Dragofer

Thanks, your words on making a unique texture for a model make good sense (basically anything inside the "others" folder of the texture browser). What I don't understand though, as someone who never got into modelling programs, is why one doesn't select the model and right-click -> "apply texture" with generic materials and trims like in DR, as the next-best solution if someone sends in a plain mesh with no UV map. I remember Springheel saying it's best to have fewer textures loaded per model. The problem with using just one generic material could be that you don't get much detail in, but some of them come with inbuilt trims (like rtable02) and maybe an occasional model that has both a generic and a trim texture on it will be fine. This reminds me that most of this technical stuff, like vertex painting and bumpmaps, is beyond me... especially that engine development thread

You might need to change your settings under "clipper" to uncheck the option "Clipper tool uses caulk texture". It looks to me like your clipper uses caulk for cut surfaces and your editor is set to hide (filter) anything textured with caulk.

This does make me wonder if we will come into contact with this land of the damned, or even visit it. That would be quite a dark undertaking. Just wondering, no doubt you have made your plans already

The irregular shapes are in my opinion a big improvement!

I don't have such a logo but, in my opinion, the logo looks as good without the digit numbers. Maybe it's enough to put the 2.03 into the title?

I find this very surprising, considering how efficient and easy texturing can be in Dark Radiant between the surface inspector, texture tool and brush-to-patch transfers. The plain objects by Andy above look like they'd be very straightforward to texture if they were in DR. Is this just because DR is user-friendly? Or does UV-mapping have extra possibilities which require more complexity?

I've been collecting inspiration images of mainly Tudor and Jacobean towns and architecture for a little while. By now it's passed 200 pictures, about half are exteriors and the other half are interiors and furniture designs. Feel free to have a look too - below is a link to the album and some examples: Dropbox - Tudor & Jacobean

My ship was made all in DR. I started with simple brush walls and floors, so that the engine knows what the rooms are. Then I made curved patches inside and outside so that it looks like a ship. The rest, like masts and sails, I've made in DR but would also make sense to do in Blender. Smaller ships like your Knarr don't need brush walls because they have no rooms, so they could be produced 100% as Blender models. For larger ships, because of the brush walls, I'd suggest to make at least the hull in DR, and when you're finished, to release the ship as a prefab file.

Ah, I see - personally I'd prefer to use layers to hide the higher deck(s) when making interiors. I think, though, that such a half ship would make a very unique exhibition piece for a museum mission.

Your basement in particular has something Thief to it - wiĺl we be breaking into Bafford's manor all over again? As for feedback: - In shot 4 I'd put in some vertical beams to cover up those bends in the wall. This is coming from a fan of beams - In shot 6 for the balustrade I'd suggest putting in some slightly larger posts in the corners, maybe with a ball or so on top. I'd make the handrail have rounded edges, and there could be a second "handrail" on the bottom for the balustrade to rest on. What could be interesting as well is to make the balcony elliptical, unless you prefer a right-angled theme.

Exporting just half the ships because theyre mirrored is a good idea, but unfortunately it wouldnt work because the two identical halves will not fit together - there needs to be a left and a right half. Unless you have a way to mirror models inside DR? Dividing large ships into smaller models is good because it means lights in different places on the ship wont all interact with the same model.

I have to say, I completely endorse this project! What kinds of ships are you looking at? - Oceangoing galleons, caracks? - Medium-sized traders like the medieval cogs? - Modest fishermens' boats, river barges? - Ships of the line, Men-o-war? - Sloops, clippers, other agile sailors? - Arabic or other foreign cultured ships like the dhows? - Sleek 18th/19th century vessels - tallships, arctic exploration, whaling boats? - Ironclads, steamships? - Steampunk metal warships? - Submarines, rusty dark brown steampunk ones? - Maybe more ancient types, like the galleys and triremes? - Rafts, maybe with a little tent on top? Regarding your question elsewhere on whether to use DR or a dedicated modelling program to make these: for ships that are large enough to have internal rooms I'd use DR. With modelling software you would need to afterwards build brush walls within the ship for visportalling, which can be tricky especially when the hull is curved and diagonal. For my carack in One Step Too Far I found it much easier to start with blocky brush shapes representing the ship's dimensions, and then put curved patches over and inside them. Visportalling functioned very easily here. Maybe then the best option would be to release them as prefabs with visportals and doors, so that they are immediately ready to use.

Thank you for your comments - wood sure is my favourite material for everything now. Such as this entirely new church. Not a single stone was laid. Yes, I was looking to make some more varieties of balustrades later on. There are some new types in this church by the way. (Also, thanks for embedding the set of shots from before)

Somewhere, deep in a forest of the harsh north... Of Brambles and Thorns (There are some first lights and interiors, to see what things would look like. It also has a working title now)

It's possible to get very steep stairs by i.e. having each step only 1 unit long but 12 units high. My guess is AI wont have a problem with that.

Yes that's right, it's mainly just tweaks to make the gameplay more even. It came across my thoughts to extend the ending with something, but following Melan's advice to focus on new works, rather than going back and adding on to what's already been done.

I've got a Dropbox link in the main post which links to v1.5. Soon this'll also be in the mirrors.

For me personally, visiting strange and unknown locations is all what Thief is about. Such missions like: - Lost Crusade (bustling town in Arabia) - Deep Trouble (gigantic submarines and habitation complexes in the depths of the sea) - Eclipsed! (terrifying harbour town) really bring this idea of taking a break from one's daily duties and instead travelling to someplace else to its peak. I tend to look for ideas for maps in those directions, such as (these are all things I did some mapping towards in the past): - A gigantic oil tanker of cold metal and salty rust, stacked high with containers and barrels, with moving loading cranes, cargo bays, a bridge tower, rounded windows, huge diesel engines, a submarine with headlights and claws, and the ambient factory01 looping in the background. Everything below deck is overrun with zombies, which you could see through Obsttorte's surveillance cameras all over the ship through the monitors at the bridge. However, this project turned out too big to handle, IIRC it was 8000 x 2000 units over many decks. Maybe this was just my reaction to how cramped my carack in One Step Too Far was. - A huge sprawling network of caves connected by the tunnels of the Borers of Stone. Sudden earthquakes from the Borers' activity, balancing along the edge of pitch-black chasms, deafening underground rivers and slippery rocks, glowing caves of many-coloured crystals, an alien tribe of pagans who carve their homes in these gray stones. But I realised in One Step Too Far how difficult it is to get AIs to path around unusual objects or over uneven surfaces, and we don't have full pagans yet, so I wouldn't be making a full mission set entirely in this environment. -Getting caught in an Arctic snowstorm and waking up next to a stove in a well-heated room of an opaque old man's manor in the middle of an icy landscape. No need to mention that he is not what he claims to be... (not so easy to get much sneaking gameplay in this scenario though) As you can see mapping is great fun, do anything you want What they keep saying in these forums: if you'd really like to see something, and it isn't there yet, make it!

There is an ice texture - you will keep sliding a bit every time you move, make footsteps that sound like you're walking on marble tiles, and there's a reflective icy sheen across its surface when it's in the light.

Thank you very much for your feedback! I had the idea for this mission after visiting Shackleton’s ship in Scotland, so I’m happy to see that you bring One Step Too Far into connection with other such stories of the Arctic and Klondike. And, what I’d be eager to see is missions that take place in the harsh and exposed world of early settlers in Northern America. RJFerret’s Window of Opportunity is already in that vein, in particular with the grey tones and its dark misty skybox. Now that we sailed to the west in a carack, it’s as good an opportunity as ever to produce such a place. Also, I’ve made an update (v1.5) to improve quality of life in several aspects:

Thanks for playing, and leaving these reviews

This is very relieving Thanks for all this feedback, it is very much appreciated (and there is a lot of it, that's probably what happens when you try to do sequences in a first mission) And that's right, I deleted the Dropbox file to make way for other things because I thought everyone uses the ingame downloader. Without editing the main post, oops.

What I'd do probably would be to use the location system normally for the gregorian, and for the thunder use the call_on_entry and call_on_exit spawnargs on the location entity. This means to call a one-line script to activate/deactivate the entity used in the thunder skybox to regularly trigger the thunder sound. All the script needs to be is sys.trigger($ThunderTrigger'sName);. If you haven't done something with scripts before that would be a good intro.

I replied no because of personal preference and also because saving has a 25% risk of corrupting itself and crashing the game so I have to use an earlier 2nd save if I have one and load the map all over, which is why I always iron man every single mission (and get horrible stealth scores). I think that no map should automatically save for you.

Since I like this thread and the new concept of cameras in it so much I've gone and made a model (.ase) for a camera, plus a test map with all the setup - sound, lights, switches etc. Features: - Camera lens can be recoloured freely via the _color spawnarg - 2 versions: with or without lamp - Has an 'on' and 'off' skin - Has sounds - Live feed into a purpose built surveillance screen - Linked up to an alarm - Lights/sounds can be turned on/off with the switch on the control board - Responds to water arrows Known bugs: - I haven't found a way to stop the func_securitycamera entity itself, things like remove or kill will also remove the func_static camera model. - The camera is hypersensitive and detects the player in complete darkness. - The only way to avoid detection is to hide behind an object. - The camera resets its sweep from wherever it's stopped at after it's seen the player. cameramodel.pk4.txt