RJFerret
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Posts posted by RJFerret
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It's a chicken and egg thing. Or, "if you build it, they will come". I would have included such assets in my released map where they fit if they already existed.
But without assets, I don't even think of such things. One can only work with the tools they have, the legos in the box as it were.
It's like making missions, no point creating a map if nobody is playing. But nobody can play a mission if there's no map to play. Got to create a map first. Similarly, nobody started designing a map saying, "hopefully someone will come along and create Egyptian assets for me someday". ;-)
That being said, of course it's optimal if you can create assets for your own or a currently being created map, so you get the satisfaction of knowing they are used within months instead of years down the road. But aside from the psychology, the net effect is the same benefit of available resources.
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Heh, at first I was curious how you didn't find the wiki article complete, as Sotha basically summarized what I remember is saying, before realizing you found an old orphaned article from 2010! I added a wikilink in that article to this very comprehensive one Performance: Essential Must-Knows.
Although that article is lengthy and very detailed, I wonder if the post above can be put in as an overview intro, as it's more natural language/less minutiae is helpful and emphasizes the priorities.
Although it doesn't point out how much impact AIs in view have.
A note on patch shadows, if your terrain is varied or rugged enough to self-shadow, then you obviously won't want to turn those shadows off, or your terrain will look unnaturally flat/wrong. Obviously the key objects of which to turn shadows off, are those that would be casting shadows into areas never seen.
The command: "r_showprimitives 1" will list a stream of info in the console. As Bikerdude said in another thread, "the draw call count you want below 1500", more can be handled to varying degrees on different systems, but that's the breaking point where FPS starts to drop. So I'd check that first, to efficiently optimize areas that might be lower/more impacting, and not spend time on areas that are acceptable already.
A sneaky thing I have done in my maps where there could be lots of potentially overlapping lights, is simply reduce their vertical radius so they don't all reach the ground. (An outdoor campfire with up to five lights, one even moving, had surprisingly good performance this way, only two reached the big ground patch, three didn't.) The command: "r_showlights 2" shows light volumes in game.
It really helps to design to start with, avoiding long sight lines with lots of details in camera view. You'll notice most good maps have zig-zagging or twisting routes. On my WIP, I created an alley opening toward a building that had dismal performance when in the alley facing out regardless of closed visportals. Simply moving that area to the other side of a neighboring building doubled the performance.
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Ironically, the question of maintaining XP support for Dark Radiant just came up. So if there are mappers on it, might want to poke that thread in the editors section.
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Didn't MS just announce earlier this week extending support for it? Negating nuisance would be nice though. That said, Win 7 here.
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I rarely suggest this, but were I you, I'd seek to change what I could on my system to replicate those who have more success running it. So far you seem to be a minority of one (although I'm quite familiar with the 90-9-1 rule, and there are likely others in your circumstance as well who haven't spoken up, compared to those with different experience from you who have). However parameters of compatibility are not determined by an individual finding less success than most users. There's no "on the fence". Others consistently report the same findings on specific missions. Your experience is different. That's okay. Such is the nature of life, it's not black and white. However your experience does not dictate others'. Hence multiple folks suggesting giving false information (won't work on XP) isn't an appropriate way to go (since it does work on XP, even for you in most cases, and your circumstance seems to be an outlier).
The purpose of compatibility guidelines and information provided on a wiki is to do just that, provide a guideline and information. It's not a guaranty. Removing information, or providing inaccurate information for most peoples circumstances, is not helpful to them. My condolences your perspective may differ.
However please recognize that your contribution does matter, and you are heard, and who knows, although MS has extended their support of XP recently, things might change with future development, and XP will fall off the list? Or greater accommodations may be made? Perhaps more future missions will be more demanding and we'll all remember your suggestion and be motivated to pull it then. However currently it seems all those actually playing with XP would wonder why their OS wasn't listed were it removed it seems. ;-)
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*nods, :-) hence, "recommended", but seems rather arbitrary and not correlating to how hard obtaining loot might be?
Also, now that I think about it, given the wide values of individual loot pieces, percentages of total makes even less sense, you could end up unknowingly trapping players into having to obtain the same high value pieces for all "difficulty" levels, regardless of difficulty.
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Oh and one last thing I just wanted to make sure I had correct. When doing an objective for collecting say 200 loot would it be setup as follows in the objective editor.
...
Is that right?
Yes, that matches both the prefab and A - Z Beginners Guide on the wiki.
And also add what the wiki says about recommended loot levels which last time I read was (of total loot) Easy: 40%. Hard: 55%. Expert: 70%
Wouldn't that depend entirely on how the designer placed loot on the map? I think of it as easy including the obvious loot, hard doesn't include what's not on the beaten path, expert includes the have to seek it out, hidden loot.
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please remove it
*blinks, that would be disingenuous, since it does run on XP. Under that logic, all OSes should be removed, since they'll all need enough RAM, despite 98% of missions running without issue. It might make sense to stipulate you'd want more than 512 MB RAM free though?
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My problem is though once you complete the 4 objectives that are visible that game just ends saying mission complete.
All objectives are ticked as mandatory.
You'll want to include an enabling objective to either an existing one or a new "wrapper" objective. See "Enabling Objectives" under http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Objectives_Editor#Editing_Objectives
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Here's another possible fluke... I selected a func_static and model. I (via shortcut key) hide everything but them. I reverted the func_static to worldspawn and made modifications. I then hit "i" to invert selection. Only the model selected, nothing else did. (It just so happens the model was on default layer, while everything else a different layer.)
I could manually shift-click to select them, or drag a box, but "invert selection" is acting like those brushes do not exist.
However I believe I did this exact routine previously without problems, but twice now this is the behavior. I wonder if I reverted to worldspawn prior to doing the hide everything but my selection previously?
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I don't know if this is unique to this version or me, but when selecting via layer, I can't deselect a func_static, while brushes will. Anyone else?
1. Have func_static and worldspawn brushes in a layer.
2. Click the layer button to select all those assigned objects in that layer.
3. Shift-click on a func_static and observe it not changing highlight (it remains selected).
4. Shift-click a brush to see that the worldspawn does properly deselect.
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In my install, there are no ".pk4"s in the main folder that don't start with "tdm_". So having a nhat2.pk4 in the main folder sounds odd.
I'd uninstall the current mission from within TDM and quit it.
I'd remove any file from the main folder that isn't a "tdm_"*".pk4", don't put them in a subfolder, but put them in a completely separate folder. I'd then remove everything from the FMs folder. When you run TDM, download the training mission only and play it. Should work as expected then.
After that, if you want to put the mission pk4s back, I'd put them in the fms folder, or alternatively never put them back and simply download them fresh from the in game downloader/installer.
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@RJ, can you do me a favout and do some screen shots of your issue so I can try and repro your issue.
How about a screencast video of me generally going through the aforementioned steps and seeing the results? This should be publicly accessible, but I believe you'll have to click the thumbnail to play it: https://picasaweb.go...feat=directlink
You can see the AI tab "live"/accessible with nothing selected, with worldspawn selected, then ghosted out with the AI selected, until deselected/reselected while the AI tab is forefront.
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Confirmed nothing apparently resulted from saving prefab, other prefabs do load in, console output before saving prefab:
Opening file F:/Program Files/darkmod/prefabs/deletemetest.pfb and auxiliary file F:/Program Files/darkmod/prefabs/deletemetest.darkradiant for writing...successAfter attempted import:
[uIManager] Successfully loaded C:/Program Files/DarkRadiant/ui/RenderPreview.gladeOpenGL window configuration: colour-buffer = 32bpp, depth-buffer = 32bpp
Open file F:/Program Files/darkmod/prefabs/deletemetest.pfb for determining the map format...success
Open file F:/Program Files/darkmod/prefabs/deletemetest.pfb for determining the map format...success
The contents of the file:
Version 2 // entity 0 { "classname" "worldspawn" }What was actually selected was a worldspawn brush and atdm:torch_gothic02_wall.
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I haven't done conversations, but you might be able to insert a path_turn before the path_corner to control direction of turn and prevent the 360° if that still occurs.
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It looked like this light entity from your posted pic.
I applied set light_radius on flame 50 50 50 after rotating it and moving it to the other wall.
def_attach light_torchflame_blue
I didn't move from player start.
I'm still suspicious that there's an extra light entity or something funky like that in there frustrating you.
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Gah, frustrating, I'd probably start fresh, remove any/all lights at that location, dmap to be sure it's all dark except for ambient, then add nothing other than your light to be sure there's only thing there.
Ninja'd by Moonbo. ;-) I'd go even simpler, I'd just spawn your torch, change it's def_attach to the "light_torchflame_blue" so there's no other complications/variables.
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There's an option for putting blue lighting in DR and ... It doesn't create blue ;lighting no matter what you do.
Erm...that's not the case, as I've done blue lighting via two completely different methods in the past ten minutes.
Both "light_torchflame_blue" works and separately "set _color on flame" "0 0 1" works (the latter requiring a blue flame in addition).
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Um, what def_attach are you using for the blue flame? "light_torchflame_blue" provides a blue light color on it's own, no need for set _color on flame at all, it just makes everything blue with no other effort! My guess is you have some other def attached instead?
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I was afraid adding another light entity might confuse matters. Do you still have multiple light entities in your map?
I just added "set _color on flame 0 0 1" to a wall lamp, the light emitted was blue, moved it, still blue.
My first guess from earlier posts is that when you added the blue entity, the original still flame color entity was being enlarged beyond the scope of the blue (human eye doesn't pick up blue well), and both are still there giving unpredictable results.
PS: My wall lamp has a rotation value, no impact from that.
PPS: I know the feeling of having done stuff before that you don't recall how to recreate (or have used a different process in the future version). There's SO many complex processes to recall/deal with when mapping. Hence films and commercial games having different people for different parts.
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From http://forums.thedar...post__p__248697
set _color on flame 0.9 0.8 0.7You'd want a lower first (red), middle (green) and higher last number (RGB). 0 0 1 would be full blue, 0.5 0.5 1 would be a lighter blue.
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...the engine treats the light as a volumetric data set which is evaluated against both facing and non-facing polygons.
Good to know, and will change some of my light placements and radius choices, thank you.
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I just looked at what Springheel mentioned and correlated to your original question.
As he alluded to, different windows.
The one with handrails is meant to be gotten to by jumping (again, remember to run and jump at the target mentioned, then you can easily jump over to the window).
There's a window by the larger unmovable crates which may be reached by stacking. See the object manipulation section first to achieve that. (The training is designed to be done in any order the user desires, but some things are helpful before others, it's been suggested before they be numbered.)
Technically I was able to get to the "jump to" window by carefully balancing crates on the aforementioned handrail, but that's tricky. Neither myself, nor my friend, in all the times I'd had problems making that jump, ever moved along that left wall to trigger the stack crates message.
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Prey-like portals
in Off-Topic
Posted
Have you played/experienced the "Illusionist's Tower" mission?