RPGista

All theories of "race" are immediately taken down by basic knowledge of biology. Why do people hang on to all these supposed cutting edge research results that so conviniently seem to explain their radical views, when we know deep down its all pseudo science? What we need, really, is basic, school level stuff. Theres one "race", human. Its an african primate. It originated in there, and then spread accross the planet. Thus, everybody, every country, culture, they come from the same place, are variations of the same thing. Thats it. Theres nothing more to it. All other conceptions are simply nonsense. As in, they make no sense. People like outlooker might say that Im simply trying to impose the authoritarian scientific view, that Im not giving alternative views the respect they deserve. But this excuse takes for granted that people like me have taken the scientific view by default, blindly, emotionally, or maybe because of some unknown agenda from my part. The opposite is true. These are not intuitive facts. We are born clueless about what lies behind that which we can see. It would be much easier to accept that differences of skin, appearance, customs, come from a true definitive gap between group A and group B. Its only when you start to actually study, to look for the answers yourself, that these things start to come together and make sense. Thats when you begin seeing the world for what it actually is, past the traditional models you were fed in your infancy, all the cultural misconceptions, and private illusions we were raised with. Thats probably what I should have said to the guy back then. But this is all pretty useless, I suspect.

How urgent is this my friend? I would like to help, but I will probably only have time to get started by the end of the month. Does that work for you?

Not to be a drag but all of what we are discussing here can only be achieved by a group of people. You cannot hope to create all that would be needed by yourself. Its not only that its impossible to master all the different stages single handedly, its also that the amount of work becomes so high after a point, that it would actually be traumatizing to have to go through all of it, if you were to achieve the goal nonetheless. It just wouldnt be fun. There needs to be a collaborative environment. Thats the (only) fun way of doing it. Ive been working on a animated AI character these past few months, having to go through all the roablocks one at a time, its simply too time consuming, and thats a single AI model. I havent reached half the way yet. After months of (little) free time invested. What I would suggest is for you to reach out in the Idtech4 and bfg community because there are still loads of people with experience and interest in working on a scifi setting, because of doom. If you could get a group together, that would be brilliant.

I think chances are much higher for you to be able to setup your own mod rigs with new unique animations than to automate a process where you export from makehumans with detached heads, models scaled to TDMs rig and with a rigged low poly version inside. That sounds simply impossible. Im no expert, but it just seems to me more attainable to simply create a new rig separate from TDMs and use your civilians models there. I know it sounds bad, but think about it: most oTDMs animations are not really useful in a cyberpunk scenario. Things like carrying a torch, swinging swords, etc. Yes, many would still be valuable, stuff like walking, running, etc. But you would need so much more stuff, animations for interacting with computers, all new combat animations like firing guns, getting hit by rapidfire bullets, hiding behind cover, stuff like that, you would only get those if you find an animator or learn to animate yourself, in which case, you would be better off just creating your own rig from scratch . You dont really need to swap heads, if you can get enough complete models in the game to account for the variation needed. Its only done in TDM because you have only a handful of bodies, that need to be shared by all the characters.

So work continues on those forest assets and the stone age dolmen. But Im going to feature them on a new concept map Im working on, so they should still take a while. It started as a scene I wanted to create so as to show them off in a cool environment, and the idea grew and grew. Its getting smaller and smaller again, because of the lack of time and the amount of effort. Parallel to it, I was looking into learning more about animation. As in a couple of times before, I tried to see if I could change the study material a little bit so I could come up with something useful for us by the end of it. I was looking into a fixed animated prop first, but I couldnt really find anything that I felt like doing/was worth the effort. So I (unwisely) jumped straight to character animation, which I had flirted with at the time TDM needed a new zombie model (greebo beat me to it). So, I thought "you know what would be cool? A simple, robotic character that wont be out of my reach to animate". Because of all the potential for dark sciences and unholy stuff going on in the game, I felt that a Golem would fit in pretty well in the setting. Something of a horror monster, unstoppable killing machine the player simply cant beat in any way other than to avoid. Im not a fan of over the top stone golems you see in most games, those hulking figures. I prefered a minimalistic aproach and went for a realistic, classically inspired statue, that would be a normal piece of art until someone decided to give it magical life. Alternatively, it could be a dormant magical protector of something sacred and valuable, inside a forgotten tomb somewhere, like in many games and stories. It was based on a 3D scanned statue of Mars (who could be more appropriate?). It was supposed to be a surprise, I would just release the full character. But since Im hitting tons of roadblocks, I thought I should simply post the progress here and let those into animation and character AI know that Im working on this and will probably need a lot of help getting this thing in TDM (damn you tdm, stealing my free time). The ASE is in the game but the texture sucks, so Im posting blender viewport shots. Right now Im working on the animations, trying to block them. Since this guy is pure stone, there shouldnt be any ragdoll stuff. He's big, so no point trying to use arcturus rig (wouldnt know where to begin anyway, its really complex). Hopefully the rigify rig will be usable in the game, its the one Im learning to use. Fingers crossed.

Sorry Destined, I admire your sincere attempt at reasoning here, but this is getting ridiculous. Why exactly are you guys trying to argue outlookers' patently insane views? Completely ignoring their absurdity and opting to discuss them only gives the false feeling that they are somehow valid and worth considering. Instead, we should be seriously advising this person to seek help. Like proper help. I mean, the vitriol and delusional paranoia is reaching maximum level. And it must be extremely uncomfortable for any people directly targeted by this hate speech to be reading this in a TDM forum thread.

Im afraid TDM is an adult game... Its a harsh, agressive world, full of tragic and cruel stories. Toning down the blood and insults sounds like a reasonable request, but unfortunately, like pointed out, its not a quick fix and will likely need someone with knowledge of the game to sit down and take the project on.

I think most if not all these initial mapping questions will be answered by Dragofer's extremely nice mission Down by the Riverside, which Im trying to complete. It has a very nice forest area that leads to where the main part of the map happens, and theres also a mansion that is freestanding inside a gated plot, in the woods. Theres a lot more to it, but you gotta play it to find out. Actually, thats my number one tip, you need to play as many missions as you can before you really start designing yours. Perhaps you did already, and played several maps, but theres always that one that really inspires you and there are many which you give you ideas and will tell you how to solve problems. Terrains can be created using patches. Its not the most confortable thing to do, as you need to adjust it control point by control point if you really want to shape it, but it can be done no problem. You can then look into the SEED system in order to populate the terrain with vegetation or rock models, in a randomized way (if you feel it would be too much work to do it by hand). You can use a black fog to hide the distance from the player. But it can be visible even indoors, if its dense enough. It will give you a fps hit for sure. Or you can use big rocks, extremely dense vegetation "walls", things like that, to limit the area the player can get to. The forest will definitely be heavy on performance. You would want to have buffer areas between the woods and the inside of the house (where Im guessing the AI will be). This is very important. Dont open main connecting areas directly to the outside. Study floor plans that would help you with that. And lastly, we have layers in DarkRadiant that should help you sort things out. Just have fun.

Thats so cool, I loved the voice range, and the choice of lines! My favourite was the "and you took it away from me" part. I would love to have a little bit of your voice acting for my future project. Hopefully you'll be available by then. Welcome to the forum!

Yeah, this guy is amazing, so talented... The voice of TDM indeed! I would love to have your narration as the voice of the hero in my next project...

Yes, if people can create and release things in a modular way, as Im sure you intend to, anything created can be used by mappers or by the community independently if it gets to be implemented in the core mod or not. What I tried to explain is that I would like to see the same compass you set up, but as a slightly translucent model. This would allow it to blend much better with the background. Failing that, perhaps an "older" texture that makes it less bright. This is to address the way it stands out when the hud model is in front of dark environments.

Dont let that discourage you, its a pretty small sample, and we are all veteran players, set in our ways. Most of the people who actually appreciate stuff we do online we never get to know about it, Im sure a lot of people would find that cool. It looks really good in the video. Personally, I much prefer your compass than the stock one. I like the size of it, I like the minimalist texture. The only suggestion I made was to perhaps see how it would look if you only had the compass glass surface (whithout the rest of the body), and made it translucent, just so it wont stand out so much from the background shadows. Otherwise, it looks very cool.

It looks lovely, I quite like it... Like Demagogue, I turn off all hud items, I dont even use the lightgem, so I guess I wouldnt use it unless the map really asks for it, but Im sure this would be much appreciated by many players out there. It would be amazing if you were able to test an alpha blend version, a translucent one. That would be even nicer, in my opinion... But in that case, the model would probably need to be a single surface, or you would be seeing hidden sides of it... Yeah, we keep asking for more.

I would certainly apply for that workshop... Ive been interested in learning scripts ever since my hexen days, I was always amazed by what people could do with them, without having to actually go deep into the game to change things. You could create new weapons, monsters, behaviours, control the environment... Endless possibilites. But I never got around to it. I never really found any resource where I could learn it in a "fun" way. Math was never my forté, so you can see why a bland wall of text telling me what the raw mechanics of a scripting language is was not something that was inviting or effective, really. I guess what Im trying to say is that I feel things like this should be taught in a much more active way. You are guided through a certain path that will introduce you to all the needed features, but with a purpose, you learn as you go. The best scripting tutorial I found in recent years was this GUI tutorial ( http://zehfernando.com/2004/doom-3-gui-scripting-tutorials/ ), that does just that, it takes you through the language in a gradual and illustrative way, starting from zero, stopping to talk about things as they become needed. Of course, the writter knows exactly what is important to learn and in what order, so he tweaks the work example we are supposed to be doing in order to go in the direction he wants. But like Obs say, something like this can take a lot of time and energy. Just look at Springheel's effort with that beginner mapper workshop. I can hardly imagine all the work hes putting into it. But maybe videos are slightly faster, easier to do than writting? PS: That tutorial goes on to 7 steps, but the author posted the rest in DoomWorld and appearently the pages are lost... I have them printed, but I couldnt access them online today.

Its always surprising to see this vilification of Snowden, and people like him, because of how they dared to open people's eyes. I guess you can make a case that you prefer your government to be protected at all costs, that any threat to it must be something evil, you buy that talk about how dangerous ratling the cage is, how vulnerable it leaves you, vulnerable to barbaric hordes, it seems. This is not a knock on Anderson or anyone else, I sincerely feel surprised whenever I see that happening. Specially because the government, wherever you may be, is not actually an entity, its a structure that keeps changing, its not composed of the same people, so in theory it could be anything. Its not a sentient being, preserved throughout history. You have your Trumps and Temers and people like that today, but you could have the opposite in the future. Hell, you already see much more advanced governments today, in certain parts of europe. Stuff we can aspire to. So I never really got why you would feel like its your duty to "protect" the government power strutucture, against your peers. Instead of seeing it as something that should be there to serve, not rule, and that you could help to improve by thoughtful participation. Obviously, the climate today is tending farther and farther away from this ideal, that you could be a part, that the individuals are the important thing. Thats why people like Snowden play an important role, reminding us what we are loosing, or what people in power are doing in order to preserve their power, to rule us "more and better". Its not really a mistery why Snowden had to run. Just take a look at the way they crucified Manning. Poeple saw the injustice and pettiness, but we could only watch and nobody could do anything to stop that (apart from Obama, in his last moments). Assange also got the message. So did a lot of people involved in the NSA leaks at the time, I remember that. But sure, I guess a lot of people see them as traitors of the cause, dangerous people that had no right. It is still surprising to see it though. Its shoot the messenger one on one. You would expect people to understand they are not the ones who commited the crimes that they exposed. But its not that simple, it seems.

Maybe we also need to remind ourselves whats the purpose of games, you know? I get it that the more advanced games become, and the amount of man hours that go into them (unbelieveable), we are introduced to these very rich fantasy worlds that seem so full of potential, but fall slightly short of being completely engrossing and immersive. Its like, we can feel they are almost there, but soon enough we see the limits of it and stare at whats behing the curtain, and the illusion is gone. But as we all know, games are not designed to have levels of content that will last someone a life time. They have a life cicle. A certain feel they want to achieve. Some games are like fine wine and they hit a great balance between elements, such as you will want to come back to it several times, to experience it again. Like our very own Thief game. The story and the art and the AI and gameplay was built to last, it hits a harmony that makes people want to revisit it, like a good film you wanna watch again. But its not like you can talk to people in there and discover their wants and fears. You cant leave the mansion and wander the streets, you cant take a boat to unknown continents and start a life there. The game gives you a place and a story and you take part in it, and thats it. We talk about kids today but in our time games were much simpler, they were restricted to gameplay alone most of the time (stuff like tetris, mario, etc), the fun was to simply play the game under their rules, there was hardly any world to get lost into, and we would be WOWed by some real simplistic graphical novelties. Games have come a long way from things like chess or boardgames which used to be about adictive or challenging gameplay and filling 90% of it with your imagination, to games like today that seem to be tending to provide never ending worlds with hundreds of hours of random things to do in them. Of course, you can then notice most of those things are procedural and the brain finds them boring rather quickly, because he can feel the patterns. They have been working to conceal that better and better. But there are limits. Like we agreed before, games are meant to be played inside the limits where the developers put their energy into. Mappers here know what Im talking about. Its difficult to ask for more. Though I too understand the sadness in seeing the limits of a creation you are fond of, you wish there was more to it. Thats why I still like good old live action RPGs the most of all games, though I havent played any since my teens. Because it was all happening between a group of people, in our imaginations, anything could be created as we went, there were no real limits to the world, it was all a matter of pushing, and trying, and things would be built for us, by us. Its a simple formula, but quite fun.

Looking good! I like that the specular is not very evident. A good idea would be to add grime to it, both the diffuse and the specular, for a rough ordinary metal blade look. An object that small and simple probably wont even need a normal map.

Pretty cool texturing. You could already take it in game and see how its looking. In case you want a reference, a blender unit translates as a doom unit when exporting, and a doom unit is roughly an inch (2,5cm). So scale your model accordingly. Small models can get away with very small texture sizes. The more textures used in a map, the more it takes to load. It also bloats the game size. So try to make it as small as possible. Chances are, unless its a HUD model, you wont notice any difference for small objects like that. You will want to use tileable stock textures as much as possible as well. For the reasons stated above. But also, because it allows for different skins, even if the modeler doesnt provide them (because, chances are high that the uvmapping will work well with other tdm tileable textures, so any mapper can set them up if they want to, without having to know how to use a modelling program). Even though you can only have one material per mesh, you can have several meshes in a single model, each with their own material. So in this case, you have the wooden handle and the metal blade, they should be two meshes, with different materials. The process is the same, you need to go inside the ASE text and overwritte the path for each of the meshes' bitmap (material). PS: So as to not derail this thread, lets take this discussion to a dedicated thread of your own, just create a post for your work in the Art Assets forum and we'll take it from there.

I quite like the sickle. If you want to spend some time and effort on texturing it, it could be used in the future as a wearabe weapon/item for druid or pagan characters. I dont mean it needs to be exotic or finely crafted, just a bit of time put on making a good metal texture, good specular, same for the handle. Most models need to be generic enough to be able to be used in maps with different storylines. AS for the saw and the screen, Im afraid the geometries look a bit simplistic right now. I think what always works the best in this sort of thing is to simply reproduce historical references, it ensures the model is going to fit right in and is going to look interesting and authentic. Take a look at these examples:

Sorry, couldnt find the time to play with this further. I shall mess with the args a bit to see if I can pinpoint what made the difference.

Indeed, like judith pointed out, it is better in the long run to create and work within your own mission folder (what we call a "project"), as it is much easier to be organized and play test features without mixing with other projects you might be experimenting with. Follow the video above for that. You might also want to check out the starter map pack page in the wiki, as it provides a map with all the basics you would need in your map, such as items, different lights, readables, etc. Though this is not needed for small test maps, you might be more confortable editing inside it instead of creating every file and folder from scratch (you would just copy the pk4 to your fms folder, install the mission in game, point dark radiant to it, as in the above video, and start editing from there). The dmap process for this map can be rather lenghty though, so its your choice. You can also start with the A-Z tutorial, also in the wiki, that covers all you need to know in order to create maps from scratch. This is important because modelers need to familiarize themselves with mapping, since testing the models in game effectively will require knowing how to place lights, how to texture the surroundings correctly, etc. That said, getting a no draw model can mean different things. There could be a typo in your material paths, or your ase "bitmap" path (that points to the material). You could be missing an editor texture, used by dark radiant to texture the model inside the editor. I would revise all the paths inside the ase and then the material file, see if evertyhing checks out. Remember to place all your folders inside your project folder, and point DR to it, so it knows where to look for them. You can unpack the tdm files to see other material files. Copy one that has what you need, and change the name and the paths to suit your model, using a previous example is the easiest way to do this. I have some models in pk4 that you could use as examples, and an exporter that actually works with the latest blender version, let me know if you need them. Ps: Pretty neat modeling, I specially like the careful texturing that brings them to life. Welcome to TDM.

That was cool, thanks man, had fun going through the list.

No need, a post in the Fan Missions forum section will do, something like this http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18327-looking-for-betatesters-down-by-the-riverside-ii/

Amazing, making those changes to the material actually fixed the problem! This is brilliant. I was able to playtest for quite a while without any glitches whatsoever. The only downside is that you still get the freezing problem if you turn postprocessing off in the menu settings (or, presumably, if you have it off when starting a mission). So you must have/keep post processing (bloom) on when playing the game with the color grading shader. Do you think theres a way for the shader to force this, and override the menu setting? PS: This feature is so cool, I cant see any reasons for it not to be a part of the core game (apart from the implementation work load, of course). All we would need is for the post processing setting to be always on (and greyed out) whenever the color grading setting were to be set to on.

Really like the creativity and the amount of detail you put into those interiors.