Towns?

[Deuce Halsey]

NPCs can take up quite a bit of server resources to run so allowing people other than the world manager to rez them can open the door to very easy griefing.

Thank you for clarifying this, Ilan. I had been wondering how much NPCs affected server performance. Is a stationary NPC that is not talking or responding to input from player avatars a major resource hog?

My concept was to have my model stands inactive until touched by any player avatar. When touched, an NPC avatar is created on top of the stand facing the person who touched the stand. The player can then walk around the stand and view the clothing and accessories being worn by the avatar from all angles. If the player touches the stand again, the NPC disappears. I had envisioned more advanced versions of the stand that would allow the player to toggle (via touch) through several different NPCs, all wearing different outfits. The idea is that by having the stands operate via touch it would be more resource efficient than having the stand scan for nearby avatars.

I agree that it would nice in future for World Owners to be able to create a list of other avatars that are allowed to rez scripted objects that use certain restricted commands. I do understand that this won't be of the highest priority.

[Deuce Halsey]

Hi Deuce,

It varies but an NPC can take almost as much resources as an avatar - more if the scripted behavior is time consuming or runs frequently. This could be optimized but a lot of work remains to be done.

[Sarge Misfit]

Is there a general rule of thumb about how many NPCs?

There's a half a dozen on my world and they are all part of the mystery that is running. I have planned on adding more as "citizens" to add to the atmosphere/immersion

[Isis Starlight]

The rule of thumb is if you can live without them then don't use them. The more you add the slower your sim will run. How quickly that becomes noticeable depends on how much load other things running in the sim create. Also, as more real people enter your world the lag created by each NPC will become more apparent. If you must use them, try to keep them as stationary as possible so broadcasting their movements will use less network resources. Also make sure to not flood your sim with timers and triggers for handling those NPCs as those can quickly create lag.

[Dundridge Dreadlow]

...estate managers are allowed to run NPCs as well as world owners, it's the highest trust position a world owner can bestow
...well, that and edit/take my objects.
...NPCs can easily be created to be "sitting", even when they appear to be standing, it's trivial to make them sit on a poseball or similar.
...there are plenty of efficient ways to script things In general, the fewer active events, the better. (of course, that makes a boring script )
...Do not use a fast timer unless it is absolutely critical. <hint>It probably is not as critical as you think</hint>

...every "update" to an object, NPC or avatar needs to be transmitted to every avatar in the area. If you have ten NPCs or avatars wandering around, that means every single movement needs to be sent to every avatar. It is literally exponential for the number of avatars. This is NOT the same as a high performance, highly optimised FPS game since SL/OpenSim are much more open and flexible and the view distance is much, much better. It also requires a server side database access and a bit of server runtime to manage it. Sitting down(poseballs, chairs, ground) transmits far, far less information. Luckily Kitely servers are quite big, quite shiny, and have quite big internet cables

Reducing the number(and preferably size) of textures is the simplest way to increase performance. If you have 50 prims with one texture on them, this will theoretically run better than 8 prims with 30 textures. It is less load on the graphics card, less load on the network, less load on the asset servers... Ever wonder why some objects have small textures tiled onto a larger texture ? Or why textures need "baking" ? Also, replacing those 50 prims from earlier with one mesh will run much faster, sending and displaying one object is better than trying static batching 50.

ps. Towns are awesome if done right Use what you need (but no more), be as efficient as you can, and make something worth visiting

[Sarge Misfit]

Thanks, the NPCs on Regio Exceslior don't move much since they are sitting or standing in one place. The biggest lag is likely due to all the particle engines I'm running. That will change next year as I got me a new idea for the place

[Sarge Misfit]

I was wondering if somebody would post a recap of this Towns idea?

[Danko Whitfield]

Hi Sarge,

you might want to look at the thread Dot Matrix started in the Other Communities category..
http://www.kitely.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=910