Due to “sim performance issues”, residents are finding their Scion Chickens (the latest trend in Second Life has been Scion Chicken Farming) returned, effectively murdering the chickens.
Scion Chickens are scripted in various ways, and taking them into inventory immediately “kills” them, rendering them useless to those who purchased, bred, and raised them. (Yes. You can breed them. For more information on Scion Chickens, please see Nika Dreamscape’s blog)
Guy Linden: Hello i had to return your chickens and related objects in Phenlite because they were creating performance issues in the region.
Guy Linden: (Saved Tue Jun 23 18:49:25 2009) Hello *****. i had to return your chickens and related objects in **Region name** because they were creating performance issues in the region. These objects are physical and colliders and if unattended they continually cause collider issue as they bump into walls and cages etc. If you decide to place them out again, please be aware they they may need to be returned again when they cause performance issue in the region. Thanks for oyur help and understanding.
[15:46] Joppa Linden: This does not imply that you should use as many chickens as you can and it is still advisable to use as few as possible, as they do use resources and a large amount of any scripted item will cause region performance degradation.
Prim Chickens, the bane of Lindens on Mainland! And to think the Scion Chicken creator claims that his chickens are “no-lag” scripted. Bullshit.
The performance and lag issues aside, the bit I rather dislike in the design of the chickens is that if you take them into inventory you kill them. What, you can’t move? Take your prize flock to an exhibition? Go on vacation?
I don’t fault the Lindens in this – if the scripts are draggin a sim down, they have to do something.
Sigh.
You can move the chickens if you buy a special Sion (note the spelling, not Scion) chicken moving box.
The issue with the chickens being returned by Lindens is that it (as Raven said) effectively kills them – you can’t just ‘put them out again’ – some poeple have spent MONTHS breeding certain colours etc., and they ain’t going to be very happy about this…
You can take them in your inventory, in a box made for that purpose. I think this is a case of “virtual imitates life”, and you can’t stuff a chicken in your backpack and expect it to live – at least I think that’s the reasoning behind it.
I can see how needing a box is good a) role play and b) business, but if you’re raising your chickens and your landlord decides to abandon the island or just kick you out, the effect is the same. Stuff gets returned.
Good script design should take into consideration “what happens if dodo happens, cause it does.”
it’s not just the scripts that cause the issue, it’s the script coupled with collisions. Each time they hit into something not made phantom, it puts a strain on the sim. People keep them in pens, so they are constantly getting knocked into each other and the pen walls. The more chickens you have, the more strain you have. I’m not very techy so not sure why they can’t be phantom to at least eliminate that part.
I did just inject one of my two chickens with a medical kit and suddenly, the lag part from scripts has become alot better. I also keep them in a ditch with terrain walls versus prim walls with everything else phantom around them. no toys at all because that’s just another physical object to cause collisions.
As an EM, if someone’s chickens are causing region issues and they are not on line with a restart not helping the situation, I’ll be forced to return them as well
The actual quote from Joppa Linden in full is as follows –
[15:42] Joppa Linden: as that is dispersed throughout the conversation, please just use this:
[15:43] Joppa Linden: Updating to the most recent sionChicken update will help reduce permoance issues in regions where these chickens are kept.
[15:43] Joppa Linden: Please make sure to keep chickens updated to help everyone have a more enjoyable Seocnd Life experience.
[15:45] Joppa Linden: Also, with the most recent sionChicken update, it should allow for any amount of chickens under 100 to exist in a region; however, if there are other chicken ownes in the region, you will need to keep this in mind as it is per region, not per owner.
[15:46] Joppa Linden: This does not imply that you should use as many chickens as you can and it is still advisable to use as few as possible, as they do use resources and a large amount of any scripted item will cause region performance degradation.
Up to 100 chickens. The creators claim that they are “Lagless” refers to the collision numbers that WERE in the old chickens, as high as 200-400 per chicken and now are down to a mere 2 -30 per chicken. That is a massive improvement. I don’t think there are too many scripted things in SL that are completely “Lagless”, but in comparision to the older version this is certainly pretty close.
I thought everyone by now knew these chickens were a problem.
When script limits are rolled out they are all probably dead anyway. Unless you own the entire island and then what does it matter if you lag your sim out? (Script limits will let LL pile more sims on a host btw so there)
If the chicken maker wants to stay in biz they best figure out how to make them much more efficient. Those uncanny valley realistic babies are in the same boat i bet. They eat script resources like mad. Someone sent me a couple and as cute as they are i can’t afford to have them eating one tenth of the sim resources. So they are in inventory.
But at least they come back to life if I rerez them. That deal with the chickens dying if you pick them up is rather questionable.
I don’t personally raise chickens but I have a friend who had done it for quite a while. They did everything possible to try and keep collisions down with the chickens by keeping them separate unless breeding and using circular pens with transparent lids to keep them from escaping, however they still caused a great deal of lag on her sim (she has her own complete region and maintains it meticulously). A couple days ago she chose to discontinue raising them. As soon as all the chickens were deleted the sim’s performance increased greatly. Unless the updated chickens were released yesterday, I’m going to assume that she was using only the most recent version. She’s OCD like that. So I think that probably whatever you do, raising chickens is gonna lag you out. Especially if you are in a shared region where you don’t have access to the maintenance tools for the sim.
The v11 chickens were updated to lagless, but they only updated if they were packed into a transport box and then unpacked. if your friend did not do that within the last month, then it’s likely her chickens were not updated, hence the performance issues.
I managed to get up to 80+ chickens on a sim before I noticed lag issues. I’m down to about 60 now, and things run as smooth as they did before I got them. Keeping them in circular pens, making sure they are updated to the lagless version, getting rid of other non-essential scripted items, and only having as many as you need, all go a long way toward solving things. If people are worried too, they should also be proactive and speak to their land owners and estate managers as applicable about the issue.
Beyond that, I know Sion and his support group are well aware of the issue and are looking into a solution to the “death by inventory” problem, which is what really had owners up in arms.
And it’s “Sion”.
Well the way I see it, the issue is not if Sion Chickens are causing lag and/or performance problems in certain regions…the issue is of the returning the chickens to the inventory of the owner. Common courtesy would be for Linden Lab as well as land owners to inform people of the performance problems and that the chickens must go. Some of us have hundreds of dollars invested in these chickens and spend hours with them daily to develop unique colors. Additionally I have seen one chicken sell for over $100 USD and it would be a tradegy for it to be returned without warning. On another note…most of the chicken farmers that I know use script performance meters and if they begin to see a problem they will either cut down on the number of birds or move some of them to another place…most farmers are very understanding and will do anything to help with performance issues. Also, my SL daughter and I got into farming a few weeks ago and after the recent update we have noticed that there is very little lag and the performance has become alot better. So what needs to happen is a little communication and less drama…for those of you who detest these chickens and will return them given the chance, I have this to say…take your favorite scripted item that you have paid $20,000 Lindens for and allow a griefer to come and destroy it to where it is no longer usable…how would you feel? Communication will go a long way to make Second Life a place that is enjoyable.
Phenlite! Oh that sim name brings back some good memories lol…
1) This is a TOS violation that could lead to you, and the person who’s chickens were returned, being banned from SL. Copying and pasting private IMs without both parties consent is not permitted and this is a Linden’s private IM to the person who’s chickens were returned. You may want to consider removing it before LL sees this.
2) The Linden who returned the chickens to the resident’s inventory is a customer support specialist who is not familiar with the chickens or how they have been designed to be as true to real life as possible. He didn’t know they would die and his actions were not meant in malice.
3) After receiving a complaint from residents, LL reps are required to investigate. This is normal for any customer service people in any company. This Linden was doing as he is instructed in his job as anyone else would. Many Lindens own chickens themselves and every complaint is handled according to each individual complaint. There is no set policy on sionChickens by Linden Labs.
4) Sion Zaius (spelled S i o n) who created these amazing creatures has never claimed they or the accessories for them to be free of lag. Every single scripts causes lag to some degree and these chickens are scripted to be as true to real life as possible. The latest update for them is called “Rev2 Version Sub 11 Lagless”. Meaning less lag because it reduces collisions by 90% over the previous release. 90% less collisions means less lag placed on the physics resources of sims.
5) One comment here, someone posted they didn’t like the idea they died. That is where Sion has pushed past crossed the limits of SL and achieved something that, to my knowledge, no-one has been able to yet. These chickens can and do die, they reproduce, they have personalities, the list of features extends way beyond what any other creation in SL every has. Every day Sion continues to evolve and enhance these truly wonderful creatures to make them more like their real life counterparts.
6) I have raised, literally, over 1000 of these amazing creatures and have spent every day of the past 5 months helping people to understand them. With new people discovering them every day, that is a never ending process for me. I have been employed by Sion as customer service for the past 2 weeks and continue to spend every day helping people. I am not foolish enough to believe that everyone in world is aware of their design or capabilities much like i don’t expect every Linden to be aware of how they are designed either.
7) Anoother comments says that by now everyone should know these chickens are a problem. I am sorry to inform you that the chickens are not the problem here. sionChickens were designed to be free range pets. Due to griefers with very unhappy lives who only wish to try to harm others, many chickens are kept in pens and coops to protect them. This increases collisions. This has been addressed by Sion and will continue to be addressed by him as time goes by and other options become possible in SL.
Another major problem is those who believe it’s fun to have 200 or more on a single sim while their neighbour on the next parcel has their high lag flashing textures running in their night club. This is enough to bog down any sim and make it impossible for the chickens to even walk to the food bowl to eat. This is not a problem with the chickens, this is a problem with their owner. Some sims I have been to have over 12,000 scripts running on them. It doesn’t matter what those scripts are, the number of scripts alone will stop the sim from being able to function.
So if you should happen to want to know more about Sion’s products, problems with the chickens, if you have questions, concerns, comments, etc … you are most welcome to drop me a note card and I will respond as soon as possible. I hope this helps to clear up some of the misconceptions of what lead to this page being created.
Have a wonderful day and be safe
Shammy
Regarding the TOS Violation. You are correct. It is against the TOS to Copy/paste chat log in Second Life, or Second Life’s official forums. However, it is not against TOS to do so on a third party site (which, we are)
Leave the chickens alone!
Why does this discussion remind me of the scene in devil’s rejects where flywheel and chicken man go to buy chickens?