The effect tool allows to add objects controlling special effects, like smoke, lightning strikes and way points for forced movement (e.g. in speed tunnels).

General stuff

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The effect objects drop down box lists all effect objects present in the mine and allows you to select them. If a selected effect is a lightning and it has a target, the 'other object' marker will jump to the target.

To delete an effect object, click on the 'delete' button.

With the 'copy' button you can make DLE remember the settings of the currently selected smoke or lightning object.

Use the 'paste' button to apply these settings to another effect object of that type after having selected it.

Clicking 'paste all' copies the settings of the currently selected effect object to all other effect objects of the same type that sit in a marked segment. If no cubes are marked, all objects of that type in the entire mine are changed. Regard that this function does not use the paste buffer, but uses directly the settings of the currently selected object.

Particles

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Particle objects serve as sources for smoke clouds, air bubbles and other effects requiring a large number of uniform objects. The particles start to emanate from the smoke object and move in the direction the particle object faces. You can control the particle effect appearance with the following settings:

• Life determines how long a particle exists before it is extinguished. The higher the value, the longer and thicker the particle trail grows.
• Volume determines the size of the particles and hence the volume of the particle cloud they create.
• Density determines the maximum number of particles a particle effect consists of. The higher the number, the higher the opacity of the particle effect.
• Speed determines how fast the particles move away from their emitter (the particle object)
• Drift determines how far the particle effect expands as it moves away from its source. It is also used to have particles appear a little bit spread out around the emitter. Different particle effects will handle this slightly different to make it look more natural.
• Brightness determines how dark or bright the particles appear.
• Side tells D2X-XL which side of the particle object's home segment to use as emitter. The entire face will emit particles.
• Red, green, blue, alpha: Color and transparency of the particles. This will override the brightness setting.
• Type determines the particle type:
  • Smoke: Good old smoke.
  • Spray: Small, white smoke particles simulate water spray at the foot of waterfalls. Spray is also much denser than regular smoke.
  • Bubbles: Air bubbles for use in water segments.
  • Fire: Simulate a burning substance. It is recommended to use small drift and speed values here.
  • Rain: Simulate falling rain. It is recommended to use no drift and medium to high speed values here.
  • Snow: Simulate falling snow. It is recommended to use small drift and speed values here.

A simple trick to achieve a rain or snow effect in a large area is to put a skybox around that area and make the skybox face above the area emit the effect. The particles will disappear as soon as they reach the bottom of the skybox segment they originated from.

Lightning

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Lightning objects can emit lightning bolts or serve as their target or both. You can control smoke appearance with the following settings:

• Id: A unique id that is only required if the lightning object serves as target for another lightning emitter. The id should not be zero.
• Target: Id of this lightning emitter's target object. If a non-random light emitter doesn't have a target, the lightning' end position is determined by the direction the emitter is facing and the lightning bolt length. The target id should be zero if the lightning has no end point.
• Bolts: Number of lightning bolts the emitter will produce.
• Nodes: Number of 'joints' along a lightning's path where the lightning can change its direction. A good value depends on the length of the lightning bolts: Longer bolts need less nodes per unit. 2 nodes per unit for long bolts (50 units or more) and 10 nodes per unit for short bolts (less than 10 units) are a good rule of thumb.
• Life: Time after which a lightning bolt will disappear to be replaced by a new one with different direction (only for random lightning).
• Delay: Time after which a disappeared lightning bolt will be replaced by a new one (only for random lightning).
• Children: Number of branches a lightning bolt has.
• Length: Length of a lightning bolt (a standard segment measures 20 units from side to opposite side).
• Amplitude: Distance that a lightning bolt can move away from the straight line between its start and end points. A good value for the amplitude is 1/6 of the length.
• Speed: Speed at which a lightning bolt changes its shape (higher values mean slower!). 3 is very fast, 20 is pretty soft.
• Angle: Maximum angle a lightning bolt can move away at from the straight line between its start and end points (only random lightning).
• Offset: Maximum distance from smoke emitter a lightning bolt may start (to make the source of a bundle of lightning look a little random).
• Red, green, blue, alpha: Color and transparency of the lightning.
• Smoothe: Make the lightning paths less jaggy.
• Clamp: Keep the lightning paths within a certain distance from the straight line between their start and end points determined by a sine function.
• Plasma: Render a blurry plasma channel around lightning bolts.
• Sound: Make the lighting create an electric buzzing and crackling.
• Random: Make the lightning bolts have random end points. If a lightning emitter has a target, all lightning it emits will end at that target. For random lightning, a new end position will be calculated each time a lightning bolt is replaced by another one after having exceed its life time. If you specify an angle greater than zero, you will also need to specify a target and all lightning bolts will stay within a cone around the straight line from emitter to target. The cone width is determined by the angle. If the angle is zero, the lightning will randomly go to all directions around the emitter.
• In plane: The lighting bolts will move in the plane given by the sideways vector of the lightning emitter.
• Style: The lighting bolts will be rendered using the selected style. The style can be overridden by the style settings in D2X-XL: If the style set in D2X-XL is a lower one than the lightning style, the lightning will be rendered using D2X-XL' style setting.

Hint: To make directed lightning moving between two geometry objects, put them inside the geometry so the emitter will not be visible.

Sounds

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Sound objects allow to place ambient sound anywhere in a level. All you need to do is to specify a sound file name and a volume for the sound. D2X-XL looks for the sound file in the D2X-XL installation's subfolder 'sounds/d2x-xl'.

Way Points

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Way points control the movement path and speed of other objects (currently only lightning objects are supported). Each way point has an id, a successor id (another way point's id or -1 for no successor) and a speed (in-game distance units per second; a standard segment has a side length of 20 distance units).

To make an object start at a certain way point, enter that way point's id in the object's way point field. When an object reaches or passes a way point, it will continue its movement towards the current way point's successor as given by the way point's successor id. An object will always move at the speed given by the last way point it has passed or reached. A way point with a speed of zero has a special function:

• Synchronize - an object linked to another object (e.g. a lightning object that has a target lightning object) will stop at that way point until the linked object has also reached a way point with speed zero. This will even out small length differences in the path of correlated objects.
• Transfer - when an object reaches a way point with speed zero (and has been synchronized with a linked object if applicable) it will immediately move to the next way point in the path that has a speed greater than zero.

You can use this for example to move a lightning bolt along some path and make it reappear at the beginning of the path once it has reached its end. To do that, create two lightning objects and two parallel paths for the start and end point of the lightning bolt. Assign each lightning object to the start of one path, make the paths' start points the successors of the corresponding end points and let the end points have speed zero. Make sure that each of the lightning objects lists the other object as its target (even though only one of the objects actually needs to emit lightning, this is necessary for properly synchronizing both objects. For convenience, D2X-XL will automatically fill in the target id of lightning targets that have a target id of zero).