Well after a long wait its finally here; The new more stable version of Skyline. Yay! After many hours testing and crash fixing we have chased out many of the Skyline gremlins leaving amuch more stable core system behind.
The main areas of the gremlin hunt are:
- Main scene editing: This is now so much more stable, to the point where levels can be designed with out the pain of restarts.
Asset importing: Many new fixes have been added to make this part of the workflow solid and if there are any mesh/model errors caused by external applications Skyline will trap these errors and inform you that the asset may be corrupted, all without a crash.
Material Editing: So much has been done here to fix errors and improve the workflow.
Obviously there will still be many bugs to hunt down so keep any reports coming our way. Also many thanks to the testers ( you know who you are ) who have helped in tracking down these issues. We still have a huge hill to climb , getting all the other systems stable and usable.
We have spent time creating some large complex levels to bug fix and showcase some of the new game mechanics and we hope to release these in the next few weeks once we can get the performance satisfactory. There will be a forum post on these projects soon, for now here are a few images….
So many new features have been added, game mechanics, workflow upgrades, new editors most with new lua commands to give you control over your scenes. Check out the update log below for a full list of changes.
Various New Editors:
Weapons Editor - Designed to work with all Skylines game mechanics systems. This editor gives you control over how the weapons will perform and look.
Mesh Magick Editor - Fix errors and issues with many imported meshes and save the result back to the mesh file. This will help your meshes work seamlessly within Skyline. Available mesh options are; rescale, reposition ( moves the mesh axis ) great for setting up dynamic / static objects.
Various upgrades:
Material Editor - Upgraded with many new features and stability.
Road Editor - Upgraded with new tools and a new deform/smooth for quickly creating great roads.
CEGUI - Layouts can be loaded via lua with basic commands to perform actions on the widgets. Currently only buttons can be registered please see the CEGUI tech Demo and the API for more information.
New Systems:
Game Mechanics -Vehicles( on-going development) many ways to get your vehicles moving along with a specific set of vehicle lua commands. New vehicle demo is in development and will be release to the forum as soon as possible
Game Mechanics -FPS Starter kit( on-going development) full FPS kit complete with fps player, very customisable pickups, damage system for exploding objects fully customisable from lua with its own set of commands. See the FPS/Neon Shooter - With Arm Tech demo, This demo will demonstrate how to use the pickup system to create items such as; ammo pickup, bonus, weapon and even damaging fire!
Particle System: more stable and includes the external Particle Universe Plugin. To create any particle universe effect you will need to purchase the PU editor or you can use any of the effects provided by Skyline. http://www.fxpression.com/
Update Log:
- New: Console Command - getCamera prints out the current editors camera position and orientation which then can be used in luas camera cmds
- New: Console Command - resetCamera, if your camera seems to flip upside down, then call this command
- New: Tech Demo: FPS Level.
- New: Tech Demos: Multi Vehicle Demo with GUI. - this is a full world to drive 3 different cars around, also used CEGUI
- New: Tech Demo: Glow Material.
- New: Tech Demo: CEGUI Demo
- New: Tech Demo: Particle Universe Demo
- New: CEGUI basic functionality via lua:
- New: CEGUI now resizes to the screen if the layout has been set to work with resize events.
- Fixed: CEGUI layouts can be change dynamically from lua with out intermittent crash.
- New: Selected Scene Entity Refresh separate from Reload Resources. This is a rapid development feature
- New: Auto Refresh button which enables a timer that refreshes the selected scene entity every "N" seconds.. This is a rapid development feature.
- New: We now have an editor settings menu. If you think we should place something in this settings instead of scene settings, then please post it on the forums.
- New: menu File->Exit can now be used to close Skyline.
- New: Editor Settings now contain controllable refresh Scene Entity Update Time Delay Value
- New: Terrain Roads now use a physics collision mesh
- New: Terrain Road Editor: Deform Terrain now smoothly creates a road surface that carves through the terrain, instead of the previous system which created very unsmooth surfaces and straight edges.
- New: Terrain Road Editor: Deform Terrain has a controllable edge smoothness properties..
- New: Terrain Editing: We now have an average smoothing tool.
- New: Renamed the older smooth tool to leveller.
- New: FPS System action . Rewritten FPS System now works in conjunction with Lua
- New: Damage system action to work along with any game system, also includes micro script for internal events.
- New: Pick action for use with game systems such as the FPS system.
- New: Lua library (fpsSystem.function) to work alongside the new FPS System
- New: When the vehicle action is applied to a car body, the wheels are immediately in the scene.
- New: Multi-Timers enable the use of many timers to be used per script or micro script.
- New: Action for use on physics colliders. This action will make the object invisible when pressing paly.
- New: Integrated the Third party Particle Universe system. This is an external product for creating special effects with its own editor ( requires purchased from the particle universe site. Skyline has a few premade PU effects for you to use.
- New: PU - action to quickly add PU effects to your scene.
- New: 3D Audio can be used in lua, with changeable pitch.
- New: 3D Audio can be used in lua, with changeable volume.
- New: 3D Audio can be used in lua, with changeable position.
- New: Vehicle: no longer need to attach camera as action, as the .car files allow you to easily set up vehicle cameras with up to 99 cameras per car.
- New: Vehicle: Can now setup a steering wheel for interior view driving.
- New: Vehicle: Steering wheel rotates in conjunction with the wheels steer angle. There is also an adjustable steering ratio.
- New: Vehicle .car file: Now includes MAX_BRAKEFORCE
- New: Vehicle .car file: Now includes MAX_HANDBRAKEFORCE
- New: Vehicle .car file: Now includes STEERING_WHEEL_MESH
- New: Vehicle .car file: Now includes STEERWHEEL_POSITION
- New: Vehicle .car file: Now includes STEERWHEEL_PITCH
- New: Vehicle .car file: Now includes STEERWHEEL_RATIO
- New: Vehicle: vehicles now have an increasing throttle with a controlled increase value between 0 and 1.
['*] New: Vehicle car file: Now includes THROTTLE_RATIO - which controls how fast the acceleration pedal is pressed. - New: Vehicle action now contains a setAsPlayer. Note: Only one vehicle should have setAsPlayer set to true in the properties.
- New: Vegetation now uses a wind shader by default.
- New: Vegetation has an editable wind factor control for the X(side to side sway) and Y(up and down movement) directions in the vegetation mode editor panel.
- New: Vegetation: Models wind effect for leaves use an up and down motion plus side to side, whereas trunk only operates on the side to side
- Updated: Microscript editor clear all, now contains a catch.
- Updated: Terrain Road material looks much better.
- Updated: Base_Multilight_V1_AlphaSmooth has been edited to stop the additive blending.
- Updated: Preset Manager: Saving of the folder structure has been improved.
- Updated: Action - Entity LOD: Changed Generate to Generate Now
- Updated: Action - Entity LOD: Removed asad from Edit Material0
- Updated: Terrain Editor panel style upgrades
- Updated: Material Editor: Renamed label "Lod 0 Distance" to "Mat Lod Dist"
- Updated: Material Editor: Basic materials can edit and save UV Tiling.
- Updated: Material Editor: Basic materials can edit and save Diffuse Color.
- Updated: Material Editor:No longer saves the "NoMaterial" material that may get tagged into a material file that is exported.
- Updated: Material Editor: Now only displays the same material name once.
- Updated: Material Editor features:
- New: Emissive Color for Basic Material
- New: Emissive Brightnessfor Basic Material
- New: Depth Buffer for Basic Material
- New: Alpha Depth Buffer for Basic Material
- New: Convert to Advanced material button.
- New: Now saves basic materials back.
- New: Property Tabs select the Texture Display Tabs and vice-versa
- New: Material Editor now updates the material the entity is using when selected to be up-to-date.
- Updated: Property values can now be typed in
- Updated: Property buttons now set the color chosen back to the button
- Updated: Property color dialogs open with the previous color
- New: Emissive Color for Basic Material
- Fixed: Reload resources crashed when post FX were enabled.
- Fixed: Refresh Post Fx Editor Crash
- Fixed: After Refresh works, couldn’t enable any post Fx using checkboxes.
- Fixed: Vegetation: models would lose their material and crash after you have reloaded the resources.
- Fixed: Main script editor now opens to all files when loading a file.
- Fixed: Material Editor: Uv Tiling would when when material was basic.
- Fixed: Material Editor: If editing a water plane, then it would have crashed.
- Fixed: fire up the editor. On the right click on Road/Paths == Crash
- Fixed: When importing a filetype other than mesh, it would crash when trying to edit material and say the mesh doesn't exist.doe
- Fixed: Vehicle gearing was not working and only ever had 1st and reverse gear. Now solved.
- Fixed: File checks for properties are now case sensitive, which prevents crash on spelling error
- Fixed: micro scripts in multiple actions would fail to pass data to the correct action, this is now fixed.
- Fixed: micro scripts would not open the editor in certain circumstances, this should now be fixed.
- Fixed: micro scripts open and save correctly if they follow other actions on the entity action chain.
- Fixed: Preset Manager: If the import entity button is pressed when no library is selected, then it would crash
- Fixed: Entity LOD was changing and editing the last selected entity when the game was stopped.
- Fixed: Progress bars left on screen.
- Fixed: Vegetation: when deleting a model icon from the editor, it would crash on trees that stored the original names and not the mesh name the icon is storing.
- Fixed: Terrain Road texture isnt squished at edges no more
- Lua: cegui:
- Lua: cegui.createScheme("TaharezLook.scheme");
- Lua: cegui.loadLayout("tahz_test1.layout");
- Lua: cegui.showUI ( int state);
- Lua: cegui.createMouse("TaharezLook", "MouseArrow");
- Lua: cegui.setText("testText","Hello world!");
- Lua: cegui.setTextColor("testText","F4440FFF");
- Lua: cegui.registerButton("testButton",script_objID);
- Lua: cegui.setProperty("TextColours", "tl:FFFFFFFF");
- Lua: cegui.createScheme("TaharezLook.scheme");
- Lua: quat:
- Lua: quat.getXAxis_RotationTo
- Lua: quat.getYAxis_RotationTo
- Lua: quat.getZAxis_RotationTo
- Lua: quat.getXAxis_RotationTo
- Lua: camera:
- Lua: camera.setPosition(x,y,z);
- Lua: camera.getOrientation();
- Lua: camera.setOrientation(w,x,y,z);
- Lua: camera.getDirection();
- Lua: camera.setDirection(x,y,z);
- Lua: vehicle:
- Lua: vehicle.getActiveVehicleID
- Lua: vehicle.setAsPlayer
- Lua: vehicle.isPlayer
- Lua: vehicle.applyForce
- Lua: vehicle.applyForceAtPoint
- Lua: vehicle.applyLocalForce
- Lua: vehicle.applyLocalForceAtPoint
- Lua: vehicle.applyImpulseAtPoint
- Lua: vehicle.applyLocalImpulse
- Lua: vehicle.applyLocalImpulseAtPoint
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_ContactGround
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_ContactPoint
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_ContactPosition
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_ContactNormal
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_ContactForce
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_LateralDirection
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_LateralImpulse
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_LateralSlip
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_LongitudalDirection
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_LongitudalImpulse
- Lua: vehicle.getWheel_LongitudalSlip
- Lua: vehicle.setCurrentThrottle
- Lua: vehicle.getCurrentThrottle
- Lua: vehicle.setCurrentGear
- Lua: vehicle.getCurrentGear
- Lua: vehicle.getRPM
- Lua: NOTE: the getVehicleID function has changed and requires you now pass the entID of the vehicle as well. vehicle.getVehicleID(objID, "Vehicle_MyCar"));
- Lua: vehicle.getActiveVehicleID
- Lua: fpsSystem:
- Lua: fpsSystem.setHasAmmo(int entityID, int State);
- Lua:fpsSystem.playWeaponReloadSound(int entityID);
- Lua: particle.attach( int particleFX_HND, int EntityID ) attaches the particle effect to an object, note this is self managed
- Lua: fpsSystem.setHasAmmo(int entityID, int State);
- Lua: physics:
- Lua: physics.setRotation(int bodyID , float w , float x , float y , float z); Rotates a physics body
- Lua: physics.setRotation(int bodyID , float w , float x , float y , float z); Rotates a physics body
- Lua: Multi-Timer:
- Lua: time.startMultiTimer(timerID,obj,Interval);
- Lua: time.stopMultiTimer(timerID, obj);
- Lua: function onMultiTimer(timerID)
- Lua: time.startMultiTimer(timerID,obj,Interval);
- Lua: Entity:
- Lua: float getElevation(int objectID, int TargetID);//get the pitch angle between the 2 objects
- Lua: float getHeading(int objectID, int TargetID);//get the yaw angle between the 2 objects
- Lua: float getSquaredDistance(int objectID, int TargetID);//same as getDistance but less accurate and faster
- Lua: float getDistance(int objectID, int TargetID);
- Lua: float getElevation(int objectID, int TargetID);//get the pitch angle between the 2 objects
- Lua: particle:
- Lua: particle.attach() has improved to contain a position offset and a arg for flipping the direction attach(FXID, objID,x,y,z,flip)
- Lua: particle.PU_setRenderOrder(int PU_ID, int order); [PU - Particle Universe effect]
- Lua: particle.PU_Pause(int PU_ID, int pauseTime);
- Lua: particle.PU_Stop(int PU_ID, int fadeoutTime);
- Lua: particle.PU_Run(int PU_ID, float posx, float posy, float posz);
- Lua: particle.PU_Create();
- Lua: particle. setVisibleDistance(float distance);
- Lua: particle.attach() has improved to contain a position offset and a arg for flipping the direction attach(FXID, objID,x,y,z,flip)
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please ensure you copy your preset thumbnails if you have added your own as the install will over right them and they will be lost forever! Once the new Skyline is installed you can then copy your thumbnails back to their folder. You can find your thumbnails here Data\Thumbnails\Presets.
Downloads:
All Files will need to be downloaded to extract the single installer from all archives.
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.001
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.002
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.003
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.004
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.005
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.006
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.007
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.008
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.009
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/downloads ... x86.7z.010
Note: As some of the users requested, this download of skyline is the last large version download required apart for new users to skyline, and update patches will go with the next release to make a quick download and install of only the required sections.
Note: As usual you may experience some new bugs, please post your findings to the forum complete with an explanation on the process used to make it fail.
Note: Some of the tech demos will need opened on a fresh load of skyline
Your Skyline Developer Team
Enjoy!