[Opensim-users] Animating NPCs without osNpcPlayAnimation

[Justin Clark-Casey]

On 03/06/13 22:19, Dr Ramesh Ramloll wrote:
> Hello
> I was a surprised to see that I could animate an NPC without using the
> osNpcPlayAnimation OSSL command.
> For e.g. if you create a prim and set it to animate an avatar who sits
> on it, then you could use something like
>
>      run_time_permissions(integer perm)
>      {
>          if (perm & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION)
>          {
>                  animation=llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_ANIMATION,0);
>                  llStartAnimation(animation);
>          }
>      }
>
> that gets triggered when sitting is detected.
>
> However, if you get an NPC to sit on the same prim, you would not
> expect it to animate as well because the osNpcPlayAnimation command is
> not there. It's not that I do not like it, it's just that I do not
> understand it. And I am wondering if this is a bug. if this is fixed,
> then I may have to debug my scripts for all my seats at a later stage.
> Since my application deals with hundreds of such situations, that
> would be hard work in the future ... because as we well know updating
> code for complex stuff in opensim is so inefficient because there are
> no way to propagate changes for scripts that are used often in
> different objects.

The effective interpretation of llStartAnimation() is that it applies to all avatars, which includes both client 
controlled avatars and NPCs.  osNpcPlayAnimation() does have overlapping functionality but is more general since you can 
play animations given an NPC id, not just those which have granted PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION.

>
> on a side note, how does one efficiently update scripts for many
> objects that use them at once. It would be great if each script
> element in every prim is actually a pointer to some script in
> inventory, so that when we change the script in the inventory, then
> all scripts would know about the change. Is this something way too
> hard to implement?

I think this is a hard thing to do since the system just isn't designed to treat separate objects as clones of a master 
object.  The two solutions that come to mind are

1) Have a manual script controlled system that can llDie() all the clones on command and reinstantiate them with the 
next script from a master object (a complex and approach).  I think this is what commands such as 
llRemoteLoadScriptPin() may be for but I haven't done that sufficient script work to know.

2) Directly edit the script asset in the database to incorporate the changes.  This will only work if you want to change 
all instances and you know for sure that all objects are using the same script asset (which is hard to guarantee if a 
de-duplicating asset database isn't used).  You would also need to clear the simulator's asset cache after this is done 
(a complex and fragile approach).

>
> Ramesh
>
>
>
> --
> 'Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin.'
> Rameshsharma Ramloll PhD, CEO CTO DeepSemaphore LLC, Affiliate
> Research Associate Professor, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID
> 83209 Tel: 208-240-0040
> Blog, LinkedIn, DeepSemaphore LLC, Google+ profile
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-- 
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
OSVW Consulting
http://justincc.org
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