Hey Bartender,

[Rhonda Huntress]

I need to kick around a few ideas in early design.

Basically the idea is to have a prim named Bartender.  It sits in an area and listens to people.  You can say "Hey Bartender, ask me a question" and it askes a random conversation starter type question.  If there are 3 or more people around and no one has said anything for a while, it will pick someone nearby and ask them a question.

Simple enough.

But that is a lot of listening on /1  so I am worried about lag.  It would be easy enough to do this with  on_touch menu but obviously I want the Bartender to be part of the conversation.  I thought about developing this into a bot for sale/lease but for now it is just a home project.

Anyway, would sitting around listening on open say channel be that much of a problem?

[Freya Mokusei]

Nah, go nuts. I run a few channel 0 listeners for recoding/reinterpretting chat and running analytics on the same. I even have one attached to my avatar - against all advice. I imagine Rolig would do backflips just thinking about it.

For just one toy you're fine. The risk is when you have a lot going on, or lots of automated messages going on at the same time. Opening and closing the listens (if you don't need them all the time) will also help. I don't notice any chat lag, and I'm obsessive enough that I'm always watching sim performance.

To be (almost) sure: Run a channel 1 listener for a while with an llOwnerSay loopback, telling you everything it hears. If you get less than 1 trigger per minute, you'll be adding negligable lag to the simulator. The first test listens perform is against channel - nothing else on your channel =/= no inherent lag.

Mostly the advice to avoid channel 0-9 is for noobs and people who don't really have valid use-cases for utilising such low channel IDs. If there's a functional purpose then it's acceptable.

Oh, and remember that Channel 1 is spammed a lot by OnDuty.

[Rolig Loon]

Probably, yes.  If you have a script listening on PUBLIC_CHANNEL, the servers have to listen to everything that is said by everybody within range and then go through a cascade of filtering decisions.  See Kelly Linden's note at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlListen#Notes .  Especially on a crowded region, your bartender could be adding significant chat lag.

[Qie Niangao]

How 'bout if you start / stop the bartender's listen when anyone sits / everyone stands from the barstools? (or collides with the spilled beer on the floor, or some such trigger -- best if linked to the bartender-scripted prim.)

Not sure it would matter that much for lag, but it's an excuse to use llListenControl.

[Rhonda Huntress]

Well, DUH!  I could have llDialog reply on channel 0.

Touch the prim, menu pops up with choices to say, start listening. (and I don't have to listen for caps vs no caps since it will be exactly what the button press says)

Do the thing.

 

I like the other trigger events too, Qie.  It gives more places to add some personification to the bartender object.

 

[ETA]

>>  I could have llDialog reply on channel 0.

I think.  I'll have to wait a couple of hours and try it out over lunch time

 

[ETA more]

Meh, I don't like llDialog either.  Saying button names is too short