New to SL - How to program two following pets?

Hi,

I'm looking into starting building my own scripts - and thought it would be amusing to have to pets following me around. If only as an goal to work towards with learing to script.

If someone has time to answer these questions, I'd be much obliged:

- How hard is it to get a pet to follow it's owner?
- Does it involve having to build and AI for the pet?
- Does the pet have to be a 'physical' item to put the script on, or is the script on an item the player carries around?
- I saw someone wander around with a little fairy flying around her - it followed the player everywhere - that's pretty much what I'm trying to achieve as well.
- Any hints, tips, pointers are welcome. I'm a little overwhelmed.

A following pet is easy, you just get it to decide where the owner is and move towards it - if its close enough, you tell it theres no need to move. I won't help with the scripting though (I'm still fairly new myself and I don't know it off the top of my head).

However, for sheer coolness, I'd suggest working with building an AI. Its fairly easy stuff to implement, just requires planning. For instance, give it values such as hunger, mood, etc. If its hungry, it'll go search out food to replenish it, if its happy, it'll be more responsive and energetic, etc.

But answering your questions:
1. Its not hard to get something to follow someone. It can be done in so many ways, using physics or non-phys.
2. It doesn't require an AI so to speak, but it helps make it cool.
3. It'll be an object that follows the player, not an attachment, though you might make an attachment that communicates with the pet.

Check out this thread for a simple pet follow script: /54/fc/29116/1.html

Thank you.

I found this script as well, that seems to work for the basic animation of pet-objects as well:

/54/76/43852/1.html

However, when I go to a sandbox area to create it (which is very intuitive btw, needed no manual for that), I can make two pet objects chase me around.

They disappear when I leave the sandbox, though. I cannot seem to resummon them when I port back to the n00b starter area. SL complains that I'm not allowed to build there - all I want to do is drag the pet object form my inventore into the game.

While it may work in some areas and not in others is annoying, it also shows an intrinsic weakness in this solution. Is it possible to add pets that will follow you, regardless of what settings the owner of an area makes?

Um no, I'm sorry it's not.

If an owner sets no-rez you won't be able to rez things, although rezzed pets will be able to follow you into the area. So you could tp elsewhere and walk/fly into the WA and it would work on that hurdle (except I think the WA is also no script).

If an area is set no-script - which I'm pretty sure the WA is - there's nothing you can do with a scripted item. Scripted attachments sometimes work, if you don't tp in, but that's becoming a little less certain over time. There is also a height limit to how far up the no-script zone extends. 30m above ground level I think, but I'm not 100% sure, but low enough you can show off your pets if you want to.