Talk:Random AV Particle Name Generator

Random Particle Name Generator v1.0 ~ Help Page

What does it do?

The Random AV Particle Name Generator randomly selects an AV from a crowd & then displays their first name as a stream of particles. For example, if "Joe Smith" is selected, the letters "J", "0" and "E" are emitted as particles out of the prim. If no AV's are in the vicinity, the Particle Name Generator will instead emit of stream of text of your choosing. For example, "PARTICLE CRUCIBLE", "NOW OPEN", "SALE ON". It is possible to turn off the AV selection functionality entirely, and simply use the Particle Name Generator to emit your own text.

How does it do it?

Once the text has been determined, the Particle Name Generator maps each letter of the text against a font texture UUID. This UUID is then used as the texture for a particle emission. Each letter of the text constitutes a separate particle emission. Other attempts to do this are avaliable as free scripts in-world. However these have proven to be unstable and unreliable. This has been blamed on the "lag" but, in fact, there is a fundemental code error in these scripts that causes them to be unstable and unreliable, as well as other ineffcient procedures. These flaws are corrected in the version presented here. See section 'Code Improvements' below for further details.

To Set-up the Random AV Particle Name Generator

1. Simply put the script in a prim and 'Touch'.
2. Select the 'On' option from the blue dialog menu.

How Do I Set My Own Text?

1. Open up the script.
2. Find the line that says: "list DefaultTextPalette = [".....", ".....", ".....", "....."];".
3. Carefully overwrite the existing text with your own text. Ensure you keep within the speech marks.

How to Use My Own Set of Fonts

1. Create yourself or otherwise procure a set of individual textures for the letters [A - Z] and numbers [0 - 9]. 256 x 256 32bit alpha tga's are ideal. See this fabulous thread by Chosen Few if you need to learn more about this: http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=80851
2. Upload these into SL.
3. Individually right-click each texture and capture the UUID.
4. In the script, locate the long list of UUID's (variable MasterUUIDPalette). You will see the the letters [A - Z] and numbers [0 - 9] marked on the line. Carefully paste your UUID over the existing one. Do this for each individual character. Ensure you keep within the speech marks for each character.

Menu Options

A description of the buttons on the blue dialog menu:

• 'On': Starts the Particle Text Generator.
• 'Off': Stops the Particle Text Generator.
• 'Defaults': Will only emit text that is contained in variable DefaultTextPalette. It will not scan the area for nearby AV's.
• 'Names': Scans the vicinity for AV's. Selects one at random and emits their first name as a particle stream. If no AV's are in the vicintiy, then it will emit text contained in variable DefaultTextPalette until an AV re-enters the area.
• 'SetRange': Allows you to set how far a distance away from the prim that scans for AV's will be performed. This option is only avaliable in Names mode.
• 'ResetScript': Restores all settings.
• 'Help': Links to this page from in-world.