Assembly Mode

The bread and butter of gameplay. A trigger zone detects when something has entered it and outputs a signal, which can then be used to drive an event.

Say you want a rock to fall on your player at a certain point. A trigger zone can detect their presence at said point and signal that it's rock-dropping time.

Let's try a very simple version of that. We'll make a light come on when the trigger zone is activated. Stamp a trigger zone and a light into your scene.

Notice the output port called detected on the right side of the trigger zone. It's the most crucial output here, the one that sends a signal when it's found what it's looking for.

Connect the detected port on the trigger zone to the power port on the light. Now when detected sends a signal that will power the light. Tweak the trigger zone.

Under things to detect, note that the zone is set to detect possessed controller sensors. All puppets have a controller sensor on their microchip.

Leave the tweak menu open so you can see the zone. Stamp a blank puppet into the scene. Go to test mode, possess the puppet, and run into the trigger zone.

Ta-dah! The light comes on when the puppet enters the trigger zone. Try adjusting the zone falloff to make it bigger than the zone and see what happens to the light then.

There are various ways to make sure a gadget can detect something, but this is one of the simplest and doesn't involve wiring. Snap a tag to something and name it.

Use that name in a gadget with a name field tweak and it will be able to detect the tag. It also has a positional gizmo so that you can be precise about the tag location.

Let's see it in action. Grab a follower and use surface snap to attach it to something. Nip into sculpt mode and stamp a cube if nothing else is handy.

Now stamp a tag and tweak it. Give it a name at the top of the tweak menu. Close the tag's tweak menu and tweak the follower.

On the first page, enter the tag name into the enter tag name... field. On the second page, strength & damping specifics, nudge min distance up to about 2m.

Use start time. Grab the tag and move it around. The follower will do its best to keep track of it.

Use with the wireless receiver for handy two-way comms of complex signals without using wires. As well as transmitting values, it can also receive them.

You could do things like attach a transmitter to a magic flute, put receivers in a bunch of meanies, and enchant the meanies when a tune is played on the flute.

Remote control vehicles, color changing lights, distant trapdoors... anything where you want to send a signal between things without wiring said things together.

Let's make an earthquake happen as a simple demo. Grab yourself a wireless transmitter, wireless receiver, timer and a camera shaker and plonk them into your scene.

Tweak the wireless transmitter and give it a name. Tweak the wireless receiver and enter the transmitter name. Now these two can communicate, no wire to be seen.

Set the zone shape of the wireless receiver as scene (second page of the tweak menu). This means the transmitter will be detected no matter where it is.

Now we need a signal to transmit. This is where the timer comes in. Connect the timer output port to signal to receiver on the transmitter.

Now connect signal from transmitter on the receiver to the power port on the camera shaker. Now hit start time and see what happens.

As the timer counts up to its target time, the signal it sends is increasing numerically, which means the power to the camera shaker increases.

But more importantly, that signal was sent from the timer to the camera shaker without a single wire connecting the two gadgets.

Use with the wireless transmitter for handy two-way comms of complex signals without using wires. As well as receiving values, it can also transmit them.

One application is a key that will open a door when within range. A trigger zone can also do that, but the receiver/transmitter are way more sophisticated in terms of signals.

Where a trigger zone can only output "a key has entered my zone", these can deal with anything - numbers, colors, positions, sounds - you name it.

Let's make an earthquake happen as a simple demo. Grab yourself a wireless transmitter, wireless receiver, timer and a camera shaker and plonk them into your scene.

Tweak the wireless transmitter and give it a name. Tweak the wireless receiver and enter the transmitter name. Now these two can communicate, no wire to be seen.

Set the zone shape of the wireless receiver as scene (second page of the tweak menu). This means the transmitter will be detected no matter where it is.

Now we need a signal to transmit. This is where the timer comes in. Connect the timer output port to signal to receiver on the transmitter.

Now connect signal from transmitter on the receiver to the power port on the camera shaker. Now hit start time and see what happens.

As the timer counts up to its target time, the signal it sends is increasing numerically, which means the power to the camera shaker increases.

But more importantly, that signal was sent from the timer to the camera shaker without a single wire connecting the two gadgets.

Makes things happen when a player presses buttons, by detecting button presses and sending signals via the output ports to execute the desired actions.

To let the player control a puppet, stick it on the microchip, make it possessable and wire the button outputs to the appropriate inputs on a puppet interface.

When the player possesses that puppet their button presses are automatically detected and sent to the puppet interface to be translated into actions.

You can make anything possessable and controllable with a controller sensor, but you do, of course, need the events and actions wired to the button outputs to do it.

If you set the controller sensor to be remote controllable, button presses will be detected whether they're possessing the controller sensor or not.

That way you can just plonk it in a scene, wire the output ports up to some events and make your player's button presses result in whatever you need them to.

The controller sensor is a very powerful gadget and there's a lot you can do with it, but here's a very simple little example. Stamp a controller sensor and tweak it.

On the important properties page, at the top, select remote controllable. Switch to sound mode and search sound effects. Find one you like and stamp it.

Tweak the sound effect. On the first page, under slice playback mode, select once. Now go to the panning page and select controller under pan style.

Connect the output port of the square button on the controller sensor to the power port on the sound effect. Now hit start time.

When you press , the sound effect you chose will play from the controller speaker. Why not try connecting other sound effects to the other button outputs?

Detects whether the attached object is being grabbed or hovered over by the imp, which has all sorts of gameplay uses. Make a clown's nose light up on hover and beep on grab.

Items in a shop which, when picked up, cause the shopkeeper to launch into their sales spiel. Or a puzzle which depends on selecting specific pieces.

Here's a small demo for you. Nip into sculpt mode, stamp a shape, and come back to assembly. Now get a grab sensor and snap it to the shape.

Tweak the shape. In physical properties, select grab under imp interaction. In outer properties, push up the glow slider so it's nice and bright. Halfway will do.

Connect the grabbed output on the grab sensor to the glow slider input on the shape tweak menu. Switch to test mode and try it out.

When you grab the shape it'll glow. Try it next with the hovered output instead of the grabbed.

Detects the velocity, acceleration and scene position of the attached object. So you can always tell where it is, whether it's moving and how fast.

So of course you could use this to detect whether something like a joystick is moving right, left, up or down and convert that into the movement of whatever it's controlling.

But you can use these values to do all sorts of cool stuff. Like trigger a scream when a character falls fast or far enough to be scream-worthy.

Or control how far a vehicle should lean, what it should sound like, or how quickly its wheels should spin, depending on how fast it's going.

Let's make a shape turn red when it gets to a certain speed. Stamp a shape and snap a movement sensor (to sense its speed) and a mover (to make it move) onto it.

Tweak the shape. On the outer properties page, use the tint color picker to make it a nice shade of red. Bump the tint amount up to 200% so that we get a nice strong color.

Stamp a calculator and set it to greater than. Set operand 2 to 2.00. Tweak the movement sensor and connect velocity (overall) to the input port of operand 1.

We're using a calculator because it'll give us nice precise conditions for our event. When the velocity of our shape is greater than 2, it'll output a positive signal.

Now connect the result output on the calculator to the tint color input on the shape tweak menu, so that the positive signal tells the shape to turn red.

Use start time, or check it out in test mode, to see the result. Why not try experimenting with different connections?

Detects whether the attached object falls within a predefined angular range. Set the angle to detect using the tweak menu, or by manipulating the gizmo.

The cone is the angle range you want, the pointer is the direction, and the rod is the object's actual angle. When the rod is in the cone you get a positive signal.

Use it with the gyroscope to make a boat bob around on waves without capsizing. Or for stuff like detecting when a door is open, or whether a dial is in the correct position.

Let's see it in action. Stamp a cube into your scene. Snap an angle sensor and a rotator (because we want it to spin) onto it. Grab a light and make it shine down onto the cube.

Tweak the angle sensor and you'll see the gizmo we talked about. Connect angle range met to the power port on the light. Leave the tweak menu open.

Use start time. When the rod enters the cone, the light comes on, because the cone denotes the desired angle range and angle range met sends a positive signal.

Does pretty much what the movement sensor does, only for rotation. Use it on a steering wheel to detect how far and fast it's being spun, and so turn a vehicle accordingly.

Or on a windmill, to determine audio effects at different speeds. Or a fan, to trigger flappy animation effects on fabric. Let's do an example.

Stamp a shape and snap a rotation sensor and a rotator onto it. Add a rumbler to the scene and connect angular velocity (overall) to the power port on the rumbler.

Use start time and presto - the rotation of the shape is sensed by the rotation sensor, which activates the rumbler with a signal from the angular velocity output.

Fires a laser (a raycast if you know your graphics terms) and outputs various signals when it hits something, like the hit distance and the exact hit coordinates.

Using all this you can use it to do things like detect when a weapon has made a hit, how far something is from the scope, or where exactly in the scene it is.

It can even tell you the hit orientation, i.e. the angle of the surface it hit, so you could do something really clever like calculate a ricochet or reflection.

The laser gizmo shows you the length of the laser, and even gives you a visual ricochet when it hits something.

Let's play with it. Stamp a shape and tweak it. Use the glow slider to make it shiny - about halfway is fine. Now stamp a laser scope (don't snap it to the shape though).

Tweak the laser scope and connect hit something to the glow slider on the shape. Now, we don't just want the scope to react when it hits anything at all.

We want it to react to the shape specifically. This is where labels come in handy. On the labels & ownership page on the shape, turn off all labels except object.

The shape is now labeled as an object. On the laser scope, on the labels page, turn off all labels except object. Now the scope will only react to things labeled as object.

Hit start time, grab the scope and wave it at the shape. It'll glow when the scope hits it, because hit something sends a positive signal, activating the glow setting.

Detects whether anything comes into contact with the attached object. Outputs signals for various sorts of contact - bumps, scrapes, rolls, even just touching.

Great for triggering specific sounds based on the sort of impact, particularly when teamed with audio surface type, in the tweak menu of a sculpture.

Or use it with the health gadgets for applying damage to something. For anything you want triggered by impacts, this is the very fellow.

A thing you'd invariably want to do is trigger a sound effect, so let's do that. Stamp a shape, making sure you stamp it above the floor. Tweak it.

On the physical properties page, set it to movable. Head into sound mode and find a good impact sound effect. Tweak it and set it to once under slice playback mode.

Now snap an impact sensor onto the shape. Connect the output port of bumps to the power port of the sound effect. Get things going using start time.

The shape will fall to the floor with a magnificent crash. Provided you chose a magnificent crash, of course.

Produces signals all by itself, without any input. The sorts of signals that you can't get from other gadgets - namely ones that vary over time.

By fiddling with the tweaks in the signal generator, you can create procedural, periodic signals - sine waves, square waves and so on.

This way you can make things pulse up and down, or fade slowly in and out, or switch on and off randomly. Good for a flickering TV, barely-heard voices or a broken robot.

To see this in action, place a light and a signal generator. Connect the signal output of the signal generator to the power port of the light.

Leave the tweak menu open and select start time. Notice the light pulses on and off along with the wave at the bottom of the tweak menu.

Why not try messing about with the signal tweaks to see what happens?

In your creations, you may want to know where your player is looking, so that you can drive events based on that. Something nasty jumping out from behind a hedge, say.

You'll need to add a head/camera tracker, if you don't have one in the scene already, and select enable look cursor. Then you can use the look cursor sensor.

It will detect when the player looks at the hedge and you can use the hovered by cursor output to trigger the nasty thing.

Stamp a shape, tweak it, and set the glow slider to about 50%. Now place a look cursor sensor and connect hovered by cursor to the glow input on the shape.

Place a head/camera tracker into the scene and tweak it. On the look cursor settings page, turn on enable look cursor. Before you start time, turn your view away from the shape.

Hit start time. The look cursor is in the middle of the screen. Turn to look at the shape. It glows when the cursor is over it, sensed by the look cursor sensor.

Gives you a way of turning things on and off in real time. You can define on and off using the on value and off value. In gameplay, it can be a light switch, or a power button.

But it's great for design and debugging too - use it to enable/disable common tweaks, or bypass bits of logic, live and without going into menus.

For example, we could control the visibility of something that keeps getting in our way while editing. Let's see how that would work. Stamp a shape and a switch.

Tweak the shape and go to the physical properties page. Connect the on/off output of the switch to the visible input on the shape.

Use the switch. You can turn on and off the visibility of the shape, making it appear and disappear.

This simply sets and reads back values, and gives you a way to wiggle them on the fly. You can use it for making your own custom tweaks, or for debugging.

Say you make a vehicle and you want to give yourself and other creators a quick interface to be able to tweak the maximum speed, or the handling, or both.

Put some sliders on the vehicle's microchip, wire them up to the appropriate ports, and name them. Then they can tweak stuff without diving deeply into your electronics.

Or there's a wire and you don't know what's on it. Stick a value slider in the scene, connect the wire to its input port, and the slider will show you what value is on it.

Here's an example. Stamp a cube and snap a rotator onto it. Add a value slider to the scene and connect the value output to the rotation speed input on the rotator.

Tweak the value slider and nudge the maximum value up to about 4. This is to give us a bigger speed range so we can see the change easily. Then hit start time.

Adjust the value slider using the value button, right to speed up the cube rotation and left to slow it down again.