Dragofer
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Posts posted by Dragofer
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One thing I'm noticing is I get a lot of "WARNING: backwards triangle in input!" when I dmap. Could that be part of the issue?
In my first mapping efforts I also made a brush lattice like that too and that also gave a lot of backward triangle errors. They're normal and harmless, but suddenly getting this many implies that the architecture is too taxing. Brushes are normally for walls, floors and trims, while fine details are covered by models. My brush lattice caused dmap to crash - I don't know if it could tank performance, but it's not so healthy for the map.
You can still do a lot with brushes though. For your lattice, I'd look at this:
- Brushes going in one direction could be slightly thicker so that they can be pierced by those going in the other direction without z-fighting or needing to carve them up at every intersection.
Caulking unseen surfaces is in my opinion only really worth doing on objects you're going to clone a lot of times in your map. Even better is caulk and convert them into an .ase model because then the object is only "created" once.
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Some of the best reading experiences I can remember in a Thief mission were the collections of ghost tales, especially then when they raise the possibility that one of the apparitions could still be in the part of town where *you* are creeping in the dark right now. They can make for tense scenes even if the mission isn't a horror mission, and they can be great fun to write if you like that kind of creative writing.
For inspiration I offer American Folklore, americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/presumed_drowned.html, set to one of my favourites so far
. One thing I realised after looking at folktales from here and elsewhere is that their tellers haven't been exposed to 20th and 21st century storytelling, which sometimes results in jarring endings. In one tale, a man is tempted by a fairy to run off into the woods, but he's stopped just in time by a woman from the village. The end. Still, more than one tale really has that campfire feel.Looks Like this amazing FM is back in production -
- http://darkfate.org/forum/index.php%3Ftopic%3D3222.msg135657&usg=ALkJrhjHsWVeJlaTTrAjLUBIpYeIAWz23w
Those are nicely fitting textures there. And the vaulted ceilings...
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You can turn fog off using location scripts to turn the fog light out. There might be non-scripting methods to do the same thing.
Thanks, looking through the forums Obsttorte has made a scriptobject that changes fog density depending on location. It's quite good already especially when you can build your map so that the transitions are subtle, and it can be used in other situations too. But is there a way to have the fog just not render in a location?
Fog can do what visportals do and hide stuff in the distance just like a closed visportal.
Does this need to be set up? I'd check if this happens automatically later on.
Theres one trick from hammer I remember. Essentially you have a brush that is transparent, but after a certain point it becomes less and less transparent until it's filled in and stops rendering what's behind it. Good for windows, not sure if you could do that here.
That could be done using the LOD system to swap the skin of the window to less and less transparent glass as you get further away. It's a good idea, I don't remember seeing this being done in a DarkMod mission.
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There's plenty of info on the forums and the wiki about making outdoor environments game-ready, such as:
- Wiki, "Performance: Essential Must-Knows" Wiki
- Wiki, "Creating Large Complex Areas" Wiki
- Wiki, "Seed" Wiki
- Wiki, "City Street Visportal Tutorial" Wiki
- Wiki, "LOD Bias" Wiki
- Wiki, "Systematic Method for Adding Pathfinding to Uneven Terrain" Wiki
- Forums: "Using LOD" Thread
- Forums: "Easy Outdoors Recipe" Thread
These articles look like they're written for forests and city streets, but not so much for buildings out in the wilderness with climbable roofs and inner courtyards. There's extra challenge in this because the whole thing could go downhill from some views like the rooftops without careful planning, so I'd like to collect what can be done for this kind of map in this thread. It would be great if you can think of extra techniques.
Visportals
Here are front and top views of an example layout of a building with a courtyard.
In this view the visportals divide the outdoors into what's below and above the roof-line. This relies on it that joined visportals can open and close independently of each other. (Thread)
In this view the visportals divide the outdoors into smaller compartments along the walls of the building
Map design
With this visportal setup it could be a good idea to make the map long and narrow using cliffs, fences or a river. There are fewer positions from where one sees multiple visleafs along the sides, and the visleafs one sees have less inside them.
Kissing cylinders (Post) - to build a forest within brush cylinders for better visportalling. The cylinders can go all the way to the buildings.
Location system
In situations like these:
- you're standing on the roof and can't see objects along the walls below, but they still get rendered because they're in active visleafs.
- you're standing along the south wall but the visleafs around the corners are open so invisible objects along the west and east walls are rendered.
The location system can hide what you couldn't see from where you are. At the south wall almost everything along the west and east walls could be hidden. Every time you enter or leave a location, the location system can trigger entities that hide and unhide objects as needed.
LOD (Level-of-Detail)
LOD can be used to change to less-detailed versions of objects when they are far away. How soon this happens depends on the "Object Detail" video settings slider. LOD bias (Post) is a different mode that spawns different geometry depending on "Object Detail".
Fog
There are foglights and fog particle emitters:
- Foglights can be used to hide distant objects, in fact like a visportal, but they need attention if there should be no fog or weaker fog inside. Obsttorte made a scriptobject that uses the location system to change the density of fog when indoors (Thread). A problem with this is that when you cross the doorstep the fog will become clearer and let you see more into the distance, but you can have small L-shaped entrance corridors where the change can take place. This might not be practical if you have a lot of openable windows.
- Fog particle emitters or patches (Thread) can create a layer of mist along the ground. It can be used to shorten the distance from which ground objects become visible. A rule of thumb for performance is to use fewer more powerful emitters or larger patches.
.ase models
Repeating architecture can be converted into .ase models to save memory/polys and to make them into LOD entities.
Foliage decal patches can be cloned and rotated to make thick bushes that can border off the map edges. Convert to .ase for efficiency. (Thread)
SEED
Used to efficiently and randomly create vegetation, and to merge other entities to be more efficient with things like checking against the LOD system.
Misc
Some lights could be set to become noshadows at a distance.
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The undead soundtrack Interred is very much how I imagine a haunted voices soundtrack should be, very good going!
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Thanks and sure, everyone is free to use my patch creations if they likeVery nice, Dragofer!
Is that a custom chair and a light, I spy in the first image?
If they are, I know the perfect places for them in the scene seen (
) in my above post - would you kindly consider PM-ing them to me at some point?Both images look great, but perhaps you might consider a different wall texture for the first image?
For my own part, I've always used it as a trim texture (as in the first image at http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/10003-so-what-are-you-working-on-right-now/page-244 ) and a stone texture could give the room a really different aesthetic.
Just my opinion, though - keep up the excellent work!
There are 2 custom chairs, and both the hanging and standing gaslights are in the first shot. The gaslights aren't technically implemented yet though. The glass texture (colorme) looks like it's selflit (see standing light on the right) in the dark, so I'd like to change it to the one of the existing gaslight. Stims/particles and frobbing need to be set up too. Plenty of work to do, for now it's a placeholder.Now that you say it, the vertical boards look quite broad. Stone is a good idea, but that's off-limits in this place, especially this high up
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The furniture arrangement here will inevitably change again, but I'm happy with how it's going.
A different place (but they have the same taste in oil lamps
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Its a known issue that even with SteveL's help we weren't able to nail down. I only got rid of it by change sound cards, (went back to my old Xfi from my SBz)
Its hoped this will be fixed for 2.04.
If I remember right from a long while ago I got sound popping in the ambients after trying out the _z versions. Going back to non_z ambients got rid of the problem. I'm doubting that it could be that simple though.
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It seems that one of the ambients in the core Dark Mod files, haunted_something_is_wrong_here.ogg isn't declared in a soundshader, so that it doesn't show up in DarkRadiant. I've written one and attached it here:
haunted_something_is_wrong_here
{
editor_displayFolder ambient/ambiencedescription "Made by Schatten"
looping
sound/ambient/ambience/haunted_something_is_wrong_here.ogg}
haunted_something_is_wrong_here_z
{
editor_displayFolder ambient/ambience_zoneddescription "Made by Schatten"
global
omnidirectional
looping
leadin sound/ambient/ambience/silence.ogg
sound/ambient/ambience/haunted_something_is_wrong_here.ogg}
It's quite a good subtle tension ambient - if you would like to use this shader, remove the .txt extension and put it into your darkmod/sounds folder. (You might need to change your Windows folder settings to not hide common file extensions if you haven't already.)
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Thanks for your comments DeusXIncognita, you make many points that I think are fair to make. The main things that are probably responsible for most of your observations are:
- the ship needed to be bigger.
- that I learned about the technical elements like AI pathfinding and clipping after the interior was finished
- and that a story needs a handful more explanation to be completely satisfying
I'm glad you had enjoyed it in spite of all though, and that you mentioned my book of eccentric travel accounts
The cutscene was too dark
What happens is that the wraith of the book has animated the skeleton in the captain's cabin and causes the ship to run aground where it needs you by eliminating anyone who could interfere. You wake up uneasy at night just in time to see the skeleton standing with green-glowing eyes in the moonlit doorway before moving on to purge the rest of the ship. There's not much light, but maybe still check your brightness settings?
Now, for the sequel in dreary Newfoundland, there's no more fumbling with dynamic team changes, unexplained mysteries and that kind of stuff. Simply sneaking and exploring. So far it counts 8000 brushes.
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So I got around to finishing this mission, after several quality sittings. I'll share my thoughts here:
- Starting with the best part, the gameplay, which was flawless. It had a feel like one of the great mansion missions by the old masters, like Ominous Bequest or Saturnine's, and that's great to see over in TDM. Like those, there is the broad range of scenes even though they're all under the same roof, from the moody cellar to the mossy balcony at the end of a long sneaking sequence, which give the sense of exploring a domain beneath the eyes of the guards.
One of my favourite parts were the attic, vents and rafters. Instead of being a featureless alternative route between A, B and C, they were a big gameplay plus because using them gave very good vantage points and ways to move undetected inside rooms.
So in this mission I was motivated to sit waiting in a corner and carefully track all the guards' movements, never using the blackjack and going iron-man (saves sometimes get corrupted). Very tense, good one.
- On the matter of appearance, some of the patch models did stick out to me as being made of patches, such as the toilet lids. However, those are just outliers outweighed by i.e. the impressive yellow pillars and the custom kitchen. What matters more, anyway, are the views in this mission - from up on the rafters down on the captain's split room, or down the stone tower which made the guards going up and down past the windows appear almost like toy soldiers (to me).
One of my favourite areas, again, was the attic. It looked like it was straight under the roof, and the beams looked disorganised and convincing even though they were only made of basic 4-sided brushes. This, together with the level of detail and lighting, brought the appearance to near perfect level.
What could be missing towards the perfect level of St. Alban's Cathedral or Rocksbourg is absolute coherence. In Talbot's there was mainly a theme of lilac and dark brown tones, but then some rooms like the kitchen were mainly yellow or posh white and brown (Talbot's antechamber), and could have belonged to a different mansion. While when I think of Rocksbourg or the Cathedral, they are blackened with thick grime or made of heavy dark blue stone and windows everywhere.
- The idea of the mission was excellent, the "show your skills" objectives are simply pristine for engaging and above all original gameplay. However, what it is missing in my opinion are more sidearms in the story for other characters or events.
"In the North does this very well:
- there is the story of Trumble and his daughter which makes him likeable even though he's a guard captain
- interacting with this: the master eyeing Trumble's daughter
- the possibility to interact with Trumble's story
- the woman who grieves for the ill servant (outstanding storytelling and show of emotion right at the start)
- the past history of the building, as a monastery
Talbot's already has some of these, but with a tad more side characters, crosslinks and side events this mansion could be just as bustling and densely lived in as Grayman's castle.
Now this is of course just a wishlist - the story with its refreshingly unusual objectives already offers an excellent level of tension and intrigue.
- All in all I gave this mission Near Perfect, Near Perfect and Excellent, which is quite a good score
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Thanks! I'm glad to hear you like these.
inside DR?
Using DR is a bit of a habit - by now I'm familiar with the editor, unlike Blender. There are a lot of vertices to drag around, but it works eventually and it's much less technically involved, skipping things like unwrapping and exporting, and you can use the same controls you've practised in map-building already. Maybe this explains the latest trend in using DR this way.
Sometimes I wonder if there are differences between a patch (.ase) "model" and one in Blender, like performance, but then again in a patch ship it's much easier to turn off/on shadows and clipmodels or for someone else to make changes.
hopefully you'll put it to good use in your own mission?
Certainly, the sloop will be the only reliable connection between a settlement in Newfoundland and an outlying locale, and the tallship brings an unwelcome visitor. What fun mapping is
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@Moonbo. Thanks for the feedback. The column in the spiral staircase was not meant to be final, and I need to think creatively about how I want it to look eventually. Any suggestions would be most welcome. By the way, your work is incredible and really acts as an inspiration for me to up my game!
Below is a picture from the area I am now working on. I am considering changing the wooden support beams to metal girders, which I think will make for a nice contrast.
Incidentally, if anyone is feeling up to it, I would really like to have a custom gas light model created for this room, which - if made - I hope will be included in 'core' TDM. If you are interested in assisting me, please PM me.
That's quite a good bookcase you've made, especially with how it uses the lighting to show details. If anything, I'd change the grey areas at the bottom to the same wood texture so that it has a completely consistent style like the real solid wooden furniture from the past.
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A new ship today, a sloop for a modest merchantman or for a traveller who's in a hurry:
And the altar was slimmed down to 600 polys and has a true hammer symbol on it now:
These ships are enjoyable to make so I'd like to do a few more different types for fun. Maybe some small reusable ships for harbours, but I'm open to literally any suggestions
Edit: Some ambient loops for use on ships, 5 files, the source sounds are from www.freesound.org:
- sailboat_interior_loop. Sound by AugustSandberg
- weather_wind_docks_loop. Sound by jimsin
- weather_wind_aggressive_loop. Sound by deku
- water_ocean_stormy_loop. Sound by kangaroovindaloo
- water_ocean_stormy_ondeck_loop. Sound by kangaroovindaloo
www.dropbox.com/s/d2aatkgploy5v07/maritime_ambients.rar?dl=0
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There is the Deep Web, TIME article: http://time.com/630/the-secret-web-where-drugs-porn-and-murder-live-online/, which (how I remember it) is a system of going anonymously and encrypted through many different servers and is actually so secure that even the NSA hasn't cracked it yet. Criminals can run and purchase from wholesale Amazon-like bazaars for drugs and guns for years without getting caught. Perhaps the last method for those really concerned about their privacy online?
Edit: It's name is actually the Deep Web, not the Dark Web
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This way of texturing in Blender sounds like a lot of hassle. In DarkRadiant, let's say there's a cylindrical patch shaped like a vase - those cylinders are like long sheets that have been bent into circles. You can apply a texture and adjust it with the surface inspector, for example with "fit" to get rid of a seam.
If wanted you could use the texture tool to choose which parts of the texture are used where, which is a form of UV-mapping (cylindrical? Brush-to-patch pastes would be planar). In the end you could quickly texture the vase this way in DR. Aren't there similar tools in Blender?
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This is extremely tempting:
It's probably too much for one person to handle within their spare time, but - how to visportal it?
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Very nice looking ship. Just dont make it too tight because I remember some problems in 1st officer room in your carrack. As a suggestion ship could have steam powered winches for sails and anchor like 19th century schooners. Since you cant really put many sailors on ship this would be perfect excuse for smaller crew.
The problems of using a tight space are very familiar to me, I lost count of the number of times I wanted to extend the carack
After my last experience this one will be more user-friendly. The rooms will use the whole width this time, and with the different hull this new ship has almost the same interior length and width as my old one despite being much smaller. At this point I'll also say that it takes almost the same time to build a smaller ship (exterior) as a larger ship.Looks really good, the only crit I would have is the lack of hammers on the altar (assuming this is for TDM of course).
That was meant as a church of God, but with a few tweaks and extra patches the cross can turn into a Builder hammer.
Man That is awesome. Absolutely well made so far and very impressive.
There is a pop about 141.00 in the exterior sound effect stream I think sort of broke the otherwise engrossing sound environment. I could just imagine creeping on and looking over my shoulder as the crack of a rope struck a mast.
Thanks for your opinion
- yeah, you can hear a car and someone speaking at some points in the recordings, so my plan is to take a clean 20 second piece and loop it.That's quite stormy weather you're imagining there, my impression is that most of the sound the ropes make is the clattering in the wind and when the mooring ropes rub along the hull and make a creaking noise. But there's a decent ambient for very stormy seas too:
wind - http://freesound.org/people/deku/sounds/115332/
sea - http://freesound.org/people/kangaroovindaloo/sounds/246515/
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Downloads - the most up-to-date
To install, place or extract the archive into the darkmod/fm folder of your mission.
Schooner & Sloop - a test map containing two older mapped ships
Caravel - a merchant ship made in Blender, including a scale model. The lifesize variant is somewhat overscaled in order to comply with minimum ceiling height requirements on both decks. Can be scaled down if you don't plan to give it an interior.Barouche - a posh carriage [part of 2.11]
Weathered Ships - two small ships, fully mapped with interiors, available moored or sailing. The LOD scale models are already part of 2.08. [part of 2.11]
Vintage Lamps - very posh brass lights for mansions [part of 2.11]
[Furniture & Shelving] - a batch of models and prefabs in the furniture & shelving department [part of 2.09]
[Blue Elemental] - blue variant of the flame elemental [part of 2.09]
[Stagecoach] - a sturdy carriage for four [part of 2.06]
[Oil Lamps ] - posh or rustic oil lamps & lanterns [part of 2.08]
[Coffin] - an old coffin [part of 2.08]
[Hookah ] - a waterpipe for smoking Mandrasola [part of 2.06]
[Prefabs & Particles ] - a collection of prefabs and particles, i.e. fireplaces, furniture, see below for list of contents [part of 2.08]
[Privy Chair ] - a rustic toilet seat [part of 2.08]
Original release postsShips
Post #1 - Schooner [Variants: steamship]
Post #9 - Sloop (Post #33 ingame)
Post #97 - Caravel + accessories + scale model
Post #123 - Brig (formerly known as the Ketch)
Post #128 - Yacht
Post - MerchantAdditional ships in the form of scale models can be found in Down by the Riverside, but they haven't been optimised.
Carriages
Post #19 - Stagecoach
Post #102 - BaroucheA moving stagecoach setup can be found in both maps of Down by the Riverside. Note that this mission uses an older variant of the stagecoach.
LampsPost #33 - Sphere lamps
Post #108 - Gas lamps collection
Post #120 - Vintage lamps collectionAmbients
Maritime ambients (included with the Ketch)
Dragofer's ambientsOther models
Coffin: Post #102
Altar: Post #102
Privy chair: Post #109
Hookah: Thread
Office suite: PostPrefabs
Furniture & shelving: Post
Fireplace, marble: Post #113
Fireplace, rustic: Post #102
Statue with seating: Post #116
Naval clock
Covered loaded cart
Rustic bed
Ship-derived bunk beds
Workbench
Large garden arrangement
Rustic wardrobeParticles
tdm_wisp - a glowing faintly pulsating orb of light
tdm_smoke_ceiling - black smoke for indoor firesOriginal post in Dragofer's Stuff, starting from here
Having your own thread to put what you're working on into sounds like a great idea, so here goes:
Update:
http://i.imgur.com/kSLWjkT.png
Thanks for your suggestion, here's a new longer version with steam propulsion.
http://i.imgur.com/RAoBKi0.png
To begin with, I made a new ship, which is an idea I got after walking around my old carack and seeing many ways to do things better.
This one is a smaller, single-decked ship with two masts, made entirely in DarkRadiant. The idea was to have a much tidier construction from the beginning, which suited a Victorian age ship (and rectangular railings can look surprisingly good
) The end result is 17500 polys, compared to 27000 polys for my carack and 16000 for Pink_Dot's galleon. I'd be happy for others to use it before I do (a while still), though it still needs to be optimised a lot.
There are also new models, all .ase, for 2 skylights, a capstan (man-powered anchor winch), ventilation tubes, mooring pins and more detailed bullseyes that can be recoloured with _color. And yes, that's the statue of St Lucia under the bowsprit. If anyone wanted to model a galion figure, here's a happy taker
http://i.imgur.com/U6U0sJV.png
Some quick scenery. Comes with both gangplanks and ladders (still needs mooring ropes).
http://i.imgur.com/RHMPTaW.png
For the ambience I'd like to get these sounds game-ready:
For the exterior: http://freesound.org/people/jimsim/sounds/147776/
For the interior: http://freesound.org/people/AugustSandberg/sounds/265553/
Only editor screenshots at the moment because it's not so easy for me to recolour the wood textures - ingame, only a small area around me has the new colour. So I'm using the black_matt texture for now, which is invisible ingame at night.
Also, an altar, as .ase. Somehow 1450 polys, but now that I looked at it again I saw plenty places to shave off some polys.
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Moonbo - my favourite shot has to be the second one, with that cold blue light and what looks like a pirate treasure chest. As if no human had been there ever since the chest was put there, a long time ago.
As for critique, I'm not so sure about those triangle-forming windows centre-left and centre-right in shots 3 and 4. I keep thinking that there should be a roof there, otherwise it could look a bit thinly supported.
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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.Yes, you would only need a decent UV map in place for simple texturing like apllying a generic material to it, say a clay surface, or stone surface.
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
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How can I retain the faces of the two resulting brushes at the clipped plane? When I use the clipper tool, and even with Shift+LMB, the faces are lost, like this:
Is there a way to create them anew?
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.
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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
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The irregular shapes are in my opinion a big improvement!
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Outdoor Buildings - Optimising, Visportals, LOD, SEED
in TDM Editors Guild
Posted
Great, that would work really well together with Sotha's Easy Outdoors Recipe for efficient .ase foliage bushes/boundaries. (http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/16159-easy-outdoors-recipe/).
I've fired up a foggy map I had lying around, unfortunately r_showtris isnt't affected by the fog. But it's definitely a great feature.