killhour
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Posts posted by killhour
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Just did another big update. The link above should still work. Enjoy!
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That's me, I'm a bit busy at the moment...but PM me with what you have in mind.
Awesome, will do.
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Who's doing the guard voice overs for the mod? I'd love to have a custom conversation in the map I'm making, if at all possible.
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Is it possible to do keyframe animation? I want to make a secret door slide and then turn.
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Here's an update with an AI and some more detail. It still has a long way to go before I'll be satisfied with it, but it's getting there.
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So far, this is really just me screwing around with the editor. The walls are too thick, and it's not particularly pretty, but I've learned a lot from making this. Next, I'm going to try adding some AI and loot.
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The "nice" thing about DromEd isn't the "subtractive" vs. "additive" building style. The real nifty thing is that DromEd had "real" boolean logic in building things.
Look at the following image:
Now try to build this with either subtractive or additive geometry and you will find it will be easy with additive:
* just make a solid 8 sides pyramid
* stack another, less high, solid 8 sided pyramid inside it
* add two (triangle-shaped) wedges laid out in a cross
And you have your church top.
Building this with subtractive geometry is...UGH.
But, now if you want to add the interiour to that tower, it is easy to "subtract" the airspace in the inner parts by just adding the same brushes in a slightly smaller version as "air".
If you wanted to build such a thin shell in additive geometry, you would end up with a lot of brushes. But since D3 leaves you no choice, building such a tower top is quite complicated. (or you need to use the clipper tool and end up with a lot of small brushes anyway)
The beauty of DromED is, you kept the original solid/air brushes that form your geometry in your map, so in total you had only 6 brushes (3 solid, 3 air) and the actual map geometry was calculated from that.
You can't do this in D3 since you only have solid brushes and need to careful construct the outer shell with them. Yes, you can build 1/4 and clone the others, but it is still a pain.
Indeed. Unreal Ed works the same way (Except with only solid and void - the materials were added with entities between portals). I loved that you could just rearrange the order of the operations too, in case you needed to, say, add a hallway without disturbing other solids.
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In my opinion it's best to think in additive terms, not subtractive ones. You don't need to carve things out of solids like you would if you had to rebuild the cave church of Petra.
For me that's the natural approach to things anyway, but then again I never was a DromEd or UnrealEd user.
I think in terms of "Make the outside of a building, carve out the inside", so subtractive just makes sense to me.
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Thanks. Growing up with DromEd and Unreal, I've been spoiled into thinking in terms of intersecting brushes, so the idea of only having solids is strange to me
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What you are experiencing is called "Gimbal lock". Because the engine uses Euler angles to determine the facing, it gets confused when you look straight up or down.
As far as I know, the only way to fix it would be to mod the engine to use Quaternions instead.
Edit: Unless you're talking about turning along the z axis, in which case, you shouldn't have any problems.
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I almost never see CSG Subtract mentioned in tutorials, and, in fact, I have read that some people never use it. Why is this? I find it incredibly useful, from doorways, to windows, to curved halls. Is there a reason I shouldn't use it, or do people just not like it?
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Don't spend a week or take 30 hours on it (unless you want to). Perhaps a room or two, a stairway, an entrance parlor, etc, a good demonstration of basic handling but not necessarily polish or finishing work.
OK, dark radiant is taking awhile to get used to (the controls spit in the face of every bsp engine I've ever used), but I should have something whipped up in a few days.
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If you can make something in Darkradiant and show us, that will open up the mapping oppurtunity.
How complex do you want it? Should it be just a few textured rooms, or a whole fleshed out mission?
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I was told to apply here to help with the mod. I don't have any work examples on me (I'm at school), but I can add anything you guys would like later. I started mapping with DromEd, and have experience in UEd 1.1 (UT), 1.5 (Deus Ex), and 2.x (UT 200x). Recently I have been mapping for the Cube2 engine (with experience in the origional), and would like to learn DarkRadiant.
I have additional experience in C++, ASM shaders, GLSL, and OpenGl.
Pretty much anything you guys need, I can contribute to. Any requests to see specific work?
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We're always happy to have more programmers helping out. Just contact New Horizon (who is reading this thread right now ) and he can help you go thru "the contributor application process." (I know that sounds painful, but when you have a largish team you need some sort of orderly process to get people set up.)
In the meantime, you can also check out the Doom3 SDK to see how it's generally set up. There is a lot there, the parts pertinent to ropes are probably idAFEntity_Base and idPhysics_AF classes. We added some functions to those in our codebase, but looking at the basics is still good.
Sounds good, what's the best way to reach him?
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Code-wise, the player is attached to the rope and follows where the rope goes, so you would nudge the part of the rope that the player is holding on to instead of the player. This can be done with a one-line physics function to add velocity to that setion. For the controls, you'd have to design a control scheme for this. How would you swing to get momentum, what button would you use that isn't otherwise being used while on a rope, maybe the attack button? Would you have to time your "kick" to the rope resonance yourself and keep hitting the attack button as you swing back and forth to build up the swing, or would it all be done automatically?
I did some experiments where you could hold on to the end of the rope, walk around and jump off a ledge to swing on it, but code-wise you have to go from "rope attached to player" to "player attached to rope" the moment the player goes in midair, but there were problems with the functions that are supposed to detect when you're in midair. It all seems do-able, we just don't have enough time to devote to a polished rope swinging simulation because we're working on other stuff more critical to stealth gameplay (like AI).
@killhour: If you want to sign up as a programming contributor and work on this task, I don't see any problem with that. Do you have experience with C++?
Indeed I do. I'm a second year computer science major, so it's pretty much required
I'd actually like to help more with mapping, but I'd be happy to work on this particular task (and any others I just "can't live without")
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Which part is hard? Overloading the directional controls, or imparting a physics nudge to the player?
I'd assume it would be overloading the directional controls, since it needs to be dependent on where you're looking (you still need to be able to climb up)
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The physics is all there, you can already jump on to ropes that are already swinging and swing along with them. The hardest part would be just programming the player controls to make the rope swing. As NH said though, we have many other high priority tasks that have to get done first. If you know any programmers with free time to do this task, feel free to send them our way.
hrm... What would be neat then, is if you held on to the end of the rope when you shot the arrow, and dropped it like a normal piece of junk inventory. If the arrow goes farther than the rope can extend, it flies out of your hands. I only have a few years of programming under my belt, but I think I could whip something like that up...
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Unfortunately swinging on ropes is not in the foreseeable future (but definitely possible in the long term!)
Alright, thanks for the quick reply on that. I'd assume it has to do with limitations of the physics engine or breaking in-progress maps? I have way too many ideas anyways. If I ever give a stupid one, feel free to slap me.
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DR is really nice, and easy to use. I'd recommend it highly. Its less buggy than UEd 2.5 and isn't a memory whore. Probably my favorite editor I've ever used.
God, I'd hope so, UEd 2.5 was buggy as hell
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I read this awhile ago. The biggest problem with this technique is that it doesn't take specularity into account. Fine for ancient ruins, but not great for that varnished crown molding you found in an old Victorian. I find that the best way to make a normal map is to simply import the texture into a modeling program, throw it on a plane, and use the sculpting tools to match it up. Most modeling programs have a way to export geometry to normal/depth maps. Or, if you're inexperienced, this works great for organic textures (assuming the shadows aren't too heavy): http://www.crazybump.com/
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I heard its really cheap on steam.
Let me see... 20 bucks. Not bad. Wish I wasn't a poor college student.
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Have you tried out Darkradiant?
Unfortunately, I can't find my copy of Doom 3 (I think I gave it away since it sucked so bad).
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When I found out about this mod, it seemed like the perfect way to live out my Thief fantasies. I'm a mapper that started out on DromEd. Needless to say, it was incredibly frustrating. Well, I've been having that itch again, and I start to have dreams when I get that. Last week, I had an idea for something I would LOVE to be able to do from a gameplay perspective: swing from rope arrows.
The scenario I had thought out as a proof of concept was a mansion roof at night. Raining hard, and our thief using the sound to cover his footsteps while casing a way in. About 60 ft away, on the second floor, is an open window, with a shadow cast on the billowing curtains. From the shape, it is clearly a guard. While contemplating how to get in the window without alerting the guard, something catches his eye: the thick beams used to hold up the roof stick out about 10 ft from the wall. Pulling out a rope arrow, our thief wraps the end around his wrist twice, and notches up. Down on the first floor, the guests are too drunk to hear the soft *thud* as the guard's unconscious body hits the Persian rug - an unfortunate victim of a taffer's boot to the back of the head.
Now, this scenario is complicated, but even just the ability to gain momentum while on a rope can give birth to a whole new set of tactics - just a piece of a master thief's ever growing tool kit.
Mapping, Programming, Texturing. You name it, I do it.
in I want to Help
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Thanks for checking it out. I'm kind of concerned about performance, since I really have no way of knowing if people are going to get bad performance on my maps (my computer is too powerful to notice any frame drops). I'm trying to map with visportals in mind, and I guess now is as good a time as any to add them.