kingsal

Yeah SEED is kind of a strange beast. In some situations its tanked my FPS as well. There's definitely no competing with modern engines here, there are other options: animated UVs, switching to static mesh LODs at long distance (I might try this), but all of them have pros and cons. I'll keep messing around with them and see if I can get them more performant and still looking decent.

Yeah, I did my best there. I can send you the 3dsmax file and you can try out some different orientations of the cards. I suspect making them too dense is going to get very very noisy with alpha tested cards.

This awesome to see thanks for putting this together @Goldwell! This was our biggest year since 2014 with lots of incredible releases and newcomer authors!

Ah right, yeah I see so maybe an additional layer of smaller ground cover grasses. I want to be careful adding too many alpha cards but maybe we can afford a few more up close. Thanks!

Thanks for the notes! Yeah that might be a bug actually. So you are standing in the middle of a patch and cards are disappearing? That shouldnt happen. Would you be able to show an example of this?

I should also mention that I do love that old demo, not trying to knock it. But its pretty tough to make animated grass conform to the terrain like that without using a 3D tool like blender, max, maya, ect. Im also curious if these will work with our SEED system? SEED might only work with static meshes

The old grass demo is irrelevant here. I've completey remade these from the ground up so they are usable by authors. The old demo is one giant custom mesh specific to that demo. Anyways- ill post a video this weekend but as Dragofer mentioned we're really looking for authors to try them out and collect feedback about how usable they are.

Hmm not sure whats up with that. Will have a look, thanks!

Restricting saves in Hazard was a way to test a new tool in the authors toolbox. That's kinda it honestly. Save rooms seemed to line up well with the theme, so I decided to try it. I didn't love the idea of eating up my EXPERT difficulty to test save restrictions, but it was the only solution that worked at the time. Looking back I might have done it this way: - Normal - Expert - Master (exactly like Expert but with save restrictions) Balancing and testing three difficulties is a huge pain to be honest. So having only 2 difficulties + a save restricted one might work well with maybe more save gears Anyways- I would be down to see more experimenting with save restrictions, but authors might want to plan for a good deal of testing. Any bugs or unintended deaths are brutal for the player in that situation

I haven't had a chance to update the mission. I will do as soon as I can.

Sorry just clarify, I agree with this statement: Imo, we should leave the rules as they are and just focus on the known issues with the blackjack.

@Obsttorte Right on. I know the KO cones can be altered by mappers so we'll have to leave those settings in tact. I agree , introducing new rules to KO isn't necessary to get this to idea to work. Im totally on board for separating the hit detection from the animations though, as that system is probably the cause of the blackjack being unreliable.

Awesome! Will try it out when I have a chance. I might be misunderstanding something , but I think any unaltered guard should be KO able from the front/ side (accept full helmeted guards). There are cases where this makes sense and actually feels pretty sneaky even if its an exploit. Also changing this might be too much of a departure from the current set up. I also agree with the helmet problem. Ive never been able to keep track of what helmet does what. The only distinction I am able to make is a full helmeted guard (with faceplate) cannot be KOd. All the rest should behave the same in my opinion. The standard helmeted guard’s only advantage is they can’t be killed with a single headshot. All these helmet rules are pretty granular and very hard to read imo.

ready10.md5anim @ObsttorteHere is the anim with all 10 frames (still WIP )

@ObsttorteThis was intentional since I just quickly copied the idle and raised it. I can do a raise and lower animation though. Will send something over soon. Edit: they will still be temporary quick anims but they might help visualize the concept.

@ObsttorteOkay! My custom blackjack has a fully rigged hand so it's not compatible with the core, but that's okay. Once you get the prototype working we can go back and do nice animations and model updates. I've attached a duplicate of the idle animation with a higher pose. If you need more frames to work with just let me know. I imagine the final ready animation will be about 10 frames; so roughly half a second but it just depends on what looks and feels right . EDIT: Added a 10 frame version if you need it. ready.md5anim ready10.md5anim

This is a much needed improvement! I can probably get you what you need. I started making new animations for the black a while ago so I'll dig them up and see if my set up will work with the core content. At the very least, I can get you something simple to start with.

Glad you liked it!

Thank you! Im looking forward to shaping them up for everyone to use (probably in 2.11 or as an asset pack) . With regards to models on the internet, if you can find a group of authors who want to split the price to buy assets and put them in their missions, that's totally fine. However, license issues are tricky so unless they are CC0 OR we can confirm they were made by someone here- we cannot put them in the core mod, at least not without a bunch of scrutiny

The animated grass demo is not actually using SEED. Its using a giant bespoke animated model so its only useful for that demo. Grass is actually fairly complicated to get it to look right and perform well. I started building some animated grass models that are more friendly for authors to use; different sizes, skins, lods, ect. although I won't be done with them for a while: Still WIP but here's a little video https://www.dropbox.com/s/f6cwq5ahy8jg7ud/The Dark Mod 2.10_64 2022-05-14 17-04-15.mp4?dl=0

Thanks! Yeah I originally planned to make more use of the rail system but I didn't have enough time to develop it. I've been playing around with the idea of a sequel someday, utilizing a full on rail system similar to half-life.

Good to know! The addons is left over from my TDM development space . Ill look into it.

Hey awesome!

@chakkman @Shadow Glad you liked the mission! Hiding the items in this mission was definitely tricky, we obviously want players to find them but not feel like we just gave them away. Tough balance there.

I am little late to the party but congrats @greebo , thanks for the dedication and keeping DR rockin!