Guild of Writers

Revision as of 20:20, 13 January 2008

The new plugin release significantly changes many of the age building conventions and properties used in older versions to the point that older ages exported with the new plugin may simply fail to operate properly.

I will list the changes most likely to break existing ages, and detail how to update them for use with the new plugin.

Drawable (Graphics) Changes

• The plugin now reads the "Map Input" settings. This means that the texture coordinates applied to the mesh will be the same as the ones that would be applied by the blender raytracer. In order to make your uv mapped materials compatible, you must set the UV button for each texture layer of your material that uses a uvmapped image texture. (the only exception is environment maps)

• The plugin now automatically assigns all lights in a scene to each object in the scene, meaning that all your objects will be dynamically lit by plasma. In order to stop all lights from affecting an object you must set the "Shadeless" button in the material panel of the material settings.

• The plugin now reads the specular color of the material. This defaults to white on new blender materials, meaning your objects will probably appear excessively shiny if they are dynamically lit. You can change the specular color by selecting "Spe" and changing the color sliders.

• It is also worth noting that the plugin has always read the "Amb" slider in the "shaders" panel of the material settings. If you are using vertex colors, this should be set to 1. (it defaults to .5)

• The plugin now reads the "Double sided" button in the Mesh settings. This is on by default, which will make all your materials double sided. Note that while the setting is in the mesh options in blender, it is tied to a material in blender, so if any of your objects share materials (you can check by pressing shift-L and selecting Material, which will select all objects using the same blender material as the currently selected object) you will need to make sure this mesh setting is the same for all of them.

• You can now assign multiple materials to a single object mesh. To do this you must use the Material controls in the "link and materials" panel of the mesh options. (new, select, assign, delete, deselect) "1 Mat 1" refers to the number of materials on the mesh, where the currently active material is 1 out of a total of 1 materials.

Collision (Physics) Changes

• All objects now use the "Bounds" options in the logic settings to set collision, rather than the col_type property. The conversion wizard will not write this property, so you will have to set it manually. The types available are:

1. Box (equivalent of col_type 1)
2. Sphere (equivalent of col_type 2)
3. Cylinder
4. Cone
5. Convex Hull PolyType (equivalent of col_type 3)
6. Static TriangleMesh (equivalent of col_type 4)

Static TriangleMesh is the equivalent of col_type 4. To help in resetting your collision properties, a wizard has been added to mass set the Static TriangleMesh bounds option. Scripts > Wizards > PyPRP Wizards > Assign Default Bounds to Selected Objects will set the bound type for all of the currently selected objects.

Region (Logic) Changes

• Footstep regions now use the "surface" string property to set the sound rather than the "footstepsound" integer property. The surface strings and their equivalent integer values can be found here (the names are the strings)

• Camera regions now require an alcscript to function. An example script:

IndoorAvCamRgn: <camera region name> region: type: camera camera: messages: - newcam: IndoorAvCam <reference to camera object>

IndoorAvCam: <camera object name> camera: brain: type: avatar <Camera type goes here (fixed, circle, avatar)> xpanlimit: 0.8 zpanlimit: 0.8 poa: 0,0,6 <This is the Point on Avatar> offset: 0,6,6 <For avatar cameras only, location relative to avatar feet> flags: - followlocalavatar - maintainLOS circleflags: <only neccesary for circle cameras> - farthest

• Climbing regions now require an alcscript to function, and the "easy" climbable regions are not recognized. Follow the tutorial here to place climbing regions but use this alcscript to set their properties.

InsideLadderTop: <name of top ladder region> type: region region: type: ladder ladder: direction: down style: twofeet loops: 13 <climbing height, as calculated>

InsideLadderBottom: type: region region: type: ladder ladder: direction: up style: twofeet loops: 13