This Wednesday, March 16th, 2011, RPS will release version 3.00.14.  This update will solve an offhand weapons issue and will, hopefully (if I can get it completed and tested in time), be connected with an upgraded back-end data structure that I have been building over the past few weeks.

A New Direction
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Over the years, RPS has had several different arrangements with weapon development for the system.  The reasons for these different arrangements have been many and I have always acted on what I felt at the time was the best thing to do in order to a) protect the integrity of the system, b) promote fair-play, and c) provide the best supply of weapons possible to players.

The current direction RPS weapon development has taken is one in which all persons are free to create weapons, but must pass them through RPS to be scripted.  In the 3+ months since this procedure has been implemented, I have received a grand total of less than 5 weapons for scripting.  It is very apparent that this system is not working.  While it may be a system that strongly furthers the goals of RPS (elimination of ‘special’ or ‘custom’ weapons with a common and standardized supply provided to everyone for RP$), it strongly opposes what has been communicated to me as the goals of players (creation of ‘special’ or ‘custom’ weapons that no one else has or the creation of a weapon store with items sold for L$).

Thankfully, with a new advance to Second Life, Linden Lab is providing an opportunity to change how RPS weapons are created and distributed.  With the implementation of ray-casting, weapons will no longer require ‘bullet prims’ and will be much less susceptible to exploitation as a result.  When Linden Lab takes ray-casting live (it is currently on the beta grid), RPS will change it’s weapon development policy.

Within two weeks of the release of ray-casting to the public grid (to ensure that all works as it should and refine/bug test development of RPS scripts), RPS will change to the following weapon development policy:

1 – Development Kits will be made available for sale (for L$) in the RPS Store on RPS Island.  Two types of kits will be available – resellable kits and no-resale kits.  Each will be priced accordingly.

2 – Environment admins will be given web-tools to help them govern weapons and weapon-types … allowing them to search weapons used by certain avatars or sold by certain developers and target these weapons (or avatars or all weapons by a certain avatar) and disable them within their environment.  These tools will return control of weapon quality and equity to the environment admins – where it should be.  That said, RPS will continue to hold control over the individual stats of weapon-types … the only type of governance that would be required is enforcement of ‘visual representation of weapon-type’.

3 – All developers (whether for resale or for personal use) are self-responsible for script updates.  RPS will not accept responsibility for a developer’s lack of updates and will regularly disable old weapon versions no fewer than 7 days after the release of a new version (and no later than 30 days after the release of a new version).  Update notices will be placed at our website – bnjrps.com

4 – Support for weapon developers will be available solely through the RPS Wiki and through an open enrollment RPS Weapon Developer group that will be provided for developers to discuss issues with each other … there will rarely, if ever, be an official RPS representative participating in the group.

5 – Developers will be free to distribute the weapons they make as they wish — whether for RP$, L$, or free of charge.  There will be no controls on the market.

RPS will give updates on the implementaiton of this policy as it goes forward.  The timeline for implementation is 100% dependent on the release of ray-casting from Linden Lab.

Those who have updated to RPS 3.00.13 have likely noticed that they are receiving repeated updates.  Please accept the –newest– update of RPS 3.00.13 next time you receive it and use that version of RPS.  You will then no longer receive update requests.  Thank you.

A small update to RPS will be released this coming Wednesday, January 5th, 2011.  Update notes are already up on the wiki here.

Those of you who pay attention to the posts on the homepage know that I moved cross-state in mid-October.  I did so in order to take a position as a senior web developer with a major Salt Lake City news company (TV, newspaper, and radio).  Since that move, I have not been able to be online regularly, and I thought I would give an update as to why and mention what the future holds.

When I moved to Salt Lake, I figured I’d be able to find an apartment, get moved in, and setup internet within 1-2 weeks.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  I will not be able to move in to my apartment until Saturday, November 20th (which is also when the internet will be hooked up).  Until then, I am shacking up in my brother’s extra room and commuting a total of 3 hours each day to and from work.  The three hour commute combined with a 9 hour work day results in me being out of the house for 12 hours per day on weekdays.  When I do get home, I manage to look through my e-mail and the various feedback responses I get, do a couple of small things, and then sleep.

Come November 20th, I’ll be moving into an apartment that is exactly 6 blocks away from work.  I’ll be able to walk to and from and have another 3 hours of free time every weekday.  In addition, I’ll be able to setup my desktop computer (currently living out of a suitcase and on my laptop) and have a nice workspace from which to do things (at the moment I have about a 50% chance of a one year old deciding to come push the buttons of my laptop while saying ‘OooOooo’ … which, while fun and cute … is not productive).  Anyway — the point is — in exactly 2 weeks I will be “back to normal”, or as back to normal as possible.  It is at this point that everyone can expect to see me dedicate a great deal of time to RPS and pushing it forward.

Thank you for your patience during this time of transition for me.  I continue to do my best to address any serious bugs (which thankfully there have only been minor issues) and to look forward to that day 2 weeks from now when I can re-dedicate myself to building RPS.