Zombie avatars

Is it possible to rez avatars with no one controlling them in world?
I want to do a turing test kind of project with them for some RL research/ installation.
I've found someone whos rigged up a chat-bot program in world- so an 'empty' body running a few animations is all we'd need.
Any ideas- or anyone who'd be into collaborating?

Avatars cannot be "rezzed" like objects, but they can be autonomously controlled. You'll need a seperate SL account for each one (and you can run them all from the same computer by using the -multiple command line option, but performance will suck). In theory, you can then use a bot program or an inworld script/animation system to make them roam the world on their own.

That having been said, I hope no one actually does this. One of the things that makes SL what it is is that there are no "NPC's". Every avatar represents a live human user, and that's a good thing in my opinion. I can't deny, however, that it would be interesting (and, dare I say, even somehow appealing) to watch an army of autonomus zombies stumble their way across the countryside if only for a few minutes or so, as long as it doesn't become commonplace.

That sounds like an interesting idea- but the kind of scale im looking at wouldnt be doable.
I'd like to create these as part of an art installation- with a turing test theme.
With really good AI's plumbed into them, zombies could be kinda useful I think- you could have a PA at your SL office for instance.

You already said you had a chat bot script in place, right?

Well, combine it with an animation control script, attach it to an avatar, and your Turing test zombie is complete.

You'll still need a seperate account for each avatar you want to do this with though. There's no way around that. Making it scalable will require hardware.

You could always go with prim-based character models instead of actual avatars. It's not exactly easy to animate them, but it can be done. Your only limitation at that point would be prim counts.

What kind of limitations are we looking at with prim based character models? Does anyone know generally what sort of number of prims we'd be looking at for a reasonably convincing model?

The animation/chat script applied to an existing avatar is something thats worth trying out- perhaps I could create one agent/zombie at a time to experiment with.

However- I'm quite into creating something that has no internal controls/viewpoint or login- something entirely a product of sl servers, scripts and the net- its neater conceptually and would be kinder on my bandwidth.

Thankyou for all your comments

Well rather than other avatars, wouldn't it also be possible to make a zombie out of prims instead? Then you could just attach the script to them, much cheaper and much more effective.

Thats what I'll do I think, I'd just like them to be as real as possible

Ive made one avatar based zombie- shes not animated yet- and her personality sucks...
Her names zombie zou and shes hanging out at my plot at burning life if anyone wants to meet her- talking to a birthday cake and a large ugly picture named Betty.

The in world implementation of the chat bots has been kindly lent to me by Navillus Batra- thanks!

I'm gonna start looking to make some animations for her to party with. So I'll be back in the morning. If anyones interested on working on some with me drop by the plot in Burning Life (Odi) at 224, 50, 25.

suggest this to the lindens. that would be hilarious if they opened a "zombie world" for halloween.
OMG ITS DAWN(or shaun) OF THE DEAD ALL OVER AGAIN!!!