Horses for Open Simulator

See the video demo of the Western Horse in action, and the bareback horse here.
Find links to all my in-world locations at http://magic.kayaker.net

• Non-physical animal, walks only on terrain
• Works with ANY physics engine
• Bareback version of horse available
• Western tack horse available with texture change parts
• Remove saddle and bridal separately in dialog
• “Ribbon particle” reins
• War Horse version takes damage from weapons and dies.
• MOD COPY versions available
• 8 speeds, 4 walking and 4 galloping
• Banks on turns
• Can jump while galloping
• Animated head, tail and ears
• Steer with keyboard keys or,
• Steer with mouse in mouse-look mode, or
• Steer by turning your head with VR goggles
• Fidget animations while idle
• Autonomous mode, wanders your land
• Call to you with remote control
• Has “return to barn” mode
• Corral horse in a parcel
• Crosses SIM borders (OpenSim 0.9)
• Fords shallow water, avoids deep
• Sure-footed on the steepest terrain
• Name your horse with floating text
• Allow your friends to ride
• Or buck them off like a bronco
• COPY, no mod, no trans

• History
• About these Horses
• How to Ride Your Horse
• Steering Your Horse:
• Wearing the reins (Western Horse only)
• Configuring Your Horse (owner only)
• Clicking to Change Textures (Western Horse only)
• Quick Changes with the Dialog
• Removing the saddle and bridal
• Corralling Your Horse
• Lunging your Horse (Western Horse only)
• Using the Remote Control
• Giving your Horse a Name
• Changing Your Position on the Horse
• Allowing Your Horse to Roam Several Regions
• Details of All the Horse Parameters
• Calling Your Horse to You
• Judge Test Nearby Horses
• Modify Version of the Horse
• War Horse Version
• Lag Issues

History

About these Horses

The horse has four walking and four galloping speeds, changed by tapping the FWD and BACK keys. When turning at speed the horse leans into turns. While galloping the horse can jump. The legs are realistically animated, changing gait and speed with the velocity over the ground. While you are riding the horse there are several different ways to steer it: You can relax and the horse will walk in straight lines, turning away from water or borders. You can turn the horse with the LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys. Tapping on these will make the horse turn slightly, mashing them down and holding them will turn the horse sharply. If you go into mouse-look mode you steer the horse by moving your mouse left and right. If you are wearing VR goggles such as the Oculus Rift the horse will turn in the direction that you turn your head!

When the horse is standing around it fidgets, stamping feet, grazing on the ground, swishing tail, turning head and flicking ears. This horse is a bit moody, occasionally hanging its head or laying back its ears. You can improve its mood by giving iit a lump of sugar in the dialog, the ears will perk back up! This horse also loves to ride so the ears will prick back up if you jump on.

The horse can be quickly configured with a dialog, remotely configured with the Remote Control provided, or configured with a NC (MODify version only). The horse can be set to a mode where anyone can ride it, or only the owner. If in the latter mode, when anyone else sits on the horse they get bucked off!

You can set this horse to do one of several things when you jump off: It can just stop where it is, or keep going, wandering around your land and turning away from borders and deep water. It can be configured to delete itself so you can set it up in a rezzer. But I prefer “back to the barn” mode where the horse turns and walks back to the barn when you jump off. If you let it wander and you loose track of where it is, clicking on the back of the remote will call he horse to gallop back to you. With the Remote you can also give your horse a name in floating text over the head in any color. There are a dozen other parameters that can be set with the Remote Control.

You can set up the horse so it stays in a parcel, which is an easy way to create a corral. Put a fence along the parcel border for more realism! But while riding the horse you can jump over a parcel border with the PAGE_UP key, so you can jump that fence! You can set up the horse to stay inside the current region, which works on regular regions or var regions. In other modes, the horse can cross SIM borders, if your server is OpenSim 0.9 or better. You can give the horse a list of safe SIMs and it will cross borders only into any of those. The rider will not be able force the horse to cross a region border unless it is on the list. Finally there is a mode where the horse trusts the rider to know what is safe and it will try to cross any border.

How to Ride Your Horse:

• Left click on you horse to sit on it.
• Wear the two "Rein End" prims.
• Each press and release of the FWD arrow arrow makes the horse move faster
• Each click and release of the BACK arrow key slows the horse down.
• PAGE-UP makes the horse jump if you are galloping. A jump can take you over a parcel or grid border.
• The WASD keys also work if you are used to them.

Steering Your Horse:

• The horse can only turn while it is moving forward.
• If you mash down and hold the LEFT or RIGHT keys, the horse will turn sharply.
• If you tap on these keys the horse will turn only a little.
• Experiment with tap-pause-tap-pause at different rates to control how sharply the horse turns.
• In mouse-look-mode, moving the mouse left and right turns the horse.
• When wearing VR goggles, the horse turns in the direction that you turn your head.

Wearing the Reins (Western Horse only):

If your reins connect to the wrong horse, click on the Rein Ends once to turn them off, move closer to the horse you want and click on the Rein Ends to ask them to try again. To disconnect the reins from a horse, you can just take off the ends, or click on them in place. The Rein End prims are near-full-perm so you can give copies to your friends so they can ride your horse.

Configuring Your Horse (owner only):

Quick Changes with the Dialog:

Removing the Saddle and Bridal

Corralling Your Horse:

Lunging your Horse (Western Horse only):

Using the Remote Control:

Giving your Horse a Name:

nametex=Your Name Here;
namecol=<1,0.5,0.5>;		//the color you want the name to be

Changing Your Position on the Horse:

sitpos=<0.5,0.05,0.6>;	//the sit position of the avatar on the horse
sitrot=<0,0,0>;		//the rotation of the avatar in degrees

Allowing Your Horse to Roam Several Regions:

Below is an example .params NC that starts a new safe SIMs list and adds 6 SIMs to it.

safe=reset;			//start the list of safe SIMs over new
safe=<1004,998,0>;	//help yourself remember which is which with
safe=<1004,999,0>;	//comments like this on each line.
safe=<1004,997,0>;
safe=<1003,997,0>;
safe=<1003,998,0>;
safe=<1003,999,0>;

Details of All the Horse Parameters:

If you have the Modifiable version of the horse, you can put this same .params NC inside the inventory of the horse. There it will automatically be read every time you change it and every time the horse rezzes. Values set in the .params NC in the horse inventory will over-ride values that have been saved. So if you want to be able to save horses with different values set by the dialog, you must not change those values in the .params NC.

safe=reset;			//reset (delete) the list of safe SIMs and start a new one.
safe=<1000,1000,0>;		//the co-ordinates of a SIM known to be safe to cross into
sitpos=<0.5,0.05,0.6>;		//the sit position of the avatar on the horse
sitrot=<0,0,0>;			//the rotation of the avatar in degrees
zheight=1.5;			//offset to raise horse above terrain (change in small increments)
unsit=unsit.stop;		//can be unsit.stop, unsit.go, unsit.barn or unsit.die
camtype=dyn cam;		//can be dyn cam or free cam
ride=free ride;			//can be free ride or private
spdfac=1.5;			//increase this to make horse move faster
nametex=;			//name to display in floating text above horse's head
namecol=<1,0.5,0.5>;		//color for floating text
maxhealth=100;			//maximum health (damage points to kill, War Horse only)
dietime=60;			//how long (seconds) to stay dead when killed
projectile=20.0;		//how fast a physical projectile must go to do damage
CameraPitch = 10.0;		//the dynamic camera parameters are 
CameraDistance = 1.0;		//documented in the LSL Wiki at 
CameraBehindnessAngle = 0.0;	//http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlSetCameraParams
CameraBehindnessLag = 0.6;
CameraLag = 0.3;
CameraFocusLag = 0.05;
CameraFocusOffset = <0,0,0.4>;
CameraFocusThreshold = 0.3;
CameraPositionLag = 0.3;
CameraPositionTreshold = 0.0;

Calling Your Horse to You:

Judge Test Nearby Horses:

Modify Versions of the Horse:

These versions come with all the full-perm texture maps for all the different parts of the horse. What you get are the monochrome textures for the gray mare because you can colorize them to many different horse types. You can colorize them with the texture tab of the build dialog in-world, the darker gray areas will keep the shading and detail. However, this colorizes all the parts of the texture at once. For example, changing to brown will change the horse to chestnut, but also make the hooves turn brown. So it would be better to upload the leg textures, colorize the leg and hoof different colors, and download them again. The gray textures are FULL PERM to allow you to do this.

Note that there are a total of 48 legs on this horse! For each leg you see there are two prims: one for walking and the second for galloping. Each of these prims has 6 faces (or materials) each for 6 different positions in a gait. (Yes, if I had this to do all over again I think I would do it with fewer!) The fidget animations had an annoying habit of changing the color back while I was trying to change leg color with the build dialog. To solve this, I used the color of one leg on all the rest: change the color of face 1 on the right front leg and eventually all the rest of the legs will change to that color. You will have to walk and gallop the horse and exersize all 48 legs! Or you can proceed to change the rest of the legs after that one without them changing to the wrong color. I regret doing it this way because now I cannot change each leg to a different color! If you need to do that, let me know and I will make a version that does it in a better way. With newly downloaded textures you probably want the color to stay white so your texture colors shine through unchanged. The easiest way to change all the textures is to do this once in each of the 8 leg prims with "select face" turned off. There are also 3 sets of ears, (each one a different face of the head) don't forget to change the color/texture on all three!

The ears, head, body and tail were once sculpts, so they have rectangular texture maps and may be difficult to work with. The mane, neck and legs are true mesh with UV maps. With these you could paint the horseshoes, hoof and leg different colors. Full perm UV maps for these mesh parts are provided to help you do this.

On the Western Horses you also get a sample texture map and a UV template for the bridal so you can make your own custom look for this. The appearence of the reins is based on a small texture map in two invisible prims on either side of the bridal. They stop moving when not in use, so they may be easier to find when the reins are in opperation. There is a texture map named LeatherRibbon in these two prims. Look at how they are laid out and replace it with one of your own. It must have exactly the same name, LeatherRibbon to work correctly.

War Horse Version:

Lag Issues: