Comprehensive Thermo Overview and Guide

[KimuraOkagawa]

Another possibility of Bolts Vs. Glued DM (besides visuals) is that it is relatively hard to glue selectively. (I had this problem like nine times in my two-stage elevator before I just scrapped the thing and reworked the level so I could use a standard one-stage Piston.) Even if you know how to glue directionally (push left stick in direction you want to glue, or L1 and L2 for gluing through layers selectively), it can still be a big pain if an object that must move is right next to an object that must be glued. And gluing both, then detatching the moving object is a bigger pain if the moving object had a connector on it.
Bolts (and Rods), on the other hand, are truly selective in pseudo-gluing. As long as you remember to set Strength to 10 (or make the Rod stiff... man that is funny, and I dunno why), connected objects act like they're glued. The bonus is that they "glue" only the exact object they're connected to. If you've got a bit of logic in front of a wall, and you Directional Glue the wall forward, well, you just ruined your logic. If you use a Bolt between the wall and That Which Needs Gluing, objects that need to stay movable are safe.

[CCubbage]

Another possibility of Bolts Vs. Glued DM (besides visuals) is that it is relatively hard to glue selectively. (I had this problem like nine times in my two-stage elevator before I just scrapped the thing and reworked the level so I could use a standard one-stage Piston.) Even if you know how to glue directionally (push left stick in direction you want to glue, or L1 and L2 for gluing through layers selectively), it can still be a big pain if an object that must move is right next to an object that must be glued. And gluing both, then detatching the moving object is a bigger pain if the moving object had a connector on it.
Bolts (and Rods), on the other hand, are truly selective in pseudo-gluing. As long as you remember to set Strength to 10 (or make the Rod stiff... man that is funny, and I dunno why), connected objects act like they're glued. The bonus is that they "glue" only the exact object they're connected to. If you've got a bit of logic in front of a wall, and you Directional Glue the wall forward, well, you just ruined your logic. If you use a Bolt between the wall and That Which Needs Gluing, objects that need to stay movable are safe.

There are definately some things that can help with selective gluing, however.

For instance, you can glue a small spot of material to the thing you are trying to glue to, then copy the material you wish to glue over the small spot. If thermo is a consideration, this is definately an option.

[Thegide]

Ok I've got one for you guys.

Setting the timing for things like pistons and wobble bolts to 0.1 seconds works fine in empty levels, but it appears that once your level starts to fill up, setting time to 0.1s is indifferent from 0.0s (in other words, it stops moving). The minimum functional time in busy levels appears to be 0.2s.

The assumption I've come to is that when moving object thermo starts to fill up, the game engine can no longer calculate every movement at 0.1s intervals, and so displacement cycles are forced longer, to 0.2s.

Just wondering if anyone's got bright ideas to get around this. This issue has now caused me grief on two occasions, where I'm trying to build oscillation-based devices.

[comphermc]

Well, that has since been dubbed the 160-hour glitch, but I'm not sure there is any particular fix for it other than copying the whole level into a blank one. This is what many creators have had to do with large levels. The name is not necessarily accurate, as it can happen way sooner than 160 hours. I've had it happen in my latest, but luckily I didn't have anything that needed to move at .1 intervals. Just so you know, directional switch controlled pistons will continue to work regardless.

Interesting suggestion that it's tied into moving objects thermo. That would make sense. Anyone willing to test that? Haha.

[Incinerator22•]

Now that this is active again I can say if the sticker thermo is overheated you can't shoot the paintinator. It doesn't give you the click sound though, it gives you that sound that happens if you try to shoot with your hand in a wall.

[comphermc]

Really? I thought it was a click... nice catch.

[Incinerator22•]

It was pretty funny actually...

I was playing with rustbukkit and I blew up one of my hugely detailed tanks and there were at least a dozen bomb smudge stickers per intricate piece

[rtm223]

Just so you know, directional switch controlled pistons will continue to work regardless

Fixed

Interesting suggestion that it's tied into moving objects thermo. That would make sense. Anyone willing to test that? Haha.

Someone did, a little while ago. Answer was negative.

For instance, you can glue a small spot of material to the thing you are trying to glue to, then copy the material you wish to glue over the small spot. If thermo is a consideration, this is definately an option.

I've been doing this recently to glue two thick layer pieces together, without gluing them to the thin layer in between. Is very very useful

If you use a Bolt between the wall and That Which Needs Gluing, objects that need to stay movable are safe.

Objects connected by bolts can definitely be knocked out of alignment, so I'm pretty sure they will count towards the thermo implications for both collected objects and moving objects. That's a big lose IMO.

[comphermc]

Fixed

Ah, I forgot. ...I tend to not activate pistons to an ON setting too often.

[CCubbage]

Actually, I think TheGide was more referring to a pistons ability to function properly with lag (which gets really wacky with multi-player).... not the 160 hour glitch.

If the system is lagging, the pistons don't work the same. So, setting to a slower speed allows the piston to catch up. I'm not totally sure what this has to do with thermo, but it is certainly good info to keep in mind with multi-player levels.

[rtm223]

Updates!

Right, stiff rods definitely don't stop objects contributing to moving objects thermo. I tested this with 3x3 sets of blocks of wood and glued them to a piece of dark matter (249 in level) and then unglued the blocks of DM and connected with a rod (155 in a level, moving objects is the thermo at risk). Now I think we already knew this but I decided to do it again anyway. I also tested the same configuration (9 squares glued to dark matter) where all ten of the squares were dark matter and this also comes out at 249. Useful just to tick the box that objects glued to dark matter are definitely considered as dark matter. Again, I think we covered this but the moving objects therm is of particular interest to me right now, so I wanted to check these things for myself.

Now for the interesting part. I've suspected this for some time, but never had chance to test, but I have a new exploit to deceive the thermo calc. If you have a moving object and you connect it to Dark matter, via a piece of dissolve, it will NOT count as moving. So you can actually force the possibility of more moving objects into your level by doing this.

Of course, like the emitter tricks you can only deceive the thermo for too long, so if you are going to push the boundaries of the moving objects thermo in this way, then remember to get your big crushy rocks out


Edit. I also did a different test that I forgot to mention. The interaction between moving objects thermo and complex shapes. There isn't one seemingly. I thought there might be some notion of complex shapes moving about is a bit harder to deal with, but it is, then I couldn't find any evidence of it, which is good news really.


Oh, also, this:

And if you have multiple emitters that need blocking, it will be more thermo-efficient to trigger them all using a single perm. Bear in mind that to keep something permanently off you can just have a mag switch on a piece of dissolve, and do away with the key (what? Stop looking at me like that!! This is the thermo-saving thread, right? Just doing my part...)

Awfully inefficient. What you actually want to do is place a prox on a piece of dissolve and connect it's on/off signal to

1. The piece of dissolve it is on
2. All the emitters you want held off.

That way sacky runs up to the prox, dissolves the dissolve, which takes the prox with it and all the emitters are left unwired. Once again, stop looking at me like that!!!

[comphermc]

Haha, that last one is totally going in my bag-o-tricks.

I will get to adding those other things to the original guide when I find some time. Thanks, rtm.

[napero7]

I noticed that if you remove the sticker of the music box thingy, you save a tiny little bit of thermo

[rtm223]

Gas qualifies as a moving object, even if the original material was dark matter. You can glue it down to dark matter to prevent this.


Note to people who gassify their spotlights to hold them up in the air: You may find that if moving objects thermo is giving you grief that it ould be better to glue all of the spots onto a single piece (big sheet) of dark matter.

[julesyjules]

The first thing to understand when trying to manage your thermo, and squeezing every last bit of level out of your allocated space, is that each thermo acts seemingly independently of every others. While this is not entirely true, it is a good way to approach the management of all your different thermos. This means that even if one thermo is close to maxing out, you may have an immense amount of space to work with in your other thermos.

I was just re-reading the thread, i can't believe how helpful this basic bit of info is. I've always come up against the full thermo and made space one way or the other, but it never occurred to me that just because say, the shapes thermo is the one thats causing the limitations, i can still bung in a truckful of decorations or sound fx. Im such a twit!!

[Kern•]

Probably already know this; Materials aren't Thermo-ised by their "abilities" but are Thermo-ised by their render Go on, if you get alot of Cow Glitch you can place alot of the same ability but with different renders and the thermo shoots up...

hope that helps

[Incinerator22•]

Or in other words, exactly what was posted on luos_destruc's thread-which is still being debated.

[Kern•]

Or in other words, exactly what was posted on luos_destruc's thread-which is still being debated.

I posted this before reading that thread.

[Aya042]

A circle will no longer behave as having "smooth" sides once any of the corners are edited or it is combined with another material. In terms of the physics engine, it is treated as a smooth circle when initially placed, so as to not tax the system any more than necessary.

This is not strictly true. You can actually delete up to two consecutive, or up to four non-consecutive vertices from a circle, and it's still treated as a perfect circle.

It's fairly easy to tell when a circle loses its "smoothness" - when it's smooth, if sackboy stands halfway between two vertices, he'll appear to hover slightly above the surface. It looks very strange if you delete them both with the corner editor.

[clarkdef]

Im pretty sure that there are 2 parts to the thermo, texture/any thing you can see, and colision/corner anything you can physically touch. I have done so many tests, stickers decorations/materials all stack with each other. Aswell as materials stacking with MMs special objects and rockets and bombs etc. Its my first time reading this thread and I find it interesting that moving things also apply to thermo usage.