When God created the world, he got it nice and spangly and set it up beautifully so it all worked fine! And then natural disasters started to happen, and plate tectonics started to shift. And then the nail in the coffin – the evolution of man.
Similar story with Second Life, really. Linden Labs created the metaverse and set it up so it worked great. And then as the system wore on, they found bugs.. and then people started turning up in droves and then it all went pear shaped.
Now God got some things perfectly balanced. Like The Netherlands – it’s flat and easy to build on, and even though it’s below sea level, it doesn’t flood. But then God also made a couple of screw ups.. like Bangladesh. The maths kinda didn’t work out there, and they get flooded all the time.
Back to Second Life, where the Bangladesh of our times is one of the most annoying bugs known to content creators – alpha sorting.
I’m pretty sure alpha sorting wasn’t a bug when I first joined SL. But then, I may have been distracted by the “missing water” bug. At any rate, alpha conflicts can be a nightmare to deal with, and in more of my recent builds, I’ve found then to be a big problem. As a builder, I work for the now, and for the future. Things like photoshopping perfect shading is pointless as Shadowdraft is in the works, and will do that for us.
And I work on the assumption that one day, alpha sorting will get fixed too. Two alpha transparent texture, when overlapped in a line of view, will conflict with each other badly. And that just looks messy.
So judging that this is a problem that’s been going on for over a year, you’d think the Lindens are working on it? A trip to the trust Second Life JIRA says otherwise. Despite it being one of the most voted on issues in the JIRA, it still remains unassigned.
I live in hope that it gets fixed though, but until it does I intend to avoid any alpha overlaps in my builds. It’s fine that one day it won’t be an issue, but you wouldn’t move to Bangladesh and suffer floods every year in the hope that in a decade, it’ll stop happening.
Lionel Oliva on August 5, 2008
Every day I read about texture problems — theft, alpha problems, Copybot — it makes me feel more and more relieved to be a scripter. By comparison, anyway. Best of luck with LL implementing a fix sometime… despite repeated submitted complaints, I’ve tried for about two years to be able to post my own name in an ad but the LOLI causes problems.
Ryker Beck on August 5, 2008
Could not agree with you more… I’m psyched for Shadowdraft… but I think I’m more anxious to see the alpha bug fixed. It’d be killer to be able to make pleated skirts without trying to dodge the alpha bug.