General modding chat

[shadow iris]

seems like the game doesn't actually use the gyro power value that modding can access apart from setting it when the slider is changed

no, BAD dyno!!

if block.GetName() == "PFB_GyroActuator [Server]" or block.GetName() == "PFB_GyroStabilizer [Server]" then
    if block.GetGyroPower() ~= power then
        block.SetGyroPower(power)
        tm.playerUI.AddSubtleMessageForPlayer(0, "Bugs!!! I hate them!!", "Set gyro power to 0.1", 0.25)
    end
end

if power = 1, this works just fine
if power = 0.1, this constantly triggers (the set value does not match the value thats its getting compared to)

[shadow iris]

why are block colors saved with RGBA despite only taking RGB?

and no, the glass block skin does not use the alpha channel either

[shadow iris]

this is the best optimization to ever and you disprove me

[scenic echo]

Wow, you are finding more bugs than the amount that i thought there was in the modding api

[shadow iris]

that was known for a little while but not reported

[scenic echo]

yeah, but i'm surprised, in general, how many bugs the modding api has

[shadow iris]

just wait till you see the structure source code

[scenic echo]

wait what source code?

[shadow iris]

the code of the game itself for structures

[scenic echo]

x_x

[shadow iris]

Frans told me the other day that he thinks new stuff for controlling structures is cool but the code is such a trainwreck it wouldn't fit in the time with each update

that might includes structure relatedbl bugs idk

[scenic echo]

x_X

[shadow iris]

x_X

[scenic echo]

that's something you never want to hear from a dev

[shadow iris]

well I did so now what

[scenic echo]

pain and suffering

[shadow iris]

screams in https://discord.com/channels/296562030624899072/1376631923983515860 and https://discord.com/channels/296562030624899072/1376630966403072071

my post about engine/jet/prop power being of a strange or high value got deleted

but I was told to report even the NaN and math.huge bugs

[formal crane]

okey wow completely extrapolate what i wrote

Doing anything with structures through modding is currently pretty hard as it depends on a lot of systems. The structure code itself is great.
Just really hard to expose it to modding as there are SO many corner cases in the game.

[shadow iris]

point is, modifying structures with the api and adding to the api is a pain

[paper bone]

Frans whats the Linux to Windows ratio like in the office?

[formal crane]

Answered in #off-topic message

[radiant lion]

Too bad c# has no eval function, else you could have just given us access to that :p
I'm sure nothing bad was gonna happen

[formal crane]

2 mins speedrun into servers sharing malware

[warm canopy]

Approved modders, have to sign some sort of agreement and you get access to more modding stuff

[formal crane]

1. everything would have to be checked, otherwise we just have Windows driver situation
2. checking other peoples code sounds like a lot of work...

[radiant lion]

Modding should have it's own dlcs, the more you pay the more functions you have access to

Jokes apart stuff like eval is annoying to work with, a good implementation and type conversion between c# and Lua like the current api is the best... But of course slower to add stuff to

[near parcel]

c# is (partially) compiled, so that would be impossible

[shadow iris]

The structure code itself is great.
not to put down anyone specifically but i'd say randomly teleporting to a random position or player on the map and seemingly flying into the air temporarily while repairing isnt exactly "great"

[shadow iris]

sometimes repairing also just doesnt do anything... i suppose this is not really a https://discord.com/channels/296562030624899072/1140936220487192587 thing anymore is it

saving this for UI reference later
checkpoint,subtlemessage

[shadow iris]

my dumbass never posted it :/

[scenic echo]

@shadow iris weren't you working on a campaign?

[shadow iris]

which one lol
trailcargo or unnamed off-road challenges

unnamed was just a concept

trailcargo had its devs suddenly disappear

raftmakers wasnt really a campaign but noiro got banned and then stopped playing trailmakers all together so

@scenic echo this guy knows whats up

[scenic echo]

x_x, hate when that happens

[shadow iris]

funny part is I might be able to code it myself now. but I decided that another fetch quests campaign is BORING and not worth the map & code time

[scenic echo]

pioneers really set a new standard when it comes to campaigns

[shadow iris]

hot take: fuck pioneers

it's just another boring fetch quest campaign with cookie cutter "oh no space pirates invaded!!"

the only thing it brings is a fundamentally different art style that doesn't feel like trailmakers, more generic "shoot enemy, bring box, fetch NPCs" gameplay

the only credit I give it is prettier sky and water. but the water doesn't even get 3d waves

give me something interesting, like designing vehicles to overcome fundamentals environmental hazards. Like HIGH SEAS WIND, STRANDED LAVA

RALLY RACE OPTIMIZATIONS

but pioneers is just to go faster to do the same fetch quests and shoot basic ai enemies. it's froggit grocery shopping simulator. grocery shopping isn't fun.

[scenic echo]

wow, that is a burning hot take

[shadow iris]

melting

and dude, if the rest of the game is cool, like... I lost interest at the second settlement. you really gotta make players invested in the game besides "it's trailmakers" and "there's planes"

starting off a flagship work with 'bring a bunch of boxes and shoot an enemy or two for an hour" is NOT gonna make me invested

[scenic echo]

i should really finish high seas, just played a bit, and then pioneers came out and i played a ton

[shadow iris]

and pioneers is the standard now?

[shadow iris]

this is just introducing players by telling them to do the dishes and run laundry

[scenic echo]

well it did change how blocks are unlocked in a good way, imo getting them from levels and boss fights is pretty good, also resource gathering is definitely a spicy decision

[shadow iris]

resource gathering is OK but it feels a little like another chore to pad out the runtime.

[scenic echo]

i like the grind of getting resources but that's not everyone

[shadow iris]

blocks unlocking in # to use is cool though

boss fight doesn't sound like trailmakers. the biggest boss I'm letting them add is the mf stranded volcano

that is the real final boss of trailmakers

that shit is legitimately difficult and it doesn't need you to be shot and space pirates invading

it's a big pain in the ass, but it proves that you vs the world is plenty

I always say that dragon lake is amazing, cause it's such a simple looking puzzle but it's deeper on the inside and has so many goofy ways to go about it. and you aren't told what to do. it's just you and your imagination to solve a well taught and well understood assignment

[scenic echo]

is dragon lake a high seas thing or a different game?

[shadow iris]

stranded, it's where you get the dragon engine iirc

in the middle of the mud area

[scenic echo]

my memory of stranded is so cooked, i should really replay stranded

[shadow iris]

why are people forgetting stranded nowadays 😭 😭 😭

that shit is peak

it's primitive but that's the soul of trailmakers: primitively putting shit together with your own mind and making it work

and going back to pioneers art style... it doesn't feel like trailmakers

[scenic echo]

i remember trying to use a plane to get some of the really big salvage, and i did get a few but it was really hard

[shadow iris]

I want more "classic" theme maps. it's such trailmakers soul to me and it needs its soul back

I swear I'd even take another rally campaign. tm excels at rally racing ngl

and the classic art style is beautiful for that

everything I just said boils down to "back in my day shit was good"

🧓

[scenic echo]

old man rainlesssky

[shadow iris]

old man yells at clouds

anyway so I kinda suddenly figured out how to replicate classic TM map style

all I need to do is get proper things like ramps and terrain

and I'll become classic flashbulb fr

[scenic echo]

yup, classic flashbulb guy

[shadow iris]

I should rename myself to Mr. Flashbulb after I release ti update

[scenic echo]

yes

[dapper jay]

fundamentally different art style that doesn't feel like trailmakers
oh wow someone noticed the weird art style

I really dont know what the art team at flashbulb is doing but its not good
Basically every new part in pioneers is so plain, all of the models are really simple and the only texture detail is some grime that they overlaid on it

these side panel things dont even make contact with the body

[shadow iris]

I should compare the triangle count of old weapons to pioneers ones

[shadow iris]

"automatic" pixel format on a grayscale 256x256 texture: 2.23kb
8bpc-graya pixel format on a grayscale 256x256 texture: 1.77kb

using gimp 3.0.4

so if you're doing stuff like subtle messages, if the icon is grayscale, USE GRAY SCALE FORMAT

it saves a solid amount of filesize and thus import time

[shadow iris]

smart cannon (the old one) is 4139 total vertices
smg (pioneers) is 4455 total vertices. BUT like half of these vertices are only for the muzzle, the cylinder part in the middle

if you exclude the absurdly complex muzzle, it's only 2241 total vertices

[near bramble]

Where is file name location?

[cinder spruce]

?

[shadow iris]

frans what did you do to #1123915629653667943

[shadow iris]

complex custom model bug is actually 32767 TRIANGLE limit

https://discord.com/channels/296562030624899072/1379254345375420496

[lean bronze]

hello does anybody know if a mod exists where the 'laser' of the distance sensor is visualized?

[regal bear]

New version of TCP uploaded to the Workshop with some cool new features. Details:
#1242291936715608205 message

[near parcel]

no, and if you wanted to make one it would have to be fairly manual (you can't read the settings of sensors from a mod, so you would have to have your own UI to set the values again)

[cinder spruce]

can’t*
typo

[crisp oak]

how would i get the data from a UIText object?

as in when the player inputs something into the field. how would i get that value out of the textlabel

i've tried using the callback parameter with a function but i can't get any arguments out

[near parcel]

use the callback function, it receives an UICallbackData as parameter

[crisp oak]

this wouldn't work?

currently it shows an exception in the text field

[near parcel]

because that's the default tostring implementation of UICallbackData

[radiant lion]

Callbackdata holds multiple data inside it, either look at the documentation or the default spawn mod

[crisp oak]

what would the data methods be

[near parcel]

https://github.com/ALVAROPING1/Trailmakers-API-LuaLS/blob/master/library/tm-api.lua#L1083-L1100

[radiant lion]

It should be .value, but again, documentation is for sure correct

[crisp oak]

ah i see

that explains alot

thanks

[crisp oak]

well atleast i know it works

thanks again for the help btw

[paper bone]

is there any way to bind mouse wheel up / down to the input of a block?

[regal bear]

Not within the mod API as far as I'm aware. I don't think we can interact with logic/functional blocks anyway.

[paper bone]

i know it was possible to get Mouse Inputs via Controller before they were added officially, is there a way that i could get mouse wheel up/down bound as input in this way?
i want to use it to switch tools in my map editor

[shadow iris]

how would i somewhat quickly get a block's speed
ideally without storing data for almost every single block currently in the world

wtf did i do

[scenic echo]

Looks like it has a motion capture suit

[polar harbor]

can anyone give me some info on how exactly to add/use custom 3d models for modded maps?

[regal bear]

For Trailmappers put your OBJ models and PNG textures into your "...Documents\Trailmappers\Custom Models" folder. Then you can access them in Trailmappers. Drag an object into the scene then drag a texture onto that object.

[polar harbor]

Sweet ty, also where can I download trail edit

[paper bone]

On the workshop

[polar harbor]

after clicking on the custom models it just breaks?..

[paper bone]

Im not sure whats causing that, i had the same issue with 3d models i generated myself with my own mod. It might be that Trailmappers needs Models that draw every triangle from both sides but idk

[polar harbor]

how can i solve this texture issue

[polar harbor]

this is how it looks through gaea 2.... and this is blender

[formal crane]

Maybe ask in #1226065444364877835 instead

[serene magnet]

I haven't fully used Gaea2 but you could try importing it into blender and unwrapping the UV maps. I'm not fully sure though

[polar harbor]

from gaea 2 it is simply an obj file and png, so im not sure why anything is different from these videos and tuts

[shadow iris]

one sided stuff works for me

[shadow iris]

its basic but still a start

[warm canopy]

Work in progress, making a recording tool using custom camera

[shadow iris]

i thought about making a mod thats kinda like the chase camera from beamng. if you don't know what that is, its kinda like bystander/drone camera that doesnt move but teleports after a certain distance from the player. it does fov changes too

maybe could do that but a bit more intense and potentially actually chase the player for trailmakers

[hard shore]

Has anyone been able to connect a g29 to trailmakers on pc?

[cinder spruce]

you don't need any mods to connect some devices to TM,
you can always try out steam input to hook up some devices to your games. I got it to work on one of my hotas setups

[hard shore]

Oh nice alright

[radiant lion]

Yeah steam input is great for this kind of stuff

[shadow iris]

yet another valve coolio

[shadow iris]

once more i fight with the modding api to make AddCamera actually work

once more i fight with my own stupidity

[cinder spruce]

@forest oracle in game road generation

[spare river]

OHHH YEAH

he's making functional train tracks

[paper bone]

lmao no im not

roads, you drive on them with a car

[spare river]

Bruh

I want rails tho brother

[paper bone]

someday

[spare river]

You have to make functional highspeed rails in TM before GTA 6 man

@paper bone

[paper bone]

ok i have it on my list

[paper bone]

if only we could load meshes from the data_dynamic folder in Workshop mods😭

[warm canopy]

Are you sure you cant but with my cinematic maker I think the workshop version is working and that reads/writes to the dynamic folder

Here is my old road generator, this is far as I got

[paper bone]

reading and writing is not an issue

its loading assets that is problematic
like AddMesh or AddTexture

[warm canopy]

ah

[shadow iris]

how would one smoothly rotate an object while the mod is running at 60fps or even 30 fps

YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE PAUSED

[cinder spruce]

"oh crap i forgot"

[shadow iris]

lets see if SetTexture() works

i dont think it does ngl

oh

i doont thni k i work

i think explosion_micro is dealing damage which im pretty sure this is the one that powercore explosions use

enough to take a dragon engine from 100% to smoking

[shadow iris]

LOD created gap

added powercore collectible type and rotation when nearby

rotation isnt smooth but it works

[serene magnet]

I can send you my function I use to do smooth rotation

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1294998405054988288/1339562286301446194/GifCapture-202502130641322146.gif

[dapper jay]

can they not load stuff from those places..?

[paper bone]

For workshop mods no they cant, because in the AddMesh or AddTexture you need to give it a path that is starting at the mods root folder and since the data_dynamic folder is somewhere completely different it doesnt work

[dapper jay]

https://tenor.com/view/when-your-son-is-a-geek-kam-edwards-banging-head-gif-10845145880130905144

when nothing in your api works correctly

[paper bone]

I dont even understand why the data_dynamic folder needs to be in such a weird place to beginn with

[near parcel]

Except the issue here is being able to load aasets from the data dynamic folder in the first place. Being able to do so is a hack, not something intended. When you rely on hacks, you should expect them to break

[near parcel]

Because it is player data and thus it must be within a user folder unique to each one

[paper bone]

Ah ok

[regal bear]

My animated StartLights box is working 🙂

[cinder spruce]

I believe the original torpedo prefab might've been modified in 2.1
can someone check if its working fine on maps that had it included?

[formal crane]

Yes this was actually known on the test branch. JESS reported it. We just never had enough resources to get it solved.

With that said; we are looking into new ways to set up prefabs for modding in order to reduce this type of issue.

[cinder spruce]

Alright then :)

[radiant lion]

Do note mines are also broken

I haven't checked since I reported it, but it could range from just not spawning from crashing the game

[paper bone]

is the spawnStructure function broken?

[warm canopy]

Nope

[paper bone]

i guess im just too dumb to use it then

[warm canopy]

Why whats happening?

[dapper jay]

no fun allowed 😔

[paper bone]

i have a function to initialize all blueprints:

local function init_blueprints()
    local carList = {}
    carList = json.parse(tm.os.ReadAllText_Static("cars.json"))

    for i, carName in ipairs(carList) do
        local carPath = "assets/cars/" .. carName .. ".png"
        tm.physics.AddTexture(carPath, carName)
        table.insert(blueprints, carName)
        tm.os.Log("Loaded blueprint: " .. carName)
    end
end

and i try to spawn said blueprint

local function main()
    init_blueprints()
    init_roads()

    tm.players.SpawnStructure(1, blueprints[1], "test", tm.vector3.Create(0, 300, 0), tm.vector3.Create(1, 0, 0))


end
main()

my cars.json:

["basicPlatform"]

[dapper jay]

arent players indexed from 0?

the playerid youre using is 1

[paper bone]

omg your right

its confusing when lua always starts indexing at 1

[warm canopy]

What are you going to use for steering?

[paper bone]

hinges at or close to 0 strength and ill just turn the wheels

[dapper jay]

can you activate the engines somehow? or will you just apply a forwards force? lol

[warm canopy]

I guess the engine could always be active

[paper bone]

i have 2 engines, both powerd by an always on sensor. One is receiving a negative input the other a positive. by changing how much engine power each of the two engine has i can basically controll it like a normal car

since EnginePower cant go below 0

[dapper jay]

oh cool

i assume you distinguish between the two engines by colour?

[paper bone]

yeah, atleast that is the plan, i havent actually controlled a car yet

[warm canopy]

For ground vehicles torque works ok but the moment you want an plane its a whole different thing

[dapper jay]

would be cool if we could use logic gates with no inputs to control stuff on creations

maybe the no inputs part isnt required but idk

[paper bone]

    local structure = tm.players.GetSpawnedStructureById(structureId)[1]
    local blocks = structure.GetBlocks()
    tm.os.Log("Structure ID: " .. structureId .. " has " .. #blocks .. " blocks.")

NO IT DOES NOT HAVE 32 BLOCKS
man what am i doing wrong now?

[warm canopy]

Doesnt look like its wrong

[dapper jay]

damn

[radiant lion]

Counting twice?

[paper bone]

Yeah each block is listed twice

The list repeats itself

[scenic echo]

Looks very nice

[paper bone]

turns out spawning blueprints is really buggy as soon as the player does anything with his own blueprints

if the player enters buildmode, each structure that gets spawned, no matter the position gets put into this buildmode at the origin. -> complexity stacks, blocks overlap
if the player Repairs his structure it is likely that atleast one of the structures spawned by the mod get also triggerd and get teleported to the players position and the player gets enterd into 2 seats at once -> game freezes

[scenic echo]

Report it in https://discord.com/channels/296562030624899072/1123915629653667943 and also link the thread in https://discord.com/channels/296562030624899072/1374687311538814986 so Frans can take note of it

[paper bone]

why are modded server hidden by default?

[formal crane]

Will be changed next hotfix. Not an answer to your question, but it will invalidate it :p

[turbid creek]

Anyone know of a way to set enable mods on test zone AND set it to deathmatch?

[shadow iris]

deathmatch is probably not customizable with mods. havent checked though

it really should be 😉

[turbid creek]

I don't want to customize it. I just want to run a custom race track with it on.

[shadow iris]

as in being able to interact with deathmatch

like you cant do anything to deathmatch with mods

that includes converting a server to deathmatch

[turbid creek]

I just meant load a custom mesh and track while in the great carrier map, or change test zone to that game mode. Either would work.

[scenic echo]

pretty sure mods can't be enabled when deathmatch is on

[radiant lion]

Deathmatch is not dethrone right?

[scenic echo]

no, it's the new game mode in 2.1

[radiant lion]

Than I got no clue... But judging from the track record I doubt you can have any direct interaction

[warm canopy]

Mods cannot be used with the deathmatch game mode currently

[cinder spruce]

yeah :(

[scenic echo]

they should make mods available on campaigns after you've finished them, it would be fun to make campaign specific mods

[shadow iris]

once again. you cannot convert a server to Deathmatch. what part of that do you not understand?

[shadow iris]

but what if I wanna fully play stranded in space with a map upgrade mod

[wispy crescent]

How would one go about making a trigger box, is that even possible through the api?

[shadow iris]

?

i see modding got renamed to modding-forum

and i think the old modding text channel got renamed to modding-archive

[wispy crescent]

Yeah that answers that

[scenic echo]

there is this too

--- Registers a function to the collision enter callback of a game object
--- @param targetObject ModGameObject
--- @param functionName string
--- @return function
function tm.physics.RegisterFunctionToCollisionEnterCallback(targetObject, functionName) end

[warm canopy]

Been updating the modding info site, its now more of a modding portal https://mods.trailmakers.ludixi.com Work in progress currently but it has the latest info on functions/audio/spawnables available

[formal crane]

Delicious

[warm canopy]

Getting workshop mods to display on the front page was a whole kettle of fish

[formal crane]

Curious; what was the challenge? You scraping their site or whats up?

[warm canopy]

Scraping the steam workshop correctly because theirs no official method provided by steam to get the data, I really hope steam doesnt change the html layout on that workshop page

[near parcel]

Web development in a nutshell ||to be fair, i was completely zoomed out, by default the box borders fit are at the sides of the screen, although functions still go off screen||

[formal crane]

straight up this joke

[warm canopy]

I blame flashbulb for the long ass function names

[paper bone]

Suggestion: instead of just listing all audio / spawnables ids have a preview of some kind too.
But i dont know how legal it is to rip these assets and sounds from the game

[warm canopy]

That sounds like a heck of alot of work lol,

Spawnables I could probably piggy back the screenshots from the wiki

[scenic echo]

this is awesome

[regal bear]

Wow! Fantastic work

[shadow iris]

guys im popular

row 3 column 1 💪

@warm canopy how is the most popular mods thing on the new site sorted lol

row 1 column 1 has 52 subscribers meanwhile row 1 column 2 has 262 subscribers

[cinder spruce]

its the same thing as steam workshop’s “popularity” filter

im not entirely sure sub count isnt all that goes into the mods popularity. i know unique visitors has a bit more of an impact but idrk exactly

ok it seems “most popular” means most visiting to the page. but it seems like the in game workshop doesn’t count towards that, only actual visits through steam website

[shadow iris]

what is the process for getting a workshop item in the curated category? am i able to submit mods?

do mods that extend official maps count? ;)

a mod i think should be on the curated list is krunch's tcp

maybe just maybe no repair tokens too mayyyyybeee

how do i submit guides?

i dont think the deprecated gravity and color functions should be displayed in the functions page

favoriting bug: only the first item you favorite on the page will be saved to favorites, you must reopen that page to add another favorite

[warm canopy]

So basically the way curated and the mods (general) and maps work is that it’s actually getting them from a workshop collection as it’s impossible otherwise to distinguish, if all types is selected then yeah that’s directly pulled from whatever is current on the workshop.

Im not finished with the site yet (especially the guides/library feature), open to suggestions with what should be in certain categories for mods. It’s easier to just display deprecated, as the way the site works for functions is I just feed it the lua docs.

[paper bone]

@warm canopy little bug report, the circle which im guessing is supposed to be the profile doesnt show up correctly (checked both with brave and firefox)
And the dashboard shows an api Error under My Submissions, probaply since i havent submitted anything yet

[warm canopy]

Yeah the whole login/submission side of things needs work

[scenic echo]

is it normal for raycasts with ignore trigger true to detect custom objects that are set to trigger?

[formal crane]

Might just be an oversight on our part

[scenic echo]

in single player it wasn't working right but hwen i went into multiplayer it worked like you would expect

[formal crane]

gamedev amirite

[shadow iris]

how could people submit mods to be curated?

[warm canopy]

Right now its just a workshop collection that I add peoples mods into

[shadow iris]

i suggest krunch's track creator plus, maptrail, and perhaps replace trailedit with trailedit test branch

im guessing custom missles mod isn't curated due to the current api bugs it has to deal with

[warm canopy]

Yeah I was going to add it but im trying to sort through mods that arent broken

[shadow iris]

that aren't broken? in this current modding api? impossible!

[warm canopy]

Updated the curated should now show

I think alot of the time actual mods get lost in the steam worskhop amongst the maps

[shadow iris]

yeah

the posts on the forum channel here should help with that

hows trailflow been going?

[cinder spruce]

maps workshop tag when

[warm canopy]

Trailflow is stuck in development hell, I refactored the code and as a result I need to "redo" the web editor, its such a huge project

[shadow iris]

buildersclub for mapmaking when

[warm canopy]

The plan is to make more libraries-like code then that gets tied into trailflow, so that things are much more modular

[shadow iris]

🥶

[warm canopy]

Even tried making a trailmappers equivalent but browser-based but no bueno

[shadow iris]

and then the browser explodes with out of memory errors

[warm canopy]

Not really, the issue is doing transform handles in the browser

non-uniform scaling is almost impossible to do right

[shadow iris]

mhm

[warm canopy]

Had working vertex snapping

[shadow iris]

oh my fucking god the missing fallback preview image bug strikes again

frans fix RIGHT NOW ! !

[paper bone]

Yeah i also want my free cam mod to basically work like a library that other mods can build up apon but i fear im not gonna complete that any time soon

[shadow iris]

ok i did the steamcmd bs

[formal crane]

2.1 got us super busy and we haven't had time to goof around... But i intend to bring it up after 2.1.1 😄

[formal crane]

wha

[shadow iris]

like 90% of the time when a mod is uploaded to the workshop the fallback thumbnail isnt uploaded

so it just displays as the gray placeholder on steam and pure white ingame

[formal crane]

ah didn't know!

[shadow iris]

or maybe the fallback thumbnail doesnt get loaded ingame? i dont know

[shadow iris]

weirdly on one session, it was working for all of my mods, even old ones; then i went to & from the blueprints tab and it stopped working

[shadow iris]

this also applies to custom thumbnails

it seems like only i have this issue though?

[shadow iris]

i just realized that im pretty sure the devs dont have a similar tool like cinematic maker because i havent seen any trailer use it

so in theory devs could use community mods to make official trailers

which sounds absolutely incredible

[near parcel]

the devs have the unity editor, which is much more capable

[shadow iris]

link a trailer or some sort where they use the unity editor rather than cinematic camera / free cam

[near parcel]

iirc the spacebound trailer used it, and they already have the functionality of the cinematic maker for pioneers cutscenes if they wanted that anyways

[shadow iris]

spacebound trailer definitely doesnt use the ingame options yeah

[radiant lion]

The simple fact that you can't rotate the camera using mods already destroys this idea in my opinion, it's just so important when doing anything cinematic

[shadow iris]

true

yet another suggestion to the list

[regal bear]

The curated list is a great idea. Maybe you could include guest curator lists? You could ask some of the devs and content creators to make a collection of their favourites to add to the list. You could even have other theme based curated collections (with community help so it doesn't overload you) eg. Battle maps, Race Maps. TM Map Extensions, Editing Tools, Server Tools, Game Modes, etc.

[shadow iris]

TM Map Extensions
hiii 👋👋👋

gamemodes like aerobatic something

or minigolf

[regal bear]

Those sort of curated lists would be so useful for finding good mods

[shadow iris]

tm map extensions like treasure island update

https://tenor.com/view/cat-gato-serio-gato-meme-gato-engraçado-cat-funny-gif-15219126009338517158

[regal bear]

yep

[shadow iris]

why did tm level designer have to leave the mountain so barren

i have to do like 4 entire sides of the mountain 😭

they have the automatic tools, i don't 😭

[regal bear]

To leave you a blank canvas to add your art?

[shadow iris]

its SO boring to place all those rocks manually though

id rather do forests and maybe race tracks

not a flat cliff they didnt feel like spending <20 minutes on

but, treasure island update is gonna fufill its purpose, so...

to fill in blank spaces... that includes blank cliffs sadly

[regal bear]

Ah well. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing it well.

[shadow iris]

well the reactions seem pretty good

i should probably remember the whole list of like 20 people who were eagerly waiting

so i can ping them

[shadow iris]

another gif of salvage clipping through objects!

right after i pressed F6, it jumped back up to here and it is not jittering whatsoever

only happens every few exports... and maybe its just a visual error? cause it seems like the collisions work correctly

IT IS!

it IS just a visual error!

take this with a grain of salt but this was something around 30 seconds until it fixed itself

actually no it still jitters a little bit

[shadow iris]

after counting for more of it, seems like its more around 45 seconds

[regal bear]

weird

Just posted about new custom objects for TCP's next update:
#1242291936715608205 message

[shadow iris]

@warm canopy can you add a "play while game is paused" option to cinematic maker?

[near parcel]

Because being allergic to open spaces is not good design

[near parcel]

In sp time is paused when the game is paused, so mods aren't being run

[warm canopy]

It’s impossible to bypass the games mechanics of pausing

[shadow iris]

I've been able to run logging while the game is paused
+@warm canopy

[near parcel]

you can finish the current update call, but no more calls will be done. It's the same as setting the time speed to 0, unless you have a button/UI text fields to change and trigger code the mod won't run

[shadow iris]

with an update function that only has the trick and one log function it can repeatedly run while the game is paused. actual lines logged while the game is paused

[near parcel]

if you are trying to unpause the game on each frame, just know that repeatedly doing that messes up the physics rendering (which is terrible for a camera for obvious reasons), and even then i doubt setting the camera position will actually update in the client until it unpauses

[shadow iris]

I don't think a camera would work and even if it does, interpolation is weird

[warm canopy]

[shadow iris]

i hope we get a way to use the blue background

also who is tmmodding again?

[shadow iris]

oh interesting, tmmodding hasnt sent anything since spacebound / pre-2.0 times

[formal crane]

Didnt even realise that was a feature!

[shadow iris]

hmm this is the long awaited ui update... rgb/hex code for subtle message background

also i see inconsistent case for the deathmatch settings names?

[paper bone]

and sublte message char limit increase🙏

[shadow iris]

uncap it fr

or make it stupidly high at least

i want doom in subtle message

with color

cant take that much time to do rightttt

[cinder spruce]

all i want is to have sprites be placed on the screen for UI upateq

[shadow iris]

all i want is everything we could ever dream of, and more

[paper bone]

transparent textures would be a dream too :P

[formal crane]

it is capped (as in pre-calculated) for proper network packaging. Otherwise it would be slow as shit (at least on our terms). String are the worst kind of data to send around so we are pretty tight with it and our network budget is already quite strict so hard to make more space for it.

(I am not arguing against increasing it, just explaing why it is there in the first place)

[shadow iris]

idk how itd work with roughness map too

[shadow iris]

ah so thats why things like the replay gif message can be long, because its client-side?

[formal crane]

No clue what you are referring to?

[paper bone]

when it saves and shows the long name of the replay

im guessing

[shadow iris]

after the replay gif recording message goes to "replay gif recorded!" or whatever and ye it shows the full file path

[formal crane]

Ah yes! Yeah that is not transmitted at all.

[shadow iris]

client side mod processing update

[formal crane]

The subtle message is lot restricted by itself. It is the remote procedure call that is constrained.

[formal crane]

Too much architecture change. I dont think it will ever happen and we prefer the security of server being trustful.

[shadow iris]

do you know what font the game uses for headers? johannes ignored me 😭

[shadow iris]

yeah wasn't expecting anything lol

[paper bone]

shouldnt mod ui windows also be insanely heavy then? Is that also why they are so limited in size ?

[formal crane]

No clue, but there are font detectors out there

[shadow iris]

every single time ive used one of them it has only listed paid fonts

[formal crane]

It follows the same constraints as subtle messge actually

[formal crane]

duh, and why wouldnt that be correct lol

[shadow iris]

money 🤑🤑🤑

[shadow iris]

it also applied to the normal font, which is eurostile, which is free

[paper bone]

ah ok cuz i havent experienced a limit except for the cut off because the window is too slim

[formal crane]

The cutoff comes before the char limit i believe.

[near parcel]

iirc it has the same char limit

[shadow iris]

try using formatting or coloring for example

[shadow iris]

wasnt it 64 bytes? and subtle messages are 32

[formal crane]

That might be correct actually 🙂

[shadow iris]

mmmmm can we have double subtle message limit 🥺

[paper bone]

subtle messages with 64 bytes would be awesome

would make it possible to actually spell entire phrases

[near parcel]

subtle messages have 2 strings, so having half the limit for each would make sense

[shadow iris]

ooh and then because of that networking thing you mentioned, do oversized messages crash because of that?

[shadow iris]

true but i want 64 characters 🥺

[near parcel]

you have with header+content

[formal crane]

There is an assertion check there. It is very stupid as we can do a check before the assertion happens and simple write an error in the console instead, and I have fixed that for 2.2

[shadow iris]

but i cant even fit a "press <glyph> to <action>" most of the time

with 32 characters

sounds pretty close but paid wth

[near parcel]

not sure if this is possible from your side, but bubbling it up to the mod might also make sense. If the mod doesn't handle it it ends up in the logs and you get an error message in game, and it allows the mod to handle the error without having to perform the same check by itself (which would be leaking implementation details from the function)

[shadow iris]

this sounds really insane but, maybe have a way to substitute text from a separate file (like translation strings i guess?)

[paper bone]

completely unrelated but does someone remember what makes text align center instead of to the left in Mod UIs?

[shadow iris]

oh its close enough (i got it off a free font website)

[near parcel]

that feels more something that the mod itself should handle, there is nothing language specific in the API

[shadow iris]

well you cant send more than 32 characters so how would you do that in the current api?

[formal crane]

None of our functions "throws" errors in a meaningful way yet. I would wish for that to be more of a thing in the future as it is hard to handle this on the modders side at the moment.

[near parcel]

iirc hiding the UI and opening it again

[near parcel]

you translate it from your side and make sure all translations fit the limit

[paper bone]

lol that is so random
@formal crane add that to the fix list please

[formal crane]

It is on the list of things to fix! 🙂

[shadow iris]

how?

oh

[paper bone]

to always align center i hope right?

[near parcel]

you use format strings and pull the correct one from a table according to the currently specified language

[shadow iris]

well no, my idea was to send the translations file to the players and then send subtle messages with the translation substitute key thing, then on the clients' end it replaces it

[formal crane]

Yes; think it is just some dumb re-enabling issue with imgui. Haven't dug into it yet.

it shouldnt be "always align center" it should just properly serialise and deserialise the state properly. So it can support whatever happens in the future.

[near parcel]

that would likely require completely changing how subtle messages work

[shadow iris]

well, let's hear frans say "probably not" and then we can say its a probable not going to happen

[shadow iris]

frans whats your thoughts on this?

[shadow iris]

seems like putting the full folder path (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Trailmakers\mods\<MOD NAME HERE>) is significantly more reliable than doing mods/<MOD NAME HERE>

[near parcel]

i have never had an issue with mods/mod_name

[shadow iris]

lucky

a lot of the time the preview doesn't upload, and just now all files wont actually get uploaded

but with the full path none of those issues have happened so far

[near parcel]

maybe it's due to you using spaces in the folder name?

[shadow iris]

why would it be inconsistent though when using mods/<name>?

[near parcel]

if you are using spaces in folder names, you are asking for trouble. Unix style paths are likely parsed differently from windows style paths due to the different syntax

[hardy meadow]

Eurostile

[shadow iris]

i ended up finding it but thank you

[shadow iris]

downloaded mod from the workshop: idk what triggers it trying to find lua but, because its a workshop mod the trailmakers/mods/ folder doesnt have the lua so it throws a load mod error

[formal crane]

Bringing this up; what feels like a good way in lua to inform users of errors/exception handling?

I see some examples with functions returning objects in case of succes, otherwise obj can be checked for nil, but we wouldn't know what happened.

Is there some kind of pattern for Lua for exceptions that could make sense here?

Maybe each method has some kind of object+err returned (Golang style).. I would love if we could do this for all api functions actually. Of course that requires a major api change which would practically break everything. But I am just opening up a discussion here.

If anyone have some litterature on this OR other games/projects which uses lua and has some kind of handling of this, then I would love to check it out 🙂

[near parcel]

there are essentially 3 main ways of doing it:

1. Error out with error(message [, level]): throws an error that bubbles up automatically, like exceptions in other languages. It automatically adds a stack trace of the error and where it happened. If level is 0, no location information is added, if it's 1 (default) the location is where error() was called, if it's greater than that the location is the function call on the Nth level of the stack. Not sure how this would be handled from the C# side, but moonsharp probably has an equivalent method you can call to error out (maybe C# exceptions are automatically converted to this? They do appear in the logs, but i haven't checked if they can be handled with pcall)
2. Option monad: return a value of type T|nil. This is usually best for simple cases in which you want to get some data and there is a single obvious error case (such as trying to find a value in a list when the value doesn't exist in it). The callee can check whether the return is nil or not to figure out if there was an error
3. Error monad: return either true, result or false, error_object. This allows the callee to check whether there was an error by checking the first return value, while the second value contains the respective data (error data if there was an error or normal result if there wasn't)

if a function uses the first error method, any callee can wrap the call in pcall(function [, args...]) to convert the return value to the third method automatically. Usually you would use the first method when the call can fail due to implementation details (or programming error), the second method when the function gets some data which might or might not exist, and the third method when the function gets some data, there are multiple possible error causes (such as file read operations, which might for example fail because the file doesn't exist or because you don't have read permissions), and you want those errors to be explicitly part of the API

[shadow iris]

crashed while hosting 8 players with 2 mods enabled (that shouldn't affect much regarding the crash)
mods: Treasure Island Update, Customizable Time Cycle

this is the same crash as #bug-reports message

[shadow iris]

fancy display for secondary color

[summer cairn]

hey is there an app similar to https://discord.com/channels/296562030624899072/1354298556269199370 ? not sure if this is the right channel to ask in

[shadow iris]

now it shows both primary and secondary!

now the name is bold and it rounds weight and buoyancy! im having too much fun lol

[shadow iris]

All lines after a line that has bold text which isn't completely static (e.g. requires if checks or gets the string from a variable) flicker

???

focus on "Invalid secondary color!"

or is it that formatted/"dynamic" lines after a bold line flicker?

i dont know man

wait no is it based on time to compute stuff? cause if i delete the stuff for the color lines, special properties stops flickering

if i remove the whole rest of the ui all of it stops flickering

[shadow iris]

hmm quite a lot of variance despite the same output

there was also that one update that took 0.7ms

[near parcel]

That doesn't make sense. The API receives the final string, it doesn't know how you obtained it. The only cause that would make sense would be trying to refresh it very quickly

[shadow iris]

i think the mod updates at 10hz

if thats the default

[near parcel]

You could try caching the state and only setting the string when it actually changes

[shadow iris]

could work maybe

i probably should cache all the block info and stuff too like i do in another one of my mods

i don't think im doing the math right

although when it isn't 0ms its at least plausible

so its plausible about 50% of the time 😆

the two numbers are the same but ok

oh i know why

[shadow iris]

Updates within a single mod update cycle
this means that if i call it at 2 different parts of my update function, that it will be different? and for GetTime() does that mean that it only updates at the start/end of a cycle and won't change mid-update?

[near parcel]

Yes

[shadow iris]

when theyre subtracted they seem correct but when logged directly theyre the same

the math.floor is for rounding with decimal place

[paper bone]

Just use string.format()

[shadow iris]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-gato-serio-gato-meme-gato-engraçado-cat-funny-gif-15219126009338517158

[near parcel]

When logging them directly, you are rounding to seconds then dividing it? That doesn't make sense

[shadow iris]

you make a very very valid point

[shadow iris]

13.1ms

[shadow iris]

UI is somehow 0.00ms but that is a tomorrow problem

[near parcel]

Could be a rounding error if it's not doing much

[shadow iris]

it does a lot of math so I doubt it's literally less than 0.01ms

and other things but primarily math

gets selected block primary and secondary color, gets selected block in general quite a lot

converts 0-1 RGB block colors to hex code

[warm canopy]

Made some updates to https://mods.trailmakers.ludixi.com

[shadow iris]

i take interest in -MultiplayerUIMaxPlayers= launch option but surely it isnt that simple to get >8 players riight

[warm canopy]

Didn't seem to do anything

[shadow iris]

worked for lower numbers

and higher numbers???

[warm canopy]

I doubt it has any effect ingame?

[shadow iris]

t heres only 8 teams so lets find out lol

ooh i should test if the get max teams thing change

so far an 9th player hasnt ojoined

ah it only lets 8 players in still

[scenic echo]

server full

would have been epic, i guess the devs saw this coming

[shadow iris]

theyre the ones who added the launch option

frans add player id 8 when

frans add team 9 when

[cinder spruce]

unfortunately seems like theres an extra check when joining :(

[shadow iris]

player id 0-7 only really exists (8 total)

so maybe its limited by the size of the pid

also only 8 teams exist but idk whether it would matter

lowercase sebi jumpscare

[scenic echo]

multiple players can be on the same team so you could have everyone on one team so other people can join

[shadow iris]

initial team is based on player id

[cinder spruce]

there's this other command im not sure what it does but it could change something

didnt change anything :(

[shadow iris]

ah

wait

[cinder spruce]

are you able to put both at the same time?

[shadow iris]

ye try that

[cinder spruce]

as server host

[shadow iris]

lets see

itll probably fail due to maximum sizes in pionet

aj can you join me

RainlessSky / does THIS allow 12 players?

wait how

aj was 2nd ofc

but how did team 4 get before team 3

nobody at that team count left i think

[scenic echo]

better pc

[cinder spruce]

im trying to join with 8 ppl now

[warm canopy]

That's how we count in trailmakers 1,4,3,5

[cinder spruce]

unfortunate

it didnt work

it took a while to load tho

[shadow iris]

damnit

[shadow iris]

was it the server full error or another one

[cinder spruce]

server full

[shadow iris]

maan

OH

maybe it was playerid thing

[scenic echo]

i guess the devs are smart

[shadow iris]

but not smart enough to make their own launch option work

[cinder spruce]

chat i did something funky

clicking it just says there's no servers available

what's the difference between host server and start server?

[shadow iris]

@scenic echo server died

[shadow iris]

request cloud server on pc steam is diabolical

two server regions is inzane

[shadow iris]

uhh

your game hosts it

but start makes dedicate server?

i dont kno

[cinder spruce]

also this exists now

im slightyl cofnused

[shadow iris]

its for console

i wonder if you can use -MaxBuildComplexity= to get increased comp without mods enabled

[cinder spruce]

just tried didnt work

[shadow iris]

what did you do to get the cloud hosting stuff

-ForceEnableHostServer=
-ForceEnableRequestServer=
-ForceEnableCreateServer=

[cinder spruce]

these

-nographics
i wonder what this does

oh it literally just launches the game without a window

[shadow iris]

what happens if i edit a server hosting preset to put mods enabled on a campaign for example

[scenic echo]

try it

that is something i want

[shadow iris]

crazy font size

oh @cinder spruce start server is cloud hosting

host server seems to be the normal hosting

[cinder spruce]

so theres start server and request cloud server button?

why both

[shadow iris]

maybe for changing region?

[shadow iris]

i wonder if you can use maxpowercores to set a powercore limit above 100

[cinder spruce]

i bet you can make the game think you're on console or something

[shadow iris]

but you have to sign in

wait

-mode=Server -UseMods=true -WorldId=Exploration -GameModeId=Sandbox -ServerName="RainlessSky / "

this sounds like dedicated server

and then thats what nographics is for

or batchmode?

[scenic echo]

let's try it

[shadow iris]

ye my game has blackscreened now with -mode=Server

join that server name

oh it is fs doing something

[cinder spruce]

join what?

[scenic echo]

i can't find it

[cinder spruce]

maybe all of these?

[shadow iris]

ooh in the errorlogs theres a logged db of all the block names

wait wrong screenshot

[near parcel]

unless you know very well what you are doing, you shouldn't enable any launch options. They are mostly just for development purposes and don't achieve anything useful for the average player

[shadow iris]

unless you know very well what you are doing
youre talking to me

[cinder spruce]

i always see that when i ever peak into logs i dont think its anything special

[shadow iris]

"why is this zero?" as i floor a small decimal

[shadow iris]

ye but could definitely use that to speed up

speed up finding block names for mods

[near parcel]

yes, you don't know what you are doing. You are just wasting your time

[shadow iris]

i mean max players did something
fun to experiment and see what happens

the launcho ption for server name could be interesting

[near parcel]

this has nothing to do with mods though

[cinder spruce]

fair enough

[shadow iris]

does general chat want to hear about this

[cinder spruce]

how about a group DM if we want to experiment with this really

[shadow iris]

tru

@warm canopy where did you get this launch options list and when was it made?

[warm canopy]

From an old version of the game around 2021

[shadow iris]

oh it does work??

[summer cairn]

you should put this in the wiki

[formal crane]

i know it is all fun and games; but I am getting a little annoyed at these kind of messages at this point.

I am trying to create some comfort in communicating here, but this makes it more of a struggle to see literally everyday
I just hope you realise that funny texts can be received at the other end in ways you might not have expected... You dont know whats going on here, and try to keep a compassionate spirit in mind. It feels extremely entitled to write these kinds of message.

It is just personally a little bit too much with these kinds of joke request.. Or continuous. HEY CAN YOU DO X; Y Z.

Just wanna have a respect chat about the game. I know you guys are passionate - but keep things nice 🙂

EDIT: to be clear. Of course you are welcome to make suggestions. Just keep it constructive and legitimate!

[summer cairn]

hey frans while youre here could you check out #1390459419980201995 ?

no pressure

[shadow iris]

i think i got the ui profiling to work

nvm

so cap

[shadow iris]

interesting

the last two are when i spawned a build

ui only costs a fuckton when its first created or?

maybe just my code

[shadow iris]

i changed target mod delta time once and now for the session its always broken no matter what

even on 1/1 target delta time

ok the ui has ceased function

this is on 1/60 btw

broke it on the dragon engine and now this has happene

it still hasnt corrected itself by the time i sent that

ohh wait

is it a bandwidth limit

so it takes more than 1 frame to add ui

thus causing the flickering

this is why it gets even worse at 1/60

but idk why it outright freezes

yeahhh its flickering less on 1/5 vs 1/10

every time i re enter build mode i double the update rate
1/1
1/2
1/4
1/8
1/16

yeah if i remove the color parts, which have a lot of characters, the last line can run at 1/60 just fine

i think it could be bandwidth limit of some sort?

@formal crane i may have figured out what causes the flickering ui bug

changing the blank spacer line ("") to a colored square ("<color#bd1c1c>█</color> 150cc") causes the whole ui to start flickering

sometimes itll start lagging behind on actions by multiple seconds but not flicker (including adding any new lines or clearing ui)

oh this is stupidly close to the threshold without primary color, its <6 bytes from bugging

ooh i got it right on the threshold where long block names lag the ui and short ones dont

nvm it was literally 2 minutes behind on only half of the ui

yeah after it flickers it needs to play catch up for a long time

this is roughly 25 bytes from being buggy

[shadow iris]

uses the same method as brainrot vehicle detector

[scenic echo]

What is this for?

[shadow iris]

racing mod with moderate inspiration from Mario kart

[scenic echo]

Cool

[shadow iris]

involved setting engine power and wheel buoyancy

and also maybe engine power based on # of wheels

[scenic echo]

That's hard because if you have 1 engine connected to each wheel you will go faster than 4 engine connected to every wheel

[shadow iris]

you're only allowed 1 engine in the mod btw

[scenic echo]

Ok that's easy then

[shadow iris]

bc bikes are weaker than karts and we wanna make both be competitive

but also antimatter has a life so I'm the only actual dev

cause the project lead keeps putting off learning modding

[scenic echo]

Let him be in his never ending mapping bubble

[shadow iris]

oh I was also the primary mapper for a while before I took over programmer. I still could definitely go back to mapping for it too

[shadow iris]

WHAT

[shadow iris]

@warm canopy glyph 33 is still listed twice

typo at https://mods.trailmakers.ludixi.com/guide_detail?slug=getting-started-with-ui&step=4#:~:text=we use this-,peice,-of code%3A 

[dusty pelican]

how do you get the x y and z components from a modvector3

[shadow iris]

modvector3.x|y|z would be my guess

[near parcel]

yes

[dusty pelican]

to frans or alvaroping, how exactly is gravity done in trailmakers?

i am trying to make a wallride mod for kartmakers but right now the way i apply gravity it's like a band aid implementation, half working and jittery

here's a little code snippet of my gravity code

[shadow iris]

jittery because its running at 30hz right?

[radiant lion]

If you run it every frame and multiply the strength by time passed it should work fine

[dusty pelican]

how do i run it every frame though

[shadow iris]

vro

are you setting targetmoddeltatime

[radiant lion]

setModTargetDeltaTime(1/60)

[shadow iris]

tm.os.SetModTargetDeltaTime(1/60)

keep in mind this will make the server lag a lot more

[dusty pelican]

gruh

oh

[shadow iris]

bc its running like 6x faster assuming its still 10hz

if its 30hz then its 2x faster

[radiant lion]

And tm.os.GetModDeltaTime() gets the time passed since the last update

[shadow iris]

are these numbers actually accurate i honestly cant tell

[scenic echo]

do you still need help? I can take a look if you want

[shadow iris]

I think I got the errors go to away, it just needs optimization

[scenic echo]

nice

[shadow iris]

if i use tm.playerUI.RemoveUI() on each individiual ui window line, it lags like crazy. if i use tm.playerUI.ClearUI() it's fine, but subtle messages won't work

what can i do to fix this?

[scenic echo]

maybe every time after you clear ui you add the subtle messages back

[shadow iris]

it still plays the enter-exit animations

[paper bone]

why do you need to remove the UI anyways cant you just use SetUIValue instead when editing the values?

[scenic echo]

do you delete ui every tick?

[shadow iris]

because i didnt make it like that when i first made ui, but i suppose i can do that

[shadow iris]

delete (if it exists), then readd ui

would that lag less than adding it?

cause youre still sending the same amount of data basically

[paper bone]

for sure

[shadow iris]

btw when i mean lag i mean the ui flicker

[scenic echo]

It removes it, with SetUIValue you have no anoying flicker

[shadow iris]

well

[paper bone]

didnt we just have a talk with Frans about the UI beeing one of the most bandwidth demanding things of mods? so try to atleast optimize your UI on your end

[shadow iris]

i suppose so because it doesnt have to create it

so theres no time when its blank

[formal crane]

Huh what are you referring to? 😮

[paper bone]

let me rephrase that

ok i misrememberd, it was the Strings that are the issue, not the UI itself, my fault

[formal crane]

I think I have had similar behavior before but only if I removed all the elements. If no elements are in the window element then it gets completely disposed and have to be re-initialised.

[shadow iris]

yeah thats what im doing, removing all ui elements and then readding them

im currently rewriting ui to only add ui when it has to

[formal crane]

(--snipped-- False statement)I would recommend just to be smart with the set values instead.¨

I am putting in a task to revisit this, I think we can do better with that because clearing a is a bit of PITA due to Subtle Messages and Window elements both being part of ClearUI.

I believe someone made the proposal to have a flag or similiar for which you want to be cleared instead.

[shadow iris]

similar, not similiar

unless im being dumb and that actually is correct

[formal crane]

I am unsure how exactly we could stop the flickering, would mean we would have to stop the window from being disposed which would be weird behaviour if you actually wanted to remove the behaviour after removing all the elements.

[near parcel]

you aren't if you just send the updated value when it changes, by setting it with SetUIValue (which is what you should be doing). You shouldn't be running anything UI related in the update function

[shadow iris]

this isnt absolutely concrete but i think if too much data is sent at once it has to spend multiple frames(?) adding ui and that causes flickering

cause even at 1/1 update rate if i send a lot of stuff, it still takes a couple frames to add it all

[near parcel]

if you are repeatedly removing and adding the UI, you should expect the flicker. It's a bad idea anyways, so there is not much reason to try to make it work better in the cases where you are misusing the API imho

[formal crane]

And it does become particular a problem when it is in the context of RPC's so timings are hard.

If we did batched UI commands we could perhaps fix it, but thats a longer story,.

[shadow iris]

not agaiiin

[shadow iris]

i think i messed up the rewrite, it runs absurdly slowly and crashes the game after like 10 seconds

and no, there arent thousands of ui lines being rendered

[warm canopy]

What'd you making?

[shadow iris]

ui window in build mode that gives vehicle stats
always visible (numbers only calculated when structure is udpated):

• total weight
• total buoyancy
  selected block
• <empty line>
• name
• weight
• buoyancy
• if it's an engine, show engine power. otherwise, show empty line

ahh its some thing with removing ui

see i can use errorlogs to my advantage

[warm canopy]

If you can use setui thats probably the safest bet

[shadow iris]

ah fixed it

for some reason i had 2 copies of the update ui code and one was old and still removed & readded a line

and then that i guess detonated itself or the 2nd copy thats actually up to date

works beautifully but now i have to keep a blank line for the engine power

otherwise i'd have to remove/add it and thats messy

[near parcel]

you can set it to N/A if you don't want it empty

[shadow iris]

best case i get to have it not show unless its actually an engine but i suppose that works for now

oh how i wish we could use <c> as shorthand for <color>

that would free up so many characters

[scenic echo]

block blob, i'm making my old combat mod compatible with the blocks added since 2.0

[dusty pelican]

Hey Frans, do you know how gravity works in TM? If i set gravity to 0 and apply a force to the vehicle every 60 ticks it slows down the car a bit so I wanted to know how the gravity system works so I can implement my version of it.

[radiant lion]

Pretty sure it works just like that, make sure the force is multiplied by the weight

[dusty pelican]

    if hit and hit.DidHit() then
        local hitNormal = hit.GetHitNormal()

        --tm.os.Log("Ground normal: " .. tostring(hitNormal))
        -- 0.33
        local gravityStrength = weight * 0.055
        structure.AddForce(worldDown.x * gravityStrength, worldDown.y * gravityStrength, worldDown.z * gravityStrength)
    else
        local gravityStrength = weight * 0.055
        structure.AddForce(0, -gravityStrength, 0)
    end

weight is scanned with a custom function

[shadow iris]

its slightly inaccurate because ModBlock.GetMass() only includes the "base" (e.g. on a small hinge, it's only counting the big part)

but only by <1kg usually

and that should reduce the applied gravity

[shadow iris]

i don't think thats working as intended

(theres a concrete wall roughly where the orb is)

Another case of: #1226065444364877835 message
Re-exported a Trailmappers map and the player / player structure was deleted
Vehicle becomes entirely unresponsive and once leaving the structure, cannot be interacted with whatsoever. Entire structure has no collision besides the top of wheels (alike sometimes in build mode)
Makertool targets many blocks at once (but stopped some time after i tabbed out?) (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1140936220487192587/1392323854067564657/image.png?ex=686f1e22&is=686dcca2&hm=c32b1565ae0370f415a5a94f2aca43f76b01a308b9ec3b1c55f3905a962a5014&)
Player is unable to enter build mode, repair, transform, or respawn.

happens rarely and has happened on 2 trailmappers maps now, i don't think its specifically a map issue

happens rarely and has happened on 2 trailmappers maps now, i don't think its specifically a map issue

[formal crane]

No clue!

[dusty pelican]

https://tenor.com/view/crying-turn-to-dust-finnicklomlgif-gif-6202351048420329284

thx for your time anyways lol

[radiant lion]

i'm sure it worked, it's been a while, but when i tested it it behaved exactly like normal gravity

defauly should be a direction of 0,-14,0

[shadow iris]

when did modder role be super duper shiny?

its too low to ever show up for anyone though 😢

[shadow iris]

i was told by terrorsoul that you were the one editing the modder role, is that correct? if so, is it possible that you could move the modder role up in priority so its color(s!) can shine?

[shadow iris]

with/without multiplying by delta time me and @dusty pelican's custom gravity still jitters every now and then. how could i fix this?

[dusty pelican]

the force is too strong, maybe just remove the strong force from the vehicle if the car is near the ground

[shadow iris]

ok never use 40 fps update rate

this delta time is absolutely diabolical

[shadow iris]

also how does the strong force mean anything here?

its not the amount of force, its when/how often its applied fluctuating

[shadow iris]

jittering still happens at 0.020 gravity, that gif is when it was set to 0.047

and besides, the gravity strength is basically 1:1 with official gravity

so i dont want to change that

the point is that its the same EXCEPT you can go on the walls

[dusty pelican]

yees'

[radiant lion]

are you still using odd refresh rates or have you gone to 60hz?

cause i'm relatively sure the jittering is caused by that, physics is stuck at 60hz, so some physic frames lack the actual addForce, while some get it, i am mostly sure the force can't get applied between frames

30hz might also work, since you always skip a frame, but i don't see why not to keep it at 60

[shadow iris]

its still 60hz

[shadow iris]

now for some reason the multiplier for a different addforce related thing won't get set on half of the times i save

idk why

even on old code

[shadow iris]

figured this out

[shadow iris]

i clicked a ui button that spawns a subtle message

and now none of them are showing up

[shadow iris]

Yet another case, with 3 people at once!

[formal crane]

afraid that i will fuck over some permissions lol

[shadow iris]

ahhhgh okayy

wait did you make it be solid blue now?

oh the gradient on the roles list doesn't render correctly on mobile

[radiant lion]

We'll just have to find a new modder that's been here between 2 and 4 weeks to see the color

[serene magnet]

Huh?

[formal crane]

Currently doing another pass on the spawnables and oh man this one made me understand the issue with Race Island and updating it.

[radiant lion]

Are you... Actually handling it as a prefab and not as an asset generated by a script given the shape...?

[shadow iris]

yes.

[formal crane]

It has to be handlle manually as we have to strip certain components 😦
It is much more tedious than you can imagine lol

We are working on a new system but we had to re-work some components.

Oh wait I see what you mean; so those barriers are actually generated using Houdini! But thats kind of the thing. They are not prefabs and I cannot extract them as they are an absolutely massive mesh object that covers the whole level

[shadow iris]

houdini in 2024 mentioned

[formal crane]

They were generated at the time Race Island was made. Now they are just.. there..

[radiant lion]

Tha. I also understood wrong, I thought you meant it was difficult to update race island itself not making prefab for it, then you made the expected choice

I'm guessing creating them real time with lua function would be too hard..? Also too specific, I'd much prefer custom tris

[formal crane]

Not impossible, but you pretty much have to reinvent a bunch of things for Lua. We dont have any procedural generated meshes for Trailmakers and we dont have access to the houdini part any longer, so not like we can just hook those up either.

[paper bone]

When mesh loader upgrade? ||jk||

[shadow iris]

When texture loader upgrade?

when modding vs pionet update

i think that sort of stuff is limited by pionet, bc strings ui are limited to 32 characters so why wouldnt custom assets be limited too

[formal crane]

Strings arent in general limited to 32 chars. It was just specifically ui lements for modding that it was set to that.

Custom asset transfer uses chunks of byte arrays

[shadow iris]

i meant that yes

[radiant lion]

That's fine. As I said custom meshes directly in-game would probably be better who wants to make their custom guardrail can, in a much more customizable way

[radiant lion]

About UI string, I forgot to mention it, but a while ago it just didn't give errors, last week having a longer string directly crashed my game, it's fine once you know it, but still... Kinda annoying

[formal crane]

It is fixed next update 🙂
It will fail softly now and give an error log insead of Oh No'ing

[radiant lion]

Cool :) I'm definitely in on the soft fail

[shadow iris]

once again, on a different trailmappers map

[shadow iris]

oh thats cool heres a subtle message error from it trying to set the icon of it before its custom texture has loaded

this is also a silent error only seen in ErrorLogs and not the mod's logs

but this one isnt as bad because often that's not gonna get spammed

[shadow iris]

alright well i did like 9 runs with checking errorlog and i think i fixed all the silent removeui errors... if i didnt then i give up trying to fix them for now because god this absolutely sucks to debug

[regal bear]

~~I think there could be an issue with despawning objects that have been set to trigger.

Something invisible is being left behind, like a convex hull perhaps. The player camera is clipped by these 'ghost' objects after they have been despawned.

I will write this up properly in vote-modding-features when I have some time but just wanted to see if anyone else has noticed something like this?~~

Edit: It may have been an error in my code. I seem to have fixed it by doing things a different way.

[shadow iris]

yet again, this time happening while i was out of the creation

[shadow iris]

more player events would go hard, like player respawn, player teleport, player enter/exit/ejected seat

[cinder spruce]

#1123915629653667943

[shadow iris]

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

[cinder spruce]

@novel maple
test just for signal
i have no clue how im going to work in a proper lifting gate arm yet

[regal bear]

Cool 👌
If only we had an emissive shader 😭

[shadow iris]

the way they do it is usually
albedo+roughness texture
metallic texture
emissive texture

[novel maple]

Moving arms are somehow possible. That's all i can tell you i am very much uneducated in this area

[scenic echo]

i remember @serene magnet made a hammer that went down on the player then reset with mods, maybe he can help

[paper bone]

You just need the arms and the base to be seperate objects. Preferably have the pivot of the arm be at the connection to the base. When closing/opening you just need to use setRotation() on the arm.

[radiant lion]

You don't even need the pivot to be at the base, so long as you know how to use sin and cos

[paper bone]

I wish mods could save a players blueprint in the data_dynamic folder

And then load it from there too

Never gonna happen :(

[paper bone]

Imagine all the possibilities, mods could be so much more interactive. Having the option to save a players blueprint and beeing able to load them again could make modding a lot more interesting, imagine beeing able to come across vehicles that you made in your world.
You could have mods that automatically give you the blueprint you last used when the mod was active, this would be huge for custom campaigns

[summer cairn]

not only with mods imo, i think you should be able to play with blueprints externally too

[radiant lion]

||we need Frans to leak the encoding code||

||and the protobuf description file..?||

[near parcel]

In practice the ton of issues that would appear from hacked blocks far outweigh anything good you could do with it

[serene magnet]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1294998405054988288/1339562286301446194/GifCapture-202502130641322146.gif

Don't have the back up as a gif rn but I basically just make a call once it reaches the end of the swing to another function that just rotates it back

But you could also setup a timer to count down till the second function is called

[warm canopy]

Anyone got any better ideas at detecting a respawn?, In the past i've just be relying on backspace being pressed for a certain amount of time, similar situation with detecting repair

[scenic echo]

maybe check the number of blocks, if it has changed. that would also detect transforms

for backspace maybe you can check if the player went from multiple structures to only one, but idk how well that would work

[warm canopy]

Perhaps my keydown approach is best then for backspace currently, I just worry how it translates to people using controllers

[paper bone]

im pretty sure it doesnt translate at all

[near parcel]

Anything else will mean doing work on each frame, which adds more load in the game

Maybe add triggers to spawnpoints? You will still need to do extra checks when triggered to make sure they aren't just driving there, but at least you don't run code for all players on each frame

[radiant lion]

Yep, had some complaints with missile mod not working with controllers exactly because of that

[scenic echo]

is there any way of completly stopping a blueprint from moving?

[shadow iris]

tm.physics.SetTimeScale(0) obviously

[scenic echo]

everything else runs normally, just one blueprint stuck in place

[shadow iris]

idk could calculate addforce values based on velocity? how to do that i couldn't tell you though

[scenic echo]

that's what i was thinking of too, it would be the only way

[shadow iris]

i find it painful how modstructures only have addforce meanwhile modblocks have addtorque and its variants

[radiant lion]

Making it static, nor setting position can't be done, no, so adding forces is your best bet

[dapper jay]

I have gotten a great idea that im sure will work flawlessly

[shadow iris]

@warm canopy you could add the emojis from the guides to the category selector

[scenic echo]

i'm having trouble with tm.players.SpawnStructure(playerId, blueprint, structureId, position, rotation), when i try to spsawn a structure, in the log, it says this Blueprint with id Blueprint.png not found. does anyone know what i'm doing wrong. This is my code tm.players.SpawnStructure(playerId.playerId, "Blueprint.png", 10, tm.players.GetPlayerTransform(playerId.playerId).GetPosition(), tm.players.GetPlayerTransform(playerId.playerId).GetRotation())

[radiant lion]

Iirc you have to first load the png, like you'd do with custom objects

[scenic echo]

so like tm.physics.AddTexture(filename, resourceName)

[radiant lion]

Yeah

Then use resource name

[scenic echo]

It worked, thanks!

spawning a blueprint that crashes the game, with mods, still crashes the game

[warm canopy]

Im having a literal nightmare with structures in terms of getting a flying structure to follow a path.

Ground structure is fine as your not dealing with lots of rotations

But flying ones I’m not even sure I can fully make it work with the api we have

Torque just isnt adequate enough

[scenic echo]

what is the problem, do they wobble a lot?

[warm canopy]

I cant get it to stay level

Constantly doing barrel rolls

[scenic echo]

show gif

[warm canopy]

Its supposed to be flying in a straight line along the road with very little elevation

[scenic echo]

yikes

[scenic echo]

are you using a pid for making it fly level?

[warm canopy]

No

[radiant lion]

A pid and some cheating with add force would probably make it work perfectly

[scenic echo]

can i try fixing it?

[warm canopy]

Yeah give me a second, let me package all the stuff up

[scenic echo]

so this is what non spaghetti code looks like

[warm canopy]

^_^, Its the physics library that handles the movement of the structures

[scenic echo]

yeah i found it

[warm canopy]

Any luck?

[scenic echo]

so far i only know that yawTorque works perfectly

rollTorque and pitchTorque are doing some wierd stuff and i have no idea why

[scenic echo]

also the plane seems to just go straight up because of forceY

[shadow iris]

yippeeee

wait wtf there isnt even a Crash!!!!

[dapper jay]

how are you getting internal game errors

[shadow iris]

but the server did crash right as the mod did a thing

[shadow iris]

decompressing ErrorLogs. sometimes they contain mod errors

especially related to UI because its client side

ngl i might want to try single process server to see if i can get more errors

[dapper jay]

Are the server logs not in there?

[shadow iris]

idk i was hosting a server

no info in AppData\Local\Temp\Flashbulb\Trailmakers\Crashes so

[radiant lion]

shouldn't you try to get less errors?

[shadow iris]

oh the idea is to expose the errors that arent seen, if any

i misspoke a bit

[shadow iris]

hmm

[shadow iris]

tell me WHY

my servers keep crashing now

are these even my fault or what??

[regal bear]

A friend has been getting a bit carried away while testing all the new stuff in TCP for me 🤓

[dapper jay]

will you also make ip?

[regal bear]

?

[cinder spruce]

peak comedy

[shadow iris]

ah shit here we go again

[regal bear]

ngl I have no idea what it means

[shadow iris]

idk either but i know tcp is a networking thing and im sure youre aware ip is also a networking thing

i think tcp is networking...

[near parcel]

Tcp is the most common transport layer protocol

[regal bear]

Correct! lol. Now my dumb ass brain get's it 🤦‍♂️

[shadow iris]

SetDragAll is 0.0-1.0 right?

[near parcel]

No idea, but it would make sense with values >1

[shadow iris]

oh god this is beautiful

so compact compared to the old way i did it

old way, but add SetMass with the similar values to each

decoration is replaced by drag btw, but now its dynamic

[shadow iris]

actually i dont need the mass variable, just /10 at the setmass line

[scenic echo]

can we get the drag of blocks with mods?

[near parcel]

No

[scenic echo]

being able to set it but not know it is painful

[shadow iris]

real

[dapper jay]

☹️

[dapper jay]

you can do value:sub() and value:find()

[topaz arrow]

Is the set drag function even consistant? I remember that it was apparently broken some time ago

[scenic echo]

no idea, never tested it to see

[radiant lion]

Unless it magically fixed itself it should still have this issue https://discord.com/channels/296562030624899072/1374141031418826762

Did I really end up not uploading the mod i tested with... Man i did a shoddy job

[shadow iris]

where?

[dapper jay]

you used string.sub and string.find

[shadow iris]

@scenic echo fix my code
sometimes build mode UI is added even when it already exists and sometimes it tries to remove ui that doesnt exist
ui is contained in data_static\KM_UpdateUI

you can find remove ui errors in your client's ErrorLogs

[scenic echo]

ok, seems like a easy fix, i hope

[shadow iris]

oh the fun part

the ui errors in errorlogs dont tell you where it is or what the id is

its just

"RemoveUIElement failed"

"have fun!! :DDD"

[scenic echo]

does it crash when that happens?

[shadow iris]

removeui errors happen when banned blocks are placed (use anchor pin to test)

[shadow iris]

sometimes...?

maybe depends how long you have banned blocks error running

happens more often in multiplayer

i feel like the duplicate ui / remove ui errors COULD be a race condition

@scenic echo would this start at 0?

like i=0 for the first iteration

which is why it gives a removeui error

because error.banned_blocks-0 NEVER exists

[scenic echo]

maybe, you can try changing that

[shadow iris]

but lua doesnt start at 0

[scenic echo]

yeah

what is the i used for in that for loop?

[shadow iris]

removes ui with the id of error.banned_blocks-i

hm?

(unrelated to the mod i just noticed this)

wow that is a lot of blueprints

ohh its probably trying to view all the blueprints in build mode before theyve loaded

[shadow iris]

it might have worked?

i didnt get any errors

[scenic echo]

ok, found a bug still, if you have more than one engine then you delete it and then you place it back, the weight and bouyancy ui will still show up and when you get out of build mode the error ui will vanish

[shadow iris]

ahh ok that helps a lot

@dapper jay like this?

[near parcel]

you are explicitly telling it to start at 0. There are no languages that have an exclusive range start

[dapper jay]

yeah

[dapper jay]

crashed my game with a string too long award

if i want a permanent subtle message, do I just make it last really long?

[shadow iris]

i do mine for 32767 seconds

roughly 9.2 hours

[radiant lion]

Now when I do my usual 32million years session it's gonna disappear, way to ruin immersion :p

[shadow iris]

-# this is actually an AJ quote

[dapper jay]

workshoppers would unironically complain about it

[dapper jay]

my mouse click function seems to die randomly..?

im not deregistering it, but its no longer working

bruh really