RJFerret

The others already have (sometimes excessive) wiki pages. But I've love even a basic stim/response tutorial (beyond damage/kill responses, pretty much the only ones I've managed to use successfully). http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Stim/Response seems to apply to an older method of implementation, without any explanation of usage. I haven't found anywhere that explains how any of the myriad other should be setup, or even what they apply to (like touch versus frob versus visual versus shield, and what the heck "player" might be as a stim or response, or when these might activate). It's also not clear when to use stim/response instead of triggers, or vice-versa. Speaking of triggers, although they are more self explanatory, it seems there's even less info for them. Whenever I search for trigger info, it ends up being forum results instead of wiki. But I've been able to implement triggers far more successfully and use them a lot. I don't know if that just means there's plenty of forum info, or they make more sense to me.

I've wanted that full alert in the past, but sadly I just tried lower absence_alert levels to hear what would result, and it doesn't seem to be functioning as described. :-( The AI went to full searching with "gone!?" or "who dares rob..." exclamations like you say. So I even tried 0.1 and same thing (this with an AI initial_alert set to 0). My impression now is absence_alert isn't working. Via binding an object to the lid, such that the origin of the testing object moves outside of it's bounds upon lid rotation. (Note, since chests are often put in dark areas, the area needs to be lit for AI to see.) However there I'd probably prefer the "that shouldn't be open" reactions from "shouldBeClosed", which is also simpler. PS: ShouldBeClosed has failed for me on dresser drawers (despite having removed all clipping). It's worked on chest lids happily though.

Sotha, thinking back to an early comment of yours, what setting is your "Object Details (LOD)" set to in video settings?

Wouldn't the vocalizations relate to the level of agitation? If you set them within "idle", you'd get nothing special. I don't know what vocalizations relate to observant and suspicious personally, although I'm sure I've heard them. The default (if their alert was zero to begin with) puts them into "searching", you'd have to make it higher to result in "agitated searching" exclamations. Um...err, sorry but...not do anything I'm afraid, it only fires if the drawer is open. (You can even define how far open with a couple different spawnargs, per that wiki link.)

Well, now we are getting out of your specified "easy". The "absence_alert" spawnarg let's you specify exactly how much you want their alertness raised: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Alert_%26_Suspicion_Triggers#Controlling_AI_Reactions_to_Missing_Objects Of consideration would be their prior alert state, what alert state you'd want them to result in, and whether you want their alert to build upon seeing the situation repeatedly. There's another spawnarg which dictates how frequently they should react, or only once. There's also another that let's you specify a random factor to their noticing or not. Note, in all circumstances there must be enough light for them to visually be able to see the drawer/whatever.

On my 1600x900 screen, it essentially takes half the browser display, the other half has one bit of content in it, your single line response (not counting the redundant quote). Even more technical, it's 245 pixels high. Compare to the avatars which are limited to 90, and not inline with content. Obviously it's subjective, but it's the same image as your avatar (obviously the latter cropped), so seems silly to me to display both. But, a simple solution? Right-click, block image, done. Don't even need the consideration of it being made a more reasonable size. However a bad ramification of forcing every user to do that, is they won't see other images from the same URL. Although those with capped or metered bandwidth who have to pay for it probably wouldn't mind. Also mobile browsers can be feature limited, not easily blocking images. Might you also change it to a jpeg? As png is useful for limited color graphics with solid color regions, but doesn't compress that style of imagery as much, you should be able to get it down to 10s of kb, instead of over an eighth of a megabyte.

That's more than one a month for us. *feels behind. Wait, I provided January's release, who is next? There's less than a week left! *cracks whip. Heck, beta testing took a month for my previous one (admittedly, bad time of year over the holidays). My current work is at least three times more involved and probably only two-thirds complete. That means at least another month before testing, then perhaps a couple months of testing, gah, May? That sounds depressingly far off. (Of course I'll be halfway through my next by then I suppose.)

You can alternatively use the absence_noticeability (sic) spawnarg, with appropriate radius if necessary. Vocalizations will be "we've got a thief" and the like rather than door related. (A "hmm, that's not right" doesn't seem suitable to someone riffling through your drawers.)

I like it. A strategy puzzle of infiltration essentially it sounds like to me. Obviously different game-play, but fun is a balance between challenge and reward, so becomes self leveling in this type of environment. Something like this also might have greater replay value, assuming multiple routes are truly viable. One thing that naturally occurs in many FMs, it gets easier as you progress, since you learn the layout, the safe spots, how to avoid risky spots, etc. This sounds viable to keep players on their toes. However it would be important to still design safe "rest" locations. I believe it'll also be important to have exit paths that are not overwhelmed. In other words, when a player is saturated with challenge, they can leave/complete it. Perhaps loot gained becomes the "score", instead of objectives completed. Presumably obtaining ALL the loot should be effectively impossible (which might frustrate completionists if they aren't expecting it). I also really like that there's not only a physical component to the plan, but a temporal one, when matters, which is often irrelevant in most FMs. There's never really a "I want to leave that until later, it's a bigger priority to X now" choice, and interesting game-play comes from hard choices. My current WIP has a strong temporal aspect, but it's story/setting, not so much gameplay. Presumably there'd be story motivation for the increasing security, aside from bank, a museum obtaining a valuable piece, a traveler securing a valuable for a time, a church (à la St. Lucia) having an event, a political item (election/referendum ballots?), or darker, evidence of blackmail, pagan/undead/builder ritual, etc. I like it (my nature is to plan ahead, so it appeals to me). Most FMs you play for 15 mins to an hour and are done, this sounds like you'd play it, get a feel, then perhaps want to play again to improve.

Why am I not surprised? ;p

Someone needs to do reverse alphabetical (says the guy with a mission in the Ws that has no video yet), heh.

The problem with video (says the former video editor), is as a medium, video is hard to reference. It doesn't go at your speed (yes there's pause, but usually the problem is it's slower than your brain/listening speed), it's not effectively searchable, it doesn't give you context, and makes it hard to reference multiple aspects of concepts (the very thing mapping tutorials need to convey). Video is good at expressing basic concepts where simple visuals support a linear dialog. You'll note Melan's mission creation walk-through thread features complex visuals with multiple text concepts explaining the process. You can view in minutes what took him hours. But, people learn differently, by reading (*raises hand), experimenting themselves, or observing another--which video obviously caters too best.

Funny, I was thinking an outline/flowchart in the wiki, linking to the appropriate wiki articles of steps for new mappers. IE, first would be the A-Z tutorial that is the de facto response currently. Included in that section would be story and world setting wiki articles. Next might be layout/visportal and I can't find Melan's excellant thread currently...ah, here it is http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/12568-fiasco-at-fauchard-street/ where he diagrams his making a mission step-by-step. The final bit would link to the packaging a mission page.

How hard would it be to highlight all the target lines drawn to other entities when an object is selected? What do others think, I believe for me it would speed up and error reduce my pathing while mapping. (I know Greebo has reworked the selection stuff recently, so this might be timely or just missed it, heh.)

Verdad, pero un poco Espanol... (*insert tilde over the appropriate "n") And...that's as far as I got. True, but a bit of Spanish would be useful in my walk of life. Not only interacting with my clients, but I have some bilingual relations. However once we got to different tenses, it all fell apart for me, and I'd more than satisfied my foreign language schooling requirement, so happily discontinued. I was doing well with Duolingo for a bit, but haven't kept it up. Now public speaking on the other hand, I'm one of the rare ones that doesn't mind it. Don't get me wrong, I'll happily leave it to others, but have found most crowds empathetic to the speaker, since they really don't want to be the one up there speaking themselves!

Welcome! I can't judge how good of a mapper I am (that's for the players, and they all have their own nits to pick, nevermind so many different factors), but I sometimes lack ideas to implement, so we might complement each other at some point. :-) PS: Language has noticeably evolved in my short life, although I tend to be technically correct, communication matters far more than accuracy of presentation I've learned. PPS: An author friend was amused when she shared a draft of her new book with an admiring teen friend who reported back typos and grammar issues--unknowingly judging intentional creative expression for that character, presented via such.

Show off! *hangs head feeling like an illiterate 'Merkin. ;-)

In my WIP, that's exactly what happened. (I did have to give the flee point a team however, or the civilians fled to the furthest AAS instead of passing near the guard, apparently because flee points are defined as "friendly" or not.)

It sounds like the first guard stopped a moment, thought to himself, "This dang priest runs screaming from rats every night", and carried on, considering purchasing a copy of Æsop's Fables with "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" for the priest. It makes sense to me they seek corroboration rather than mindlessly going to full alert. But they do go on alert if they'd encountered something suspicious previously. That grey area also minimizes gaming the system. If reactions are predetermined and predictable, players will manipulate them. The whole point is for it to be fun/challenging for gamers to game. ;-)

Sounds like your local DNS cache was out of wack and needed flushing, Windows: ipconfig /flushdns For more details or how to flush it in other OSes: https://www.whatsmydns.net/flush-dns.html (Multiple in house systems all having the same issue is likely, if their DNS source is the same. You'd have to have completely separate ISPs, and those providers would need completely separate upstream providers with good refreshed DNS data to compare. It's also an issue of timing, if the DNS there got corrupted, and you flush it before it's refreshed, you gain nothing. It's not until the data is good that you benefit. You also don't have to use your ISP's DNS servers, you can access others, which I do anyway for speed benefit.) If I find a site unexpectedly unavailable, I tend to see if it's available via my phone (completely separate ISP in a totally different region). if it's down, I wait, if it's not, flushdns and voilà.

I've been designing around avoiding AIs/ghosting, as blackjacking/killing simply removes the AI from game, no pathing, conversations, interactions, ramifications, etc. I've tried to not overlook other gameplay, by trying to have blackjacking challenging and figuring if players want it easy, they'll simply put an arrow in things. I wish to invest my building time efficiently and adapt to player desires. I know folks don't appreciate too many restrictions (like no killing/conking objectives) and I obviously want to accommodate as many different playstyles as possible within the story/scene/gameplay, but just want to get a current read (as compared to the previous forum threads/wiki articles I've read on the topic) of how folks say they play. So would you kindly vote? :-) Thanks!

Ditto. Give me a blank sheet of paper and instead of writing or doodling, I'll probably fold it into a paper airplane and toss it at ya'. ;-) But I can edit things. (Had a career as a video editor once upon a time, speaking of entertainment industry.) Making missions is so technical, you don't need as much creative spark like for drawing or writing. It's more like snapping Legos together into a dollhouse, then routing the people in it all sorts of random places. (With a whole bunch of technical details to pay attention to along the way.) *wants to play in an MC Escher level now, there was an MC Escher house built in Second Life that was fun to romp around in.

As someone who has nothing but modern architecture around, that has no bearing on fun gameplay. ;-) (Heck, my house is one of the older around, built in the 1920s.) And the best FMs are built of boxes. And some of the FMs with totally uninteresting architecture are most raved about. And many FMs of the supposed "supergods" mentioned above have visual flaws galore (mismatched textures, z-fighting, sky showing through, floating objects, objects that drop through floors, sounds coming from incorrect areas, lousy performance, etc.). The trick to any design isn't to execute a grand vision. It's to draw out the box. Then add other boxes. Then add some more details. Then plunk in some models. Now patch in some grime. Whoa, suddenly it appears lived in! Now add AIs. What would they do in the kitchen? Stir the pot? Look at the shelves? What would they do at a table with chairs? Play cards? What would they do on guard by a door? Patrol around looking in the dark corners? What would they do in an office? Sit at the desk? If I used where I live for inspiration, you'd get woods and water. Nothing like anything I've built. Why do we have windy streets in FMs? Because straight ones perform poorly. So lay out a zig-zag path. Voilà, suddenly you have designed what is in those pictures you find so juicy. ;-)

Know scripting? Apparently via scripting you can add, replace or remove items from player's inventory, see: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Inventory#Scriptsupport Presumably you'd use the location system to fire the scripts as people switch back and forth between your areas to swap out the items.

I suppose Native American tepees would suit? LOL