Rotate Object with Up and Down Action

Is there a way to create a linked object with several prims, and put a script in the root prim to make the object rotate around, while one of the linked subobjects has a script to make it go up and down at the same time? All the prims in the object are not physical. I can get the whole object to rotate around and sit on one of the objects while it's rotating, but not go up and down.

Am I asking too much of the objects and scripting to make that happen? Thanks for any replies.

That should be pretty easy. If you are calling llSetPos() in the child object and not seeing anything happen, the usual reason is that you are calling it with a region co-ordinate. llSetPos uses LOCAL CO-ORDINATES relative to the center of the root prim. Region co-ordinaes are usually too large and llSetPos just quietly fails to move at all in that case.
[totally untested code]
timer() //called by an llSetTimerEvent(0.4); or less often...
{
vector pos=llGetLocalPos();
pos.z+=1.0;
llSetPos(pos);
pos.z-=1.0;
llSetPos(pos);
}
[\totally untested code]

A number of multi move options which are not normally available in SL can be effectively done through use of animated sculpties. By cycling through sculpt maps rotation, translation and scaling operations are all quite easy. More challenging is making simultaneous size and shape changes that animate well AND keep the proper position.
just remember that texturing sculpties is very different than regular prims.

Kayaker, I tried your untested script and it works! You're good. The only thing it appears I can't do, is link several prims together, with the up and down script in the root prim, then link that group to another group and still have the up and down script work on the entire original group (if all that makes sense). Only the root prim from the first group moves up and down, when the new root prim is now in the larger group. But, I'll bet thats the limitation of the LSL code....

Zen, interesting concept. Never thought about animated sculpties. Is there someplace I can get more info about that? The Wiki is kinda limited for things that are more complex.

Thanks to both of you!

It makes sense but it's not supported. A linked object is always a single "group". If you want some of the prims to move separately as a group, you need to have two objects.

When you say "animated sculpties", do you mean, a sculpty map for each frame of animation and cycling through them using:
llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, "sculpty UUID frame X", PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_SPHERE])

that's it, and you can use another prim to "preload" the maps so the animation is smooth instead of showing you a deformed blob between frames