Demitters - New demitter switch added!!! 2010/03/10

[Incinerator22•]

Just saw it. Bigger than the layer glitch, cow glitch, and invisible material glitch combined

[comphermc]

So, essentially it's 1-time demit logic, without any logic. I haven't added this to the tech demo, or the level... hopefully you can work out how to construct it for yourself... right?

Wait, wait, wait, wait... slow down! Start over...



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That is awesome, though, rtm. So you can verify that anything emitted in create mode counts in play mode? Geeze, this is awesome. Thanks to Aya and rtm!

Edit: Okay, I verified for myself. Super-cool.

[rtm223]

Edit: Okay, I verified for myself. Super-cool.

Isn't it just? I had noticed that rewind no longer screwwed with the emitter association a little while back, but I never thought to check whether entering playmode was fixed up too. It really does make emitters much, much safer / easier to work with now. In many cases there is pretty much no need to block them off, although I probably still will be doing that anyway, out of habit

[jwwphotos]

wow... this is an awesome find!! Good work mysterious purple ninja type guy! ..and thanks to Aya as well!

[rtm223]

Oh teh noes! I just noticed one of my stickers is missing in the photo I posted

Not nearly poiple enough!

I'm not even really a big fan of purple, if I'm honest with you...

[jwwphotos]

Hmmmm were you around Morgana recently? She sorta absorbs purple. I think it's that wand of hers. Sorta like standby mode.

[rtm223]

Nah, I probably touched a paintenator, they typically ruin my costume.... But that's the price you pay for looking this good I guess

[Aya042]

OK, based upon the implications of Aya's recent discovery regarding emitters...

Oddly enough, I'd posted a very similar-looking technique (which quite frankly I thought I'd 'borrowed' from your demitter level) on LBW about 10 days ago:-

1. Create an off-screen platform of dark matter which is large enough to hold the object you want to dissolve.
2. Attach an emitter to the platform, and configure it to emit the object onto the platform. Set the Lifetime to ∞ and Max Emitted At Once to 1.
3. Attach a one-shot switch to the emitter, and trigger it once.
4. Take the object it just emitted, and move it to where you want it. You can glue it to other objects, attach it with any connector, change its materials, or size if you need to.
5. The next time the emitter is triggered, that object will vanish, and reappear at the offscreen platform.

Indeed, I thought that was the technique you were ultimately trying to imply in your level, i.e. exploiting Max Emitted At Once to make stuff disappear, or rather to move out of the way.

Of course, what I wasn't aware of until very recently, was that this retaining of emitter association was only true as of a certain patch, which presumably wasn't the case at the time you made the level.

The thing that I didn't notice at the time I tested this out 10 days ago, was that changing the material type actually had no effect on the thermo - meaning that for simple things like dissolving a large boulder, you may as well combine the two techniques, by making the original emitted object a block of DM, then reshape it, change its material, and put it where you like - then you don't even take a thermo hit for the material type.

Anyways, it's clearly now the best way to dissolve anything, since you can actually glue or attach it to other objects, which you can't do with the creature brain method.

So I don't want to see any more creature brains being exploited for the same purpose - creature brains have feelings too, y'know.

[rtm223]

Indeed, I thought that was the technique you were ultimately trying to imply in your level, i.e. exploiting Max Emitted At Once to make stuff disappear, or rather to move out of the way.

Of course, what I wasn't aware of until very recently, was that this retaining of emitter association was only true as of a certain patch, which presumably wasn't the case at the time you made the level.

It's the same basic technique. TBH, conceptually it's not much, but back in the day getting it all to work so that your initial emit was never triggered in create mode was a bit of a faff. When I first did this (a while before I published the level) I'd been creating for about a month and the loss of association was a right pain.

The demit-remit reset technique is still fantasically useful as it is often the easiest way to reset something complex. And now the association loss is patched, the one time dissolve is so much better than before as you say, due to the fact you can edit it, glue it etc. Plus, I prefer your version of this - emit and then move the object elsewhere, rather than emit and then move the emitter

[Sehven•]

This is good stuff. Now that the association in play mode has been fixed, it's WAY easier to work with. I always avoided demitter/remitter use because it was a pain to set up and super easy to screw it up, but using a one-time demitter to get rid of something without a creature brain is awesome. You could even combine it with Aya's technique to make the demittable object cost zero thermo (though I'm still hesitant to use his thermo tricks).

As for a Soul Reaver type level (you mentioned in the much older posts in this thread), it might be interesting to try it that way. My own Soul Reaver level (not really Soul Reaver, but inspired by it) ran out of therm really quickly, so I didn't get as far as getting the shifting between planes working much. You die and shift to the spectral realm, but then never shift back (It basically functions as the intro for the main levels, but I haven't worked on them much yet). Anyway, I went with actually moving parts of the level around, rather than demitting/remitting. Might be interesting to try it your way, though, but I'd be worried about running out of thermo even more quickly than I did in the first level. Wouldn't having two versions of each room eat up huge amounts of thermo? Maybe I'll use a mixture of the two ideas: having some things move and other things demit/remit.

[Rogar]

This is a good week for LBP science!

Edit: @Sehven: that sounds like the perfect situation to fool the thermo in. You basically have two levels, only one of which will be in play at one time, so really the thermo should only be counting one of them. But the thermo is dumb, so you have to "educate" (fool) it.

[rtm223]

Wouldn't having two versions of each room eat up huge amounts of thermo? Maybe I'll use a mixture of the two ideas: having some things move and other things demit/remit.

That's what I was thinking about it. Either just create the emitted / demitted version as a small technical showcase (which, in honesty, would have blown minds back then) or have certain elements emitted / demitted, certain elementsthat move on pistsons / bolts (to mimic the stretching you get in the game as you shift) and some things that freeze in time.

I'm not really that interested in doing that now though tbh.