Sotha

Okay here goes: http://www.mediafire...88yrlgzg6896g6l This version is the alpha version: Added an alpha channel to the original tga, removed the black backgroundI checked alpha in compressinator, looked good.Created mipmapsCompressed in compressinator with DXT3. It still does not load in D3. The file contains: material, dds and DR preview tga's for both the tree and city building decals.

So this means that I don't need the separate xxx_alpha.tga texture and I can embed the alpha in the dds texture? How? I create a .tga with transparent background and compress (using DXT3) that into .dds or is there something else to it? Sure I'll do that once I get home. If someone provides info how to have alpha IN the dds file, I'll try to create a dds with alpha and upload that. As always, thanks for helping out.

Heh.. Stim&response system! A patch of flour + water stim -> dough.Dough and rolling pin have a custom stim so that touching the dough with a moveable rolling pin makes the dough into flat dough.Frobbing the flat dough transforms it into a raw bread.Fire stim transforms the raw bread into ready bread.Fire stim transforms the ready bread into burned bread. The fire response on the ready bread should should activate only after a while so the bread gets burned only if it's too long in the firestim.Fire stim could be replaced with a special oven stim and fire stim might result directly in the burned bread. I wonder when we have FM's where the player has to gather ingredients to make an alchemical concontion or a potion according to a clue recipe. Like in monkey island 2 there was the one chapter where Guybrush had to make the correct concontion for the ship to arrive at the island.

All the .dds are in /darkmod/dds/textures/decals/vegetation/forest_trees.dds /darkmod/dds/textures/decals/building_facades/ city_buildings.dds For the time being I also have the .tga:s in that path. I've got the material file set up correctly, but still d3 says that cannot open the .dds files. Ingame I see pitch black shaped as per the alpha-files, so D3 sees the alpha-files in the same folder, but not the .dds files. Could they be somehow in a wrong format or something? Or should it simply work? Also should I make the alpha-textures into .dds or is it okay if they're .tga?

Need help. I'm trying to get my decal textures into .dds form. Without success. I'm basically doing as told in the dds creation tutorial in the wiki using the version of compressinator which was provided. I open source tgaI generate mipmapsI compress the thing with DXT1I saved it with save compressedI renamed the DDS to dds When I'm dmapping doom tells me that "couldn't load image." DDS does not work, tga's do. I've triple checked the path in the material file. I've tried both DXT1 and DXT3. How do I get the damned dds working? What I'm doing wrong *this* time?

Heh. LEGION, if you decide to start mapping, I'm pretty sure you can use the versatile stim/response system to your advantage and create the magic healing turnips if you want to.

Hey, this is turning into a nice discussion. I love it when a topic, which sparks a multitude of point of views, surfaces. The art of telling a story in a computer game is far different than writing a story. In a written story things occur exactly the way the author wants. In an interactive game the player should be able to make decisions, which affect things. And it should be fun and look pleasing. Therefore well rounded experience with skills in gameplay, story and beauty are important. Making a small yet complete mission is a well rounded experience, where the mapper gets to try and learn all the main aspects of mapping. I find this more useful to just learn to build. Bug stomping and troubleshooting are part of the process and it should be learned. On hardware limitations Of course we could set a recommended maximum scene r_showprimitives tris-count. Actually I would personally like to know what kind of values to aim at. On contest type selection Of course we could ask the community. This approach might maximize the participating mappers. Have a poll with contest suggestions from this thread and ask the mappers "which one of these contest you would most likely want to enter and make a map for it?" Having an option "none. don't have time" would also give an estimate how many mappers would be interested in the contest in the first place. Also it might be interesting to have a poll which asks the players which type of contest entries they would like to see. Keep the discussion going. This is gonna be interesting!

What's the point in that? People would get better results quicker with image editing/rendering software. And the level of detail is useless in a game if it is utterly unplayable. It will give an unrealistic promise what is possible and what is not in TDM.I don't see why mappers should work for weeks in DR to yield a picture! A picture which is checked, rated and forgotten. A FM will always be there for new TDM newbies to find, play and enjoy. It's an example how to make maps for new mappers.There would be no enticement for new people to go and try mapping. No one sane would learn DR only to make a picture.Creating a map always hones the mappers skills. This contest would not improve the mappers gameplay and story skills at all. And most likely these are the skills which are most needed in order to get those killer missions which brainwash T1/T2 fanatics into TDM fanatics. Thus providing a source of new, skilled and veteran dromed mappers.There would be no flurry of new FM's for the mission hungry community. The prospect of getting something new to play usually brings a lot of publicity and interest in the contest. Sorry again for my negativity. Must be the autumn getting the best of me.

I'll vote for (yeah, you guessed it!) gameplay over beauty. I'm more interested in playing good missions rather than beautiful ones. However, I don't mind having a gorgeous map with good gameplay and good performance. A beauty contest will, I fear, lead to other features getting stomped by beauty and we'll have mediocre or choppy maps with good visuals. It would be shameful if there was the great injustice of a great gameplay mission losing to a beautiful but mediocre one! My heart truly bled when I played the Caduceus of St. Alban. It looked fantastic, but gameplay and story missed the mark, unfortunately. With that area covered it would have been a killer mission instead of a good one. True beauty lies within. Or that's what ugly people say...

Yeah, definitions, definitions... When I talk about a skybox I mean A small separate room outside my normal map geometryThe room walls have cubemap sky&terrain texture with no details. Landscape only.The room has decal patches with buildings. There the city walls seen in the shots is the only model.The room has the skyboxcamera-entity. I don't remember now the exact entityname.The skies in my normal geometry is textured with portal_sky so they show what the skybox camera sees I do not see any weird bobbing. Everything seen in the skybox looks okay. Only problem is that they move in unison, as if the scene the skybox sees is like a flat painting: when the player moves there is no perspective variation, ie distant buildings move slower than the nearest. The buildings just sit there static and they do not move when the player moves. When the player looks around the skybox looks good and immersive. The other problem I've spotted that sometimes the skybox blinks out and reappears when mantling. Yep. Nearby objects just HAVE to be real objects, especially due to the skybox no-perspective-movement -issue. I've now one decal with 5 trees and one other decal with 2 towers and three kind of buildings each shot from several angles. The buildings are shot at ground level so they work nicely for distant buildings at the same level the player is in. Now that I'm writing this I'm confused why I didn't take similar shot of the models/architecture/buildings we have. Gotta do that also, since these buildings look better than the decals I made from the toy buildings. Once I get these textures .dds:ified I'll make them available for you. Can you suggest how I should name them? building_decals.mtr? and the shadernames could be something like decal_buildings / decal_trees. Is there a guideline for naming conventions. If they're gonna be added to TDM the names should go right with the first attempt...

Nope. I didn't caulk anything. I just happily made toy model buildings and tossed them around to make the scene. When I realized that the skybox was so heavy, I removed all the windows in the blind sides, but that only squeezed me a few more fps. The decal one means stable 60fps at all times. Actually the decal making was not a big trouble. All it took was placing the toy houses in a row in DR, load TDM up, take a screenie and do 10mins of image manipulation. It was quick to make the decal once I knew how to do the material file for it. Now when I tested it with 3d and decal skyboxes, I seem to like the decal one more. And using the decal one leaves me with "free" 7600 polys more to use in map geometry when compared to the 3d skybox! Also there is no benefit of using 3d objects since the skybox objects do not move with the player to fake that they're real. This decal scene creation technique would have been great during the vertical contest since it's a cheap way to create decently believable surroundings. The biggest problem with believabilty is the lack of perspective moving of objects. (nearby objects should move when the player moves) You welcome. Nice to be of help.

Okay. I'll summarize my tests. I've got now 4 skyboxes: Skybox1 is separate decalsSkybox2 is the same decals made into one aseSkybox3 is separate 3d building modelsSkybox4 is the same 3d buildings made into one ase. Decal ase is 1000 polys, 5 materialsModel ase is 8600 polys, 27 materials Skybox1 and skybox2 show the same results for r_showprimitives. views 5, draws 161, tris 25000, shdw 3020, image 44.8mb. Skybox 3 gives: views 5, draws 860, tris 39200, shdw 3200, image 60mb Skybox 4 gives: views 5, draws 226, tris 39800, shdw 3720, image 60mb Conclusion is that ase model conversion has no effect on the decal skyboxreduces draws for model skybox I hope this is useful.

Time to resurrect this thread. I just had my very own TDM Battle Royale. I wanted to see what happens in my WIP map if I set half of the guards to team 0 and other half remain in their standard teams. Then I hid in the shadows and marvelled the AI's great battle. It wasn't a battle. It was carnage. It worked really well and the team 0 finally won since they had a slight superiority. The battle looked very realistic with fleeing wounded and bloodthirsty chases until the wounded ran into a dead end or got an arrow in their back. It was very chaotic as true battle should be. And very cruel. It was also cool that after dispatching some team zero's, the standard team started spontaneously searching the rooms and found more zero's to be eliminated. It was especially hilarious when a lone standard team member stumbled in a room full of sleeping team zeros. He charged the nearest one and managed to hurt him pretty bad until he was hacked down by three zeros. After a while of fast action the final standard team member resumed normal patrol route with no chance of encountering team zero's, who where hanging out in other area. I jumped from the shadows and let the last standard teamer to chase me all the way to the zero teams room. The standard team member got his ass kicked by my buddies and tried to flee, but got a sword in his back. There were also some cool moments when: I dodged a standard teamer's sword so that an escaping zero teamer got hit and killed instead of me. A marksman archer in the zero team put an arrow right in between the eyes of standard team member. The only buggy things I noticed where a few stuck characters, which mainly was due to somewhat incomplete monsterclipping in my map. All in all, this battle royale of mine showed how nice the AI in the game truly is. It was quite impressive, actually. It would be interesting to see an FM which takes place during somekind of battle. The player is looting the local thieves guild house, when suddenly a citywatch raid breaks through the main door.

decal version = separate decals in the scene ase version = the above made into one ase. Decals removed, only ase model present. 3d version has nothing to do with this.

Okay. I used killmonsters make sure AI will not interfere. For the scene seen here: The ASE version and decal version give exactly the same result: views 5, draws 155, tris 22800, shdw 3310, image 44.8MB Note 1: The decal version is worldspawn, not func_static. Note 2: This is not comparable with the 3d skybox seen earlier since there I didn't kill monsters. Plus there are additions and improvements.

Spent just roughly 30mins in the wardrobe. 1/6 of the custom vocals needed for my FM is now recorded. That means one line. I recorded it about 12 times. The end result sounded decent, probably because it does not sound like me. I'll probably hear complaints about poor voice acting, but hey I'm no pro at this. It'll be ugly, but it will be mine. I'm starting to develop an entirely new appreciation for real voice actors.

Sorry for being so negative, but this does not sound like a good idea. In the perfect world it would be nice, but in this reality I really don't know. The result would be nice example how prettyness is only a secondary point in a map. The mission would not be of consistent style, it would be obvious it is mashed together from too many sources. To keep it consistent everyone should know what everyone else are doing. Who places the AI and other map-global things? This is the thing which defines whether the FM is good or not. Who is the poor bastard who has to mash the fragments together? What happens with drop-outs? "Whoops Roger stopped working, now we don't have the mansion second floor." Who pays for the managers medication, because managing such a mess would result in the need of being constantly stoned?

Hehe. Very nice! I liked it. Reminded me a lot of the really good music in Diablo1.

Well, the mapper could set this up relatively easy, if the damage effect works the way I'm thinking. You only need a trigger_timer which targets a stim effect damage for the player. Not tested that, though. Would make a cool poisoning effect: "you've been poisoned and lose 1 health per minute. Find the local doctor and break into his house for antidote.." That's how I played the original thief games. Try playing without save/load -roulette sometime. It really brings the experience to the next level as you have to deal with consequences. It's still relatively easy to escape with flashbombs and the worst thing you'll get is that the guards wander around their swords out.

I'll throw in some contest theme suggestions as well: Private property heist (Mansions, towers)Public property heist (Banks, churches, museums)Dark secret (Otherwise free mapping, but the story should involve a dark secret (with grave ramifications) the player uncovers)Water contest (water should be the contest theme: innovative use of water)Puzzle Mystery (The map should involve at least one brain teaser)"Make The Killer Mission" (Enitirely free mapping where the most fun map wins)Mechanical Nirvana (A map where emphasis is on victorian age steamworks)Movie Land (The maps should have special elements relying on cutscenes or conversations. Mission is about eavesdropping etc.)

Yeah, captain Knightons manor aka Porter 1. I've made great progress this weekend and I'm rather confident I get it released shortly after the new TDM version rolls out. Whenever that occurs, I dunno. After this mission I'm gonna take a long break from mapping. Three map contributions per year is definately enough for me.

One mansion heist coming from here as well. Looks like nice times are upon mansion-lovers..

My map now has 2 skyboxes and I can switch between them. The first skybox is the old 3d skybox. Meaning that the buildings are models. The second skybox is 2d, meaning that everything therein is 2d patches. 3d skybox: Worst possible fps: 45. (observed at certain map bottleneck area, not in the area seen in the screenie) Showprimitives: views 5, draws 870, tris 39000, shdw 2280, image 60mb. (showprimitives is for the area seen in the screenie) Screenie: 2d skybox: Worst possible fps: 55. (same area as above) Showprimitives: views 5, draws 150, tris 20000, shdw 2900, image 46mb. (showprimitives is for the area seen in the screenie) Screenie: 2d skybox does not look as good as 3d, but the performance improvement is quite tangible. Maybe I'll stick with the 2d and improve it by better patch placement. I don't think it is difficult to reach similar visual quality as in the 3d skybox. And low-enders will love me for additional fps. I probably have no longer the SVN access, I'm afraid. Of course, I could stick the stuff I have in a .zip file at mediafire or something. The nomenclature would probably have to be changed to fit the official TDM stuff. I can contribute the tree and building textures right away. For more more complex assets (models, skyboxes) my modus operandi is as follows: I want them to be unique for the mission I've created them for. So they appear for the first time in my mission.After the mission is published models, skyboxes, everything is free to be added to TDM assets. Oh, and I'm eagerly waiting for the female characters. I'd love to have them for my map. But once v1.03 comes out, I only swap placeholder AI's into females and press the big button labeled 'publish.'

The texture is basically a collection of 5 trees. Aligning the texture on a decal patch you can get 5 different trees from one texture. Then you can clone the patches to get individual trees here and there. Like here: Or you can create a forest simply by multiplying the patches: The benefit of individual patch=one tree is that you get the perspective effect, when the more distant trees are smaller. I don't think there is a huge performance impact, since one tree is 2 polies (right?). A forest of 100 trees costs 200 polies, which is less than one typical model. All the buildings in the scene are real models. I had the idea of creating textures with images of the buildings from different angles and then substitute the model buildings with patches. The performance improvement would be quite nice. But yeah, my map is mostly finished and I'm waiting for 1.03 assets. In the meantime I could easily look to create textures for the building patches. I think many things can be accomplished already with this simple texture of 5 trees so I'm focusing on the buildings rather than on the trees. As always, I'm really pleased if someone else can benefit from my hard work as well. Naturally, all textures, models etc I create are free for TDM to use.

I was just about to lose hope and quit trying, but these last suggestions helped. Got it finally to work. For those who are also wondering how to make it: The material file is like this: textures/knightons_manor/forest_light_d. tga is the normal diffusemap texturetextures/knightons_manor/forest_light_alfa. tga is the alphamask-thingy. Basically it is a black&white image with black background and white silhouette of the trees I want to be visible. Black is transparent. White is opaque. Thanks for help!