I now have a completely independent interface script, core script, and a pair of working effects. I can say most of the huge crazy slice of work is done.

One very good news, since the changes, the new camera prototype operates as much as twice as fast than the old one, due probably to reduction of the script size, and link message showing to be efficient. Also probably because of each effect being isolated in their own script, that helps.
Another good news, silent commands. You won’t hear gesture commands in the live chat anymore, everything operates on chanel 444 now (changeable by the user). So you can pass commands with /444command and those will still be silent too. In fact there will be no display at all neither in the history or in chat, only on the HUD.

That’s about it for the updates now, I will come back for more when there’s more of it done. Next step: isolate all of the existing effects, finish a few addon plugins, refine the MCAPI messaging system and code a few new effects for your enjoyment. I got a pile of nifty suggestions for the future, I guess I will have to write a roadmap soon.

Thanks for your continuous support for this product, needless to say it should fulfill many expectations soon.

Our dear Raul Crimson made this little machinima movie, about his lovely home. He made it using the MachinimaCam he won at the last SL Blogger party contest.

Please note the video is laggy because he apparently shot it at full resolution, something I would NOT recommend doing for that exact reason (read MachinimaCam Instructions for tips and tricks). But nevertheless, the result is quite sweet.

My sweet friend Ana Lutetia just made this most awesome list of the most popular SL shopping spot with direct SLURL links to please your immediate shopping addiction. Of course she was sweet enough to list my puny insignificant little store in there. Me lieks! TY Ana! *muah!*

UPDATE: Oopsie. Ana did a boo boo and erased the page, she had to put it on with another URL. Sowwy, here’s the corrected linky:

Ana Lutetia’s Shopping Directory

Your a MachinimaCam owner? Made a movie already? Please submit your movie for the MachinimaCam Showcase!

Send your movie link by sending me a notecard entitled “MachinimaCam Showcase - (your name here)” and containing the link to your submission. When enough are received I may just make a little contest and take votes for a winner. No idea yet on the prize.

Since I sold a lot of MachinimaCam HUDs it was just a question of time before someone used it to make actual machinima.

So taadaaaa! I present to you the first (and hopefully not the last) MachinimaCam Showcase!

Starring this month, my witty friend Ina Centaur, machinimaker extraordinaire, talking about her shopping addiction. Hope you will enjoy!

Just a quick update on the MachinimaCam development. Well it’s going on roundly, I believe I am rather close to completion of the MCAPI framework. Of course there’s much try and testing to do but I’m slowly but surely closing in to something workable. I achieved complete interface separation.

Now all voice/gesture commands and menus are independent. I’m rather proud of my menu system which will allow very easy addons for plugins. The menus are now uniformized and consistent. I’m working hard on the API structure itself, I have a few things to figure out yet but it’s all going in the good direction.

After that is done, I will be ready to move all the effect routines in independent scripts and do more testing for usability and consistency. As for the intercom architecture, I will have it worked and extended while I add on the most popular feature requests, namely targeting other avatars and maby some other surprises.

I really hope I will have a somewhat functional demo this weekend. If it’s the case, of course, you will know about it.

Following Melissa Yeuxdoux , Lillie Yifu and Tiessa Mongolfier’s example, I submitted this blog to this education rating evaluator. Well I’m glad that using cryptic allegories doesn’t seem to scare that rating engine. As for the actual reader, this still needs to be proven ^^

Today 21st of November is one of my beloved best friends and undoubtly one of my top favourite SL Flicker artists, Stephen Venkman. Steph is also a fellow council board member at Avatrait, and himslef and his adorable wife Kimberly (Mirabeau) Venkman are long time friends.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY VENK! *muah! muah! muah!*

The Venkmans, Stephen and Kimberly

Luc Aubret, the infamous scripter and assault weapons maker, has struck again with which is in my own humble opinion his best idea yet. Rezzed.Net is new social network especially made for Secondlifers. What makes it different from SL Profiles in my own sense, is the actual ability to actually share your blog entries and photos in the main page. It’s also way cleaner than SL Profiles that looks like an evil version of MySpace. Rezzed.Net also have hooks into SL to verify if you are a real or fake users.

Rezzed.Net is very early beta of course, but improvement I could suggest is more space for pictures (only 10 megs allowed) and a URL list manager would be an excellent addition. Also the profile layout looks a bit messy when you insert long ass SLURL strings, maby Luc should replace the URL display as a label. Anyways for the rest, it’s pretty neato.

Rezzed.Net is a public beta. You can register too if you have a SLX account you an buy a 0L invite here, or if your logged in inworld you can get an invite through the Rezzed.Net terminal. You can add me from my Rezzed.Net profile.

(PARENTHESIS) First, let me say: W00T, this is post #100 on codebastard.com (applauds myself). I don’t even understand how I could post that much. Even then 100 posts is weak, Vint Falken must post at least that amount each month. But yay anyways. For me it’s a milestone even if i’m a weak blogger. (END OF PARENTHESIS)

Okay this last weekend I went on a mega all-nighter coding rampage. I am very pleased and proud to state that I achieved what I would call a working proof of concept of a modular plugin architecture for MachinimaCam HUD. Being very limited by that 16Kb bytestack limitation, I had to find a way to separate the effects from the main core.

I really hoped it would be technically possible to make a real uniform architecture that would allow me to pass an upgradable parameter block from and to the effect plugin scripts. However, LSL is so handicapped on that level, it is even weaker than Standard BASIC on a TRS-80 Coco 2.

From what I discovered, there is no way I can declare a new variable name from a string, which totally borked my attempt at building a real transient API. But, using a few smartass tricks, I managed to build a decent intercom architecture. Only downside is that I will need to upgrade each effect script if I ever decide to extend the MCAPI range of variables, which is very likely to happend. But this is still good news none of the less, since now MachinimaCam will be able to hold several dozens of effects, maby even over a hundred (tho this would need to be tested). Much better then the 16 effects I was stucked with due to memory bytestack limitations.

Next step, interface separation. By keeping church and state separate, I should be able to have an interface+plugins open and upgradable architecture while keeping the MCAPI core and communication API closed. This is not really a big task, I have pretty much a good idea on how it will be achieved. Fun thing is that only the interface will need to be updated when you write new plugins. The core should use one of the MCAPI parameter as the effect name, therefore eliminating the need to do any modding to the core itself. Yay!

After that is done, I will finish that “Cam focus on other avatars” extension, because it is a wildly popular demand, and maby half a dozen new effects. And I will close this release. But this big hoola of an upgrade will just open the door to more and more possibilities. I have in head at least 2 major advancements: MachinimaCam Remote control through another authorized MachinimaCam wearer, and another idea I had was Automated avatar trajectory recording and camera playback.

I know you guys want moar, so moar I shall bring!