Monday 17 November 2008

Diary: 17th November 2008

Problems with the latest Binary
Several people reported over the weekend that downloading the latest binary from the OSGrid website (OpenSimulator v0.6.0.7324 ) resulted in the OpenSim server closing down before completion with a "Registration Failed" error message. I tried myself and was able to reproduce the error.

The problem was in the opensim.ini file, in the [Network] section. All the URLs for the gridmode services had been changed to point to the OSGrid. The relevant settings were these:

grid_server_url = "http://osgrid.org:8001"
user_server_url = "http://osgrid.org:8002"
asset_server_url = "http://osgrid.org:8003"
inventory_server_url = "http://osgrid.org:8004"

To operate a local grid on your own PC or server these URLs should be changed to:

grid_server_url = "http://127.0.0.1:8001"
user_server_url = "http://127.0.0.1:8002"
asset_server_url = "http://127.0.0.1:8003"
inventory_server_url = http://127.0.0.1:8004"


Maze Terrain
I thought it might be cool to create an underwater maze terrain to link my sims of Anubia and Rhodes (currently, the sim in between is a void sim, just sea, which I called 'Eastern Med'). As Crete is (almost) between Egypt and the Greek island of Rhodes [give me some leeway here :) ], the famous Minotaur's Labyrinth might be an interesting way of getting from one sim to the the other.

The steps I followed were these:

a) I downloaded the free Daedalus 2.2 Maze Generator

b) I let Daedalus create a maze for me, then I saved it as a bitmap file (c:\maze01.bmp). I did not change any of the Daedalus settings, and fortunately this program draws the maze with the black lines representing the path, and the white lines representing the walls, which is perfect for a terrain file.

c) I then loaded the file into MS paint, and changed the size and format to 256x256 pixel 24 bit RGB format (Image, Attributes, and set Width and Height to 256, and select the Colors radio button).

d) I then created a custom colour (Edit, Colors, Define Custom Colors), by typing 20 into each of the RGB boxes, creating a dark shade of grey, which should translate to a terrain height of just under 20m, and thus just below the sea level.

e) I then selected this custom color, then chose the Fill Tool (the one that looks like a paint can pouring), and filled all the white areas with the new color. The result is difficult to make out, as the background is black, and all the maze walls are a dark shade of grey, but I could just about make it out.

f) I then saved the result back as c:\maze02.bmp

g) I then loaded this file using

change-region Eastern Med
terrain load c:\maze02.bmp

The result was great and should prove quite a challenge to my visitors.

Note: SL does not accept bitmap (*.bmp) files for terrain loading. However, you can convert bitmaps quite easily to the SL RAW format by using the free Bailiwick program, http://www.spinmass.com/bailiwick/

Rock