Black Box - eXclusive Alpha now works

The next level is done.. the .x commands now apply to the model. Turned out to be pretty darned simple to implement.

This "Exclusive Alpha" command is useful in situations in which there's a given set of prims with the same names, and you only want to show one of them. For example, let's take the arousal states of a penis. let's say this fictional penis has 5 arousal states.. you only want to show one at a time.. so you want to show all prims that say "penis.x=1" and hide all the ones that says "penis.x=2", or 3, or 4, or 5.

That's working. And along with it, the function that would move an optional piercing alongside those arousal states, is working too.

The exclusive alpha function is a bit sluggish in my 89 prim workbench rig.. as stated previously, the problem comes in where a button might generate 3 or 4 commands in a single message. Each command causing the linkset to be searched through once, and each tag in each prim's description checked against the command. With 4 commands.. that can be 356 prim checks.. and with an average of 2-3 tags per prim description, that can lead to over 300 prim information queries, and over 1000 data comparisons between the moment the button is pressed, and when the action is completed... not to mention the time it takes to actually perform any linkset changes, nor the time it takes the message to be sent from the HUD and heard by the object.

Thankfully, most products I can envision using this function on, will be relatively low prim. And those that do get their primcounts up there a bit, can be shortcutted somewhat, by converting some of those prims into combined mesh objects. Referring back to the genital example, imagine a series of cock-rings that would fit on the aforementioned penis.. instead of using 25 individual torii (5 per arousal state), those rings might be combined into a single mesh object with 5 'faces' that could be alpha toggled, with 5 'rings' per face.. thus reducing the number of 'prims' that have to be checked, and speeding up the performance of the script.

With today's accomplishment, all existing HUD controls now work as intended, if not quite as fast as hoped.

Remaining controls:

• passthrough buttons


• grouped passthrough buttons that can pull a value from the radio buttons


• resizer buttons and a built in resizer.


• HUD rotation controls.

After that, it's back to the lock, to get it in shape to be used.

Tomorrow though, I'll be moving my computer upstairs into my bedroom, where I'll have privacy surrounding my online activities, for the first time in over 3 years. I'm expecting a long downtime, as I have to disassemble my desk to move it, then reassemble it, move all the bits up there, rewire, and then configure the network stuff.

Combine this with some uncertainty about the networking at home, a possible 'going to see 'the hobbit'' plan.. and whatnot, I probably won't see any significant return to scripting until Sunday or Monday.