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MEXedit Info Here is a little bit of basic info on the MEXedit utility we released (courtesy Lyceel). It includes info on coordinates and what each type of entry is. | Types of Entries: | | DMG | Specifies points on the model where damage effects (fire, etc) appear. | | GUN | Specifies the location of each gun on the ship. | | Eng | Location of engine(s) on a ship | | Dok | Location of entry/exits points for docking. Only used for carrier/mothership class ships. | | Sal | The location of the salvage point on a ship where Salvage Corvettes attach themselves. | | Nav | Locations of the Navigation lights on a ship | | Col | One of the more complicated of the entries. Col is used to determine ship-ship collisions. It is a bounding sphere, defined by its centre location and a radius. | | Rct | Bounding rectangle that closely encompasses the ship. It is used to determine weapons hits. Defined by a starting point for a corner of the box, and then the dimensions of the box. | Standard Co-ordinate entries. The 3 entries common to all the types of entries are the X,Y, and Z boxes, where X is Up and Down, Y is side to side, and Z is forward and back. Using these 3, you can determine points on the model for different entries.
The other basic boxes are Entry ID and size, both unchangeable in this release. Entry ID just says what the point being inserted is )ie Sal, Dmg, etc) Common to the Sal, Gun, Dok, Eng and Dmg points are HotSpot, Falloff, Orientation and Name. As far as I know, I dont think Hotspot and Falloff are used for much but I know they are used for DOK and SAL points. Imagine that the points defined are really the tip of a cone. This cone points in the direction defined by the orientation vector. The Hotspot and Falloff control the width of the cone. This cone controls how accurately the ships heading to these points have to be. If you look at the Omega's mex file, I have set the Hotspot to 1 (1 degree) and the falloff to 0 (0 degrees) This means that I am allowing a 1 degree deviation from the center of the cone when the ships reach the docking point. Basically the rules for this are simple. Hotspot must be larger than Falloff. I believe but am not positive that these need to be integer numbers. In other words, no decimal points. Orientation is the direction in which the point faces. I am not too sure how the direction is determined, but this info will be filled in. On most entries, the name is not controlled by the Name box. The name of the piece is entered in the 'Name' box. Generally the name is 'Type#' where that # sign is a number (duh) and type is whatever point you are specifying (ie Dmg or Gun). This is how you will know which point you are working with in the .shp file. Special Co-ordinate entries. PartName For a reason unknown to me, the PartName box is used to specify the name of a part for the Dok, Sal and Nav entries. The same rules as the above go for it as well. Menu Functions The menu buttons at the top of the editor are pretty simple. The ones under the 'File' heading are so self-explanatory I would embarass all involved parties by explaining :). The buttons under the entry tab are the only ones requiring a basic explanation.
Clicking on Insert gives you a menu of the different types of points you can have. You can have as many of each as you want, within reason, but I would recommend no more than one Rct entry and one Col entry, just to be safe.
The Insert Duplicate makes an identical entry to whatever entry you have highlighted in the entry window, or if none are highlighted, whatever was last highlighted. Be sure to change the Name or Partname of the piece so that you do not have identical duplicates, and move it at least a few spaces in some direction so as not to cause potential headaches.
Delete is pretty simple too. It deletes whatever entry is highlighted in the Entry Window or if none is highlighted, whatever was last highlighted. Be carefull with this, as it is irreversible until we incorporate and Undo feature. I think I covered all the basics of the MEXeditor. If anyone has any questions or additions you feel should be added, go ahead and e-mail me (drazi_guy@firstones.com). |
