Release of the Open Source Anim Override Script

(I'm reposting this reply as a new thread.)

I was lowering all the prices on my animations as announced in my online catalog and noticed that someone dropped off a free copy of Francis Chung's animation override script in my Werkstatt that has been edited and documented by FlipperPA Perigrine! Thank you all so much!

If you would like a free copy of Francis Chung's Open Source Anim Override script, head over to "Ulrikas Werkstatt" at Seefeld (50, 10) and go to the industrial loft at the top of the mountain crest with the red SDF banner (not my smaller cottage). It's in a large purple prim. You can't miss it.

I've been told it performs better than other commercially available override scripts. Given that Francis is a busy bee, I volunteer to answer any questions that users might have concerning this script.

~Ulrika~

Very interesting script.

I thought I would save some people some times. Here is the url link to the Social Democratic Faction (the place where the animation script can be found) .secondlife://Seefeld/53/8

It works great have had no problems with it yet and i've used it quite a bit.

Hey Ulrika,

You know, an IM might be nice before you make an announcement like this. This script has never been released, so much as "given to a few friends". And you know how it is, they give it to two of their friends, and THEY give it to a few friends, etc.....

Part of the reason I've never officially released it, is because I dread getting tech support questions. Do you mind if I list you as official tech support? That'll be great if there'll be someone to help out. It's not an easy thing to understand how to use.

You mentioned that Flipper documented it? As far as I know, all he did is comment out a couple lines and change a constant. That's another reason that it's never been released - there's no documentation. Gwyneth Llewelyn has been writing up a notecard. It's a couple pages long so far, and it doesn't even cover the voice commands, anim priorities, or multiple-animations

I apologize. I know you sent me a copy awhile ago and I promised to help write up documentation but have instead been very busy with a project. When I saw it turn up in a prim in my Werkstatt, complete with a GPL license, I assumed it had been released and thought I would do my part and try to advertise it, volunteering to be a point of contact, so you wouldn't be disturbed.

If you would like, I'll delete the prim with your script from my Werkstatt immediately and let you know who the person was who put it there with the GPL. However, if instead you feel it is ready for release, I will provide all support for you as payment for my transgression.

Let me know Francis. I have complete respect for you as an artisan and will do whatever it takes to fix things up.

~Ulrika~

Ulrika,

It's alright. You don't have to take it down. That's part of the beauty of GPL. Noone has the right to make you stop modifying/redistributing it, not even me. In some sense, it belongs to the community now.

I wrote the AO script (hehe, I think it's actually called the Franimation Override - that's what Gwyn calls it in the documentation anyways) because I wanted to change some stuff in Archanox's script. Unfortunately, there's no way to "add on" to the script without writing one up from scratch.

So, I ended up with this script that was pretty good, and that everyone seemed to want, but I had no intention of ever selling. For lack of a better idea, I tagged it GPL and gave it to whoever wanted one.

The script by itself is ready for release. (I don't know what version you have, I'm up to 0.6 myself but they were all reasonable). I don't think I will change the code significantly anytime soon. Kex did some modifications that I might patch with, but that's just more icing

As far as a real "official" release goes, I'm not real comfortable saying it's done, until there's documentation, and possibly someone that will be willing to answer questions.

I try and be as helpful as possible to support my products, but I'm pretty much at my limit. I don't want to degrade the depth of my tech support by adding onto my workload.

*pauses*

This is how I say "thank-you" when I'm rambling.

Anyways! I'd like to accept your generous support offer, and I'll list you as a contact point in the official documentation if/when that ever gets done. (If you know anyone that loves to document stuff, I think poor Gwyn is at her limit - but she's done a great job so far)

So, basically, I'm not going to stop you from distributing it. If you're willing to help people out with it, you have my blessing and thanks and I appreciate all the help I can get.

Thanks for the kindness! I feel just awful that I jumped the gun like that.

In addition to providing customer support, I would be more than happy to help Gwyn finish up the documentation on the Franimation Override script. I'm a writing machine. I'll contact her in world.

~Ulrika~

You're doing it all wrong. You need to post the code in the scripting library and claim its for the benefit of the SL community. Then you need to also post it on a webpage and put the link in every thread.

Don't forget physically restraining someone who is computer-adept from posting in the forums, sending an email to linden lab, or generally using any of the thousands of net-enabled cafes to get a message in here....

Oh wait...that didn't happen, did it.

Still haven't seen any posts by Alondria - which everyone just brushes under the rug. Where's the proof, people?

Oh, and the anim override thing - nice, be picking that apart soon for my own use.

Francis definitely deserves the lion's share (as in 100%!) of the credit here. I simply took what Francis did and ran with it. Off the top of my head here are the changes I made:

(1) changed the timer constant to create less lag
(2) removed several listeners to have a single listener, and set as constant for the user to be able to define
(3) rewrote the listening code to be a tad more efficient
(4) put together a step by step notecard on how to use it

I by no means ever wanted credit for it, I just see this as a stop gap solution until these functions are natively supported by Second Life. I've kept it open source, of course, under the spirit of the GPL with any changes I made. I've commented the changes I made explaining why I made them to try to keep lag low (anyone who knows me knows I'm an anti-lag fascist, lol)

I hope I haven't angered anyone with the changes / doc I have made. It was nothing major, I was just trying to help out, as I'm sure Francis was!

I, too, was trying to avoid tech support calls by inserting the documentation.

I'm glad to many people like it. Thanks for the kind words Ulrika - I just really wanted to clarify that Francis did ALL the heavy lifting here!

Regards,

-Flip

PS: I did, of course, leave it titled "Franimation Overide 0.6" and added "FLIP MOD" at the end to maintain clarity between the two versions.