Breakthrough!

On Day 17 of my adventures with the Artiste HUD (17 has always been a lucky number for me), I had a breakthrough.

I had been fussing and futzing and fighting with the stupid curtain fade.

I wanted the curtain to fade, then my other object, and then my other events to start happening. I couldn’t seem to get the curtain to fade fast enough. I would have just changed the fade script to make it fade faster, but the curtain was no-mod. So, what to do?

I began playing with the timings of event 0, trying to make it last longer, so the curtain would fade out completely before the next event happened.

I made it bigger. I made it smaller.

Nothing worked.

And then, I remembered something from the manuals.

When you use an event 0, it causes an anomaly with the timing. Whatever the time of your event 0 is (say 2 secs) then 2 times your event duration (2 secs) is the amount (which would be 4 secs here) your timings will be off for the rest of your events.

AHA!

So because I was using an event 0, and my next event (#1) was only 2 secs long, I was confusing the poor HUD. Because my event 0 lasted for 2 secs, my timings would be off by 4 secs for the rest of the events. With event 1 only being 2 secs long, no wonder things weren’t happening in the order I wanted them to!

I felt like I was on the verge of finally understanding how all these different pieces fit together. Ever cautious, I sent a message to Yummy to clarify that I understood how events fired. So that would mean with an event #1 of 2 secs, and an event #2 of 3 secs, I press play, 2 secs later event #1 fires, and 3 secs after that (5 secs after pressing play), my event #2 would fire.

She verified that my understanding was correct.

Eureka!

So, with my new-found understanding, I deleted my pesky event #0. I realized that I had been constrained because of the way all other systems work in SL.

Normally, when you design a routine, you base everything off your audio cue – the start of the music. You press play when the music starts, and everything needs to fall into place from there.

However, because I can choose when to start the music by playing it through the Director, I didn’t have that constraint anymore.

With no need for an event #0, I reworked my events timeline. The curtain fade would be the first event, then my second fade, then my other actions would follow.

After making all the changes, I reset my palettes and my HUD.

With baited breath, I pressed play and waited to see what would happen.

IT WORKED!!!!!

Everything happened in the order I wanted it to, and the pesky curtain faded out completely prior to everything else.

I was so elated! I felt as though I had had a major breakthrough, and certain that I now had a firm grasp of how everything worked, I immediately began working on the rest of the routine.

The failure and the frustrations of Day 16 melted away and I was energized and excited to not only finish this routine, but to start working on more!