Dev Video: Ornaments Overhaul

Ornaments have been refactored and updated! Although this feature was mostly functional as a prototype, it still had loads of bugs and a couple of years of dust and neglect.

We were able to revisit it and get it up to snuff now that lots of other important game systems are in place!

Some things we've been doing:

• ornaments generate a mesh trigger collider for detection on the Ornaments layer (like cosmetics)

• ornaments get highlighted

• stamp cursor updated to be 'decor cursor' in level editor, and now picks up ornaments too

• full control prompts and sound support for placing ornaments and using decor cursor

• ornaments spawn as such by default if the option was set by devs

• 'disable object type switching' dev option actually works now

• max limit popup for stamps fixed, plus added one for ornaments

• can now set a custom ornament offset and default rotation per item, as devs

• loads of other fixes and changes to make Ornaments work!

How do Ornaments work?

Ornaments are Props, but with a different mode of placement and no collision. They can be placed freely anywhere on a parent surface, with unlocked rotation and uniform scaling. However, they cannot have their appearance edited like Props (via Design Tool), nor can their properties be changed (lethal, etc.)... They're purely decorative, just like Stamps!

Most Props can be turned into Ornaments. However, some assets are Ornament-only, as indicated by an icon in the Craftbook. This means they'll spawn as an Ornament by default and can't be changed.

Why are some Ornaments not able to be Props?

Props have a requirement in the game/engine: they must fit inside at least one layer, or a thin layer. If we struggle to give a Prop normal collision, or if forcing it into a full layer makes it too large, then we'll usually turn it into an Ornament-only asset. For example, small bits of decor like felt flowers are perfect for the ornament-only mode.

What if I want an Ornament to have collision?

This isn't possible by default, but you can fake it in your level by placing an invisible barrier material around the Ornament so Stuffy and other objects can't collide with it.

Collision has to be inside fitted game layers, so the free placement of Ornaments would break this rule. Also, placing a lot of Ornaments with collision that overlap would be bad for game performance.

How many Ornaments can be placed per surface?

The limits are always changing as we develop and optimize the game. However, we currently limit the number of Ornaments per surface to ~30.

This is because of performance. Ornaments use different, slightly more complex collision than Props do. Ornament models are the same as Prop models, so they're a bit higher-poly and have larger textures than they would if we had a dedicated Ornaments library.

However, this is a soft limit that can be worked around. You could, for instance, just place Ornaments on invisible, non-colliding materials and put it in the same spot you reached the limit on. We don't recommend this, because the limit is there to sort of keep things performant for most players who don't have the same hardware or settings!