Oktokolo
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Posts posted by Oktokolo
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I started playing at the time where it needed a Doom 3 installed to run. I do not know whether object rotation (and holding objects nearer or father from the player) is explained in the training mission (i really should replay it after all that years - it surely must have changed a lot).
But loading tips are a mission-specific thing if i remember correctly. So i doubt it beeing explained in the loading tips of a relevant amount of missions. And loading times are a really machine specific thing anyway. I regularly get my minutes of loading on my ole rig. But there certainly are people out there who only wait seconds for most missions to start.
All in all, it is not that big of a thing anyway. You do not need all that "secrets" to be able to knock or even ghost your way through most missions. It might be a good idea for mission authors relying on less common (outside of the thief series) game mechanics to mention that in the mission notes or briefing. Then the player knows what to search for in the wiki.
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Even after years of playing this game, i ashamedly learn new things i have never even noticed when playing it.
If you do not kill AI (just blackjacking or ghosting), no AI can react to any blood stains. AI also will not react to stains it can't see. It is easy to miss that part of the gameplay.
I played years without knowing how to rotate objects. Always wondered how others deal with all the clutter in the few missions that are actively designed to encourage the moving of objects. Then i stumbled upon some wiki article and felt enlightened...
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Do it like the guys from marketing department: Alt-tab to some other application whenever someone comes too close. They used office applications. In your case, a parent-approved game might be more suitable. Also always ensure a good view on all entry points to your location, so they can't sneak up on you when you are wearing headphones.
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And we know Reality TV is a clear and accurate picture of what life is really like.
Sadly, real life seems to more and more become a reality show. It gets harder and harder for the Onion to puplish anything that would not be believable in a conventional news paper...
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Using controller in FPS is just a skill. Unless you're a competitive/pro player, you'll do fine, e.g. in all single player games, regardless of difficulty level.
Mouse and keyboard are just more easy to use than a controller for FPS. Of course you can play them with a controller. You also could play them with an eye tracker or pedals and a steering wheel. It certainly needs more skill to do it that way.
I could use a screwdriver with nails or a hammer for screws. Depending on the materials and my skill it might even work. But it would certainly not be the right tool for the job.
The thing with keyboard is that is has tons of buttons that can be bound to functions or used to enter text. Most games could be designed so that they use just a minimum amount of buttons. But a lot of them can utilize quite a lot of them. That is the reason for controllers getting a lot more buttons since the arcade games era. Also you can enter text with a keyboard and text chat is the least bandwidth-hungry way of communication in multiplayer.
The mouse (and its reversed version - the trackball) is the most precise pointing device after the touch pen. You certainly can point with aan analog stick too. But it is harder to use that as precise as the mouse.
Keyboard and mouse are the more versatile, and for some genres more appropriate, tool. There are certainly genres that really profit from two analog sticks too (the Zelda example was rather arbitrary because certainly that would work even better with keyboard and mouse if they just had implemented proper support for them).
Where the controller really shines is when it comes to space requirements. Keyboard and mouse need space on a table (or possibly laps when using a trackball) - a controller does not. That might be the real reason why consoles are still used with controllers only. Consoles are often placed in the living room where the tables are too low for comfortably using a keyboard and mouse. The PC traditionally sits on or below a table - so there is plenty of space to place a keyboard and mouse (and other input devices).
P.S.: I would love to see eye tracking support becomming mainstream in PC gaming - in combination with VR and a threadmill.
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You can build as high as you want. Structural integrity only covers the parts that do not form a pillar from bedrock right now. It depends on the materials used how far a floor may spread before needing supports.
Get building materials quicker by undermining high buildings (debris is way faster to mine than intact walls and floors).
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Yeah, I'm not 15 anymore, and I spend most of my working time in front of a screen. So yeah, spending even more time in front of a monitor is tiresome, and rapid mouse movement adds to that.
VR will fix that. You can wear the screen instead of sitting in front of it
All those improvements I mentioned are UX/UI things, so something impacting players in much more visible manner. And it began roughly with X360/PS3 era.
UX/UI-wise i am strongly against quicktime events, consolified fighting (had to drop the Witcher 3 because of that), and bad UI design like vanilla Skyrim's menus (thankfully mods fixed that).
Steam is okay as long as they do not get a monopoly (i prefer GoG and game homepages).
Installing a PC game was hard for some in the DOS era. Since they got simple installers even my old mom would have been able to do that. For some, the cloud is really good for backups though. They would not care to backup their (obviously) worthless data otherwise...
Unified CPU architecture came with XOne/PS4, and players won't care about such things much, as long as games look good and have stable framerates.
Players did rant against consoles because they limited indirectly what games looked like on PC too. Tech specs did matter a lot. Well they do not anymore because consoles are just specialized PCs without the legacy stuff now.
And mods on consoles are a thing now. Guess why they where not before.
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I really don't get this "cuz of consoles I can't play stunning looking games on my new crazy rig" discussion.
There was a time where consoles had extremely limited specs in comparison to the average gaming PC. Games that had to run smoothly on consoles had to have rather small levels, simple geometry, small textures and extremely limited world state. That years preceeding the PS4 are where "cuz of consoles I can't play stunning looking games on my new crazy rig" came from. It was true back then and especially RPGs suffered badly.
That time is over now. The quote is not true anymore. Current consoles can handle an uncut Fallout 4 or Skyrim quite well. PC gamers can still get bigger textures, higher frame rates or more detailed geometry if they are willing to spend more on their rig. But even my gaming PC from more than ten years ago can handle current titles quite well regardijg CPU and RAM. I replaced the HDD with an SSD to get better load times and the GPU (twice) to get playable frame rates in newer games.
Controllers are more comfortable to use for longer time, and the camera movement isn't so jerky with analog controls, so I can easily play for 2-3 hours straight without eye fartigue.
Only 3 hours? I had sessions 24 hours long and 12 hours are still okay if i find the time. I do not own a console. But if i had one, i would attach keyboard and mouse to it. I would certainly not be able to have fun with the Darkmod or Starcraft with a console-style controller. Of course it is also a matter of taste and whether games are optimized for a limited number of keys or less-precise pointing devices. But RTS and first person 3D games seem to be a natural keyboard and mouse territory (at least without VR goggles).
All of this is a result of unification of standards that came from the console world.
When it comes to unification of standards i would point out the CPU architecture of all big current consoles: AMD x64. We got the unification because everybody stopped to do their own thing. AMD united them.
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Not really. Compare it to the 90s and early 2000s, where people were able to make multiple maps on their own. That still applies to e.g. Thief community, where people can still release something like a 12-mission campaign. In modern titles, even with fully-fledged editor or SDK, you rarely see a custom level, map or a new quest. All you get for Fallouts and Elder Scrolls is gameplay tweaks, better textures, character models and such.
At least for Skyrim, there are not only some quest mods, but also quite a few new lands listed on the nexus. Yes, there are tons of trivial mods. But there also are the complete and partial overhauls, new worlds, new quests and patch sets. Regardless of the engine used, it would be much harder to make something as large as Enderal without a proper world editor.
You are right, it got harder to release a state-of-the-art level for modern games (assuming tools of the same quality). But that can solely be attributed to the improved visual quality of in-game geometry. It is easier to model the blockyness of the Metal Age than to do a proper Darkmod map (although, modules might have reduced the amount of work a bit). And as a result there are fewer Darkmod maps than there are Metal Age maps. The real question is, whether the improved visual quality is worth the loss in quantity.
I am somewhat starving for new maps to play right now. I could play (literally) hundreds of maps that have been made since i last played the older thief titles. But i played the Darkmod since then and so i wander the forums and try to learn mapping until the next Darkmod map catches my attention for some hours...
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Of course, modern single player games will continue to work after the servers shut down - that is what cracks are for.
And yes, consoles really affected PC gaming very badly. But i think, today's shallow games are not shallow because of consoles' technical limitations anymore (current consoles got enough RAM and CPU power to support big maps and lots of world state). They are just targetting an enourmous and more casual audience.
Do not even spend the five bucks for a second hand copy of that casual AAA-stuff. It will just waste your time. Search for the real thing until you find it.
I think, i might try to play the new Thief again - hope they got the crash bugs patched by now. I hate cutscenes but like AAA graphics and the Dishonored style.
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7 Days to Die indead is a great crafting-oriented voxel game with surprisingly good graphics. It definitly is worth the time needed to learn to play it.
And it is has a somewhat softer perma-death as you are allowed to dies some tuimes in a row as you have enough vitality. You can craft a bed roll and place it somewhere to mark your respawn point. You only loose the carried items and some vitality on death (can be configured). So you do not have to start from scratch when dying.
And beware: Structural integrity of buildings is a thing in 7DtD.
Another great game of a completely different genre is Factorio...
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Also, games got much more complex, and golden days of big PC-oriented modding communities are gone. It's not like there'd be 10 animation programmers who would magically step in and volunteer to fix facial animations.
Where there is proper support from the developer, modding prospers. I think, we live in the golden age of game modding today. Look at Bethesda's recent titles to see what i mean. The communities there are enourmous - they even are if you only see half of them because you are only looking on either the Nexus or Steam Workshop.
The tools, the devs use are far more sophisticated and complete today, than what they had to use in the past. That tools are used to make the original game and its official addons. They are already made and polished when the game ships. So they could be made available to the modder communities easily. Bethesda seems to do just that. And they get longer product life and customers' loyality in return.
No, the golden days of PC-oriented modding communities are not gone. They only began some years ago. And they novadays are not PC-exclusive anymore because consoles got more RAM and therefore the mod-worthy games are now available on consoles too...
Also see the Darkmod right here for the benefits of modern engines available for independent and even free game development. The complexity of modern engines serves a purpose. It allows for the creation of virtual spaces that look and act more like what the mapper intended them to look and act like.
It seems we can agree on that in the last decade, on average, games became less appealing to us males.
Nope. Today a much greater part of the male population plays computer games than 10 years ago. So obviously games have become more appealing to males.
Also, as we live in a capitalism-oriented market-driven economy, it would be surprising to see developers collectively ignore a market as big as 50% of the population interested in games. That probably is the cause for why there are more games in general and why a huge amount of them could be described as targeting an audience preferring a somewhat shallow learning curve and more accessible (some even dare to say "casual") game play.
A greater part of the population has access to devices capable of universal processing. But of course they did not magically all convert to hardcore gamers. They are the same people as before they started carrying around a computer in their pocket all the time. So what would you expect to happen when a new audience consisting of men and women that just want to kill some time between work and sleep emerges? A greater part of modern games targets people that would just watch TV without that games. Wasting effort on a deep plot and intricate game mechanics would even reduce the profit because of minimizing the target audience.
But fear not. There is a (small) market for more complex games and it gets served too. Creating a mass-aufience AAA-title costs millions. Not every studio can aquire so much mony to spend. They do less graphics and create still good looking games for the less mainstream audiences. You always will get the games that match your taste... If you are willing to search for them. They are not gone - just burried under the big pile of TV show replacements.
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A typical case is brushing wooden boards. Their sides are often relatively long and narrow. Naturally such side faces get split into two very spiky triangles.
Last time i saw holes in my geometry, i had brushed a crystal in a holder to be used as a light source. Only two materials but lots of tiny faces.
I solved missing tris by exporting as ASE as that seemed to fix it.
But now that i know the reasoning behind the hole punching i will split geometry into sections (even when not needing more vertices for sculpting) to prevent the spiky triangles. I probably should get more experience with patches too.
Is there an easy way to convert faces of brushwork to patches?
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If the wiki supports file uploads, it might be the ideal place for storing and cataloging community-made assets.
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Yes, an SDK would really help in that. Gothic had the same problem (but the community actually did fix some bugs without an SDK).
It is so sad, that game developers often would rather see their work die a horrible death than enable the community to fix it. It almost feels like they just decided "Nah, we do not want it to get better. It would just lead to increased profits from the next title and then we would have to think about what to do with all that extra money..."
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Well, i am good at spotting missing triangles. But regardless i still would prefer a deterministic way of getting repeatable results from the dmap process and engine.
Is there a way to make dmap color drop candidates purple so i can see them better?
Maybe i should use modules more. I could build them in purple rooms so i instantly see every hole. But would they get new holes when placed rotated in another part of the map?
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I think, he just touched the key drop trigger while fleeing. Harming the steward (by hitting him with arrows, the sword, boxes,...) is the foolproof way to break the current scripting.No, I did it "legitimately" in the sense I used no cheats. I woke up the steward and then shot him with arrows (which made him flee) and then he dropped the key when he was leaving the room. I did the diary stuff AFTER Crowley was killed because it was a required objective. I didn't even know of the secret room until that final dialogue with the Steward after he killed Crowley.
@NeonsStyle:
I would recommend one or more of the following ways to mitigate the issue:
- Disable all steward-activated triggers at map start and enable them after the diary-drop.
- Disable the steward's AI's processing at map start and enable it after the diary-drop. I am working on a method to do that since some days and might get it working soon (or not - depends on the solvability of the a stimulus problem).
- Make the steward instantly die on any received damage and KO-able. Provide an alternative plot solution. Maybe the player could free that girl himself (that was what i tried first anyway). The player may also kill the molester or let the nearby city's mob solve that problem after the freed child testified...
The last one adds a bit of non-linearity and therefore is the preferred way to go
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So it is about rounding errors. Are we speaking about IEEE 754 standard precision (24 sitgnificant bits, 8 exponent) floats here?
24 significant bits look like they should provide a lot of error margin.
But i am not that interested in the math anyway. Just want to make sure that the engine shows it like i built it (and i am fine with the engine or math having limits as long as i can work around them somewhat easily).
Your maps look fine. So for what factors (highest / lowest value) are you going when creating detailed patches or brushwork?
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Thanks for the explanation. That also explains the lots of smaller triangles (instead of less big ones) in a lot of the assets that are included in the game.In addition, I don't think the removal is based upon the size of a triangle, but on its condition instead. The condition of a triangle is the ratio of the radii of the inner and the outer circulum. Triangles with high conditions will introduce heavy rounding errors, which can result in graphic glitches etc..., thus they should normally be avoided. If you have such triangles, for example on a heavely bend high patch, it might help to split them up, or in case of patches simple use several patches instead of one.
The only other sources on the internet i found for "well defined triangles" are for sureyors and suggest a minimal angle of 30°.
Do you know about further readings of that topic especially when it comes to the id Tech 4 engine?
What are safe numbers for angles so that my surfaces get not eaten by a regular dmap?
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Regarding that switchable player_clip: It works when the brushwork that is covered with the material is made into a model (i used the ASE export). You can use common/player_clip for a barrier that only affects the player or common/collision for a barrier affecting all the things (including thrown objects) except a single AI that is set as owner of the model. Should also work with common/monster_clip (could be used for simulating the classic circle of protection holding back a horde of undead or a demon).
My test map contains the player_clip version. Replacing "player_clip" with "collision" in barrier_collision.ase and uncommenting line 90 in the script changes it to the collision version.
The relevant code is $barrier_collision_mesh.hide(); for disabling the barrier (that is what you need) and $barrier_collision_mesh.show(); for enabling it (not needed in your case). You have only one AI that needs to enter the forbidden area. So i recommend using common/collision on the barrier brush before exporting as ASE. Set the owner of the barrier with $barrier_collision_mesh.setOwner($steward); before he might try to pass it (do it in map script's main function or another already present script that gets called before the steward needs to pass).
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Is there a way to disable the engines' small triangle optimization that makes some (not all) somewhat spiky triangles of brushes, funcstatics and patches disappear?
It gets tedious to work around that by continously exporting and reimporting everything as ASE models. I would be fine with having to explicitly chalk each and every surface that should be ditched if it would stop the engine from punching holes into my geometry.
That must have annoyed mappers before...
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No wonder, Andromeda has not been finished in time (it could still get finished however - if they would want to).
It is a new team. That equals throwing all the experience of the three predecessors aboard and starting from scratch.
They basicly tried to implement No Man's Sky but with lots of deep plot and story on top. They did not know that No Man's Sky would fail (it wasn't announced back then). Mixing procedurally generated worlds with handcrafted assets and plot is possible. Everything generated scales pretty well - everything handcrafted doesn't. They initially did go for a hundred worlds! No way could they have believed to get this done without adding enourmous amounts of artists to their teams. The world might get created and filled with props by a script. But someone still has to add life to it and mke it all be a part of the overall plot and story (scripts seem to suck at animation and lip syncing too).
They where on a wishfull schedule and did not had the guts to delay the next phase when it had become clear that predev would not finish in time. They had a really ambitious goal and they knew it. IT projects almost never finish in time. Years of overtime are the standard for big projects like that.
As a side note: I played Gothic 3. It had similiar problems (massive explosion of world size and extreme underestimation of resulting work increase). They patched it. Community patched it. Was still pretty buggy. But it also was a pretty satisfying experience while playing it - multiple times. So it might still be fixable. Maybe Andromeda will get enjoyable after the community modded the hell out of it...
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The AI is not the only problem when it comes to potentially emotionally touching game elements.
Just look at the comments about NeonsStyle's last mission. And what about horror - there is some (at least for some players) in a few of the missions. Or desecration of holy places (think about all the churches we can relieve of their material burdens in some missions or all the graves and crypts to be explored). Or the often pretty dark and cynical stories that are implicitly and explicitly told in a lot of missions. We also got plenty of spiders, undead and ghosts too. Don't remember if we also got sex in any of the missions (there are at least readables about it if i remember correctly)...
The swearing and blood stains might be the things to stumble upon first. But there is a hell of a lot more stuff in this game's missions that might scare or unsettle the unstable mind. And some of it might come unexpected in missions that look pretty harmless at first (most Darkmod mission authors seem to love unexpected plot twists).
The Darkmod and its missions have mostly been built with a dark steampunk fantasy world in mind. That world contains an awfull lot of horrible crime, violence, occult and religious fanatics and politics. That content is there on purpose. Most missions appeal to the dark side of the player and/or use strong emotional storry telling to get the player involved.
The solution to the thread starter's problem is probably not a technical one. The Darkmod might just be the wrong game for him (or his parents).
I would go so far as to say: If you are not allowed to play The Witcher, Fallout and Skyrim, you are probably also not allowed to play The Darkmod. If you are allowed to play that three, then The Darkmod should be fine too.
P.S.: Despite the previous, i am on the side of having a swear-free vocal set (that might just be the standard vocal set with swearing-containing sentences removed). It might come in handy for well-behaved versions of guards, workers, cultists. Guards might also refrain from swearing while standing right next to the mistress...
I'm working on a VR version - early alpha
in The Dark Mod
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So we could get soft shadows and tesselation and parallax occlusion mapping that make our wall corners look like they are made from seperate hand-modelled bricks?