OpenSimulator 0.8 brings one much requested feature, profiles, and a fantastic new feature, variable-sized regions (varregions for short), something we got from an offshoot of OpenSim with collaboration from viewer developers. Profiles and varregions both work out of the box for new installations of D2, so if you’re doing it from scratch, you don’t need to read this. But if you are upgrading your D2, there is some manual upgrading to do. Please read on!
The latest release of D2 (diva-r22043) includes a few new addons that are missing from the core of OpenSim, namely: Groups, Offline IM and a Terms of Service feature. I’ve waited this long to implement these, but it has finally come to a point that I can’t live without them. Groups are pretty important for access control and permissions, and it has been a battle to work without them; offline IM is convenient; and showing a Terms of Service agreement has become important to me, especially for foreign visitors.
D2 is meant to be a personal virtual world server, so some of these addons have limitations that reflect the spirit of a personal virtual world. For example, in D2 you can create at most 2 groups. I have an unlimited version of Groups, too, but that is meant for larger worlds.
Anyway, you can find all the information about these addons here. The Wifi web app has been extended with some minimal support for managing groups.
These addons are works in progress, and I will keep improving them. This is their first release to the public, so expect some hickups. Please report those issues here, but make sure to read the documentation first.
Have fun!
NOTE: This affects only Linux installations. D2 on Windows machines is fine.
If you are updating your D2 in Linux from r20232-b to the latest, you will very likely encounter the following problem:
$ mono Update.exe
Using download link http://metaverseink.com/download/diva-r22043.zip
Your current release is diva-r20232-b. Available release is diva-r22043
New release available. Updating…
Downloading new release from http://metaverseink.com/download/diva-r22043.zip to /tmp/diva-r22043.zip. This may take a few minutes.
……………………………………………………………:-)
Extracting new release to /home/opensim
* Unable to unzip. Please try updating later. (Reason: Path is empty)
*********************************************************************
Your installation has been updated. The new release is in
>> /home/opensim/diva-r22043 <<
Your regions have been migrated.
Please read the RELEASENOTES to know what changed.
If you made changes to OpenSim.ini, please copy that file over
or change the new one.
*********************************************************************
<Press return to exit>
In other words, the Update tool fails to unzip the new package.
This is due to a bug in a library included in OpenSim 0.7.4, on which diva-r20232-b is based. The offending library is called Ionic.Zip.dll. Here is what you need to do in order to get past this issue.
1 – Download this version of that library and place it in your current d2 bin folder, diva-r20232-b/bin. You can overwrite the one that’s there, or move it somewhere before placing the new version there. Note that some download tools (e.g. wget) don’t overwrite files and instead give them new names. Make sure the new version has the right name.
2 – Run the Update tool again.
$ mono Update.exe
Voila! Problem solved.
The latest D2 release has the correct version of Ionic.Zip.dll, so hopefully this won’t happen next time you need to update.
Last week I packaged a release of the Diva Distribution (D2) for OpenSimulator 0.7.4. I’m glad to see that D2 continues to be very popular. Not just there’s already a large number of downloads, but other distributions such as sim-on-a stick also continue build on it. D2 is very easy to install because of the Configuration tool that comes with it. It’s also very easy to keep up-to-date because of the Update tool that is included.
Nevertheless, medium-to-advanced users of D2 often want to change a thing or two from what comes in the package. One thing that I often hear is people not wanting to use mega-regions and, instead, wanting to use plain regions. Another thing I often hear is wanting to add more regions. These are all perfectly good things to do with your D2 installation. However, there’s the wrong way and the right way of changing the default configurations. If you change them the wrong way, things may work fine for a while, but they may break in the next update. This post explains the right way of changing the D2 configurations.
Hi everyone! I finally had the time to put together a new diva distro release corresponding to OpenSim 0.7.2 — plus a few minor bug fixes over that. If you already have a d2 world, you know the drill: run Update.exe. Otherwise, grab the zip, unzip it and take it from the README file. If you’re upgrading, I highly recommend running the Configure tool on the new installation, and you’ll see why.
There are many improvements in OpenSim, most notably the new LSL NPC stuff — this allows you to create and manipulate Non-Player Characters (bots) directly from scripts. Really cool!
Hypergrid-wise, the most noteworthy development is the support for Friends across the Hypergrid. As explained in a previous post, I have created a world-to-world social network platform in OpenSim! Diaspora, anyone? Well, I get to actually do it and deploy it in your worlds 😉
Have fun!
P.S. I also made a new release for Wifi that works with Robust 0.7.2. Enjoy!
It has been a while since I made a D2 + Wifi releases. I had been waiting for OpenSim 0.7.1; the changes between 0.7.0.2 and 0.7.1 were such that I didn’t want to risk making a release in between. OpenSim 0.7.1 finally happened earlier this week, so here is the much awaited D2! Technically, it corresponds to OpenSim r15402, which is a couple of commits after the official release — I found a couple of bugs in the official release related to the Library, so I fixed them.