Customer Reviews

Scripting Your World: The Official Guide to Second Life Scripting

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Aesthetically, I personally found this book is very well laid out, colourful and easy on the eyes. It contains many screenshots and even explanatory diagrams. The structure allows the advanced LSL scripter to scan read to use the book as a decent reference and is complete with keyword indexes in the appendices. All levels of LSL scripters will enjoy the side notes on many pages that explain the aspects being discussed in more detail and gives build notes and useful tips.

The content of the book itself starts with a decent introduction to the LSL scripting language. It gives seasoned programmers the information they need to get started and yet at the same time provides detailed explanations of the syntax for beginners to begin to understand.

The book goes on to cover many various examples with detailed explanations, achieving what I feel is a nice balance with the amount of example code to theory. To take one chapter as an example, it explains the settings of vehicle parameters, handling input controls from the user and setting the position and rotation of the viewer's camera plus example code to get started with. It is enough to get going on scripting a vehicle in LSL. Advancements in this area would come from experimentation by the LSL scripter herself and by reading the book's tabulated explanations of all the vehicle parameters and functions. The side notes in this chapter include a useful time-saving warning when combining two of the mechanisms for moving objects and also a note on other scripts to look out for in world and even a link to a wiki that hosts complete sailboat scripts.

What I particularly enjoyed about the book was discovering how others have used LSL scripting. I'd fully expect this book to inspire the LSL scripter into creating something that they may not have tried without having had the book to explain the workflow to them.

Overall, a very respectable and professional book. I'm very pleased with the copy I have.

This book is an excellent guide to scripting. I was able to figure out how to script shapes very effectively. It is a well designed and laid out book. Another feature is the enthusiasm of the authors. They are responsive to emails and post other material on their web site.

BUY this BOOK!

This book helped me a lot in my struggle with Lindens Script Language. The first Chapter is a good review of the language. The next chapters demonstrate how and where to use scripts. Explanations of the examples include object-building instructions. I have used many of the example scripts, which are available in Second Life. For a "hacker" like me who lacks the patience to really study the language rules - this is a perfect resource!

This is, by far, the best book yet on writing LSL scripts for Second Life! It is easily the cleanest, most straightforward and most comprehensible presentation of the Linden Scripting Language you will find anywhere. Chapter 1 is a fantastic summary reference as well. If you are interested in scripting in Second Life, you must get this book! If you are not, you should be! A wonderful world awaits you!

All the best,

William F Zachmann, President and CEO, Canopus Research Inc.; Senior Analyst, Enterprise Social Networking, Wainhouse Research; a.k.a. Arifi Saeed, Research Director, SL, Canopus Research Inc.

Glad to get the scripting SL book...This has helped with basic understanding of the scripts and how they work...Was hoping for a little more on timed, multiple animation info "but"...we can't have it all ;-)

I have been in SL since 2005. I was a scripting and building teacher inside the game. I have worked with the Lindens to announce upcoming projects or changes over the years. One thing that was nice back in 2008 was this book. At the time it served its purpose. I used to advertise this book in my school classes inside the virtual world Sandboxes. But sadly, Second Life ( SL ) has changed since then. In fact, although 2007 and 2008 has seem some amazing things with SL, with lots of books written, it in 2009 started to take a turn for the worse.

Its the reason why only two books last year ( 2009 ) was written for SL and none for this year ( 2010 ). SL is not the same as it once was. And so this book is great to get you into the beginning level of learning how to script in the game, but the functions are slowly being changed or replaced. Linden Labs is changing their Terms of Service in such a way that Making money or building a business inside is not easy to do any longer. Notice, I did not say impossible. But if your going in thinking you can make money, think again. You have to REALLY plan it out. If your going in just to have fun and to play around, then yes, this book is still helpful to you.

Another thing to think about is the fact that SL is slowly loosing its customers. So if your planing on buying this book to make a business to have paying customers, do your research on what your wanting to sell first. Walk around the world and explore and see if there is something you CAN sell in there. Because most everyone in there now makes their own stuff now. So selling to make Linden Currency is not as easy anymore. But again, if your going in there to play and have fun, then I say yes, get this book. I still recommend it to the public for the new ones.

I give this book a ratting of 3, only because its slowly getting old and outdated. But sadly, its the only book of its kind. Other books do not have near what this book has. So it still has some useful info. Although, everything you learn in this book, you can get free from inside the game. All of it. Since everyone has been leaving to other games or grids or heck going back to their REAL LIFE, the original creators have slowly been giving away their scripts free.

So enjoy the game while you can. Because with other projects out like openCobalt, SL might be slowly fading away.

A great book to learn LSL scripting. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is just starting to learn to script in Second Life.

The book is great & helpful. I enjoy it very much.

But on the Kindle version the tables & code listings are all very tiny pictures you have to enlarge one by one (e.g. by tool like microsoft magnifier) to see what's in them.

Do get the free sample and check it out yourself before you decide. You might want to buy a printed one instead.