How to get an animal and make him roam?

Hello there, I've been using Second Life for educational purposes for the past year and a half. However, I've never done anything more complicated than creating an avatar and teaching others the basics about SL (walking around, chatting, flying, etc). In one of my classes at school, my professor found out I had "experience" in Second Life and volunteered me to work on one of their projects.

The project requires adding some animals to an Aztec Marketplace, like a turkey and a dog. I tried to tell him that I've never messed with objects in SL, but he thinks I can figure it out since I know the basics. So I'm forced to ask you guys for help!

What is involved in finding animals and making them roam around our little marketplace? I think I've found some "pets" that I can buy as objects, but I don't know the first thing about scripts(?) that make them roam around an area. [Edit: Turns out the animals I thought I found only follow, so I need help finding animals that roam too!!]

Like I said, my knowledge of SL is really basic, so I'm pleading for some help so I can do well on this project. Thank you so much for any help you can offer!!

Most of the animals that you can buy in SL come ready scripted and have all the instructions for setting them up and setting their roaming area or path.

I suggest you look at some of the animal merchants - e.g, Animania and Zoobies amongst others- do a search and also check out XStreet. Sion Chickens seem very popular too - but if you have a lot of them breedng, they can cause the dreaded lag!

If you want to make and script your own animals then you are better posting on the building and scripting forums, below, as this one is meant only for avatar animation questions and discussion.

PS - be sure you rez them in a good space too. My jumping dolphin jumped off world and never came back!

Thanks, I'll check them out. Are the scripts pretty easy to figure out? Like I said, I've never done this stuff before.

And no, I have no intentions of trying to make my own animals since I don't even know how to find and set pre-made animals, let alone create something from scratch! lol

Cartoonimals is a pretty cool place for moving critters, too. Don't know if they wander around though - they may be all puppeteer based..

Well, if I can do it, I should think anyone can! Sometimes you have to edit a notecard and others want you to walk the boundary and click to set waypoints. Some accept commands typed in chat and others have menu systems. Most come set-up with standard defaults which can often be used - so nothing to change. You don't have to get into the script/s - in fact, the scripts are usually no-mod.