Guide to Ingame Moveable and Ragdoll Editing

[Ishtvan]

D3 allows for some ingame editing, with commands to save things to the map file. Lets say you want to set up some moveables or ragdoll corpses just so. Editing these positions and orientations from the editor is often more difficult than manipulating them ingame, and sometimes impossible. For one thing, physics doesn't run in the editor, so you don't know if the stack of boxes you just made will be at rest, or if it will topple over as soon as the map is run ingame. I don't think there is a way to pose ragdolls from the editor, so that's impossible unless you manipulate them ingame and then save them.

 

The save commands below all save things to the map file, and show what objects you can edit ingame:

 

saveMoveables
save all moveables to the .map file [NOTE: Will not save if any moveable is not at rest]

saveRagdolls
save all ragdoll poses to the .map file

saveLights
saves all lights to the .map file

saveParticles
saves all particles to the .map file

saveSelected
saves the selected entity to the .map file

deleteSelected 
deletes selected entity (I believe it just deletes it ingame, not from the mapfile, but if you delete it ingame and then save, it should be deleted in the mapfile)

 

Selected items are selected by turning on "g_dragentity 1" and clicking on the object. [Warning: g_dragentity 1 interacts badly with our object manipulation system, so you may want to save the game before doing this in case the grabber gets messed up.]

 

Our object manipulation system (grabber) is quite useful for placing moveables and ragdolls, with some cheats enabled to disable the force limits. The following console cheats are useful for setting up moveables ingame:

tdm_drag_limit_force 0 // allows instant translation/rotation of moveables
tdm_drag_af_free 1 // allows picking corpses up all the way off the ground
tdm_drag_damping 0
noclip 1 // it's easy to place things when you're flying around

 

Then you can just use the grabber as normal to place things. A word of caution: since the force limits are disabled, you'll want to move heavy objects around somewhat carefully to avoid high energy collisions that may send things flying that you didn't intend to send flying. Fortunately, you can save/restore the game at any time during the time you are setting up objects.

 

The following commands are also useful:

killmonsters 1 // avoid pesky AI that may blunder into your carefully arranged objects

g_dragentity 1
allows D3 "selection" of objects to save/delete an individual object.  Can interact badly with grabber, see word of warning above.

bindRagdoll
binds ragdoll [to the world] at the current drag position.  Useful for binding stuff like hanging chains from the ceiling, but cannot be used to bind to something other than the world (that you have to do in the editor).

unbindRagdoll
unbinds the selected ragdoll

spawn <entityDef>
Spawn anything ingame, with tab completion.

[Ishtvan]

Update: The naming of spawned items issue was fixed, so you can spawn things and save them now.

 

There are still some things that are not saved correctly, like "bind" information on everything. Some entities refuse to save if they're bound. Some entities seem to revert back to the world origin for some reason, but fortunately not moveables. Spawned ragdolls technically have their origin at the world origin, but then in the first frame they get set up as they used to be set up. You can move them wherever and they'll revert to how they were saved. If it's a ragdoll bound to something though, there will be problems.

 

As time goes on, hopefully someone can fix the saving of the binding information. For now though, you can spawn moveables and ragdolls, arrange them how you want, with physics running, and save them to the mapfile.

[Fidcal]

Won't need this in my current map but I shall definitely need this in the future. Well, at least I did several positionings of bodies in Dromed I recall where you set the frame from an animation for a pose then rotated it. Hope this is going on the wiki?

[Springheel]

Selected items are selected by turning on "g_dragentity 1" and clicking on the object.

 

Ok, I tried this, but really didn't know what I was doing.

 

I set g_dragentity 1, and then frobbed the spiked ball, but I was totally unable to move it. It didn't act like it was in the grabber at all. Is there something special that needs to be done to move the object? Ishtvan has been MIA for a while, but has anyone else tried this successfully before?

[plasticman]

Ishtvan has been MIA for a while, but has anyone else tried this successfully before?

 

Me. Just yesterday.

 

In Doom you would do something like (in the console)

 

bind h toggle g_dragentity

 

Your key "h" toggles now g_dragentity. You can turn it on and off, which is nice, because you don't want to use it all the time.

 

Now you can point at any moveable or ragdoll (in TDM you have to imagine the crosshair), LMB and drag. It's not working within the frobdistance (Ishtvan mentioned the interference), stepping back a little helps this, dragentity seems to have an unlimited reach.

 

If you do it right you will notice it. It looks very different than frobbing, writes some info on your screen and stuff.

 

Binding the raggdoll however gave me trouble. I could bind one part of it, applying a second bind to another part crashed the game. So I can do the typical hangman, but not the typical Christ on the cross. Said something like "bind1 already there", maybe just some screwed up autonaming stuff.

[Springheel]

Ah, so you don't actually frob the thing? Ok, I'll give that a try, thanks.

[Ishtvan]

If I remember correctly, I ran into problems with saveragdolls clearing the "bind" keyword on all ragdolls (or possibly re-binding them to the world, I forget), so make sure you back up your map before trying it. Once you have them positioned, go back into the editor to re-enter the bind information (but don't touch the position or orientation, even though it may look wrong, it gets set right again in the first frame of the game).