Scripting Your World: The Official Guide to Second Life® Scripting

CHAPTER 13

280

TRANSACTION

BASICS

REDISTRIBUTING

WEALTH

SELLING IT!

RENTALS AND

SERVICES

GAMBL...

UH... GAMES

OF SKILL

SUMMARY

TRANSACTION BASICS

When you pay an object, you are transferring money from your account into the account of the person or

group that owns the object. The scripts in a paid object are notified of the transfer details and can react to

it, for example by giving an object to a paying avatar. Scripts may also give money to avatars by transferring

money out of your account to theirs: you can program objects to give rewards, to pay salaries, or even to

act as a bank teller by sharing a single account with multiple avatars.

Who gets the money? It's transferred to the object's owner. If the object is group-deeded, the money

temporarily goes into the group's account, to be disbursed when there is enough to distribute to all

members who have the Make/Receive Group Payments option enabled.

Figure 13.1 shows a pop-up menu you might see when you pay an object. This is the default menu,

with four buttons and a box for entering your own amounts. You can change or hide any of these amounts

if, for instance, you want to accept payment of only one specific price.

Figure 13.1: Paying an

object

Second Life allows scripted objects to move money around on your behalf. Because you wouldn't

want objects asserting free rein over your account without your knowledge, you'll be asked to grant

objects special permissions before they request money from your account. Figure 13.2 shows how this

looks: the menu's yellow background is clearly different from the rest of the permissions menus. If you

grant permission, you really want to get it right; remember, you are playing with real money. You'll want to

thoroughly debug your scripts before you grant permission, because one endless loop around a payment or

one misplaced decimal point can clean out your account remarkably quickly.