OpenZone 4.2

[Windcatcher]

There was yet another bug in the 3DS import code and this version has a fix (OpenZone shouldn't ignore object transformation matrices). Hopefully this will get you zone builders really going now...

WC

Here is a quick link to it:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/e...2.zip?download

[Windcatcher]

Well there were some problems with this version so I whacked it and re-uploaded a fixed one. It should be good as of midnight EST.

WC

[KhaN]

Windcatcher, the zones im designing advanced very well, nothing compared to the crappy castle you seen last time. There are a few things i would like to add to my zones, but i cant find how to do / add it.
- Animated Objects : OZ handle animated objects ? If yes, how to add them ? I can easily make an animated object using bones, but object isnt animated when i log into my zone ...
- Animated Textures : To have surface of the water moving, or for torchs
- Object Transparency : Like for crystals, ice, glass ...
- Non cubic ground mesh : When i make a basic ground mesh, for example, for "West Common", i make it non cubic (luclin zone like), but everytime i will load into OZ, i will have it cubic ... this is quite embarrassing ...
If i look at some eqlive objects, on objects like torchs, i can see "light" effect added to them, it would be cool to have those kind of effect available.

I know OZ isnt very advanced "for the moment", so far, my zones starts to look fine and in the line of new world zones (Post Velious), but zones look like "fixed in time", because nothing is animated, nothing is moving, well NPC are moving, but for me, moving NPC dont make a zone live, i know it wiork this way on EQ, but why not making better ? :p

It will also be cool to have you pop on IRC when you will have some time, i have others questions/suggestions that would take too many posts~

Thanks

[Shadow-Wolf]

uhh kahn animated textures and transparency are handled in the object properties....

[Windcatcher]

OpenZone supports animated textures and object transparency, but I don't know if the .3DS format does. In OpenZone .SCN and .MSH files you specify an animated texture by having multiple textures separated by semicolons:

water1;water2;water3;water4

with NO spaces between them.

There are other settings for transparency and semitransparency but as far as I know you can't affect the transparency level in the client. If the .3DS format does support these things, I'd appreciate it if you could post a .3DS with them in there so I could figure out how to import them.

OpenZone doesn't support animated objects, though I know how to create at least one kind of animated object in .WLD files (there are at least two different kinds of animated objects in .WLD files). Once again, if you can export something that's animated then I could start to add support for it, though that would take longer since OpenZone doesn't support animated objects at all right now.

OpenZone doesn't support non-cubic ground meshes. This is because it's the only easy way to allow ground editing with the tools OpenZone has. You can always import your ground mesh as a non-ground mesh, though it means that OpenZone won't know where the ground is and therefore object gravity won't work. I've been toying with the idea of trying to get gravity working regardless but I haven't figured out how yet.

WC

[KhaN]

After you gone sleep WC, i updated Astral Plane, all is working fine.
- Animated Textures : Since 3DS format dont support it, i exported Astral Plane pond into MSH, played a bit with notepad, and i succeded in having water animated, i dont know if there is a number limit like we spoke about yesterday (And i think there is not limit), but actually, water in pond is animated with 25 textures and working fine.
- Object Tranparency : I changed all the crystals in Astral Plane to have them transparents, so far, it look really great. For the people that are trying to build zone and want to make transparent objects, not that your object opacity will need to be between 25 and 75, by default, when importing object into OpenZone, it will setup it to semi transparent.
- Non Cubic Ground Mesh : Aye, Citadel look awesome~ I got nice rounds hills now, in the luclin zone spirit, but way less laggy lol.

Also since 3DS file format support Lights, i was wondering if it would be possible to import them into OpenZone.
I will get more info about what can be done with 3DS file format, i dont know it well, but im sure a lot more thing can be added to improve OpenZone.

EDIT (07.24.04) : As i import my mesh with "import 3DS" im not able to add ambiance sounds in the zone, and it look like to be a problem Dungeon Builder too, as you import with "import 3DS", it would be nice to be able to add ambiance sounds without having to import with "import as a rground mesh".

[Shadow-Wolf]

hmmmm khan, mind putting pics up of your astral plane?

[KhaN]

http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16211
Zone is downloadable on EQA Forums, i will update it during the week-end (with transparent object and new features i added).