Announcing microCTRL

I’ve released a new product line I’m calling microCTRL. This product line was birthed by the need to update my automatic lights to something more modern using mesh. This got the wheels turning and I decided to make an entirely new product line that to start with includes lights and a power switch.

If you’re at all familiar with home automation in real life, I’m basically designing microCTRL to be home automation for your virtual life. The initial release of these products is fairly basic, yet quite customizable. I’m hoping to add more products in the future and add more to the control and automation aspects.

You can view and play with these new products at our main store in Lionheart.

If you’re a previous owner of an Automatic Box Light or Automatic Disc Light, use a CasperVend redelivery terminal or the SL Marketplace to redeliver these items to get their microCTRL replacements at no charge.

SL Marketplace listings:
Power Switch
Recessed Light
Shop Light

 

Elevators updated to 2.7.0

Updated script package to 2.7.0:

  • The “experimental” animation based movement system from the previous version is now the only supported movement system. The old physics-based system is now considered legacy.
    • A legacy install disk for 2.6.2 with “real” physics will be included but no longer updated or supported.
  • Fixed an issue where systems that had many doors (10+) would fail to have all their scripts updated/installed by the install disk. If you have a system with many doors, I recommend running the update process to 2.7.0 twice to hit everything.
  • Fixed an edge case where the car doors would close if the elevator was put into maintenance mode while the doors were already open.
  • Added the ability to automatically remove unused floor buttons from the elevator car.
    • After installing the car, bring up the car menu (touch the panel behind the buttons) and choose Unlink from the menu. Extra buttons will be unlinked and then deleted.
  • Fixed an edge case where the car would throw an error about animating linksets with prim equivelancy. This error only seemed to happen when installing scripts and didn’t break anything.

 

Updated install disk to 2.4.1:

  • Cleaned up a bit of code and recompiled it using some new tools. Disk should be functionally the same.

 

Updated all shells to 2.7.0:

  • Updated all proxy scripts to be more reliable with regard to an update disk loading scripts into many objects.
  • Cars and doors have a new mesh shipping crate (looks the same, but only 1 LI).

 

Notes about mesh:
Gen2 was designed to use many different prims for different purposes and has many scripts that need to be inside some of these prims, such as the scripts for the buttons inside the car. Thus, it makes it difficult to convert components of a Gen2 elevator system to mesh and still retain functionality.
I’ve experimented with converting a Rhino elevator car to mesh and reduced the land impact from 28 to 20 with all 16 floor buttons. The problem is that when the car moves, it turns solid (convex hull) and then you can’t enter it or be inside of it. If you want to experiment with making your own mesh car (you can re-use the call panel and buttons and doors from one of my shells), you’ll have to use prims for most of it, and detail it with mesh perhaps. But as of right now it doesn’t seem to be straight forward to convert the old prim cars to mesh and have them work properly.

 

Elevator Update 2.6.2 Available

March 24, 2018

Replaced update system in shipping crates with CasperUpdate due to the closure of HippoTech. This also means that if you’ve purchased your elevator (or many other Union Micro products) in-world before March 24, 2018, you will not be able to automatically check for and receive updates as your current crates are trying to check HippoUpdate for updates which is now offline. You’ll have to contact Stylez Gomez to arrange for a manual update. I’ll post more info on Twitter (@UnionMicro) or UnionMicro.net when I have an update path for manual updates.

No elevator functionality was changed. I don’t foresee any more gen2 updates coming but I want to be ready in-case a change in SL breaks something and I have to push out an update.


February 2, 2014

  • Updated script package to 2.6.2:
    • Added a new disk to the package that contains a set of experimental scripts (2.6.2e).
      • These scripts should be considered EXPERIMENTAL and although they have been tested it’s impossible for us to test under all possible scenarios. It’s suggested that you rez a fresh elevator system and test it yourself before using it on a production system.
      • Our mesh testing was limited but successful. If you’d like to create a mesh elevator you will have to use the panel and buttons from an existing non-mesh default elevator. Gen2 is designed for use with buttons being separate prims (although you can make each button a mesh if you want). Gen3 will be more efficient with the call panel.
      • Converted the movement engine of elevator car to the engine that will be used in our Gen3 elevators.
        • Movement is now animation based and not physics based.
        • Allows for the usage of mesh objects.
        • No gaps required around the elevator car anymore.
        • Smoother and more reliable movement.
      • Removed much code from _car_main used for keeping the physics engine in check.
      • Added notecard options to allow the end-user to control the physics shape of the root and child prims (see below). Most users should not need to use these options.
  • “Vanilla” scripts updated to facilitate going back and forth from experimental to vanilla scripts.
    • Vanilla scripts are considered to be the normal scripts which use the older physics based movement (the engine which all of our elevators used up until this point).
    • Scripts will set all prims in the object to PRIM_PHYSICS_SHAPE_PRIM. If you somehow have a mesh working with 2.6.1 then don’t update to vanilla 2.6.2 (use experimental scripts instead).

Elevator 2.6.0 Update Available

This update is mainly a sound engine update adding new places to trigger sounds and includes some new default sounds. We’ve also added glow to all of the elevator buttons and a real elevator “nudge mode” with an audible alarm. See the full release notes for more detailed information!

To get your updates, simply rez your original crates or use our redelivery terminal at our customer service desk. It’s been a while since I put out an elevator update so let me know if something seems broken!

Enjoy!

 

Updated script package to 2.6.0:

  • Added more sounds and sound options to the system.
    • Car can now play a sound when it arrives at a floor. Configured via the notecard in each call button. Defaults to a voice calling out the floor number.
    • Doors can now play an arrival sound depending on direction of travel. Defaults to a voice saying “Going Up” and “Going Down.”
    • Car can now play a sound when it enters maintenance mode. Defaults to a voice saying “Maintenance mode enabled/disabled.”
    • All sounds can now be disabled by setting their option to “off” in the notecards.
  • Added a new “nudge mode.”
    • Doors slowly close when blocked and an alarm sounds.
    • Number of times the doors have to be blocked before they’re forced closed is now configurable.
    • The warning text saying that an avatar is blocking the doors can now be hidden.
  • Buttons now use the glow feature. Amount of glow can be configured – set glow to 0.0 to disable.
  • Direction arrow on doors is now applied to the back of call buttons in order to preload it.

Updated all shells to 2.6.0:

  • Changed the on-rez text from whisper to owner-say – less spam for people around you.
  • Updated all notecards with the latest options.

Updated elevator unlocker:

  • Fixed the profile picture generator. Now correctly shows your profile picture.
  • Also updated the notecards included with it to more recent ones.

Elevator 2.5.1

All generation 2 elevator parts have been updated to 2.5.1 – this includes shells. This release is mainly a bugfix release but it has a couple of small features that straddle the line between a fix and a feature. The scripts have also been optimized and should perform slightly better than before, although you probably won’t notice a difference! Rez your original shipping crate or use our redelivery station at our customer service desk to get your updates.

Elevators updated

We’ve released an elevator update to all elevator parts. The script package has been updated to 2.4.0 which brings numerous bug fixes to the elevator logic to help it deal with those pesky “button pushers”, a new centralized install feature as well as an auto install, and a verbose setting that will allow you to shut those chatty elevator parts up once and for all!

Simply rez your original shipping crates to check for updates. If you’ve deleted those then you can head to Union Micro and request a new copy from the redelivery station as long as you bought your elevator in-world. For purchases made on XStreet you will have to IM Stylez Gomez for an update if you no longer have your crates.