THIS GUIDE IS FOR VERSION 3 VERSION 3.5 MAY HAVE FIXED SOME OF THESE PROBLEMS
I thought i would put together a quick guide to making maps and include some of the things that have annoyed me for hours trying to figure out.
(if any information is incorrect I'm sure someone will let me know)
IMAGESGeneral Design
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First thing is level size.
I had problems where if fluids were created too far away for world 0,0,0 it would just crash to desktop this includes saliva.(inside the box works outside just crashes)
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so keep your maps small and center them on the world 0.
Next problem was when using fluids i would lose a lot of performance this is because the longer the fluids are in the scene and moving the more performance you lose.
This was due to fluids not being deleted when they hit the floor but instead they get deleted when they hit the void or the lowest object in the scene.
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The fluids get deleted at the bottom of the stands not the floor.
Objects flickering i thought it was my models doing that because i had some interacting geometry but after cleaning them up it sill would flicker
so i moved the bottom of the walls up above the ground object by 0.002 and it stops flickering so any large object (all my walls are 1 object) flickers when interacting with the ground.
Smaller objects don't seam to care.
Names matter as i found out.
I'm using 3ds max to make the objects i use because i know how to use it a lot better then maya.
But when i imported the objects the names became Object:Object and when exporting this breaks so always rename your objects to not have : in the middle.
Now these objects wont crash for you but will when compressing or copying.
PCylinder1 is good
Flikertestgood:Way is bad and will break on copying
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names.jpg [ 3.57 KiB | Viewed 16053 times ]
Lighting and shadows
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xpadmin wrote:
Version 4 will have easier lighting, but for now a lot need to be defined in the scene.ini file for good lighting.
But for now
To enable shadows disable them in maya
To enable ambient shadow (occlusion), disable the motion blur in Maya.

Code:
lightI "mainDiffuseLight"
{
intensity = 0.5;
intensity2 = 0.6
color = (255,255,250,255);
default = true; <--- can only have one default light (means castes shadows also does not work well on point lights)
cast_shadow = true;
shadow_dyn = true;
shadow_buffer_width = 4096; <--- i upped it to 4096 and it makes shadows nice and smooth
shadow_buffer_height = 4096;
group = 0; <--- ?
}
Doors
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Doors are really simple just add this code to your scene ini and make sure your object's pivot point is where you want the door to rotate around
(and not off in the distance like mine was

)
Code:
rb "door4Shape"
{
link
{
type = REVOL; // Revolving door
axis0 = Y; // Revolving axis
axis1 = Z; // Opposite axis
Fc = 0.5; // Friction
kd = 0.5; // Damping
Ks = 0.7; // Spring (so it closes)
Ls = 0.0; // Spring angle
}
render {}
physics
{
elem[0]
{
mesh = "doorCol4Shape"; // The collider mesh (can be same as door mesh if it is cube object)
}
}
interact {} // Can open door by hand
}
If you want more control on over the door
Then inside of the scene.dat
Code:
door_objecti DOOR1
{
q = -0; <---- how open it is
q_min = -100; <----- max open in one direction
q_max = 0;<----- max open in other direction
q_spring = 1.33;
open = true; <---- locked or unlocked
obj_name = "Door4";
}
This guide is brought to you by many hours of staring at the screen wondering why things arnt working
I'm sure i will find more stuff and updates might fix some of these but for now i hope this helps.