Meet My Psychotic Little Friend

 

I am sure we ALL have those stories in Second Life; The first time we accidentally wore a whole house on our heads because we didn’t understand how to rez things in-world, or the time we broke our hair or clothes textures by fiddling around with them so that you ended up looking like you came out of a Buggles video, or that time you accidentally ran over a Linden with a flying genital…

Well, I have my own little horror story, though this one harkens back to the days when I was trying to learn how to script the hard way- by tinkling around with the code. The story goes something like this…

During the time I was trying to learn coding I decided I would make a pet.  Just a simple little thing that would follow me around.

So I created this little monitor with a goofy smile and a floating text, "Will you be my friend?"  So yes, he looked something like this:

I decided that I wanted the damn thing to follow anyone that got close, a little bit like a lost puppy would follow you if it had lost sight of its owner and was lost and alone.

It was the worst. decision. ever.

I screwed up the speed , and the thing was set to physical, so of course it could collide with you. Let me remind you, this was back in the day before Linden Labs added some safeguards against this sort of thing.

The moment I released the bugger, my screen froze and then I suddenly found myself halfway accross the next sim, not knowing what had happened.

I could see this little  blue blip on the map (that is the way Second Life shows objects that belong to you) moving here, then there, then there, then here.

I ran in to find that a wedding had been going on next door, you see...

Just as the beautiful veil-bedecked bride was making her way down the aisle, in comes this computer with a psychotic grin on its face and "DO YOU WANT TO BE MY FRIEND?" plastered over it, zooms in and TWANGS the bride into a fricking tree !

Then it proceeds to bounce off the guests, sends the groom into the stratosphere and crashes him...

I essentially came into a disaster zone where people were being catapulted all over the place.

And all throughout, the eager smile, "DO YOU WANT TO BE MY FRIEND?" *TWANG* *TWANG* *TWANG!*

We had to call a Linden to stop it. The groom didn't come back, either, at least until the time I had left after apologizing to everybody and outrunning the lynch mob.

 

I didn’t try to code again for a whole year.