Okay, it probably seems crazy to lump that many days together. Unfortunately, that pesky thing called RL kept me from accomplishing as much as I wanted for several days.
On Day 7, I was still trying to work out emotes/emoting. I tried using the adhoc method first, using the dialog boxes to enter my emotes, and things seemed to work just fine.
I went back through the manual again, just to refresh my memory. The HUD will always use the MaxGroups Override value if it is NOT zero and it is less than the MaxGroups value. You can adjust the emote lead-time with the HUD menu – [EXTRAS]>[AutoTiming]>EmoteLead. Then use increase/decrease to adjust the lead time. Remember the 5/6 (or 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, etc) rule! Lead time MUST be smaller than the smallest event time. (You can set the lead time to zero.) If you want to skip an emote for an event, simply enter one space on that emote line.
You can change the max # of events in 2 ways – using the HUD menu to change the maxgroupsoverride, or changing that parameter in the *config nc. You can have the HUD send the emotes directly to local chat, or send to you (it says it sends to your IM box, but it just displayed mine in local chat to owner only). [AUTOS]>SendtoIM or SendToChat. If you use the *config nc, you can also change the channel for the chat relay, as well as shout/say, and the send to IM/send to open chat on/off.
Announcements – these are similar to emotes, only they are meant to be sent over their own channel to display text in a different context. (Examples – announcer, MC, narrator, bubble chat, etc.) Announcements can be entered via nc for via the HUD. You simply create a regular emote-detail set and assign its name to AutoAnnounceTitle, set an AutoAnnounceLeadTime, and switch AutoAnnounce to on. You can set the channel as well so it matches the receiving object (like the message board). Change the parameters in the *config nc.
The message board (which is now part of the Performer’s Series) lets you send lines of text up to 48 characters long. Default channel is 8 – it only listens to the owner or object owned by the owner. Up to 4 lines at a time can be displayed. Entering a 5 tells the board to ‘clear’ itself.
Line format: EventNo,LineNo,%Text Example: 1,1%Hello. How are you?
To select an emote and make it an announcement – [EXTRAS]>[RELOAD]>EmoteDetails>Announce. Select the emote detail set you want, if you need to change the active set, then change mode to Announce.
In order to use emotes, it’s often advisable to use a lead-time. There are also lead times for AutoAdorn, AutoFX, AutoRex, and AutoPose. All lead times MUST be less than or equal to the specific or calculated interval and less than or equal to the smallest custom interval.
Lead time is the number of seconds before, not after, that an action takes place prior to the actual event time. An event time marks the time that an item (or group of items) is removed/stripped. You can specify ‘none’ for a given strip round. You can also disable AutoStrip, but the events will still fire as if it was enabled. You should get an error if the lead time rule is not obeyed.
So after reading through everything, I tried my hand at an emote nc. I created a nc titled *lamentemotes. I loaded it into the HUD, added it to the emotetitles nc, changed the timing of the events to 5 secs, added an event #4, then reset the HUD. Let’s see what happens. 🙂
Well, it fired the first emote. I thought the lead times were wrong, but the lead times are set to zero for emotes, so I can’t figure out why the rest of the emotes are not firing. I didn’t have an emote for event #2, so I had used the blank space like the instructions said. I deleted that line and reset the HUD to see if that was the problem.
Grrr. It’s still only firing the first emote. Added an END command to the end of the emotes. Chat from the HUD shows that it is still reading the *emRedDemo emote nc, so I’m not sure what’s going on. After I reset the HUD, the chat showed it read the *lamentemotes nc, so maybe I just needed to do the reset.
Nope. Still just showing the first emote.
At this point, I ran out of time and decided to come back the next day and see if I could figure it out.
So, now it’s Day 8.
I still can’t get the emotes to fire correctly. I looked at the maxgroupsoverride, maxgroups, events, and orders01. Everything seems fine. I did increase the maxgroups from 3 to 20 and did the same for maxgroups override, just to be safe. Still doesn’t work.
Then I realized I had the events set up wrong. I had them all listed at 5 secs (duration) rather than as a timeline (elapsed). I changed the events to 2, 5, 10, and 15 instead of 2, 5, 5, 5 and it worked perfectly. Yay!!!
Yummy has a new version with fixes/improvements and some new pieces in it, so I will be getting that all organized later. She wants to show me how to use my HUD to play the song, rather than through a stream. I don’t understand how that’s going to work, so it should be interesting. 🙂
Got the new box of stuff and got everything set up so I could try to play the music through the HUD. We had some initial issues with getting the Director set up and getting it to recognize me. A little frustrating, but we eventually got it working.
Ran out of time again, so on to Day 9!
On Day 9, I didn’t have time to do diddly squat with the HUD. 😦
Day 10 dawned, and I decided to scrap the idea I’d been working with as a routine, because I’d hit a wall. Played around with a few ideas, and decided on one. Yummy wants some help with the Dance Diva stuff she is working on (just to be a ball-sitter, really – except she says there are no balls, so I’m not really sure what I’ll be doing, lol). After reading a little bit of the manual about the Dance Diva, I realized I needed to make some of the old sequences I’d been planning to use into separate nc’s to use with the HUD. Decided to get up bright and early on Day 11, because the rest of Day 10 was spent on that darn RL stuff again!
Day 11 – well, you know what they say about the best laid plans. I had no time at all on Day 11 to work with the HUD.
Big sigh of disappointment. 😦
A Kat and A Mouse 