A story to be presented in the chat window does not need to be very short, but you should consider the difference between reading a story individually and as a group. Groups will interject comments and sometimes you may wish to respond. So the time to present a story in this manner can easily be 50% longer (or more), than if you are reading it yourself. Also consider that some of your audience may not be native speakers of your language, so you may need to allow more time for comprehension.
If you are presenting a story, other than original content, you should consider copyright and performance restrictions.
The entire story notecard is read when the Story Server is reset or its contents changes. Stories can be very long if need be -- up to 50,000 words. But there is no way to skip to a chapter or section. [Perhaps for version 2, if a lot of people request this.]
One limitation of a script reading a notecard is that notecard lines can not be longer than 1024 characters. A "line" in this context is a lot of text without a "NewLine", "Return", or "Enter"
If they are longer, they will truncated (silently) before being given to the script by the Second Life Dataserver. It is not likely you will have a single story line that is that long, but in case you do a warning will be displayed as the Story Server reads the notecard.To prepare a STORY notecard you will need to:
After the story is in the notecard, you can consider adding some special controls"
Commands are on lines by themselves and prefixed by a Tilda "~" character.
Commands are single uppercase letters
Some commands may have an optional parameter
Commands can be daisy chained together (Except for Pause commands -- see below )
Commands and parameters are separated by a vertical bar "|" character
~Command ~Command|Parameter ~Command|Parameter|Command|Parameter
Example: "~T|Story Title|R:1:1|D|name of Title Graphic texture" will print the title to chat, make the Display Screen square and show the title image.
In Autoplay Mode each notecard line will automatically be show after a delay for the audience to read the previous line. The delay is variable and based on the number of words in the previous line.
If the story is not in Autoplay mode, this command is ignored because the presentation is stopped anyway.
Pause commands must be on a line by themselves, or the last command on a line of other commands.
If the story is not in Autoplay mode, this command is ignored because the presentation is stopped anyway.
Pause commands must be on a line by themselves, or the last command on a line of other commands.
~F|SAME means the text follows the presenters name as is normal for chat window text. But as it is common to have the audience comment or ask question in chat, this can cause the presentation text to get buried.
~F|NEXT means to start the text on the next line after the presenters name. This provides a little "white space" before the text.
~F|INDENT separates the text even more by:
~F|SAME looks like this:
Story: This is the presentation text.
~F|NEXT looks like this:
Story:
This is the presentation text.
~F|INDENT looks like this:
Story:
This is the presentation text. All lines
are wrapped and indented.
Commands can be combined on single line:
~T|The title of this story|D|Title Texture|H|Chapter One|P
EXCEPT that the Pause command is always at the end of the line, or on a line by itself.
In addition to the story, there are two other configuration notecards you include:
The optional PINCODE notecard, (in each component's inventory), is used to link systems together, or keep them apart. Presenters working together should verify that they are all using the same Pin Code in each of the HUDs, Story Servers and Displays in use at the same place and time.
This will allow multiple Story Teller owners, that are present at the same event, to "take over" control of another person's story if they crash or have to leave. As long all Story Teller components use the same Pin Code this can all works seamlessly.
In most cases however the only reason you might really need the PINCODE is to guarantee that a griefer with a HUD does not try and hijack the presentation. If this is not a concern, everyone can leave the PINCODE notecard out of the contents of the components.
If a Display Board is being used, make sure it's Pin Code also matches.
When you click the 'Play' icon on the HUD, the story lines will be printed automatically at the speed defined with this notecard name.
ON the HUD, (below the Pause and Play controls), you can click the minus or plus symbols to speed up or slow down the automatic play-speed of lines during the presentation.
Keep in mind that audience members for which the presentation is in a second language will need longer between lines than native speakers. It is better to be too slow than make the audience feel that are always rushing to keep up.
This allows you to add display of textures to your presentation. The preceding section explains the commands to be inserted into the story to trigger display of a texture.
You only need one Display Screen rezzed. The Story Teller Servers will send the textures for each different story.
Textures are referenced in the Story Teller Server by name, so make sure they are spelled the same in both the story notecard and the contents of the Story Server. Note: Putting an extra space in between words in the texture name is a common mistake.
As you have probably seen before, showing a new texture on a prim can sometimes take a few seconds before it displays sharply. This can be eliminated by preloading the next texture to be displayed. The Story Teller Screen Display does this automatically by loading the next texture, listed in its contents, onto a face of the display object that is not visible to the audience.
So, to allow this to happen you will need to name the textures to be used so that they will be shown in alphabetical order. The easiest way to do this is to prefix their names with a 2 digit number, ( 01, 02, 03 ...), so that they match the order that they are referenced in the story.
The Story Server will automatically append the included story name to the end of its object name. This allows you to keep multiple copies of the Server with different stories and easily find them in your inventory.
However, a script can not rename an object when it is attached to you. So even if you will present the story with the server attached as a HUD, you will need to first rez the Story Server on the ground, copy your story notecard into it, (this will reset the object), and then take it back into your inventory.
Permissions: Copy, Modfy, No Transfer // standard_footer(ProductConfig, ProductChanges, ParentName, ParentURL)