Extended preprocessor script

The simple preprocessor script works fine, but for concrete project it does too much... and too less. What is too much? Rescalling any hair prim sepratelly will easilly destroy the hair style. Also the flower looks mostly odd if rescaled alone. The processor system must just rescale the whole hairinclusive the flower at once.

What is too less? Well, we made use of the letter 'S' in TASC (the preprocessor sends the scale commands) but there are also 'A' and 'C' for alpha and color, we could use, namelly hiding the flower and changing its color would be a nice improvement. In this post we imporve the preprocessor script's abilities but in a way it remains easy adaptable to other concrete projects.

Generic preprocessor in use

Now the second step, equiping of the real attachments with TASC processor and preporocessor generically. We want to use the script system instead of common resizers. There are two sorts of attachments where that resizers are known to produce lag, the boots and hair styles. Reason: Those attachments are prim-intensive and as the resizer script must reside in each prim, the solutions are also script-intensive. To avoid that problem the resizer script must offer their removal possibility, and some versions actually do.

But back to topic. We want test the TASC processor system in practice. To do that we link two attachments to a single atached object and teach the processor system to handle individually the prims that belong prevously to each attachment.

Simple MACS preprocessor script

I stated in the last post, the processor script of the SDK is able to replace the commonly used resizer scripts and even allow much more usefull stuff with attachments for instance. Now its time to proove it was a true statement and no hot air. This mission will go in three steps:

TASC SDK released stand-alone

Ok, i planded equiping street lamps with MACS but life goes strange ways. No street lamps this time but something not less interesting. I released the TASC SDK as stand-alone product. What that means? The SDK was meant to use MACS as lower layer and not to run without it. This has changed now. The SDK needs verry less from MACS and has too much own power, so it seems to be a wise step.

Updaters temporary moved

I am in vendor changing process right now. To be exact it started at christmas last year, as i needed a vendor with a gift purchasing and networking ability. I took than a commonly used system. But it is known to be laggy, so i choosed another one last week, also a vending system in commonly use. For politeness I'll not say which systems that are: It is stil temporary, the final system will come somewhen next month.

Well, what about the updaters now

MACS, Part 5.3 - Extended control HUD

Last time we build a simple hud for our shoes. This time we will extend it by some more usefull features. The extension will take again several steps.

Step 1: Planing the hud extensions

• We add a collapsing feature by using another hud base. It has also an advantage to remember it's position for every onscreen attachment point
• By now we have three color libraries of 5 colors each, each changes color of just one element, the diamond, upper and lower base sides. Instead, we will use a color library of 20 colors, a HLS and a gray scale color pikers
• We will use a command module to decide if the color libraries and pikers change the colors of diamonds or base sides, so we do not need that color modules three time
• We add two buttons that remove or reinstall the processor scripts. The shoes have not many prims, but even removing of 30 scripts saves sim resources and we also will learn on this example how to do in other, more prim-intensive projects

MACS, Part 5.2 - Simple control HUD

Yesterday, in prevous post we equiped a pair of shoes with the connector script (core of the MACS) and processor scripts. By now nothing has changed, we can not even click the shoes to shrink or enlarge them or change the style. This is all correct, we need a remote control device to do that. We will now make a hud to perform all planed tasks.

Our challenge is: We will make that hud from control modules out of the SDK package, we will have to arrange the modules to configure them and perhaps do some reshaping, but we will not write any line of LSL code. We even do not know what LSL is.