Invisible Walls

[Wynna]

Mick and I have both noted that it seems that whenever one mouses over a usable object on the other side of a placeable wall, the placeable wall vanishes, revealing all objects on the other side of the wall, including nasty creatures waiting to try to kill you. Has anybody found a way to solve this?

[Thangorn]

make them environmental and cut around them with the walkmesh..

also dont stretch the placeable too much in the z direction..

[Wynna]

Thanks, Thangs, but environmental and walkmesh cutter didn't work. Just FYI, I haven't stretched these, I've shortened them. Is it tampering with the Z axis that does this? If so, I can find some other solution. I do notice that it's only the placeable walls that go transparent. Placeable columns in the same "wall" retain their opaqueness when moused over.

I'll keep trying.

[Thangorn]

You are right Wynna..

just checked in on this.. there are some wall pieces and buildings that do not have c2 and c3 collision data for their models in the toolset. Check whether you are using these because I find they seem to be the ones that fade out on me so I dont use them for anything where they need to obscure things.

The ones with proper c2 and c3 data seem to work properly however.

[Wynna]

How would I find out if they have c2 or c3 collision without placing them and testing them in a mod?

Thanks for corroborating!

I've noticed, though, also, that even on the placeable walls/columns that don't actually disappear, mousing over a usable object behind them still pops up the title bar and the usable symbol of that placeable. You can't see the object or the rest of the room behind the wall, but you can mouse over and take a count of what objects are in the room.

[Thangorn]

go to the "collision" drop down menu in the toolbar in the toolset next to the "grid" and the"occlusion grid" buttons. clicking the c2 and c3 buttons will let you see whether the model has been made properly.

otherwise I'm not sure what to do about the object fade.. I havent put many usable things in my mod so I havent experienced the object fade to much except for my high walls. All I did to stop the fade was stack placeables instead of stretching them but there wasnt anything to click on the other side of them..

how very painful. We must be able to do something though.. there's a mod called "endless dungeons" that spawns stuff, including walls in as placeables and it doesnt cause object fade.. hrm

[Mick]

OK...figured out the invisible wall thing. It is a client-side setting, as was suggested I think by Cipher in chat yesterday. Under the General Options menu, in the Miscellaneous Options submenu, there is a setting for "Object Fade." Turning this off fixes the invisible wall problem. However, it does not fix the issue with the popup still appearing when you run your cursor over an object behind the placeable. Additionally, we will need a way to ensure that players can only have this set to off, otherwise, there won't be many surprises to be had.

Additionally, when I start up my mod to test it, I can see everything in the area where my PC is, including behind all closed doors. I think Wynna mentioned something about this yesterday in IRC. Does anyone know how to fix that? Is there a module properties setting or something that controls this?

[Aelred]

I have found the "object fade" useful in very dense forest and definitely any players in Tangled Trees on the elven treehouse platforms will need it turned on otherwise the trees and branches just block your view.

Would it be possible to place a second wall with c2, c3 just to block the view and then somehow set appearance to invisible?

I have a similar problem. As an experiment I am actually building the Abbey of the Sword with the lego placeables...floor by floor. But if you are on the first floor and move the top cam farther away tfrom you (up), the view actually goes thru the ceiling and you see the second floor.
Is it possible to somehow limit the range of the camera in an area? Or make a script forcing players to use certain cameras in certain areas?

[Wynna]

Is it possible to somehow limit the range of the camera in an area? Or make a script forcing players to use certain cameras in certain areas?

It might be possible to make a script that only spawns your placeables when they fall within a floor to ceiling range of your PC's z axis? Maybe? I say this because I've solved my problem with being able to see into placeable built rooms from the top down camera angle by placing a roof. It's actually a rug, fit to the dimensions of the room, tinted to stonish colors and raised to ceiling level. I find, though, that when PCs are inside the room, the roof limits the viewing angle to an unacceptable level, so I have placed a trigger at the doorway that despawns the roof whenever anybody is in the room and respawns it on exit of the last creature.

My next task is scripting around the ability to mouse over a placeable wall and see popups. I've changed my walls to those that have the right collision information and so don't fade, but I still get popups when mousing. The solution I'm about to try is to only spawn the usable placeables upon opening the door to the room, so that before a PC does that, there's nothing inside to mouse over. This requires either: 1) that our spawn waypoints now include the ability to spawn only when a PC is at a certain distance to the waypoint (Yes, please, Cipher or AL?); or 2) that I can create persistent placeables by script. I presume that if I set a local string on the script created placeable that contains the unique ACR_PSO_NAME for that item, it will retain it's persistent inventory from spawn to despawn to respawn?

[Wynna]

This requires either: 1) that our spawn waypoints now include the ability to spawn only when a PC is at a certain distance to the waypoint (Yes, please, Cipher or AL?); or 2) that I can create persistent placeables by script. I presume that if I set a local string on the script created placeable that contains the unique ACR_PSO_NAME for that item, it will retain it's persistent inventory from spawn to despawn to respawn?

And the answer to both seems to be no, after a bit of fiddling. For #1 I can't find any update saying we can set distance as a spawn flag. For #2, I've tried setting both local and persistent strings named ACR_PSO_NAME on my containers with a script but their contents don't reappear inside the container at reset. So how can I make a container persistent via CreateObject and associated script instead of placing it?