Dragofer
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Posts posted by Dragofer
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You would need to cut up a brush into a lot of small brushes using the clipper tool (press X on the keyboard) to make an arch shape.
I'd recommend you use patches instead. The wiki entry http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Patches gives an introduction to patches and at the bottom are instructions on how to create an arch.
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I'll be withdrawing from the contest as well, because I'm enjoying this map building business (and asking countless questions, hehe) so much that I have decided to expand my concept and potentially even split it up into a 2-mission campaign with the full package. I project completion of the first mission within 45 days.
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Thanks for the swift replies, this stuff is both useful and reassuring
. I was sure I had fixed subdivisions on that one, but it probably got lost. Ah well, a difference of perhaps 200, 300 polys or so.I also found a fourth way of aligning the textures: to select a good texture for it in the first place (dark, coalish - as in Badcogg's mine).
The only thing I'm not >90% sure about now though is the best approach to integrating cylinders into patch walls. In the sample I tried making a ring for the cylinder's mouth, then sinking the adjacent walls through the ring. Imo this looks a bit rough. So I tried to make the adjacent walls directly surround the tunnel's mouth. But this stretches the texture to provide excessive amounts of what I call "texture coagulation", the texture moving when looked at in the editor preview.
Aside from that, I'd appreciate if someone (just one) could take a look at and provide some feedback on the development of what I have done now (keep in mind that the demo earlier was just an investigation into a construction style). One could consider it a kind of alpha testing
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From what I read in the 1 month old "TDM Vocals" thread, I gathered that TDM currently has both an unrigged pagan warrior and pagan vocals in the works. The pagan warrior will be rigged upon completion of the vocals script.
I'd like to know about the progress with the script. If it is still a way off from completion, as it may well be due to the Wench Project, I'd be very glad to speed the process and try my hand at coming up with additional lines and researching the style (I believe it's Gaellic/Teutonic non-silly ordinary folk). I do realize that these scripts are very long, but I also possess a large amount of free time at the moment.
I do have a German/ic accent (German + Danish), yet I'd have to see if my mike is up to it.
To sum up, I'd be happy to lend assistance if I can.
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I like the description, it makes me want to play it. Too bad I'm restricted to vastly inferior hardware for as long as I have time
A fun mission and some very cool visuals.
Ah well, I suppose I can sift through it for inspiration though
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In the spirit of the thread that was recently here about constructing outdoor environments, I'd like to make one asking about advice for creating cavernous ones as well. Perhaps we could even make a new series in the wiki.
I've more or less finished a large section of the map I'm working on and am now working on an underground area. I took a look at The Rift, Mad's Mountain and glimpses of NHAT (just the entities alone completely kill my current computer) and saw that patches played a big role, but it is a bit like looking at a painting: one can see what works well quite easily, but trying to create one like it can be a different matter. I was wondering if there is any general advice that applies here, i.e. how to properly bend patches to one's will. I think I'd be particularly interested in how to build larger caverns sized 1000 x 1000 x 200/300 units, if possible with streams of water, as well as how one could make the places where the patches intersect look more seamless.
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I was thinking that it could be possible to, when the elevator is meant to go up and the up button is pressed:
Teleport out the frobbable up button and the door button.
Instantly replace then with non-frobbable up and door buttons (to preserve the push animation, the non-frobbable up button could be targeted by the first up button).
After the time it takes for the elevator to move to the other position, the frobbable up and door buttons are teleported back in and the non-frobbables are teleported out.
The same would go for the down button when the elevator is meant to go down. To make it easier to program, one could by a method similar to the above make only one of the up and down buttons frobbable depending on position.
For elegance, the non-frobbables could be made into highlighting non-functional buttons instead.
As you can see, this approach is not really for the skyscraper-type of elevator or one that changes path midway. I'm thinking of an elevator that travels with its own door attached without stopping. Having more than 2 stages would require a bit more thought.
Speaking of stages, I think the pseudo-floor concept would work if patches can be used as triggers. If not - I can't check - I think a one-way path using brushes would also be feasable. (The buttons flying off in all directions as the result of an explosion at the endstop
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For me, pressing f3 causes no delay whatsoever. I could almost be proud of my dusty laptop, if it weren't that there's absolutely no difference between f3 and no f3 (except for the void being black).
In any case, performance can be improved I believe by making house trim (i.e. beams on the roof, brush desks) func_statics. As referred to in http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Performance:_Essential_Must-Knows#func_static_v_worldspawn_Brushes
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Could there be a way to make an elevator only work when its door is fully closed, and when the elevator is moving to make (the button for) the door unusable? I considered various possibilities, but I think I'm looking for a special spawnarg, possibly one not listed in the "Add Properties" list.
Speaking of elevators; could I make it so that it follows several "checkpoints" that are not aligned with each other before it comes to the stop point? I presume that it would be possible to just have several unbuttoned stop points as checkpoints, but with my current mapping in Beethoven-style (5 year old integrated laptop graphics show everything save the HUD in black) I'm unable to check.
The following is merely a reflection:
In an emergency I may be able to have it follow a spline, but for some reason I can't adapt the D3World spline tutorial - even when imported as a prefab and the .script file being altered accordingly. I suppose it is just a quirk.
/reflection
Is there somewhere a list with possible void() functions for scripting that I must put into .script files, or can I just make do with those atdm entities (if all I need is custom death, conversations, teleporting, black-outs, starting AI on their paths and the likes)?
Thanks for the replies, which were as always hastily delivered. It does wonders for self-esteem
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This should actually be a bug report, and is more of a slight variation on T2's forward-leaning KO exploit I found while standing on a slope a few months ago in one of the Christmas Contest missions (TDM 1.01 I think) that may now be obsolete, but regardless.
As the name says, one has to lean forward in the dark or out of the line of view in the direction from which a guard is approaching, then start swinging the blackjack so he gets hit before he is too close. He won't be knocked out, but it may be that he stands still and will let himself get battered to death in this fashion. It's lengthy and *very* noisy, but eventually he will drop dead.
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Well, I have been working on my map since I was last here, despite me being away from home (I will miss the contest deadline by at least a month). I would appreciate an answer to either or both of these questions:
I saw the screenshot for Illusionist's Tower with plenty of fog in it. What caught my attention was that on the walls and on the floor I was able to see texture, not just the void blackness that I saw on my usual pc when I tried to have white fog (light value 100) inside a subterranean environment and went up close to a wall. Could I be doing something wrong? I used standard TDM textures for that. I remember that the fog encased the walls. Unfortunately I can't supply screenshots at this moment.
A further area of interest for me would be patches: do the same rules apply to func_staticced patches and models, or would - provided they are aligned - overly ambitious patches just give missing slivers and starriness all over again? I was thinking of twisting patches at angles I would never dare with a brush. The wiki on this made patches sound to me like an alternative for modelling.
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Having cobbled together my place again and almost to completion, I have now started with making a cave (rest assured, I didn't use grid 1. DR just defaults at 1 when I start). I've been using grid 8 exclusively and only the clipper tool to get the shapes. To add to that, I made sure that the clipper gradients are not 0.1783421, but 0.5, 0.33, 0.25, 0.16, 0.125 and so on. However, I cut them in all shapes and sizes and made brushes intersect, giving what appears to be very chaotic on the grid. I was wondering, would that be a problem? The place miraculously doesn't leak and there's no z-fighting. Would there be a more optimal method or approach for this terrain?
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Yes, I think my mission can fit that. It even fits my intentions
. I may be a month late, but then again I have at least another month. -
Yes, I saw that a lot on my inexperiencedly made map in the renderer. In-game they were not there. Hopefully though, that problem should be purged now with my brand-new 30 min house.
Which brings me onto my question, is it possible to rotate doors so they are in line with the grid? They were a pain to visportal, involving 0.125 grid sizes. Dragging vertices appears to be no good, as there are no draggable vertices here...
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I think you have to select the female model in DR in the Lone Salvation mission, then go to file and click on "save selected as prefab". Then you go to your mission and right-click somewhere on your map in orthoview and select "insert prefab" and find wherever you saved the female.
I took a look into this grid business. To begin with, my (outside) walls are now 16 units thick. Reworking the glass dome into something simpler as well as the walls also got rid of all the missing slivers. And starry stuff at the doorframes is now a thing of the past
. So I decided to commence visportalling which worked yesterday in terms of appearing at r_showportals... but when I loaded the save I'm sure I made this morning all of them were gone, they didn't show up. Could this be because of internal leaks?Anyway, I decided to go into the texturing business as well. I think I followed all the steps of creating a texture successfully, yet it doesn't show up in the editor. Now, in my Doom3/textures/darkmod/wood/boards folder I have the following files:
woodfineorig.jpg (backup)
woodfine.jpg
woodfinegrey.jpg
woodfine_ed.jpg
woodfine.dds
woodfine_s.dds
woodfine.tga
woodfine_local.tga
tdm_woodfine.mtr
And this is the content of the .mtr file (which was renamed from a .txt file)
textures/darkmod/wood/boards/woodfine
{
description "wood"
qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/wood/boards/woodfine_ed
bumpmap textures/darkmod/wood/boards/woodfine_local
diffusemap textures/darkmod/wood/boards/woodfine
specularmap textures/darkmod/wood/boards/woodfine_s
{
if ( parm11 > 0 )
blend gl_dst_color, gl_one
map _white.tga
rgb 0.40 * parm11
}
{
if ( parm11 > 0 )
blend add
map textures/darkmod/wood/boards/woodfine
rgb 0.15 * parm11
}
}
I was told to make a textures and materials folder. I have the same .mtr file in both, under the same folder structure (darkmod/wood/boards), as I'm extremely unsure where it goes. I definitely think that DR is a whole lot user-friendlier and tons easier to find help on than other editors like Blender (do they even have any support for new users, i.e. how to pan the camera? /rhetorical question). But this is still quite mind-boggling :/.
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As you can use the telescope and have it in your inventory I believe it is an entity, which can be found under create entity > darkmod > playertools > atdm:playertools_spyglass.
I'd have been surprised if there was no z-fighting. Anyway, I uniformly thickened all the walls to at least 8 units, sometimes more. Now is still a good time to do this kind of work.
I've had a look at my map to check if what has been said is true. To begin with, my grid lock was never turned off, so everything is on at least 0.25 grid (unless there are some exceptions, i.e. door/windowframes or the glass area which I can easily modify or infact do without as I'm just trying new ideas at the moment). To double-check, my clipper tool and every other form of manipulation stuck to the grid like superglue. I think what was meant with the "unsnapped" stuff was the roof and other slanted brushes, which have a gradient that isn't equal to 1. Ironically, the roof has no problems as it is.
I think I'd be more willing to accept Fidcal's explanation. His suggestion of resizing and slightly rebuilding areas (for example covering up troublesome brushes with other, new ones) almost completely removed these rendering errors to the point of maximally 3-4 pixels remaining, if any. Tinkering with the lights also diminished errors. I'm confident that the moment I start visportalling, it will be gone completely. Besides, I am confused that I am advised to restart, considering that it is just a matter of trial and error and finetuning, as well as the fact that editing it is just a matter of resizing current brushes rather than drawing and positioning them all over again. I'd probably go insane or something if I had to do it again because I probably lack the machine-like speed of someone who has several maps under their belt. And I'd be doing it for something that to me is hardly a step above an unanti-aliased edge in terms of annoyance. It appears that the cause of the problem is something else.
In any case, in 2, 3 or maybe more years TDM will have advanced far enough to support finer alignments the first way round.
Almost all of the backward triangle messages started appearing after I began working on that portico at the front. It was said that they were unimportant, so I guess it can be left aside for now.
Internal leaks causing performance drops, I never heard of that before. I will inevitably have a box around the house to work as a skybox (white fog, light snow and a concrete/snow texture for the sky as stated in the A-Z tutorial give an effect that is in line with what I would like) and probably another box connected to it via a tunnel. It also makes testing the map easier. But internal leaks? I suppose I could work on that, but I'm surprised to hear it. I've been getting exactly the same framerate (63 fps) since I started.
To stick with the spirit of the thread, I'd like to know if there is a way I can resolve these missing slivers of which there are currently 2. They extend across many different brushes, always in straight lines and they change their shapes even when I don't recall having worked on that area. Standing on them removes all sound, and looking at them from behind makes them look normal again. As if someone caulked one face of the brush. The strange thing though is that there is nothing visible to me in DR that shows them. That difficulty might warrant a complete rebuild of the affected area. Is there anything I can do to try and avoid it?
Also, is there a way I can make the compass rotate i.e. 1.5 times as fast as normal so it becomes out of line with the real directions?
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I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Anyway, here is the proper link: http://rapidshare.com/files/407111587/Cottagev2.zip. I do use the CSG subtract and clipper tool very often, which may be responsible for some of the starry flaws. But some are completely inexplicable. A problem area (not for the starry flaws) I noticed was the glass area, which flickers depending on how I turn my camera. However, I saw that with other missions as well so I think it's another ATI card problem. I look forward to that patch.
Since the last upload, I added a roof and partially cleaned it up but there is still a reasonable amount left to do with it. I'd say the mission is about 15-20% done now. There is still much I intend to implement. While I'm at it, be sure to check the bookcase
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I've had a look into the texture business. Now, I never heard of (or hardly remember) .tga or .mtr. When looking into these pk4 archives, I found that every texture had 3 files: a .jpg, a .tga and a .dds. Perhaps it wasn't surprising that just placing a .jpg of the texture I wanted into the archive did not prove a success (doing so via a lengthy process of extracting the .pk4, dropping the .jpg in there, compressing it, renaming the file extension to .pk4 and renaming it to the original textures archive's name).
I don't think I'd intend to use them as floors, or have bumpmaps for them. I just think that these textures would make out a tremendous lift (as imo there aren't too many light, "clean" wood textures initially). Needless to say, some clarification on the importing of textures would be great.
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I have uploaded it (.map and .radiant files) to this site http://rs744tl.rapid...440560043874967. When compressing them, I selected the "Best" compression which made the file 20 times smaller. That seemed strange to me, so I uploaded an uncompressed version as well, on http://rs452tl.rapid...440560049786335.
I also forgot to mention a skybox problem I have had. Not only does it twist around excessively when I move my camera (which I know is associated with Catalyst AI in ATI cards - I turned that off many weeks ago) it also has a black semi-circle in it. Perhaps it will be reproducable on another system.
While the effect of falling snow is a nice addition, I think that even with this effect one could still put the "storm" into snowstorm. The swirling clouds of snow being blown so quickly that one can't make out a single crystal, the fog-like effect of the houses only appearing once one is close to them, the howling wind, all that in the video that I linked to before truly mesmerized me.
In any case, thanks for the help and support that I got so quickly.
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Hello,
I've quite recently (only a few days ago) decided to give Dark Radiant a try. I am now busily working on a (Scandinavian style?) mission that I am constantly evolving. I do have an array of questions (1 per paragraph), however, and I would appreciate an answer to any one of them.
First of all, I have a few textures that I'd like to add. I tried finding a textures folder, but all I found was a long list of .dll files. My search of the internet has not revealed any results. I'm quite new to this kind of editing - DR is my first - and a short set of instructions would be nice.
I'd also be extremely interested in having a snowstorm (this is absolutely perfect http://www.youtube.c...h?v=dotGqox6QeM). I think having that would be monumentally important. Would that be technically possible in TDM? Does it already exist?
To add to that snowstorm, I'd like to have some flags that rapidly/violently twist in the wind (not the white poles, but the red fabric). I've tried to make such a model in Blender/UnrealEd, but all that my skills could come up with was a badly textured cylinder with a cone on one side. Could there be a place where I could get such a thing from?
I have also come across a few problems. In some places (2 so far) I "lose" slivers of my brushes, making it possible to look at the brushes behind. From the other side, they look completely normal (in the case of the attached image, from under the house). These slivers cut across several brushes at the same time, and when I stand on them I get no sound of any kind anymore. I have tried duplicating and moving the entire house to a fresh space, and this has reproduced the error. I'd like to know if this is a bug, or if it is just a fault in my mission design. Could it be solved?
Should I worry if I have about 30 lines of "Warning: Backward triangle in input!" whenever I compile? Perhaps it may be related to the last question.
Lastly, I have an issue with what someone on this forum called "twinkly stars". Apparently it is due to disaligned diagonal brushes. However, I get this on perfectly rectangular brushes with nothing else behind them (apart from my patented LeakProtectorEncasing
). Again, could it be a bug or is it time for me to go back to the drawing boards?
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I have identified my brand of the black screen problem. Basically, after having gone through the briefings of an appearingly randomly selected number of fms, it gives me a dialogue box saying that the map files cant be found. Which would indicate a problem with the download.
I later found out that the problem was caused by me having put spaces between fm names with multiple words when downloading them (i.e. sons of baltona.pk4). Writing sons_of_baltona.pk4 or sonsofbaltona.pk4 completely got rid of the problem.
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I used to have the same problem, however I found a work-around which goes like this:
Find the fm folder in your darkmod folder, there you need to find the folder into which you downloaded your fm.
Open the startingmap.txt file, make a note of the word found in it (i.e. sons_of_baltona_1_beta).
Start the Darkmod and proceed as usual until it asks you for the cd key.
Press ctrl + alt + ^ (may vary on different keyboards, it's the button to the left of 1). This will open a command console.
Put in map (word from the startingmap file), i.e.:
map sons_of_baltona_1_beta
This starts the map and ignores the cd key.
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I have this problem as well, however I can reproduce it quite easily.
1. Install a fan mission after a fresh install of TDM.
2. Install another fan mission or uninstall the one that was installed in step 1.
3. Black screen. Also, the load screen before the main menu is the default Doom 3 one, only without the texts (i.e. Loading game, Initialising Menu)
I have tried using the methods found in the previous posts, but none of them worked. Deleting all TDM related files in my Doom3 file and then re-downloading the whole 1.4GB TDM again solves this problem though.
So far it meant that I need to download the whole mod again for every fm i want to play, but I'll now try making a backup of the TDM files to get quick acess to them.
DefTokeniser: no more tokens
in TDM Tech Support
Posted
In DarkRadiant I recently split up my map's progress into several smaller .map files, each containing a seperate area.
After cleaning up some brushes in one area, I went to work on a second area for a few days. When I went back to load the first area again, I got an error message saying "Failed at entity 0. DefTokeniser: no more tokens" while loading the 47th primitive. My first entity I put in was probably the ambient_world light. I think there were only 800 entities in that area, and this message doesn't seem to talk about the 4096/8192 entityevent thing that Nielsen had to deal with a while ago.
When I try to dmap it, it says in the console "ERROR: C:/map/file/location. Line 613: New line inside string" and nothing happens.
When I try to load the map in the game, it says there was an error loading it.
Now, I do have an autosave and various backups but they are all a few days behind that broken save (I quicksave far too often
). I was wondering if anyone could help spare me having to do the less than enjoyable work I did in those days again.