Show/hide: customer expectations?

I'm busy creating a line of model poses, pose balls, and dances, as well as a few cuddles and kisses. I understand that from a game-performance standpoint, it's probably better for such things to "llListen" on some channel other than channel 0.

But my question is: do customers expect to be able to say show/hide in open chat? Or will they be happy with a ball that responds to show and hide on, say, channel 1? If the latter, should the ball itself display /1 hide in its title (I've seen this at Bits and Bobs), or should it be sold with a notecard? If this question belongs in the animations section, please let me know and I will decamp to that forum instead. Thanks.

Okay well... I don't use a LOT of pose balls and stuff, so maybe I'm not the best person to use as a demographic. But personally I much, much refer when they work on a channel.

For one, it is that much less lag, and less lag is ALWAYS nice. But also, I find that giving objects commands in open chat can spoil the illusion, ruin a mood, etc etc. Maybe I like to immerse a bit much. :3 But in any case, I like it much more when this kind of thing can be done "behind the scenes". There's just something silly about wanting to sit down with friends and having to stop and talk to your couch. XD

That's a toughy. You are so right that open listens on 0 are a Bad Thing, but people certainly have come to expect it. Worse still, because of this de facto default, if you have five things in a room they all hear the command which is not necessarily what you'd like. Even more fun are pieces that have some command like "pose hide" that the customer will forget in a day or two.

Now that I think about it, I've seen couples dance balls that go invisible when sat upon, why is this not the norm for any poseball?

Personally, I prefer poseballs that show/hide on touch, but having them display the command in their title sounds like a viable and userfriendly alternative.

If they're being sold as separates, or attached to an item of furniture or similar you can also use the object description field to remind people about the commands.

My preference is for touch activated ones, followed by 'always on unless you sit on them'

My preference is for poses built into furniture without any pose balls. It is simple for chairs but you can use one pose per couch cushion or use other subtle methods to include multiple poses in a single piece of furniture. Dialog menus (with on-demand listeners) can be used to switch poses, adjust position, etc. Pose balls are dinosaurs only they waste resources instead of politely turning into fossil fuels.

If you simply have to have a pose ball, for example a couples dance animation, first try using a cube instead of a ball (fewer polygons to render, easier to judge alignment), second make it automatically turn invisible during use and visible when unoccupied and skip the listen and touch events since it will never be used solo.

These are only suggestions of course.

Yup. This answer for the win.

Any reason that show/hide can't both be activated both by touch and by /1 hide etc? I think that's what I have now. The trouble with touch is that once you made the ball hide with it, you can't see it to show it without using CTL ALT T, which breaks immersion.

I do love the idea of putting the command instruction in the description field. I've put in /1 hide, /1 show in that field on a few of my balls, and I think I'll go with it.

could always use lldialog, make it pushbutton

Use the SexGen system, lol, or Hiro Pendragon's PoseCubes if you're creating single AV animations. The ball clutter just gets ridiculous after a while if you really want lots of options to suit the mood or add variety.

There's no reason that Stroker's SexGen system couldn't be used for non-sex poses. I wish more builders/vendors would take advantage of that platform tech. Besides saving on poseball clutter and allowing many different poses on one piece of furniture, it has the excellent feature of a menu-driven way to tweak the position of one or more AVs in the sitting position, while they're still sitting. You can line up those cuddles and snuggles perfectly for different AVs, or whatever poses, lol, without breaking the mood.

We have to know about it first. lol

Frankly I'm frustrated at times reinventing wheels yet I can never seem to find the previous wheels when I look for them.

I've been doing a lot of poseball work and am thinking about a master poseball controller that will let me selectively turn them on and off or have one button themes. Having guests over, press the guests button and all the guest appropriate poseballs will show up. Romance? Press the romance button. you get the idea.