Verbatime Premium – Manual
Contents
[1] Quick Start
[2] Menu Settings
[3] Creating your own Skins
[4] Creating your own Fonts
[5] Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
[6] Credits
[7] Support and Feedback
[1] Quick Start
Setting up Verbatime is fairly easy.
- Rez it and place it where you like. Verbatime will start working automatically.
- To customize it, touch it and play with the menu. The menus are very user-friendly and intuitive.
Optionally, you can rez the shadow prim. To align the shadow prim, you have two options: to manually do it, or to touch it. The latter will make the shadow prim align itself with the closest Verbatime it finds.
[2] Menu Settings
The following settings are accessible through Verbatime’s menu. Please note these are only featured in the Premium Edition of Verbatime.
[2.1] Timezone Offset
This setting defines the UTC-standard offset. UTC stands for Temps Universel Coordonné, in French – Coordinated Universal Time, in English. Yeah, like you needed to know that. Anyway, you can increase it or decrease it to match the time you’d like Verbatime to display.
[2.2] Lights
The following settings control certain aspects of the behavior of the lights. To change their color, see section 3 of this document.
[2.2.1] Fading
The fading effect applies to the lights. Every time the display needs to update the text map with the current time, the lights will fade in and out accordingly. In high-lag sims, you might want to turn this off, as a single fade process can take up to around 20 seconds, according to our tests.
[2.2.2] Glow
Glow can be a beautiful thing. We have provided 5 Glow options for you. As the menu says, beware, some skins don’t work too well with glow. This is because Second Life’s rendering system acts funny when several alpha texture layers and glow get involved. At the time of this writing, dark skins seem to support more glow than light ones.
[2.3] Skins
We have provided a wide range of Skins for you. If you wish to modify them, you can access the notecard named “Verbatime.Skins”, located in Verbatime’s inventory. To learn how to make your own skins, see section 3 of this document.
[2.3.1] Reload
If you’ve modified the Skins notecard, you might want to reload the list by clicking this button.
[2.3.2] Print Line
If you’ve modified a Skin using one of the customization commands (as explained on section 3 of this document), you can make Verbatime generate a line for you to add to the Skins notecard.
[2.4] Background Types
Verbatime comes with 3 Background Types:
[2.4.1] Opaque — Default. The background becomes a solid color.
[2.4.2] Transparent — The background disappears, allowing you to see through your Verbatime’s unused letters.
[2.4.3] Same as FG — Makes the background turn the same color as the foreground. Essentially, this means the unused letters will become invisible.
[2.5] Fonts
We have provided a wide range of Fonts for your taste. Keep in mind most of these are embedded in high-res (1024 x 1024) textures, which means it will take each of them a few seconds to load on your cache. To create your own fonts, see section 4 of this document.
[2.6] Access
The following settings control who gets access to your Verbatime.
[3] Creating your own Skins
Creating your own skins is very easy. In a nutshell, you start with one of the existing skins and modify it with Customization Commands.
[3.1] Customization Commands
Verbatime comes with four commands that will help you create your own awesome-looking skins. To issue these commands, you must type them in your chat box, prefixed with the Customization Channel.
NOTE: The Customization Channel can be obtained from the main menu, or from the Skin menu. For example, if the channel is 9161, then a command would look like this:
/9161 lights 255 255 255 or /9161 lights 0.5 0.5 0.5 or /9161 lights 56, 31, 200 or /9161 lights <129, 100, 21> or /9161 lights <0.1, 1.0, 0.273>
That’s right. It supports various color syntaxes.
Also, Verbatime will automatically recognize whether you’re entering a RGB value or a Second Life color vector. You’re welcome.
TIP! Once you’ve used channel 9161, you can type two slashes instead of having to type the channel every time. The double-slash makes you use the last channel you used. If you type in main chat, though, it will be reset, so you’ll have to type 9161 again.
/9161 lights 100 200 50
and then
// lights 128 128 128
[3.1.1] Foreground Color: fg
This will change Verbatime’s Foreground Color.
Example: /9161 fg <150, 293, 123>
[3.1.2] Background Color: bg
This will change Verbatime’s Background Color. To tell the difference, make sure your Background Type is set to “Opaque”.
Example: /9161 bg <1, 1, 1>
[3.1.3] Light Color: lights
This will change Verbatime’s Light Color.
Example: We already mentioned too many above. =P
[3.1.4] Font texture: font
This will change Verbatime’s text-map texture. You can enter the name of a font located in the Font menu (case-sensitive), or you can use the UUID of another font texture. Verbatime will automatically recognize what you’re entering. Smart little thing, isn’t it?
Example:
/9161 font Digital
or
/9161 font c69872d5-defc-6528-fcf6-55b5025b07bf
[3.2] Adding Skins To The Skin File
- After you’ve finished creating your own skin, click the “Print Line” button from the Skin menu. This will make Verbatime give you a line in chat.
- Open your Chat History (CTRL + H) and copy the line.
- Open Verbatime’s inventory (Right-click -> Edit… -> Content).
- Open the notecard named “Verbatime.Skins“
- Paste the line at the bottom, or wherever, as long as you paste it on an empty line.
[4] Creating your own Fonts
Fonts are white textures, with 100% transparent letters and dots. To create your own font, you’ll need to create and upload your own texture.
We don’t provide full details for this process, to avoid turning this document into a Photoshop tutorial, but here are some details and tips you should know:
- The texture is based on a 15×14 cell grid. Here is a texture you can save to your harddrive to use as a base:
- Verbatime-Foreground_Sample.png (Right-click and Save As…)
- The dimensions of the final texture must be either 512×512 pixels or 1024×1024 pixels. However, we recommend working with the following dimensions: 1500×1400. This will let you have cells of 100×100 pixels, and you’d also be working at the same ratio Verbatime is built in.
- The dots on the corners don’t have to be circles, but may not exceed the area of a 32×32-pixel circle. Otherwise, the light prims will not be able to fill them completely.
[5] Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1: This thing is displaying the wrong time!
A1: No, it isn’t. Verbatime’s display is made of two essential elements: text and dots. The text displays the time rounded down to the nearest five minutes, AND the dots display the remaining time. So, for example, if the actual time is 6:27, Verbatime will display “IT IS TWENTY-FIVE PAST SIX” and there will be 2 dots lit up. The dots are the equivalent of the minute-hand of an analog clock.
Q2: Is Verbatime too heavy on the sim resources?
A2: No. Verbatime’s scripts are idle for 59 seconds of a minute. That’s… 98.33% of the time. This allows Verbatime to have a low script time of around 0.006 milliseconds, which is nothing. If you’d like to optimize this even further, you may turn Light Fading off (see section 2.2).
Q3: I don’t believe it’s idle for 59 seconds of a minute. How come it updates the time right when the minute changes?
A3: Because there’s no reason to update the display at any other point in time.
Q4: Why would I need another clock? I can already see the time on my computer!
A4: We’re not selling you a clock, chief. We’re selling you a concept. To embrace it and to appreciate it, you must have a refined taste of elegancy and class. Furthermore, we believe what makes Verbatime appealing is the novelty of the design, of the concept, of the technology involved. If you don’t think this is for you, then don’t make it yours.
Q5: Why can’t I make the foreground transparent?
A5: Because the lights would go through parts where they’re not supposed to go through.
Q6: I don’t see a difference between the various Glow options. What’s wrong?
A6: Make sure the setting “Basic Shaders” is checked under your Second Life’s Preferences -> Graphics. If this doesn’t work, your video card might not support Glow. Sorry!
Q7: Channel 9161 isn’t working.
A7: We only used this number as an example. Every time you rez a Verbatime, it will generate a new Customization Channel. To find out what channel you must use, simply touch Verbatime and read the main menu, under “Customization Channel”.
Q8: I resized Verbatime by entering numbers in the Edit window. Now it’s broken.
A8: Delete that copy and rez a new one. You must resize the entire object, not prim by prim. This is because of the multi-layer display system that powers the Verbatime concept.
Q9: I’d like to sell this at my store for a commission!
A9: http://ChronoLabs.jadsoft.net/affiliates
Q10: Will there be updates?
A10: Yes. Free and automatically-delivered.
[6] Credits
Almost Everything – Clock Engineer
Advertisement and Skins – Ed Bumstead
[7] Support and Feedback
You may contact Clock Engineer in-world. But we truly prefer and recommend you make use of the support resource we have set up for you at our Support & Feedback page.
Make sure you’ve read this document thoroughly before contacting us. Support inquiries that can be solved with this document will most likely be ignored.
