[Opensim-dev] OpenSim Event Scheduling

[Antonius Frentis]

Hi. I'm new to OpenSim after having spent some time with Second Life, where I've been working on a graphical modeling tool that automatically generates LSL code.

I have a question regarding how OpenSim schedules events to scripts. Although Second Life's LSL provides a state-machine paradigm for scripts, it completely undermines it (IMO), by clearing any events (except for timers) that may have queued up, on every state change. (In RL I have never seen an real-time system do this.)

It's unfortunate, as state machines are a great way to design S/W for real-time systems such as virtual worlds. The tool I've been developing leverages modern state machine design techniques, enabling the developer to model complex behavior more easily. However this clearing of events causes headaches for me when modeling event-intensive scripts.

Given that a virtual world is a real-time environment where events occur 'unpredictably', any event-intensive script designed as a state-machine, (i.e., using multiple states), would be inherently flaky, sometimes losing event messages. Possibly as a result, one sees that most scripts that people design in Second Life use only a single state.

So, I was wondering what OpenSim's approach is? I understand that for your LSL plug-in, compatibility with SL would be a must. Perhaps a scheduler setting that the script could set might work. Support for other languages might have a freer hand.

Interestingly I do believe that Second Life did not originally clear pending events on a state change, but then something broke, and it was easier to fix by clearing the queue and it stuck. I suppose now the inertia of thousands of scripters would preclude SL from ever changing things.  But perhaps OpenSim is a different story?

I realize that this is likely not on the top of people's minds, but thought I'd ask what people think here. (Sorry if this mailing list is not the right one for my post.)

Antonius F.
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