Windcatcher
05-14-2006, 05:43 AM
I was going to hold off on this but I realized that when I uploaded the new Veldona that this would be required, as the new Veldona uses some of the new mesh objects. Here's what's new:
1. Added buttons on the bottom toolbar that resize the selected object(s) up or down by 10%. Also added menu items to do the same thing under the Edit... menu.
2. Added several objects to the mesh library.
3. Added a bridge script under the Buildings category. It is highly versatile and can make bridges that arc either up or down based on the Size.Z parameter (positive values make it arc up and negative values make it arc down). Different parts of the bridge can be turned on or off, and if everything is turned off except for the bottom of the road deck it can also be used as an arch.
4. Allowed single objects to be grouped (that is, you can select only one object and OpenZone will let you put it into its own group). The reason is that the Rotate parameters by themselves don't allow all possible rotations, but grouping objects lets rotations be stacked. In this way you can rotate objects exactly as you wish.
5. Made some extensive internal changes to the way texture coordinates are handled which should improve compatibility with textures that aren't 256x256 pixels.
6. When inserting objects from the mesh library into your zone, any such objects can now be placed DIRECTLY into the zone geometry at export time rather than exist only as references. Normally you wouldn't want to do this since each object would exist as its own individual copy (so if you did this to 100 trees there would be 100 individual copies of trees placed into your zone). However, the client has limits on how many polygons a placeable object can have (about 1500 polygons). With this option you can get around the limitation by inserting the object directly into the zone geometry instead. This means that mesh library objects can have any level of complexity as long as they are directly inserted. The option shows up in the properties pane next to the Gravity option.
7. Added a menu option under the Object menu that will flip the insert option described above for all selected mesh objects (if it's True it sets it to False, and vice versa).
8. Made some massive speed improvements to ground editing (and it might affect water editing as well). If you have a zone that only has a few placeable objects you might not notice, but if you have something that has thousands (my new zone has 2500 trees in it) then the improvement is huge. What took hours to rumple the whole zone now takes seconds, for instance.
A lot of these changes were necessary for the new zone I'm building. It's called Lelembeth and is reachable from the heretofore unused eastern zone exit in Peshara Highlands. It will sort of be a super-gfay tree city and I also want to add a small dungeon in one corner. If I can I'll try to get a screenshot up but no guarantees...
OpenZone 6.9 is available here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=88515&package_id=128908&release_id=416768
It requires texpack5.zip, which is available here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=88515&package_id=128908&release_id=276191
The new Veldona zone (actually all the zones I've uploaded to date) is here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=88515&package_id=128908&release_id=333409
1. Added buttons on the bottom toolbar that resize the selected object(s) up or down by 10%. Also added menu items to do the same thing under the Edit... menu.
2. Added several objects to the mesh library.
3. Added a bridge script under the Buildings category. It is highly versatile and can make bridges that arc either up or down based on the Size.Z parameter (positive values make it arc up and negative values make it arc down). Different parts of the bridge can be turned on or off, and if everything is turned off except for the bottom of the road deck it can also be used as an arch.
4. Allowed single objects to be grouped (that is, you can select only one object and OpenZone will let you put it into its own group). The reason is that the Rotate parameters by themselves don't allow all possible rotations, but grouping objects lets rotations be stacked. In this way you can rotate objects exactly as you wish.
5. Made some extensive internal changes to the way texture coordinates are handled which should improve compatibility with textures that aren't 256x256 pixels.
6. When inserting objects from the mesh library into your zone, any such objects can now be placed DIRECTLY into the zone geometry at export time rather than exist only as references. Normally you wouldn't want to do this since each object would exist as its own individual copy (so if you did this to 100 trees there would be 100 individual copies of trees placed into your zone). However, the client has limits on how many polygons a placeable object can have (about 1500 polygons). With this option you can get around the limitation by inserting the object directly into the zone geometry instead. This means that mesh library objects can have any level of complexity as long as they are directly inserted. The option shows up in the properties pane next to the Gravity option.
7. Added a menu option under the Object menu that will flip the insert option described above for all selected mesh objects (if it's True it sets it to False, and vice versa).
8. Made some massive speed improvements to ground editing (and it might affect water editing as well). If you have a zone that only has a few placeable objects you might not notice, but if you have something that has thousands (my new zone has 2500 trees in it) then the improvement is huge. What took hours to rumple the whole zone now takes seconds, for instance.
A lot of these changes were necessary for the new zone I'm building. It's called Lelembeth and is reachable from the heretofore unused eastern zone exit in Peshara Highlands. It will sort of be a super-gfay tree city and I also want to add a small dungeon in one corner. If I can I'll try to get a screenshot up but no guarantees...
OpenZone 6.9 is available here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=88515&package_id=128908&release_id=416768
It requires texpack5.zip, which is available here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=88515&package_id=128908&release_id=276191
The new Veldona zone (actually all the zones I've uploaded to date) is here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=88515&package_id=128908&release_id=333409