HTML on a prim vs. Texture at a URL

Kisa Naumova tweeted this earlier today:

If there was one thing I would like from SL, it would be to be able to use external images as textures, and not using the media URL. PLZ

Spot on... I couldn't agree more. This would be very neat and would, I think, be far more useful than the current direction in which "HTML on a prim" is taking us.

Wanted: rotation expert

The last thing I have to do on the prim front is to make its arms make a typing movement whenever it is chatting. Should be pretty easy.

Good grief... how wrong was I? So far, I've managed to get one of Pandora Bot's arms to move up and down, but it is not exactly a smooth motion and it doesn't look much like typing. I know what I need to do - I need to get the forearm to rotate around the elbow. But doing that simple task is proving to be pretty complicated. Dunno if it is just me being thick but I cannot get my head around how to rotate an object correctly using LSL.

Any pointers to a good tutorial or examples would be very welcome.

Primart Fossett

It occurs to me that I could combine the body of Pandora Bot with the TwitterBot to create a prim-based version of my avatar, Primart Fossett, allowing me to have a presence at in-world meetings completely remotely via Twitter. Might be useful I guess. And worth noting that this would work using any of the current methods of interacting with Twitter (Web form, IM and mobile phone). Yes, that is definitely worth trying.

Pandora Bot update

The prim parts of my NPC, Pandora Bot, are almost complete.

Clicking its head sends it from sleeping ('Away' mode) to being awake and back again. And while it's awake it blinks, sways slightly (in a robotic kind of way) and shuffles its feet regularly. Pandora Bot is pretty primitive (excuse the pun) but good enough I think.

Note: this prim avatar won't fool anyone into thinking it is real for two reasons (well, ignoring the quality of the chat for now - which is a pretty major third reason! :-) ). Firstly, the name above the head isn't presented in quite the same format as avatar names are normally presented - as far as I know I can't replicate the exact way that avatar names are presented just using prims. Secondly, whenever Pandora Bot chats, a swirling mass of stars is emitted, as with any prim-based chat - as far as I know I can't turn these off.

At the moment, Pandora Bot wakes up and sleeps only in response to clicks on the head. In due course I'll make it sense its surroundings and sleep or wake depending on whether anyone is around.

The last thing I have to do on the prim front is to make its arms make a typing movement whenever it is chatting. Should be pretty easy. Then I'll have to focus on configuring the backend PandoraBot AIML correctly - so that Pandora Bot can actually talk some sense about something. That'll be a lot harder I suspect!

PandoraBot NPC

Not a real NPC yet, but one of the things I'm playing with currently in the SLashup Space on Eduserv Island is a NPC driven by an external PandoraBot.

At the moment I'm trying to focus on making my NPC prim avatar look and feel roughly like a real avatar - i.e. shuffling its feet at regular intervals, blinking, and typing with its 'hands' while chatting. (For anyone that bothers visiting the SLashup Space, note that I haven't actually done any of this yet!)

Note that my prim avatar head is a sculptie that I stole from Chip Midnight.