a 500 error is returned
    }

}

Construction Time Again

Just a quick update - I'm starting planning on the companion sim to Nowhere. Looking at coastlines in Google Images for inspiration and I've been privileged enough to visit and live in few interesting tropical locales in RL. Thematically it will be very similar to Nowhere, with my signature landscaping techniques, such as gently sloping coastlines, private bays, and natural mountains. I'll post more details as the plan gels.

I'm also hoping to make some progress on finishing the Lost Hatch (aka Dharma Initiative Swan Station) skybox build that I started on so long ago.





The layout has been done for months, except for a few details, it just needs to be textured, which is unfortunately outside of my skill set.

In my quest to better learn texturing, I did read the excellent book 3D Game Textures: Create Professional Game Art Using Photoshop by Luke Ahearn. While it will take more than even a wonderful'y written book such as this to impart graphic design skills on someone like me, it at least helped to explain to me how places such as Downtown can look so amazing. I recommend it to anyone who's trying their hand at building anything in Second Life since good texturing is so often what makes the difference between good and great in anything in-world. One point that the book makes, but which is even more important in SL, is the size of textures. If you're using textures that are greater than 512x512, and you've got several of them in a build, you ARE going to be making life difficult for people who don't have higher-end graphics cards who will experience render lag, which they'll probably incorrectly attribute to your sim or SL. Many SL users aren't PC gamers with the latest and greatest hardware, so pay attention to texture size and please use smaller textures when possible.