Moonbo

I usually only post screenshots when a section of map is completely done, but I really like how the lighting and textures worked out in this part so here are some early shots. The gameplay in this section is going to involve enemies with moving lights attached to them so I didn't want to make the area too bright...hope I struck the right balance. Feeback/crits appreciated:

Hey Arcady, Don't get depressed, I'm a fellow newbie author and you wouldn't believe the amount of time it took just to get the first section of my map looking decent (and I'm still having performance issues w/ that part). The more you work w/ DR the easier it gets to make stuff quicker :-).

Thanks guys, I'll check out those scripts you listed Obs and let you know if I run into any issues :-). For now I'll just try to limit myself to joints that the two skeletons share in common, like "Head".

Hey guys, Three questions, two specific ones about scripts, and a general one: 1) I'm trying to spawn/teleport a moveable directly into the player's hands (i.e. similar to what would happen when you frob a candlestick in the game except that the object in question will start in a blue room). From looking at the script reference I think the right script is "scriptEvent float holdEntity(entity entity);" as the description says "Forces the player to hold an entity (e.g. puts it into the grabber)", but when I trigger that script, nothing happens. Now, all I'm doing is triggering the script, so perhaps there's a step that I'm missing like teleporting the object close to the player first? 2) Is there a way via scripts to break a bind between two objects (i.e. let's say you hit a switch and two bound objects un-bind)? There's an article on the wiki about "Breakable bonds" but it's more a theoretical discussion and doesn't delve into actually how to do this. 3) Right now I'm using a zombie AI and binding an object to the "shoulders" joint with the bindToJoint spawnarg. In looking at the standard Dark Mod humanoid AI with "r_showskel 1" I've noticed that this joint isn't there. Does this mean that my FM will break when we go standalone and the zombie AI gets replaced? Thanks!

It seems fine to me, but like someone else mentioned in this thread, try sticking an AI in there and seeing if everything seems to match up with their size. That's the sure-fire way to know if things are scaled properly.

Well *that* gives me the inspiration I was looking for in the next section of my map. I would have never of thought that red plaster texture would look that good.

@SomeTaff - you know, it's really hard to gague what's a good framerate. What I'm aiming for is a minimum of 20 FPS on my desktop in all areas of the map (it only drops to that in one or two sections though), I'm hoping to see through beta testing whether this is too little though. @Sotha, thanks :-). I'll see about griming those arches. @Capella - looks really good! Really clean and diverse, the trim on the buildings really makes everything crisp.

Hey Obs, How did you make the patch round? That seems like a useful trick.

Work on the map has slowed as my day job's been picking up, but I put in several scripted sequences which I think will help with immersion (thanks everyone for answering all my questions on the newbie mapper thread) as well as finishing a couple more rooms. Feedback/critiques are appreciated, as always. Also, Bikerdude, I'll try to flip you the latest version of the map as it's been a while :-):

Nice! Looks pretty good to me :-), must have taken forever to get those stairs put together.

Thanks Demagogue, I had trouble with getting setCurInvItem() to work, but using getNextInvItem() to flip to the next inventory slot did the trick. The whole sequence works now without a hitch :-).

@Sotha - thanks, that did the trick. @Demagogue/Obs - So it sounds like with the func_removeitem not working that I have to use a script then. When I set it up, it works well except for one tiny issue. When I activate the script ("$player1.replaceInvItem ($FirstSeal, $null_entity)"), the key is properly removed from the inventory, but the key's inventory icon is still up on the HUD. You can't do anything with the icon and if you scroll through the inventory it disappears for good, but it's still a little disconcerting. Is there any way to get rid of the icon such as clearing the player's inventory selection ala the backspace key (or alternatively force the inventory to scroll over a slot so that the player doesn't see the icon, as it will disappear after that)? Thanks!

Hm, ic Obsttorte. You mentioned that I wouldn't need to rename my script file everytime I changed my map name if I used script objects. How is that so? Where exactly do I write the script objects?

Ah, I had read that In Remembrance of Him got broken but I might have misread that then. Thanks everyone for giving me suggestions on how to get an item out of the player's inventory: @ func_itemremove. it's a bit difficult to know if I'm using it correctly as I couldn't find any documentation on it (and don't know of any FM's where it's used). I added a "remove" spawnarg for the item I want to vanish from inventory and triggered the func_itemremove but nothing happened. I looked in the map warnings and noticed this though: "WARNING: Could not spawn 'func_itemremove'. Class 'idItemRemover' not found on 'RemoveSeal'". "RemoveSeal" is what I named the func_itemremove...is there a different spawnarg I should be using? @ script objects. With scripts, I understand that I need to write the scripts in a script file that I place with my map, but what about script objects? What exactly makes a script object different from a standard script? It wasn't clear from the documentation on the wiki... Final question related to another part of the same sequence as the item removal. I'm trying to have a func_static appear on a sliding door after it's frobbed. The func_static has to move along with the door after it appears. The easiest way to do this would be just to bind the two together and make the func_static invisible. It would then be turned visible after the player frobbed the door, but I have no idea how to switch the visibility of objects on and off.

Thanks Sotha, for more complicated scripts I've read of instances where the scripts break when TDM is updated and I wanted to make my FM as stable as possible, and for simpler scripts it's just an annoyance because I'm continually renaming my map when I make saves which means I need to copy over the script file as well. But I guess there's no choice at this point.

I've been trying to avoid using scripts up to this point, but I think I've run into something I can't do w/out a script. Basically I want to remove a key from the player's inventory after they've used it once. I tried setting up a remove stim/response on the key but this causes a crash because while it appears to actually remove the item, it's HUD icon is still present in the inventory and when I go to drop the key, the game crashes. I got it to work using a very simple script ($player1.replaceInvItem ($key1, $null_entity)), but is there any way to do this without resorting to a script?

Yeah, some things I would say from my experience on my map is: 1) never use the subtract tool - I had one instance where I used it and it created brushes that caused internal leaks when I tried setting up visportals. 2) If you run into a situation where you have an internal leak (i.e. a leak where the map is compiling but you can't create a working visportal), do your best to narrow down where the hole is by building BSP walls around the suspected spot until your visportal works, and then start peeling back the walls until you find your trouble spot. 3) Like Sotha said, do your very, very best to not visportal angled geometry, I did it in my map and while it was too late for me to change that, it caused a whole mess of problems before I got everything solved.

Thanks Grayman, I'm trying to steer away from scripts, but the workaround I mentioned in my first post (using stim/response to teleport the player onto a trigger which then uses a func_teleport to face the player in the right direction), while a little Rube Goldberg-y, did the trick :-). I actually have another question for you though. I'm using the Builder Ghost that you made for WS1 and I notice that you didn't actually make a new skin but rather just modified some parameters in a .mtr file. I was wondering, is there a way to lower the transparency of the ghost, and also potentially to give the ghost a slight blue color? Thanks :-).

Okay, so here's the issue: it appears that the func_teleport teleports whatever it is that sends the trigger signal. So in my test, I set up a switch that targeted the func_teleport and when I flipped the switch, the switch teleported instead of me. I tried using a trigger relay in between and it was still the switch that teleported. In my particular case I'm using a conversation to trigger a sequence of events, including teleporting the player. When I use a conversation to trigger the func_teleport nothing is happening. I'm pretty sure now that what's going on is that either the conversation entity or the actor in the convo that's triggering the teleport is being teleported instead of me...is there any way to force the func_teleport to target the player instead of the triggering entity? Or alteratively, is there a way to add the player as an actor in a conversation (I tried with player1 but it didn't seem to work). If nothing else works, what I'll do is set up a trigger_once in the exact spot the player will teleport to using the S/R system. That trigger_once will target a func_teleport which will have the angle set and will just move the player's head in the correct direction.

For me, when I rotate things I go to the "Modify" menu and pick the option "Rotate and Scale". This lets you have much more control over the rotation as you can pick which axis to move and by how many degrees. Grayman: let me check that out again and see if I was just doing something wrong.

Hrm, I'm actually using the stim/response system to teleport the player. I tried using the func_teleporter but it didn't work when triggered.

Is there a way (outside of using a script) to force the player to look at a specific entity in a specific direction? I'm teleporting the player using the S/R system and want to make sure he's looking in the right place after the teleport.

Well, with my focus on getting my novella out, there wasn't too much mapping this week. Don't know why but I'm really not happy w/ the area in the last pic...any thoughts on how to spruce it up?

Thanks guys, I flipped him your advice and he changed the font type/size on the authors name. I updated the first post with a link to the now-published ebook. Thanks again for the feedback (and if you see anything weird on the Amazon page, please let me know as this is the first time for me doing this)!

Haha, wow that's huge! Is the whole level to that scale? Since you've already put so much work into it, maybe just work the size into the plot and release it as part of the unusual gameplay contest :-P.