Sotha

Thanks for playing & glad you liked it! Never though about the lit window. Sure, the window light could be switched off and the window texture could be swapped from lit to dark (cannot use skins because it is not a model, but it is doable by hiding and showing different wall modules)... But c'mon! That is a lot of work, which will be noticed by only a small amount of unusually observant players. Also, it might become an implementation hell, because what if the AI relights the light behind the window pushing the entire setup out-of-sync. Too many eventualities should be taken into consideration.

A-Z tutorial should be probably one of the first links provided? Check for typos: usefull, etc?

OGDA, the AI can do what animations the AI has. If the kneeling anim takes him down and up, then you cannot have him go down and stay there. In order to make AI kneel down and stay there, you need to 1) make an anim where the AI kneels down 2) make an anim where the AI cycles staying kneeling 3) make an anim where the AI gets up from kneeling position 4) make a special AI who has the sitting anims replaced by the kneeling anims. 5) now you could use "sitting" behavior for kneeling behavior. With this principle you could do any activity where the AI goes into activity, stays there and then leaves. Leaning against walls, doing pushups, standing on a chair, or whatever. The problem is that making good and natural looking animations is a lot of work.

...Take me down to the Emerald City where the grass is green and the law is easy....

Excellent! Can't wait to see it!

@Springheel, thanks! Indeed, such a contest would be fun. 10 hour contest or something. The problem is that if time is cut, so is probably mission quality as people cannot make their stuff as good as they wanted. I do not know what would be possible in 3 hours. Possible a one to two room mission. In this mission, I made the modules in 30min and spent 30min to lay the basic geometry (placed the modules themselves.) But I spent over 60 min in monsterclipping + over 60min in interior details. So in this analysis the main time drain is monsterclipping and detailing. Modules do not help optimizing these tasks. I do not know how these could be done more efficiently.

Video ready here. Part 13: Betatest Fixes

The Bakery Job is a tiny few room FM, where the player steals a recipe book. Made by Sotha. Briefing: The entire building process of this mission was published in a youtube video series. New mappers are warmly welcome here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18680-lets-map-tdm-with-sotha-the-bakery-job/ ...and on youtube: BUILD TIME: 381 minutes. CREDITS Thanks goes to TDM team and the whole community. Special thanks to OGDA and gnartsch for betatesting! Link to the mission:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwR0ORZU5sraZWpiRnluMXpvOEU/view?usp=sharingIn-game downloader. Cheers and enjoy!

Cheers! It is done! Mapping completed. Final video uploading. Some stats: Introduction 5mins Modules 28min Basic geometry 30min Basic Backyard 24min Interior details 64min Backyard details 12min Lighting 39min Monsterclip 67min Objectives&Readables 37min Sounds 13min Finalizing 34min Briefing & Packaging 10min Betatest Fixes with exterior extension 18min Total 381 minutes. That is 6.35 hours.

I just recently calibrated myself in the training mission gamma room. I think gamma was something 0.97 or so, but it depends on your monitor. You should just barely see what is in the shadows.

Nice texturing and lighting. I am a bit concerned about the triscount and the overlapping lights. Did you check with r_showprimitives? Biker might be able to some good optimization, though... ;)

Thanks for testing, OGDA and gnartsch! I think two test runs are enough for such a small map, so I'e ended the betatest. I'll do the "final fixing pass" -video and release the mission hopefully this week. Daughter has been ill, so delays are probable.

"It's free to download and play, and even though it isn't officially sanctioned, Electronic Arts so far seems content to let it slide. " http://www.pcgamer.com/battlefield-2142-revive-brings-back-eas-cult-classic-online-shooter/ So basically it could be stomped at any moment?

And here is the video: Part 12: Briefing & Packaging

The beta version is up. Anyone can download it, betatest and give comments here. I'll wait a few days and then fix the stuff that is to be fixed. If you want to play the bugfree final version, DO NOT download the beta version, but wait just a little longer for the final version. Play the beta version only if you want to participate in the betatesting. Get the beta here: Betatest has ended. What is betatesting? I've made the mission to as complete form as I can. Now it needs to be tested so that if there are some critical bugs, they can be fixed before the mission gets to the wider audience. At this stage, I am only interested in bugs: things that are broken and do not work. I will no longer redesign anything. I will just fix the obviously broken stuff you find and then the mission is finalized. The final video is being encoded now and will be uploaded later.

Just found this thread now. A typical problem for me when I choose ambient musics for my mission is that there are many songs to look at, they are rather slow to listen and to analyze. Thus I've simply familiarized myself with just a few songs that come with the core mod and stick to them. This is maybe a bit boring and I would like to expand my music pallette, but I cannot because I do not have the time to both map AND listen a lot of ambient musics and try to categorize them. Some people seem to like to listen them... could we use this somehow to assist mappers? Would it be a good idea to build a "FM location->song" kind of information repository? When people listen to ambients and find particular ambient from a certain site/package and feel it would fit a manor, church, or graveyard, they would then post their findings for the mappers to discover. The format could be like If mostly high quality songs would be added, that would give the mappers a nice shortcut, because they are guided towards the good stuff and they do not need to spend a lot of time to filter through the mediocrity. If the mapper is looking for an ambient fitting for they manor setting, they would have a nice set of recommended tracks at hand.

Oops, I didn't know about that. Good to know. Thanks!

Here it is! Part 11: Finishing Touches

Argh! Looks like the post-upload processing hanged at 98% and I had to start doing the entire uploading again. Sorry about it. This will take a while. Please check back tomorrow.

Thanks Neon, but please see post #51. New part is almost ready: Part 11: Finishing Touches (link removed, need to reupload...) The next part will be about packaging, and when that is done I'll release the map here for public/open betatesting.

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.