IMAGE 1.2 is Out — Testers Wanted
HEY GANG! I have been a little silent for a while but for very good reason. **IMAGE Matrix Action Game Engine version 1.2** is live on the OpenSimWorld listing. I need some help before Helga and I issue the next bundle of code, I need people to test this. I am hoping this build will have better results on YEngine, but it was built on the stable 0.9.2.1 YETI Release (Xengine) targeting forward compatibility with clean lsl code & no ternaries.
The 1.04 release shipped two months ago. HG Safari came and stress-tested it with seventeen-plus avatars in the arena, and they did exactly what stress-testers are supposed to do: they showed me where it cracked. Patches forthcoming, I said in the listing description back then. Patches *forthcame*. This is them.
But it's not just a patch dump. **1.2 is the version where IMAGE stops being one game engine and starts being a family.**
## What's New in 1.2
The polish cycle ran seven patches deep. Most are surgical; a few are structural. The ones you'll feel in-world:
**The welcome lecture.** Drop the Core script into a fresh prim without configuring `ArenaNE` and `ArenaSW`, and the engine will speak to you:
> *WELCOME TO IMAGE: Please configure your software before attempting to utilize it. Read all scripts and documentation or enjoy reading more messages like this. READ EACH section carefully, don't just skim over it. YOU MIGHT JUST LEARN SOMETHING!*
The lecture re-fires every time someone tries to start a game without configured bounds. Configure once and it never speaks to you again. **The Arbitrator does not run out of patience.**
**Bounds enforcement is now mandatory.** No fallback radius. The arena is a 3D rectangle defined by NE and SW corners — NE holds the ceiling Z, SW holds the floor Z. Old SL trick. If either corner is `<0,0,0>`, the engine refuses to function. This eliminated the entire "untested default mode" code path in one stroke.
**The scoreboard scales now.** A new player roster replaces the single-target tracking from 1.0x. Kill attribution works correctly past the seventeen-avatar threshold the HG Safari session surfaced. Multiple shooters score correctly; the starter no longer dominates by accident of timing. Fix those SLUGS folks! They need the new Vtracer script!
**Grugs originate at ArenaDROP.** Replacement Grugs after kills emerge at the show-center prim and walk toward prey. Initial game spawns appear in a ring around ArenaDROP matching attract mode geometry. **No more spawn-in-wall, no more spawn-in-air, no more spawn-on-top-of-player.** Grugs come from a known dimensional anchor, not from thin air at random coordinates. The narrative is consistent: there's a portal, the Grugs come through it, the Grugs come *for you*.
**The hot path no longer sleeps.** Three blocking `llSleep` calls inside the combat sensor handler — the bite, the death sequence, and the recoil pause — have been replaced with tick-based cooldowns and a deferred-removal queue. The script doesn't go deaf during combat anymore. Per-Grug bite cooldowns hold the damage rate constant. Sister Mary's ruler stays in the drawer this time.
**ArenaHook reduced from 474 lines to 143.** The hook does one thing: it teleports the visitor to staging and presents the SlugShooter for permissions. No per-avatar tracking, no recall menu, no recycled-touch dead-end. Each touch generates a fresh channel and token; the gun owns the session from there. **The click-twice-to-enter UX bug is gone.**
## What I Cut, and Why
I want to flag the cancellations honestly because I think they're more interesting than the additions. Lets face it, my consultant helped me over-engineer the initial release. This was a systematic and deliberate exercise to see just how far I could push this thing yet keep it purring like a well fed lion.
**Spectator zone — gone.** It was redundant. Once Grugs are hard-leashed to the arena and players outside it are unreachable by definition, an extra "spectator rectangle" was just two more coords doing the same job. Cool idea, functionally STUPID!
**OrbitSR — deprecated.** The personal-soundtrack-following-the-player object was unnecessary in tighter arena deployments. Anyone who already has it deployed can keep using it; the script is still on the listing labeled deprecated. New deployments use IASR ambient and call it a day. Nothing worse than some shady Operator spamming their guests with an audio follower. Great for giant arenas but the die feature in it did not work correctly.
**Boundary theatre — never shipped.** Originally on the polish list as Patch #5. The Dismayland skybox arena uses tapered hollow-cube walls plus a deliberate portal exit, which solves the "visitor wandered out and doesn't know why" problem architecturally. I didn't need to ship a feature to fix a problem the build no longer had.
**One-button entry UX — also never shipped.** The mechanism it would have required (a new private channel from the gun back to the engine for menu-request signaling) added engineering surface for the sake of saving visitors one orange-ball touch. The orange ball is also the visitor's "I'm ready" signal. **Skipping that step would have skipped consent.** Wrong tradeoff.
**Pigeon Pressure — promoted, not retired.** This is the structural change. Pigeon Pressure used to be coupled to IMAGE through a Minstrel framework that no longer exists. **Now it's its own engine.** Lives on the listing as `!.IMAGE-GAME-Pigeon-Pressure-NPC_SHOW_Engine`. It listens to IMAGE's channel 0 game-state announcements, runs its own NPCs and skits, and has zero coupling to the Core. **You can deploy IMAGE without it. You can deploy multiple show engines alongside IMAGE in the future. The framework is now extensible.**
## The Bigger Picture — IMAGE is Becoming a Family
Here's why I'm asking for testers and not just announcing a release.
The 1.0x line was a single game engine with theatrical scaffolding glued on. The 1.2 line is something different. **It's a Core engine with documented protocols, plus a separate NPC_SHOW_Engine that talks to it through publicly-defined channels.** That separation matters.
What it enables: a region with multiple IMAGE Cores running in parallel, each powering its own encounter. A theatre layer (currently Pigeon Pressure, eventually others) that listens to *any* of them. NPCs that gate access between regions until objectives are met. **Monster-encounter middleware for OpenSim RPGs, basically.**
That vision is what 1.2 is the foundation for. Whether we get there depends partly on how 1.2 holds up under operator-grade testing across grids. The reference deployment at **xoaox.de:7000/Dismayland** is one configuration. I want to see what breaks in *yours*.
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## What I Need From Testers
Read the README first. It's at the top of the listing now (`!!!! IMAGE-1.2-README.md TESTERS NEEDED!`). The exclamation marks are alphabetization, but they're also accurate.
If you can:
- Drop IMAGE 1.2 into a parcel where you have build rights and OSSL permissions
- Configure `ArenaNE` and `ArenaSW` in the Core
- Place an `ArenaDROP` phantom prim
- Wire up the ArenaHook with a SlugShooter and the IASR speaker
- Run a few solo combat sessions and watch what happens
- Try to break it deliberately — touch-spam the hook, get bitten in attract mode, kill Grugs faster than the scoreboard expects
- Report what you find back to me on OSW or in-world at `xoaox.de:7000`
…then I'd genuinely appreciate the help. **IMAGE remains a self-support model and a CC BY-NC gift to the community.** It always will be. But pre-public stress is what keeps the gift worth giving.
The listing is here.
The reference deployment is here: `xoaox.de:7000/Dismayland`
-dh
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