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[HE-Cooper]

It can be about anything, script, world building, art pipeline, anything. I will begin, and I will list two because I'm awesome.

Selecting an object with the dynamic selection tool and then spamming cntrl-D will allow you to place the same object over and over again wherever your mouse moves.

The plateau terrain tool can have its pitch and yaw changed by holding modifier keys and mouse wheeling. This allows you to make smooth ramps and roads that wrap along the sides of mountains and things.

[FI-ScottZ]

Programmers:

Besides the Chat and Console panels, be sure to use the Script Error window.  When it spews the stack trace of scripts and line numbers, you can double-click the lines in the Script Error window and the Script Editor will open that script and go right to that line.

I don't know if this is mentioned in the wiki; I didn't realize this until I was playing around.

And don't eat the yellow snow.

[RealityX]

Art Server:

Having every one working on the same sheet of music from remote locations is easily accomplished with a linux VPS, samaba, and hamachi vpn. Its secure too =)

[HE-HERB]

Do not delete or rename files or folders in the repository if you don't know exactly what they're for. 

Many of the files in the repository are the glue that makes the GUI or camera or character work.

So, don't rename or delete them until you have your new system in place and working

Cheers

[HE-CHRISTOPHER]

Area Builders:

• Area checkpoints allow you to snapshot an area at a point in time and restore back to it (or even restore just selected objects).  http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Area_Checkpoints
• the Asset Library (http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Asset_library) persists the properties as a part of the library object allowing you to add objects to the library that when added to the game take on the exact properties of the original.
• the Asset Library allows the creation of "prefabs" grouping multiple assets together into a single library object
• your team's Programmers can use HeroScript to build tools to simplify your life...ask them. 

Programmers:

HeroScript has nearly total access to everything in the engine, this allows you to extend the engine to provide new tools.

• the Spec System (http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Spec_system) is Cool.  A one stop shop for most game data needs providing factories for complicated objects that designers create through composition and an efficient implementation that minimizes memory and bandwidth usage.  (I'd say this even if I were not the one to conceive of and implement it).
• /heinfo - (http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki//HEINFO) interface that allows near realtime monitoring of nodes in multiple remote GOMs (including other clients).
• UI, tools and systems you implement can be invoked from the Asset Library. (http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Making_Your_Own_Tools_Tutorial)

Artists:

• When there is an issue with an asset you have added to the engine, the most common problems are related to the path.
• Check the Console Panel now and then, it helpfully displays errors related to the content.

[HE-Cooper]

Terrain Based Caves:

You can have multiple heightmaps in an area, and you can invert heightmaps. Which means you can easily make caves and other structures by stitching a regular and an inverted heightmap together.

[FI-ScottZ]

The way to fake a private "method" is to define a function (private) which accepts a NodeRef of the script's class.  Then pass the 'me' node (or other node) to that function when appropriate and use that NodeRef in the function.

factoid:  While I prefer passing 'me' into the function call as Scott indicates, the engine actually does set the 'me' node appropriately in the use case where a method calls a private function it maintains 'me' as the same node from the method call.  ~Christopher

I find that a good way to keep the HeroSense listing of methods from being cluttered up with a lot of methods that are not intended to be part of the public interface.

[HE-Nate]

Programmers:
If you're looking for a particular method in order to accomplish some task, but don't know where it might be or even what it is called, run a search in all scripts (Ctrl Shift A) for likely substrings. When you've found something promising, you can click on the method call in script and hit Alt G to go to its declaration.

Take the time to read these articles before immediately jumping into HSL. You'll thank yourself later.
http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki/HSL_for_programmers
http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Do%27s_and_Don%27ts_of_HSL

[Stadi_Thompson]

If you turn your keyboard upside down you will see a red button labelled "EASY". Push that and your mmo will create itself automatically, the output will be a WOW killer.

Anyway... to reduce texture stretching and distortion on steep cliffs use the Soften>Slope Smoothing in the terrain brush panel. Works very well and keeps your cliff steep.

[FI-ScottZ]

I just accidentally discovered that if you click in the output part of the console panel (where the messages appear, not the input box) and then use Control-Scroll Wheel, the text changes size.  The same is for the chat panel.

[Viper_Simulations]

Programmers

You can press ctrl+T to turn on a debug output showing you info on the object the mouse is currently over. Turn this off with ctrl+T again.

I find this very useful for debugging mouse selection features and to just see what is around in the scene.

[FI-ScottZ]

In the GUI texture viewer of the GUI editor, in which you set the texture coordinates, the SelectedHover tab was disabled.  I am not sure why, but to re-enable it, open the guixml script _cleanenginetextureviewer.xml and on line 249:

Code: (hsl) [Select]

<_tab name='selectedHover' enabled='false'>
remove the enabled='false' part, compile and submit.

I also adjust the size of the window to better fit my standard viewport, but that's just me.

If you make this change, then like changing any clean engine script, make note of it so it can be restored if an engine update overwrites it in the future.

[Thazager]

Seeing the text in the script editor.


Under Tools, Syntax Highlighting Editor are the color values the user can set. The Identifier is the basic text on screen, normally a lt grey in color, I set to 0,128,128. String default is the text inside strings, I also found hard to see. I set this to 64,64,0.

[keeperofstars]

When building / working with animations remember these two key factors.

1. The Default controller is set to always have Combat turned on. In your animation script file make sure you account for this, if you are using the default controller. If you program your script to only include normal your character or npc will not function.

2. The default controller is set to always run. When trying to test your walkrun animation files and setup, remember this the character will always run by default. You can however test your scripts and setup are working by holding down ctrl  while moving to force walk, and holding shift down to force a sprint, if your walkrun is setup the character or npc should do all 3 states of movement, walk, run, sprint (which is just a faster run loop)

[keeperofstars]

When creating or adding values to an Enumeration the value cannot start with a number.

So

\medav "WeaponTypes"; "1_handed" "2handed"

Will fail with invalid values in both cases.

You can however use numbers in the values just not start with.
So

\medav "WeaponTypes"; "Hand2Hand" "Twin_daggers01"  does work