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HOW TO MAKE A DOOR-- the Dwagon Way
in virtual worlds
How do you make a door in virtual worlds? It's not as easy as some may think. So following is step-by-step guide of how to add a door to your virtual home.
You will need several things:
* Doorknob
* Virtual door (any style)
* A building to link it to
* A scientific calculator
Here are the steps involved:
* Rez the house
* Place the virtual door in the proper position.
* Rez the doorknob and put into place
* Add a door script to your door... you know, the one your friend gave you that looks like it was written by a drunk math student.
* Link the door to the house.
* Link the doorknob to the door.
* Realize the door became unlinked when you linked the doorknob.
* Select doorknob, door and house and link all three.
* Suddenly realize everything in your build became unlinked all at once.
* Zoom back, drag-select your entire build and re-link it
* Discover that in selecting the home you also selected all the trees, bushes, rocks, sidewalks, automobiles and sundry items surrounding it, including your neighbor's house as well.
* De-select everything, carefully select the door and all the parts of the house, one by one, and link them back together.
* Realize on testing that you accidentally linked the door last and now when you touch the door the entire house rotates.
* UNLINK the door, re-select it, select the house last, re-link everything.
* Test door. It opens. Unfortunately instead of opening 90 degrees it rotates 180 degrees and gets lost in the wall.
* Do some tricky camera work to locate the now-invisible door, pull it out of the wall, place it back in proper position.
* Use scientific calculator to determine eular-to-radian-to-quaternion-to whatever conversions to get proper rotation.
* Mod the script to the best of your ability so the door opens only 90 degrees.
* Save the script and test the door.
* Notice it now rotates upwards instead of sideways.
* Manually position door back in place, go over the script again, realize you accidentally changed the Y axis instead of the Z axis, try to remember the prior settings, re-set the parameters, save script.
* Touch door. To your delight find it works perfectly. However, doorknob stays right where it is, floating in the middle of the doorway.
* Discard separate doorknob idea and use Gimp to add a doorknob representation to the door texture.
* Test door. It works. Congratulate yourself.
Total time to make simple door that opens and closes: 2.5 hours.
Satisfaction in a job well-done: Considerable... until time to add the back door.
Note: prepare to grit our teeth every time a friend points out that you did your doors the hard way.
ALTERNATIVE PROCESS:
* Unlink the door and turn it phantom.
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