A quick rundown of the buttons and stuff and what they all do:
Hurdle ID – It’s the hurdle ID we just talked about. The current hurdle ID should be displayed. You can use the up/down arrows to increase or decrease the value. Since we’ve got Auto-Increment turned on we don’t need to worry about this, so we won’t.
Handicap – The steeple course uses some fancy math to generate consistent scoring based on the number of hurdles, distance between them, movement speed of an avatar. Lots of nerd stuff. The Handicap function allows you to add a bonus to the score for successfully clearing an especially difficult hurdle. The handicap only effects the score, not the time.
For our sample course you can set it to whatever you’d like.
Hurdle Thumbnail – Buried deep inside the HUD are each of the hurdles that it can rez. Since we’re all about efficiency rather than you having to rez then delete then rez then delete until you find what you want the HUD displays a thumbnai of each hurdle including its LI. Use the arrows below the thumbnail to preview the hurdles.
Finally the buttons. There are four:
Help leads you here, that’s what it does.
Rez – Here’s the fun one, and it’s also where the damn cool comes in. The HUD knows where you’re looking. To within about .001 meters in fact. So, if you were to hold down the Alt key on your computer’s keyboard or the Opt key if you’re using a Mac, then left click with your mouse to focus on that exact spot the HUD would know it. Then if you click the Rez button the HUD will create the hurdle you want at the position you want it.
Didn’t I tell you waaaay back in the introduction that it did neat stuff? You’ll still have to do some minor adjusting and almost certainly rotate it, but that’s it.
Save – Once your hurdle is rezzed and positioned and you’re happy with it click the Save button. This sends the course, hurdle, and handicap settings to the hurdle, and deletes the set up script which isn’t used any more so no point is leaving it around cluttering up the joint.
You can still change the settings on a hurdle by clicking it and using its menu, the setup script is only used after a hurdle is rezzed and is of no use past that.
Delete will delete the active hurdle. What’s the active hurdle? When you click Rez the hurdle that appears is the active hurdle. Clicking Save – which removes the setup script – takes that hurdle out of the active state.
Ready for your – snerk – first hurdle?