Sotha

Oh, I thought the idea was not to do TDM changes which break the existing FM's. I'd like to hear the official team opinion of breaking the main menu. This current mainmenu_briefing.gui of mine is simply a modified version of the original. It gets called just like the original did. The difference is only that instead of a steady flowing animation, this one presents buttons which control the animation. My briefing gets started and terminated exactly the same way the original briefing did. So I think doing alterations to the mainmenu, which breaks my briefing certainly breaks all the existing ORIGINAL briefings too! My briefing should be compatible to changes, which the original briefing is also compatible with. Ideally imo we want a stable menu system, which the mappers can tailor to their own needs without fear of breaking changes as long as the structure of the custom menu is designed to work with the original. Giving this liberty allows creation of diverse spectrum of custom mainmenu briefings as long as the briefing creators see the trouble to see how the original mainmenu_briefing.gui works. Your suggestion would confine future briefings to be according to a certain template, without not so much liberty in the design.

Of course not! I'm just glad if someone finds this good enough to be willing to use it. Check the mainmenu_briefing.gui file: I tried to write there clear instructions how to edit the file to mapper's own needs. Feel free to ask here if you run into trouble.

Heh.. Well, going in without lockpicks, of course it's tough. It is far easier with them. All the weirdness the AI does is due to AI coding. The map does not contain any special AI pointers, just path_corners, path_waits and path_sits. Oh, and the fleepoints for the prisoners and the guards. I've also noticed in my current WIP map that sometimes (rather rarely) alerted AI just stop and stand at a fixed point doing nothing forever with their swords drawn. Bug (hard to reproduce)? EDIT: Now that I think about it, I think the guards in the barracks were set sleeping. If they get alerted badly enough, they won't go back to sleep, but simply stop in their position after the alert level has dropped? Not sure. With this I agree. I kinda learned this the hard way and it is mentioned in my FM design tips wiki article so others do not make the same blunder.

Okay, everything seems to be working, so I think it is ready now. Here is a simple test mission to show how the alternative briefing works. http://www.mediafire...ewg8ws3s9atth8g The package includes also a challenging mini-survival mission to entice people to test this!! As always, feedback is appreciated...

Well, nanofibers are really strong in the direction of the fibre. Perpendicular to the fiber, mechanical properties are of course weaker. Think about graphene, for example. And then there is the problem of foam. You can easily achieve a foam with polymeric materials (styrox for example) or foaming liquids (mmhh, beer), but it's difficult to see how you could form an airtight foam of carbon nanotubes or nanospheres. That's why I was thinking of an individual micro to nanocontainer, which you could will with gas. Vacuum is even more difficult.

Yep, I'm a chemist and I'm especially interested in nanotechnology. And I've fiddled with gels too, altough not aero-ones. Like said, creating a nano structure with vacuum inside, which could withstand the pressure difference and which would be non-leaking would be impossibly tricky. Think about the practical considerations: how do you suck vacuum into your nano cells? You should have some kind of stimulus responsive nanodevice, which you first open, then you enable vacuum, and then close the device. And then hope it would keep the vacuum. It is much easier to prepare a microstructure with trapped gas. Also if the idea is to prepare a 'safe' device which would not explode like H2, this vacuum material probably wouldn't solve this. If a huge amount of such cells would be destroyed at the same time.. It could be used to prepare a cool implosion bomb.

Yep. Standard Nosslak quality. We're so lucky we have such a talented modeler sacrificing personal free time to contribute such high quality models. Every step we take brings TDM closer to brilliance. Thank you! Well, it is a tool, but a tool which is most likely very expensive with high resell value. Even if this is a misc-category object, I think it would be appropriate to generate a loot entity with this as model.

Heey duude, I'd like to have one of those mushrooms, bitte.

Well, due to the magnificent binding system, a mapper could bind a cloak garment on our existing zombie. You know, if we had a wearable cloak. The problem in making one would be the fact that it's difficult to make it look right, since the cloak model would be stiff and could not flutter. Also related to this: is it possible to make new heads for AI's? If so, it would be simple to create recently zombified zombies, that have not yet decomposed. Simply make a pale/bloody face texture for a new head, which goes to our current AI characters. A new skin for -say- citywatch tattered and dirty citywatch uniform and attach a head with pale redeyed mangled texture. The problem with this is probably that then these fresh zombies would walk like ordinary folks. Therefore this approach could be okay for more intelligent undead, like vampires and ghouls.

I've read this several times now, but it makes no sense to me. I wish I could understand. I suspect it is due to the fact I sit on the other side of the spectrum and I cannot understand what you're saying from the other side of the barrier. Basically Spring's arguments do not count because he is paying attention to the details (ie. using a microscope?) Without examining the details anyone could feed you all kinds of lies, without you detecting it. It's from the details where the disparities are observed. Also: Excuse me, but didn't you, yourself, just do that here? It kinda sucks that back then when these books were written they didn't have the technology to provide a steady stream of updates and patches... So people built their own hacks in. And this is the result.

Yeah, in retrospect it probably should have had some kind of engravings on the sphere part. Victorian era thingies are not smooth and neat like modern objects, but rather curvy and full of details. I guess that's the cartoony part: simply too 'clean.' The TDM textures it uses have specular, which make it look rather too shiny, too.

Well, if you would see the trouble, you could create the next/previous gui-file and add it to the mission package. The player could then get it into use simply by renaming the mainmenu_briefing.alt -> mainmenu_briefing.gui. Now I got the images to work. They float around like they should. There are a few bugs which emerge, when back and forth buttons are pressed rapidly many times, but I think it is easy to fix. Already fixed one image, just have to apply that solution in all of the sections which show/hide images. After fixing those, it is basically button graphics creation, placement and floating image position and movement fine tuning. Always nice to learn something new and make progress.

Look carefully. Black arrows on the top left and top right corners. Black arrows with tiny white contour.

Hey nice to see that this is of benefit for others as well. One scepter coming up. Sending PM....

I've just now completed all the next/back buttons. All the text in The Beleaguered Fence briefing can be cycled back and forth with the next and previous buttons. The middle cross button is the exit button. When the user reaches the first page, only the next-button is shown. In the final page only the back-button is shown. The system supports 6 pages, which can be easily reduced by commenting out one line at the screenstage the mapper wants the pages to end. I know it's ugly at present. The arrows are only placeholders. I'm also definately putting them somewhere else. I'm proably going to change the exit briefing button into text "exit" and place it in the lower right corner of the screen, where the forward options are for the difficulty selection and the shop menu. I'm open to suggestions how to place the next/back buttons on the screen. Next task: get the floating images to work... Nice. It is motivating to see that someone is already interested in this. I think its rather easy to implement existing briefings to this format. All you gotta do is to copy-paste the contents of the "windowDef BriefingText1"-thingies from the old briefing to this new file. If the mission has its text as .dds, then it is not possible, unless the user types in the text.

Hm.. As seen in the scientific community quotes, homosexuality is probably affected by a genetic factor, make no mistake. It has also been concluded that upbringing does not affect sexuality. Nbohr's statement above tells us that there is a cultural effect too. In Finland it is entirely normal for guys to pack in a small hot room (sauna), naked, sitting shoulder to shoulder. And maybe whack each other with a bath whisk (an object made by several thin branches bound together.) while drinking beer, having fun and pouring water on the sauna stove. There is nothing homosexual in this activity, even that the guys are in close proximitiy of each others' dongs. It is really rare (but not impossible) to find a finnish guy who would feel uncomfortable in this kind of situation. So culture is certainly affecting how close two naked persons of the same sex can get to each other. While this tells nothing about the origins of homosexuality, I think it's safe to say that it occurs due to many, many factors. It is absolutely certain that sexual preference is is not a choice. It's kind of lame not to accept groups people with qualities they cannot do anything about. I'll throw in some interesting (at least for me) questions: Why does nature exhibit occurences of homosexual qualities? What's the evolutional benefit of homosexuality? There must be some kind of benefit for such a variation. Exciting, huh?

Psst, Fidcal! My first blender model. If you want to use it, just ask. It's slightly smaller than a mace.

Ehm... *Turns on diplomacy-mode* Considering that it was created in DR it looks great. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's close to the best that can be done. Considering what it could look like if created in blender...................... ... . . . .. It's like painting the sistine chapel using a single magic-marker. *Notices that diplomacy-mode threw a seg-fault.* *Hides*

Ahem... The American Academy of Pediatrics, 2004: The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and National Association of Social Workers, 2006 The Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2007 Please note that typically later publications have more information sources, so the conclusions get more accurate. Of course, there is no 100% proof as there seldom are with complex systems like this one. But basically these conclusions made by the scientific community are a big red flashing arrow pointing to a certain direction...

I think it is 'f'. That's what I got, but I'm unsure if I changed it. Check the key bindings from the control menu. That'll tell you everything.

Yeah, I think this is the main thing. But the most important and maybe difficult thing is to get the pictures to work, so they float nicely around while the screen is on. I'll try to make it as 'universal' as possible so that later people only need to change text and replace image-files to make their own briefing. I added also a start mission button which can be used at any time to go the the difficulty screen. The coding experts are probably going to laugh at me, but basically the system is going to work like this: Briefing starts. Show paragraph1. Show Next-Button1.Clicking Next-Button1 hides Next-Button1 and shows paragraph2, previous-button1 and next-button2.Clicking on previous-button1 hides previous-button1 and paragraph2 but shows paragraph1 and next-button1 (giving the exact starting situation)Clicking on next-button2 shows again new set of hidden buttons which then form a sequence which shows the paragraphs in the desired order. I don't think its gonna be really difficult to add moving pictures to this series of hidden and shown things. Lets see. Now, gotta sleep...

After one evening of fiddling I'm making progress. Now I have next and previous buttons, with which I can cycle between the first two briefing paragraphs. It's ugly, and no floating pictures yet, but I'm optimistic...

I'm sorry, Fidcal, but the system I'm fantasizing seems to be exactly the kind you'd not prefer. I do not like the delays, because they're never right. They're either too short or too long. When I did the briefing for The Beleaguered Fence I hated the arduous and boring task of getting the delays right. I loathed the delay setting so much that I didn't do an animated briefing at all for The Glenham Tower, even when in principle I wanted to do it. I certainly had time. Just for the record: if the briefing was a spoken narrative, then I'd prefer the delays over next page buttons. I agree that pressing next with spoken briefing would be stupid. But without the narrative the briefing is exactly a readable. I'm considering it is a sort of story book with animation, where the reader turns the page once (s)he is finished with the current page. Then another page with animations open. Few points in random order (my mind is in a flux at present): When/if I manage to pull it off, then I'm going probably going to always use it in my missions, because I had enough of the delay setting.It's not a TDM change, but a file a mapper can use for individual FMs as needed.I'm certainly going to make it available for other mappers, but they do not have to use it.So you shouldn't worry about every future mission using this. Probably it gets only embraced by the few like minded mappers who hate the delays. And with this alternative, everyone gets better briefings, when they can be exactly what the mapper has envisioned. Surely more options for the mapper is always a good thing. But yeah, first I gotta figure this out. Thanks for the links nbohr, they got me on the right track already!

Aye! I'm not disagreeing at all. Instead I'm gonna continue the story, because it's getting even more exciting. Remember that christian party leader who said that homosexuality is a flaw in one's sexuality? Because of her talks, the christian party is getting more members! Also, at the same time SETA (Sexual Equality organization in Finland) memberships are increasing faster than normal. Note that church memberships are decreasing by thousands: 28000 last time I checked. And christian party and SETA memberships are increasing by hundreds. So basically it looks like: liberal people leaving church (mass movement)conservative, non political, people joining the christian party as a gesture of support.normal/liberal people joining sexual equality organizations. (since more liberal people probably are already members) Lots of people voting with their feet. People choosing sides... Interesting times...

Ahoy! I was thinking of maybe spending some time to edit the animated briefing gui for my upcoming mission so that it would contain next and previous -buttons instead of the timings. So basically the gui would contain the moving images and appearing text, but in such a fashion that the images stop somewhere and the text remains on screen until the user clicks forward button. After that the next screenful of images and text appears. I do not have yet any clue how to achieve this, so does anyone know a gui-creation tutorial or similar information I could research before embarking on this exciting journey? Thanks!