Downloads and Support

Time for a Status Report

A lot has been happening with the development of Prim Composer and I want to take a moment to bring the community up to speed. This week I’ve been surveying the current landscape of open source tools for Second Life.

Open source and SL

libsecondlife

libsl

I looked at libsecondlife, of course, to see how difficult it would be to use it to automate the prim import process. Looks good. I was able to quickly set up a working development environment, although it will take some time to fully understand the library.

OpenSim

OpenSim

I also dropped in on the OpenSim project and was delighted by how much it has matured. To be honest, when I first heard about OpenSim over a year ago, I was skeptical. I’ve seen projects like this come and go with high hopes and little substance. But looking at it today, I’d say that OpenSim is poised to become a vital part of every builder’s repertoire.

OpenSim

Open source grid server

OpenSim is a backend server that utilizes the same protocol as Second Life to communicate with 3d clients such as the Second Life viewer. Because it supports SL’s protocol (via libsecondlife), it can be used with the official viewer from Linden Lab and it implements services that are similar to LL’s commercial grid.

What this means for builders is that it is now possible to run a limited, but functional equivalent of the Second Life main grid on your home computer, completely separate from Second Life and without the cost of tier or the need to connect across the internet. It’s not completely stable yet and many things are missing, but to my delight, it does actually work.

Visit a public grid

OpenlifeGrid

A good way to try OpenSim is to visit one of the public grids that are forming on the internet: OSGrid and OpenlifeGrid are two good examples. You’ll have to create a new account on their websites first, but then it is relatively simple to launch the official SL viewer and connect to these OpenSim grids. The websites for both of these grids include FAQs and forums to help you get started.

Do it yourself

You can also run OpenSim on your own computer by downloading OpenSim directly from opensimulator.org or by getting a somewhat more user-friendly Ready-To-Run version from openlifegrid.com. But I recommend going to one of the public grids first to get an introduction. For example, OSGrid has a good orientation center at Wright Plaza with posters that describe some of the finer points.

Wright Plaza — OSGrid

Prim Composer

So, what does all this have to do with Prim Composer?

Freedom!

OpenSim gives us the freedom to build when and how we like. It provides a cost-free way of seeing how our builds will look in Second Life with no file upload charges. And we can demo large builds to clients without having to own or rent a sim in SL.

Greater dependence on libsecondlife

Support for OpenSim will require a change in the way prims are exported by Prim Composer to Second Life (and now OpenSim). Previously, my focus was on building a LSL-based importer which would be augmented by libsecondlife to allow easy uploading of the images and notecards needed by the LSL script.

With OpenSim in the picture, this is no longer a viable option, since LSL support in OpenSim is very limited. At some point in the future, LSL will work for this, but not right now. Essentially, this moves the focus from LSL to libsecondlife. Now, the entire import process will be driven by libsl.

Delayed release

The primary impact of this is that it will take me a little longer to finish the first version of Prim Composer, but it will also have more functionality than was originally planned for the first release. Basically, it pushes it out by about a month.

Max9 Required

Another big change is that I’ve decided that the first version will require Max9 or above. Max8 and below might be supported in a later version, but no guarantees. Please leave a comment below if this is an issue for you. I need to gauge how large is the demand for older versions.

The reason for making Max9 the minimum supported version is that .NET support was added in that version. The shift to libsecondlife puts a greater emphasis on .NET as well as XML (since libsecondlife supports an export format that is in XML). All of this is easier and cleaner with Max9’s .NET integration.

Update (June 2008): The first version of Prim Composer will not require Max9, but future versions might for all features to work.

Coming in Q2 2008!

Yes, it really is almost here. Just a little bit longer. It will be worth the wait!