BETA TEST 3.1.4 Decoration 2.0 (mimicking the mimic with better mimics)

BETA TEST 3.1.4 Decoration 2.0 (mimicking the mimic with better mimics)

What is up Depthians!!!!!

We are really happy to release our new Mimic 2.0 to Beta Test, which we all need to call “Decorations” so that we are on the same page and not get confused.

Decorations are essentially mimics but have several key differences

  • they are free, have no volume, mass, health, armour buoyancy or any other physical effect
  • They are tethered to existing blocks, and you can have up to 32 of them connected to one block. If the block dies they go invisible to simulate the damage. When the block is repaired they re-appear.
  • They can be attached to barrels, dediblades and custom control surfaces and will move and spin with the barrel/dediblade/surface

The primary reason for adding them is to allow decorative constructs to be made without affecting the physical behaviour of the vehicle. There are only a few situations where a mimic is better than a decoration (e.g when you need a wood/metal/alloy cube but wanted it to look different you would use a wood/metal/alloy mimic). For most situations, a decoration would be more appropriate.

We should probably start off by saying that there is a slight change made to the old mimics, as they can be converted to the new system. So don’t be thinking they are useless or no longer work on your other constructs, they are still usable with no issues.

The new decorations will work as follows. 

Ctrl + X IN any block, notice me using capslock for IN a block not flush on a block as the mimicked item will be then highlighted as red. 

Ctrl + X will open up this UI. 

Add new decoration will bring up our usual mimic UI.

However, as you can see the mimic UI has been added as a new tab in slot 0. Therefore this means that you can have multiple decorations tethered to the exact same block/location on a 4m beam.

The UI is self-explanatory, copy all would copy all the tabs allowing you to paste all at another location…Delete all destroy’s the world and all of your blueprints.

The other important thing to explain is the “Shift tether point” 

As you can see the decoration block in the pic has no physical collision/mesh it has no volume and adds 0 to the block count or cost. The tether, in this case, is created in the applique slope which is where the “mimic block” is currently and the blue corners showing the tether. If I click “right” we will move the tether 1m right, yet the “mimic block” remains where it was.


I had mentioned the new “Change to decoration” feature in our old mimic block.

In this pic you can see the mimic block its self with the blue corners is sitting on the deck.

If we click Change to decoration now, we will see our decoration tinted in red like something is wrong. This is because the game needs the decoration block inside any block as it thinks it’s not attached to anything / the block it was in has been destroyed. To fix this once converted simply move the tether where you want it inside any block.

After moving the tether point, you can access all the decoration parts from one point and you can have up to 32 tethered at one point but a max of 900 decorations per construct per subobject, the standard mimics do not add to this number.

All five decorations in one point.

If we turn on our mirror mode and pop back into our new decoration setup we can mirror all five of these tabs.

We also have a new way to view the actual location of mimic blocks and decorations.

You need to cycle through the shift+p views. Yellow are the mimics and blue is where the decoration is tethered.

Changelog

Additions

Decorations
  • Added a new new mimic-type feature available with CTRL+X in build mode. A decoration is visually like a mimic but does not take up physical space on the vehicle.
  •  Decorations can be attached to barrels, dedi-blade spinners and custom control surfaces and will move with those objects
  • Decorations can be prefabbed with blocks and placed
UX
  • Ability to drag and drop .txt FTD log files into the FTD application to parse and display them has been added
  • Ability to drag and drop blueprints into the FTD application to load them in single player designer has been added

Changes

Adventure
  • Decreased the spawn chance of warp gates by 2

Fixes

Breadboard
  • Fixed complex control controller input component not displaying the value of the input
Prefabs
  • Added hull prefabs to new blueprints section.  This will be updated over the month along with others.
  • There is now a new start fort that contains the spawn-o-matic.  The spawn-o-matic contains trainer blueprints with annotations that people can learn from.  This can also be modified to suit your own needs.
Regression
  • Fixed a bug where a disconnection of over 400 blocks would halt the disconnection code from making subsequent disconnections