General modding chat

[near parcel]

That will be slow regardless of language, as you would need to read a file, send it over the network, and respawn all assets each time the mesh changes

[fallow fox]

how does the shinyness of a custom model work, is it per pixel or for the entire model?

[radiant lion]

should be per pixel

[fallow fox]

thx

[near parcel]

per pixel determined by the alpha value of the texture

[ivory agate]

yeah I guess that's fair

[tribal gate]

Is it just me or is ludixi down

[paper dragon]

does anyone know if its possible to create artificial gravity within a defined volume? im making a starcruiser map, and was wondering if i would be able to make gravity inside the ship and hangars

[tribal gate]

maybe try teleporting players that are within a set of coordinates in a way that feels and looks how you want but other than that as far as I know I don't think the modding api has a way to do it within just a specific area.

[paper dragon]

aw dang it, i guess my starship wont work in space lol\

[paper dragon]

also, that sounds so incredibly buggy and wierd, and i feel like if you introduced any build itd do an explode

[tribal gate]

yeah it definetely will be buggy but I feel like you could probably find a sweet spot where it looks and feels nice. I think there shouldn't be an issue with builds though unless you have a million weld groups something, I've made an autopilot function that uses the forces and torque functions to make it look like a build is driving/flying itself and it works fine with vertical movement

[paper dragon]

im trying to simulate gravity inside my spaceship

[tribal gate]

yeah I know?

[paper dragon]

idjk

[tribal gate]

I was trying to say that you could do the same thing I did and use the physics apply force function to make it work with vehicles and simply teleport the player when they aren't in a vehicle. I think that the teleporting will be hard to make it look good but it's probably possible. You would need to use a raycast or something to detect if they're touching/near ground so that you could stop it from happening though.

[paper dragon]

the physics force makes alot of sense, and i dont have the skill to make the player one lol but that explination makes more sense

[paper dragon]

on a differen note, is is possible to make like, a platform move, or would it have to be like, appear and dissapear in different spots rapidly

[tribal gate]

yes but if you plan on trying to do gravity by pushing the player with it rather than for parkour reasons I don't think it will be very helpful to you

[paper dragon]

what if i dont do gravity, im just trying to make an elevator, i gave up on thr gravity idea

[tribal gate]

that should work then

[paper dragon]

which one?

[tribal gate]

both

[paper dragon]

oh cool

alr

[tribal gate]

you'd need to get it's transform and set it's position to move it. Making it disappear and reappear rapidly is not a great or visually pleasing way to do it

[regal bear]

Spawn it with tm.physics.SpawnCustomObjectRigidbody and your platform will be able to move smoothly

[tribal gate]

I think it's down because It gives a 503 gateway error on multiple devices and browsers but if someone else can still access it please let me know

[tribal gate]

A great example of feature creep from an old mod of mine

I never did end up getting to the "Must have features"

[latent pine]

holy line length

[tribal gate]

Yeah I usually have my fingers near shift so I've gotten into the habit of not breaking up the lines and just shift scrolling

[fallow fox]

is there a way to change how custom model LODs work because these look really bad from far away
also some models seem to not be effected by the LOD thing at all

[mint grove]

How did you even make this intersection

Like us this made with curve modifier

[fallow fox]

huh, its just a model made in blender

[mint grove]

But how did you make it in blender

[radiant lion]

Somewhat, I don't know the exact metric but basically the larger a model is the least it is culled

[fallow fox]

just a 3d model nothing special

[radiant lion]

Since yours is on the ground you can add an extra Tri far underground and it should have a better lod

[fallow fox]

thx

[mint grove]

Oh ok so they are laid down piece by piece

[ivory agate]

You could probably do it in geometry nodes pretty easily since roads can be simplified to lines, and just have special cases for intersections

[paper dragon]

i see you are using blender, i am experiencing issues with blender to trailmappers. I made just a simple cube and took a chunk out of the center to make a tube, and every time i send it to trailmappers its just a full cube

i was using it as a scale reference but its not working

anybody know what im doing wrong?

@serene magnet doeth thy have any inspiration for me 👉 👈

so uhhhh, idk why iots happening, but TM is connecting the verts even when they shouldnt be, the internal geometry is all there, but for some reason its covereing the ends?

I FIGURED IT OUT

note the lack of dividing lines on the corners because i did a boolean operation, so it didnt change the mesh, it just put a hole in it

well of course, i fix that and now it just dosent show anything

no visual mesh in trailmappers

and several thousand errors

[crystal laurel]

is @radiant lion here? how ur formation mod work lol

[radiant lion]

I'm here

[crystal laurel]

hi

[radiant lion]

So, first you are better using V2 by AJ, as it has some very neat fixes https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3585918112

Then what is the question? General how to use of now to use properly?

[crystal laurel]

yee

how does it work. lol

oh wait

nvm i see description now 😅

[radiant lion]

-_-

Well, if you still have doubts feel free to ask

[crystal laurel]

sorry

[ivory agate]

Not even blender likes concave ngons, a triangulate modifier should suffice though

Usually the engine triangulates but as you've discovered it might not do what you want

[paper dragon]

yeah, i figured that out lol, i have it working now

[oblique bone]

@cinder spruce once done, where should i post this if allowed. its a external program so idk if its a bad idea to post here.

ignore the ai image, i cant do designs my self :(

[warm canopy]

How are you communicating with the game?

[oblique bone]

through json files

[scenic echo]

Can you get the position of a blueprint spawned with a mod? i tried but i keep getting errors

[scenic echo]

fixed it

[scenic echo]

@cinder spruce @radiant lion how did you guys make the formation flying mod to be so accurate in it's position? is it a pid?

[radiant lion]

Ye

[cinder spruce]

yes, its jess’s pid that i used

[radiant lion]

Tho in the original one I did something quite stupid, like considering the previous plane position 0,0,0, which is what prompted aj's v2

[oblique bone]

im making this public where do i post it 🙏

in modding?

[cinder spruce]

i honestly dont know

[ivory agate]

Static as in typed?

Because then another reason would obviously be type checking

[radiant lion]

Asking to DM you in the mod description sounds like the safest bet, else just put everything on GitHub and add a link

[oblique bone]

well i made a whole website for it :/

and my other mods

ama see if i can catch one of the higer ups in the general chats

and ask em

[near parcel]

if it requires running code outside of the game, it's a liability

[oblique bone]

it dose, "it's a liability" is very vague can u explain pls

[near parcel]

if something bad happens, the devs would be responsible for allowing it

[oblique bone]

understand

[crystal laurel]

hi can blender be used to make maps for trailmakers?

[oblique bone]

yea

@near parcel my jarvis mod communicates to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Trailmakers\mods\Jarvis - by Criticals\data_dynamic_willNotBeUploadedToWorkshop"

but i have had multiple ppl say that the file path dose not exist even tho mod is installed. but for some ppl it works. can u pls explain why and where the file path gose if u have any idea. iv tryd debuging it with a user who it did not work with. the mod folder would literaly not appear in the mod file only in the workshop file with raw code

[near parcel]

Read the last dir name again

[oblique bone]

ik its not meant to. the mod creats json files in there. but the whole mod file dose not get created. like "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Trailmakers\mods\Jarvis - by Criticals" is not there but he got a log in the mods folder showing it was downloaded. and it was in his workshop folder

[near parcel]

because that's not where mods are installed

[warm canopy]

On workshop it saves to a different folder

[oblique bone]

yeah i think i figured it out

[oblique bone]

tought it was installed to both.

[near parcel]

trailmakers/mods is only for local mods

[warm canopy]

You basically need to be look in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\585420

[plucky pewter]

For a mod I am working on I want to draw shapes in the UI.
I was told I need to do it with 3D objects in front of the camera (how do I get camera position?).
Can anyone help me with something like an example mod or some tips?

[cinder spruce]

you cant rn
im doing something similar but im just assuming the camera center to be a specific position

[near parcel]

you can only know the camera position of cameras set by the mod

[scenic echo]

Space altitude sensor mod done (@fallow fox ): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3733419901

[fallow fox]

nice

[plucky pewter]

Cool, tested it and it works well.

[regal bear]

Have a look at the "Trail of Duty" mod (by Noiro1). It has a custom interface using custom objects and a camera.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3090899486

It's quite easy to set a camera and point it at an object. You would then need to map the mouse click world positions to something meaningful in your code.

[plucky pewter]

Thanks, I will look into that.

[mint grove]

So um how many vertecies is to much again

[fallow fox]

around 32k is the limit iirc

[mint grove]

And will it change anything if I slice it up into individual sections

[paper bone]

Yes, the limit is per mesh iirc

[mint grove]

Oh then I'll just split it

[scenic echo]

32k triangles

How can i make my ui text a different color?

[fallow fox]

put <color=(hex code)> in before the text and </color> resets it
unity docs for text formatting: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/StyledText.html

[scenic echo]

Thanks!

[regal bear]

Just updated Track Creator Plus. Details here: #1404642052129423466 message

[fast oyster]

i get this error whenever i try to load my map with textures, they are 2k and under 10mbs is that too high?

[regal bear]

What resolution are your textures? 2k isn't a clear way to identify it.

10mbs is a bit rate - did you mean 10mb in size?

Also:

• how many textures are you trying to load?
• how many custom objects are in your map?
• how detailed are your custom objects (ie triangle count)?

[fast oyster]

By 2k I meant 2048, by mbs I meant megabyte(s) sorry if that was unclear, Im trying to load 2 textures, 5 models, 4 of which use one of the textures, all objects are under 15k verts

[regal bear]

The mod API doesn't handle texture loading very well so 2 x 10Mb textures will take quite a bit of time to load. Even so it doesn't usually crash the game. It's possible that one or more of your meshes is causing the issue. Try loading one model at a time and see if you get a crash.

[fast oyster]

It insta crashes, and without textures everything loads no problem, scaling down the textures does nothing

[slim hatch]

add botnak with ai to the spawning api!
https://discord.com/channels/296562030624899072/1510079916081807420

[ivory agate]

you use the update function for stuff that happens each frame right? can't get anything to happen so I'm not sure if I need to set a callback or something

[cinder spruce]

as long as function is named update it should run every frame

[ivory agate]

I realized you couldn't have it local

I just automatically named everything local

Not sure this is the best way to make a loop that needs to initialize but eh I guess it should work, I couldn't find anything about setting an on-update callback

[near parcel]

there is no on-update callback, the global update function is everything there is for now

if you need to initialize something, you can do it at the top level of the module (and with onPlayerJoined callback if it's player related)

[ivory agate]

yeah I just did it on player join

[ivory agate]

damn no 0bN syntax

kind of surprised 0x worked then

[near parcel]

on lua or json?

[tribal gate]

Speaking of which do you think I could track camera position by setting the position then somehow tracking mouse movements. Idk if tm mods support using things like libraries but if it does I was thinking about finding on that tracks mouse movement. If it doesn't my idea was to use the ui register mouse down function but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work how I want it to. Even if I did get it working there would be a ton of issues with there being so many camera modes on top of that being able to zoom in and out would be difficult to deal with too.

[near parcel]

there is no way to track mouse movement, because that happens client-side

[tribal gate]

somehow I completely forgot I would need to make it work in multiplayer

I was also thinking of tracking player rotation

but that would be inaccurate

[near parcel]

registermousedown uses a raycast, giving you world coordinates, not mouse movement. It also requires the user spamming the button while moving the mouse

[tribal gate]

yeah I haven't found a reason to use it yet but I had a feeling that's how it would work

[ivory agate]

lua, I just wrote a helper with tonumber

[lime sequoia]

can anyone give me the modder role so i can post on #1123915629653667943 ?

[near parcel]

you can use #1196793172429394050

[ivory agate]

huh?

I cannot tell why one of the examples work but mine doesn't

Is the playerId you get from currentplayers different from input callbacks?

because it seems so

no

oh it's just a capital letter

is there really a 64 character limit? or any way to get around it

I don't want to start doing formatting stuff but I guess I have to

[near parcel]

yes, because the data needs to be sent to clients

[ivory agate]

Kind of works :P

[ivory agate]

so is there a way to make the UI local?

because obviously not everyone needs each other's UIs

[latent pine]

why do I see registers and opcodes, are you making an emulator in tm

[ivory agate]

yeah just a chip 8 emulator, I thought i'd be able to make something like an amiga or at least a c64 but it seems like even writing 2 kilobytes of text per frame will be too much

(because of the network thing)

[near parcel]

you tell it which player to create it for

[ivory agate]

something other than the addui functions?, because that's what I'm using and those require a player id

[near parcel]

yeah, because it doesn't make sense to create an UI on the server where nobody can see it

you can use logs instead of an UI i guess if you want it to be server side

[cobalt sapphire]

Hi is there no way to place down building blocks using code? I plan to create a playback of the building process and the use cinematic camera to record the building process, is there any way of doing this?

[near parcel]

No

[ornate plaza]

laser pointer mod wip

[ivory agate]

What I was wanting is a way to do client only stuff but I'm assuming that's not possible then

So you can only really go up to like 30 or whatever "things" before everything just slows down massively

I was considering trying to make a SWE solver but that's probably not possible considering how the modding api works

(or if it is it would be too slow to get any reasonable detail)

[near parcel]

all mods run server side

[formal crane]

@cinder spruce a little crude example for inspiration

tm.physics.AddTexture("particle.png", "fx_particle")

local particle_a = tm.particleBuilder
    .SetShape(tm.enums.particleShape.cone)
    .SetShapeAngle(15)
    .SetShapeRadius(0.3)
    .SetPosition(tm.vector3.Create(10, 0, 10))
    .SetRotation(tm.vector3.Create(0, 0, 0))
    .SetEmissionRate(30)
    .SetLifetime(0.8, 2.0)
    .SetStartSpeed(0.5, 1.5)
    .SetStartSize(0.05, 0.12)
    .SetStartColor(tm.color.Create(1, 0.45, 0.1, 1))
    .SetEndColor(tm.color.Create(0.3, 0.1, 0, 0))
    .SetGravityMultiplier(-0.2)
    .SetTexture("fx_particle")
    .SetLooping(true)
    .SetDuration(0)
    .Create()
particle_a.Play()

local particle_b = tm.particleBuilder
    .SetShape(tm.enums.particleShape.sphere)
    .SetShapeRadius(0.5)
    .SetPosition(tm.vector3.Create(0, 2, 0))
    .SetRotation(tm.vector3.Create(0, 0, 0))
    .SetEmissionRate(0)
    .AddBurst(0, 80)
    .SetLifetime(0.4, 1.2)
    .SetStartSpeed(3, 8)
    .SetStartSize(0.1, 0.4)
    .SetStartColor(tm.color.Create(1, 0.9, 0.2, 1))
    .SetEndColor(tm.color.Create(0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 0))
    .SetGravityMultiplier(0.3)
    .SetLooping(false)
    .SetDuration(0.1)
    .Create()
particle_b.Play()

[cinder spruce]

hmm interesting
thanks

[formal crane]

I also like to look at other games mod api, can be very helpful to see what they come up 🙂

Main thing I always think about with these is that one might also need a SetParent function. I don't think PioNet is good at supporting hierarchy changes -- but usually you want the particles to be attached/parented to objects

[cinder spruce]

hmm what about a trailrenderer too?
in the same vein, and a bit simpler

finally,
real trailmakers

[formal crane]

I mean it could be made via these particles to some degree. But I would otherwise consider that a different thing if it was to directly connect with Unitys own Trailrenderer

But yes, seeing some of the Kerbal FX stuff I think it could be very relevant 😉

[warm canopy]

Holy smokes, particles would be amazing

[formal crane]

bet

[fallow fox]