Baking Lessons

[TheWilloughbian]

I thought of doing that.

[TheWilloughbian]

So I did a google search and it looks like the answer to my question was on a now defunct message board, so I'll ask here.

 

What's an "ipoint"?

[Tchos]

An ipoint is simply a placeable that has no visible appearance in the game, but can be seen in the toolset (I speculate that it stands for "invisible point"). Any placeable can be used for the same purpose as an ipoint, but they are essentially intended to be used when a waypoint (which has a smaller CPU impact) wouldn't do the same job. Waypoints can be used for many purposes, but they cannot, for example, display special effects, speak, execute scripts, or cast spells, while ipoints (and any other placeables) can.

 

I should mention that the most frequent reason that I personally use ipoints is when I want an independent object to fire scripts with no interference from any other scripts or object (such as an NPC during combat), and I typically spawn them as needed, and destroy them when their task is done.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Tchos

[Tchos]

Also, and this is important, never place a copy of the object in the blueprints tab called "ipoint speaker". That is an ipoint with a special script attached that is intended to be spawned by a particular script (CreateIPSpeaker()), and the attached script will just run uselessly forever if you place it by hand. It is identical to a normal ipoint except for that attached script.

[TheWilloughbian]

Ah, makes sense. Thanks.

[TheWilloughbian]

That's another thing I'm still trying to workout, Is when to spawn things (creatures, ect.....) and when to place them.

[Tchos]

It's up to you, but if you place your creatures, and decide to change them in some way later (inventory, appearance, abilities, etc.), you'll need to edit each of the instances, whereas if you spawn them you'll only need to edit the blueprint. My general practise is to spawn all creatures as needed (such as when the player enters an area for the first time, or when a quest begins). For non-creature objects I spawn things as needed when they have heartbeat scripts, so that they're not running them when not necessary, or else I swap their scripts to the needed heartbeat at the appropriate time. For quest-related objects I may spawn them when the quest is at the right stage, or I may place them but make them unusable until the right quest stage, then flag them as usable. There are a lot of options.

[TheWilloughbian]

I was watching some of the Legends Plugins videos on Youtube and he spawns everything. I'm thinking of giving them a try. It just feels somewhat like cheating.

[Tchos]

Use whatever gets the job done, I say. But keep in mind that the Legends plugins are mostly designed for PW use, and only some of them are usable for offline module creation.

[TheWilloughbian]

So I'm playing with a creature I downloaded and I'm a little bothered by the fact that it has no walk sound fx. I was poking around in the stock sound files and found some that would work, but I haven't the slightest notion of how get them to work with the creature model. I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Any suggestions.