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My latest Age is almost finished except for the GUI popups!

I have done this before in my previous Ages successfully.

But this time...
I have followed the tutorial and created the new prp .age file, made the buttons and the cameras and the responders all ok, the plasma export is successful and the conversion through Drizzle is all successful. The game launches as normal but crashes upon linking to the Age. I have checked everything very carefully and I don't know why this is. The game does not generate any error messages that might give me a clue.

Any thoughts?

Drizzle can be a bit temperamental from time to time, Some thing I would try when I had issues I could not figure out is to delete all the exports from both 3dMax and drizzle and try exporting fresh age files from Max and drizzle instead of exporting over existing age files.

Could you try making a very simple test Age with just a ground, a link-in point and a similar GUI popup, and see if you can link to it ?
If it crashes, then upload the exported files for this test Age somewhere, and I will have a look at it. I don't own 3dsMax, but I might be able to troubleshoot the issue.

Thank you both for your suggestions. I’ll give both a try and see what happens.

Well, I have fixed it, er, I think!

This is what I did:


Shut down the PC and left well alone for a few days
Deleted mainroom.prp from the MaxExport/dat folder
Copied the text of the .age file to Notebook++
This time saved it in the dat folder as a .txt file
Then renamed it as .age
Did a Plasma export from 3dsMax
Had a cup of tea as the export takes three minutes (and this could be the crucial difference!)
Converted through Drizzle

And it was fine! Panic over, disaster averted.

One of things that has caught me before when using the PlasmaMax plugin is forgetting to clear out the previous exports.

You can leave the .age and .fni files, but delete all of the Age's PRP output. Then you'll get a fresh export.

If you don't do this, problems in a previous export can accumulate and be carried forward.

Thank you. I quite often get Plasma export failing whenever I have made changes in the material editor too. It usually requires a reboot to fix. It seems that Max forgets where the maps are located. Hmm. Can be a bit frustrating and tedious.

I can't believe how long it takes to put these GUI popups in. It takes a good half hour for each one and I've got thirty to do. I've been trying to streamline the process by having a separate Max file with the camera, click planes and buttons in position with the Plasma component utils attached correctly. I then merge this with the Age's Max file and allow Max to auto-rename everything. I have to connect audio files to the sound emitters, put materials to the objects and create a new Python file each time.

Is it really worth all this time and effort for something the player spends mere seconds viewing? Well, I think so - I'll just have to persevere.

Does anyone have any tips for speeding up the process? Can things be doubled up? I mean if an item to be viewed appears in a more than one location can they share the same camera and Plasma components? If so which ones?

As a thank you, here are some PopUps to look forward to:

Show Spoiler

TovahtGUIPopUps.png (356.27 KiB) Viewed 3461 times