Create A Flying Pet: Transcript 2a

 

 

You: Now, I wasnt sure how long that lot was going to take

You: So I have session 2 ready as well, we will not finish it tonight, but should get at least a third of the way through

Gino Medici: the direction thing - is that because we are use vehicle functions to move?

onionpencil Musashi: yay

You: Gino, no but it is related

Serious Grommet is offline

You: we are not going to be using the vehicle functions, its actually to do

You: with the sensor cone

You: remind me in alater session and Ill show yousome tricks for simulating real creatures

onionpencil Musashi: cool

Gino Medici: ok :)

You: one second, Im going to make a copy of the chat so far and drop it in a notecard

onionpencil Musashi: excellent plan!

You: Ive put the transcript onto a card inside

You: how we doing?

Rhiannon Chatnoir: good

onionpencil Musashi: ok

RacerX Gullwing: fine proceed

You: right, anyone need a comfort break before I start again?

Hokuto Gorham: no

onionpencil Musashi: ok here

Morlee Moreau: luckily, my sl butt doesnt get sore

Xander Moe: mine does

You: Ok, so how are ppl with Link messages?

Rhiannon Chatnoir: ok

Dr Tapioca: okay

Hokuto Gorham: un linked

Carrina Hathor: ok

Iamnot Prefect: ok

Xcaliber Zadoq: don't know

Ariel Monde: a quick review on it please? it was a while ago

neand Fleming: no clue

Azazel Czukor: sketchy but I'll figure it out

Xander Moe: uhh heh

Elle Pollack: Haven't tried to figure them out yet

Alan Kiesler: I understand the basics.

Xander Moe: no idea

You: sorry lagged here a sec

RacerX Gullwing: i find one that works and copy paste it

You: SO link mesage are used to allow different scripts in the same object pass information

Dr Tapioca: lsl wiki

You: they can be in different prims if you want

You: for our pet, we are going to use a link message from the brain to the movement script

You: telling it where to move to

You: and one from the movement script to the brain, when it reaches the target

You: As usual in LSL, there is a function to send a link message

You: it takes four parameters

You: num, str and id can contain whatever you want, as loing as its a integer, string and id whichis a bit limited

You: and linkset determines where the link message will be sent

You: linknum can have several different values

You: do you want me to go through these?

Xcaliber Zadoq: yes, pls

You: OK, the asumptio here is that we have an object comprising several linked prims

You: if we set linknum to LINK_ROOT, then the message will only be sebnt to

You: scripts that are actuall in the root prim of the object

You: if its in a child prim, it wont get the message

You: LINK_SET sends the lin mesage everywhere

You: LINK_ALL_OTHERS sends the link message to all prims except the prim the script is in

You: and LINK_ALL_CHILDREN sends the message to all prims except the root prim

You: or, you can actually set it to the actual link number of the prim if you know it

LadyMacbrat Loveless is offline

You: Happly, we will only ever be using one of these values, no need to remember them all

Hokuto Gorham: :)

You: so jus to recap that

You: we are going to use this function to send out a link message

You: Linknum says where to send the data to

LadyMacbrat Loveless is online

You: and the data can be an integer in num, a string in str, and a key in ID

You: Just a few thoughts here on what we want out of our link messages

You: we want to be able to send several different items at the same time

You: we want several different messages we want to send other data types besides string integers and keys

You: sometimes we just want to send a simple stop message

You: so our system must cater for quie a lot

You: This is an example of one way we could design it

You: If we put each script in a prim, and use Linknum

You: we can send each message straight to the script that needs it and only that script

You: but, sometimes we may want to send a message to two scripts, and what if we dot have a prim for every script?

You: so not too good

You: this way is better

You: If we set Linknum to LINK_SET, every message goes to every script

You: doesnt matter which prim the script is in

You: we can then use the num variable to tell which message is which

You: so num = 1 could be a move message

Iamnot Prefect: is there a performence impact using this vs direct messaging?

You: num = 2 could be the stop mesage etc

You: Iamnot, not that Ive noticed, but Im only firing off my scripts evey 0.5 seconds or so

You: in theory more scripts are having to check

You: each message to decide if it is a message for it or not

Gino Medici: is there a SL equivalent of enums for the numbers?

You: but I dont think its a norticiable drop

Iamnot Prefect: ok i would think with low script count(less then say 10) prob not much diference

You: enums?

Gino Medici: Labels for the numbers, rather than 1,2,3 etc.

You: ah, no Im afraid not

Gino Medici: ok :(

Alan Kiesler: You can set those yourself, imnot, if worried about that.

You: OK Im going to try and finish this bit of design and then leave it there for today

Xcaliber Zadoq: examples R helpful

You: now this design is good, and probalby the usual way you will see link messages used

You: but does suffer from one diadvantage

You: if you try and combine scripts from different creators, you can have clashes

You: If you have a movement system that uses 1 to represent a move

You: and someone else has a combat system that uses 1 to represent a hit

onionpencil Musashi: oops

You: if you try and combine them together you could have problems

You: not very likly I'll admit, but I like to think ahead

You: this is the system I use

You: I set num to 150 everytime

Ariel Monde: and we will use this system for the rest of this class ?

You: now I can filter out MY mesages from anyothers that are running

You: Ariel yes

You: if I mix my messages with someone lese, the chances of a clash are very reduced

Gino Medici: ah ok - thats more like enums :D

You: plus, I can make my scripts open source, if someone elses scipt wants to

You: send a message to one of my scripts, they know to use channel 150

You: ight, so we are using linknum as LINLK_SET all the time

You: num is going to 150, or what ever number you choose for your scripts

You: which means we are going to have to put all the data

You: and the message type into the remaining data filed, which is a string

You: Im ignoring the key field at the moment

You: everyone happy?

Gino Medici: yep

You: so thats what we need, and a quick browse trough the WIki

You: brought this up

You: a nice method of comapcting all our data into a string and

You: decoding the other end

You: Now Im going to leave it here

You: Next time we will start going into the actual code

You: we are going to use in our link messages

Rhiannon Chatnoir: will you be giving us the slides and notes for this second part as well

You: and take a look at the design of the brain script

onionpencil Musashi: would be helpful if doable

You: Rhiannon, Id prefer to leave that till the end

Rhiannon Chatnoir: and, when is the second session happening

Rhiannon Chatnoir: ok

You: Next Sunday, same time same place

onionpencil Musashi: same bat time and channel i think ;)

Candide LeMay: don't forget your homework folks ;-)

 

 

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