Aosys

Something like this?

Just found this (totally spoopy) video on lighting: Admittedly the focus is on cinematography and not game design, but the stuff on contrast and silhouetting could be useful

@Obsttorte Massive thanks for taking the time to do this!

@Obsttorte I know the script uses 1-cos(θ), but I thought that was done for you, so a user's DR inputs would be between -1 and 1? eps = getFloatKey("tolerance"); if (!eps) { eps = 0.1; } eps = 1.0 - eps; Regarding the script, I have a turning statue script by VanishedOne and grayman that looks like this: Normally, you just take that script, drag it into the same folder as the mission it's used in, and it works. In this case, it runs all the time and causes an object named Statue to always rotate and face the player on the x and y axis. I would like this behavior to trigger only when the player isn't looking at it, so when the player's view angle is outside maybe 90 or 95°. I thought that by putting a do-while conditional loop where the trigger_look script normally activates a target, I could continually get it to check the truth of the conditional, but something's clearly off with my implementation and I'm not sure what. (I'd also like it to work on whatever object it's applied to, not just something named "Statue", so the final scriptobject could be applied to multiple elements in any given map). @Springheel Ok, I think I've finally got it figured out. Script tolerance uses 1-cos(θ) = eps, θ being the angle (in degrees) and eps being the tolerance. To solve for the final tolerance the script uses is easy, just plug your angle in and calculate it. So, an angle of 30° from the object would be calculated by 1-cos(30) ~ 0.13 when rounded. Going backwards is a little harder, you have to use the inverse cos (cos-1) to find the angle, so for an eps of 0.1 solving would look like this: 1 - cos(θ) = 0.1 -cos(θ) = 0.1 - 1 -cos(θ) = -0.9 cos(θ) = 0.9 θ = cos-1(0.9) = 25.84°

So I tried adapting this with the Turning Statue script, and I'm not getting the right behavior. I want a statue to turn only when the player isn't looking at it (aka when the player's view angle < eps). I tried giving the statue ($Statue) this as the scriptobject: It's not working in the slightest, and I get the feeling there's something wrong with my loop...

Yes that's a typo, my bad! It should be: Eps of 1 = 0 degrees (looking at object) Eps of 0 = 90 degrees (looking perpendicular to object) Eps of -1 = 180 degrees (looking exactly away from object) At least, that's how I think it works, someone correct me if I'm wrong!

Ok, time to see if I really understand what's going on here! From what I understand, an eps (tolerance) of 1 translates to 0 degrees, or in other words looking dead center at the object. An eps of -1 translates to 180 degrees, or looking directly away from the object (and would probably result in the stim being triggered all the time, since the player's view angle can't exceed looking completely away). An eps of 0 translates to 90 degrees, or looking directly perpendicular to the object. The smaller eps is, the smaller the angle to trigger is (or how directly a player has to look at the AI/object before the script is triggered). At least in the version of the script I checked out, unless otherwise specified the eps would default to 0.1, which is a decently generous tolerance of 9 degrees cos(x) = 0.1, or arccos(0.1) = 84.26 degrees. assuming I've done my math right. MAKE SURE YOUR CALCULATOR IS SET TO DEGREES AND NOT RADIANS WHEN MAKING THESE CALCULATIONS! So for what you're depicting, a total angle of 90 degrees on all sides from the object would need a 45 degree player view angle from any side, so the eps would be 0.5. [EDIT] No, I haven't done my math right. Eps is calculated by cos(# degrees you want). So 45 degrees would be around an eps of 0.70 or 0.71. Derp. Am I right, or am I horribly mistaken? By the by, should probably drop this here for future reference (and thanks for this @Obsttorte, it was super useful; I haven't had time to look into modifying the script yet but I plan to once base architecture is done):

I think the original version would work well for anyone who wants the tiles to look old/dusty. Here's the glossy version as promised (just using a specular), and it does look noticeably nicer (: Download

New tile texture is finally done (more or less): Download A couple of notes: 1. Sorry for the slightly lower resolution, the base texture was taken with a camera phone which in hindsight was not ideal. 2. IMO, this texture looks best at 0.125 default scale (which is what it's set to in the above screenshots). 3. This version has no specular. I'll probably release a glossy version at some point. 3. Feedback is appreciated!

The Kolibri is, believe it or not, a real gun, and it's ridiculous...

@Obsttorte I... may or may not have something in the works Though the real question is, can I finish it in time, heh...

@Obsttorte So I was looking at the scriptobject you created, and found the older Trigger Look script you had posted. Do I need both for this to work? Unfortunately I have 0 scripting experience, so I'm feeling a lot little lost at the moment... I've tried commenting the code but I pretty much don't know what's going on :/

More of an academic question than one stemming from immediate need, but one that might be nice to implement later. I'm interested in generating some in-game behaviors based off of the player's POV. The first has to do with the Func_Static Player Face Script by VanishedOne and grayman. Currently, the script works as intended; func_statics with it applied will always turn to face the player. What I'd like to do is invoke the script only when the func_static is outside of the player's FOV. The other is to have ghosts which are visible in the player's peripheral vision, but not when looked at directly, like what's done in the Metro games: I did go digging around in the TDM Script Reference page, and found getViewAngles(). I've also somehow gotten hold of a trigger_look script (apologies about not naming an author, I forget where this came from): Would either of these be the correct solution?

Congrats! Very much looking forward to playing this tonight!

Congrats on the release! And, I've only just started playing, but wow is this mission oozing atmosphere!

This is definitely a subjective topic, and can vary immensely depending on the mission, the author, and the player. For what it's worth, here's my two cents on these questions: What do you think about objectives that limit my ability to KO AI? Personally, I'm not a fan since my playstyle tends to deviate towards the "KO everyone, explore everything in peace" route. However, a good bit of ghosting can be immensely satisfying if executed correctly, so I would say implement KO limits or prohibitions only if you have a very good reason for it, or it's absolutely crucial for the mission's story. If you do end up implementing limits, I would also suggest allowing knockouts on lower difficulties, since forced ghosting definitely isn't for everyone. Otherwise, this should be optional or not present at all. What do you think about objectives that prohibit killing? I myself have gotten used to not killing anyone if I can help it - so much so that I'll take the pacifist route in practically every game it's possible! That said, forced non-lethal can also fall into the contextual category, as Crowbar mentioned. After all, it makes sense for some gentleman thief to not want to get his hands dirty... but it also makes sense for some common street thug to not give a whit about offing someone, so in fact the no-kill objective can act as a bit of character building in and of itself! That said, I'd advise some lenience on this, e.g. making it optional or even removing it on the lowest difficulty, though on the whole I don't think this is as big a deal as KO limits. What do you think about "collect X loot" objectives? This one I'm not sure there's a definitive answer to, since a lot of different things can work here. There's definitely a fine line between a so-easy-it's-boring objective and a frustrating loot hunt, though, so I guess what I might attempt is to keep testing and refining until you hit that sweet spot. Most missions tend to be pretty good about their loot goals, and I've gotten used to having this mandatory, so I don't mind it at all. On the flip side, though, you could also argue that a given loot goal can be mission-contextual in order to best satisfy story and mechanics needs. Ergo, in the end it's up to the mission author to decide on what's best to bring their vision to life. I can see where you're coming from here, but I might urge caution with this since it has the potential to get a tad bit annoying. I do, however, really like how Quinn Co.'s bank mission handled loot, with the player having to manually ferry heavy boxes and sacks of ill-gotten gains to a specific drop-off point, rather than sucking said boxes into their magical bag of holding, this being used in conjunction with the normal loot mechanic. I'd like to see more missions do something like that, since I found it to be an interesting challenge and a welcome change of pace, while being optional (if I recall correctly) and therefore not something to stress about. In all, I'd say balancing everything properly is a good thing to strive for, but ultimately you should also stay true to what you've set out to create.

Just a heads up, it appears that the most recent version of Nvidia's drivers (372.70 for me) is not playing nice with Blender on Windows 7 - specifically, whenever you fire up Blender it immediately deactivates Windows Aero. Not a catastrophic bug, but kind of annoying nonetheless... http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/61776/blender-disabling-windows-aero https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?405368-Blender-suddenly-disables-Windows-Aero-on-launch

Saw this and immediately thought of TDM: I can just imagine some member of the Inventor's Guild having a small collection of these...

While digging around a bit, I found this old thread from the Blenderartists forum: http://blenderartists.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-206654.html In particular, one post mentions: I'm no expert, but I'd say that your best bet would be to pursue updated plugins if at all possible, rather than looking for the older software.

For what it's worth, I got some serious fun out of Sniper Elite V2 (haven't played the others yet, it's somewhere on my to-do list). I was playing the Silver Star Edition on PS3, but it looks like Steam carries the game, along with Sniper Elite 3 for something slightly newer. The fourth game is currently in the works too.

Hi all, not an apocalyptic bug, but something slightly annoying I noticed. Every once in a blue moon, the in-game downloader gets hooked up, and may stop at a certain percentage during a mission download. An easy way to counter this is just to quit out of TDM, but in order to start the game again you need to do a full system restart. As far as I know, this doesn't break anything (I'm always able to get the mission in the end), but it'd be nice if the restart wasn't necessary. Does this count as a bug, or is it just something to live with?

Gratz on the release! Can't wait to play it

For anyone who's interested, the System Shock pre-alpha demo is now live: https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock_demo