Group controls are specific to "Poetry of Dance" HUDs. They are not part of the "Barre Dance" HUDs features.
Groups are an advanced feature of this HUD. It is a bit complicated and confusing. *Rolls Eyes* With Groups you can run different animations for different dancers at different times all from 1 HUD. If you didn’t understand that last sentence… you are not alone.
You can divide up the people that join your HUD to dance into groups. Each one of these groups can be driven separately from the HUD. This lets you choreograph some amazing dance routines! Imagine 5 dancers on stage. 4 in the background dancing a slow sway dance, you in the foreground dancing center stage on a different animation. Via a sequence or live clicking, you animate the other dancers to sit while you ballet and vogue.
Or let’s say you are at a club and you don’t want your man to look like a DORK! You animate him in male dance animations while you dance female. Maybe you DO want him to look like a dork so you animate him with a ‘duck dance’ while you are animated in a ‘crossed arms OMG you didn’t’ animation.
With groups you get control over each animation slot. These abilities are controlled though Macros. The ‘G1, G2, G3’ buttons on the HUD allow you to click switch dances for groups 1 thru 3. There is a notecard called ‘! Group Macros’ included with your HUD. It illustrates the Macros used to control Group functions.
Macro Commands for Groups
The following commands can be used in combination with other dance Macro commands or independently by ‘live clicking’ from a Macro NC to create the effects needed.
NEW FEATURE... [LOADAV]
[LOADAV] - This is a menu driven macro function for inviting a dancer. It will give you a list of avatars in the area that you can select from. Then will ask what slot you wish to add them to by listing only available dance slots. You are then given a choice of group to set the dance slot to. Using this function will avoid trying to add dancers to occupied dance slots.
[INVITE]SLOT#|UUID - Invites to a specific slot. You can only invite to a dance slot that you have a script in your HUD for. If you invite to Slot 25 and script Slot 25 is no in your HUD it will fail.
The Invite first looks for a UUID/KEY. If a KEY is not given in the Macro stream then the HUD will force display a list of AVs in the area for you to select from. If you click back or ‘exit click’ this function will silently fail. This function pauses the Macro stream until a selection is made.
UUID/KEY invites will only work if the Avatar you are inviting is in the same region. This is simply a limitation of second life.
[CLEAR]SLOT# - Resets that slot to null, dumps Dancers and resets group to null. This is like clicking on the STOP Button but without stopping the Macro stream.
[CLEAN]SLOT# - This function will remove ALL animations that are active on an avatar that is using the specific slot. If 0 is given for the slot number then ALL slots will be cleaned. (This function is somewhat redundant do to the nature of Macro function [NOANI]) [CLEAN] does not halt Macro stream execution.
[SET GROUP]SLOT#|GROUP# - (Puts slot on group channel x) this sets it to that group. So now any animation sent to that group will be animated by this slot. This does not halt Macro stream execution.
[GROUP]#|ANIMATION or PS …. (Tells group channel # to play that animation) PS is a Pause / stand command. This does not halt Macro stream execution.
[PAUSE]Seconds – Pauses the execution of the Macro stream. This is useful for delaying the execution of the next animation. It will pause the Macro stream but not the animations. [PAUSE]0.03 - PAUSE is not a group command but it is very useful in managing group sequence dances.
The following are 2 Macros to demonstrate how to use groups in a dance sequence. Please understand these use embedded SL dances. (They don’t download fast) You may see some pause in the switching of those dances. This does not happen with dances cached from the inventory of the HUD itself. You can find these Macros on the “! Group Macro” notecard in your HUD. Load it into an ‘Quick Card’ database by using the ‘Floppy Disk’ button.
NAME]Invite 3 Dancers|[CLEAR]1|[CLEAR]2|[CLEAR]3|[OWNERSAY]Inviting dancer 1|[AVSELECT]|[INVITE]1|Inviting dancer 2|[AVSELECT]|[INVITE]2|Inviting dancer 3|[AVSELECT]|[INVITE]3|Setting Groups|[SET GROUP]1|1|[SET GROUP]2|2|[SET GROUP]3|3
[NAME]Group Dance Demo|dance 8|4.85|dance 3|4.85|We DANCE because we can!!!|[GROUP]1|dance 6|[PAUSE]5|dance 8|5[GROUP]2|dance 6|[PAUSE]5|dance 8|5[GROUP]3|dance 6|[PAUSE]5|dance 8|5|We ALL fall Down!|falldown|8|[STOP]
The first Macro helps you invite 3 dancers onto the HUD. This can include you. If you invite yourself from an invite Macro the ‘ME’ Button will act differently. The Macro will then set the dance slots your dancers are on to the groups 1, 2 and 3 each independently. Keep in mind you can use the ‘G1, G2, G3’ buttons to control them by clicking the button and selecting a dance.
The second Macro shows how Groups can be used in a dance sequence. You need to run the ‘Invite 3 Dancers’ Macro first and add your dancers. Then run ‘Group Dance Demo’. You will see everyone start dancing, all switch to a different dance then in chat you see the e-mote “We DANCE because we can!!!” Next dancer 1 will dance separately, dancer 2 will then start to dance separately, then dancer 3. All will join together to dance in sync again and then fall to the ground.
This is just a simple sequence that can be done with the HUD. The HUD is capable of much more elaborate sequences and longer running using [JUMP] commands. Remember SL limits us to 256 characters per line on a notecard. If you go beyond that it will chop off the end of the line and it won’t run right on the HUD. I have no way of error checking that issue. This is where shorter lines and more [JUMP] commands helps!
*Happy Face*
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