Garry's Mod

Garry's Mod

Track Assembly Tool
Iacubos 28 Nov, 2014 @ 3:36pm
Suggestion: New mod: Gears
Hello, I was wondering if you could either add on to this mod or make a new mod. It might be a little trickier to do what I'm about to propose, but I think you might do a better job based on this mod.

You could make a tool where you can connect different gears of various sizes. Of course I will have to mention how I think it could work. One problem I already see is that they are round with no edges. But what if you count each tooth as an edge? Like this mod, the only time the object's center is under the crosshair is when you are not connecting it, (or if you adjust the offset in such a way). But unlike this mod, (this is the tricky part) the amount of edges depends on the amount of teeth (or space between teeth). Thats one idea

The settings panel could contain 1. Each gear categorized together (because different gears have different size teeth and gaps, so 1 gear sometimes would not work with another gear). 2. A few checkboxes: Should the gear turn by itself or with a keypress?, Toggleable?, Should the gear have a constant angular velocity?, Gravity?, etc. 3. A few sliders: Torque, Friction, etc.





Another idea is a little simpler, but more complex than the vanilla axis tool (similar to a Smart-Axis Tool where there is less problems and frustration in getting the gears to line up (I've yet to find one on workshop)).

You could make them connect like this: Put down any gear -> Choose any gear to connect -> (optional: change settings) -> Left click center of gear to attach the 2 gears. This would mean a few things: 1. Each gear would have to have 2 defined radii (Center to edge of tooth, and Center to open gap between teeth). With this method, in order to choose which "edge" to place another gear, you have to change the settings, you can't just left click on any tooth/gap. (Default settings: When placing another gear, it would go directly above the gear, unless you change the settings)

The settings panel could contain a few things to make it easier for all gears (with various amounts of teeth). Instead of which tooth to place it, it can use angles (which are rounded to the nearest tooth). As well as everything mentioned in the above paragraph about settings.


Now I don't know much about the Lua programming language, so if you have a another idea for how this would work, by all means go ahead.
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[Sk$Bh]Trick or treat KID!  [developer] 28 Nov, 2014 @ 10:59pm 
Hmm interesting, but I dot have so much free time. It's hard the free time to stay free if you know what I mean xD
Last edited by [Sk$Bh]Trick or treat KID!; 28 Nov, 2014 @ 10:59pm
Iacubos 5 Dec, 2014 @ 12:56pm 
Whenever you get around to it is fine with me. I don't mind the waiting, I mean it isn't a big deal. I'll be playing Gmod for a long time to come.
[Sk$Bh]Trick or treat KID!  [developer] 7 Dec, 2014 @ 1:16am 
By the way, Just noticed that this can ne easily acievd in Gmod with the standart tools.
I mean, the gear is getting ghosted, so you can easyly determine where to put it. Also when you using the Precision tool you can snap it as you wish to, defining your own offsets.
So using this same method for gears is possible, making the POINTID the tooth and NEXTID the gap but if u have a 100 teeth gear, it will insert and cache 200 lines in the DB, and if u have 3 gears like that, the amount of data is equal to the inserts of the Trackassembly tool as it is right now ( Putting it simply 3 gears or 200 rails and the DB is growin quite fast, plus you have to make sure you script all of the gears/gaps...).

If u snap them relative to the teeth / gaps your contraption weight will be destributed relative to the gaps of the gears ( Not equally geomatric shape I mean coz sometimes they got odd set of teeth / gaps ) !

I usually make gears like this, coz it's lot way easier than anything:

1) Grab a fairly flat and big plane, SPrpops, PHX or so, It doesnt matter
2) Now you have sth to build relative to
3) Make the gear W 50000, and just Freeze / Roteate it with Precision
4) Smap more gears as you wish
5) Now you have build a "layer" of gears
6) If u wish to bild anothe layer of gears ( Like gearboxes for example ), just move the base plane and snap-freeze it, then repeat the same trick above for each layer

I used the same method for: /watch?v=yf_JRnLXoVg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf_JRnLXoVg
Last edited by [Sk$Bh]Trick or treat KID!; 11 Jan, 2015 @ 11:36am
[Sk$Bh]Trick or treat KID!  [developer] 31 Dec, 2014 @ 11:48pm 
Originally posted by Iacubos:
Whenever you get around to it is fine with me. I don't mind the waiting, I mean it isn't a big deal. I'll be playing Gmod for a long time to come.

Dude figured out better way for the inserts .... not based on point IDs
Last edited by [Sk$Bh]Trick or treat KID!; 1 Jan, 2015 @ 12:49am
Iacubos 3 Jan, 2015 @ 1:29pm 
That's awesome! Can't wait for this to be released; if it does get released that is. I noticed in the comments that "the script is very personal" (after translating). I'm guessing it's not finished yet?
[Sk$Bh]Trick or treat KID!  [developer] 11 Jan, 2015 @ 11:27am 
Originally posted by Iacubos:
That's awesome! Can't wait for this to be released; if it does get released that is. I noticed in the comments that "the script is very personal" (after translating). I'm guessing it's not finished yet?

Yep I need to insert a lot ot gears in there xD
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