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Aug 3, 2001, 4:27pm

Does anyone know of a simple way for me to send a variable to a web browser
when pulling up a url from a bot? For example aw_url_send just lets me put
in the url, but I need to be able to send a variable (such as to an ASP
page) so that a slightly different page could be opened depending on the
variable. This is for a bot that I am writing in c++ if that makes any
difference.
Thanks in advance,
Bogey

Aug 8, 2001, 4:06pm

> I think he wants to get the url form the page....therefore woul;dnt want
to
> specify it in the URL, becuase in theory, he wouldnt know what the
variable
> is yet...if you catch my drift.

yeh i think that kind of catches what i meant, so i don't think the
following would work:


since i would use the following to send the url and it would look like:
aw_url_send(someuser,
"www.somehost.somedomain/somepage.asp?somevariable=somevalue", NULL);
I would still have to add a new aw_url_send for each value of somevalue
since it wouldn't interpret it as a variable but just as an int or a string
or whatever it is. Does anyone know of anyway to get around this??

Thanks,
Bogey

Aug 9, 2001, 1:35pm

> If I understand correctly... You want the bot to send a URL to the client,
> along with a variable. The variable will determine which page will be
> displayed, or can just fill in certain parts.

That's exactly what I want to do. Grimble aqnd faber suggested good
solutions to my original post being that since I am sending the URL from the
bot, I should build the string in the bot code and then use aw_url_send.
The problem is I forgot to mention that in my bot there are 440 different
variable values so to do it that way I would have to use 440 different
aw_url_send's. If somehow I could get aw_url_send to recognize that what I
was sending was a variable holding an integer value as opposed to just a
string I could do it with just one aw_url_send.

[View Quote] I haven't done anything in CGI or PERL so I'm not exactly sure how they
work. I think that I run into the same problem that I did above though. If
im looking at that wrong or if anyone can think of a way to get around it
I'd appreciate. Thanks for your help so far and sorry if I've been a little
confusing .
Bogey

Aug 22, 2001, 6:00pm

I am trying to make a bot that will log all of the conversations that happen
in my world. The only problem is every instance of the bot can only "hear"
things that are within 20 degrees of it. Ex. If my bot was at GZ the
farthest convo it could pick up would be at 20N 20W. Is there any way
around this other than creating a bunch of instances and placing them
throughtout the world? I tried giving myself Public Speaker rights and
being the bot owner I thought maybe that would do it but it doesnt seem to
work, Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Bogey

Aug 23, 2001, 3:51pm

I don't suppose that there is any way that I could get other people's
whispers either even being caretaker of the world?

Aug 24, 2001, 3:35pm

The worlds that I am doing this for are private worlds run in the
Educational Universe that are run on our own servers. People are told that
their convo's will be recorded and their used for research purposes.
(something about group dynamics in virtual world space, im not really
involved in this part) so don't worry no laws are being broken here. :)


[View Quote]

Aug 8, 2002, 11:01am

Hi,

I am running bots as a Win32 service, and I wonder what I need to do to
restart a bot.
1. Can you call aw_init(), then aw_term(), the aw_init() again?
2. Is it impossible for the initializations done in aw_init() to run amuck
so that a service could reliably reload itself just by killing the bot with
aw_destroy() and creating it again?
Right now, I run the bot as a child process of the service so that I can
cleanly unload and load it again. It is safest, but running the whole
service as one process would be cleaner and more configurable.

Also, aw_init() accepts an argument which is the current build of the SDK.
It does not return an error if you pass the wrong build number. This
implies that you can link against build 22 and later, maybe, run against
build 27 of aw.dll. That means the SDK internally keeps lists of the
various AW_ATTRIBUTES and other enums from old builds so it can translate to
the current SDK? Or does it fail silently?

Thank You,
Drew

Aug 8, 2002, 1:32pm

Thanks for the advice. I am just trying to figure out whether the
appropriate way to restart a Windows service for the AW SDK is to restart a
child process, thread, or just the bot. Since it is possible to initialize
and terminate a second time cleanly, then restarting the thread is an
easy-enough option.

I didn't mean anything bad by my phrase "running amuck," just that typical
problems requiring service restarts are related to memory allocation or the
state of the network communications, and destroying all of the bots does not
promise to reset either.

The VERSION_MISMATCH error is simple, too. I missed it running through the
list.

Thanks Again,
Drew

Jul 16, 2003, 4:08pm

cin.get leaves the line terminator in the stream. So each input is reading
the endline immediately. Either use getline, or extract the endline
manually between inputs.

--
-Rich
[View Quote]

Mar 5, 2005, 9:47pm

neophile-

You can use a static member function as an event handler. If you want an
instance method to handle the event, you can make the static one call to its
instances.

I think it is possible to use an instance function as an event handler, but
you'd have to use an awkward and dangerous hack of some sort. (I know that
if you wrap the SDK for .NET, you can use delegates that wrap instance
functions as handlers.)

However, this is a bad idea, and I don't think it will do what you want,
especially if you are installing the handler in a class constructor. Think
what happens if you create a second instance of the class: it takes over the
event handling. Then if you destroy the class, you no longer have a
functional handler.

You're much better off making a static handler, which need not be a plain C
function. Maybe you want an event-handling class with static event
handlers, to which your other objects may register as event listeners?
Consider deriving classes that will be listeners from an event-listener
abstract class.

--
Rich

[View Quote]

Mar 31, 2005, 8:09pm

Hi Richard-

I'm going to guess that it's because the SDK is in an aw_wait when you're
trying to do the say command, and it seems that the wrapper or SDK is
synchronizing SDK calls. Try changing that aw_wait in your main loop to use
a non-infinite wait time (preferably one that is relatively short).

Are you certain the sub is exiting, and not blocking (waiting) on the aw_say
call? Is it throwing an exception?

If you're going to have a multi-threaded app (yours is multi-threaded
already because you are using a timer) you should be synchronizing to make
it thread-safe yourself anyway. You could do something like using
SyncLock(sdk) around any groups of SDK calls (and do something analagous
around any data or other resources that might be shared between threads).

Of course, this is only my guess as to what's happening; I've never used the
particular wrapper you are using.

--
Rich

[View Quote]

Mar 31, 2005, 11:24pm

The timer he's using uses an event to signal, specifically the Elapsed event
(this is not a system event). Either way, the handler would run in a
different thread from the main loop (in this case a system thread). In fact
his code uses at least 3 threads, one in the main execution thread, one to
operate the timer, and one for the timer's callback (plus however many the
SDK adds).

--
Rich

[View Quote]

Mar 31, 2005, 11:26pm

How can you tell it is "aborting" the sub and not blocking at the call?

--
Rich

[View Quote]

Apr 1, 2005, 1:52am

Sounds more like the thread's going to sleep to me. If you let it run, does
it print that first line each time the timer elapses, or does it only enter
the handler and print once?

While your debugger is running, turn on Debug->Windows->Threads. If the
handler is entered repeatedly (and if you have a breakpoint there), what
happens in your Threads window?

--
Rich

[View Quote]

Apr 1, 2005, 2:08am

When using the System.Timers.Timer timer (as Richard is using), the
application's process gets handles to 2 new threads, one when the timer
starts, and one the first time the timer elapses. It gets no new handles to
system timer objects or any other system objects, as far as I can tell.
Maybe there is a system timer being used that is buried somewhere in a
library such that the process never gets a handle for it, but it's much more
likely that the timer is implemented as a thread sleep on that first
timer-related thread.

--
Rich

[View Quote]

Apr 2, 2005, 12:24am

Good to know. Did you look at the threads window in the debugger? Is it
creating a new one each time it does this, or is it re-using the same
thread?

--
Rich

[View Quote]

Jul 10, 2001, 6:32pm

Hello,

I need to change the avatar that a user has, by clicking on a definite
physical object in my world.

Which attribute (AW_MY_TYPE or AW_AVATAR_TYPE) needs to be changed? I am
including the code for this action in my event handler for avatar clicks. Is
that correct?

thanks,
scifair214

Aug 3, 2001, 4:27pm

Does anyone know of a simple way for me to send a variable to a web browser
when pulling up a url from a bot? For example aw_url_send just lets me put
in the url, but I need to be able to send a variable (such as to an ASP
page) so that a slightly different page could be opened depending on the
variable. This is for a bot that I am writing in c++ if that makes any
difference.
Thanks in advance,
Bogey

Aug 8, 2001, 4:06pm

> I think he wants to get the url form the page....therefore woul;dnt want
to
> specify it in the URL, becuase in theory, he wouldnt know what the
variable
> is yet...if you catch my drift.

yeh i think that kind of catches what i meant, so i don't think the
following would work:


since i would use the following to send the url and it would look like:
aw_url_send(someuser,
"www.somehost.somedomain/somepage.asp?somevariable=somevalue", NULL);
I would still have to add a new aw_url_send for each value of somevalue
since it wouldn't interpret it as a variable but just as an int or a string
or whatever it is. Does anyone know of anyway to get around this??

Thanks,
Bogey

Aug 9, 2001, 1:35pm

> If I understand correctly... You want the bot to send a URL to the client,
> along with a variable. The variable will determine which page will be
> displayed, or can just fill in certain parts.

That's exactly what I want to do. Grimble aqnd faber suggested good
solutions to my original post being that since I am sending the URL from the
bot, I should build the string in the bot code and then use aw_url_send.
The problem is I forgot to mention that in my bot there are 440 different
variable values so to do it that way I would have to use 440 different
aw_url_send's. If somehow I could get aw_url_send to recognize that what I
was sending was a variable holding an integer value as opposed to just a
string I could do it with just one aw_url_send.

[View Quote] I haven't done anything in CGI or PERL so I'm not exactly sure how they
work. I think that I run into the same problem that I did above though. If
im looking at that wrong or if anyone can think of a way to get around it
I'd appreciate. Thanks for your help so far and sorry if I've been a little
confusing .
Bogey

Aug 22, 2001, 6:00pm

I am trying to make a bot that will log all of the conversations that happen
in my world. The only problem is every instance of the bot can only "hear"
things that are within 20 degrees of it. Ex. If my bot was at GZ the
farthest convo it could pick up would be at 20N 20W. Is there any way
around this other than creating a bunch of instances and placing them
throughtout the world? I tried giving myself Public Speaker rights and
being the bot owner I thought maybe that would do it but it doesnt seem to
work, Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Bogey

Aug 23, 2001, 3:51pm

I don't suppose that there is any way that I could get other people's
whispers either even being caretaker of the world?

Aug 24, 2001, 3:35pm

The worlds that I am doing this for are private worlds run in the
Educational Universe that are run on our own servers. People are told that
their convo's will be recorded and their used for research purposes.
(something about group dynamics in virtual world space, im not really
involved in this part) so don't worry no laws are being broken here. :)


[View Quote]

Mar 8, 2002, 6:00pm

Hi,

Has anyone here ever set up their bot to always be running? Ie, you have a
world and you need your bot on always...

I'm working on the Windows platform. Now sometimes my bot will die for
whatever reason. This is somewhat outside the scope of bot programming, but
does anyone have a strategy they've been using which keeps their bots going,
ie after crash, the bot is restarted immediately... I can think of a few
ways, but I was wondering if someone already has an implementation that's
been effective in practice.

Thanks,

Omar

Oct 29, 2002, 7:48pm

It seems to be some kind of undocumented feature that text in the
"Action" field of an object will be ignored if it does not correspond to
an action. Currently, we have one bot that uses this functionality so
that it can keep track of its own object, and we are considering using
this field as the basis for a system that would track outdated objects.
Has anyone else done something similar, and what is the best way of
ensuring that the text will not be misinterpreted (e.g. enclosing data
in commands)?

--Bill Barksdale

Jul 16, 2003, 4:08pm

cin.get leaves the line terminator in the stream. So each input is reading
the endline immediately. Either use getline, or extract the endline
manually between inputs.

--
-Rich
[View Quote]

Mar 26, 2005, 9:13pm

Hi Alex-

I've looked into this a bit, and I believe the order is yaw-roll-tilt. You
can verify this by manually rotating an object from zero rotation, a known
amount in a given order. Then check the resulting angles according the AW,
and see if it matches the rotations you made.

In cases Gimal Lock you should be able to just choose one of the equivalent
values. If you do figure out the math to extract the angles from the
matrix, please let me know, as I could use it. I haven't had time myself.

I suspect that yaw-only rotation would work fine even on objects that do
have tilt/roll, simply by adding the two yaw values. This is only because
the yaw is applied first, and the build rotation should get applied before
the object rotation.

Maybe AWI could be convinced to document the math they use, or better yet
expose rotation functions in the SDK?

--
Rich

[View Quote]

Mar 27, 2005, 8:35pm

Hi Alex-

See my comments inline.

--
Rich

[View Quote] I started with 2 objects, and rotated each 2 clicks (30 deg) on each axis.
The first I did in the order yaw-tilt-roll, the other I did yaw-roll-tilt.
Here are the resulting propdump entries:

41 1111956050 -800 100 250 139 -337 -257 9 13 0 sign3.rwxyaw-tilt-roll
41 1111956095 -788 100 299 300 -300 -300 9 13 0 sign3.rwxyaw-roll-tilt

Oddly enough, I rotated left, +x, and +z, and got negative roll/tilt values.

I believe this means that when you are trying to come up with angles to give
as object properties, you want to extract from the matrix as if applied in
yaw-roll-tilt order. In other words, the rotation determined by a set of
angles in a propdump is equivalent to the 3 separate rotations applied in
yaw-roll-tilt order. When you rotate an entire build, apply the build
rotation first, followed by the object rotation, so that the object gets
rotated in the build frame.

I'm not so sure the avatar pitch problem you mentioned is evidence for a
yaw-tilt-roll order. The avatar's roll is always zero.

>
> Unfortunately, chosing equivalent values does not seem to work or, to
> put it another way, alternative values can not be found when Gimbal
> Lock occurs - in all other cases, there are always 2 sets of (x, y, z)
> values which are equivalent for the same rotation. The reason being
> that in the process of extracting Euler Angles, a division occurs by
> the cosine of the second angle. If the angle is + or - 90, this cosine
> is = 0, and you can't divide by 0. A similar thing occurs when
> changing from Euler to Matrix notation.

What I mean is choose one of those equivalent sets of angles and use it.
Check for gimbal lock and treat it as a special case. This is what I have
seen done in other places, though of course I didn't understand it well
enough to apply the math quickly to a different rotation order. All you
need is one set of angles that results in the desired rotation; it doesn't
matter if it's the "original" one.

> I have a full set of Delphi routines, including Euler to
> Matrix/Quaternion and reverse. These Euler chappies are the
> problematic ones. If you request by email (xelag at 3dee.nl) I will send
> you the unit.

Will do.

>
> It doesn't, as was reported in a recent email by someone who uses
> xelagot to move and rotate groups of builds. When tilt and roll are
> present in an object (i.e. <> 0), rotating using only the yaw, as
> xelagot does, fails to rotate the object properly.

Does your code sum the yaws (or subtract them depending on Xelagot's
definition of positive yaw) and leave the tilt/roll as-is? Note that
something is funny with the signs of the angles AW expects. A quick test
changing the yaws in a propdump by hand seems to behave as expected for me.

>
> That would be nice, I'd rather have the documentation though :)
>
> Alex

Mar 28, 2005, 1:40am

Hi Alex-

The use of the browser is informative. Each rotation in the browser is in
fact a separate rotation, applied in the order in which I do them. However,
putting a set of angles in an object's attributes (using a bot or loading a
propdump) is a compound rotation that will be calculated in the order in
which AW applies the rotations. Therefore, if I apply 3 separate yaw, tilt
and roll rotations in sequence in the browser, and the propdump shows the
rotation as the exact amounts in my manual rotation, then I have used the
same order of rotation that AW uses. If I see values that are different,
then I must have applied the rotations in a different order. This match
occurs with the order yaw-roll-tilt.

What you need to do to calculate the angle for an object in a rotated build
is first calculate the matrix for the build's overall rotation, and then
rotate the object relative to it (of course you also need to calculate the
new position, but that's relatively easy). So, lets say you want to rotate
a build by angle (yb, tb, rb), and it contains an object at angle
(yo,to,ro). To calculate the resulting angle, start with the matrix for no
rotation, then apply the rotations yb, rb, tb, yo, ro, to (in other words,
apply the entire build angle followed by the object angle, using
yaw-roll-tilt order). Then convert the resulting matrix back to angles,
checking for and dealing with gimbal lock conditions. Of course, you should
save the result of the first rotation because it will be the same for every
object and you only need to calculate it once.

If you are only applying world-up (world frame) yaw rotation to objects, you
can simply do this by adding that yaw value to the one recorded by AW,
regardless of tilt/roll values (which should remain unchanged). This is
different from opening the browser and clicking the rotate yaw button, in
that it is equivalent to applying your additional yaw rotation BEFORE the
object's existing tilt/roll. This is because yaw is applied first. The
tilt and roll thus occur in the yaw-rotated frame of reference you with to
create; this will work regardless of whether tilt or roll is applied first.
You must be sure the yaw value you add has a sign that is consistent with
the calculation you use for position.

The avatar pitch is equivalent to tilting all the objects in the world
(about the origin), prior to applying each object's individual rotation.
The reason it doesn't help to determine the rotation order is that the
avatar's orientation always has a roll of zero, and so you cannot tell
whether the tilt or roll is being applied first from this.

Note that the order I gave here may seem backwards depending on which way
you multiply the matrices; I'm not remembering all the details of
transformation matrix stacks very clearly right now.

My point about the negative rotation values was that I rotated in what the
browser called the positive direction, and yet it actually rotated in the
negative direction. A right-handed system makes sense, but labeling +X
rotation -X does not, and could lead to confusion in tests.

I got the code, thanks.

--
Rich

[View Quote]

Jan 17, 2005, 5:53pm

We have done this using SciTech's GLDirect, which can convert OpenGL calls
that are not intended to be viewed stereoscopically into Direct3D calls that
are displayed in stereo. SciTech removed the forced stereo option after
version 3, and you must use one of their supported cards (which include
popular nvidia and ati cards from a couple of years back). Their site is
www.scitechsoft.com, and you will probably have to contact them to get the
old version that supports this. Maybe with enough demand, they will support
that feature again. Last I knew, licenses were about $20.

It works very well for the most part, though there are some quirks (for
example, skyboxes appear too close).

--
Rich

[View Quote]

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