DEV Community: Galaxy Littlepaws

Building GalaxyViewer - Part 1

Galaxy Littlepaws — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 10:14:31 +0000

About GalaxyViewer

GalaxyViewer is an open source, cross-platform viewer for Second Life and OpenSim Next Generation Core (NGC) grids that I'm currently developing. The goal is to create something I've been wanting to do for a long time: a modern viewer that functions well on both Android and desktop platforms, flexible enough to adapt to different use cases. Whether you want to use it as a text-only chatroom, enjoy immersive 3D experiences, or something in between, GalaxyViewer is designed to accommodate your needs.

Please note that at the time of this writing, it's still in the early stages of development. The code is available on GitHub, but it's not yet ready for public use. It's missing way too many things for me to be comfortable sharing a public beta version. However, I will be sharing updates on the progress of the project as it develops, and will start reaching out to folks once we're ready for testing. I will also be in touch with Linden Lab once it's ready for a public beta to ensure compliance with their guidelines.

Some of the key technologies I'm using to build GalaxyViewer include:

Rider: An IDE for C# development, which I find to be better than Visual Studio for C# development right now.
AvaloniaUI: A cross-platform C# UI toolkit that allows for building modern, responsive user interfaces for desktop and mobile applications, as well as web applications.
LibreMetaverse: A library for interacting with virtual worlds, providing a set of tools and APIs for building Second Life and OpenSim applications. Cinderblocks is the main developer of this library at the moment, and I highly recommend checking it out if you're interested in building a viewer in C#.
.NET 9/.NET 8: The project primarily targets .NET 9 for desktop platforms to take advantage of the latest features and performance improvements. This will be upgraded to 10 once that is released. However, .NET 8 is used for Android and potential browser deployments at the moment due to platform-specific requirements and compatibility considerations.

Why am I building GalaxyViewer?

I've been a long-time user of Second Life, and I've always been interested in creating inside and outside of the platform. Over the years, I've seen many viewers develop, many of which have inspired me to take on the challenge of building my own.

One notable viewer that has influenced this (at least on the android side) is Lumiya, a mobile viewer for Second Life that was ahead of its time. Lumiya demonstrated that it was possible to create a functional, immersive experience on mobile devices, and it inspired me to take the time to study hard and learn how to do the same. It even had VR! Clunky VR because it needed a "Cardboard"-style headset to shove your phone into and a controller to use for movement, but it was still a VR experience. I was amazed to be able to look around, and see my home in virtual reality. I want to bring that sort of flexibility back, but with all of the modern upgrades that have come along since the days of Lumiya, and bring more to desktop in the process.

Why not contribute to existing viewers? While I have always wanted to contribute more than just support, honestly, nearly every single viewer is based on the same codebase which is written in C++. I don't know C++, and I don't want to learn it yet. But, I do work with C#, and want to build something in that language and strengthen my skills with it. I tried seeing if I could contribute to Radegast, but it being built on such an old .NET Framework at that point in time made it difficult for me to do at my skill level, and I didn't know enough about the codebase to upgrade it to .NET 8. The UI framework it uses (WPF) is also locked to Windows-only, which is too restrictive for my tastes. So, I decided to start fresh with a new codebase that I could build from the ground up, taking the time to learn from the very beginning steps and create something that I've always wanted to see. I do hope that once GalaxyViewer is further along and I better understand the ins and outs of how a viewer works, I can contribute to other viewers as well, but for now, I want to focus on building something that I can call my own.

What can you expect from GalaxyViewer?

As I mentioned earlier, GalaxyViewer is still in the early stages of development, so there isn't much to show yet that I haven't already shown off on BlueSky. However, I can share some of the features and goals I have in mind for the project:

Cross-Platform Support: GalaxyViewer will initially be designed to work on Windows, Linux, and Android platforms, allowing users to access virtual worlds from anywhere. Web browser support via WebAssembly is also being explored, though hosting costs may be a limiting factor. Note: Apple devices are blocked on my end because I do not own a Mac or iPhone, nor the money for the fees to get a developer account. If you want to help with that, please reach out to me.
Modern UI: The user interface will be built using AvaloniaUI, providing a modern, responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes and orientations. At the moment we're making use of Ursa Semi components, which are a set of reusable UI components that provide a consistent look and feel across different platforms. This will help ensure that GalaxyViewer has a polished, user-friendly interface.
Flexible Development Roadmap: The initial release will focus on 2D mode with text chat and basic functionality. The 3D world view will be added in a subsequent release, and VR support will be implemented after that. This phased approach allows me to deliver a stable, usable viewer sooner while building toward more advanced features.
Accessibility Focus: My vision is that Second Life should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their device, operating system, or ability to see or hear. GalaxyViewer is being designed with this principle in mind from the ground up.
Optional Features: Whether you want to use GalaxyViewer for text-based chat only, voice communication using WebRTC, or immersive 3D experiences, the viewer will be designed to accommodate your preferred way of engaging with virtual worlds. All advanced features will be optional.
OpenSim Support: While primarily focused on Second Life, GalaxyViewer will also support OpenSim grids running the Next Generation Core (NGC) fork. I will be collaborating with the developers of that fork to ensure compatibility and provide a seamless experience for users on those grids.
Open Source: GalaxyViewer will be an open source project under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), allowing anyone to contribute, suggest features, or help with development. I believe that open source is the best way to build a viewer that meets the needs of the community, and I'm excited to see what others will bring to the project.

Getting Involved and Staying Updated

If you're interested in following the development of GalaxyViewer or getting involved, here are some ways you can do so:

Follow Development: Keep track of progress by following the GitHub repository and our social media accounts like BlueSky.
Contribute: Once more code is available, you can contribute through code, documentation, bug reports, and feature requests. GitHub's Issues and Discussions tabs will be the primary venues for community interaction.
Support: If you'd like to support the project financially, you can do so through GitHub Sponsors, Ko-fi, or Polar. Every contribution helps keep the project moving forward.
Contact: For direct communication, you can check out the Discussions tab on GitHub. You can also see my contact information on the Contact page of my website (please be as direct as possible in your message so I can assist you better), but please be patient as development is the primary focus, on top of needing to manage my time with work and other commitments.

As for release timing, I don't have a specific date yet since the project is still in early development. However, I'll be sharing regular updates on progress and will announce when we're ready for beta testing, along with installation instructions.

GalaxyViewer will always be free to use, and I'm committed to making it accessible to as many people as possible. Whether you're a longtime Second Life resident looking for a fresh experience or someone new to virtual worlds who wants a modern, flexible client, I hope GalaxyViewer will have something to offer you.

Must-Haves for Second Life Scripting

Galaxy Littlepaws — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 19:42:46 +0000

So, you want to get into scripting for Second Life, one of the most-popular virtual worlds? Need to pizzazz that plywood cube, or create something a little more complex such as a HUD for texturing mesh clothing? Let's discuss what has helped me with scripting with Linden Scripting Language (LSL).

IDE:

For this, I greatly prefer the editor and external editor options that exist in the Firestorm or Alchemy viewers. You can customize the UI, insert things, and get error messages and test immediately. You also have the option to use a pre-processor in both viewers.

If you want to use something like Visual Studio Code, I recommend using one of these extensions:
https://github.com/Minuit-Ferina/vscode-lsl
https://github.com/jyaoma/vscode-lsl

Other popular IDEs include Sublime Text and NP++.

Optimizer:

I recommend using PyOptimizer. You can download it and even use it in your browser here: http://lsl.blacktulip-virtual.com/lsl-pyoptimizer/

It is written in Python 2.7, and supports supports code memory optimization for Mono. There are many reasons to use it, check out their website above for the full details.

Alchemy and Firestorm also include optimizing in their pre-processor.

Wikis, Documentation, and Free Scripts:

There are many places to learn about LSL and how it works.

First, you need the official and most up-to-date documentation that's found on the SL wiki here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal

You can also get many free scripts online. I'll link to some of my favorite websites:

LSL Library: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:LSL_Library
SL Forums: https://community.secondlife.com/forums/forum/305-lsl-library/
OutWorldz: https://www.outworldz.com/cgi/freescripts.plx
DigiWorldz: http://lslwiki.digiworldz.com/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=scriptlibrary

You may also be able to find other LSL code or snippets on GitHub or other code-sharing sites.

In-World Groups:

You can also make use of groups in-world. I recommend searching for these inside the viewer, as it is otherwise hard to link to them outside of SL. There are many groups out there, so feel free to search for others as well.

Builder's Brewery
Script Academy

Ideas:

So, let's get down to business. The best way to learn scripting is to script, so let's look over some ideas. And feel free to put your own spin on things!

A painting that looks different depending on which day of the week it is, or perhaps on holidays (texturing, date checking)
An object that alerts you when the simulator hosting the region is rebooted
A HUD that changes the appearance of furniture in a home, and the listener inside the furniture (texturing, contacting other objects)
A pet that you can wear, and interacts with other people on a touch event (anti-spam measures, chat or hover text)

What's Next?

I'll be writing more posts on how to make various things with this language, so stay tuned!

Creating Virtual Pets in Second Life®, and Beyond

Galaxy Littlepaws — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 01:23:17 +0000

Second Life® is a virtual world platform launched back in 2003 by Linden Lab, inspired by the novel Snow Crash. You can be, create, explore, and do pretty much whatever you like within the limits of the platform, which I find to be far more open than almost every current virtual world offering that's available these days. If you have the imagination, you can probably create it in Second Life®.

Some people have taken that creative potential and invented something known as "breedables", virtual pets that you can breed and make more pets from, all within SL.

Here you can watch a short video highlighting one of the popular breedables today:

I of course got caught up in these cute pets, and today I have quite a few piles of various kinds rezzed in world and in my inventory - ranging from Kitty Cats, Stray Cats, Amarettos, and more.

I have always had a creative "but can I do this too?" mindset, and with SL, it was no different. I found myself trying to create clothes like t-shirts in GIMP, sculpties (this was before mesh) with various free software, and a lot of different scripts written in the Second Life® coding language known as Linden Scripting Language (LSL). I'd pore through the wiki, forums, and OutWorldz for scripts to use.

My first attempt was to take the "robot" virtual pet scripts from OutWorldz and expanded on that a bit to try to create something usable. I didn't have the ability to make or upload mesh yet, so I used sculpties. They looked rather ugly, but you've gotta start somewhere.

After this, I eventually moved up to using a static mesh model that I found free to use, cleaned that up to make it work well with the simulator without causing much lag for people who had to render the things, and kept developing from there.

After a few years of this, I eventually realized that using only LSL wasn't going to cut it for much longer. I needed a server, and I needed to make sure everything would connect, it would work cleanly, and wouldn't be open for abuse by bad actors. It needed to store data like who has what pet and how much food or other items they own, data on each pet such as how old they are and various traits, and then data on each trait. From there it can be expanded easily to add fresh traits, and perhaps even let people take the pets outside of the SL platform into other spaces as development goes on.

This is where I'm still working, and I'm even redoing the models so they can make use a newer feature on the SL platform: animesh. This creates a "pseudo-avatar" out of the mesh and you can rig it up with a skeleton and have it use animations as if you were wearing it like an avatar. As you can imagine, that's a huge hit in the virtual pet scene, even though it raises the Land Impact (people can only use so much land impact on a region or parcel due to simulator limits) by at least 15. As long as the mesh itself is well-optimized, this shouldn't be too much of a problem as many existing pets already use more than 15 Land Impact.

This project has since launched me into the coding and development world. I went from learning LSL, to learning HTML, CSS, PHP, and soon C++. I've made a handful of websites for myself, to experiment with, and even for paying clients. I'm hoping to make a lot more projects and learn even more cool things to use. I've even started preliminary planning with someone for a metaverse-capable game.

It is also where I grew my love for art. Creating textures for mesh objects and avatars is an enjoyable experience that I've since expanded on by creating 2D art as well.

My hope is that in the future I'll keep imagining, creating, and dreaming. One step forward is a one step forward, and this journey has already taken me to some pretty amazing places. I'll keep on walking throughout my Second Life, and beyond.

And I'll be posting more updates here as well.

How To Hide Module in Prestashop 1.7 from Visitors/Guests

Galaxy Littlepaws — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 15:32:45 +0000

For the past week or so I've been trying to solve this issue:
How to hide a module from someone not logged-in to a Prestashop 1.7 store. I'm newer to Prestashop so I've not gotten very deep into more advanced customization yet.

My specific use case was trying to hide the "IQITSEARCH" module search bar and the search results to anyone not logged-in. I tried removing access to the module in the admin panel for the Guest and Visitor groups, but no dice.

This is how I finally figured it out:

First you need to look into the relevant theme code .tpl files. The template files are written in Smarty. You can wrap what you want hidden like this:

{if $customer.is_logged}
// Things to only show if logged in (widget, etc)
{/if}

In my use case that was the theme-specific header tpl file.

Be sure to recompile the theme in Admin Panel → Advanced Parameters → Performance → Smarty → Template compilation. This way your changes actually go through and can be seen in your shop.

Please note that when the files are overwritten during an update to your template, you'll need to redo the customization.

If there are any Prestashop experts who have some tips to share, I'm eager to read what you have to say on the subject.