dim3 Forum

Brian, the materials system is kind of limited. Currently, you can set different textures as different materials, but it's hard to do much with them.
For example, different bullet holes on different materials is impossible without doing two hitscans, one to check the material and one to place the mark. Because of this, there is no (good) way to have the correct bullet holes for a weapon unless it has perfect accuracy.
Another example, I was trying to make shells only bounce off of hard materials (iow shells don't bounce in the grass), but there's no way to tell what material the object is currently on.
Of course, this isn't nearly as important as working on the editor and animator, but eventually it would be nice to have more support for materials.
(btw, if I'm wrong and this stuff is possible please tell me!)

Maybe a material.xml file would be good?

You could then select one of these for each texture in the editor.
Add a few more settings for marks and particles (override the ones defined by the materials?) and a way to detect what kind of material an object collided with/is standing on/etc. and we have a lot of new possibilities for Dim3.

Bink Wrote:Maybe a material.xml file would be good?

Code:

<Materials>
    <Material name="concrete">
        <Settings mark="true" particle="true" breakable="false" damage="0" />
        <hitmark mark="mark_concrete" particle="debris_concrete" />
        <Sound file="step_concrete" />
    </Material>
    <Material name="glass">
        <Settings mark="true" particle="true" breakable="true" damage="20" />
        <hitmark mark="mark_glass" particle="glass_shards" />        <Sound step="glass_step" break="glass_break" />
    </Material>        
</Materials>

You could then select one of these for each texture in the editor.
Add a few more settings for marks and particles (override the ones defined by the materials?) and a way to detect what kind of material an object collided with/is standing on/etc. and we have a lot of new possibilities for Dim3.

<Material name="wood">
<shootthrough="true">
</Material>

Oh, and the Database.xml :D

Bink: Great idea! That would be very useful, and would help organize material names.