Hi all, I have purchased MAX but haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Sorry if this has been answered before, but, in MAX, will we be able to spawn entities dynamically?
or will we still have to place the entities in the editor and then show/hide them through LUA?

Cheers

No.

sadly

I do not find the post where AmenMoses explained why we will never get this. Anything with physics is in my mind.

Would be good to see and dont see why it would be that hard to do in the code

It looks like it implies to re-write the whole engine to achieve it, IIRC it has to do with physics plus collision detection.

Hu? That's news to me that we couldn't have script-spawned entities.
I agree, that's strange that we couldn't figure out how to spawn a new
item on the fly... All items that are moved, scaled, rotated, destroyed,
spawned, etc as we already CAN DO are under the same constraints as
a script spawned item-- in other words, the physics have to be computed
again for all those anyhow!

So don't throw it out! Some users of the engine would rather just manage
the assets themselves-- with no need for engine intrusion. P.S. Lee said it
sounded like a good idea when we first opened up MAX discussions.
What would have changed since then? Besides 64 bit, auto add models
is the only reason to get MAX.
64 bit supports scripted spawning, scripted spawning supports 64 bit!
And most importantly, the users who spawn dynamically would already
have plans to use all those objects in their own customized scripts--
no need to worry what the engine physics does.
All you have to do is provide the link of the script for them.

Lots of reasons really.

Main one from my perspective is that the only valid reason I could see for wanting something like this is automatically creating a populated map, maybe a forest or town or something, such that every time it is created it will be different.

The problem then is that the engine normally creates the AI navigation map once and thereafter it is simply reloaded with the level but that will no longer be possible, in fact the engine will have to do this every time you dynamically spawn a new entity. This will then cause your game to grind to a halt as creating the new nav map takes a lot of time. The alternative would be AI completely ignoring your objects and either becoming stuck in them or simply walking straight through them.

Add to that the sheer chaos from the Physics engine pov, poor old Bullet is busy working out potential collisions for a whole host of existing entities (which requires future predictions to work smoothly) and you go and dump some brand new object in the world! If you place so it overlaps a dynamic entity in any way or such that it is in the path of an already moving entity then the likelihood is that the Physics engine constraints will be violated and either something will get punched through the terrain or it will get thrown off the map!

Btw, if you take a look in the pickuppables script you will find a whole lot of scripting to detect and rectify the physics issues I mentioned, it is not a trivial thing to deal with!

BTW you can re-use entities and characters as well.

Yes you can, things like ammo and health packs can be re-used over and over again with a little clever scripting.

NPC's can also be re-used although that is a bit trickier.

I gave slaur3n a set of scripts that re-use both in a virtually endless way and it was very successful.

[[ A Discussion ahead-- not ranting or demand! ]]

It might indeed take a little bit of re-structuring-- for what- AI?
Is ammo and health packs all this engine is good for?

Here's where we are not communicating; how about forget about NPC's
and health packs-- how about imagining building games... where you need
100+ blocks to build up your base?! ((more on that later))

Well, I'm sure with that being said, that we will always rely on having to place
the objects beforehand on the map before it's used... and I'm willing to do that,
the only reason for me to keep discussing it is because I'm not convinced of
the arguments against it.

"the engine normally creates the AI navigation map once "

And? Well, obviously for a one and only First Person Shooter without any
creativity added to it, then sure-- we can't imagine any need for this.

For NONE of my past or future game ideas would I include stock AI NPC's...

So for other, more creative projects, sure, you could place 200 objects
on the map in a pile that you want to spawn at will in the location you
want, in your scripts. It's harder without scripted spawning when you want
say 15 different objects types that can be used to build your fort with...
"Extract" is just not very fast or convenient with many different objects.

Let's just hope Copy and Paste is also not thrown into the trash...
If we CAN get Copy and Paste, then indeed this isn't quite as crucial.

How about Fortnite where you build your protective fort structures and
climb up ramps onto buildings? How about a building game, where the
player can construct walls, castles, towers, etc.

I'm not asking ANYONE ELSE to provide the scripts to achieve the player
building feature-- that can be handled sufficiently enough if users want this--
obviously they should provide that script themselves. It would be just so
much easier to link up objects if it's just a call to example;

InstanceObject("Entitybank/Defenses", Parapet6, x,y,z, xa,ya,za)
SetScriptToObject(74, "ScriptBank/3com", castle_segment.lua)

I'm not sure about others, but I still don't see the issue because there is already
a Spawn and Destroy and CollisionOff function calls- except that there is a
strange and archaic dependence on the "AI mapping out the level" before
it is ran... weird.

I repeat over and over that when moving an object, it seems like AI will have
to re-compute their paths again anyhow?? Guess I haven't actually really
tested the AI with moving objects-- hmmm can't remember.

Besides, maybe some users won't have a single stock AI entity on their map??
Testing it before it's discarded (because of course I could be wrong!) would be
a nice idea.

Currently AI ignore dynamic entities entirely. Put a dynamic barrel in an AI's waypoint path and they will simply bulldoze straight through it. Make it a large enough object so they can't move it and they just get stuck.

Here your funky math comes handy.
I did something about re-using NPC's times ago, there might be some vid somewhere.

@ GubbyBlips
Don't kill NPCs just hide them, save their current position/angle in a variable, and calculate the new position/angle where you want to place the NPC, over and over again.
Be careful, or the same will happen with the time travelers that appear in the middle of the ocean.