rich_is_bored

If it's just going to stand still you might as well try using a func_animate.

Go with a custom GUI. You only need to create one if you fetch the street name from a key/value pair.

You might try setting the CVars manually with the console (accessible via CTRL + ALT + ~). Those of interest would be... r_mode r_customHeight r_customWidth r_aspectRatio And you can use the command vid_restart to apply the changes without restarting the game.

From what I gather searching on google the motherboard's form factor is micro ATX. Micro ATX is backwards compatible so it will fit in either a micro ATX or a regular ATX case. But keep in mind I'm assuming your older case used to house an ATX motherboard on the basis that it's larger.

^^^ beat me to it ^^^ Not to nitpick but when you say 2 GB, it's in reference to a quantity rather than a speed. Volume is measured in bytes, speed in hertz. Also I'm not sure more RAM is going to help you. I've got 2 GB of RAM myself and I don't experience choppy performance. Your bottleneck is some other component. It might be the CPU but since you mention performance getting worse as more props are on screen it sounds like you'd see the greatest gains by upgrading the video card. Is anyone else running the game on a 6000 series card?

I had this same issue and found that you can't disable desktop composition with 64 bit programs. You either have to install the 32 bit version of Dark Radiant, disable desktop composition as a whole, or find a 32 bit program you can run in the background for that purpose.

At the moment, I've resumed work on an ASE import/export plugin for Blender 2.5 I was working on beforehand. The plan is to return to the Dark Radiant plugin once I've finished that. I'll start a new thread when the time comes to keep you posted.

I had a bit of luck with writing an ASE export plugin for Dark Radiant. It's very much a work in progress and I should mention that I'm also using my own ASE import plugin to load the data into Blender 2.5 so it's probably not very useful at this point. At any rate, this is what a vertex blended patch mesh looks like... ATM, it's just dumping the resulting ASE to the console. It doesn't handle vertex normals. And it doesn't handle errors so it'll probably bomb out if you try exporting a brush or a group of objects. That said, if you'd like to tinker with it I've uploaded it to google docs... exportase.py

Python? Sweet. I see it's covered on the wiki so I'll look it over.

You guys would be better off writing a plugin for darkradiant so that you can export patches as LWO or ASE. It's really hard to screw up a model when all you have to do is vertex paint. On a side note, was HDR included in the latest update?

That video isn't real-time rendering. Here's some real-time radiosity for you... And another better example...

Actually you can swap the mouse buttons in 2.4x too. But the settings are tucked away in a user preferences panel that's hidden away so well you'd never know it was there unless someone tipped you off. For those curious, it's hidden above the main menu. You access it by dragging the menu border down.

There are no ASE, LWO, or MD5 import/export plugins for v2.5 yet. It's a shame too because 2.5 is a HUGE improvement. As it happens I'm having a go at writing an ASE import/export plugin. If I have any luck I'll post a link. Also, that "arrow origin thingy" is called the 3D transform manipulator or widget and there are buttons to toggle it on and off ... http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-237a/3d-transform-manipulators/

I made the block in Radiant to serve as a scale reference for adjusting the grid size in Blender. The only attribute of interest should be the scale. Any other peculiarities you've noticed about the mesh are simple modeling misconceptions you'll dispel as you gain experience. Rest assured that there is no difference between a cube and a mesh. It's all vertices and faces. The cube I imported from Radiant was triangulated. In other words, it's composed entirely of 3 sided polygons, otherwise known as tris. It's worth mentioning that most games only support the use of tris. The reason why you see a diagonal line running across each of the six sides of the cube is because it's just not possible to make a 4 sided face with a single 3 sided polygon. If it helps, think of it in 2 dimensions. You can't draw a square with a triangle but you can draw a square with 2 triangles. Now you're probably wondering why you don't see tris on a cube constructed within Blender and it's simple. The two tris that comprise each side of a cube are represented as a 4 sided polygon called a quad. The tris are technically there but for artistic purposes they aren't represented that way unless you explicitly triangulate a quad, n-sided polygon, or entire mesh. You can verify this by creating a plane in object mode in the top down view port, entering edit mode, selecting two opposing vertices, and moving them a considerable distance along the z axis. When you rotate around the plane to view it at different angles you'll notice a sharp bend along the diagonal. Congratulations. You've just created a non-planar surface. It's impossible to create such a surface with triangles and that's precisely why everything is represented as tris internally. Triangles are the only forms that allow for a surface to remain flat regardless how the vertices are positioned. But enough of the modeling fundamentals. Here's some Blender specifics. Forgive me if this isn't as well thought out as the rest of my post. I've spent quite a bit of time on this already. Only the circle, uvsphere, icosphere, cylinder, cone, and torus allow you to define the scale of the object prior to placement. The cube will always start at 2x2x2. Read on for why the edge length might report otherwise. In 2.5 you can adjust the dimensions of the cube with the utmost precision using the properties panel. In version 2.5 they have added a "align to view" option when adding primitives to the scene. This would avoid the rotated placement issue you had but then so would placing primitives in top, side, or front view. When you create an primitive in object mode, the object is named accordingly. Create a cube and the object will be named cube. You can select the cube object, switch to edit mode, delete the cube mesh, add a sphere mesh, and the object will still be named cube. The object in the blend file linked above is named mesh because it was an imported mesh. You can rename an object in the object panel (shortcut: F7). Objects and meshes are two different things. Objects are containers. Meshes are data stored within those containers. Objects are manipulated in object mode. Meshes are manipulated in edit mode. If you perform an operation to an object, it's only applied to the object. The mesh maintains it's own local coordinate system. If you scale the object down, and the mesh up, the edge length reported will be wrong only because it's reporting values relative to the local coordinates. If you apply any transformations performed to the object, the edge length reported will be correct. In versions prior to 2.5 snapping to the grid is a separate operation. You scale something close to where you want it and then click mesh > snap > selection -> grid. In 2.5 snapping to the grid is a toggle that applies to all operations.

I'm not sure what is the cause of all your troubles. I just did a scale test in both 2.49 and 2.5 without issue. I exported an 8x8x8 brush as an obj. Then I imported it into Blender. Then I set the spacing and divisions of the grid to 8. This results in a grid where major lines are 8 Radiant units apart while minor lines are 1 unit apart. And edge lengths are reported the correct length. Here's the blend file if you'd like to see for yourself. Perhaps you can compare it with your own work and spot the discrepancy. scaletest.blend

The huge grid size is normal. The units of measure in Blender and Radiant are both arbitrary and as such scaling things so that they translate well from one to the other is necessary. As you can see the discrepancy between applications can be quite drastic. Also when you change the grid, objects will not scale with it. It's not a big deal though. Since you're dealing with a simple 1:10 ratio all you need to do is select your object, press s, and type 10 to scale it up 10 times in size. If you're a real stickler for getting the scale just right you can export an appropriately sized brush from radiant as an OBJ, import that into blender and scale your model to match. This sort of thing is handy when you're trying to match things up to level geometry or you need a player sized box for reference. And according to the blender wiki, edge length rendering can be turned on with F9. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Uses/Architecture#Display_edge_length

You can change the layout and settings however you like and save as the default by choosing... File > Save Default Settings

guerrillacg.org is all about the fundamentals of modeling rather than the specifics of any one package. It's aim is to teach you general modeling terms and concepts. guerrillacg is polygons, vertices, normals, subdivision surfaces, topology, etc. explained. The tutorials on katsbits.com were all made with an old version of Blender and you will have trouble following along if you've installed version 2.5. Also keep in mind that if you're using an older version of Blender you will have to relearn everything when you upgrade. That said, I hope you resolve this embeded video problem your having with blendercookie.com. They use vimeo.com as their video host. Perhaps you can view them if I post the vimeo.com links?... Installation Interface Modeling Materials Animation Rendering Lighting

I don't know if anyone has been following the Blender Foundation with their work on Sintel but over the weekend they put out a request for models from the community and the response has been ridiculous. I mention this because the models are creative commons and would be right at home in a medieval setting. You can have a look here if you're interested... http://www.blendswap.com/

If Wine is good enough for Lightwave and 3DSMAX then it's good enough for Blender if need be. Maya is the only other modeling application I know of that offers a Linux build. I think it's a good thing that Blender does as well but you can't please everyone. Importing/exporting has caveats in all modeling applications. If it worked flawlessly they'd call it saving/loading. That said 3DS, LWO, MD5, and ASE can be imported/exported to/from Blender although I would recommend avoiding binary formats as they leave you no way to be 100% certain of the results short of owning a copy of whatever program natively supports them. The UI in Blender has been completely overhauled in the recent 2.5 alpha release so everyone who's tried Blender needs to try it again. Things have greatly improved. Keyboard shortcuts are still a big part of using the program but it's entirely customizable. You have a "tool shelf" where you can add buttons for any operation you like. You can move things around. You can change the shortcuts. But that said, if all you plan on doing is scaling static models, Blender, Lightwave, 3DSMAX, etc... are all overkill which might have something to do with why people find it confusing. I've never heard of Anim8or. It may be better suited to the task.

Modeling in general has a steep learning curve. I'd recommend Blender on the basis that it's free and the community is huge. You'll be able to export both static (ASE) and animated models (MD5). You should have no trouble getting questions answered if you run into trouble. Two sites worth checking out... http://www.blendercookie.com/ http://guerrillacg.org/ I recommend visiting the latter first as it covers fundamentals that will be applicable regardless what modeling package you choose. The former has a good number of free quality video tutorials specific to Blender.

Ambient/Projected lights with custom textures are the way to go if you want to maintain light gem functionality. The map plasticman linked to at the start of this topic is perhaps the best example I've seen in any id Tech 4 game. Lunaran, the author of said map, elaborated on the process he used here for those who are curious.

I enjoyed this game quite a bit. In fact, I'm playing through it a second time now. The game presents you with so many options. Not so much in where to go or what to do but rather how you do it. And it's refreshing to have that kind of freedom. You can run and gun if you want but you don't have to. You can be stealthy, you can set traps, you can exploit your environment, ect... For me, a lot of what makes this game so entertaining is finding new and unconventional ways to exploit your abilities. And I don't know if the demo really gives you a taste of that. I'd give examples but there's a lot of fun to be had in discovery. It's kind of like methodically setting up a chain of dominoes and tipping the first one. Everything falls into place and it's very satisfying. Aside from gameplay itself, I thought the story was excellent. And I haven't enjoyed the story in a game for ages. I'm not sure what it is. It just feels right in contrast to other games. Kind of like everything in the game was built on top of the story instead of the other way around. That said, the game does have it's flaws. I think my biggest gripe is not having an inventory. Not so much because I want to manage storage space and make critical decisions about what to carry or leave behind, but rather because I can't keep track of what items I have without visiting a vending machine or attempting a hack.

My rig has a total of 6 fans in it. A 5 inch fan in the front sucking air in. Two smaller fans in the rear blowing air out. A fan on the CPU and a fan on each of my 2 GPUs. It's relatively quiet if I'm doing office type tasks, but when I fire up a game it's like a jet taking off.

No that's not what I meant. I was referring to how both can be purchased but the screening process for assault rifles isn't as stringent. At any rate, it's not important. I've struggled with communicating my thoughts clearly during this entire debate and the notion of spending any more time on it seems like a waste of both my time and yours. I'm just not interested anymore.