I've been working on an update to the ZHAO (it's a free HUD Animation Overrider). I'm now at a stage where I would like to give this to a few people and get their feedback after they've tried it out for a while. If you are interested in taking the new ZHAO for a spin, please post here, and preferably also send me an IM in-game so I can find your profile easily. I'm mostly looking for:
* Experienced ZHAO users - You've set up the config script many times, maybe even taught some classes on how to set it up.
* Frustrated users - You've tried to set up the ZHAO, and found it really annoying, or gave up completely. The provided help notecards didn't help; none of it made any sense.
* Inexperienced users - You've never tried to set up a ZHAO before, and maybe don't have any idea what a ZHAO is.
There's no money involved (this is a free product
), so I'll be grateful for any help I get. Like I said, this is a beta test, so I expect there are still some bugs waiting to be found. I would appreciate it if you spent a reasonable amount of time with the ZHAO-II, and gave me feedback in the form of a notecard with your name in it (IMs get lost sometimes).So... if you fit one of the mentioned categories, or you'd just like to try it out anyway, let me know.
The rest of this post is an excerpt from the notecard that goes with the ZHAO-II:
Changes from the current ZHAO:
Fewer scripts, and some code optimizations. Preliminary testing shows that ZHAO-II has about 4 - 6 times lower script time than the old ZHAO. This is mostly from eliminating the idle scripts in the button prims. When I wrote the ZHAO, idle scripts didn't take up simulator time (or they did and I didn't know about it).
New notecard format. The new notecard is NOT backwards compatible with existing ZHAO notecards. If you don't feel like re-writing the notecard by hand (and you probably won't), rez the provided 'Notecard Converter' object and follow its instructions. The reason for the change - I think the new notecard is a lot easier to set up. Open up the provided 'Default' notecard to see the new format.
Inventory checks - if ZHAO-II finds an animation in the notecard that's not in inventory, it will complain and stop loading the notecard. This will help with typing errors, missing inventory, and so on.
Up to 12 walks, sits and ground-sits. Why 12? Because I'm lazy, and wanted to fit them on one dialog box.
As many stands as you want, until the script runs out of memory. If you add too many stands, the script will crash, and then you'll have to remove some stands and reset the script. How many is too many? Hard to say, depends on how many other animations you've configured. Use the free memory as your guide - if it gets too close to 0%, you're obviously asking for trouble.
New options for cycling stands. You can have stands cycle sequentially, or randomly. You can choose the time duration between stand changes. You can turn off automatic stand cycling, and use the 'Next Stand' command to cycle stands manually.
Easier for developers to build and customize their own AOs. No more scripted texture changes, so you can apply whatever textures you want. The only visual impact of the script will be to set the same green/red tint on the root On/Off prim. Also, the main script is now controlled by sending it link messages (details in the script comments). So you could design a new user interface and build a new HUD attachment, and use the ZHAO-II-core script to perform the AO functions.
Questions/comments are welcome.
I scripted katana for RobbyRacoon Olmstead...I love new toys!