Indigenous population?

I'm reletivly new to the game, but I was interested in trying to build random creatures to populate the landscape (such as birds, fish, slimes, etc.), nothing too big or annoying, just some fun little wandering varments to add some character to the region I live in. I was wondering if I could have a few questions answered....


1) Are there already critters running around the servers?

I've only gotten to play about 9 hours so far, and most of that was spent on building my sunken tower house, so I haven't too much of an idea of how big or what the game world's like


2) What's the max amount of primatives somebody can link together as one object?

I've been having a problem with making primitives where they often don't cost me anything, then don't work right and woun't link (this usually happenes when I create a duplicate object using the SHIFT + mouse drag method)


3) What programming language is SL using for in game scripting? in it an in-house variatioin on something pre-existing like C++?


4) If an object, acting out of its own script, wanders to the edge of a map, will it turn around as if it hit a wall, or wander onto another server, or just disappear or what?


5) Can an object be programmed to re-spawn if it is destroyed? (say if one of these creatures was put into the battle enabled zones)?


6) Slightly off topic with this one, but is there a max height you can make an object (Keeping in mind that primatives can only be 10 high), and do larger primatives cost more come tax time?

If anyone can shed some light on these questions I'd be really appreciative.

Thanks alot to anyone who reads this >^-^<

Nada's building a school of fish I think, but most people aren't building ambient stuff as far as I can tell.


2) I've had trouble with large numbers of linked objects, but I may have been hallucinating as I don't recall anyone else agreeing

3) it's using a custom language, fairly easy syntax.

4) Depends. Each sim seems to have it's own coordinate system, so if you cross a grid line, the x/y will likely change. Currently there are also gridline bugs sometimes objects just stop.

5) as far as I know you'd need a second object to spawn the the first over and over. Depending on your range you might be able to shout before you're destroyed to trigger the respawn.

6) there will be a height limit, but currently I haven't hit it. The top of my tower isl.. 130? 150? meters and it's fine.

primitives cost more if they're lights, but most simple primitives cost the same regardless of scale.

Salarn and I were working on the fish together , infact once i have some time, i am gonna get them up and running, er swimming.

Height restrictions: if you take an object above 512k you will crash the server, however it takes a very long tim to get that high, since max velocity ( i think) is 50 m/s. I have pictures from 60k, but that took what seemed forever to get to, I wastalking to bbcthe whole time, so it wasn't thatbad. And it was using a huge 10x10x10 cube with my zero-g script to get to (objects have a certain amount of "energy" that power the scripts that are attached to them, and this energy is proportional to the volume of the object.) There will be more limits set on height, or so those lindens keep telling me .

I've got another list of questions to throw out there on this subject, And on atleast a few of these questions it would be neat to get as much feed back as possible, as some of this project may affect large portions of this world.

1). Do you guys want small wandering critters roaming the map? I don't want to agrivate people or annoy them with this project, so if anyone has any feed back on the idea or possible requests, I'd really like to hear them.

2). Are their random combattable monsters in the outlands? I have yet to get out their myself and really don't know what it's like. Would this be something you guys would be interested in?

3). Is there a way to prevent wandering objects set to a random movement script from wandering outside a pre-set distance from another object. I was thinking about "anchoring" the fish to an under water tresure chest so that they wouldn't simply wander off the server or onto land.

4). Will textures like the avitar skin, hair, and eye textures or the textures for dirt and grass be added to the texture selection for building objects? I've started building (among other things) a mermaid to go with the several fish modles I've made, but I can't find the appropriate textures to skin her with.

5). Would you guys be interested in buying pets which you could feed, play catch with, or call to? The pets could also keep track of how good or negligent they're treated and act accordingly, by acting silly and doing tricks if they've been well kept and by leaving messes if they have not (which of course will need to be "cleaned up" in order to get back the used cash).

6). Sort of on the same subject, would anyone be interested in being able to feed pigeons or ducks?

I know alot of this is very ambitious, but I figured I'd throw these ideas out there and get some feed-back before I attempted any projects that would aggrivate more people than would enjoy them.

Hey Salarn,
Great ideas indeed! I'm answering what I can. I'm stupid in the code department so you best talk to other scripters aboot specifics...
flyk

Q). Do you guys want small wandering critters roaming the map?

A).I'm used to the birds that used to hop about so small critters wouldn't bother me provided they are sparse and not bogging down the processors. (I still want programmable dummy npcs.)

Q). Are their random combattable monsters in the outlands? I have yet to get out their myself and really don't know what it's like. Would this be something you guys would be interested in?

A).Nope not yet. Tho Cory did make some roller ramps which kill on occasion as well as a pit of almost certain death. Tho i think people are working on mechs.

Q). Is there a way to prevent wandering objects set to a random movement script from wandering outside a pre-set distance from another object. I was thinking about "anchoring" the fish to an under water tresure chest so that they wouldn't simply wander off the server or onto land.

A).I believe so. Speak to someone that knows something, but you shid be able to use a sensor and the llDie method to kill something that goes out of range?

WARNING: Bad pseudocode>don't dissect cuz its really wrong.
llSensor blah blah;
if(range>= distance from sensor);
{
llDie(object uuid);
llRez(newObject at spawn point);
}

Q). Will textures like the avitar skin, hair, and eye textures or the textures for dirt and grass be added to the texture selection for building objects? I've started building (among other things) a mermaid to go with the several fish modles I've made, but I can't find the appropriate textures to skin her with.

A). Don't know, right now not betting on it. You have the option to create textures yourself and upload theme for a small fee of $10 per file. If you wanted you could zoom in on the ground, take a snapshot and save it into your inventory to map to objects.

Q). Would you guys be interested in buying pets which you could feed, play catch with, or call to? The pets could also keep track of how good or negligent they're treated and act accordingly, by acting silly and doing tricks if they've been well kept and by leaving messes if they have not (which of course will need to be "cleaned up" in order to get back the used cash).

A). Spoken to several people that would like this. Hear some peeps are coding pet behaviors.

Q). Sort of on the same subject, would anyone be interested in being able to feed pigeons or ducks?

A). Interesting idea. I wid for a bit just to see the outcome of your project. It wid be a nice addition to a zoo. (I hear someone is making a zoo).

You could do your anchoring without difficulty, and you wouldn't even need the chest. You can set yourself a home point, and then any time one or more axes get further from that point than you want them to go, they'll turn around. Wouldn't be too difficult if you've already got moving fish =)

On the other hand if you llDie() them you'd have to have some other object to spawn them again.

maybe you could use llDie as a safeguard, putting the border you want well inside the max sensor distance, then only die on a no_sensor, while you still turn around based on distance. That way you have double security.

And sensors seem to be flaky when sims go down, so relying on them as your only defence might not be good.

I think i would just set the object to check the distance between itself and some arbitarary <x,y,z> and just stay with in a certain radius of it, and when ever it does, applie a force vector and rotations that sends it back towards the center point... but thats just me.

Sorry salarn i haven't gotten back to you with a moving fish, i seem to pick up new projects left and right, only to leave other ones unfinished. Gah i need to just sit down and code ! heh.

yeah but if you just reverse course you end up with fish moving in straight lines throught their local origin, I was thinking there'd be some other algorithm that was being used to control fish movement.

i know, you would add variation to it, like have the vector change to a random sin curve, or something along those lines. it was just to illustrate the use of a simple way to get it to stay around a single point.

and then have 5 or 6 on different orbits, introduce a little wobble or something ocassionally and it'd look kinda random...

not a bad idea, all we would need to do would be to have it change directions randomly, along with the wobble, and it would be pretty good

Maybe I'll ork on this too, since I'm going to be dong some orbit work anyway

in a lake you have natural boundry conditions, and make fish that turn around when they collide with the side of the lake, or maybe work with sensors (reset problematic) so they swim about. Use the random num genarator, and you have a fish that swims around in a non-predictable manner - you could make speed variation etc.

it will be intersting to see some scripted "AI" behavior

BBC

at the outside edge of an outside sim?
Or would our fish swim off into eternity?
I haven't explored that yet =)