[Opensim-dev] OSSL NPC functions available here

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Hi folks.  Some of you may know that I've been working on OSSL NPC functions over the past couple of weeks 
(osNpcCreate(), etc).  The main body of work has now been completed.  The existing functions, many of which had been 
broken since OpenSim 0.6.9 (I think) should now be working again.  Existing scripts should work, though this is not 
guaranteed.  Autopilot should also be working from libomv.

General information about OSSL NPC, the current functions and an example script are at 
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/OSSLNPC.  New additions include functions to get avatar rotation and position, movement 
options and the ability to save appearance and baked texture data permanently so that it can be used by NPCs when the 
original avatar it was copied from is no longer logged in.

I also composed a brief wiki page on the different options available for using NPCs in OpenSim at 
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/NPC.  Please feel free to add to this.

Though my desired philosophy is to try and avoid adding osNpc* functions that can be achieved via existing scripting and 
techniques (e.g. by putting the controlling script in a prim that is attached to the NPC for detecting the presence of 
other avatars), I've no doubt that other good osNpc* candidates will emerge.  I'm very probably going to move on to 
other things now, but it's worth bringing these up, either on this mailing list or in the comments section of the OSSL 
NPC wiki page, in case other people are interested in submitting patches for them too.

Very many thanks to David Burden from Daden (http://www.daden.co.uk) for sponsoring this work and bumping it way up my 
priority stack.

Best Regards,

-- 
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
http://justincc.org/blog
http://twitter.com/justincc