How To Seriously Cheat The Thermo

[Aya042]

Introduction

It seems my previous post on the subject wasn't good enough for some people...

Out of curiosity, which thermos tend to be the most problematic when building a typical level?

Shapes and collected objects. Make it go away!

...so after several hours of deep thought, and trial and error, I found a way to make comphy's day (and probably a few other people's too).

This method is kind of the same as the previous one, but in reverse. i.e. rather than emitting dark matter and 'editing' it to make it what you want, just emit what you want, and 'edit' it to make it dark matter.

This time, you can theoretically cheat all the thermos, by making any object, set of objects, or theoretically your entire level, only cost as much as one block of dark matter!


Method

1. Capture a single block of dark matter.




2. Capture the object, or set of objects you want to get for free, as a single entity. Here I'm using a variety of fairly complex MM objects which take up about 10 of the 16 notches on the thermo, since I'm too lazy to build anything that complicated for the purposes of a tutorial.




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. Set the emitter to emit the previously captured object, or set of objects somewhere nearby, and then toggle the "Inverted" setting on then off again to trigger it once. Since you'll need to unpause the simulation to emit the objects, you'll have to be careful of gravity affecting those objects.


5. Now set the same emitter to emit the previously captured single block of dark matter somewhere nearby, but don't trigger it. As soon as you select its emitted location, watch in awe as the thermo drops to near zero, as you've just tricked the thermo into believing that the objects you previously emitted should be thermo-calculated as the same single block of dark matter that is associated with the emitter's thermo calculation.


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, or else you'll end up with just a single block of DM.
• 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 cheats of this nature haven't always worked in previous versions of the game, so bear in mind that MM may 'fix' this exploit in a later patch.
• Capturing and emitting certain combinations of objects seem to prevent you from subsequently selecting individual objects independantly. I'm not sure what the exact criteria are for this to occur, but you can always work around it by emitting problematic objects separately using another emitter.

[rtm223]

Now you're just being silly

[Kern•]

You are unbelievable... WOW

[Aya042]

Now you're just being silly

I thought you might like this. I'm expecting SS redux to be twice the size of the original.

There are still a few oddities with this, particularly when emitting multiple objects at the same time. Now, as I said, you can emit them separately if you like, but what happens when you use up the collected objects thermo with all the emitters and grab switches you need to leave lying around?

Simple, just emit those emitters from another emitter, and you can get all those for free too. Your entire level should never require more thermo than:-

• Two blocks of dark matter
• One emitter
• One grab switch

Funky, eh?

[rtm223]

Of course, this still has the same limitation as the previous method. Once to push things too far you can't actually add new material to the level without the use of an emitter. Which yesterday was too hard for the average creator

[Kern•]

Surely this does register on the Invisible thermo, as in Game Memory, but the visual representation doesn't catch it?

[Aya042]

Of course, this still has the same limitation as the previous method. Once to push things too far you can't actually add new material to the level without the use of an emitter. Which yesterday was too hard for the average creator

I actually said "too annoying".

I guess you could argue that you'll still have the complex objects limitation, but since this technique makes it so simple to build your level in smaller pieces on different craters, then emit them into a single level, and piece them together, that you might be able to get away with it, although you'll still be "playing with fire".

This is only based on your observation that you could seemingly break the complex object limitation if you only ever emitted parts into your level, rather than placing them in the old-fashioned way, but since I haven't actually tested that theory, I'm taking your word for it.

Therefore my claim that this can break all the thermos is based on your word, so if I'm wrong, it's all your fault.

[rseah]

:O nice ill try it out

[comphermc]

so if I'm wrong, it's all your fault.

Ah, the ol' passing of the baton of blame. Nice.

---

Seriously, though. Are you rain man? Quick, how many toothpicks?

[Aya042]

Surely this does register on the Invisible thermo, as in Game Memory, but the visual representation doesn't catch it?

I'm really just judging it from the POV of what the visible thermo tells you. Now there may be other limitations, which I stipulated to in the OP, but there's really nothing I can do about those.

Another oddity I have noticed, which might be attributed to "invisible" limitations is that eventually, some blocks of material will fail to render, but I'm not sure if this is due to an invisible "objects too close together" limitation or an invisible "too many objects" limitation, because my tests generally involved cramming as many blocks of DM into as small a space as possible, just to make things easier.

However, since it actually started happening long before I even hit the standard 2500 objects limitation, I'm more inclined to believe that it's just a case of the objects being too close together, which is generally less of an issue in a real level. Although it was perfectly happy to let me emit more than 2500, albeit invisibly, into the level.

On the other hand, it was perfectly happy with rendering 2000 mag keys (which is over the usual limit of 1400) on the screen at the same time. So if you just want some uber-complex logic, you'll probably be okay.

Ah, the ol' passing of the baton of blame. Nice.

Not that I really need to. I think I used enough instances of the word "theoretically" in the OP to absolve myself from any blame.

Seriously, though. Are you rain man? Quick, how many toothpicks?

None. I only see 50,500 pixels.

[rtm223]

I guess you could argue that you'll still have the complex objects limitation, but since this technique makes it so simple to build your level in smaller pieces on different craters, then emit them into a single level, and piece them together, that you might be able to get away with it, although you'll still be "playing with fire".

That is exactly what I was thinking about it the other day. This is going to be one of those things that we will either have to prod gently to see how far it can go, or wait for someone to really go mental with it and see what state they end up in

On a side note, I'm not going to be using this in setbacks. To much risk to subject my baby to it, much as I'd love to ram the thing with extra detail.

Seriously, though. Are you rain man? Quick, how many toothpicks?

None. I only see 50,500 pixels.

Lol, this reminds me of a conversation the other day. I'm still waiting on an answer comphy:

[comphermc]

Now, I was thinking about this a bit more and am wondering about the practicality of it all. It all rests on the following question: Can you copy the 'Cheating' objects and emitter block and transfer them to a new level, while maintaining the trick?

If not, I see one of two problems:

1. If you need the glitch, then you are tight on space. Good luck getting the objects into the level to pull of the glitch in the first place.
2. You did the glitch before building the rest of the level, and even though your thermo says you have plenty space, you reach the ceiling for whatever thermo you are tricking, and it won't let you place anything new.*

Forgive me if I am not understanding its uses in its entirety.

*This is all based on the assumption that the limit still exists, but the thermo is not telling you about it. Hm... perhaps I need to either read the thread again, or do some testing.



Edit: Okay - I'm going to try something. I'm going to capture the beginning of my latest level and emit it, thereby tricking the emitter. Then, I'm going to see if I can add more to it. If I can, I will be giddy as a teenage schoolgirl, and will report my findings.

[rtm223]

1. If you need the glitch, then you are tight on space. Good luck getting the objects into the level to pull of the glitch in the first place.
2. You did the glitch before building the rest of the level, and even though your thermo says you have plenty space, you reach the ceiling for whatever thermo you are tricking, and it won't let you place anything new.*

1 is an issue, although you could use yesterday's technique to help get around that. 2: just emit the new objects into the level. You can't place, but you can emit. This invisible limit is identical to the visible limit, but it only affects things you place manually as far as I could tell yesterday.

At the end of the day, it may well not be that practical... And it may just crash your system. As we've seen, a heavilly maxxed out level is highly liable to crash anyway and this will only add to the strain on the engine.

[KQuinn94Z]

I seriously could not be bothered... I avoid logic any more difficult than Logicpack beginner... That's my main weakness. So this looks freaky as heck to me. I don't know how you find it fun...
Ps. Javi move out of the way your heads too big!

Nice job Aya.

[comphermc]

Holy crap! It worked, I was able to cleanly add 21 more bubbles to level. Wow, awesome!