Notice anything missing?

[Lontahv]

Yes, I tried that in PrpShop 3 but it didn't work. Maybe my test was flawed. I'll try again. Corrected my text above to mention this.
Thanks, Lontahv.

Edit: I just tried again, it didn't work.

Maybe it's a feature that's broken in the engine. O.o

[Chacal]

I think it is only used on the spans in memory, when you call up obj.draw.enable() or obj.draw.disable (). That's the conclusion I reached at the time.

Are you going to apply this to your current Ae'gura modifications so they can be added to our current gaming enjoyment??

Man, how you know me!
I certainly will, as soon as I get uruDistro going again. I am not doing all this by hand again! One proof of concept was enough.

[Wamduskasapa]

I bow to the maestro

[Jennifer_P]

Very cool Chacal! You certainly know how to crack these hard-shelled nuts.

[GPNMilano]

Very nice Chacal:

A side note: If you find that the object you want to delete from the drawable spans is just a single object an not part of a larger mesh. (In Chacal's example the gate is part of the Palace Mesh i believe. However there are doors in the city that are not part of larger meshes and are just part of a single object like Gate01 or Door01 or what have you) With those single object's, you can easily disable their drawing by simply adding a pythonfilemod to them that calls the xAgeSDLBoolShowHide.py file with the correct parameters to disable it. Then just add a appropriate sdl variable to the sdl file for the age. This comes in handy if you want to disable multiple objects drawing at once.

[Chacal]

Thanks Chloe, this is quite useful.

[Chacal]

I am working on a VB script*, based on my UruDistro codebase, that automates this whole process of deleting a visible object from a prp.

So far the only snag is that the XML produced by libPlasma tools (in .prc files) is not standard: it does not escape ampersand characters, which makes it impossible to load the XML using a parser. I have found a workaround for this.

Now here's a question for hackers:
Right now my script deletes the visible object by disabling its icicles in the plDrawableSpans object, as explained in this thread. It also deletes the plGenericPhysical if there is one. This is sufficient as far as the player is concerned.

But the object isn't really gone. To do a thorough job, one should also:
- remove the plSceneObject from the plSceneNode;
- delete the plSceneObject;
- delete the plDrawInterface;
- delete the plSimulationInterface;
- delete the plCoordinateInterface.

Should I do this?

---------------------------------
* Yes I know I should be doing this in Python and use the Python wrapper for libPlasma.

[Paradox]

If you break the link from the SceneNode to the SceneObject, is that enough to disable the object entirely?

[Chacal]

I guess it depends on how you define "disabling" an object.
I was looking at two meanings:

1- From a player's perspective, it means the object can no longer be seen or interacted with. This is what I already do, and it is the equivalent of using the Python methods obj.draw.disable() and obj.physics.suppress(True).

2- From a builder's or hacker's perspective, I think it would mean delete the object, as if it never existed. This is good because it lets you add the object again from scratch. The danger, however, is that you could have something else still trying to interact with it (responders, Python).

[Wamduskasapa]

In this opinion, I will be one of the few BUT

Personally I have to look at this from the Programmers point of view. If an object is to be removed from the program then it and it's references Should be deleted. Not because it is more apropos, but because it will prevent an interaction with possible future enhancements, additions and modifications...