I Make HUDDLES™

About a week after we went final with version 1.2.1, someone pointed out that there is a problem with the listener that is on channel 7. The listener is part of the flight assist script. I left the listener as is, not wanting to break the script (an open source script that I incorporated with permission from the author).

The problem is that when you say something on channel 7 that the HUD doesn’t understand, it gives you the feedback:

HUDDLES EZ Animator Deluxe v1.2.1: I don’t understand

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Do not wear or attach a hud that is sitting on the ground (rezzed in world). Instead, right click on the object and choose Take, then wear it from your inventory.

Why?

Nock Forager found a way to reproduce the detach bug and posted it at jira.secondlife.com:

1. Open build menu.
2. rez new box object.
3. rename it “Object A”.
4. Attach “Object A” to Left hand.

- Open inventory list and use filter key “object” make easier what will happen. -

5. You see “Object A” under the Objects folder.
6. Copy “Object A” and paste it in same folder.
7. Rename new “Object A” to “Object B”.
8. Drop “Object B” on floor (rez it).
9. Wear “Object B” directly from floor.

Obserbed:
“Object A” dissapear from inventory.

“Object B” appear under the Library folder as “worn on left hand”, but it just a shadow. You can’t rez it. And relogging make it completely disappear.

Should be:
“Object A” should remain under Objects folder as unweared.
“Object B” should located under Objects folder.

Notice that he is attaching these objects directly while they sit on the ground. This may not be the only way to trigger this bug, but it only reinforces what should be a law for HUDDLES users. Once again:

Do not wear or attach a hud that is sitting on the ground (rezzed in world). Instead, right click on the object and choose Take, then wear it from your inventory.

If you have suffered from this bug, please post a comment to confirm whether or not you ever wear your HUD directly from the ground.

I now strongly suggest anyone who is a basic member of Second Life and who has lost inventory to become a premium member so that you can get customer support on the matter. I have been hesitant to recommend this because I was not sure that it would help. However, over the last few days, I’ve heard of several cases of people who have managed to get support and retrieved their lost HUDs (and other items).

In the mean time, I’m going to research other ways we can lobby Linden Lab to both fix the bug that is causing this latest rash of inventory losses and to create a channel where Basic members can get support for inventory issues.

I also found this issue on jira, I think this deserves many, many votes: To gather Inventory loss troubleshooting data, let Basic users submit tickets for loss.

Inventory loss bugs affect many Premium & Basic users. Linden has been interested in getting timely data to help track down the causes. However currently, only Premium users may submit tickets about inventory loss. By not allowing Basic users to submit tickets about this, Linden is losing all the troubleshooting data they could provide. And clearly, it’s needed. Linden should start letting Basic users submit inventory loss tickets. Besides, Basic users contribute to the economy, by buying items, buying/renting land, etc. It doesn’t seem fair that there is *zero* official concern when their investment in the economy (items) is affected (lost).

Please note, this issue is not specifically requesting that Linden HELP Basic users (though actually I think it should when we lose items)…it is requesting that we be ALLOWED to help Linden! By giving them data (ticket info) to help them track down bugs that affect everyone.

It’s not enough. Inventory loss should be something that all users of Second Life should be able to get support for, but it’s a start.

PLEASE NOTE: If this has happened to you, please add your comments to this jira entry about the detach bug explaining all the steps you took before the HUD disappeared. Also, for everyone else, please log in and vote for it.

JUNE 23 UPDATE: In order to get help for this, I now advise that you open a support ticket about this. Linden Customer Service has made significant progress in the last couple of weeks to address this. Open a ticket, explain clearly what happened (that your attachment disappeared from your inventory after detaching, after a crash, or after it was replaced by another attachment). Ask for a Directory Repair or Inventory Restart. It will work. At least I don’t know of a case when this fix has failed to return HUDs lost in this manner.

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The last few weeks, I’ve seen a definite spike in inventory problems. I think it is a new bug, and it’s hitting some people multiple times. There are many variations, but the basic problem is that some HUDs are disappearing from inventory simply when they are detached, often but not always when they are replaced by a different HUD.I was skeptical that Linden Lab support would be helpful, but one of my customers did report that they recovered their lost HUD with all the animations still inside. It took some persistence, but they were able to recover the item when a Linden employee used a particular utility to recover lost/corrupted objects. It doesn’t always work, but it often does.

I sent this Linden an IM to thank them and to ask some follow up questions. I’ve removed their name so that he doesn’t get swamped with direct support requests. As always, you should go through the official channels to get support. However, I thought many of my customers would want to know some of the things that he said:

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So I got a message today from a customer who was trying to convert his AO notecards to the ZHAO II format:

Any ideas how to fix this 9:13] ZHAO-II Notecard Converter: ‘AO - Config 2′ does not appear to be a valid ZHAO animation notecard.

He sent me his notecard and it was definitely a card that the older ZHAO script could read. After some experimenting, I realized that the converter script was having trouble with the first line on the notecard. The script would only convert the notecard if the first line was:

:: [ Walking (also Striding) 1 ] ::

So if you get that error message, try changing the first line of the notecard to that.

Occasionally someone will IM me with a problem that goes something like this: They have been using the EZ Animator Deluxe for a week or two with no problems. They decide to go out and buy a couple dances and drop them into their HUDDLE. They drop their HUDDLE on the ground, put the new dances inside and pick it back up. But when they wear it, they either are missing the new ones, or they are missing the old ones. What happened?

Well, most likely they have put the dances into a fresh copy of the EZAD, not the one they had been using. See every time you rez the original EZAD you received, SL rezzes a new copy on the ground. So if when you go to add new dances, you accidentally rez a fresh copy and not the one you were using, you will think some of your dances have gone missing.

To find your dances, I recommend doing the following:

1. Open your personal inventory and search for “1.1.3″. This will bring up a list of all the EZADs you have in your inventory.
2. Identify the EZADs which have “no copy” next to the object name. If an EZAD is labeled as “no copy”, that means there are some no copy animations inside.
3. Rez each no copy EZAD on the ground and look inside by right clicking on it and choosing “Edit”. Then select More and Content. Look inside and find your animations.
4. Collect all your animations into one EZAD by dragging them into your inventory and then dragging them back into the copy you want to use.
5. You may want to rename the EZAD something different so you can tell it apart from all the other copies that you might have floating around in your inventory. You do this by clicking on the General tab on the edit menu.

The other reason their animations might be missing is that they hit “Copy to Inventory” or “Copy and Wear” after adding animations to their HUD. If that might be the problem, take a look at this other blog post.

Does your HUDDLE look like this sometimes lately?

Unfortunately a few weeks ago, a new bug was introduced into SL by update 1.17 of the SL client. Sometimes after logging in or teleporting to a new sim, floating text fails to appear on HUDs and on other objects. It seems to be intermittent and random. I have two avatars and I’ve only experienced it once with Keiki. However with my alt, I experience it nearly every time I log in.

It’s important to note that this bug is not just affecting HUDDLES and has nothing to do with it’s design. It’s not a bug I can fix. It’s a general SL bug affecting anything with floating text. If you are experiencing this, please log into jira and vote there to have the bug fixed. It’s important to let them know that it’s affecting a large number of users and should be a priority to fix.

If you do experience it, detach and reattach the HUDDLE. This should fix it. I’ve also had reports that doing a manual reset of the HUD might help, but I’m not sure about that.

UPDATE: It appears that they have fixed the bug, but I’m guessing it may be a few weeks before they actually get it into the viewer.

There are few things worse in Second Life than losing inventory items. Nothing can ruin your day like losing a folder full of no copy animations. Things like this used to be rare, however for many months now, it’s been sickeningly common.

When I hear about it, it usually happens like this: Someone buys one of my EZ Animator HUDs and starts to transfer animations from various places like collars and AOs. They move their animations into their inventory and then drag them, often en masse, into their HUD. Most of the time, there is no problem. But occasionally, the no copy animations don’t make it. I’ve heard at least once someone getting the following error message:

Inventory creation on in-world object failed

When an inventory loss happens, you should not panic. Don’t log off in disgust. First, make a note of the time and your location and take a look at this blog post on inventory loss.

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One day your EZ Animator starts to act up. It starts to spam the word “Touched” every time you touch it. It doesn’t matter why you are touching it, it always says “Touched”. Maybe it even says it several times each time you touch your EZAD. What is happening?

While very annoying, it’s actually very simple fix. There are some extra scripts in your EZ Animator which shouldn’t be there. When you are editing an object and looking at it’s contents, you will notice a button which says, “New Script.” If you click that button, a new script appears in the object. By default, new scripts always respond to a touch by saying “Touched.” At some point in the past you must have accidently hit that button once or twice.

Fixing it is pretty easy:

1. Right click on your EZ Animator and choose “Edit”
2. Hit “More” and then “Content” to see the contents.
3. Search through the inventory for scripts named “New Script”
4. Right click directly on these new scripts and delete them one at a time

Your EZ Animator stopped working. The buttons seem frozen or it no longer animates you or your friend. You are getting a strange “run-time error”. Most likely, whatever is wrong can be fixed by resetting the scripts.

If you have an EZ Animator Deluxe and you are wearing it. You might try the /99reset command. However, if you are getting a script error, this will not work. Instead find a sandbox where you can build and do this:
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