Hinges should turn invisible if the part’s transparency is greater than 0, because as of right now hinges go invisible when the part’s transparency is equal to 1. Personally I don’t like seeing hinges on tires and other things.
Ex:
I could make a tire’s transparency 0.01 and the hinge wouldn’t show.
On second thought maybe Hines/Motors shouldn’t even show on Online Mode.
I think a “show surfaces” or “surface transparency” property might be a better solution. That way instead of working with obscure behaviour rules we have full control over it.
There’s always welding a visible part to your invisible hinge part. Shouldn’t affect performance unless you have hundreds of hinges…
You can also generate it manually with a rotate
That’s just going to create property bloat – we can’t create properties for everything. I can’t think of a single reason why someone would want hinges to show in online mode, so they should be disabled there unless someone has something else to add.
While this may be viable for anchored parts like the parts holding a swinging door in place, any unanchored object is going to have issues. It’s essential to keep part count as low as possible in unanchored models such as cars, trains, etc.
[quote=GollyGreg]You can also generate it manually with a rotate[/quote] Not everyone is able to do that – not even everyone here can do that. If you’re not a scripter, you aren’t going to have a fun time with that. Going back to what the OP said and I mentioned earlier, unless someone has a reason to add on why they would need hinges displayed in online mode, they should just be removed outside of studio.
That’s just going to create property bloat – we can’t create properties for everything. I can’t think of a single reason why someone would want hinges to show in online mode, so they should be disabled there unless someone has something else to add.
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It’s an aesthetic choice that some people do use, and like any aesthetic where somebody sees a use for it others won’t. I think that just not showing them in online mode would be a shotty solution to what could be an interesting feature. And I really dont think “property bloat” is a valid excuse for adding even more obscure behaviours to features that already exist.
Assuming a property to set surface transparency was going to be added ideally it wouldn’t just be for motors and hinges the property would allow for all surfaces types to have a set transparency. This could allow for people to have visually smooth surfaced parts that will make joints with others without the use of welds or meshes to hide the surfaces. As you said yourself not everybody will have the scripting ability to use weld and rotate joints to bind smooth parts, so this would be a feature to compensate for that without forcing the user to learn how to script it.
Maybe a bool value in the lighting property that says “Show Surfaces” and if enabled then it shows all the surfaces ie: Welds, Hinges, etc. However if the property is false then it doesn’t show the surfaces on any part in Online mode or just not at all.
There’s actually no good reason why hinges should still be visible outside of Studio, to be honest.
Are hinges actually supported still? (Besides for vehicles and stuff)
You can probably just weld a CSG wheel to an invisible wheel.
Quite a few old building games put hinges on the fronts of their seats.
Quite a few old building games put hinges on the fronts of their seats.[/quote]
But that’s not what they’re supposed to be used for. I think the benefit of making hinges look decent would outweight the harm done by making it slightly more difficult to build a car in a building game that hasn’t been updated since handles came out.