Treve Saves Gor!

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May 2012

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May 28 - Memorial Day

[Victor Warilard]

Well, maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but we did help solve the biggest controversy over weapons I have seen since I have been in Gor. My next post will deal with the actual controversy, but I wanted to thank all the people who came to help out last night. We needed to simulate raid conditions with as many people as possible running around shooting weapon and there were more Trevans than anyone else. Some of the slaves and free women had entirely too much fun going around shooting everybody and will need a firm hand to remind them of their places, but it actually turned out to be a blast for everybody. Navar is going to post a video soon for the stated purpose of showing the results of the test. Seeing Asea run around in her garters and Payton with a tight top clinging to her ample bosom are merely side benefits.

[Victor Warilard]

Here is my original post about the controversy. This was sent to council members, but now that the results are out I will share this and the results of the test.

Some of you may be aware of the debate about the new bows from H & S and LR. Their arrows use 3 scripts, which some claim given them an unfair advantage in heavy lag.

I am not a scripter, but after trying to clear through to the main points, here is what I see are the crucial aspects of the debate about the weapons:

Alika Sao, Anhandreu and others claim the additional scripts cause additional lag, based on the assertion that even an empty script will add lag. If you can improve the performance of arrows by adding additional scripts, this will lead to more and more scripts being added to bows, causing even more lag. As evidence, Anhandreu shows a test demonstrating how additional scripts increase lag.

The arguments against this state that when one script is active, the others are inactive, so there is no reason to believe the additional scripts increase lag. Anhandreu's test was under different conditions than would be experienced by the use of H & S or LR bows. Besides which, Alika Sao and Anhandreu have a conflict of interest because they are in competition with them and would benefit from the new bows being taken off the market.

Navar Harbinger has offered to conduct a test this Friday to measure whether the three scripted arrow really does add more lag than a one scripted arrow. This will certainly help, but might be inconclusive.

I will be following this situation closely, but I do not intend to ban either LR or H & S bows unless there is conclusive evidence against them. They are two of the more respected makers in SL Gor and have offered to change their weapons if tests show their arrows do increase lag.

[Victor Warilard]

First of all, I do think Alika had cause for concern. On its surface, all else being equal, more scripts would induce more lag. Furthermore, if you could improve the performance of your weapons at the expense of others simply by adding more scripts, the problem would quickly escalate as every maker would keep loading more scripts into their arrows to outdo each other. AC did show that even an empty script could cause more lag.

However, there is a little more to the story. The H & S arrows do not have all the scripts on at the same time. I checked with a friend who is an expert scripter, a computer scientist when RL gets in the way of her SL priorities, and who is NOT a weapons maker so she doesn't have a  dog in this fight. She agreed with AC that the additional scripts ion the arrows would cause additional lag, but that this would not necessarily happen if the scripts were not all active the whole time.

I went to the testing sight Navar had set up a bit early. He had his robots set up to fire 1 script arrows or 3 script arrows for comparison purposes. I verified the arrows were set up as stated. We had to lag the sim down terribly to slow the arrows down enough for me to inspect the arrows content (try catching an arrow in mid flight). The arrows that were color coded as 3 script arrows did have 3 scripts. You have to catch the arrow at the precise moment because there is generally only one active at a time. Any other time you will only see one script.

I measured time dilation and sim fps and was unable to find any significant difference between the two arrows. There is more impact by having several people on the sim running around.

More people came to check the test. To get enough people on the sim to simulate a real raid, we invited people from BtB sims, GE sims, slaves, Free Women, warriors and everyone else to help out. I think Treve deserves special commendation for having more people participate than anyone else.  Everyone first used 1 script arrows from different makers for the first test. The sim was restarted and we came back to repeat with weapons with 3 script arrows (both H & S and LR bows were used).

Again, I could see no significant difference in performance between the two.

[Darkness Vollmar]

Well done Vic.  Thanks for your efforts.

[dana Tehani]

nicely done, Master ;-)

[Vivienne Daguerre]

Well done. Good to hear a sane voice through all the clamour. You are correct that any script, even an empty one, does take up a certain amount of memory resources of the sim and therefore causes some lag. The amount is minimal, unless you are talking about 20 avatars running around with 200 plus resizer scripts in their prim hair. The difference between one and three scripts would be unnoticeable.

The quality of the scripting is more important. One badly written script with repeated sensor events, open listens, unnecessary looping through conditions, and so on could in the end cause much more lag than ten well written scripts running in parallel.

I am glad you brought up the point that Alika is in direct competition with H&S. She does have the right to do as she wishes on her own sim and I will not argue that. It leaves a foul odour in the air that this has become a widely spread discussion against a competitor.

A monopoly is a bad thing, and I hope it opens the door to other meter makers. There are some very good new ones under development out there.

Not long ago I rented a merchant stall in a place and set out my hippo vendors. I was asked to pick them up and replace them with the alika vendor. The rationale given was that the alika vendor has only one script instead of the several in the hippo. Further investigation showed that like the arrows, not all the scripts in the hippo vendors were on at the same time. There has been no proof that the alika vendors are any less laggy than the hippo vendors. I asked for a refund and left that market. I will not be told how to do business by a market manager and will not be told what vendor system to use.

It is disturbing to see that same argument made about alika weapons. I encourage people to consider other meters and to be open to at least examining some of the newer meters coming out.

I once had a woman tell me that if she had to take off a meter and put on a different one to come to my sim, she would not do so. If she is unwilling to make that small an effort, she is more than welcome to stay away. If you offer worthy role play, they will come, no matter what meter you use.

*Gets off my soap flake box.*

[Adoveea Rau]

*wink*
goes back to working on tarns.

[LadyFlame Aulder]

I once had a woman tell me that if she had to take off a meter and put on a different one to come to my sim, she would not do so. If she is unwilling to make that small an effort, she is more than welcome to stay away. If you offer worthy role play, they will come, no matter what meter you use.

*rolls her eyes*

I would hand her a ready-made list of Sims that play to accommodate whiny crybabies instead of the good of the whole of the Sim.