demagogue

I suppose I don't need to belabor this anymore, but this is the core answer for this thread. But I did want to say, there are actually good reasons to use our engine beyond the things you already mentioned. It's right at that level (2005 base) where an individual or small team could get traction on developing it. But even aside from that, not to pat ourselves on the back too hard, but IMO our engine is pretty awesome and would be a great base for a lot of kinds of games, especially of the immersive sim / semi-open world type and complex AI. It has a lot of pretty sophisticated systems, advanced AI alert states, the S&R simulation system, the location system, the systems for objectives, readables, scripting, soft shadows, AO & the like.... People could argue that the Unity or Unreal engines are better for general purpose, and it's true they do have big communities with lots of modules that do lots of things, but working with our engine in DR is also really pleasant to build with. And if your game is of a certain type (the immersive sim type), I think you've got a headstart with our systems than starting from scratch with those other engines. Also it's not like you'd be alone. You could probably ask questions in this forum too, since many of us know this engine really well by now and might help answer some questions. (That said, our community doesn't mix well with commercialization, so probably not good to mix us too much into the project, but you know, within reason.) I've always thought it'd be a good base for aspiring devs to use for all sorts of games. So I'd actually be excited to see what someone could do with it. Not, of course, just a blatant copy of our game, but if someone could stretch the legs of our engine, I think it could be a good base for some really cool and original games. Anyway, you can take that for encouragement. Good luck for whatever you decide to do anyway.

To clarify, you can sell code under a GPL license, but the license requires you to release all of the sourcecode in a form people can compile it, and it retains the license. So practically you can't stop people from just taking the sourcecode, possibly changing some things, compiling it, and independently releasing it for free. Also, outlets like Steam really don't like GPL licensed code because it puts them at risk. And they already mentioned that all of the game assets are strictly non-commercial. So idTech4 derived things aren't the best platform for a commercial game. That's separate from what our team thinks. I don't think you'll get much objection from us for trying. The whole point of GPL is to give people the most freedom to do what they want with the code under it without past devs standing in their way. Even that said, it probably wouldn't go over well if you just blatantly copied massive chunks of the game straight. One guy that had been on the team was doing something like that for a commercial project and got some pushback and grumbles. But that would have been different if he had been an outsider doing a completely different project with a very different look and feel and they just needed the base to build from. That would be more respected. But, again, that's aside from the issues above.

In principle it'd be great. I think at the root of it ... well the Steam people themselves really don't like GPL-based code, because they worry about integrated Steam-related code (GPL3 would require that to be released and covered by itself); so to begin with they weren't very welcoming and IIRC said something like it's rare that we ever clear any game under GPL3 (but technically not impossible; I think there were like a handful of games that have done it). The accounting for all of our IP is also a pain, and that's before you even get to the authorship issue. Those are still issues that might be resolved possibly, but even if they could be, I think the root of the issue is more simple ... Going on Steam would require us to incorporate in some form and take on some formalization and to boil it down, that's not really our ethos ... because while we have a Darkmod Team, Darkmod doesn't belong to any set of people. It belongs to the community; it belongs to anyone contributing to it in any way. It's your game too. That and I don't think anybody on the team wants to be filing tax forms and yearly reports and claiming the mantle of legally speaking for the game for basically their hobby. I don't know. That's been my take, but I've always recognized different people have different takes & I respect that. There's a lot to be said in favor of it going on Steam too. I don't want to dismiss it. Anymore, people really distrust downloading anything from a source they don't know anything about. There's multiple balls in the air one has to juggle, and this is how they seem to be aligned right now.

That looks pretty respectable actually. It's a challenge for everybody anyway. For the border work, I was speaking about the facade of the barn. It's a big wall of a brush (/set of brushes) with one unbroken texture for the bulk of the surface, and I tend to think big stretches of an unbroken single texture are like dead space when they get too big. Breaking it up with borders or windows or anything that's contrasting makes the space come alive. It's a minor observation just IMO though.

They would do that if their teams were set (or able to be set) to be mutually hostile. Long story short--if that's the issue--that's not really a problem the code base, but a problem with the mapper botching something in the map design. It's also technically possible that they did it intentionally and you just don't agree that it made sense, which I think can happen and wouldn't really be technically a "mistake", just a strong dissenting opinion. It's hard to know for certain without knowing which example you're referring to though. Edit: I think one of the team settings was neutral unless attacked, and it could happen that a guard accidentally hits another one, switching them to a hostile setting. If it's that, then it means the author probably didn't foresee that happening and/or didn't know that would happen if it did. It's good for mappers to understand team relations and how things like that might happen so they can plan against it at least, and the team could make that potential issue more well known. That's not a matter of changing the code (since it's still "properly working as intended") so much as better communicating how it works to avoid unintentional & unexpected problems like this. I can't even remember all the details off hand thinking about it now to know if this is a real possibility though, or if I'm just making it up and something else was happening.

Cool scene. My constructive comment is that all walls should basically always have border work & interlacing planks to break up the space. It should be drilled in by habit, any time that you make a wall you make it with that. And then they should be combined into a func stat since they aren't separating geometry. There are some tricks to hide the path/dirt seam. It's not a big deal to have it, but I like to lay down an n-shaped patch over the seam so it looks like a mound of dirt or rocks over the seam. Another trick is to glue a bunch of rocks together in long rows, and you only need a few that you can lay down over the seam or that you can quickly alter to follow the curve. Another way is to use a prefab surface with an alpha blend texture, but I never got into that method, basically because you're stuck with the pre-drawn curves (I think) instead of the arbitrary curves you want.

Does it work if you have a small layer of air between the glass and the water?

I've been playing Control recently, and it definitely has System Shock 2 in its DNA. It has the most immsim vibes I've had playing a game since I guess Prey. And it looks great. It's kind of light on the sim part, but it has very diverse environments, and the action varies by that, so that keeps the action pretty fresh. The story is also weird & interesting. Fun game.

Nice to see this limit go so that the size of an FM is defined by an author's ambition and not some technical limitation.

I can only hope with Vampire Bloodlines apparently getting canned that Paradox turns to one of my most anticipated games since forever, Victoria 3. (Yes, I understand VB2 was actually being made by another studio; but I think it's still part of the equation in terms of financing, and I'm just speaking rhetorically off the cuff anyway.) Vicky 2 came out in 2010, and the series has been noticeably skipped over as Paradox has made sequels to other games that came out after that one like Crusader Kings & Magicka. But asking them about when Vicky 3 is coming out has been a running joke for years now. It's probably my favorite game in the entire genre, but I can understand that it's a detail-oriented game in a period most people don't really get, and that's why they haven't come back to it. But they have said they'll get to it eventually.

You know you can change their team in the .map file if you really have your heart set on it.... This is one of those cases where a little DIY tweaking can be fun (just for your own personal local version).

Not bad, about a mission every 1~1.5 months for 11 years straight. As time goes on, we get more very ambitious ones too.

Which is to say, even in "retirement" greebo (who codes DR) is still one of our most prolific workhorses.

Cobalt blue, uranium green, and amber glassware sets would be really cool to see. I think Victorian style glassware might fit our world.

My first advice is, it might be good to open up another FM and see how it set up a custom speaker and double check every element with the tutorial in case you misinterpreted something. It could be something like a typo in a spawnarg in the speaker, or in the soundshader, or not have the shader in the right folder, or it not referring to the proper folder where the sound file is, etc. Worst case, if you still can't figure it out, then you can just flat out copy and paste a custom speaker & all the relevant stuff from another FM into your map and change it from there.

I bet you could still make a 1- or 2-room FM in 30 minutes. But anyway alright, we can consider these threads as your creative contributions then.

I can't recall a zoo-themed FM in Thief or TDM off hand, so it'd be original fare that's for sure. Animating quadrapeds is a serious challenge. But it would be admittedly amazing if someone pulled it off. You know you could use some of your apparently boundless imagination & creative energy to actually make an FM one of these days...

Since Arkane already made a spiritual successor to Thief (Dishonored) and System Shock (Prey), they should be due for one for Deus Ex to complete the gaming golden age's Gaming Trinity hat trick. Recently I've been playing Hades, among some other games. It's slick. Cool kind of aesthectic, quick gameplay loop for each room (what was sorely lacking in, e.g, Void Bastards trying the same model). Story is cool. The tone is a bit overbearing, but it's easy to get caught up in the gameplay and trying to make it a few more rooms in each round. I don't think it's an all time masterpiece, but I think it's a great game, one of the best of 2020.

They're probably fishing for support, so want to keep it up as long as they think there's an offside chance. The fiasco with Underworld Ascendant unfortunately probably did compound their difficulties. My general view is there's a time and a place for a certain game with a certain team to come together with a certain design philosophy where it all comes together and a great game emerges. And if it doesn't have that alignment of pieces, then the gates to development hell are always open and never far away.

Thanks, it sounds good, and I didn't notice any broken locations. If anyone needs it from me, I'm fine with this being uploaded on the official mirrors as the official release version as it fixes the efx to be basically as originally intended (if I had been able to hear efx when I first set it up).

DoomScript is weird to begin with (to me, an amateur at coding) because it's using C++ forms (made for compiling) as a script language (running real time on an interpreter). I don't mind too much because I basically learned C++ just by learning to code for TDM anyway.

@Dragofer That's a great public service you're doing! I was always meaning to make a scripting tutorial, but I just managed to make a simple page because it's practically a mini-course in coding by itself. So I recognize how much work goes into it, and what you've made so far is great. I think it will get more mappers to get into scripting, as I think a lot stay away not because they couldn't get it, but just because the step-by-step instructions weren't there. Then that means we'll have better FMs, which is a win for everybody. Thanks!

@Kin, the subtract tool is bad because it very often leads to shattering a brush into countless triangle shards, which is almost always going to be bad news no matter how the engine is optimized. It definitely (okay, probably) shouldn't be used if the surface or wall is separating leafs, i.e., standing between two visportal-separated areas, and it's best used, if at all, basically in contained places where you'd feel okay putting a 10,000 triangle model or the like. Or you just do it in a way that doesn't make so many small triangles; but if you could do that, then you can probably do that in other ways too. To wit: the thing is, most of the things you could do with the subtract tool you could also do with the cut tool, and it doesn't take even that much longer to use the cut tool for much less potential for headaches later on. But they kept the subtract tool in because sometimes it really is handy, like if you wanted to make a star-shaped hole in a pillar, there's not much better way to do it. That kind of thing. ------- The impulse discussion reminded me of a Halloween themed FM I was working on once where the player started off inside a closed coffin, along with a lantern and pesky rat that's scurrying around inside there with you; and the first part of it was finding a way to escape. Anyway, to make it believable, I had the player crouched in a false bottom with the head exactly placed at the head of a headless player model, so you're looking across at your body. So I had the game start with a crouch impulse. It kind of worked, but IIRC something was always a little off so I never did finish it off. I still think it was a cool idea though. Maybe I'll get back to it someday.

This whole situation is looking like No Man's Sky, which has probably been noticed a lot before. Overhyped, pushed to release too early, massive backlash, but people can still see some of its potential, and in a year or two or three they'll probably come out with enough patches, or some great overhaul patch, to make it the game it was meant to be, not necessarily perfect, but as good as Witcher III for better & worse. It apparently already looks great (for the people that have the rig for it) anyway. But anyway, this is the reason I'll hold off on buying this until those future patches, if the reviews have turned around. I also expect it'll be greatly discounted by then, again like the last No Man's Sky release that got a lot of buzz for making it into a good game.

Yes you can put looping on the soundshader to have it loop, omni makes it sound from anywhere so you don't have to literally have it near the player, and some other spawnarg makes it environmental (coming from the direction of its source, e.g., if you wanted distant thunder), but I think you're not doing that here. And just by triggering a speaker, e.g., from a trigger brush, button, or activating it from inside a script, you turn it on and off, so no need to spawn it in. Also note that I added a feature to the location sound system where you can override an ambient and trigger a sound directly, and that's already set up to be looping, omni, and all you have to do is put in the soundshader name on the entity. I made it for things like "action music" when a guard was alerted or music that plays when some other state is entered (like reading, or frobbing a thing, etc.) or some special zing music that triggers for story or gameplay reasons. So you can use that system too if you read up on it in the location system wiki entry, down a ways in the sound part. The speaker route is probably simpler though if what you want to do is simple. Well they're just different tools that can do similar jobs, and you pick the one that does your job best or that you have a preference for.