Land Terraforming and Randomization...

So this is a huge project that would make for a very interesting sight... And object that would do full land terraforming for you... And Randomize an entire SIM at the drop of a hat... You could load all of the plants rocks etc with scripts that would move them to llGround(); after the terraforming... Or rather just keep them from being stuck in the ground... Anyways... I was wondering if this is possible with the current tools that LL gives us... Could we create an object that would fly around the SIM in a Random Fashion and totally randomize the Terrain... Giving a whole new look to the SIM each and every time you run it... Let me know what you think... Maybe we could create a group for scriopting it... Well just thought I would put that out there... I've been thinking about it alot lately and it might just turn into an interesting tool for the Public...

Heratiki Turnbull

Yeah, it's possible; I've got something similar on my 'list of things to do when I can be arsed'. Although I reckon it'd be a relativly hefty bit of code to stop it from looking like crap.

Yeah I agree... Maybe have it to randomize to some set limits... IE Rolling hills versus Mountain's of Fury... I've been looking at the Terraforming tools in LSL and they aren't too shabby... And you can load all Linden plants with a small script that will "How you say... Ah yes... Make them stay afloat"... Basically they just detect the ground level and set themselves accordingly... And since we all have the ability to llRezObject() the linden plants it could just rez a stored copy inside the device that would just drop it straight to the ground... Think Jurassic Park... But then you can mod it later to cut path's and so forth...

Heratiki

EDIT: I know Jeffrey Gomez is insanely busy with everything he does... *GREAT JOB ON THE OUTWORLD PRIM BUILDING UI*... I'm really hoping to get his input on the whole idea... I mean after something like Primmies it's gotta be possible...

I am developing something like this and have a couple of working models. They fly either a zigzag pattern or they can be step controlled under the hud. The advantage is that multiple copies can be flying around independently and that you can look at the ground to see what is happening.

The real problem is to work out the effects of each of the terraforming commands will take some doing as they influence a lot more than just the land under the brush. So while the minmum size for the brush is only 2 M by 2 M, the effect seems much broader than that. Also have a mode that combines a number of the terraforming commands only applied as necessary by checking llGround () but still not happy with its effects.

Other issues involve safety - many of mine have run away and i now have timeout die commands to destroy them after a certain time. You only work with copies!

Now working on notecard scripting these commands so that you can fly predictable patterns with somewhat predictable results. I should have the current version up in about a week unless I get more major problems.

I have four major scripts link communicating - life is not meant to be easy!

Sounds awesome... IM me in game and I'll help the most I can if you need it... I was thinking of using RPC to give it a distinctive look... Say using RPC calls to a server that would have plenty of stuff written to control what it's going to look like... I don't know the feasibility of this but it would make it much easier to randomize everything without having to rewrite the script constantly... Might even be able to do the same thing the Lindens allow now which is change the land based on a terraforming layout (Usually PNG's or TGA's that are Grayscale and map the land) I've seen RPC do alot of amazing things... Like one guy wrote a script that would bring everything in Pixel by Pixel by simply changing the colors of a single prim and reading RPC calls for each color from a picture... I might be wrong but I'm sure I remember reading that somewhere in the past... And if ya don't need my help then good luck to ya... I think it would be interesting to see what we can come up with...

Heratiki Turnbull