How To Cheat The Thermo

[Aya042]

Introduction

To be more specific about "the thermo", I'm guessing this method will only let you cheat the following thermos (see comphermc's excellent Comprehensive Thermo Overview and Guide for more details)...

• Complex Shapes (investigations ongoing)
• Materials (you can use all 172 materials in a level simultaneously)
• Moving Objects (you can exceed the usual limit of about 1400 up to the 'shapes and objects' limit of about 2500)

...however, it's possible that a variation of this technique may allow you to cheat some of the other thermos too.

Edit: And indeed it does. My newer thread How To Seriously Cheat The Thermo makes this one look like the random mutterings of a mad man.

However, I'll leave this one here for posterity.


Method

N.B. I'm using 100 objects for this example, but you can theoretically use any number you like, up to the maximum number of blocks of dark matter which it's possible to place in a level.

1. Pause the simulation.

2. Create 100 blocks of dark matter, capture them all as a single entity, then delete the blocks.



3. Create another dark matter block, attach an emitter and a grab switch, and wire the grab switch to the emitter. Use the following settings (leave unspecified settings at their default values):-



Emitter
Lifetime: ∞
Max Emitted At Once: 1

Grab Switch
Behaviour: One-Shot

4. Unpause the simulation, set the emitter to emit the previously captured set of 100 blocks somewhere nearby, and then toggle the "Inverted" setting on then off again to trigger it once.

5. The objects you now have are thermo-calculated as the same 100 blocks of dark matter that are associated with the emitter's thermo calculation. What this means is, any changes you make to these objects don't affect the thermo at all. It still calculates them as being 100 blocks of dark matter regardless. Here's a picture where I've used this technique to have all 172 materials in a level at the same time:-




Caveats

There's a few rules on what you can and can't do with the emitted objects in order to retain the thermo savings. These lists are by no means exhaustive, but should give you a general idea:-

Things you can do

• Move or resize the objects.
• Change the material types of the objects.
• Extend (with a brush the same material), cut into, or corner edit the objects, although if you split an object into two pieces, then one of them will not count as being one of the emitted objects.
• Glue or attach to another object with any connector.
• Attach mag keys, switches, etc.
• Embed another material inside, although the embedded material won't be 'free'.
• Lethalise and unlethalise the objects.

Things you can't do

• Delete any of the emitted objects. If you do, then the emitted objects are no longer deemed to be the same as the ones in the emitter. It seems that you can crush one of the objects with a heavy object, and it will still be okay.
• Delete the emitter which emitted the objects. If you do, then the objects lose their association with the emitter and will take up their full thermo space.
• Trigger the emitter again, without increasing Max Emitted At Once, or else you'll lose all changes you made to the emitted objects.
• Copy and paste any of the objects. Well, you can, but the copy won't count as one of the emitted objects.

Other tips

• It should be pretty obvious when you break the association with the emitter, because the thermo will suddenly jump. If this happens, just rewind and rethink.
• Be aware that cheating the thermo in this way makes it much easier to create a level which the game engine can't handle, so be careful.
• rtm has suggested that this cheat hasn't always worked in previous versions of the game, so bear in mind that MM may 'fix' this exploit in a later patch.
• You don't have to create all the blocks you'll need in a single hit. If you just emit, say, 100 at a time, then when you need another hundred, simply increase "Max Emitted At Once" by one, and trigger the emitter again. It seems I can tweak a 100-block emitter's setting up to 25 before the thermo goes mental, which implies you're limited to about 2500 blocks of DM.