Avatar NPCs

Wow another old thread revived. o.o

I can imagine buying a avatar for a NPC. They could possibly be used as vendors. You would have a problem about griefers pushing them around though. I just don't think LL will do this.

I like the idea of NPC Avatars

haven't read all the constraint suggestions but here's my partial list

1. Some way to instantly tell them apart from players (a different colored dot in the minimap is one possbility, as is a differently colored name).

2. Restricted area of movement (owned land for example)

3. No means to cause griefing nor be affected by griefing (so non-physical avatars)

4. Limited number per person (1 or 2 should be plenty).

Or could just use a large amount of prim usage. but a realy good idea, Might even replace the posiblity of alot of the try before you buy ideas people have. you could have your vendor avi put on your clothing/atachment, do a animation and show off your product.

I would like that as far as where they could go it should be options that are set by the land owner. if some one realy whanted to they could alow people to rez what ever they want on there land. or alow them to rez nothing.

I have no problem with NPC's if, as has already been stated, they are easy to distinguish from regular chars.

And are limited to the owners land parcels.

Else, we'll have hookerbots roaming the country side.

You can currently hire a Basic Account player for as little as L$10 per hour to sit on a prim. Make the prim a scripted vehicle and run animations on them and you've got a totally affordable NPC avatar.

And people can use (and allegedly are already using) campers as models like this.

And for the people talking about non-humanoid NPC meshes... let's have some non-human avatar meshes first!

Hmm and with the new anti-newbie policy of not giveing them 50/week for loging in those newbies are going to need all the lindens they can get by doing anything.

Kind of kinding on that .. I realy do see this as a bad choice to make I spent most of 9 months on a basic account rarely whent to contests and what not and rarely got any money for it. now people aren't even given 10L to be able to upload a texture much less not have it exactly right and have to upload it again .

Your plan would require the basic account to be there at all times. If they were to sell clothes, they would need to be around to change them. However... This brings back my idea of the llChangeClothes() / llChangeGender() functions i thought of. Since scripts cannot currently change these, it would fit to add them if NPCs are added. Plus LL would have to fix the problem where when you change clothes while sitting, your avatar stands up. http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=1182

....Thus making them horrible NPCs.

Store window dummies don't change clothes dynamically.

You could pay them a commission for sales, from their vendor, which would give them an incentive to hang around and model clothes for people.

It seems like a very cool feature, specially for darklife we could use it!!! however I would like a limitation on NPC usage (for example max 1 npc on a certain amount of land).
If people could make unlimited NPC's (or counting as 1 prim) I think it might cause a lot of lag and confusion. It also must be very clear it's an NPC so newbies don't go thinking nobody wants to talk to them when they try to have conversation with NPC's.