Aeryglow Wildlife - Ice Storm II:

Things are slowly returning to normal here. After 8 days we finally got power turned back on... just a couple of hours before a major snowstorm rolled in. I had enough time to get all our batteries plugged in to recharge, take a long (HOT) shower and run to the store to fill up our empty fridge. The pic above is from our back woods before the snow arrived. All of the trees and branches were coated in ice. Once I returned home with groceries, the snow started and didn't stop for two days! Normally I don't grow tired of winter until late February... I normally love winter weather. But I think this year I've had my fill of winter and I'm ready for spring now. Eight days without power and over two feet of snow in two days can do that. Sadly, there are still thousands of people nearby without power in nearby towns, this has been a very bad month weather wise for all of us.

As for Aeryglow, I'm going to start going through my IM's today. Hopefully I'll get through most of them if not all of them today. I apologize again to all of you that have had to wait for a response, this was most definitely not a typical situation for the business.

Aeryglow Wildlife - Fall Chores: Winter is almost here and the cold weather outside has made pre-winter chores an icy excercise. Thankfully I'm wrapping up my RL duties and I am looking forward to spending more time back indoors with a warm laptop and the virtual wildlife park. At Aeryglow Island I've had some fun with the leaf-raking I've been doing by placing some of my leaves in the garden Teleport Arrival point. I photographed these leaves this year for the ground cover I created - copies can be found in the Gothic sales hut on the eastern side of the island.

I'm also continuing with updates and shop improvements. The Garden shop is mostly updated - the Aeryglow vending machines have all been replaced with purchase panels to make shopping easier. I'm working on the seaside shop next. One of the previously available (but unannounced) objects is now purchasable right in the Seaside shop. This sport surfboard is a ridable board that can do jumps and there's even a scripted trick move included! It's mostly another promo item so it's inexpensive and is a lot of fun to use if you have some water on script-enabled land.

More updates are on the way and I've also been spending some time doing some very cool stuff for Cranial Tap Inc. - there's a lot of unique technology there I don't get to talk about, but as a team we get to do some very creative things. Sometimes I wish I could share more of what we do there, but then that's one of the reasons why I keep Aeryglow running... it's a much more public side of the work I do.

Gothic Wildlife - Happy Halloween 2008: Halloween is nearly here and Aeryglow's holiday release is finally complete and set for sale in the Gothic Hut! This years release is a series of baby Dragonlets. These Dragonlets are only 1 prim and are fully animated. They operate in up to 5 modes:

    * The standard Freeze, Float, Loop Flight and Free Flight are available (same as the bats & birds of prey).
    * New for this release is a *Follow Mode* that allows your Dragonlet to follow you around your land!
        - Your Dragonlet will fly just over your shoulder as you move around the sim.
        - When its energy is up you may see occasional dragon breath effects or a Dragonlet call.
        - When its energy is low your Dragonlet will attempt to rest on your shoulder.

There are a number of special behaviors as well.

Each Dragonlet creates it's own unique personality on first rez. Also, each Dragonlet type has its own special dragon breath effects. All standard options apply including sound settings, friend access settings, food (Dragonlets eat small critters - Garden Mice, Garden Rats, Squirrels, with more to come) and the Perch Settings are now found in the Options Menu. Up to 4 Perch locations can be saved, either by moving the Dragonlet into position & selecting "Perch Save" or by manually entering a position. In Loop or Free Flight mode the critter will rest at the closest saved Perch Location when it becomes tired. Just as with my other flying creatures, the more space you have the faster and better your Dragonlet will fly in Free Flight mode.

I've put many many many hours into creating this new release, I hope it lives up to expectations for everyone. Currently there are five versions to choose from - Poison Dragonlet, Lightning Dragonlet, Ice Dragonlet, Fire Dragonlet and Emerald Dragonlet. In time I'll add more versions to the mix. For now, these new creatures can be found in boxes on the wall of the Gothic Wildlife Hut on the Island. There's a couple flying around as well so come visit and adopt a Dragonlet of your own for Halloween!

Jungle Wildlife - A Little More Green: If you've been by the Jungle area at Aeryglow Island you may have noticed a new greenhouse has been put in. The Hodgey's have put in a beautifully built house for their tropical plants. Being the newest area of the park the Jungle section will need more work (and more new critters). For now though, feel free to check out the cool new building and plant life. On the beach nearby you'll also find some seals playing, sleeping and swimming.

In other news, I've been hard at work on a new critter for Halloween. I'm still finalizing the details, but should have some specific details by next weekend. For now you'll have to be satisfied with the pic above. I promise the new animal will be worth the wait! Also, it appears I'll be getting pulled away to do more work for Cranial Tap so I may be harder to get hold of from time to time. I do try to keep up with IM's, but if you have an important question or need help and I don't respond in a timely fashion please drop me a notecard in case my IM's have become capped or in case an IM gets lost on logout, etc. Beyond that, stay tuned for the latest news on the next release. I'll post again when I have more details to share.

Aeryglow Wildlife(tm) - Props Updates: I've been working on updating props the last few days. The props web page has undergone some changes & I'll continue to improve it over the next few days. There are additional pages now to help make navigating the web site a bit easier. So... on with the props info:
   
The Gothic vending hut now has a dedicated props machine. I've improved the grave fogger so that it will produce fog for viewers further away. There is also a modified food item now available there - Dead Kelp. Halloween Crabs will eat Dead Kelp during October, and once it wears out the kelp becomes Ethereal Kelp which Ghost Crabs can then eat (so you don't need to wait for the Seaside Fresh Kelp to die and then expire).
       
Over at the Seaside Hut I've added two new versions of the copyable Tiki Torches. There's a torch with a clean new wooden post and a version with an older wooden post plus the bamboo version that has been available all along. All of these have been updated to the new business name as well. I've already updated the Seaside Props vending machine with the new torches today.

And lastly, over at the Jungle Wildlife Props vending machine I have placed a copy of the jungle bridge into the vendor. I've set the jungle bridge for sale directly as well, but the vendor's version has wooden posts that may be more fitting for most jungle environments rather than the park's green marble ones. I don't usually put park objects up for sale (it's usually more work than it's worth) however this one seemed fitting to place in the Jungle Props vendor where I would like to have more items to choose from. I may add various lengths  to choose from (they're no-mod since they don't scale well... shorter spans really require reworking the bridge). In other Jungle updates I've also improved the Birds of Prey scripting as well with some minor bug fixes for stalling, etc. I've been running the fixed code for some time now and the new birds were added to the vending machines today.

That's the bulk of the updates for now I'll have more to report very soon... oh, and don't forget to check out the new Seals!!!

Seaside Wildlife - Something Fishy(tm) Part I: My SL(tm) friends are starting to wonder if I'm still alive. I am, I've just been working my tail off on a new project. This latest critter is going to be a sea animal and is a partnership with Maggie Morgan at Something Fishy(tm) next door to Aeryglow Wildlife(tm). The new critter is nearly finished and I'm testing it now - hopefully it'll be ready for release this weekend. While the testing continues I'll tell you the story of how this creation came to be, it's been a long time in arriving...

Back when I was new to SL(tm) and was starting out my little shop, Maggie sold me some land next to her shop. We became good friends and soon I needed more prim space for my growing park. She gave me some nearby land in exchange for a couple of jointly-created animals. The first animal I scripted for her was the Blue Whale family. Soon after completing the whales, I went on to do other animals to help pay the bills - since we split the income for the joint creations I needed to do some independent creations to cover tier.

She agreed to let me give her a rain-check on the second animal and not long after the whales were released Maggie decided she wanted to get an Island. I decided to go along for the ride and our two islands were born. Once again I was trying to catch up with tier, meanwhile new technologies brought new design opportunities - sculpted prims, Havoc Updates, and now Mono LSL. As a content creator I've had my hands full and throughout the past year Maggs has been very patient & understanding.

A few months ago Maggie asked me if I'd thought much about the second animal. I asked her what she would like to have at Something Fishy(tm), adding that we should do something cool and unusual. She gave me some ideas and soon I was off doing research & thinking up how much I could do with the current LSL/Prim environment. Early this month I showed Maggie the first rough draft of our new animal - and she was ecstatic. I'm so glad she's going to be pleased with this new creation and I can't wait to share with all of you.  My next post will go into the new critters details, don't worry I promise it won't be much longer so stay tuned for Part II ...

Aeryglow Wildlife(tm) - Mono-Mono-Mono!!!: I've been working my tail off this last week, so let's get to all the good new info...

v1.31 Garden Rats: Before the mono release I was updating the "Second Wildlife" Garden Rats to "Aeryglow Wildlife(tm)" Garden Rats. I've added three new colors - Slate, Beige and Cinnamon. I've also added the ability to use Garden Rats as "Food" for the Birds of Prey (requires the latest revision birds, see below). Just like the squirrels, the rats 'play dead' for a few minutes when caught before returning to scurrying about. I've also added some owner detection so that they'll randomly wander towards you if they notice you're nearby. With Mono available as I finished up the changes I recompiled & tested the Garden Rats using LSL Mono.

v0.37 Birds of Prey: The birds of prey have received the greatest benefits from the conversion to LSL Mono. The added calculation speed & memory have allowed me to add some much needed improvements, including the following...
    - Improved Ground Avoidance: I've added scripting to help better avoid the ground in hilly areas.
    - Improved Ground Collision: When collisions can't be avoided, the scripts handle collisions better.
    - Improved Perching: The perch list clears on rez now, and the birds reach their perches more often on landing.
    - Support of Garden Rats for potential prey (requires Rat version 1.31 or higher) when food seeking is 'On', adds energy to birds.
    - Various other flying/hunting/landing improvements.
These have also been flying well for a few days using LSL Mono, of all the recent animal upgrades these have been among the most satisfying. This revision is in the vending machines now.

v0.36 Rabbits & Bunnies: With the rats running well under LSL Mono, I went back & recompiled the recently updated rabbits. These have been running happily, same as the Garden Rats.

v4.30 Squirrels: These were the latest animals to be recompiled to Mono. With the extra moving scripted prims they were more work to update than the other animals. I just finished them up yesterday and have been testing them since. They have been running well, and should not appear to operate any different from their non-Mono cousins.

All of the LSL Mono animals are now available from the vending machines. Compiling in Mono is a bit of a pain, I'm sure it'll take some getting used to. Generally, the animals don't behave much different from before - as I've mentioned previously, I already script animals to help minimize their impact on their sim whenever possible. The biggest differences are the improvements mentioned above, and in busy sims the lower resource use will definitely help keep lag at bay. As I release new animals or continue updates I'll continue to script using Mono. With these latest releases I'll keep a close eye out for any bugs, Mono is still new and any changes - even when they're made to improve behaviors - can introduce unintended glitches. I've tried to catch all the possible bugs, as always my goal is to provide the best possible scripting that I am able to.

Well, all the new changes should keep everyone happy for a little while until I can get the next new items out. I'll keep working hard, I have some new ideas I want to try, I'll post about them soon (hopefully)!

Aeryglow Wildlife(tm) - Bald Eagles!: I have a new Bird of Prey to announce, thanks to some texture work by Hodgey Hogfather. If you haven't been to Hodgie's Nature Stand, stop by the Aeryglow Wildlife(tm) Garden area to see some of their flowers & pick up a landmark from one of their signs. Hodgie & Hodgey do some great texture work and as an Eagle expert Hodgey wanted to try improving the golden eagle skin to more closely match real-life feather patterns and do a bald eagle. The results look great and I've applied the new skins to the latest version eagles. He did admit that texturing animals can be challenging work, especially with the amount of prim torture I seem to create. Despite the challenge the skin came out wonderfully and the new Bald Eagles are flying around the mountain at the main shop location.

I've also been refining the bird scripts further for improved performance. If your bird is having issues drop me a notecard and I'll be happy to upgrade your bird to the latest version. I'm still awaiting LSL Mono so that I can add better ground avoidance. The birds flying around the mountain seem to be doing much better but do occasionally get trapped by the near vertical rise, so make the best use of your home point and limits to minimize the chances of flying into tall mountains! I'll keep trying to improve this behavior over time.

In other news, I've updated the crickets so that they'll respond to the Animal Finder. Although they don't move around they are very small and hard to see, plus the latest SL viewers seem to cut out smaller objects more easily than in the past. That combination makes the Animal Finder compatability nice to have. The new versions will go into the vending machines in early August, and I've updated the crickets I can find on the island (I have a few more to locate still) but will get the rest of those sitting out this weekend.

The Garden area at the Aeryglow Wildlife(tm) island has been converted over to the new group finally, that just leaves the Gothic area to do, plus I need to close out the older 'Second Wildlife' group. I have a new group of completely updated animals almost ready to announce, I hope to have them ready by early next week - the updates do include some new models as well as scripting improvements. I'm trying to implement all of the improvements you've asked for as I go through and update animals to the new business name. I'll keep everyone posted as they all get completed.

Aeryglow Wildlife(tm) - Crawlie Updates!: Once again I've gotten myself a bit sidetracked. I need to get back to group stuff, but in the meantime check out the latest dropping spider updates at the main shop. As with all my critters I needed to update the names & scripts with the new business name, but the dropping spider has also remained virtually unchanged since I released it back in 2006. Yes, these were among the first of my SL(tm) creations (originally in physical form - now only available that way from the spider and summoner wands.) One spring, when I was slacking on lawn mowing duties a bit, I came across a Yellow Garden Spider in the tall grass and have wanted to do a SL(tm) version inspired by the brightly colored real-life version. The result is shown above on the right - an all new Yellow Garden Spider! I've completely updated the code for smoother, more precise operation and have reduced the prim count to just 4 prims!

I've gone beyond that and created a series of different colored Garden Spiders to choose from, and the multi-pack vending machine has an assorted color 10-pack if you'd like to pick up the whole series and then some. All of these function the same as the original dropping spider. Place them upside-down, adjust the sensor & drop settings and watch them drop down when someone walks nearby.  You can also attach them to yourself (their legs will animate) and carry them around as a familiar. The new brighter textures really stand out when attached.

As a side note... I now remember why I haven't messed with these in so long, the mathematics for getting the animations just right are pretty annoying to work out. I've tried to modify the framework so that I can update these more easily in the future.

As if to test out the new framework I decided to try updating the Gothic Tarantulas as well, and added an all-new spider - a Dropping Black Widow! Again, I reduced the prim count to 4 for the Tarantulas and all of the Gothic spiders get all-new surface and leg textures. I also added a new Brown Tarantula to the available choices. Finally, these versions are closer to what I had originally intended back when I first built them.

I'm not sure what I'll do next, I do still need to update external vending machines and the related web entries here with all the new spiders.

Seaside Wildlife:

   Located at the center of the island is the Seaside Wildlife Reserve. This area specializes in aquatic wildlife and includes some sea life developed in cooperation with Something Fishy.

Garden Wildlife:

   In the Southwest is the garden section with its flowerbeds, meandering pathways and many benches for sitting and taking in all the beauty SL(tm) has to offer.  Here we specialize in garden variety critters that may be found in your own back yard.

Gothic Wildlife:

   The Gothic section features a dead forest and is the place to find the creepy critters you may need for your dungeon, attic, or dark forest environments. These include modified (and twisted) versions of garden variety critters as well as some gothic-themed critters.

As one can imagine, scripting & building new critters, landscaping our new home and keeping up a Website is a daunting task. There's always something new being worked on, and I hope you will check back from time to time to see what's new and exciting at Aeryglow Wildlife(tm)!

   http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aeryglow Wildlife/73/82/26/