Sotha

Absolutely! BDGs are imperative for any successful Youtube artist. I might throw in some of my own MC Hammer maneuvers as well... Not sure yet how this all mixes with this Let's Map genre, but there is plenty of time to investigate.

I'm not sure about that. Some plaster have the frob stages, like framed_diagonals and framed_crosses, and some don't, like framed_0*. These were probably made by different people or at different time. This leads me to believe the stage was simply forgotten from some of the textures. The deficiency was never spotted because people haven't needed to frob these textures... until now. Good thing it is easy to fix.

I would not underestimate the "educational value" of these videos. For a total newbie, they can be a gold mine for learning DR, because it covers everything it takes to complete a functioning mission from 0% to 100%. For an experienced mapper the benefit is of course lower, but they might pick up something small from here and there. But sure, the information could be more concentrated, but doing that would risk not showing something important people would need to know. I do not want to choose what to show, so I show everything. It's been fun making them, which is the main motivation. If they produce some concrete benefit, like a single new mapper joining the fray, then even better!

It is what it says on the tin. In Let's Plays usually someone plays something and makes a video of it as they go. This is a Let's Map video, which means that someone (me) maps and makes a video of it as I go. I am not sure what you expected.

Just in case you missed it, the point of this video series was to vblog the whole creation of the mission. If the lighting phase of the mission took 1h to do, then the lighting video is 1h long. That way, in the end, I get minute accurate information how much time was spent on this mission and how much time was spent in each of the mapping phases. If you don't have time to watch, feel free to skip to the parts you want to see.

Part 10: Sounds has been uploaded. Enjoy!

Part 9: Objectives & Readables is uploaded!

Thanks, nbohr! Bugtrackerified: http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4487

So I will file a bug report? Can someone tell me how I can make a new material that I can ship with my mission. The shipped material would override the defunctional material and my mission would have the frob highlighting for the this texture? Thanks!

Hi! While working on my map, I made a secret compartment to wall made of textures/darkmod/plaster/framed_03 I noticed that this texture, when on a door, will not frob-highlight at all. It is probably missing the material information. There may be other materials in tdm_plaster.mtr, which are missing frob highlighting. Is it by design or accident?

I know there are many ways to remove the noise. Audacity way would need me to separate audio from the video, then do the noise reduction and then edit the videos with new audio track. Lots of work, when I just want to focus on the main-good-stuff, which is the mapping. For some drivers there is a on-the-run noise removal, but my drivers have that option grayed out. I didn't want to start messing around with sound drivers, lose time, and risk losing the basic mic functionality that is presently working. So I'm just gonna wipe the problem under the carpet and do nothing. Agreed, it is an annoyance for most people, but the videos will serve their purpose for those who want to watch and learn from them. If I decide to start making more videos for youtube in the future, I will probably buy a good mic, a faster internet connection, some background dancing girls, and do a thorough system check so that everything is in top-notch order. At present there are no such plans, so I trust the current setup will suffice, and OGDA gets their meditation session.

Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate your appreciation. I like your unusually positive outlook on things.

The next video is now processing. It should be ready in 10 minutes or so. Part 8: Monsterclip & AI Enjoy!

Just imagine the TDM Insider HEADlines... bwahaha. Cough. Sorry....

Thanks for sharing. That really was an interesting read and formalizes some of my experiences I've had with New Things in the past. It was fun to even recognize that I was a 'mop' in that New Thing back in the past and a 'geek / fanatic' in that other. Even recognized some 'sociopaths' from the past. As for the end, well, I think it is natural that all things come to an end eventually and delaying the end is the only thing we can really try to do. And when the end comes, it is not too bad either if the Ending Thing brough joy while it was still active. That joy and experience will increase in value, because memories have the habit of getting gilded. Perhaps 20 years from now TDM is long gone and we have a bunch of us old farts hanging around here remembering in how exciting circumstances TDM got Greenlit, or how frickin' unfair that teleporting flaming revenant in Transaction was (what was I thinking!)

Nice videos, Springheel! I added a link to it from my modules-video comments.

Cough cough coercion cough cough... ;D Anyhow, well said. If everything we do was honed to absolute perfection, we would not have finished anything. Good enough is good enough. That's good rule. Then next time, we can do it a bit better if it is not too much extra work.

Peer review won't help, because like grayman said, it is too late to change them. *If* someone makes new modules to TDM core, perhaps then it would be a good idea to do some team peer reviewing. But my personal experience is that whatever you do, and no matter how well you do it, and no matter how much others helped you to perfect it, someone else *will* find some component of your hard work, which they can (rightly or not) criticize. And that is of course irritating, and it burns out unpaid voluntary workers ultra-fast.

Hmm. I might be wrong, but didn't doom 3 use total pitch blackness? That way you had to use the flashlight and you could not gamma-cheat your way out of it. Also modern games like Rust have pitch black nights that force the player to use light sources. Increasing gamma does not make anything visible in the darkness.

Maybe I'll just add a text annotation on the video that mentions it is not the default lighting method plus a link to the A-Z guide lighting section. That should cover all eventualitites.

Part 7 about lights is up. @Judith, The benefit with nightvision approach is that the mission will not look so washed out, which is why I wanted to use this here. It has not been experimented with much yet. I do agree that the nightvision is probably not the newbie mapper's default choice, which is why I talked about the ambient world lights in the video. Should have probably talked more about it though. It probably isn't a terrible mistake on my part, though, because most likely the newbie mapper will be referred to the A-Z guide anyway, and that covers the ambient world lights. I am thinking that if I calibrate myself properly in the training mission gamma room and set the nightvision lamp brightness to decent level, it will work for the majority of the people. If it doesn't, the player can always tune their ingame gamma settings to the brightness level they please.

Uploading the next video now. Part 6: Backyard Details https://youtu.be/f-oFxWs8cWQ Should be up in 20mins or so. Edit: uploaded!

What Springheel said. You can still do any kind of geometry with the func_statics. Just keep the sealing brushes blocky-90-degrees. You won't be losing any interesting shapes... The only thing you will lose is the bug hunts for weird problems. I am happy if you have not encountered those. Weird sealing problems are easy to fix, but pain in the butt to locate.

Ok. I googled around and found out how to activate the noise suppression, but for some reason my system does not have the tab which has this microphone option. I don't know how to get that enhancements-tab. Sorry about the inconvenience. I hope it isn't too bad. The modular way is the best way. That is what all the modern games use nowadays. The difference here is that I make the modules in DR, because I am not so good with real 3d-modeling software like Blender. <- This exactly. Thanks Obst! --- In other news: Interior designers flee in panic. New part is uploaded and ready for viewing: Part 5: Interior Details

If you keep your sealing geometry in grid 8 and 90-degree blocky and as simple and straightforward as possible, the risk of getting leaks is greatly reduced. Maintaining the mission is much easier. Using this blocky-simple-sealing-geometry -approach, I've never had much issues with leaks and weird results. For example, when I made Glenham Tower, I lost a lot of time bugfixing a weird sound leak. The sounds from the outside was leaking inside the tower, even though the tower was properly sealed and visportalled. It turned out that sealing worldspawn must be 8 units thick. I had slanted 8 units thick, so it was thinner than 8 units. This caused the sound to leak. When I widened the slanted sealing walls to slanted 16 units thick, the sound leak went away. Had I used simple, blocky approach then, I would have not lost time to seek out the issue. Also, as veteran mappers know, slanted geometry may start deteriorating due to the floating point rounding issues. At least at some point it did, it might have been fixed already. In short, hours of mapping experience indicates that keeping sealing geometry as simple as possible (8 units thick, 90-degree blocky, non-slanted) is generally predictable and safe. Using slanted sealing geometry may result in strange and hard-to-troubleshoot issues, i.e. "asking for trouble."