Micro Blog(s) - July 2015 to March 2016

No coffee pics means no work clicks

Working on fixing some of the issues you guys found. Some textures are not properly assigned so the concrete now looks green to me.

 

Hello community,
here's a small post that is going to give quick peek at two new features (along others) coming in the next update: Offset and Global Wheels.

Offset is a feature that allows a slot to be offset from its original location by a defined value(s).

Let's make an example: Small Flatbed Trailer


If we had to adapt this part to be used with the Gavril H-Seriers for example, we would have proceeded in this way:

• Copy all the .jbeam files of this trailer to the H-series folder.
• Edit all the nodes to be placed in the correct position.

This would have been slightly time consuming. Not to mention the unecessary KBs added just to make a copy of this trailer.

With the offset feature instead, this operation becomes easier.
All we have to do is place 'parts' that can be shared with other vehicles in our 'common' folder.
Then we simply add a slot to the vehicle we want to add that part to:

Code:

    "slots": [
        ["type", "default", "description"]
        ["trailer_small","","Small Trailer", {"nodeOffset":{"x":0.0, "y":0.615, "z":0.0}}],
    ],

That's it. Our vehicle is now equipped with a Small Flatbed Trailer too!

But.. how does it connect to the van?
Official vehicles follows quite a pattern in node naming.
The towhitch nodes in both D15 and H-Series for example are named in the same way.
So as far there are beams that connect the trailer to the towhitch nodes in the 'trailer' .jbeam, the whole thing will work as it should. Sweet, isn't it?

Now let's talk about Global Wheels.
This actually comprehends two changes:

• Tires and Rims can now be choosen separately.
• We made them use the offset feature.

That means that Tires and Rims are now shared between vehicles.
You can now choose all those wheels and rims that would be 'mount-able' on your car.


Apart from consistently increasing the customization options, this change also allows for much easier wheel management. Previously, if we had to fine tune a specific wheel, we would have to copy the changes to all the vehicles using the same wheel, while now all we have to do is change the 'source' file of the wheels to get that done.

This is the end of this small peek to these new features. You will see what else our next update has to offer soon

 

We are working to improve the reliability of collisions, and one way I have found to do that is to add inter-part collision triangles, to close up exposed edges. This really reduces the chance of "hooking" where nodes get around the edge of a triangle, as apposed to clipping through it. So far, I have been able to apply it to doors. When the door hinge and latch beams break, it triggers the inter part coltris to break too!