RJFerret

*nods, I went from, "uh oh, someone spotted me; hit reload before they even swing" to "uh oh, spotted; hit the flashbomb key and close my eyes" to "uh oh, about to be spotted, move away". I've also taken to doing missions without killing/conking anyone out, so even if I could hurt an AI, would be counterproductive to my fun! PS: Strategic positioning also helps, corners are okay to not get snuck up on, but if they find you, you can't run away with them blocking you! Now just like driving, you keep aware of your escape option to steer to in case something bad happens, I try to position to keep more boltholes available.

(Note auto parry doesn't mean your character automagically parries everything always, it means when you parry, it chooses the correct direction of the four possible incoming strikes.) LOL, great pic!

I'd responded to a previous thread about this agreeing, as the first guy in the training mission slaughtered me in two hits, I was unable to parry him set to auto, and he parried anything I tried (or simply struck when I went to swing, so I was dead before my blow could land). "...you need only to time from the enemy's backswing..." This is the key to parry. Hitting parry will not parry. It's counter-intuitive, but you need to NOT parry and wait. Once the opponent actually starts their swing, THEN hit the parry button. Perhaps it should be written, "...you need only to time after the enemy's backswing..."? You'll still die if you try to hit them, as they'll simply strike you while you're swinging so can't parry, but you might feel more survivable? ;-) There are several provided alternatives to trying to be a trained warrior, quicksave/quickload, flashbombs, arrows to kill them before they even know you are there, although I've found it more fun to sneak by everything, if you kill it all, it removes the challenge of sneaking around and ends too quickly. PS: Just noticed page six of the training mission mêlée book's text is cut off at the bottom.

So what might cause a texture to load on brushes and func_static in a map, but be missing on the SEED produced items of the same for someone else? (Ironically, the properly displaying brushes came from the SEED sources, which were copied with space, reverted to worldspawn, to be stretched/rotated/placed on the map.)

*nods, yups, I'm more accepting of my own limitations than others might be though, and have less shame. I also specifically started to get involved mapping before I'd played many more missions so I'd be able to share my personal ideas before getting too influenced by "this is how most others do things". :-) I tend to be an out of the box type, but fall into ruts later on, so want to stave off that ultimate parroting of what's come before as long as possible.

;-)

PM sent, thanks! Correct, it HAS been fun to work on, but work as well. And obviously takes time away from other things, like playing! ;-) It's a wonderful addiction, when I've spent to many hours creating, playing a mission is a good break. When I've completed that mission, what do we turn to since the software's already loaded up? ;-) But I've created a LOT of 3D content in my career, and earned good money doing it once upon a time. I also used to be involved hosting a 3D building game in Second Life, where it's ridiculously easy to create for your own pleasure. I really appreciate all the development that went in to providing TDM for all of us to enjoy, and my motivation is to give back as much as I can. I've already received hours of entertainment value, and I've only gone through some of the missions. So I'd like to provide some fun for others, and new stuff may encourage others to create too. Frankly, the quality of missions out there is rather impressive, and possibly intimidating for up and coming mappers. But we don't get new content, if we don't generate new content! ;-)

Um, it is in the best condition I can get it? It won't see any expected changes to this part. Like I said, I've reached a stopping point, and it's playable. So it's kind of beyond a technical beta test phase, as there's nothing more on my change list for this bit currently, no apparent bugs, and usable (in my environment). Either it checks out fun/OK for folks, and it's worth moving forward, or it doesn't work, and I bail. (Or nobody wants new missions, or enjoys my design style, and I've already wasted effort.) Now's the time to cut the bleeding if there's bleeding I don't know about. ;-) I obviously have no way of knowing if there's bleeding, because it all seems fine to me! Ironically, I've had fun playing it, despite being it's creator. However I wouldn't presume it's releasable, since it's my first creation. I'm wise enough to know I'm ignorant of many things, it's not what you don't know, it's what you have no idea you might even want to gain knowledge of, and creating missions is a very involved process. Even if I did presume it was releasable, I'd still want help/feedback to give insights. Such things are a team effort, and I can't get that input without asking for assistance. ;-)

I'd shared this a few days ago in the "what you're working on thread"... Now I've reached a stopping point. It's playable on easy, but before I add a ton more, it would really help to know if it performs okay on a system that might struggle with some maps. And would someone experienced at poking around newbie maps like to see if my new builder ignorance shines through, before I naively continue on and design more trouble? ;-)

What about both in one? Designing optional objectives/sections?

OK, so I've reached a stopping point. Half the mission is in place (and playable on easy), but before I do more, it would be helpful to know what I've missed in my beginner ignorance, and how it performs for someone on a lower end system. Would someone experienced at poking around newbie maps like to check it out? Might someone with a system that struggles, care to give me insights how it performs for them please?

Nevermind, I figured it out, the wiki was wrong. The correct spawnarg is "difficulty0Name" not "diff0default" like it said on the wiki page. PS: And for future searchers of how to disable the shop, since this will come up in a search but not the wiki page since it's listed as how not to do something, the spawnarg to apply to a worldspawn brush or patch: shop_skip 1

Thanks, that didn't come up via search for me previously, worked great, however... *points to my initial post, been there, done that, even copied the spawnarg directly from that page and posted the link to that, no effect. I'm even more baffled now, since the shop disable is applied in the exact same method, and worked fine.

How does one change the level labels? I tried diff0default, 1 and 2 on a worldspawn patch per http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Difficulty_Levels#Changing_the_Difficulty_Level_Names but nothing resulted. Secondly, is it possible to eliminate the shop and it's extra screen (IE, my map currently has one select the difficulty, then click "Buy Equipment" to reveal an empty shop with no equipment in order to click "Start Mission". Is there a way to just have Start Mission available on the same screen as the player chooses their level?

So I was trying to setup a loading screen via the Mission Title wiki page today, everything was going fine (graphic in, text positioned/colored) until I noticed my font selection hadn't applied properly. I had Andrew (and Andrew Script), Stone/Stone Print fail to show up. Camberic, Carleton, ChrisHand and obviously Medusa do. I specified the former as "Stone", "stone", "stone print", "stone_print", "Stone Print", "Stone_Print". (It's listed as Stone Print on the wiki, just stone in the fonts pk4.) Any insights?

Since I was just reading up on Readables/doing them last week I happen to remember from the wiki Readable Editor page... It would look odd if the body text didn't start at the top of pages that continue on from previous.

Thanks! Heh, most the light you can't see down at the far third, I just like this view. :-) More light, more AIs (you can't make out half a dozen horses and those down by the fire), more sound, more foreshadowing, more frills, more... You know how it is! Yes, story motivated the setting down the hill, basically we're at a trading stopover on a mountain pass, but recent rockfall has cut off the way down this side. Our thief overheard a local trader regretting having sold something to a merchant caravan for the amount he did, since they haven't gotten very far, we can recover said item for him. Of course we don't want suspicion pointing his way, so need to nab other stuff to cover up the main intent as well. Of course, that's only half the adventure. ;-) (I wanted to start fairly basic, to learn what pitfalls to avoid with more complex things for the future, and also measure my investment/enjoyment in the process, thankfully so far so good! Just don't put a domed lid chest up against a wall...)

It's still good 3D design wisdom. :-) I'm specifically exploring/poking at things to learn for the future, rather than what I'm currently working on. Not that it hasn't grown into a complete/it's own project, but I wanted to shake out the inherent mistakes I'd be making on this, rather than stumbling on what I really want to develop. Meanwhile, this has been a blast, and I've surmounted the issues I've run into, and know how to avoid them in the future. As an example of that fine wisdom in practice, one room that took my several hours to set up, subsequently let me do two more with much greater detail in the same amount of time the next day, as well as enhancing the first room some more, heh. Another key thing to learn in any digital design medium is when to stop creating. It's easy to get lost in the process. That helps with speed, do the broad strokes, then can refine, enhance, etc. But I made the same mistake, my experience with leakage was due to caulk, nothing to do with geometry.

Not to change the subject, but here's my bare beginnings (sorry, pun intended)... Hidden out of view from here, there's a nice warm campfire down there to, erm, avoid...

Could a summary of these monster clip responses be added to the wiki, with these great pics as examples please, so the info doesn't get lost, buried in this thread? (I'd request permission and do it myself, but is there anyone else who can grant wiki accounts, my PM from a week ago remains unanswered as of yet.)

Thanks again all, and yes, it was your article I mentioned about manually splitting patches. :-)

So it's been a couple days and I apparently patched myself into a corner. ;-) Little did I know you apparently can't use clipper or the subtract tool on patches (I'd add this to the respective wiki pages, but don't have access), I guess they aren't being converted to polygons in DR? (Yeah, that makes little sense.) However everything I turned up on the subject was from old forum threads, and the manual patch splitting article is from four years ago. (I'm surprised that functionality hasn't be added, it's the complement to the append function.) My planned workaround is to simply eliminate aspects of the map, but before I commit to that loss, thought I should check here in case I'm missing anything else/new, and there's some option to create holes in a patch? (I guess what I'm learning is although DR obviously deals with data, and outputs it in a uniform form for DM to use, it doesn't seem to permit the user to work on the unified data like most other editors, but maintains the initial separate constraints. Which obviously causes those rotational issues I had previously, and means other tools fail to even perform on different sources.)

Note, the natural followup to that will be, "Why can't we just click on an item in that list?" There have been only two missions that I had inventory issues with, both of which had excessive keys, most of which didn't seem to even be used. People don't seem to overdo it with inventoried readables since those have a higher barrier to creation. Perhaps a solution would be to simply make keys separate like weapons? They already have their own subsection in inventory, but perhaps exclude them from inventory and have a virtual key ring instead? The same shortcut would still work to cycle through keys, but they wouldn't clutter inventory just like the dozen weapons don't. This would negate requiring a new UI. PS: For those who want to access inventory via mouse, do you switch weaponry that way? If not, you can map the mouse wheel to cycle inventory instead.

Or ability to enter custom resolution in game. You can in a text file, I have mine set to 1600 by 834 for my laptop that way.

Curious, I haven't reached the other yet, but got Builder's Blocks a few days ago fine. But errors were mentioned with no indication of where/which files were affected. (I didn't download all missions at once, but in batches.)