Is this possible or even feasible?

I have thirteen different prims with a particle emitting script inside each one. What I'd like to do is have a master control prim connect to each of the 13 prims and pass parameters to them to control color, rate, speed, etc. options.

My question is: Would I accomplish this by linking the "child" prims with the master prim? I don't know anything at all about linking prims (other than physically linking prims while building) but I've glanced through some LSL tutorials and saw script linking being discussed and assumed it was a way to control scripts/prims programatically. Is this correct?

Also, if linking prims to a master control prim is a doable way to accomplish this, are there any drawbacks to doing it this way?

Thanks!

Linking the prims will enable the scripts in the prims to use llMessageLinked (note: I had llInstantMessage here at first by mistake) to talk to each other, which is faster than other ways such as llSay.

As for a downside, the object would have to be linked, which imposes a lot restrictions compared to unlined objects.

If the objects serve their purpose just fine while linked there's no downside to linking them.

You would need to use llMessageLinked and link_message rather than llInstantMessage on linked prims.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlMessageLinked

I have a number of particle systems that do this...

1. Generate the list of parameters in the Control script [YOUR_LIST]

2. Dump the list to a string, and pass this string to the child prims using llMessageLinked

eg:

string YOUR_LIST_AS_STRING = llDumpList2String([YOUR_LIST], " | ";
llMessageLinked(LINK_ALL_OTHERS, 0, YOUR_LIST_AS_STRING , NULL_KEY);

3. The child prims receive the message in link_message and "rebuild" the original list using llParseString2List

eg:

list REBUILT_LIST = llParseString2List(YOUR_LIST_AS_STRING, (list)" | ", (list)"";

4. Extract the individual parameters from REBUILT_LIST using llList2String, llList2Integer, llList2Float, llList2Vector et al as appropiate

http://rpgstats.com/wiki/index.php?title=List
http://rpgstats.com/wiki/index.php?title=llMessageLinked
http://lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=llDumpList2String
http://lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=llParseString2List

Thanks so much, Debbie! That's exactly what I was looking for. I figured it could be done, but I haven't, yet, explored using link communication between prims. Now that you've put me on the right path, I don't think I'll have any problems doing what I need to do!

Again, thanks so much for the help! Also, thank you, too, Laurence and SuezanneC, for your advice and information!

I must be tired and dazed from sitting at the computer all day.

I meant llMessageLinked.