Animation Overriders

No need to hang anyone... we all improve in this game.. even our looks... right?

Hmm yes.. all creations can be improve...that is why SL keeps upgrading for good... and is awsome... I love creations and creations to get better and better....

That is why we grow..and we love the game for the more improved creations and more inventions...

I love AO"s... an awsome creation.... I love the bling on my rings, my earrings, I love all the animations and poses, I love all the vendors that deliver our merchandising and have scripts that update, I love particles that anyone carries... with cool colors, ect..... I love the 300 prims skirts on a formal dress....

Hey we all lag!!!! Yesss lets bring in a sim and bring a bomb of 1000+ prims attach on 40 avies... and see what happen.. we can find someone that can test that...and improve it!!!

Maybe there is a way to IMPROVE that! Yess!! We don't need to hang nobody.. we all improve in this game...

Scientific proof:

Step 1: Set up a channel spammer than spits out 100 or so messages.
Step 2: Fire off said spammer, watch the results in an empty area.
Step 3: Setup 20 listeners.
Step 4: Firre off the spammer again.

Results:
SL grinds to a halt while the spammer is spamming, ONLY when the listeners are active.

Just to reiterate, I have nothing but respect for Francis and her scripting skills. She's done wonderful things. KrisBabyCakes, put the pitchforks away!

I think part of the reason there are discussions of this matter is that the Lindens really haven't given us firm answers... Palomma, who was the Linden who was involved in your investigation? Maybe we can get them to chime in by dropping them an IM in world!

In addtition to listening on the 2 channels, let's also not forget that any time there is chat, it doesn't just go through the priorities Hiro mentioned; I'm guessing (let me know if I'm wrong) it performs parsing of the message passed in the listen to see if it begins with "/ao". That's another function and another if conditional. I suspect this is why I was seeing a drop.

Testing in a sim that's already as low as 130-160 with only one agent probably isn't the best place to benchmark, in all honesty. The resources are already spread very thin and scripts are probably already having their server cycle allocations reduced. Again, this is all heresay, as we don't have solid figures from our benevolent overlords.

What would be cool would be to do a version listen free; perhaps make the AO object transparent, and attached to the spin. Then when you click your AV, have a dialog box pop up for all the functions. Just an idea. I also like Hiro's idea of not needing a notecard - simply name the replacement animation in inventory. Of course, this would be problematic if someone made an anim "no modify)" but there's really no reason to do (no modify) with anims.

Good discussion, my friends.

-Flip

I think a sim's FPS of 130-160 is the ideal sim to look for lag in. It couldn't be more perfect. A sim with > 100 fps is in the "doing fine" zone. 130-160 is doing fine, but not with a lot of headroom. This is when performance matters the most - if you turn a healthy sim into an unhealthy sim, you have an issue.

I believe the sim fps drop happened because of the way the command parser was designed, and the way your test was conducted. I do not believe this is a result of prioritzed listen filter match that Hiro mentioned nor the fact that it is listening on two channels. I will take a look at this when I get my Internet back.

Regarding a notecard-free design, it would be less convenient for expressing many of the things the notecard allows you - the ability to switch through multiple animation states, multiple stand positions, and multi-priority animations.

A dialog-based version would be a good addition, I think. I've wanted to do one, but I never can seem to find the time. The script is open-source, so if anyone would like to add that on, that'd be great

The Franimation Overrider relays intercepted chat via link-messages to other scripts, so that the overall number of listens() in an object can be reduced. The Wet Ikon AO uses that relayed chat to control a colour-change script, as well as a script to manually llStart/StopAnimation. So you can use my script to make other scripts more efficient

From now on, let's take performance discussions in-world. The forums tend to get unruly, and I so detest that.

Incidentally, while I'm here, someone mentioned a Linden or two did some performance analysis on this script? If you could have them contact me, that'd be great I'd love to have access to the data their tools can provide.

Here's where we always get into our disagreement zone.

A sim fps of 130-160 is in its DOING FINE zone... if there are 20 avs present.

Not with 1 avatar present.

Any sim with 1 avatar and a sim fps over under 500 is NOT a good sim to perform baseline testing, as its already overtaxed, as proved by Chromal and Cory's testing a while back. Too much background noise already present to do any relevent testing, and too much timeslicing already present. Please refer to the previous Cory town hall regarding Chromal's findings about sims.

Regards,

-Flip