ShiVa 1.9.2 New API Calls

With the newly released ShiVa 1.9.2 Game Engine came a bunch of new API calls.  Not all of these calls have been documented, until now!  Head over to my github repo for a comprehensive list of new API calls that showed up between 1.9.1 and 1.9.2.

The biggest highlights in my mind are.

Average Frame Time

application.setUseAverageFrameTime ( bUse )

This should be a default.  It makes all the internal engine calls use average frame time.  This could mean smoothing out jitters in the dynamics system and is something everyone should try.

Collider Create/Destroy

collider.create ( hObject )
collider.destroy ( hObject )

Being able to create and destroy colliders at runtime solves many problems, particularly if your meshes are being combined.

Offscreen Output, Clipping Children, List Item Children

Offscreen output lets you easily render a HUD to a rendermap.

hud.enableOffscreenOutput ( hUser, sRenderMap, bEnabled )

Enabling children clipping will clip children that spill out of their parent container.

hud.setContainerClipChildren ( hComponent, bClip )

List item children allows you to use a HUD template inside of a list!

hud.setListItemChildAt ( hComponent, nItem, nColumn, hChild )

Disabling Logging

Possibly one of my absolute favorites!  Shuts down those noisy logs:

if system.getClientType ( ) == system.kClientTypeEditor then
    log.enable ( false )
end

Toggling AI Models

Now instead of adding/removing AI models, you can disable them. This provides a very clean solution for toggling sets of functionality!

object.enableAIModel ( hObject, sAIModel, bEnable )
user.enableAIModel ( hUser, sAIModel, bEnable )

Attractors, Vortex Fields and Turbulence

The particle system gets better with every release!  There are simply too many new functions here.  Here’s a sample that creates a vortex field.

local hBox = application.getCurrentUserSceneTaggedObject ( "box" )
sfx.addParticleVortexField ( hBox )
sfx.setParticleVortexFieldAxialDrop ( hBox, 0, 0.1 )
sfx.setParticleVortexFieldAxialDropDamping ( hBox, 0, 0 )
sfx.setParticleVortexFieldOrbitalSpeed ( hBox, 0, 1 )
sfx.setParticleVortexFieldPosition ( hBox, 0, 0, 0, 0, object.kLocalSpace )
sfx.setParticleVortexFieldRadialPull ( hBox, 0, 3 )
sfx.setParticleVortexFieldRadialPullDamping ( hBox, 0, 0 )
sfx.setParticleVortexFieldStrength ( hBox, 0, 1 )

Everything Else

You’ll find the rest of the API changes on my github page, feel free to submit changes or samples.