Category Archives: diva distro

Wifi and Other Diva Addons

Hello everyone! OpenSim 0.8.1 brings a few minor bug fixes to core OpenSim and a significant change to how the web app Wifi is deployed in grids (no changes for D2 standalones). In general, this release introduces a mechanism for me and others to provide 3rd-party addons via mono addins, a mechanism that has been in OpenSim for a very long time, but that was severely underutilized. Let me explain how to deploy Wifi in your grid from here on, and then I’ll explain how to install additional Diva addons in either grids or standalones.

NOTE: mono addins works in both .NET and mono. If you run Wifi in Windows you do not need to install mono in order to run mono addins. Everything you need is already included in the OpenSim distribution.

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New in 0.8: Profiles and Variable-Sized Regions

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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!

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D2 Addons: Groups, Offline IM, TOS module

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!

 

How to Change the Default Diva Configurations

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.

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New diva distro for OpenSim 0.7.2 featuring W2W Friends

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!

Diva Distro for 0.7: Introducing Wifi

It took a long time, but OpenSim 0.7 is finally here! It’s quite difficult to explain the value of refactorings and of  re-conceptualizations of the software, which is what happened to OpenSimulator between 0.6.x and 0.7. Those things tend to be intangible at first (“WTF? This does the same thing! And it has bugs that it didn’t have before!”, etc.); the ROI only shows up later.

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The OpenSim Library just got more interesting

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The OpenSim Library has been a neglected part of OpenSim since I can remember. Apart from a few animations and example scripts, there hasn’t been anything interesting there. Even though it was possible to add things to it, the process was so cumbersome and error-prone that no one cared to do it. So the Library stagnated. That stagnation has finally come to an end.

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