Hi,

Zones are causing me a lot of problems. Since my last thread posted in bugs has zero views there's evidently little coverage over there, so I thought I'd ask here in case anyone has tips.

First issue: When I click and drag points 9 times out of 10 it picks up some entity underneath instead. This is very irritating! I've found by switching to waypoint mode I can move the points without this happening, but its clumsy, see my next point:

Second issue: To actually assign a script to the zone I have to right click on it in entity mode. I cannot do this as I have large entities below it (road section, etc.) and that always gets selected and pulled out of place, so I have to reload my save.

The only way to successfully get around both issues is to place the zone somewhere with no entities which is very far from where I actually want it and then try and move it, which seems to be a bit hit and miss.

Lee, can we please have zones in a mode of their own? So I don't have to use both Entity and Waypoint mode to alter them, because it really is quite clumsy!

And finally, sounds like a stupid question, but how do you remove a zone? Because I thought it was right click... but:


Nope, that leaves the middle of the zone, which I now cannot remove because of the placement of my large entities around it, which all pop out of place if I attempt it.

hey m8, yeah zones right crazy hard to use unless you do what your are doing and move them well out the way to change...
they do seem to be abit bugged at the moment at times, sorry no extra advice im afraid as your doing the same thing I am put down out the way change and then move .

Well I suppose at least its not just me with the issue, at any rate. It's kinda annoying especially as I'm runnning low on places to create them as I try to fill the level with zones.

Would be really handy if sound zones had a volume setting in the editor as well, since my sounds aren't the correct vol to start with I have to edit them outside of the engine.

Also, do you know how to make the sound only play in the zone?

I had thought soundinzone.lua would make the sound play in the zone, but it just starts the sound and it plays for ever.

plrinzone sound be once off might play for the length of the sound out side the zone but should stop after that.

Yeah, just tried that one, trouble is when you leave the zone it cuts off the looping audio very abruptly, also if you go back into the zone it doesn't restart the audio?? Might just not bother with audio in my contest level as the end result is rather jarring

To get rid of a zone make sure it is selected and press delete However, be warned it will probably mess up any other sound zones you have. So best to just disable it for now ( have no sound, default.lua script)if you have several.
I've had to mess about making a few scripts to get looping sounds and such, basic and a little abrupt sometimes. However in the next version, it looks as if we will have some way better audio options to play with. I have found it easier to assign a distance script to an entity in some cases rather than use a zone at all. But I mix and match really.
A basic script, to get a sound looping once from an entity you get close enough to.


You could probably fade it in also by adjusting the volume level also, but due to other complications later on I left that part for now. Not sure whether to attempt to get music fading or wait for the update tbh.

Thanks
Smallg and Avram gave me scripts that could adjust volume up/down when entering or exiting the zone or distance from entity, however shortly after all my sound zones, win zone, and checkpoints all had a fit and deleted themselves. After this behaviour recurring I decided to submit my level without, and wait for them improved sound system

My entire level uses zones for sound. I have found serious bugs - especially when the player triggers a one-shot sound in a zone and then triggers it a second or more time crashes the game.

I have also found that if a sound zone is misbehaving, then I delete it, add a new one in place of the old one and all is good.

I have also found that when sound zones are very close to each other, it crashes the game. They need to be separated enough not to trigger together.

Mike

Zones of any kind are seriously buggy still. All the issues ever reported are still there even though one was claimed to have been fixed. They need to fix this for 1.008.

Thing is I've found the bugs take a while to show up. Everything was fine for a few days, then one day it all went haywire, I am hoping for some fixes in 008 though.

I expect the competition accelerated the rate f bug detection also, as there were more people focused more on getting more out the levels, I'd assume by the high quality of the entries

I have to say one thing, sure there are plenty of bugs and many important features are solely lacking, but the level editor is REALLY robust and quite surprisingly stable.



My level was freakin HUGE and the editor really did not crash on me. Rarely did it crash and even then automatically loaded the level and I was right back where I started to continue editing.



Sure, it did crash here and there - that was to be expected - but I was amazed at the level of complexity I was able to use at this early stage of the engine.



We definitely need zones fixed - and soon! We also need the ability to rotate, pan, dolly, etc. the camera in the editor so we can see from all angles. It's nigh impossible to edit complex levels without that. I'm amazed at what I was able to accomplish without tools I am used to in other engines, like Unity.



One of the things we need more than any other is the ability to lock down entities and zones so that we do not accidentally move things we do not mean to move. I cannot tell you how frustrating it was to finely edit houses with tables and things on tables, etc and then accidentally move the house when trying to move a zone and now everything I did was off. If I could just LOCK items into place, then it would be so much easier to edit levels and not have to start over or waste time lining stuff up again for yet another hour.



Mike

Here here. I'm with you on that.

Totally Agree



ARGGGGGGHHHHHH ****** was my response several times because of this... Especially with big entities or half buried ones. I posted this in feature creep a few days ago I think for this very reason.

That is another reason - if you bury an object, you cannot select it, but if you lock down all other entities, then you can. If not, there should be a folder-tree organizer in the editor so we can manually select objects.

Mike

That is another situation when it can be infuriating, personally I'd rather a lock over a tree/organiser panel, because those start to get really messy, especially when I put down so many entities!

But yeah, I think a lock is a must-have ASAP

Yeah I have seen the glitch in mention. I don't have no solution however here is what I found over the past few months. Tests and possible outcomes I went back to a edit 1 zone, new save, exit and return. A system I used in classic for years.

I don't edit a way point and a sound zone on the same save, reboot first.
My reasons for this suggestion is not at a engine fault, more so my own tests was overloading the script data. Editing various sound zones and way points, test was = glitch. On return a way point is where the sound zone was and the sound zone boarders are there and yet the dot for editing is gone and so on. This can be edited by expanding the zone reproduces the dot etc, however I wanted to avoid this.
Try a prior save state (before zones were introduced) Limit zones were possible. 3 audio into 1 file = 2 less sound zones = less draw on scripts.


I like the idea of the lock system, interesting.

Ya got my vote for that! Would also be nice, especially in larger maps, is if you selected that entity in that tree view, is if the view moved to that object, or perhaps could bring up a properties panel where you could see (and alter) translation, rotation, and scale, as well as other stuff.



I'm not meaning a simplified tree view of what we have now, I mean when you have multiple instances of the same entity, they must have an index of some sort. That would also have to be accessible in the tree view.

I think zones, entities and waypoints should be entirely separate things for starters. They all provide different functions. But being able to alter zone middles with entity mode and zone points with waypoint mode is bound to mess stuff up sooner or later. That could have been when i went wrong, because I found in entity mode it was a nightmare to adjust the points without moving other stuff, so I switched to waypoints.

Who can tell? Who can tell...*


*Sorry, some of these emotions aren't used enough...

I have added the issue of the zone marker not being editable when over larger entities beneath. A workaround is to raise the zone marker handle with PGUP until it is higher than the entity interfering with you.