Owner HUD preview released, Trance fragments and Mesmerizer 1.1

The Owner HUD preview should be up in vendors this evening.  It's free (although in order to purchase it, you have to give the vendor L$1 which it will promptly refund), so anyone with "owner"-level access to a Mesmerizer should consider getting it.  I've come to rely on it, especially for live trancing, which is one reason that I'm releasing it as a preview - it's so useful even in its current limited state that I felt I shouldn't keep it to myself.  I'll happily accept suggestions for ways to improve it, as well as comments on some of the non-standard UI design choices I've made. 


Since the previous post, I've been experimenting more with the concept of "trance fragment scripts", and I'm getting to like them more and more.  One significant problem with pre-recorded scripts though, is the lack of interaction with the sub.  As I said in my post on hypnosis in second life, one of the big issues I have with prerecorded trances is the lack of participation by the sub - they are pretty much expected to just sit back and watch.  This perhaps isn't such a big issue with fragment scripts, since they tend to be short sequences of messages that you can use within a longer trance, but it still bothered me, so I've tried to at least begin to address it in V1.1.

The minimum sort of interaction that I think is useful is just asking the sub a simple yes/no question within the trance, ideally one in which the answer is pretty-much a foregone conclusion.  Something like "Are you feeling calm and relaxed?" or "Can you hear me?".  The expected answer to both of these questions would be "yes", or some agreed-upon signal that indicated agreement.  To allow for the sub to respond to this sort of question, I've added pause and resume commands to V1.1.  These operate on the currently-playing script, and pause/resume playback.  The pause command takes a parameter, which is a number of seconds to pause before the script will automatically resume.  Scripts themselves have been augmented with a variant of the pause command so that the script playback mechanism can handle that itself rather than having to issue and re-parse the Mesmerizer command.

The way this is intended to operate is in conjunction with the new playscripti command, which tells the hypnotist each line that's being displayed to the sub.  When the script asks a question of the sub, then next line would be something like "pause 60" (or "!pause=60" in script language).  The hypnotist would see the question, as well as the sub's answer, and he can either issue a resume command (if the sub gives the expected response), or issue a stopscript command and take over the trance if the sub gives a response that requires a different continuation.  The timeout (60 seconds in the example above) means that, if the sub says nothing, then the trance will eventually continue anyway.  Of course, the hypnotist can resume the trance early if he so chooses, without waiting for the timeout or the sub's response.

I've only just started to experiment with this, but so far I think it works well.  So well, in fact, that I may have to add two more buttons to the Owner HUD button bar to quickly pause or resume a trance.

More on Mesmerizer V1.1, and the CHAOS Owner HUD

Since the previous post, I've been working on enhancements to the Mesmerizer's support of trance scripts.  As my first post on hypnosis in second life implied, I'm not a big fan of scripted trances.  But recently I've been using scripted trance fragments within a larger unscripted trance, and I've found that works well.


The Mesmerizer currently supports two types of trance script:  Notecards and dynamic scripts.  Notecards are the preferred way to store a trance script in a Mesmerizer, but I added dynamic scripts to make it easy for an owner to create scripts within their subs' Mesmerizers, without having to pass a notecard to the sub and have them edit their Mesmerizer to add it.  Dynamic scripts allow a trance script to be created and edited via Mesmerizer commands.  The downside of dynamic scripts is that there is only limited memory space for them, whereas notecard-based scripts can be of unlimited length, at least in V1.1 (better memory utilization for scripts was one of the enhancements mentioned above, along with much faster startup).  But distributing a notecard script to a sub and having them install it isn't a trivial process, and requires that the Mesmerizer is unlocked.  So in V1.1 I'm providing a transferable installer to make it simple.

An installer is a device into which you can load notecards, animations, landmarks or textures, and have them installed into the proper places inside your Mesmerizer.  Since the installer is transferable, you can give it to a sub (assuming the content you loaded was also transferable) and then they will be able to install the content in their mesmerizer.  It makes distributing notecard-based scripts easy:  you write the script in a notecard whose name starts with "Script:", drop the notecard into the installer along with any other content you like, and give it to your sub.  They rez it, touch it to activate the installation, and in a few seconds the content is inside their Mesmerizer and ready to be used.

As I said above, I've been using scripts for "trance fragments" - a short series of messages that can be played back in the middle of a live trance session.  Repetition within a trance, or common phrasing between different trances, can have a powerful effect, and the use of trance fragments is an easy way to achieve that.  When I first created Mesmerizer scripts, I had in mind devices like the MesmerX, where a "script" controls all elements of the trance including the activation of a spiral at the start, and its deactivation at the end (and of course, scripts can do much more than just display spirals and text - they can include any Mesmerizer commands).  A fragment script would in general contain just some text to be inserted into a trance. The existing playscript commands works fine for this except that the hypnotist won't get any feedback as to what the script is saying or doing.  So in V1.1 I've added a playscripti variant which will inform the hypnotist about the start and end of the script, and show them the individual lines of text that are being displayed to the sub.  playscripti can be thought of as "playscript with information", and it works as expected remotely (if you're wearing a Communicator).

The final Mesmerizer topic is an update on outfit support.  The support I have currently in V1.1 works with the layout under #RLV that OpenCollar uses for its outfit support.  However, the "Nut" fork of OpenCollar has changed the layout of outfit folders in its latest version (Peanut 9).  This means that if you're using a Peanut-based collar with outfits, you will have to reorganize your folders to allow them to continue working under Peanut 9.  I will likely enhance the Mesmerizer so that it can handle outfits with either layout, but it probably means I will release V1.1 sooner than I expected (with OpenCollar but not Peanut 9 support), since I'm already hearing from people who are using Peanut (or HeartCore) and don't want to be forced to change their folders.  If any Mesmerizer users reading this also use OpenCollar and have outfit folders set up according to the original layout, and want to help test the Mesmerizer support for such folders, drop me an IM in-world and I'll give you a V1.1 pre-release to try out.

Along with the V1.1 Mesmerizer, I've continued to work on the Mesmerizer Owner HUD.  I've found myself relying more and more on this HUD, especially for live trancing, where it makes it easy to see and control vertical text layout, and to insert blank pauses into the message sequence.  The HUD has three modes of operation - minimized, button-bar, or full.  In its minimized form, the HUD reduces itself to a single small button and hides away in a corner of the screen.  In its full and button-bar modes, the HUD is intended to reside on the right side of the screen, beneath the area where blue popup-menus are drawn, although you can move it elsewhere if you prefer.  The button-bar mode is intended to be sufficient for trance use, and contains buttons to select target subs, to start and end a trance, to hide or show the spiral, and to display and control on-screen messages to the selected subs.  It also contains a button to easily send any Mesmerizer command to the selected subs, as well as supporting the storage and playback of commonly-used command sequences (macros) and teleport destinations.  Finally, just dropping a landmark onto the HUD will teleport the selected subs to the landmark location.  I'm playing with various UI choices to try to maximize usability, which is one reason why I consider the version I'll release soon to be a "preview" version.  The Owner HUD will most likely be free (possibly L$1 on MP so it can be gifted), and should be available shortly.