New SecureVend releases improve reliability

We’ve made some reliability improvements to the SecureVend family of scripts. We closed a small window in (Pay) that could potentially result in a buyer not receiving their purchase, such as when many buyers are trying to all Pay the same prim. On the backend, we’ve also given the scripts a dedicated path to our out of world server, which means traffic to <-> from the database won’t be subject to interruptions from other applications.

These changes are included in the following script versions: Pay v1.10, Deliver v1.3, Redeliver v1.6.

Note that this is a recommended, but not required update. Nothing will break if you don’t upgrade, but for best reliability we do recommend it.

New Pricing Policy

We’ve figured out a pricing policy finally, which we feel will be enough to cover basic expenses (like tier on the SecureVend™ Hosting sims) while still being very reasonable given what we feel is a stellar product. There won’t be any retroactive charges, so those of you who got the system for free will not be charged now or in the future.

See our How to Buy page for more on purchasing SecureVend™ and a link to our new store.

For those of you who noticed the bit about the Web Portal, yes, it’s being worked on currently. Expect an announcement about that soon!

(Pay) v1.9 improves delivery performance

Release early and often, yup, that’s how we roll.

The new (Pay) script adds a change that improves the speed and efficiency of product deliveries. It’s not a required upgrade, but is recommended, especially for large stores. If you’d like the new distro, just IM ReachWorks Engineer.

If you decide to upgrade, now might be the time to learn about the automated updater. You didn’t think we’d make you hand replace all those scripts did you? When you get your new folder from ReachWorks Engineer, rez the enclosed ‘ReachWorks SecureVend - Pay Updater' and touch it for instructions. It’s a painless process, I promise.

Enjoy.

(Pay) v1.8 adds spacing fix

Whitespace in coding terms is extra spacing around strings, such as the names you give your prims. They can cause issues sometimes because computers don’t overlook spacing the way we do.

It seems that, when you drop your boxed items inside a prim (like a SecureVend™ server), the SL system tries to be helpful and removes this whitespace. Try it if you’re curious – try to add some spaces to the beginning or end of the Name field – you’ll see them removed. Anyway… this behavior isn’t the same for REZZED prims – SL will happily let you add spaces wherever you want. This discrepancy meant that your vendor prims wouldn’t match up with their corresponding server items if they had whitespace around their names. In (Pay) v1.8 I’ve fixed this by stripping the trailing and leading whitespace before comparisons are made.

So if you’re having problems matching vendor prims to items in your servers, this is something to check this is a good practice anyway). And if you’d like the new release, just let ReachWorks Engineer know.

Group Discount feature added

In (Pay) v1.7, I’ve added support for group discounting. This allows you to discount the sale price for buyers who have a certain group active.

To enable, just add a keyword to the prim’s Description field such as [G 10] to mean 10% discount for example. Then make sure the prim is set (but not deeded to) the group that you want to offer the discount. Then reset the prim (Edit, then from the Viewer menu, Tools >> Reset Scripts in Selection).

Here’s a screen showing a prim set to give a 15% discount to the Reach Isles group.

On reset, you’ll be prompted to give debit permissions to that prim. This is necessary so that upon group verification, the buyer can be refunded the discount amount.

(Pay) v1.6 released

In (Pay) v1.6, I’ve added support for two new keywords read from the object’s Description field — [NG] and [NR] — The first disables the “Gift” option in the pie menu, while the second inhibits mention of “Redelivery” in messages to buyers. With both keywords present, both Gift and Redelivery are removed. These keywords are case sensitive, but can be in any position within the Description field, mixed in with other text, etc.

This addition is meant to better support use of SecureVend™ for products sold with transfer permissions, the logic being that “Redelivery” isn’t relevant, and the Gift option isn’t necessary. Nonetheless these 2 keywords can be mixed and matched to suit your particular needs.

Remember, anytime you change the Description field, make sure to reset the scripts in the prim (Edit it then from the Viewer menu, Tools >> Reset Scripts in Selection) so it can be re-read.

FAQ and Quickstart Guide available

We’ve finally added some documentation – a SecureVend™ FAQ and a SecureVend™ Quickstart Guide. The FAQ covers some general questions about SecureVend™ and SecureVend™ Hosting while the Quickstart Guide is to help new users with their install. In time a more comphrensive manual will be available, but we hope for now these documents will help.