Scripting Recipes for Second Life [Paperback]

Jeff Heaton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 160439000X | ISBN-13: 978-1604390001 | Publication Date: July 8, 2007

Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world where residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize and participate in individual and group activities. Another major activity is the ability to create and trade/sell items and services to other residents. However, to create advanced items you must program in the Linden Scripting Language. This book presents many common objects in Second Life, with complete Linden Scripting Language examples. For each example, you are provided with copy/modifyable objects for all examples in the Second Life world. These examples are presented as a series of recipes, which are useful by themselves, or as a starting point for more complex objects. The recipes span a wide array of uses. Useful recipes for buildings provide elevators, teleport pads, and locking doors. Vehicles are covered with example cars, boats and helicopters. The video game side of Second Life is demonstrated with an assortment of gun and bullet recipes. Recipes for wearable items such as glittering jewelry, jet packs, parachutes, and anti-push orbs are also presented. Recipes for slide shows, cannons, weather stations, and other miscellaneous items are also covered. Commerce is a huge part of Second Life. Two chapters are dedicated to commerce objects, such as tip jars, rental scripts and vendor kiosks.

Product Details

• Paperback: 364 pages
• Publisher: Heaton Research, Inc. (July 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 160439000X
• ISBN-13: 978-1604390001
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #407,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeff Heaton is an author, consultant, artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and former college instructor. Heaton has penned more than a dozen books on topics including AI, virtual worlds, spiders and bots. Heaton leads the Encog project, an open source initiative to provide an advanced neural network and bot framework for Java and C#. A Sun Certified Java Programmer and a Senior Member of the IEEE, he holds a Masters Degree in Information Management from Washington University in St. Louis. Heaton lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Save your money, September 4, 2007

By 

Steve J. Szatkowski "Corky" (San Bernardino, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scripting Recipes for Second Life (Paperback)

This book provides a very basic introduction to LSL scripting. Everyone of the scripts in the book can be obtained as freebies within SL and much more can be learned about LSL in the SL Wiki and various other online tutorials and references. Speaking of references, this book had none. One of the few reasons I keep programming books around is that its nice to be able to flip open a book and get a quick answer to a programming question. Well, forget it. This book has no reference section and a marginally useful index.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful in getting started in LSL scripting, September 5, 2007

By 

D. Apperson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scripting Recipes for Second Life (Paperback)

I liked this book a lot. This book is useful for both a beginner who wants to get started in the basics of LSL and also very handy for someone with scripting experience who wants a nice inventory of ready to use scripts that can be easily dropped onto an object.
For the beginner, the book starts out with an overview of the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) and descriptions of the most commonly used functions in LSL. The explanations are clear and contain examples for each newly presented concept.
The real value of this book though is in the wide array of useful scripts provided. When I started in SL, I bought various in world items which did things using scripts. I realize now that if I had had this book then, I could have made these objects myself, which at least for me is more fun than just spending Linden dollars for someone else's not modifiable way of doing something.

Here is a list of some of the scripts included in this book.
Buildings: Splashing water, Open door, Owner locked door, Mult-User lockable door, Teleport pad, Elevator
Particle Effects: Basic particle emitter, Chimney, Leaf generator, Jewelry, Explosion
Vehicles: Car, Boat, Helicopter, Super car
Scanners: Avatar radar, Notecard giver, Automatic door, Traffic scanner
Miscellaneous recipes: Avatar cannon, Analog clock, Weather station, Slide show, Notecard controller slide show, Announcer script, Online indicator
Commerce: Camping pad, Simple tip jar, Club tip jar, Vendor script
Rental Property: Rental script
Weapons: Basic gun, Multi-bullet gun, Bullets for the guns
Wearable Objects: Parachute, HUD parachute, Jet pack, Anti push bracelet

The cool thing I found from the book is that all of the example scripts have been implemented on objects and are freely available for copy/modify at the authors island in SL.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in writing scripts in SL (except perhaps a seasoned scripter who might find this book a little too intermediate).

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good.. but.., March 5, 2008

By 

Zap Zhong "Zap" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Scripting Recipes for Second Life (Paperback)

When I first got this book, I was frustrated with it because it jumps deep into LSL and makes an assumption that you have a basic understanding -- it is not an introductory book. And to be fair to the book, it doesn't hold itself out to be an introductory book. If you are looking for a beginner book in LSL, get something else!

BUT, after I spent some time learning LSL through other sources (online Wiki!) I found that the book actually has become really useful to me as a way to understand LSL. In other words, don't make this your first book on LSL, but maybe make it your second.