Exploring an area

Contents 1 Choose an area 2 Tool tips 3 Look around 4 Explore in camera mode 5 Find a nearby object 6 Investigate other nearby assets 7 Investigating distant assets 8 Investigate assets in other rooms 9 Moving between rooms 10 Dissect an effect 11 Dissect a trigger 12 Look for unusual assets 13 Look for specific assets

See also: Getting started with HeroBlade

This page provides tips and tricks for exploring someone else's area with the HeroBlade tools. Tips on this page may also be useful when entering an area where you may have gotten "lost" or disconnected from things that have been created.

If you are new to HeroEngine, it is strongly recommended that first you work through the Getting started with HeroBlade tutorial.

Choose an area

To see what areas are in a given world, open the Organizer panel.

If unsure which area to try first, a good area to explore is one in the Hero's Journey Reference World, such as "Three Points Plaza", or look in the "Cities" folder for some complex areas. Note that some areas in HJ Reference may have monsters in them which will try to attack your character! If you wish to explore safely, stick to Camera mode, or if your character is killed, type /DEMO REZZ into the Chat panel to resurrect.

Tool tips

See also: Keyboard shortcuts

As a fast way to get information about anything that you can see in the viewport:

Press Ctrl-T, to turn on Tool tips. Now, hovering your mouse over any asset in the viewport will give you detailed information about its art properties. To turn Tool tips off, toggle it again with CTRL-T.

Look around

• When exploring an area, it is usually best to be in camera mode, and in a Play instance
• Many mouse controls exist to move your viewpoint around
• Toggle in and out of Overhead View Mode by tapping CTRL-O
• Press Ctrl-W to toggle on and off Wireframe mode, which may make some items visible that don't show up in normal "art" view.
• If an area is dark, tap the B key to brighten it (this only works in camera mode)
• You may only be seeing one room at a time. To turn on all rooms, open the Area Panel, go to the Room visibility tab, and make sure all the rooms you want to view are checked.
  • To only view one room at a time, wherever your viewpoint is, check the box for automatic room selection
  • To tell which room is which, check the box for Dim Other Rooms in rooms visibility tab. Everything not in your current room will be displayed with a reddish tinge.
• If you cannot see distant rooms because of mist or fog, then, assuming that you are in a play instance, with the rooms checked that want to be seen:
  • In the Environment panel
    • In the "Fog" section, drag the Fog attenuation slider down to 0
    • In the "Cloud Layers" section, drag the vertical slider down to 0 there as well.

Important: When adjusting environment settings in an area while exploring, please ensure that you are in a play instance, so that your changes are not saved!

Explore in camera mode

To see what is in an area, one quick way is to get a bird's eye view:

• Go into camera or Fly mode
• Look down at the ground and then backup with the S key, into the sky. If you get stuck on a ceiling or mountain, press F2 to go into no collision mode.

Find a nearby object

Note: If your character appears to be standing in a grey void, it may be because your character is in a room which is not able to see other rooms (for example, this is the regular configuration of the Everywhere Room). To see other parts of the area, choose another roomname, such as the Default Room, from the Area Panel.

To find the nearest object, and not sure which to choose (or if you can't see any), HeroBlade will often be able to choose one for you:

• First ensure that you are in Fly mode
• Move the mouse pointer over the main viewport
• Press mouse button #4 (the "back" button). This will move your viewpoint to a nearby object in a visible room.
• The same thing can be done with Ctrl-G

Note: If the above steps do not appear to do anything, proceed to the next section, to determine if there are any assets in your area instance.

Investigate other nearby assets

• Open the Assets panel
• Look under the "Model" asset category
  • Assets which are in bold, definitely have instances in your current room
  • Assets which are greyed out, may or may not have instances in the area
• If any of the names are bolded, click on one, and a list of instances in the current room will appear in the "Instances" part of the panel
• Right-click on one of the instances, and choose "Go to position"
• If none of the names are bolded:
  • Open the Area panel, so that you can see both it and the Assets panel at the same time
  • While watching the names of the assets in the Assets Panel, cycle through the different room names in the Area Panel by clicking on the room names with the mouse, or using the cursor arrows to move through them. As you step through rooms, the bolding in the Assets panel may change, depending on which rooms have instances of which assets.

Investigating distant assets

If you can see something in the distance and wish to visit it:

• Use the Selection Tool
• Click on the distant object to get a selection box around it, and then press mouse button #4 to go to it
• If you cannot click on it, try click and dragging around it, to get a selection box that way
  • Using the Ctrl-W toggle may also be useful, to turn on wireframe to see the extent of an object
• If you still cannot select it, it may have had its "selectable" property set to false. To still be able to select it, hold down the "|" (pipe) key while clicking on it.
• If there are multiple objects within the field where you are clicking, and you keep getting a "foreground" object when you really want a "background" object, hold down the Shift key while clicking on the object, and each click should cycle through a different layer
• If you are trying to select a background object which may not be selectable, hold down the "|" key while click and dragging in the general area. This may at least give you a better sense of the bounding box of the background object, as well as what foreground objects are interfering with your ability to click on it. You may need to play with this, such as going to one of the foreground objects first, so that it's not in the way, and then trying |-click again.
• Note that when you select an object, it may have a yellow or cyan-blue bounding box around it:
  • Yellow means the object is in your current room (you can see this roomname in the Area Panel)
  • Blue means the object is is a different room, though that room is set to be visible from your current room.

Investigate assets in other rooms

• Ensure that you are in Fly mode
• On the Area Panel in the room visibility tab, check that you are not "Auto" mode, and have the rooms checked that you want to be able to see.
• Use the selection tool
• Open the Area panel
• Open the Assets panel
• Expand the "Model" section of the assets panel.
  • The "greyed" assets in the Assets panel are in rooms that you cannot "see" from your current location.
• While looking at the list of "greyed" assets in the Model section of the Assets panel, choose a different room, either by:
  • Clicking on a different room in the "Room" section of the Area panel

As you select the different rooms in the room menu, different assets should become bolded and greyed out, reflecting what is associated with each room. You may also see assets appear and disappear in the viewport, depending on how close you are to them.

• Note: If when you select one room, the selection "pops" to a previous room, check the Area Panel in the room visibility tab and ensure that you are not "Auto" mode and have the rooms checked that you want to be able to see.

To investigate an asset that you can see, follow one of the steps in the above function.

To go to one of the distant assets that you cannot yet see in the viewport:

• Click on various room names until you find one which makes that asset go "bold" in the assets panel
  • Note: If you have clicked on every room name, and the model never bolds, that means that it was added to the area at some time, but either never had any instances created from it, or that any instances were later deleted. During an area cleanup, it might be worth considering whether such unused assets should be removed, to free up resources. There is an option for this in the Assets menu: "Remove assets with no instances"
• Assuming you've found an asset that is bolded, click on the name in the Assets panel. This will make the instances (if any) be listed in the lower section of the panel
• Click on one of the instance numbers. This will put a yellow selection box around the instance in the viewport, which may or may not be easily visible depending on which way you are facing, and if there are any other objects in the way.
• Go to the instance, either by:
  • Hovering your mouse over the viewport and pressing mouse button #4 (the back button); or
  • Hovering your mouse over the viewport and pressing Ctrl-G
  • Right-clicking on the instance number and choosing "Go to position"
  • Clicking on "Instances menu" and choosing "Go to position"

Moving between rooms

• In the Area Panel in the Room Visibility tab, check the box for other rooms to see if other objects become visible
• Note that when you click on objects, they may have a yellow bounding box, or a blue one. A yellow box means that the object is in your current room. A cyan-blue box means that it is visible from your current room, but is actually in a different room. See Rooms toolbar for more information on this.
• If you click on an object that is in a different room (cyan bounding box), then to find out which room it is in:
  • Open the Properties panel
  • Look under "room" to see the room name that is the home of the object
  • In the Rooms toolbar, select the room name in the dropdown box. This will change your location to that object's room, and you should then be able to see other objects in (and visible from) that room.
  • A keyboard shortcut for this is to press CTRL-R, which activates the room of a selected object, without moving your camera
• Another way to quickly move to the room of a selected object, is to press F9

Dissect an effect

If you see an interesting effect in an area, and you're not sure how it's done, and you can't seem to select it, it may be being done with something other than normal model assets. For example, you may be looking at a light or particle effect. To tell for sure, try turning things on or off with the Filters menu:

• In the filters menu, try turning off (remove the eye) from Models. This will make all normal model instances in an area temporarily disappear
• Next, try turning off lights, or particle effects
• If you are trying to zero in on a particle effect, be sure to turn the particle emitter filter visualization on.
• In the Rooms toolbar, you may wish to click on All to see if that gives you a better sense of where the effect is coming from
• If you think you see the particle emitter that is generating an effect, click to select it. You may need to use one of the techniques above such as holding down shift, or click and dragging around it. Look also for the bounding box color, so if you see a blue one, press CTRL-R to activate that room.
• To check if you have the right one, open the Properties panel, and look for the Hidden property. If it is set to FALSE, you probably don't have the right emitter. If it's set to TRUE though, then double-click it to set it to FALSE, and see if that makes the effect vanish from the world. If it does, then you know you've found the correct emitter!

Dissect a trigger

• Open the Filters menu and ensure that triggers are visible and selectable
• Open the Assets panel
• Look under the "Triggers" heading to see which triggers are loaded into the area. You may not be able to see the instances of those triggers yet, depending on which room that you are in.
• Select a trigger in the Assets menu, and see if any instances show up in the lower part of the assets panel
  • If no triggers appear, go to to the Area panel, and select a different room to see if instances appear in the assets panel. You may wish to use the cursor arrows to rapidly scroll through every room in the list, until you find the one that contains the trigger instance(s). When you select a room that has trigger instances, that trigger's name in the Assets panel will appear in normal typeface instead of greyed out, and a list of instance numbers will appear in the lower part of the assets panel.
• Select one of the trigger instances in the Assets panel
• Move the mouse back over the viewport (ensure that the selection arrow is active), and press the "back" button on your mouse. Your viewpoint should move to the center of that trigger (you may need to back up with the "S" key to see it better)

At this point you may simply want to go into character mode and step on the trigger to see what happens. Or to get more technical:

• While the trigger is selected, Open the Properties panel
• Look to see if there is a TriggerScript property. That will be the name of server-side script which controls the trigger's behavior
  • If the field is blank, the script is probably being handled via a class on the node
    • In the Properties panel, look for the GUID property. Copy the number to the clipboard
    • In the Chat window, type /HEINFO node <guid#>
    • A window should popup with information about the node, including its CLASSES
    • All class-based triggers will have a basic TriggerInstance class, so you can ignore that one. Look for other classes on the node
    • Once you have a class name, open the Script Editor, and in the Server-side scripts, look for the class methods script with the name that you found on the trigger node.
      • For example, if you find a class entitled OverlandTravelPointTrigger:
        • Open the Script Editor, with Ctrl-H
        • Choose File / Open / Server Script
        • In the search filter box at the bottom of the window, type enough of the class name (OverlandTravelPointTrigger to find its method script
        • Select the script, and click "OK"
        • Choose Window / Functions & Methods
        • In the Functions & Methods window, double-click on any method name that you would like to investigate.

For more information understanding the functions or methods involved with triggers, see Trigger events.

Look for unusual assets

To get a sense of what is in an area besides the normal visible assets:

• In the Filters menu, turn off some of the more common assets
  • Turn off models
  • Turn off heightmaps
  • Turn off speedtrees

• Be sure to turn off both the visibility and selectability of the items in the filter menu, since even if you set something as not visible, you may still be able to select it, which means that its bounding box might interfere with other more subtle things that you'd like to see.

Once you have the obvious items turned off with the Filters menu, try using the selection tool to click and drag a rectangle somewhere in your view. Anything that remains selectable, is probably an unusual kind of asset that might be worth investigating.

Zoom in on an asset. If you're not sure what it is, you might use trial and error with the filters menu to try and toggle it on and off, or open the Properties panel and look at its Type to determine what it is.

Look for specific assets

To find the particle effects in an area:

• Open the Assets panel
• Look under the Particle heading. These will be all the particle effects in the current area. You may not be able to see the instances of those particle effects yet, depending on which room that you're in.
• Select a particle effect, and see if any instances show up in the lower part of the assets panel.
  • If no instances appear, go to to the Area panel, and select a different room to see if instances appear in the assets panel. You may wish to use the cursor arrows to rapidly select every room in the list, until you find the one that contains the particle effect instances
• Select one of the particle effect instances
• Move the mouse back over the viewport (ensure that the selection arrow is active), and press the "back" button on your mouse. Your viewpoint should move to the center of that effect (you may need to back up with the "S" key to see it better)

Go back to the filters menu and turn Model visibility back on, to see the models "around" the particle effect.

From here, go on to explore other effects, other areas, or other interesting effects. For example, look for all the Trigger assets in an area, and then bring your character to stand on them and see if something happens. Or open the trigger's properties and examine them to see if you can determine what it is supposed to do.

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