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peter_spy

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  3. My first map – questions & work in progress

    in TDM Editors Guild

    Posted · Edited by Judith

    Wow, Biker, that was very informative, thank you very much! :o That's exactly what I needed.

     

    Now I have a different problem. I only have 2 rooms and everything is made of brushes, but once I add an AI and set up a few corners, I get "AAS32 out of date message" and the AI is stuck. Once I alert it, the game crashes. The thing is, when I dmap my level, it doesn't even write *.aas32 file. I've searched wiki but still have no idea how to investigate that problem and where to start troubleshooting.

     

    Edit:

     

    nbohr1more, that actually helps, thank you!

  4. My first map – questions & work in progress

    in TDM Editors Guild

    Posted · Edited by Judith

    Ok, for now I'll just stick to what's available. I'll try to use more on spotlights too.

     

    For a moment I thought the player character height is identical to Thief3/UT3, but 64 x 128 doorways seem bigger than usual. The nice thing is, you can fit under a 48 unit high table, that should allow that tactic from Dishonored.

     

    And, I like the agility of player character. Running, jumping over, and mantling the walls of various heights is fluid, almost effortless.

    • Like 2

  6. My first map – questions & work in progress

    in TDM Editors Guild

    Posted

    I don't have the bugtracker account yet :)

     

    As I recall, surrounding your map with a caulk box can work but it tends to make it harder for diagnosing leaks.

     

    I saw that in Volta, but with the skyportal. Maybe I'll just create a layer called "Ceilings" and add proper brushes to it. Might be safer.

     

    You can control the falloff behavior with light textures. Most mappers are aware of the main "z-projection" image that lands on the surface
    but there is also a "falloff Image" that controls how much light attenuates from the light_center.

     

    I'm using fallofg textures for lights and I also use in-game objects, like candles, that seem to use them as well. The problem is, and I'm not sure whether it's just me or a problem in general, the falloff looks good, but only on the floor or ceiling, like here:

    image.jpg

     

     

    When I pick that light up, it also works great. But, when I get close to a wall, this happens:

    image.jpg

     

    Is that a known problem/limitation, or something wrong on my end?

  8. My first map – questions & work in progress

    in TDM Editors Guild

    Posted · Edited by Judith

    Hi there,

     

    One of my NY's resolutions is to make a small but fun mission with nice visuals. Now, I'm really tired of getting around T3Ed's quirks, so I thought that I should at least give DarkMod a try. I took a few days to teach myself DR basics with the Wiki and the comprehensive (but slightly outdated) A-Z course, and now I'm at the point where I find DarkRadiant... not so awful? It still takes minutes to do what I did in seconds with Unreal editors, but that should improve over time, I guess.

     

    I used the wiki and forum search to find answers to my questions, but I'm still not sure I get everything right, so here it goes:

     

    Questions:

     

    1. I'm familiar with concept of additive and subtractive geometry, but to be sure I get this in 100%: TDM uses additive geometry, but needs to be air-tight, as with subtractive levels? Can I have a big box (e.g. with skybox dome) for my whole level, so I can focus on building floors and floorplans for gameplay first and add walls/ceilings later? This is just for clarity and faster work, T3Ed used subtractive levels and only inner sides of subtractive brushes had textures, so they were easier to see and navigate.

     

    2. What's the real distinction between entities, prefabs and models and what should go where in terms of content creation? (I hope that does make sense.) T3Ed used mostly entities (actor classes) and meshes. E.g. lights were the invisible light source attached to meshes with some particle FX and scripts. Here I can find lights in entities, prefabs and models, do I get a bit confused.

     

    3. I'm a bit worried about the cuboid (Omni) lights. They look OK while touching the ground, but the falloff ends quite abruptly on walls. Any tips about the placement would be appreciated. Or maybe it's better to stick to spotlights and fake the effect? (With T3Ed it was better, performance-wise, to use multiple spotlights touching fewer objects per light than having one big omni light.)

     

    That's what I got for now, I also have a couple suggestions that might speed up the work in the future:

     

    Suggestions:

     

    1. The Entity/Media/etc. browser window should have Minimize and Maximize buttons, like the Generic Browser in UE3. It will be much easier to use, especially on laptops with smaller resolution.

     

    2. The rotation widget should have some angle snap by default, and it should be displayed next to grid icon on the lower right side. Using Arbitrary Transformation window for that is tiresome.

     

    3. Writing your materials with a notepad is a big no. Well, writing anything in code is frustrating for LD, and that goes double for visual stuff. I know that's a shader language, and I'm not asking for a fully-fledged node-based editor, but some simple GUI material code generator with source textures to choose, checkboxes for common options, and simple preview window would speed up the whole process by years. (Maybe an external tool would be a good idea?) I tried searching for something like that for Doom 3 engine, but didn't find anything.

    • Like 3

  10. Beautiful Mod. For UT3.

    in Off-Topic

    Posted · Edited by Judith

    Somehow I cant believe you couldn't care less, NH (regardless of funny wordplay in between ;)). I always thought that one of the reasons for making this mod is graphics. Not the main reason, but still... Otherwise, Dromed offers almost all that Thief FM designers could wish for, Mission X is a great example of that (even though it has some bugs). I know that DM utilizes much more complicated sound and AI algorithms, but from the player standpoint CoSaS team did an impressive job here, sufficient for players' needs nowadays, I guess.

     

    Really, I reacted only because of AH's patting himself on the back, a bit of humility while judging or comparing your stuff to other's work is a better, instead of cocky we-already-did-better-but-you-can't-see-it-right-now attitude ;)

  12. Beautiful Mod. For UT3.

    in Off-Topic

    Posted

    First of all, it's recorded with external camera and that might be somewhat misleading. I'd really like to see it recorded with fraps or sth like that. Second thing - it might be simple bsp and a few static meshes, but those textures look really good - nice use of shader model 3.0 and proper set of lights. There's nothing in public screens or in Thief's Den demo that could be called "even" or "better" in comparison to that, when it comes to visuals. I'm not interested in anything you have on your hard drive :) Because this way I could tell you I managed to achieve stunning visuals with T3ed, and you wouldn't believe me, at least until the whole thing gets released :]

  13. Beautiful Mod. For UT3.

    in Off-Topic

    Posted · Edited by Judith

    I doesn't matter, whether it's low, or high poly, it's the final effect that counts, for the players, not designers. And right now it looks better that anything in TDM or TDS that has ever been published. I hope they will be able to finish it someday :)

  15. Parallax Maps

    in TDM Editors Guild

    Posted · Edited by Judith

    I'll be uploading them to Judith's site as soon as I figure out how to upload stuff to Judith's site.

     

    When I'll be back from work I'll give you ftp access to your own texture folder and author status, as well as some short posting guidelines, to make it all clean and simple ;)

  18. Master Builder Store - a new texture site

    in TDM Editors Guild

    Posted

    Hi everyone,

     

    I'd like to present you a new site dedicated to sharing textures, Thief universe-related textures in particular. I'd like it to be an independent repository, where all the textures are stored on one server, where every author has his own folder, and is able to present his own terms of using works presented there.

     

    The second reason is the ease of use. Most sites offer photo references, not tileable textures. Making such texture can take a considerable amount of time, which is obviously slowing down designer's progress. Besides, DarkRadiant, Flesh or any other modern engine use normalmaps. Those require some time and knowledge to be prepared as well, again slowing mappers down a bit.

     

    The third reason was accessibility. There's no free website giving you full control over posted images, ability to sort it by tags, authors, categories, etc. There's always some option missing.

     

    That's why I gathered some of our finest texture makers on TTLG and presented my idea - fortunately, they liked it :) In the beginning it was supposed to be a texture repository for T3 Editors' Guild, but such restriction would be ridiculous, right? ;) That's why it's a site for all designers (T1, T2, T3, DarkRadiant and any other engines), as long as they respect texture authors' rights, expressly stated in appropriate section.

     

    So, without further ado, welcome to Master Builder Store, taffers!

  19. Wanted: Theifish Textures

    in I want to Help

    Posted · Edited by Judith

    Oh, I forgot to mention one thing - if you use image browser with .dds plugin (e.g. IrfanView), the alpha channel textures will look weird/screwed. Open them with gimp and they should look nice. I hope everything will be fine under the Dark Radiant editor as well.

     

    NH, Greebo - not a problem at all. I'll have another package for ya, after I finish the second part of the mission :)

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