# AArcade: Source Help

## Features
Coming Soon: Help organized by feature name. (Screenshots, Attract Mode Camera, Camera Slow Fly, Always Animating Images)

## Guides
### How to spawn Steam games using Wizards
- https://youtu.be/-R1iuxPTksk

### How to select non-collide objects
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEmuAWGOVEs

### How to make portals to other arcades
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2nuBvCuvdQ

### How to use MP4s as Always Animated Images
AArcade lets you set images to always animate, even when not selected. MP4s can also be used as always animated, but you should use very low-resolution, very short MP4 clips (for performance reasons.)

If you have [Gyazo GIF](https://gyazo.com) installed, it can help you capture 7-second low-resolution MP4 clips that are auto-hosted at a URL to use on your items.

Here's the steps for setting up an item w/ an MP4 using Gyazo:
1. [Download & install Gyazo](https://gyazo.com)
1. Find a gameplay video on YouTube.
1. Right-click **twice** on the YouTube video & choose "Picture in picture" to pop the video out.
1. Resize the popped out video to be tiny - around 400 pixels big.
1. Click on Gyazo GIF, then draw a box around your video.
1. Hold your mouse extremely still for 7 seconds as it records to get a good clip.
1. Gyazo will automatically upload the file & open it in your web browser when it's ready.
1. Click the Share icon then click Copy Direct Link for the VIDEO. (This copies an MP4 URL.)
1. Middle-click on your item's cabinet in-game & choose EDIT.
1. Go to the Other tab and paste in your MP4 URL into the Stream Website field & press ENTER to confirm your change. (Then close the EDIT menu.)
1. While looking at your item's cabinet, go to the Tab Menu > Commands tab & use Always Animate Image.

You'll now see your MP4 looping on your cabinet's screen!

Note that you could use any of the following item fields to put your MP4 into (in this priority): stream, preview, screen, marquee, file

Also note that using MP4s *may* cause AArcade to be slightly more unstable - particularly during map transitions. You can always turn off Always Animated MP4 Support in Settings > UI tab.

### How to manually update ReShade
ReShade lets you use pretty post-processing effects. AArcade currently comes with an outdated version of ReShade. You must manually install the newest from from https://ReShade.me if you want the newest shaders.

#### Overview of how to manually update your ReShade version
1. Download the newest ReShade from https://reshade.me
2. Install it to your Anarchy Arcade/bin/hammer.exe file.
3. Rename the Anarchy Arcade/bin/d3d9.dll to d3d9_reshade.dll
4. Launch AArcade.
5. (OPTIONAL) You should set your overlay & effect toggle hotkeys to Shift + Scroll Lock and Scroll Lock accordingly. They are the only keys not used elsewhere in AArcade.
* NOTE: If you verify file integridy of local files in Steam, you must re-install the modern ReShade again. There will be an update to AArcade this year that fixes this issue.

#### Full step-by-step instructions
1. Close AArcade.
1. Go to https://reshade.me in your web browser.
1. Click the green Download button, then click green Download ReShade 5.3.0 button.
1. Open the EXE you downloaded.
1. Don't choose AArcade on the list. Instead, click Browse and choose Anarchy Arcade/bin/hammer.exe
1. Select Microsoft DirectX 9
1. If asked if you want to modify, update, or uninstall, choose modify.
3. On the "Select preset to install:" menu, click SKIP.
4. On the Select effect packages to install screen, click Uncheck All, then click Check All.
5. Click Next to let the installer beign installing ReShade.
6. At the end, click Finish.
7. Go to your Anarchy Arcade/bin folder.
8. Delete the file "d3d9_reshade.dll"
9. Rename the file "d3d9.dll" to "d3d9_reshade.dll". (If you already have a d3d9_reshade.dll, delete it before renaming d3d9.dll.)
10. Launch AArcade
11. Load into a map.
12. Press the "Home" button on your keyboard to open the ReShade overlay.
13. Click Skip Tutorial (Or go through it, up to you.)
14. Try turning on some effects, like Lightroom and Sketch.
15. Click in the Overlay key field and press Shift + Scroll Lock.
16. Click on the Effect toggle key field and press Scroll Lock.
17. Press Escape a couple times ot get out of the ReShade overlay.
18. Victory.

### How to make AArcade startup faster.
There are a couple default settings in AArcade that you could change to make it start up faster.

- Turn OFF Settings menu > General tab > Detect Maps When AArcade Starts. This will speed up startup because it won't scan all your maps for new worlds.
- Turn OFF Settings menu > General tab > Auto Reload Sound Cache. This will speed up startup because it won't scan all your addon maps for environment sounds to cache.

### How to make AArcade load arcades fast.
Do one or many of the things below to help improve AArcade's load times for you.

- Put AArcade and all mountable games on the same HDD/SSD/M2 as each other. (If possible.)
- Turn ON Settings menu > Objects tab > Batch Object Spawn.
- Turn ON Settings menu > Objects tab > Precache Models.
- Merg multiple subfolders inside of your "aarcade_user/custom" folder into fewer folders.

### How to free up space in the AArcade folder.

- When syncing assets to multiplayer sessions, a local folder is used as an upload cache. It can later be deleted without any side effects, to free up space. It's at ```Anarchy Arcade\aarcade_user\upload```
- Images have small JPG thumbnails generated for them that get saved into ```Anarchy Arcade\aarcade_user\cache\urls```. That folder can be deleted to free up space, but note that images that are no longer available online to re-download will not work in-world anymore.
- 3D models have small TGA thumbnails generated for them that get saved into ```A:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Anarchy Arcade\aarcade_user\cache\models```. That folder can be deleted to free up space, but note that models will have to re-generate their thumbnails again the next time they are shown in menus.
- Merg multiple subfolders inside of your "aarcade_user/custom" folder into fewer folders to eliminate duplicate assets.

### How to use Hammer w/ Cubemaps
Cubemaps are usually what lets fancy materials look shiny or reflective.

If you use such fancy materials in your own maps you create in Hammer, you have to also do something called **building cube maps** to make them look good.

There's a bug in the current verison of Source 1 engine that makes this a multi-step process that requires 3rd party tools. This is an overview of the steps needed to build the cube maps for your custom map.

1. Have PakRat installed ([Pakrat Info](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Pakrat))
2. Have at least 1 cubemap in your map in Hammer.
3. Compile your map from Hammer like normal.
4. Open Pakrat & use it to open your BSP with it. (Make sure you open the BSP from your aarcade_user/maps folder, **not** the one in your project folder.)
5. Scroll down to the bottom. We want to delete a bunch of broken VTFs that Hammer put into the BSP.
6. Find the VTFs with weird names like "c-1120_" as well as any with "cubemapdefault" in their name. Highlight them all & click Delete.
7. Click File, Save BSP and overwrite the BSP you just opened.
8. Now you're done w/ Pakrat.
9. In AArcade, load up your map. (Hopefully it's not an empty map, if it is, spawn at least 1 object into it to avoid the empty map bug.)
10. In the console, use this command: ```buildcubemaps```
11. When it's finished, use the Main Menu to re-load your map.
12. You should now see the fancy materials working in your map the same as they do in other maps.

**NOTE** Fancy materials w/ cubemap reflections usually are most noticable in dark areas.

**NOTE 2** Cubemaps will get saved into your BSP **only** after you perform these steps on their BSP. If you re-compile your map, the new BSP has broken cubemaps again. **However, you won't notice the impact of the broken cubemaps until the next time the engine is launched.** This is useful for testing, because it means you don't have to repeat the process **every** compile as long as you keep AArcade open. But remember that you **do** need to repeat the steps to actually get the cubemaps to **save** into the BSP & be there the next time.

### How to record good videos/GIFs to share.
- Coming soon.