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Springheel said we should first have a consensus on what information to include. So first we need to know what information there could possibly be. The best source for that is the oldest source, from the TTLG mission authors. This is the information they include. We can exclude all of that, if none of the TDM mission authors want any of those fields. But then at least we can say we've excluded all those fields intentionally, not because we didn't know about them. I think separating story and mission notes could be useful if there's anything the player should know about the mission not story related. Maybe TTLG has this many fields and potential filters, simply because they have an insane amount of missions from authors since 1998 and it's really easy to get overwhelmed when browsing through them especially for newcomers. Also notice what's missing: there's no field for a mission rating. That's been brought up a few times here. I guess they don't need that, so we don't need one either.

I hope someone’s going to provide all this new data. As a mission author, I’m not inclined to put in the extra time to provide it for my missions. Is a player honestly going to decide whether to play a mission or not based on whether there’s a shop? Call me grumpy, but time is short, and there it is.

Yes, we may want to keep some information in the "more details" section, as that would be the place you would expect more spoiler-ish information.

I remember making these mockups but I couldn't handle the code alone to do it myself, here s one of them:

I remembered we had an MD5 animated tree that's solid, and on checking atdm:animated_tree_01 it looks as though the interesting difference from a basic func_animate is "articulatedFigure" "tree_01". (Edit: also, it inherits from atdm:af_entity_base, even though it overrides the spawnclass with idAnimated.) So I'd guess you've no collision because there's no AF set up.

I think it's Penny Dreadful 3 that has an inconveniently placed guard outside a mansion, a place where the player can look down on him, and some moveable crates nearby... One thing with rope arrows is how easily you can get back down without leaving the arrow behind: for example, if you can open a building from the inside, or use scenery to break your fall.

For collision it's hard to say without knowing what kind of entity you're using the model for (AI, ragdoll, func_animate...), but is there meant to be a collision model set up? See http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=An_AI_consists_of_6_Models For func_animate nonsolidity is normal (there's a spawnarg to let articulated figures push moveables, though I haven't tried it).

The general rule of thumb i've been using is if it's critical to the story, there are alternate ways in. But if you want to find every piece of loot and/or every secret / explore everywhere then you'll have to be diligent with what you use. I feel it's the most natural fit as more novice players can still complete the mission without running into a frustrating dead end. And those who prefer a challenge more than likely are experienced enough to know they need to conserve and retrieve their used rope arrows. And if all else fails this mission has a new ingame shop keeper, so they can always loot a few homes/businesses to gain some coin and then go to their fence and buy a rope arrow!

I actually have just the thing to get this thread back on track. Here's a lineup of most of the ships I made in DR over the years, including the most recent addition, 2nd from the left. That one was this week's weekend project, a galleon-sized steamship sharing a lot of elements with *that* ship all the way to the left. From left: Barque, Barquentine (new), Merchantman, Schooner, Sloop, Brig, Yacht. The 4 to the right are available to other authors already now; the Merchantman is done and will be made available after release of its respective mission; the Barque will probably stay unique as I think its size makes it unlikely to be reused. For the Barquentine I have no real plans at the moment as it was made as a fun side project. If someone's interested in using this ship now they'd be welcome to do so and I'd then prioritise getting it finished. Otherwise I'd probably make a simple stowaway mission like Pandora's Box out of it sometime down the line.

Second batch:

I am posting these on behalf of bikerdude (from Shadowhide's big city map). LONG.

I'm trying to break up the monotony of flat surfaces a bit, in similar fashion to what modern games do. Typically though, you'd need photoscanned assets or hi poly sculpts that go both as bakes for low poly geometry, and then for flat tiling materials. Since this is way too time-consuming for one person, I decided to take slightly more simple approach, where I'm just modeling shapes based on tiling material made with Substance. The result is similar to what parallax mapping would do, except no "jelly effect" and hopefully less stretching. Good thing is that this geometry doesn't need to cast shadows, and every stone is like 50-100 triangles, so not that much. So far the engine seems to handle that without any problems, but I'll wait with my optimism until I get both walls and floor covered with this additional geometry

Just out of nostalgia, I created a little fanart, based on my first and yet only mission "Sneak & Destroy". Would have also made a great loading screen back in the day I guess.. Click here for: HD VERSION

Good news boys, I was able to get the hang of it, Im bringing several test models in game - so far, I found Keless exporter to be quite reliable, been using it with the 2.72 version to do the exporting. Will do more testing with the Arx one later. Will be posting a quick guide soon, with the needed details. Thanks again.