Record a patrol and have it walked back

Record it

Open the avatar window, go to the Patrol tab and press Record. Then walk the route yourself. Everything you do is written down: where you go, whether you walk, run or fly, and any region you cross into, a route may span several sims. Press Stop recording when you are back where you started, and give it a name in the box beside the button.

Flying is recorded in full, height included, and played back the same way: the avatar climbs where you climbed and levels off where you did. It works whether or not you wear an animation overrider, because NeuraCore asks the simulator how far above the ground you are rather than guessing from the animation you are playing.

Recording does not move the controlled avatar and does not need Follow Me switched on. Each route also gets a number, and that number is never given to another route, so a route named in a script or in chat always means the same path even after you delete others.

Play it

Choose a route in the list and press Play. The avatar goes to the route's first point and then walks it exactly as you did, running where you ran and flying where you flew. If the route begins in a region the avatar is not in, it teleports there first; the same happens at any border the walk cannot manage on its own.

Tick “In a loop” and it keeps going round until you press Stop. Leave it unticked and it walks the route once and stops. You can tick or untick it while a patrol is running, and the change takes effect at the end of the current lap rather than sending the avatar back to the beginning.

From chat

The Master can also send the avatar out by instant message: “patrol 3”, or “patrol Garden round”. A name is matched exactly first and then as the beginning of a name, so “patrol garden” works unless two routes begin with it. If there is no such route the avatar says so rather than guessing. Add the word “loop” to keep it going.

Four more words control a patrol that is already running: “patrol pause” halts it, “patrol resume” carries on, “patrol stop” ends it, and “patrol random” starts a random run, “patrol random 4” for four routes, or on its own for all of them. These four are read before the list of routes is consulted, so a route named after one of them cannot be started by name; rename the route if that matters, because a control word that stopped working would be a patrol nobody could halt.

Only the Master may do any of this. Patrolling sends the avatar off on its own for as long as it takes, which is a different thing from asking it to follow you, so residents on the allowed list cannot start one.

Pace, and what the grid allows

The Pace box sets how fast a patrol walks, as a percentage of the avatar's own walking speed. It is read on every step, so turning it up or down while a patrol is running changes the patrol you are watching rather than the next one.

Second Life has one walking speed and one running speed and nothing between them, so any other pace is held by moving for part of the time: above a hundred the avatar runs some of the way, and below a hundred it walks in short bursts. That is worth knowing because it is visible, a very slow patrol is an avatar repeatedly starting and stopping, because that is the only slower-than-walking there is.

Carrying on after a disconnection

Tick “Resume on restart” and a patrol interrupted by a dropped connection, or by closing NeuraCore, starts again by itself when that avatar next connects, whether you reconnect it yourself or it reconnects automatically at launch.

It picks up the route it was on, from that route's beginning rather than from the exact step it was interrupted at. Only the first point of a route is walked to from wherever the avatar happens to be, so resuming halfway would leave it trying to reach a spot it is nowhere near. If it was working through a random selection, it carries on from the route it had reached.

A patrol you stopped yourself is not resumed: the tick box is about interruptions, not about starting a patrol every time the avatar logs in. Routes deleted in the meantime are simply left out, and if every route it was walking has gone, nothing resumes.

Sitting down along the way

If you sit on something while recording, such as a bench, a chair or a vehicle, that is recorded too, along with how long you stayed. Playing the route back, the avatar walks to the same object, sits on it, waits as long as you did, stands up and carries on. Standing up again is recorded the same way.

One kind of seat is skipped, and it is worth knowing why. If NeuraCore has not been told about the object you are sitting on yet, nothing is recorded for as long as you stay on it, not even where you are. While you are seated, Second Life reports your position relative to the seat rather than as a place in the region, so without knowing the seat there is no usable position to write down. Stand up and the route carries on normally.

Touching objects and building are not recorded, and cannot be: a touch is delivered to the touched object and to nobody else, so a client watching you sees nothing at all, and a newly rezzed object looks exactly like any other object coming into view. Recording either would mean guessing, and replaying a guess would have the avatar doing things nobody asked for.

Seats are only replayed walking the route forwards. A sit remembers the object it was taken on and a stand remembers nothing, so a backwards walk would have the avatar stand up where you sat down and then arrive at a seat with no matching stand.

Pause, reverse and random

Pause halts the avatar where it stands and keeps everything else: the route, the point it was walking to, and its place in a list. Pressing it again carries on from the step that was interrupted, and the time spent paused is not counted against it.

Reverse walks a route from its last point to its first, so a route out becomes a route back without recording it twice. It is applied when a patrol is started rather than to one already running, because turning a walk round halfway would leave the avatar retracing the half it had just done.

Random play strings that many different routes together in a random order and walks them one after another. No route appears twice in a list, and with “In a loop” ticked a fresh selection is drawn each time round rather than the same order again.

Giving a route to your other avatars

A route is worth recording once and using everywhere. “Copy to…” files a copy of the selected route with another avatar, and “Copy all” files copies of every route you have. Both offer the same list: every avatar you have set up, with “All Avatars” at the top.

Your main avatar is not on the list. It is the avatar your licence belongs to rather than one you send out on patrol, so it is left out of both. The avatar you are copying from is left out too, for the obvious reason.

Each copy is numbered in the destination's own list and counts against that avatar's own allowance, exactly as recording it there would. If an avatar has no room left, the copy stops at that avatar and the rest still go through.

How many routes you may keep

Recording is what the licence limits, and the limit is per avatar rather than per installation, because a route is a path in a place that avatar goes. An Individual licence keeps one route on each avatar it seats; a Business licence keeps a hundred. The free licence does not include patrol recording.

Playing, pausing, reversing and random runs are not limited at all. When Record is refused, pressing it says which licence carries more, and deleting a route you no longer walk always makes room for another.

While it is walking

Follow Me and a patrol both decide where the avatar puts its feet, so starting a patrol pauses following, and following comes back by itself when the patrol ends or you stop it. Nothing needs re-selecting.

A sitting avatar cannot walk anywhere. Rather than standing it up without being asked, which would take it off whatever it is sitting on, it says it is sitting and asks whether to stand up and go. Answer “yes” and it does. In the Patrol tab the same choice is a “Stand up and play” button.

If something has been built across the route since you recorded it, the avatar gives up on the corner it cannot reach and carries on with the next one, rather than standing against a wall until you notice.