BETA of Snug Houses

[slink]

Yes, as in "My, this dress is now a snug fit!  I must have eaten too much stuffing with giblet gravy, this Thanksgiving Day."   

[rkelly17]

Yes, as in "My, this dress is now a snug fit!  I must have eaten too much stuffing with giblet gravy, this Thanksgiving Day."   

@slink, don't tell me you were celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving yesterday!

Here in Kitchener-Waterloo Thanksgiving weekend is also the beginning of Oktoberfest (which we claim to be the world's second largest), so we have to eat bratwurst with our turkey. Saturday was the free Oktoberfest bratwurst and pancake breakfast, yesterday was the Oktoberfest/thanksgiving parade (I mostly grew up near Pasadena, but I try not to diss other people's parades), so we had a big weekend.

A funny piece on why Americans should trade Columbus Day for Canadian Thanksgiving: http://www.vox.com/2014/10/12/6962795/columbus-day-canadian-thanksgiving

[slink]

   Thanks for that link, @rkelly17.  Columbus Day has always ranked low for me because most of us don't get it off as a holiday, while vital functions such as banks and the US Mail tend to take the holiday.  Obviously it is a lame holiday and should be replaced, but not by something silly.  I believe the state of Washington's decision to celebrate Indigenous Tribes Day, or whatever it was called, instead is a mistake.  It's not like the Portuguese were the only people slaughtering foreigners and enslaving people weaker than themselves, back in the 1400s.  In fact, some people are still doing it now.  But no, I didn't know yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving.   

[mellowtraumatic]

Got to try these and doing fine so far.

[slink]

Okay, I have come to a point at which I must make a decision.  I have been building these houses to be used with the "F" key rather than by choosing each one with a button.  The problem comes with how that is implemented.  We cannot see how the points from which the smoke emits, when the building is occupied, are specified with this type of mod.  That is because the missing information is inside a model file, which Luke did not give to us.

To expand, for those interested:  For multiple houses on one button, accessed by the "F" key, all of the meshes are inside one file.  Normally each model file contains one model named "mesh" and one dummy hierarchy based on a dummy named "points".  There can also be meshes named "build01" and "build02", but these are not necessary if you comment out the calls for them.  They are the intermediate stages in the building process.  However, for the multiple choice system, there are for example six meshes named "mesh1" through "mesh6".  For each of the six buildings there is a line specifying which mesh to use for the chosen building.  However, I do not see any place where the "points" are specified other than by the name of the single FBX file.

What this means is that I can only have one single set of "points", which is the master for the dummies which set the points for building, using, creating, and smoke coming from chimneys, per group of buildings on an "F" key.  This is not a problem for anything except the smoke, which apparently is just going to come out of the middle of the roof no matter what I do.  Unlike with single buildings on one button, the smoke location does not seem to be responding to the movement of the smoke dummy.

So I can do one of three things:

1.  I can leave it the way it is, and let smoke come out of the roof when the house is occupied.
2.  I can remove the smoke points and you won't be able to tell if the building is occupied without looking inside it.
3.  I can move all six houses onto their own buttons.  This takes up menu space and removes the semi-random factor, but would allow me to set the smoke to the proper location for each house.

Any opinions?   

[rkelly17]

So I can do one of three things:

1.  I can leave it the way it is, and let smoke come out of the roof when the house is occupied.
2.  I can remove the smoke points and you won't be able to tell if the building is occupied without looking inside it.
3.  I can move all six houses onto their own buttons.  This takes up menu space and removes the semi-random factor, but would allow me to set the smoke to the proper location for each house.

Any opinions?   

Oh, I always have opinions--most of them worth what you pay for them. 

Seriously, this might explain why chimneys don't move much from house to house--or Luke may have some secret he hasn't revealed (my father once told me, "I've taught you everything you know about fishing [true at the time], but I haven't taught you everything I know."). I like the snug houses. It is convenient to have them on the F key. I can live with smoke-osmosis. I don't rely much on smoke to tell me what's going on; I sort of see it as "atmosphere."

[slink]

So is smoke-osmosis smoke that comes out of the roof instead of out the chimney (option 1), or smoke that is invisible (option 2)?   

[rkelly17]

So is smoke-osmosis smoke that comes out of the roof instead of out the chimney (option 1), or smoke that is invisible (option 2)?   

I'm good with either option; whichever suits you is fine by me.

[slink]

Okay, I went with no smoke showing.  This will crash any game in which you have the previous version, but a in a new colony it works fine.   

[Alfreddie]

Fine. Frankly, the smoke detail is no big deal for me either! But at last, some new houses... That is a great news! 

[rkelly17]

Okay, I went with no smoke showing.  This will crash any game in which you have the previous version, but a in a new colony it works fine.   

I suppose the other option would be to move the chimneys to where the smoke is appearing.    I'll remember your warning and not add the new version until I'm finished with Fingen.

[RedKetchup]

euh sorry but you need to make 6 differents houses with mesh and 2 builds in each .fbx, so 6 fbx. (it is not a fixed number you can make 4 or 8 or 10 if you like) and all those 6 fbx will have their own set of points.

everythig it s how you call those in your template.

it is 1 template for all the houses.

[slink]

euh sorry but you need to make 6 differents houses with mesh and 2 builds in each .fbx, so 6 fbx. (it is not a fixed number you can make 4 or 8 or 10 if you like) and all those 6 fbx will have their own set of points.

everythig it s how you call those in your template.

it is 1 template for all the houses.

As it happens, I do use six different FBX files, but it appears that the houses in the game actually use only one FBX file for all six houses (we are discussing six houses, and not four or eight or ten).  Within the single Woodhouse.FBX file, there are six different meshes for the final structures, labelled mesh1 through mesh6 in their respective WoodHouseXMesh.RSC files.  I could do this.  The problem comes with the points, which are apparently only defined once for the six.  Given that the chimneys are in different locations for the six houses, it is not possible for me to define six different "smoke" points whether in one FBX file or in six FBX files.

From WoodHouse.rsc:

Code Select Expand

InteractDescription interact
{
PointList _pointList = "Models\Buildings\WoodHouse\WoodHousePoints.rsc";
}


ParticleDescription particle
{
ParticleAttachment _systems
[
{
Time _fadeInOutTime = 2.0;
bool _addOnCreate = false;
bool _addOnNotify = false;
Particle _particle = "ParticleSystems\Fire\FireSmall.rsc";
}
{
bool _addOnCreate = false;
Particle _particle = "ParticleSystems\ChimneySmoke\ChimneySmoke.rsc";
String _attachNode = "smoke";
}
]
}


I believe that Luke has a trick for attaching the smoke to the chimney so that he can place a smoke point right on the top of it as he did for the apiary, and not at some insane offset from that spot, as we are forced to do in our mods.  This would enable him to have six dummies labelled "smoke", one attached to each mesh inside the single FBX file.  Maybe some day someone will figure this out.  For now, the snug houses have invisible smoke.   

[RedKetchup]

did you tried to put 6 different pointlist.rsc gathered with a brakets set ? [  ] ?

[slink]

did you tried to put 6 different pointlist.rsc gathered with a brakets set ? [  ] ?

Yes, I did.  The game crashed, because there is apparently no statement analogous to a collection of meshes, for a collection of points.  There is no example for listing six different _pointlist in the templates for the standard houses, which is where one would expect to find it.   There are also not six instances of points listed in the WoodHousePoints.rsc file.

I believe the contents of WoodHouse.FBX are

mesh1
mesh1build01
mesh1build02
mesh2
mesh2build01
mesh2build02
mesh3
mesh3build01
mesh3build02
mesh4
mesh4build01
mesh4build02
mesh5
mesh5build01
mesh5build02
mesh6
mesh6build01
mesh6build02

And last but not least

points

One single set of points, referred to with one single smoke attachment statement in the template file.  Since the chimneys are not all in the same location for the six wooden houses, somehow the smoke is being attached other than by simply placing a "smoke" dummy on the chimney.  But I can't see how, looking at Apairy.FBX.

I suspect this is related to the broken animation that imports into 3ds MAX for the white chickens.  The smoke is an animation.