MirceaKitsune

Truly this FM exposed every problem with AI and physics TDM has when I wasn't even trying to do that

I'd like to know about the draw count too. Most likely it's the building modules which this map was designed around exclusively, despite me even using their LOD models... for new projects I'd likely use patches at this point. I'm not aware of anything I did wrong in particular with this FM, other than the space being a bit cramped and me not monster-clipping literally everything: It seems that for some reason it's among the few to trigger some rather specific issues with collisions performance and crashes.

Stuck doors almost always mean an object is in the way, make sure a moveable didn't fall in front of it. There aren't any objectives for delivering notes you find, they're primarily to get a view of the world and everyone in it. The doors with a voltage meter have an electronic lock, you need the decoded item from the shop which is a custom lockpick alternative to snake and triangle.

Good FM with attention to detail. Very intensive platforming, solving some ways you must go is a puzzle of its own. A bit too difficult I'd say, almost impossible without some knockouts and being spotted several times, many spaces are very tight brightly lit with AI are always present so you don't have much room for error. Found a bit over half the loot, must be a lot of hidden stashes I missed. It will be interesting where this goes in the next episode after that little twist.

There are a few ragdolls in there that are brought out later: They shouldn't be shaking unless something bumps into them, just like those spawned outside they should settle on the floor within seconds. Wonder if that may be related to the crashes? Lots of candidates though, without the engine saying what's upsetting it I couldn't really guess.

The "closets" are spaces where I keep objects / ragdolls / AI meant to be teleported outside later, or oppositely teleport things from the world to them when they're meant to disappear. They're cramped as nothing there is meant to be seen or to interact. The screams are from AI that will be teleported outside later: Normally the audio should be culled but sometimes it escapes into the visleaf of the starting area. I was past the point of redesigning stuff so I just left that as is. The electrician's office is the door next to the East gate, across the road from the watch station with a suspended bridge connecting it to the inn. I later put a fried transformed in front of it to make that more obvious: There's a sign but no symbol for electricity so I think I left it with the key symbol. The army chief's home door can be lockpicked, I tested it and don't see how I could have broken that. You can alternatively get inside through the roof, remember that in this FM all transparent glass is breakable. The rooms seen from the vents aren't meant to be reachable, just an environmental detail. One of them has a window you can open for a little loot though. There are alternate ways into the shop too. If you don't want to break more windows and trigger alarms, jump onto the shop's balcony from the tavern terrace, the nobles at the table aren't scripted to mind a total stranger walking over their table and their food

What you describe occurs when you try dropping an item too close to a surface. Walk backwards a bit and look in the air above the floor and wall: This should allow the item to be held and become dropable.

Yeah this map seems to be triggering a lot of issues that are random for everyone: Crashes, corrupt quick saves, absurd FPS drops... all of which I've never encountered. I believe it should be used to debug them in the engine; I haven't done anything too different and this is a small map with relatively few entities, further more this FM doesn't use custom assets nor any map scripts only the default entities or variations of various defs and guis. The flying bottle that's also a bug. I suspect it's from the commoners eating and drinking prefab: A drinking bottle must be getting attached back to the AI's hand with an offset at times. In my case I run Manjaro, KDE Plasma, stock amdgpu driver.

Look in the root directory for a Darkmod.log and the FM directory for a qconsole.log. Alternatively run the engine from a console and see if that prints anything after the crash. AI can get stuck sometimes especially with the building modules, I mitigated it best I could. Shiny floors only a few are used in small indoor spaces to avoid performance impact, they aren't visible outside in areas with the usual FPS drops. I can walk on the wires fine, but if you step the wrong way there may be exceptions in a few places.

I didn't think much of it since the module walls are so thin they shouldn't affect AI navigation, given there's always a brush wall behind to delimit rooms. This is true for human AI, but since rats are so small it's enough to be a problem. Random crashes and corrupt saves are a strange occurrence: I play-tested the first Beta before posting it and encountered neither, going through a full game where I quick save / load many times. It sounds like I must have tripped an engine issue that only occurs in specific circumstances and may be Windows specific; It would be nice if someone experiencing these could debug what's happening, hopefully it doesn't require a GDB backtrace since those were always annoying to capture.

Never had any crashes myself, Linux on AMD card. It's weird if the logs don't say anything: Without some error messages it will likely be difficult to know the cause and solve this in the engine. I noticed performance isn't ideal though I found it bearable. I don't believe I used excessive geometry nor an excessive light count. It may be due to using the building modules exclusively for structures, albeit I've set LOD models and noshadows after a distance which should alleviate the GPU stress. I believe I added wind mostly in tunnels and tight alleys for realism, but come to think of it I could have lowered the volume some more. I'll keep that in mind if I ever update this FM again. The small rats can get stuck into the modules like that, saw it a few times but hoped it's a rare accident. I didn't monsterclip those too as it seemed excessive and too much work. The modules can be a bit tricky to work with, I'd likely be tempted to recreate them using patches in the future given there's far more control with those.

I'm very glad to hear you're enjoying it! Yes: It was cramped from the start as I thought this would allow me to add more detail and get better performance for less work, which it did but at the cost of problems with player and AI navigation. Hence why the skybox can be seen in a few places since making the fences even taller would have ruined the atmosphere, I left it like that since this skybox feels right even when you can see the bottom.

I'm happy to announce the release of my third FM: Year of the Rat. This is my first city hub map, focused primarily on story characters and environment. It's my most complex project to date, taking its fair share of effort to make which was a good learning experience. As an experiment I opted to use no scripts and rely solely on the default entities, as well as no custom assets apart from the map and splash screen hence the small pk4. It features a few special elements, such as factions that are hostile only when the player commits crime or a decoder lockpick used to open electronic doors. The beta testing thread can be found here, thank you everyone who helped find the most obvious problems. You play as a famous thief nicknamed Black Jack: A man who's pulled many crazy jobs in his life, only to be hired for an absurd and insulting task by an anonymous employer. The objective is pretty straightforward: Be kind to the mice and feed them some cheese! Your silly quest takes you to the Lantern Light district during the Lunar New Year celebration, a place where gangs and corrupt nobles do their dirty deeds together. What ulterior motives and unexpected twists could your adventure entail? While the most obvious problems were patched during beta testing, some issues can't be easily resolved due to the complexity of the entity setup and objectives, meaning you may encounter a few inconsistencies. Most notably surrounding AI, which may float above chairs and not react to alerts or oppositely send the whole map into a panic: This is mostly due to how the engine handles AI and alarms. The map is small since I wanted to add more detail without having to work on large areas, as such some places can feel cramped while the skybox may be visible up close. I'll be busy so further updates are unlikely unless I decide to add new content later... you're welcome to report any issues you encounter, but keep in mind that if something wasn't fixed it's likely known but difficult to address or due to engine functionality. Spoilers for objectives and secrets as follows: Download 1.2: Google Drive, Mega. Screenshots with minor spoilers for the various areas:

As a general rule I'm in favor of modifying the originals as long as they look identical enough and it's only to upscale the resolution: I think new versions should only be created if the texture is too different. Nothing will really change otherwise, old FM's won't be upgraded and we'll keep adding more assets that ultimately replicate each other.

Yesterday when packaging an old FM in which I used this, I noticed the script was crashing the latest TDM version. This was caused by a variable name conflict, likely a default script later using the same name. I fixed that and updated the pk4 in the first post, since nothing else changed it's still version 1.1.