@pictionaryjr
Quote: "Like one effect I want to do that I'm struggling with is making an object fade to black before i take it out of the game. just deleting objects makes it really jumpy."
Do you actually mean fade it to a black color or do you mean make it disappear slowly? I'll assume you mean make it disappear slowly.
There is a command FADE OBJECT that is helpful to this end. What it does is actually emphasize or deemphasize the normals based on a percentage. FADE OBJECT 1,100 means set object 1's normals to 100% of their value. FADE OBJECT 1,50 means set object 1's normals to 50% of their value.
Changing the intensity of the normals changes how brightly light is reflected from the object. This ties directly to the objects AMBIENT color level. The less bright the ambient light, the more dramatic the fade effect. When you combine fade and ambient on a ghosted object, you can make it disappear or reappear:
set display mode 800,600,32
sync on
sync rate 60
hide mouse
autocam off
rem make a matrix for reference
make matrix 1,1000,1000,25,25
rem make a cube to fade - ghost it and set the fade to 0
make object cube 1,25
position object 1,500,13,500
ghost object on 1
fade object 1,0
rem position camera
position camera 500,20,450
ambdir=1
amb=255
do
rem use the objects ambient to fade it since it is ghosted and
rem it's fade value was set to 0
dec amb,ambdir
if amb <=0
amb=0
ambdir=0-ambdir
endif
if amb >=255
amb=255
ambdir=0-ambdir
endif
text 0,0,"Current ambient level = "+str$(amb)
set object ambient 1,rgb(amb,amb,amb)
sync
loop
Enjoy your day.
