Properties

The Properties window contains settings that control the simulation environment.

A word of warning - the Properties window only "refreshes" and updates its content when it is opened, and it will make changes permanent when the window is closed. This means that switching between saves with the Properties window open will transpose those properties to the new save, overwriting them, but only after trying to close the window or save the file. The Properties window should be closed when not in use or before opening a new save.

Scene
This panel contains sections to enter information about a simulation. However as the Phyzios servers are no longer active, this component appears to no longer be functional. No data is written to the save file.

Size
This section controls the scale of the render. You can set the height and width of the window, but also the size of the particles. Smaller particle sizes allow for finer detail at the cost of FPS.

BoundsWall
This enables or disables a hard boundary. When disabled, particles will be destroyed when they leave the bounds.

Sound
Enables the special new sound engine for certain physical interactions.

Tool Limit
Does not seem to be functional or has a yet unknown purpose.

Fire/Splash/Bubble Effect
Enables extra graphical effects for certain physics interactions. Fire is for burning materials containing Fuel, Splash adds a flair when Water is moved suddenly, and Bubble adds a swirling effect in fluids.

Gravity
Allows you to change the strength and angle (in degrees) of gravity. Lower gravity is suitable for timelapse creations.

Scroll
Controls settings related to how the window displays the physics sandbox.

View
Offsets the display window around the sandbox, but also controls the size of the window. You should think of this as the window observing a grid - (0,0) is at the bottom left corner of the screen, (80,60) is at the top right. The default is to observe the area between (0,0) and (80,60). Increasing these numbers will move the observed area up and to the right, decreasing will observe lower and to the left. In order to maintain the same sized window but observe a different area, you must make sure you are observing an area of equal dimensions. So if you wanted to observe an area 35 units east and 17 units north, you would need to add those new coordinates to the dimensions of the display. (0,0) + (35,17) and (80,60) + (35,17) as this ensures the window will have the same dimensions.

However View on it's own is not very useful, if BoundsWall is enabled particles will be squished offscreen upon moving the view, or simply deleted if it is disabled. As changing View also changes the window size, the way to observe a larger area or more detail in a given sized window is to change the Particle Size. It is safe to use View settings when a simulation is paused, to move around and work on simulations that are larger than the display size, though care must be taken to return to the original display settings before unpausing.

World Bounds
This setting toggles the simulation boundary between display limits and world limits. The four numbers control the size and relative location of the world boundaries. In order to observe and work on areas outside the visible section, the View function must be used.

In conjunction with Autoscroll, the World Bounds will also be used to set the size and scale of foreground and background textures - by this means it is possible to change the relative scale of particles vs the foreground and background textures. By making World Bounds smaller or larger, the size of the particles relative to the world's texture resolution can be tweaked. World Bounds must have the same aspect ratio of the desired foreground/background to avoid distortion.

Sleep Outside View
This powerful setting enables a simulation mode where particles are "frozen" outside of the visible area. This vastly improves performance on large "maps" as only the visible particles will be simulated. While effective the function is rather blunt, it has some significant complications. Mechanisms and any other scenario can only perform as expected when entirely visible - partially visible setups may not be able to function at all, have unusual and undesired behaviors, or become broken. Rigid and Elastic objects that hit the simulation boundary may become hung up, slowly falling until free from the particle freezing. Fluids that hit the boundary will form a temporary wall which other fluids will then bounce off. Upon moving the display, these frozen wall particles will suddenly come into play again. This requires careful planning and usage of the setting to ensure proper function.

Autoscroll
This section causes the display to track a piece of Character through the world, changing the View settings automatically. The X and Y axis can be toggled separately. Only one piece of Character can be tracked, it will be kept in the center of the window. This allows a Character to traverse throughout a game environment much larger than the display. It is recommended to be used in conjunction with World Bounds as this allows the separation of the boundary from the display, using Autoscroll without World Bounds enabled generally causes lots of trouble as far as particles and boundaries are concerned.

The Autoscroll feature can be combined with Scale to create a "magnifying glass" effect, allowing precision work on larger creations. By combining Wall and Character, a single particle can control the display position with the arrow keys, or the Select tool can be used to position the particle where needed. Combined with Particle Size it is possible to zoom into and easily traverse larger creations.

Foreground/Background
This toggles whether the foreground and background textures should be fit to the display window or to the world bounds. This allows for textures to be used for creating environmental backgrounds, as well as masking off underlying particles. Using a foreground mask is a great way to lower particle count - only areas typically in contact with the Character will need to behave properly, everywhere else can be empty without a visual penalty.

Rendering
This setting controls the simulation appearance and the background color.

Images
This setting allows control of various textures in the game. Foreground and Background are self explanatory, though Watermark appears to either be broken or have an unknown function. The Fire, Bubble, and Splash textures can also be changed to produce different visual effects.

Sometimes image loading is broken, trying to change the foreground or background on very large simulations can crash the game. One solution is to start a new empty simulation, change the desired textures in it, then with the Properties window still open, load the desired simulation, and save. This will force the textures into the save, but also reset all Properties. It seems as though textures can safely be loaded from a file, but not always configured in-game. It may be necessary to manually change image locations in the save file.