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Nico A.

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Posts posted by Nico A.

  1. Isn't there already a seperate exe to check if TDM is up-to-date? Maybe all mission loading could be moved to that app, like keeping TDM missions up-to-date too!

    I think that would make the app too overloaded. Better to enable bulk downloading at the website, if that is possible.

     

    What do you think about this suggestion for a new "new mission" functionality?

     

    post-21200-0-89513700-1440599904_thumb.png

    • Like 1
  2. A difficulty rating seems like it would be a lot more difficult to gauge than quality if you ask me. It is affected not only by the players personal skill level, but also the difficulty options they choose prior to playing the mission.

    This might be true. What would be needed is a more sophisticated measurement (I know more about that than about programming, I'm studying social sciences), that takes into account which difficulty level the player chose and somehow functions as a weight; also, a rating for a mission should only be visible if more than one person rated multiple missions, and these are the same persons. Not impossible to achieve, but a bit cumbersome.

    I still think quality ratings tell you more about the person who rated than difficulty ratings.

     

    I'm not in favor of a 'rating' value, since it's very subjective and will be incomplete across all missions.

    Principially I agree. For this and for other complications, ratings should be left out.

  3. Wow, this looks so much better.

     

    In your layout you put a "rating" header. As I said I think it would be much better to have a difficulty rating rather than a general rating, both for map makers (newbies get discouraged, even when they see "no rating") and for the players (I play all the top rated missions first and then I just stop because it's "not so good anymore"). Also I think rating difficulty is closer to objectiveness than rating goodness. The problem would be when the players should rate the missions (preferably after they completed a mission), but that sounds difficult to implement and could be a problem for later.

     

     

    I can make some filtering functions. Also I just came up with the idea to have an external mission downloader so that if you want to do stuff outside the game and you want to download in bulk you can do that.

     

    Yes yes yes! As VanishedOne pointed out, bulk downloading of missions may be preferable, but why must this be ingame? If there is no "chosen maps for download" panel, that would leave more room for mission details (the one you clicked on). Later today I'd like to try some slight rearrangement after my imagination.

    For the bulk downloading: could such an option not be made available directly at the website? Just thinking...

     

     

    With the seperate list and only a handful entries, this list needs to be made scrollable, which is a lot more work (than not having a second list :)

     

    I'd say scrollable lists are a must-have, but if it's really that complicated to implement, I'd better be quiet :ph34r:

  4. I have a question: What is the point to download more than one mission? In my opinion, this makes the mission menu overloaded and for newbies, as I was one not long ago, potentially confusing. Here's why I think so.

     

    When I go to the mission menu, I want to search for a new mission to play. Normally I don't want to download a bunch of missions for later; I want to play one of them right now - the one I'm going to download. It even happens to me sometimes that I wonder why I can't download a mission I selected - then I realize I first have to "select for download". Terribly confusing, in my opinion.

     

    My suggestion and question if that might be possible: download, installation, relaunch of TDM and launching of the "new mission" menu all in one go and automatically. If we can agree that the point of downloading missions is to play the downloaded mission instantly, then this would make the most sense imo.

     

    Also I'd suggest a difficulty rating of the missions rather than a general rating (might be discouraging for map makers). Of course this comes with its own problems, but when I download a mission, I want to proceed from easy to hard rather than from best to "not so good anymore".

     

    @Wallace: That's what I thought also: separate the missions into single missions and campaigns. Makes chosing a mission to play easier.

     

    I tried messing around with the GUI a little bit to change everything to my liking. As I have absolutely no knowledge on programming this kind of stuff, I didn't come far. That would have taken me many months (at least). But as you guys want to work on that maybe I should stop trying things out on my own anyway. When there's some raw work a newbie can do, I'm glad to help.

  5. Fuck it, make a spaceship mission!

     

     

    Actually I think that would make for a really interesting plot. Maybe not even a spaceship from aliens; what if, with all the technological knowledge of TDM's time, someone greedy tries to launch a huge thing into space and our thief has to stop the whole city from exploding, because technology's not ready? With all the metal floors of the spaceship this would also be a rather complicated mission.

     

    Someone please use this theme as the final mission in a campaign. ^_^

  6. How can I rotate the origin from a brush? For example, when I create a door entity and rotate it along x 20°, then the origin is also rotated likewise. But when I create a door from a brush and rotate it 20°, the origin is not rotated. I want to fix this. But when I select the origin vertex and rotate it from there, it just changes its position and doesn't rotate.

    post-21200-0-76303800-1439031123.jpg

    post-21200-0-32020400-1439031130.jpg

  7. Okay, I'm just phantasizing out loud here, I don't think these are easy things to do. Just some wishful thinking from my side.

     

    1) Add a little green "run" button in the menu. When hit, it launches TDM in window mode and automatically testmaps the current map. Just for convenience reasons.

    2) Create an "Easy start" option when creating a new map, that asks how many instances of each item the player should be equipped with at the start, what the ambient light should be. Stuff like that.

    3) Add an option for subtractive level editing. Okay, this is really impossible I guess... :(

  8. Ah! I tried that and somehow it works. I guess I need to refresh my knowledge on image basics. That is, when I mark the option "generate mipmaps", then the image appears as it should in the game. However, when I change the image to grayscale, then the same problem appears again. But it's only with grayscaling. I'll look into that tomorrow.

     

    Thanks a lot! :)

     

    edit: even that works now. I needed a gray-conversion-option that didn't delete my color channels (and found it in color-->desaturate).

  9. How do you edit the main menu DDS files? When I open them in GIMP and save as the same file (and even when I'm not changing anything), then upon launching TDM, this picture is not there anymore. Instead where it should have been everything is white. However, when I open the same picture file in GIMP again, it looks perfectly the same.

     

    For example: I opened

     

     

    darkmod\tdm_gui01.pk4\dds\guis\assets\mainmenu\background_empty.dds

     

     

    in GIMP, just clicked "overwrite background_empty", then let the zip archive refresh, and launched TDM.

    It looked like this (see attached file, I'm not really sure which image extension I'm allowed to use here... :ph34r: ):

     

    Can someone please help me how to edit the pictures? I really want to mess around with the menu!

    post-21200-0-70304900-1437314194_thumb.jpg

  10. Sorry to interrupt, I too have a question: I was playing around the .pk4 files in the darkmod directory, unzipping them to elsewhere, and deleting the old .pk4. But when I rename the .zip to .pk4 - I did this with the tdm_gui01.pk4 - the game won't start normally (even though I don't make any changes!), but show a black screen saying

     

     

     

    Invalid GUI: guis/mainmenu.gui

     

    Does anyone know where that comes from? What do I have to consider when making changes to the .pk4 files?

  11. Perfect! As someone who is still trying to learn and don't expect to get his first map done until the end of the year or so, I'm digging myself into this. Way overdue that someone does something like this!

    I only watched 3 minutes so far, but I already love it.

     

    Btw, you are from saxony, aren't you? That's where I come from.

  12. May I abuse this thread to ask an ignorant question: Is it (easily) possible with The Dark Mod to put missions together like a campaign? I mean, in a way that you don't have to download each new next mission in the series after completing one (which also in a way allows you to play a later mission before finishing a prior one), and, more importantly, that lets you buy equipment for the next mission in the value of the loot you found in the former.

     

    Not that it's of any practical importance for me for the next several quarters, but I'm just curious...

  13. I really enjoyed playing this mission. Pretty scary at the end, I like this :)

     

    I especially enjoyed the storyline. A little thing that still adds to the immersiveness imo is the fact that not at every place that would make up a good hiding place there is something valuable hidden. To me, it seemed rather rare to find some gold in the suspicious places (except among the wine bottles). I really liked this, it makes the mission more realistic. :)

     

    Also, some of the nicest rooms I saw here. Some were even so nice I could imagine living there. :P

     

    All in all, well done from me ;)

    • Like 1
  14. Okay, I really want to leave my impressions here. All in all I loved this (rather small) mission and can't wait for the other ones in the series. :) It felt a bit like TDP, but it only looked nicer <3

     

    + I loved the voice acting. It felt really professional.

    + I usually don't like weather effects in TDM, but the rain was very well done.

    + The introduction to the mission was really good (the fence). Also, I liked how the mission built up from the dark sewers to the noble mansion.

    + The difficulty and the length of the mission was really good for a tutorial/beginning mission. For this, the balance between linearity and complexity was about perfect.

    + I found the textures brilliant.

     

    Some negative things I want to add:

     

    - Only 4 missions in this campaign? :wacko: I'd love to see at least twice as much! Is there any possibility to extend the storyline, maybe adding an unexpected twist? Because I think this is the best campaign's first mission so far. :)

    - The trailer was atmospherically the best introduction to a TDM mission I've seen so far. So why isn't it included in the actual mission?! I love the voice acting and the images! Please include it!

    - The font of the loading screen should probably have a bit higher resolution.

    - Some things were unexpectedly not frobable imo. For example, the carrots were, but the apples not... also, I'd like if all doors which look the same are frobable, even if you can't open them...

    - another entrance into the building would have been great, but that's not so bad for a first mission imo.

     

    Keep up the good work!

    • Like 1
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