Sotha

What an amazing mission. I've completed the first part. It kept me so absorbed that I failed completely to go to sleep at my normal time. Todays gonna be loooooong day at work...zzzzz. Great mission. I hope to play the second part soon! Thank you for you work, this mission is really impressive. Any tips for a fellow mapper how to reach similar visual quality? What is the secret in making locations so "lived-in?" It seems to be natural talent and effortless for you to maintain consistent ultra-high quality visuals. How do you do it?

Modeling stuff for Blender. These will work on Blender 2.7. Newer version compatibility has not been tested. Arcturus made a blender rig file for male and female AI: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14970-blender-rig-for-standard-male-npc/ It works, and I've been using it in my animation activities. Exporting with ARX:EOS md5 exporter is possible. Everything seems to work, but the animation file sizes sre slightly larger than with other exporters. Be careful though, some other blender md5 exporters bork the AI bounding box which causes weird shadow clipping. The Arx exporter works fine. Link: http://arxendofsun.solarsplace.com/downloads/io_scene_md5.zip I made a very short instruction guide here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14970-blender-rig-for-standard-male-npc/?do=findComment&comment=325423

@obst, it is Rayleigh scattering in science terms. The further scenery is, the more blue or desaturated towards blue it is as blue light scatters more than longer wavelenghts. Anyhow, for me this is a lost cause. Foflights cannot be done with skyboxes (to simulate RS), if textures are scaled down, their repetition becomes painfully apparent... Probably a skilled photoshop artist is needed, not a mapper.

Here is a screenie and the .map if someone else wants to try to improve it. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwR0ORZU5sraQWFpQlZNYXg2eTQ/view?usp=sharing I just can't get what it causing the unnatural crappy look...

I gave it a try but it just looks shit. Not going to even post a picture. I can't do it but maybe someone else can.

+1! and me too! I hope it will be successful!

I did some analysis and yeah, it looks like it is easy to place objects in the incorrect place in the skybox. If a human is 1.8m or 88 DRunits tall, then DR units are ~49 units/m. Thus if you do a decent cityscape vistas, like the view from Uspenski cathedral, Helsinki: The buildings shown are roughly 100m away in a nice long vista. Thus the object should be 4800 units away in in game geometry or 300 units away in skybox geometry. Closer objects should probably be in the playing area. Just throwing some rules of a thumb here to get a feel what the numbers should be like. For a hilltop church like the Uspenski, one would do *Square play area of certain dimensions with border buildings in the play area rather than skybox. *Check play area size and make a large skybox with a "play area dimensions"/16 forbidden zone in the middle of the skybox and then *pepper 1/16 buildings into the skybox 300 units away from the play area. That might probably work.

Hm.. I tried to make believable 3d skybox in the past, but it was difficult. I tried a concept of a mission where the player climbs to a tall tower. Tower supposed to be in game, and the surrounding city in the skybox. Since the tower was really tall, the surrounding cityscape needed to be very convincing and moving skybox camera was used. I made 1/16 scale buildings and pasted them into the skybox room. It looked like crap. I could not exactly put my finger on what was the thing that made it look wrong. Perhaps the building models, perhaps the lighting, perhaps the streets. Everyhting in the skybox area looked weird somehow. I dunno. Because I could not identify the problem, I abandoned the attempt. Perhaps it would need to work like this: tower in game area. Immediate surroundings around the tower in game area, other cityscape in the skybox area.

This was a good mission. What I didn't like: *defocused. Big town, lots of meaningless places. Good thing I had a map. I find it appealing to have a single location that is well focused. Here you had maybe little too much of everything. *keyhunt. This is also related to defocusedness. Lots of keys, lots of doors that cannot be picked. When I started the mission, I headed directly to the main location, but could not get inside, because the gate was locked. Frustrated, I started wandering around. I knew what I needed to do, but I could not get to the location. I wandered in locations I didn't feel I would even want to go, but I had to because I could not go where I was supposed to. I was irritated not being able to make progress, but I had to wander aimlessly. Finally, about to give up, I wandered back to the compound I was supposed to go to... AND THE GATE WAS NOW OPEN. I didn't have any clue why it was open, and I had not found any key for it. But at least I got back into the mission. Those felt quite critical problems for me, but good thing I didn't quit. What I liked: *Ultra-high detail. Windows, vistas from apartments. Wow factor indeed. *Use of light. This mission, in indoor areas, shows specialist quality level in the use of lighting. Lights of different color, custom locale fitting ambient light. Cool candy. Very well done! *Good AI patrols. *Custom conversations and player remarks. There is so much stuff to love, so I cannot give it a poor grade for gameplay. But the aimless wandering and keyhunts almost killed it for me.

I actually have OBS installed but I've not configured it. It was faster to do it with a known workflow using old software than use time to learn the new one. Yep, I must be getting old: it is really easy to get stuck in doing just the way I've always done them.

Played this just now. It took me 1.5hrs, with a stealth score of 51. No knockouts or kills. Interesting plot & mystery. Well designed mission. Excellent aesthetics. I even got a map, which was certainly necessary, due to the complexity of the manor. Space was very well thought of and I really liked the architecture and the use of verticality, so that stairs shift the level inside a single floor. That breaks the flatness in an interesting way. My only gripe was the handling of the grates. I was causing a lot of alerts when I tried to move them out of the way. Other than that, this mission is a masterpiece! Excellent job! Thanks for making it!

Thanks! Yes, it will be a simple package of files that add a "atdm:citywatch_gunner" people can just add into their mission. (Or simply add an atdm_X_archer and def_attach the gun to them instead of the bow). The package should contain gun model, def files and animation files. No source changes are necessary. People could even replace the gun with their own custom weapon model. Let's see.

Citywatch raid with the new equipment: Looks like our AI are headshot specialists. Any idea how I can change the rate how long they have to cool down before attacking again?

Bridgeport Citywatch Armoury Upgraded! Recent deal with the Inventor's Guild has brought new arsenal to our ever vigilant law enforcers! The IG Mark III Perforator is expected to bring terror to the hearts of the the thieves, rabble and other would-be-criminals. Loud, deadly and accurate, the new weapon is not expected to fully replace the old, slower longbow guards, as the Perforator still has some design issues, not to mention the high manufacturing and licesing costs. Still, the mere sight of this experimental yet deadly device should be a good deterrent for criminal activity. Bridgeport has never been safer! I've always wanted to do a gun for an AI and now I had some time for a miniproject. The gun was modeled quickly with DR and I was interested more in functionality than aesthetics. If you think, the gun is ugly, please feel free to make me a better one. It should be around the same size. The origin should be in the middle of the wooden handle, and the gun muzzle should point towards the x-axis. That way I do not need to readjust the hand/holster rotations, which is boring work.. I fooled around with the AI defs and managed to get the correct animations in order. The AI will have the gun in holster, pick it up and shoot the player with it. On todo list: *Make AI always use the gun. Now if the player gets too close, the AI gets flustered and will not fire. It is probably a spawnarg job, but I do not know which one. Any ideas? *The gun shoots broadhead arrows. I need to make a new projectile for it. I was thinking of making the gun very deadly, maybe 70-90% damage to player's health. The projectile should be very fast. *Needs BANG! sounds. *Make a proper shooting animation. Now the AI uses use_righthand animation for shooting. Also, the gun could be single use: the AI shoots it once, then drops it and picks up a dagger. I'm not sure yet. This would open the door for easy implementation of various other kind of single hand missile weapons: small hand crossbows, heavy hand cannons, blowguns, etc.

For me it is either carpenter's work area or a writing desk. Yeah, used Amiga Workbench,too, but sometimes too much guru meditation...

Lowest level of cat "AI" 1) make a sleeping cat model MD5mesh 2) when player goes near it, the cat goes MEOW! (alerting nearby AI) 3) cat plays run-away-at-unnatural-speed animation and disappears In game effect, the cat would be an "alarm mine." It could be implemented with a func_animate and a trigger. If we have resources for more elaborate behavior, it could also react to sound, which is not possible with mere trigger work.

Cute cat you have there, nice work! Is the little beast gonna be a fully animated character? If that is the case, it should be an MD5 model, right? To swat as many flies at once as possible, it might be a good idea to think about general quadruple animal animations. So that eventually all our cats, dogs, wolves, sheep and platypuses use the same animations to get as much stuff working with minimal animation work... But yeah, I know, I thinking waaay too much ahead here.

If someone is capable of doing a 3d skybox with cityscape, would it be good to document the process to the wiki? That way the knowledge stays available to those who want do custom skyboxes, and mappers could easily learn to make their own.

Cute furries. But +1 what SeriousToni said (in 7161). We prolly need most a feral pagan-looking character or some humanoid monsters like werewolf (almost done), rat-people, spider-people, praying mantis-people, or distorted cthulhu-people. (People and humanoids, because that is what we have animations for...)

Wiki pages updated, added slanted door guide: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Doors#Slanted_or_Tilted_Doors Enjoy!

@Glyph, actually it is related to mission design. The missing loot detection has been there for ages. It just isn't commonly used. It is up to the mapper to make the absence of loot to be noticeable to the AI. Here, my idea was to make the absence of prominently displayed loot cause an alert. Nobody is gonna notice if a statue on a shelf or a purse on a desk is going to be missing. But anything missing from a fancy display case will cause an alarm. I think it turned out so well, I'll be using this in the future as well, as long as the amount of noticeable loot is low in the mission.

Most of our missions are quite flat and horizontal. Your work has interesting verticality. Nice to see where it goes...

On slanted doors: I figured it out! It is the BINDING that resets the object rotation axis. In the picture above is a model door prefabs, which have been rotated 45 degrees so that they are slanted. They have rotate 0 90 0 and 0 -90 0. So rotate 90 degrees along z axis. If you now open them, they will open along the WORLD z axis, which is not correct. If I add a goblet (or any model), rotate it 45 degrees, just like the doors, and BIND the doors onto the goblet, they start turning according to the GOBLET z axis (which is now rotated). The slanted doors open as they should. Test map for analysis: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwR0ORZU5sracWR4eHNzdGFKR1E/view?usp=sharing Enjoy! I am still quite certain that the AI cannot use the door. But one more mystery solved.

I've noticed too that fleeing AI does not always alert other AI. It works if the AI is walking on normal patrol, but is more unreliable if the AI is sleeping or playing cards. Grayman knows better than I, but perhaps the AI needs to see the fleeing AI? If they are absorbed in their cards, it is more unlikely? What if you make the card players stop playing and just stand idly. Does the fleeing AI then get their attention more reliably?

On slanted doors: I played around with it last night but could not get it to work. It tried the method I mentioned in my last post. Here is what I found: 1) DR built objects rotate around world axis (already known ) 2) lwo model door rotates also around world axis, even though the rotation spawnarg description claims that models rotate around origin. 3) I was able to get the slanted door to open with combination rotation so that opens to the correct position, but the door momentarily flies off the hinges. 4) the door handles, when on slanted doors, were working correctly, so it hints it may be possible to get it working. It is not clear at present why slanted door handle rotates around it's origin when tilted, but tilted model door rotates around world. Perhaps lwo/ase models are treated differently, or it has something to do with binding. I'll look further into this at my next fragment of free time. If this path turns out as a failure, the next thing which might work would be to make a slanted door in modeling software and animate it to open, just like Arcturus did thst shattering statue some years ago...