Vehicle pulled by avi (advice requested)

I've been - unsuccessfully - looking for a carriage or somesuch to draw with a horse avi. So, no big deal... just create one myself. Except that I've never written any vehicle scripts, let alone vehicles drawn by avis.

The way I see it, vehicles normally work by people sitting on it. With any rideable avis, that's how their saddles work anyway. This does require that all the animal animations be in the vehicle I'd think - making the vehicle in essence specific to the draft animal used. And of course the vehicle script (with corresponding vehicle limits)

I'd imagine it should work to just "drag" a vehicle along using a follow-script, llMoveToTarget and llLookAt (or llRotLookAt). It'd seem to me that this would be more logical, but also quite susceptible to sim lag. And it might get iffy if someone would want a driver on the vehicle control the animal and thus the vehicle - wouldn't matter to me, so I'll ignore that aspect.

And thoughts, pointers or suggestions would be more than welcome.

If you don't care about having riders, you can make the vehicle as an attachment. That will make the scripting a lot easier (you will have the animation work to do but the physics work mostly vanishes), but in the trade you gain some glitch potentials (a jumping or flying avatar might look really silly with a cart attached, moving on steep terrain could look strange, and so on).

On the other hand, I have some silly little cars and trucks I picked up somewhere that work with the attachment thing, and they're really cute, the avatar's animations make it look like the car is hoppy, like in an old cartoon. It really depends on the end result you want, if this would do the job for you.

I've thought about it, but I don't think it'll work well, or at least not any easier. It'd look odd turning, and typically there's not many places on an avi where the vehicle could be attached and not wobble in a most odd fashion, which I definitely do not want to.

Use a physical follower object...
A sensor to track the avatar, then a physics moveto, or something.

I'm sure there's some in the library that could be modded to do the job.

The easiest way to do what you want is to take a full perm car or bike , srtip all the extra prim off it lights , mirrors and such and link your carrage to the back of it , add your pose or animation that you use for your hourse AV to the car part instead of the default drive pose. A little script editing in order here . then change all textures to transperant except for the carrage. IMPORTANT When done it has to be under 32 prim for the physics for the car to work, any extra will have to be worn as an attachment. when done it will look like you are pulling it instead of driving . oh change sounds from motor to horse sounds . Hope this helps, contact me in world I will show you an example , or even help you link it up . I had to do similer to a high prim bike to get it to work for me . excuse the spelling
Dislexia sucks .
Coldfire Nightfire
Hope this helps

probably the best option for detailed constructions

The only prob with follow scripts is the objects tend to lag behind , so his horse would step ahead then the carrage would jump forwar to catch it, making him look like he came unattached then reattached , when he moves , I could be wrong, been wrong before lol
but I see alot of pets and floating tip jars acting in this mannor

multi move is also an option. if the move message is trsmitted out to chat, and then acted upon by all parts it should minimize jumpiness. cetain construction techniques should also minimize that (like overlapping braces)

Thanks for the input.

I'll try going the vehicle route first. 32 prims including draft animal and possibly passenger(s) isn't an issue, I can use sculpties if need be.

Follower sounds like a good idea if there wasn't the lag, considering the omnipresence of massive lag... probably not a good idea. Sim lag pisses me off.

I have a "ponygirl" cart which I modded to allow pulling by my equine avatar, I think its by Yia Yang and all I had to do was replace the animations with some of the ones that came in the pony's AO HUD, modify a notecard to refer to those animations, and make some cosmetic changes to the cart. A vehicle-based cart is much more responsive and fun - and lets you have different speeds like walk, trot, and gallop.

Hit me in world sometime, I'll take you that shop and then tear out the changes I made for you to copy in.