Sotha

Always bet on stupidity. I'm sure some people might be foolish enough.. I've started to despise and hate advertisements and it typically puts me in a difficult situation because I realise I cannot buy the product. Doing so would support the company which made the mind numbingly annoying advertisement. On the internet side, I'm using adblock and TV side.. Well I don't watch TV anymore. If I do watch, I'll watch it from the digibox so I can fast forward over the ads. If you want to see a good commercial, here it is. It is selling chicken minced meat in the good ol' soviet Estonia. Back in those days, they knew how to make a good and well structured ads..

I had to check the definition of ghosting from another thread: As I mapper I'll probably avoid actively designing a mission which can ALWAYS be completed without using any equipment and without being seen. I'd say that significant portion of player enjoyment comes from clever use of resources. I'd say that if you can get away with all situations with a conveniently placed shadow or a turning guard its not fun. But yes, replacing a valuable with a fake conforms to clever use of equipment. It is still using consumables, and thus not ghosting? But still. It is more important to make a fun mission than making it ghostable. Does the replacing thing really work? I think I tested it when I played the chalice and the guards never noticed the missing object, but I had turned the lights off near it so maybe the guards never saw it missing. Is there a tutorial how to set up the duplicate object so that it removes the loots absence-marker? I'm looking at the chalice.map in DR and the crown duplicate has no spawnargs which would indicate it to work somehow. What says Fidcal?

Sounds really neat, gotta give that a spin! Well done!

Have fun. Here are also a few prefab toy houses I made for the skybox seen earlier in this thread. Basically they are simple brush versions of the models seen in architecture/buildings/ But they'll react to light much better than rescaled models. I hope they get you started! Remember to rename them to .pfb toy_church.txt toy_house.txt toy_house_small.txt toy_tower.txt

Okay so some people wanted a Skybox Tutorial? Ask and ye shall receive! http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Skybox_Tutorial I hope it makes sense.

Thank you for your interest, but the skybox is still incomplete and -since I'm a bit of a perfectionist- I want to get it finished first. I've been building this skybox specifically for a mission I am currently envisioning. (Envisioning, not building.) I suppose the way I will proceed is that I'll finish the skybox and use it in the mission. I need it to be original for the mission. And after that I'll happily provide it for anyone to use. Estimated time for the above conditions to be met is 1-4 months. You could easily prepare anykind of special sky in a few days, as this thread points out. The information required to make one is cluttered in all of the following links: Theory: http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/Cube_maps http://modetwo.net/d...hp?title=Skybox Practice: For creating the scenery: http://www.planetsid...ent/view/16/28/ The skybox texture creation guide: http://www.doom3worl...opic.php?t=3571 And then you need to make in DR a room with the sky texture, place an info_portalsky there and place miniature buildings and objects at a position sligthly lower that the info_portalsky. Hey, would it be beneficial if I wrote a wiki guide on skybox creation? Would someone be interested if I tell exactly how to make this kind of box using terragen scenery?

I am sure you will be pleased the way I improved it. I got some really good feedback on that one...

Okay, I think that's it. I couldn't get the scaled models lighting to work, so I created my own toy buildings with normal brushes. They light up in moonlight quite nicely. Here is my artistic view, how the City might look from the outskirts. I'm planning to add later some more distant buildings on the hilltops right and maybe a keep on the left. Conclusion: it doesen't take very long to create a decent custom skybox. Plus, it was quite fun. I also have a sunset and crescent moon properly aligned.

Leaves plenty of time for other activities. Mapping, gaming, doing the dishes, vacuuming...

@stumpy: Worked! Turning the info_portalsky rotates the whole sky, not the compass. So the compass points to the direction it used to but the sky is rotated. By turning the sky I've got now the sunset in the west as it should be. @Fidcal: I've resolved the problem with a one click now. Changing the sky is a more tedious task. Is there any other grounds for doing it the hard way than consistency? Why is this consistency required? I'm slowly starting to understand how cool the skyportal system actually is. At first I was planning to learn some graphic editing and add the city to the skytexture by painting it. But then I remembered reading a wiki-article on model size scaling. I decided to put tiny toy building models in the info_portalsky -room. It ended looking like this: With scope: Looks really nice. Far better what I could probably do with graphics editing. I instantly started thinking about candlelight torches in the distance. With correct lighting the city would look really living place, only a few kilometers away. Now problem is visible in those images above. There is a light (with noshadows 1) in front of the church (scaled model) and the city wall (ordinary brush). The ordinary brush lights up as it should, but the shrinked are not lit by the light. You can see this most easily with the banner on the city wall, which is dark even the wall is bright. Any ideas why this occurs? Is this because the shrinking does something to the model? Can I get it to work properly somehow?

That's what everyone keeps telling me, including my wife... Nope. I'm just playing around and doing everything-else-except-what-I-should-be-doing. .. But no maps for a while.

Success! Thanks for advice. The forcehighquality parameter improved the textures nicely. Also I found out that terragen had its zoom parameter higher than 1.0. After changing it back to 1 and rerendering everything, I got the skybox working nicely.. Now the final problem is... The compass! Sunset to the north? Can I change the compass north-point by some spawnarg or do I have to change the skytextures accordingly? And then I only need the artistic ability to add some details to the skybox: a city in the distance. Well, not a city, but maybe a clocktower roof and a few rooftops sticking from behind the hills.

Haha. Here is the entertainment post of today: my pitiful attempt to make a sky-cube-map-whatever-thingy. Method: *Took Terragen and made a nightly plains with some hills in the edges. It looked decent. *Rendered the images. I -of course- used the maximum allowed rendering quality. I also used maximum allowed square image size. This is 960*960: not very far from 1024*1024. Might be okay, I thought. *I placed the terragen camera in a good spot. Roughly 2m above the ground. I turned the camera in 90 degrees and rendered the scenes. I paid special attention to pitch and bank so that they were zero at all times. Well, except the up and down images. Since the camera wasn't moved in between renderings and only the angle parameter was changed, the images should interlock just okay. *The images looked okay in the GIMP when I converted them into TGA-files with correct names. I checked that the images are correctly named according to the post #7 in this thread. Looked fine. *Then I created the material file and tested the sky-thing in game. It looked like this: This is probably the second most horrible thing I've ever created. The seams do not match. There are some grainy artifacts in the sky. Sheer awfulness. Here is how the image looks in GIMP Even I changed it to png for the imagehosting it is still not as bad as... that... that.. that horror in the sky ingame. Note that this image is in 1024*1024, because at first I thought that maybe the game uses some inefficient scaling to get the image from 960 to 1024. But it didn't affect anything. Any idea what I did wrong?

With the free version you cannot render 1024*1024 images making this rather useless. It renders pretty views, though.

Yes, I tinkered a bit with the prefab. I noticed the moon texture, but I never found out how to change the night stars etc. I mean the texture itself, which is pulled over the viewer. Basically I wanted to see if it would be easy to create a skybox like this But with the star night sky, moon, green fields, a lake perhaps and finally few towers in the City far in the distance. In principle, if I build this area with dark radiant, make some landscape features with patches, the towers in the distance and use the existing star sky prefab without the clouds and then use the envshot command, I might get something useable. Or awful. I dunno. Maybe I try it later.

I've noticed that the default TDM prefab skybox selection is quite limited. I checked the wiki and there was simple instruction on skybox addition but no information how to create one. Is there a tutorial on skybox creation somewhere? How tedious a task creating one is? Does it require significant artistic skill?

I would love to hear how exactly you did that. I tested myself, but I couldn't get outside no matter how hard I tried. Also I checked in DR that the area is properly playerclipped. I saw no problems. First I thought that the player start is slightly touching the playerclip, but that is not the case. I have no idea how that was possible.

At any rate, I'm really happy that so many of you have enjoyed the mission!

Well,

From "The Things that could me improved" -thread: In reaction to this, I've added a poll so people can rate this mission. If you've played this mission already, please take a moment to fill the rating. I'd be nice if the results would help new players to decide whether to play this mission or not.

Many thanks, Fidcal, for your trouble. I've added the mirror links to the main post. Now I get to simply lean back and see how the map is received by the community. Enjoy, everyone! I'm also itching to see other entries for the contest.

Please use spoiler tags when appropriate.

Are you sure you clicked the right place? It works for me, I tested the download.

Okay it is now released. If someone would put it in ttlg as well I'd be grateful.

The Glenham Tower is a small/medium sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter sets out retrieve an old book from a derelict tower. Mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank Melan, Fidcal and Bikerdude for playtesting. After I busted Lark Butternose out of the Old Town Jail (please see mission: The Beleaguered Fence) I hid and waited for Lark to regain consciousness. When he learned how he got out he was quite happy to offer me a significant portion of his share to our loot. After that our business was concluded and we went our separate ways. I heard Captain Godfrey Knighton was not at all pleased with the events at the Jail and was still looking for the people who robbed him blind. I decided to disappear and move north to a town called Braeden until things calm down in The City. After looking for work via the usual channels, I was approached by a bookstore owner named Victor De Grenefeld. He offered me a simple and entirely legal task of retrieving a rare old book from a derelict tower. The Glenham Tower was originally built by a wealthy family to provide a safe and secluded place to reside in the misty Glenham Moor. The family was disgraced by some kind of scandal and the Tower was later bought by a hermit scholar named Lord Morley who moved in with a single servant. Lord Morley, I learned, was doing some kind of research for the Builders. Some years ago the inhabitants of the tower simply stopped visiting Braeden anymore to buy supplies and food. The tower was found abandoned and sealed. The original residents, in fear of robbers, had installed an indestructible portcullis which was now closed and there was no way to enter the tower. Many have tried to force their way inside, but the portcullis is impenetrable. The windows are also made of this material. De Grenefeld told me that an skillful acrobat like me could easily climb the exterior of the tower to the top and gain entrance that way. He would pay a nice sum for a rare old book called 'De Vermis Mysteriis,' which he knows is somewhere inside the tower. I could keep all the other goods I find. The most dangerous thing would be the Tower itself: De Grenefeld told me that the tower is old and structurally unsafe, but I shouldn't worry if I'm careful enough to watch my step. The task sounded simple enough and the pay is extremely good so I agreed to De Grenefeld's offer. I need to buy some rope arrows and travel to the Glenham Moor. It is nice to do something legal for a change. LINKs: Use the ingame downloader to get it. WARNING! There are VISIBLE spoilers in this thread. I do not recommend reading any further until you've played the mission.