First Vehicle- Passengers

[SinfulPrince]

I am trying to make  my first vehicle, a simple boat, and want to know if the vehicle requires a script that specifically allows passengers or will a general boat script suffice as long as there are seats available for the passengers.?

If it requires a passenger specific script, is there one anybody would like to recommend?

As a secondary question, I keep running across references to physical vehicles. Would any prim(s) on a water vehicle need to be physical?

[Amethyst Jetaime]

There are two kinds of boats,  One that attaches to your avatar and you drive the same way you drive your avatar using the arrow keys.  Basically your avatar becomes the engine of the boat.  These aren't very exciting to use and can't go faster than your avatar can.

However if you are building a boat that you want to act more like a RL boat, yes the boat needs to be physical just l like other vehicles in SL.

If the passenger is going to be passive, you just need to have a seat available and a sit script and animation in it.  But be mindful of that fact that if you are using a physical boat the avatar will effect how the boat moves in the water, just like it would if a RL person were in the boat. So how many passengers you have and where they sit is a consideration that you will probably have to experiment with.  If you want the passenger to crew then you need a boat script that will allow that.

I have never made a boat but I do sail quite a lot and also am familiar with using scripts for vehicles in general and some of the scripts used.  Since it is  your first boat you may want to start out with a freebie script.  If your building a power boat, then this all purpose script is probably as good as any.  It is the free version of one of the more popular vehicle scripts. If you are building a sail boat you need a sailing script and there is a freebie one for that too, I just can't remember the name of it now.  I have a copy in my inventory but am not in SL right now.  IM me in world if you are interested.  If I can't pass you  a copy I can at least tell you the name of it and probably where to get it if no one else does in response to your post.

 

[SinfulPrince]

You are awesome Amethyst. I had no idea about the weight distribution being a question. I guess i'll find out whether I've set the seats  correctly :matte-motes-agape: I wasn't so ambitious as to attempt a motor or even sail boat this first time out (an air boat/swamp boat done as a steam powered one) but it could very well happen in the future so I certainly wouldn't turn down any info or input.