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OrbWeaver

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Posts posted by OrbWeaver

  1. I don't know of any plans for a faction equivelant to the Keepers, but I suppose it would be possible for you to use our assets to create a level with Keepers in them. However, we cannot advocate doing such, as it is illegal to use TDM to make a Thief FM.

     

    It wouldn't be illegal to create an FM that just used the names, as long as you didn't try to cross-import any Thief series assets into the mission. Mere names are not substantial enough to be protected by copyright, they have to be trademarked which requires registration and a fee - something Eidos almost certainly haven't done with "Keeper" or "Garrett".

  2. Yeah, that's the simple "poor but happy" theory, which sounds great in a story but is mostly crap.

     

    It is true in some places - one of the things I often hear from people who have visited "poor" countries is how friendly and relaxed the people are, compared to western countries where they are stressed out trying to hold down their jobs and "get ahead".

     

    That happens usually if you let it happen. I'm in a similar position and my comanpy alos would like to pressure me in 60 hours or more, if I let them.

     

    Fortunately in the EU there is an absolute maximum of 48 hours per week set out by law, unless you "opt out". If anybody asked me to work 60 hours a week (or even an extra hour for free) I would just laugh in their face.

  3. It's got nothng to do wih luck, and it's an insult to suggest that it has.

     

    Of course it has. Even a professional musician has good days and bad days, and with a number of skilled musicians involved, having a bad day while your opponent has a good day could make the difference between winning or losing.

  4. IIRC, the powerup of Constantines sword was to slay zombies, not just knock them down. And you could use it to open beerbottles too.

     

    The only difference between Constantine's sword and the regular sword was that Constantine's did not have a visibility penalty when it was drawn.

     

    Much as I would have loved a zombie-killer, it had no extra killing powers whatsoever.

  5. There is a slight problem with this approach. Of course it is cool to have the job that you like. Fortunately I am in such a position, but interest changes over time. So I became a programmer which is also a hobby, but nowadays I wouldn't mind working on games or trying to be a modeller, but I would never find a job as a modeller for obvious reasons.

     

    Not only that, but

     

    1) You can't just walk out and change jobs because you don't really like what you are doing, if you have bills to pay and you don't know how easy it will be to find another job (which might end up being just as bad if not worse).

    2) Most people can't do the things they enjoy doing professionally, due to lack of demand or just lack of skill. I would enjoy doing level design all day but there aren't enough jobs that require this, too many people who want to do it and most of them are better than me.

    3) Many of the enjoyable things that CAN be done professionally either don't pay very much or are unstable and have no job security or guaranteed income (such as being a musician).

  6. If you were to actually spend that extra time enjoying life instead of going to the office and doing the same drudgework day after day, you'd easily find a reason to live another 40-50 years.

     

    If I were a multimillionaire I would do just that. Unfortunately most of us are not multimillionaires, and have to indulge in the aformentioned drudgework in order to feed and clothe ourselves.

  7. I never found looking at other people's maps to be particularly instructive, as it usually involves being faced with a totally incomprehensible mishmash of brushes and objects with no easy way of discovering how each part was built. I find it easier to work up from the basics by following a tutorial and experimenting.

     

    What I have found useful is using the r_showSurfaceInfo cvar while playtesting, which allows you to point at something an immediately see what model it is and what texture is applied. You can then look up the model in a 3D app if desired, examine the individual textures or whatever.

  8. Society should concentrate on improving the quality of the years we have, not trying to endlessly extend them.

     

    When you spend 5 days out of 7 in an office just to make enough money to stay alive, what the hell do you have to gain from a longer life?

  9. ok, have a look at the difference between my mansion trees and the new trees i made - thats what im talking about. All the mappers working on the city would have to be roughly equaly experienced and must know the same things, otherwise you get an 8 sided tree in one part of the city, and a nice highpoly one in another

     

    edit: oh i see what you mean now - the brushes. Yes well, everyone starts off at first by building everything out of brushes - its just a habit from dromed/unrealed/etc which means you get some pretty angular circles and that are also not roundshaded like patches. Basically, you need mappers with the same knowledge of d3ed working on it.

     

    That's not an issue with style, it's an issue with quality. It goes without saying that several mappers working on a project must all have a similar level of competence at mapping otherwise the end result will be very patchy.

  10. I think it's a better idea to be able to read it in shadow - otherwise you can't put books in the dark ;)

     

    I don't think you SHOULD be able to do this - I always found it ridiculous in Thief when you were in a completely dark room but could pick up and read a book just fine.

  11. So... I've finally found something that is better implemented in T3Ed. ;)

     

    It's certainly no worse in D3 than in T3Ed, it's just that rescaling in the 3D app is generally the better solution in any case.

     

    Nevertheless, there ARE things that are better in T3Ed, such as the entity browser/menu (which is absolute crap in DoomEdit and top of my priority list of enhancements for DarkRadiant).

  12. Another question: is there a way to change model size in Radiant (e.g. make the barrel two times bigger)? In T3Ed there was DrawScale property that allowed us to do it.

     

    I think somebody did manage to do this on D3World by using the rotation matrix to perform a scaling operation.

     

    I don't know how well it worked though, normally I would recommend getting the size correct during the modelling stage.

  13. I've just played it. The water looks good (from the outside). Yet it is very buggy if you swim (the sky is switching etc.). And the fps is really low. I hope it's not because of the water.

     

    The FPS is low, this is mainly due to the total lack of visportalling and the fact that the entire map is illuminated by a giant shadowcasting light.

     

    How was it done? Is water some kind of a brush? :)

     

    I believe the physics for the water is done via a volume brush, the surface is in fact two flat patches - one to do the reflection and one to do the distortion. This is no longer necessary now somebody (I think pbmax) wrote a combined shader that does both.

  14. Or am I missing something here?

     

    I believe that in TDS everything (including material exports) is done through the closed-source Max 5.1 plugin, meaning that for Max 5.1 users it is exceedingly easy, while for everyone else it is impossible.

     

    Moving to Doom 3 with its open formats may seem like a hassle if you are used to having everything done automatically, but the openness and flexibility is much more important. In particular there is nothing stopping someone from creating an all-integrated export plugin for their 3D app of choice.

  15. Did we find a weak point in Radiant (compared to T3Ed), or it's just that we don't know something? Can you point us to some good tutorial about making and importing advanced custom objects into Radiant? BTW, these tutorials did not help...

     

    Any new process will seem complicated when you are not used to it. Once you have imported a few dozen objects into D3 it will seem very easy and natural.

     

    Which tutorials you want depends on what 3D application you are using to create your objects.

  16. Hmm... I've just loaded Mars City Underground (quite small map). It has 2549 entities. So... if it is possible, you should up this entity limit.

     

    We don't actually know that it can be increased - although it is available in the code and could be adjusted, the long-term implications are not known, for instance the rendering code could break in some subtle way or performance could deteriorate due to the changed setting.

     

    2) Sometimes when I press F3 (render mode) while examining original map, my system freezes, and VPU Rcover error message appears. I need to restart my system then. I have Radeon 9800 Pro. What should I do?

     

    1. Turn off VPU recover.

    2. Make sure your drivers are the latest version.

    3. Consider using the Omega drivers for ATI, I use these and a number of crashes have now stopped happening (in particular the use of r_showTris in fullscreen mode used to crash the system, now it doesn't).

  17. I managed to get a 16384 x 8192 texture of mars into Doom3, including that sized normal. It loaded for ages but ran fine

     

    The loading time is probably because D3 creates compressed DDS version of textures while loading the level. You can save time by creating a pre-compressed DDS file externally.

  18. I'm a newbe if it comes to Radiant, therefore I might be wrong... but 4096 entities (lights, objects) seem not that much. Of course, I might be wrong. How many entities had these (rather small) Doom 3 maps?

     

    4096 is fine when you don't have to use static meshes for basic geometry and you can "inline" meshes so that they become part of the BSP. You are likely to hit performance or memory limitations long before the entity limit is reached.

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