Hitomi Tiponi

A couple of new UI elements, floater_pathfinding and floater_pathfinding_linksets appear to be about to be added to the official Viewer.

Together with the imminent arrival of Direct Delivery, visual muting and the new server code designed to make sim crossings easier, amongst other things, it looks like February will be an interesting month.

__________________

Cerise

Public documentation for the LSL pathfinding functions is pouring out to the wiki now. There are some public alpha release notes at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Pat..._release_notes but no list of public Aditi regions yet.

Kirari Kujisawa

for us non technical people, what does it do?

__________________
Kirari's snaps:

Cerise

It is a step toward letting regular objects be NPCs. It lets them navigate around other objects in the sim, follow or avoid avatars, etc. This will make items like pets or games easier to script, among other things, because the path finding will be done by the server and we won't have to cram quite as much half-baked "AI" into LSL.

Seven Paragorn

Now if only we could rig non-avatar meshes...
Seems like SL has been making a steady progress towards becoming more game like, or rather getting very basic features that all modern games have. But its a start.

Kara Spengler

Oh joy.

__________________
dilettantes unite!

Void

looks like it might be related to what they were doing with the linden realms game (the comment about agents becoming invisible when flying).

objects as NPCs to chase us around the grid, er, yay?

__________________
- These eyes can do more than see

KT Kingsley

Cyberstalkers!

Adeon Writer

I'm going to be having fun with this one.
I'm sure that's part of the overall vision, but, one thing at a time.

It sounds like the pathfinding functions themselves also move the object. That's interesting. I was thinking the functions would just return a vector path and you would have to animate it manually (with keyframing or something) looks instead like this will be an entirely new kind of motion (or an automated/dynamic keyframe motion)

NeoBokrug Elytis

I am excited for this. I am also hesitant because of the castration of llCastRay.

Here's all these new things! They're not very useful!

__________________
Tin Man Rant - Blog

Alright, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons. Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons. I'm going to to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down! -- Cave Johnson

Hitomi Tiponi

A brief Overview of Pathfinding and the new LSL functions and what they do is now available. They sound good - it will be fun to try them out on Aditi.

Adeon Writer

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

llTeleportAgentHome() isn't a too useful function, you can only use it to teleport yourself home if you're already home. It won't work anywhere else.

This means llTeleportAgent can't be used for personal teleporters, period.

But it does mean you still get to be randomly teleported around at random just by walking on someone's land. :I

We got all the negatives and none of the benefits.

Myf

Pets will no longer look like they're having a stroke.

__________________
DeviantArt (nsfw)

NeoBokrug Elytis

Why even release the fucking function then?

Rodvik, Linden Lab:
Hey, I understand you want to make SL an immersive world with new features, and that you also want to protect it's users at the same time. Why would you flaunt a function as being cool, nerf it so hard it only has all the negative aspects of it? You got an F on this assignment. Try again.

Adeon Writer

It will be useful for doing exactly what LL is doing with it: Permanent public within-sim teleportation set up by the land owner.
Which to be fair, is nice.

The only other thing that can be done with it is sending any trespassers to 4000z.

-Still won't work for personal worn teleportation-devices. (Help HUDs, Landmark managers, hunt tools)
-Still won't work for public inter-sim teleportation devices. (Stargates, Tardis)

Edit: I realize this thread is about pathfinding, not teleportagent. Sorry for the derail.

Innula Zenovka

Sorry to continue the derail, I hope briefly.. but two points.

First, I read the description of llTeleportAgent as meaning that, like llTeleportAgentHome, it will only initiate the teleport from land owned by the person or group that owns the script but, again like llTeleportAgentHome, the person or group that owns the script doesn't need to own the place you're going to.

Second, I've had personal worn teleportation devices using RLV for ages, both in my collars and ones I've made myself. I used to use them all the time, but ever since I've been able to pin favourites to the top of my screen, they've been a lot less necessary. Nevertheless, I see from Nalates' blog that so we may get it.

__________________

Frau Yardley

Does this mean I can teleport people right into our jail?

I'm horrible at scripting and don't understand half what is being talked about, but it does seem like a nice alternative to the very annoying scripts we have for trains, cars, etc.
The vehicles that drive around on their own.

Oh maybe we can have a taxi bot that will drive you to certain spots without running everyone over.

__________________
Enjoy Time Travel?
Come visit Berlin in the 1920s;
http://slurl.com/secondlife/1920s%20Berlin/236/232/751

Qie Niangao

Unless I'm missing it, the pathfinding stuff seems oblivious to parcel constraints, so won't be able to avoid no-script / no-object-entry land without another script to find a script-safe path first, before using the pathfinding functions to scramble around terrain and obstacles.

What do we think the viewer-side bits of this will do? "Viewer tools are planned for beta release" and Hitomi started the thread with "floater_pathfinding and floater_pathfinding_linksets" -- sounds as if this is going to be end-user controlled without even needing to use these script functions... which I'm finding difficult to wrap my head around.

Adeon Writer

Yup. As the land owner, you can warp anyone to any location in the sim or have any scripted object do it for you.
Pathfinding would work great for this.
The function is list-based so new rules can easily be added, a stay-within-parcel rule would be easy to add as that just requires simulating an impassable wall for all land outside the parcel, so the pathfinding code will choose a path that doesn't go there.

Innula Zenovka

Yeah, you should be able to teleport people straight to prison. And it looks as if it would be very good for vehicles that drive round on their own, though I'm wondering if llSetKeyframedMotion wouldn't be better, at least for trains and trams that follow a set path.
I wonder if that's handled by PU_FAILURE_UNREACHABLE in the path_update event ("Goal is no longer reachable for some reason - e.g., an obstacle blocks the path").

Nephilaine Protagonist

I'm so excited to see what people do with the pathfinding thing. That is something sl has needed for ages, if it doesn't end up ridiculously hobbled with constraints, it could add a lot to the world.

__________________

Adeon Writer

Pathfind ALL the wall-crawling spiders!

Qie Niangao

One great thing about KeyframedMotion for such applications is that, once set, the script can be removed completely. Of course, that won't work if the motion is to be combined with other scripted functions in the vehicle, such as opening doors, playing animations, ringing bells, etc.

If the vehicles are to dodge pedestrians or other vehicles, the path functions should be a big win.

Argent Stonecutter

It's also less restrictive than it sounded like it was going to be from my earlier discussions with Tiggs. I get the impression that he had to fight to open it up this much. Be nice to him.

It really bugs me when people pronounce "skulltula" as if it was spelled "skulltulla".

__________________
Argent Stonecutter -- Skyhook Station -- Coonspiracy Store

"And now I'm going to show you something really cool."


The previous is a cybernetic datum published - in direct contravention of DoD Regulation #229RR3X3 - as being conducive to the physical, psychological and/or social well-being of the population.

Penny Patton

A friend of mine has been playing with keyframe motions and we've noticed that it hangs frequently. We still don't know why for certain, but it requires a scripted fix to reset the object when it's been stuck for so long.

__________________
The Digital Pasture - SL from a cow's point of view. When the cow is also a designer.