Running down stairwells full tilt

I have noticed if a stairwell is straight my avatar walks up them fine (though often with an annoying thunk -thunk sound), but going back down the stairs I run like mad. For a while afterward I'm afflicted with an awkward hoppity skip that's almost like the newb walk until the AO gains control again.

Now this isn't a problem, except now it's on MY build and I would like to give any unlikely visitors a realistic stairway experience. I thought I gave the stair enough room not to be too steep, but I overshoot the landing when descending every time. A spiral stair stops this I guess because of the rails or walls, but I want a straight stair. It fits the design better.

I don't know whether to ask this in Building or Scripting or here. Any ideas on how to slow an av going downstairs? A poseball of some sort? Or do we just laugh about it and move on?

As far as I know the only feasible solution would be to soften the angle of the stairway if at all possible. Perhaps a landing halfway down, and then a second stairway leading to the first floor? Kinda has the benefits of a spiral staircase, while still retaining the straight stair look....for the most part.

Just an idea.

This unsettling skipping (which i think is the start of the fall animation) happens whenever you take your first few steps down a ramp. You might be able to lessen the effect (but only slightly) by having a landing at the top of the ramp sections - so that the avatar is already moving when it hits the top of the ramp. You still get the skipping, but it is less obvious than when you start from a standstill at the top of a ramp.

Thank god, I can breath easy again.

Solving your problem in your walk might be dependent on what the script in your AO is and whether you an edit it or not.

If there's a problem that occurs with a spiral stair that is dealt with by a railing or wall, could one add a railing or wall to a straight stair?

Is the stair made from a bunch of separate prims or is it really a ramp?

You might get a different result by having the visible stairstep part of the stair made from a phantom sculpty with a ramp to actually be walking on.

I prefer steps to a ramp any day of the week to prevent head-long plunges at the bottom, but making a decently sloped stairway requires a lot of prims!

For a ramp, maybe I could provide a vendor at the top for free crash helmets?

LMAO...priceless

I don't know anything about these sculpties, but given some of the amazing things I have seen done with them, I'm surprised nobody has "cornered" this market yet. 1 prim for a whole staircase has been an idea in folks heads since before I joined SL.

/shrug

There's loads of 1 prim stair cases out there.

Sculpty paint comes with a tool to make a 1 prim staircase also.

Nice!


...there ya go Weston!

I've seen these one prim staircases. They look a little rough because of the nature of sculpties but I think they work great in rustic builds like old temples.

I may just try adding more steps, making them a little less steep. I think I have the prims to spare. The landings idea and the stairs doubling back should work too. I couldn't think of those ideas. I was too close to it. Thanks very much.

I feel your pain...hopefully that fancy new Havok physics integration will help LL to fix problems similar to this, but I don't know much about how it really works just yet. *shrug*

I have been stumbling/rumbling down SL stairs so long that I do it in real life and almost break my neck when I take the subway.

i have a one prim sculptie staircase that requires an invisible ramp prim be placed over it, as sculpties are phantom. not really sure if that would solve the OP's issues, but then, i'm probably doing it wrong.

the steepness of the stairs can also affect your ascent, because the force needed in getting over the last hump of the top step usually sends me flying face first into the railing just ahead.

i look forward to a hard and fast solution to this, and hope one of our dedicated home builders has a solution we just haven't considered yet.

Well, sculpties don't have to be phantom. And I would think that a PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_PLANE should have the collision envelope of a ramp (and shouldn't look like a squashed cucumber while rezzing, which generally takes about five minutes on my viewer), but I haven't actually tried this myself.

Having short legs, my avatar is way happier with ramps than with steps. For aesthetic reasons, I've tried making real prim steps with very small, gradual rises--and they're still clumsy to climb while walking, and downright comical when running.

I just wonder, apropos the down-the-stairs lurching, if playing with the AO would be informative. The viewer must be animating the avatar with *something*--is it really "run", and if so, couldn't it be overridden? Maybe worth turning on animation info from the client debug menu and trying to catch what it's up to on a really long flight of steps.

I always run down the stairs and I've never fallen over yet! Bumped into things at the bottom? - yes, many times, but I've never actually tripped!



I made one of those on Torotoken - it worked well (phantom, in an oblong case with the upper surface made transparent). It got lost when I had my accidental deletion disaster and i haven't bothered to install it in my new place. The steps were a bit wonky becaiuse of the limitations of scuplt rendering, but it was OK.

i've seen this too weston.

it's the angle of the stairs. decrease the step rise (height) and make each step deeper.

edit: it makes the stairway "longer" but you no longer run down them.

think of outdoor, "ceremonial" stairways in rl. in front of court houses, libraries, etc.

those are the style that allow you to walk (not run) down them in sl.

Hmmm....I had not seen any yet, but I'm still a little new - and looking for more stuff.

Download Sculpty paint, and you can make your own. You can choose between how many steps, whether to smooth them etc etc.

There's a thread here where you can find it.

My stairs are usually set at 35-degree slope and each step is .1m thick and .3m different in the z-axis, then, they slightly overhang each other and are about .5m wide. Obviously, these would be big steps in RL, but they work well in SL. Going up is smooth and going down usually has a small hop-skip-jump but not a big commotion.

Thank You. I'll give that a look-see when I get home. I don't mind building my own, but when faced with "prim counts" I end up having to be rather careful.

You're welcome
Have fun with it.

Its good to explore all the tools that residents have come up with. I've yet to try them though but I have read the thread and the blurb on his (her?) site and it looks to be fun and easy to make lots of things