Important: New Plugin Info...

[andylegate]

*sigh* I'm getting old.....and loosing my memory. I exported my Age with the new Plugin and promptly fell through the ground when I linked in. Then ranted about it in the other thread.

Here we go for all to see, as Trylon spoke, and as this information is IMPORTANT if you are trying to export an Age you've been working on with the old stable plugin and are now having trouble.

I think this should have been added, or a link pointed to this thread when the New plugin was released this weekend, but we've all been busy.

I know now why I'm falling through the ground......because of what you're about to read next:

Be warned, as much has changes, and you will need to run at least the conversion-wizard (Scripts->Wizards->PyPRP) to update your book objects (in layer 3) to the new style text script.

Also note that you'll need to use the BOUNDS button in the blender logic-properties menu to set the collision info, and ACTOR + ACTOR->DYNAMIC
to make an object kickable.

Just enabling the ACTOR button, without any other settings, will make the object dynamic - aka having a coordinate interface.


New stuff:
- doesn't use multiple objects in blender for one uru ublect anymore - but it now combines them all, and sets the per-face materials correctly:
- is able to export multiple materials per mesh
- can do multiple uv-maps per mesh
- can do alpha vertex painting - it uses the 2nd vertex color layer for that, which you should use only in black and white. (white being full opacity, and black full transparency
- Oh, parenting does work now for exports - just don't make the mistake if parenting two kickables together
- specular lighting works
- More, but I can't think of it from the top of my head.
- it imports every prp file into a separate blender scene
- Does not export unnecessary doubles - previous versions made copies of each vertex for each face that used them. (Something to do with blenders per-face uv mapping system) Now it only does that if absolutely necessary

[Trylon]

Summary of current physicals settings:

• Setting physical boundaries
  To set a physical boundary, just go to the logic properties panel and click the [bounds] button.
  When it is clicked it will show a drop-down box that can be used to select the type of bounds (box,sphere,convexhull, trianglemesh)
  Once it is set, the object will have collision
• Making an object dynamic
  In the past, making objects dynamic was associated with these objects having mass.
  In truth, if objects are dynamic, this just means that they have a coordinate interface (aka have a non-identity transformation matrix).
  So, I severed the relationship between dynamic objects and mass - even without collision, an object can have mass now.
  Just press the [actor] button in the same logic properties panel to make an object dynamic
• Making an object kickable
  To make an object kickable, and additional step is needed.
  Once you made it an actor, a number of additional buttons appear.
  press the [Dynamic] button to make it a kickable - aka, to make it become a physical object.
  You can now use the mass setting in the panel that just appeared to set the mass.
• Friction and elasticity
  For friction and elasticity, you can still use the good-old logic properties.
  just make a float property and call it either "rc" or "el" depending on what you want to use.
  
  NOTE: When you don't specify friction, it is assumed to be infinite friction - and the appropriate flag that makes it frictionless to the avatar is set.
• Physical game logic settings
  We used to have the col_flags0 property to set whether the position of a kickable object was stored, or if it was a detector object, etc.
  Now you can use the logic property "physlogic" - which should be a string.
  
  It can havethe following properties:
  "none" - (0000) - nothing
  "storepos" - (0100) - makes kickables appear at their last known spot upon re-entering an age
  "resetpos" - (0200) - makes kickables appear at their original spot upon re-entering an age
  "detect" -(0400) - neccesary for detector regions and clickables
  
  Now, the new pyprp does apretty good job autodetecting these settings, so you shouldn't need to bother with it
  It defaults to "resetpos" on non-dynamic objects, and to "storepos" on dynamic objects, and "detect" is set automatically when you use the quickscript to make something clickable, or if it is defined as a region

That about covers the new physical interface - more features are planned in the future, but they won't change what I just said above.[/list]

[D'Lanor]

A question. If I wanted to quickly make my age fully compatible with the new plugin would this method work?

1. Export with the stable 0.5 version as full age
2. Install the new plugin
3. Import my age

[Trylon]

Basically it should help you to at least set the collision properties straight. Game logic stuff isn't imported though, but that it has never been the case anyway.

[andylegate]

ooooookay.......

Trying to export my Age here now that I've set the bounds and now I'm getting an error. Specifically every time it comes upon a Plane object.

Let's get some better definitions here for the Bounds objects:

You've got:

Box
Sphere
Cylinder
Cone
These are kind of self-explainitory.....I mean we know these basic shapes. No problem.

Then you have:
Convex Hull Polytope
Static Triangle Mesh
Boundary Display

Okay, I think I know what a Static Triangle Mesh is......my mountains are that. They are Static (don't move) Mesh's whos faces are triangles.....(uh, what do we use if the faces are quads?).

Boundary Display ------ I have NO idea what this is.

Convex Hull Polytope ------ okay, now yer just trying to confuse this simple southern boy with big werds......
To me Convex is the shape of a type of lens that I use with my telescope. It's also used to describe geometric shapes that bulge outward (our galaxy is flat, but has a Convex bulge at it's center. Concave is sunk in).
Hull........well I was in the Navy for 10 years, but I'm savvy enough to know you mean a wall or divider of some sort here.
Polytope.....now here you've really got me. Poly means, many or more than one. That one is obvious. tope on the other hand means:
"To drink excessively."
or
"Type of rough skinned shark"
It can also be:
"A dome erected by Buddhists monks."



How about just telling me which one to use for Planes?

[boblishman]

now Andy, if your head was hurting before.... read this ...

[Paradox]

ooooookay.......

Trying to export my Age here now that I've set the bounds and now I'm getting an error. Specifically every time it comes upon a Plane object.

Let's get some better definitions here for the Bounds objects:

You've got:

Box
Sphere
Cylinder
Cone
These are kind of self-explainitory.....I mean we know these basic shapes. No problem.

Then you have:
Convex Hull Polytope
Static Triangle Mesh
Boundary Display

Okay, I think I know what a Static Triangle Mesh is......my mountains are that. They are Static (don't move) Mesh's whos faces are triangles.....(uh, what do we use if the faces are quads?).

Boundary Display ------ I have NO idea what this is.

Convex Hull Polytope ------ okay, now yer just trying to confuse this simple southern boy with big werds......
To me Convex is the shape of a type of lens that I use with my telescope. It's also used to describe geometric shapes that bulge outward (our galaxy is flat, but has a Convex bulge at it's center. Concave is sunk in).
Hull........well I was in the Navy for 10 years, but I'm savvy enough to know you mean a wall or divider of some sort here.
Polytope.....now here you've really got me. Poly means, many or more than one. That one is obvious. tope on the other hand means:
"To drink excessively."
or
"Type of rough skinned shark"
It can also be:
"A dome erected by Buddhists monks."



How about just telling me which one to use for Planes?

Okay, we used to use col_type properties:

Code: Select all

1: Bounding Box (The engine will use the faces of the object's bounding box for collision detection.)
2: Bounding Sphere (The engine will use the object's bounding sphere for collision detection.)
3: Convex Hull (The engine will use the faces of the object's convex hull for collision detection.)
4: Faces (The engine will use the faces of the object for collision detection.)
5: Faces (The engine will use the faces of the object for collision detection.)

In the dropdown menu you have multiple options, some of which don't seem to correspond well to the old properties.

Box - Use the object's bounding box for collision. This is inexact, since the bounding box encompasses the entire object.
Sphere - Use a sphere around the object for collision. This might not be implemented, I recall there were problems making it work up to speed in Python.
Convex Hull Polytope - This does something special that it used by regions and volumes. It detects whether an object is inside the bounds or not. This generally isn't used for standard colliders.
Static Triangle Mesh - This is the standard collision setting, it uses the object's faces (triangles) for collision.

The other options are either not implemented or will default to "Static Triangle Mesh".

[Trylon]

and "Boundary Display" is just the name of the drop-down menu

[andylegate]

Static Triangle Mesh - This is the standard collision setting, it uses the object's faces (triangles) for collision.

sigh.........So why bother with the others? NO! Don't answer that! I've got to go back and change all my Bounds settings now.......

[Robert The Rebuilder]

sigh.........So why bother with the others? NO! Don't answer that! I've got to go back and change all my Bounds settings now.......

Sorry, Andy: I can't just let this one sit here...

Using every polygon in a visible mesh for a collision mesh may be overkill for certain objects. For example, a sculpture with 10,000 visible polygons can be encased in a 12-triangle bounding box. The less collision polygons created, the smaller your PRP file will be, and the quicker the physics calculations will be.