MirceaKitsune

I'm working on a bunch of maps and have a new one more than halfway done. Finishing a map to completion is a difficult task, it's why I always wished DarkRadiant could automate more things though it's doing the best it can.

Had fun playing this on stream last night! It's an old favorite for me, and between Christmas and New Year it seemed like a fitting FM to do just before 2023. If anyone wants to see it here's the Twitch broadcast (expires after a week because Twitch auto-deletes stuff) and I also mirrored it on Youtube because why not. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1692417368

Thanks. That could explain the AI seeing me right behind them in such an exaggerated way. I think what I'm seeing may warrant its own bug report but I'd like to understand it better first. The effect I noticed around those stairs intrigues me the most: AI often walk past you, either searching or even just walking on normal patrol routes, then after a few seconds they suddenly turn back and attack the player out of nowhere. Even if the player is in complete darkness at the time (lightgem at minimal level), not making any noise, and the AI shouldn't have touched the player either. But it will only happen if the player was nearby as the AI moved past. In another FM I played recently (not on that stream) I had another similar oddity: An alerted guard was running after me but had lost track of me. They sped right past me down the corridor as I hid behind a pillar in a dark spot, then after several seconds of being away, came running back down the corridor and attacked me knowing exactly where I was. It felt like the guard must have touched me when they first ran past, but it took a very long time for the signal to register thus the guard returned from far down the hall once it finally did; Might have been something else too but that was my impression... those scenarios are a bit difficult to test consistently since it depends on a lot of momentary conditions that sort of emerge on their own.

That might be more complicated as I'll need to downgrade, play it or other entire FM's again, and feel out if the result are the same. Getting the guard to hit through the door like that is a rare event, happened by accident and I probably couldn't get it to be the same way again if I tried for hours. I might if I find some time but can't make a promise at the moment. I looked at them as occurrences that might be out of place at the moment: Indeed I don't know if I saw any of them in 2.10 which I last used a while ago. My vague memory tells me AI didn't suddenly spot you like that after walking past you and ignoring you for several seconds, but with each FM being so different it's hard to tell without one or more extra playthroughs just for retesting.

Alright: Posted my stream on Youtube too and found the timestamps for all notable moments worth investigating. Hope I'm not wrong about any of those bugs and wasting anyone's time, they at least seemed suspicious and worth submitting for investigation. Oh and I say the Effy word a few times because it's fun and that hotel guard annoyed me so beware Let me know if you'd like me to move this to another thread, since we're hunting bugs for 2.11 here seemed logical. https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=1195 (19:55) Shows the HUD glitch. Look at the bottom-right corner of the screen: As I selected a key the compass didn't go away, the key was drawn on top of it for a second until I cycled away. I don't know what I might have done special to trigger that effect. https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=1677 (27:57) My first suspicious encounter with the guard: I'm trying to grab a key from him which had issues highlighting, he spots and attacks me at 28:02. My confusion is that he was walking away from me calmly on his normal patrol route, then suddenly he instantly goes to seeing me completely behind him and attacking. Do you think I got close enough to touch him during this interaction and that's what caused it? Even so it feels like a strangely delayed response. https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=2064 (34:24) Indeed I was in the light at this moment, but the guard's back was completely turned to me. He seemed to turn his head to the left just a bit, I believe I saw that and went to the wall to the right to counter it... this one might be normal but it still seemed odd he'd see me so fast through the back of his head. https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=2407 (40:07) Collision bug, may be map specific but obviously this wouldn't have been done on purpose by the mapper so maybe worth noting. I'm able to walk straight through that furnace; Even when I seem to sit on something as it clips through me, I get the wood collision sound so the furnace remains ghosted. https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=2721(45:21) Another weird moment with that guard. He walks down the stairs whereas I head up into the attic. Between the stairs I was standing in front of and the attic ladder there is no light, my lightgem never got bright on the way... I also didn't make any special noise I can tell. Yet despite the guard being on his way down anyway, I find him right behind me looking up and alerted once I finish climbing at 45:30. What triggered him? https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=2787 (46:27) Then I jumped back in the corner in front of the stair. The guard heads there, could be because he heard the noise so that's normal. The odd thing is he walks past me, heads down the stairs, then while there he suddenly goes to attacking me seconds later at 46:37. Maybe he touched me, though the distance should have been large enough as he walked past... even then why so late of a reaction? https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=2828 (47:08) Here I decide to stop trying and jump over the rail suspecting he might see me, him doing so is normal. Problem is that as he chases after me, he attacks as I enter the nearby room before him: Despite him being outside and the door nearly closed, I take damage straight through the door at 47:14. Feels like a limitation that could be improved with collision detection for combat, maybe something with the trace line for hits? https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=2879 (47:59) A repeat of the stairs incident from 46:27: I hide in the corner, the guard walks past me down the stairs seemingly far enough to avoid touching me... he waits for a few seconds then out of nowhere attacks me on sight, despite me doing nothing during that pause. He shouldn't have seen me because look at my light gem, it's always at the lowest value... also this is the forgiving difficulty which makes it all the weirder. https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=5359 (1:29:19) Second occurrence of the HUD bug, lockpick over the loot icon. https://youtu.be/bAw56sNSkJQ?t=5884 (1:38:04) Wasn't sure if this is map specific and worth mentioning again, but that chair has no collisions. I presume it wasn't set that way on purpose by the mapper so throwing it in.

Last night I streamed Business as Usual, I noticed what may be a couple of issues with the AI myself. First was the AI spotting me in places or at times when it shouldn't have been able to, especially on the secondary (forgiving) difficulty for AI sight and hearing... I was sitting in total darkness with my lightgem at the lowest level and a guard was looking for me nearby when suddenly he noticed and attacked me out of nowhere. It's also possible for AI to have a 3 - 5 second delay in detecting touch causing big lag in noticing you... this might be a reason why I don't get how they suddenly spot me late after walking past me, I presume they might have somehow touched me but only "realized" it nearly 5 seconds later. In addition I noticed some AI will often attack so fast their animation seemingly doesn't have time to finish... if you disturb an archer taken by surprise, an arrow may fly out of them before it feels they even had time to pull the arrow out. Last night a guard attacked and successfully hit me with his sword straight through a solid wall My stream is still on Twitch and I'll be posting it on Youtube as well, let me know if you think I'm correct and would like to inspect those moments... YT is still uploading so I might post timestamps here a bit later. Other issue I noticed is that sometimes you may have two inventory icons overlapping on the HUD. Like at some point I selected an item, but the compass or loot icon was still showing and my lockpicks were being drawn on top. I caught this one in the stream two times, it went away after playing around with the inventory menu.

You mean opening the console? On Linux at least you could do this with just the ` key until a recent update. Now you need to set "com_allowconsole 1" for that, otherwise it's indeed Control + Alt + `

I'm trying to help another mapper with an issue, and since this is something I may use personally in some circumstances I wanted to know if it's possible. Can you place an animated model on a map but have it show a static frame from a specific animation? There exists func_animate which I played with a couple of times, but using it this way would need to things: First a way to stop the animation, possibly by setting its speed to 0... also a way to pick which frame you want, possibly by choosing a custom starting frame. Does that entity or any other currently allow this?

Thanks for noticing that. I still need to test the mirror / realtime reflection bug, but I need a proper test case which I no longer have meaning I may need to make a new map just for it. I played a FM with functional mirrors on walls and it had no issue, reflection works perfectly in latest beta... means it must be something only in certain rooms or with specific setups.

With this FM being so small sized but urban and pleasant, I decided to play it again for my first ever TDM stream on Twitch! If anyone wants to watch the recording, here is a link below... note that streams are only stored for up to about a week so it will be gone by year's end. Apologies for the echo issues also, tweaked a few things and future streams (which will definitely include TDM) will hopefully not be as problematic. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1687257288

Wonderful, thank you for that! Indeed that works, and running it this way resolves the problem with mouse movement. So at least there's a workaround until this can be solved.

Good thinking. Unfortunately I can't find a way to force an application compiled with Wayland support to launch under Xwayland, just looked and only found one suggestion that didn't work. Does DR have a runtime flag you can launch it with to force this, similar to how Firefox did to enable WL support optionally at first?

I'm technically working on one but no way I'll finish it on time since it's barely half done, especially with a DarkRadiant bug plaguing me following a system change. Will be fun to follow this and see which makes it: I played most FM's by now so I'll probably know what it's about, if not I'll get to enjoy something new again!

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6203 Been a few days and I can't find a solution so I went ahead and reported. Let me know if a suggestions come to mind. If you're on Windows I imagine this should be possible to reproduce in a virtual machine: Download Manjaro KDE, install the plasma-wayland-session package (I don't think they defaulted it yet), build DR from Git on the setup then run it and use any of the views.

This FM was an incredible and unexpected delight. So much detail put into the little things and character interactions, it always had something unexpected and often times hilarious at every corner. Not all that difficult at least in terms of figuring out what to do, if you get really stuck you can figure it out by thinking back on everything you've read and discovered... stealth wise it feels nearly impossible not to get caught in the primary objective's building on maximum AI settings, but I'm sure there's someone out there who could complete it with no alerts. Found more than half of the secrets and completed the other side quests with ease. Congrats and thank you for this gem, definitely among the top FM's. Obviously one of the most surprising aspects, as is hopefully no big spoiler to say, is seeing the first ever TDM FM with a female player. Whoever voiced her did some of the best voice acting too, the progress lines when you reach certain areas were a delight to listen to, I'd really say she did a better job than some AAA voice actors! Wouldn't mind seeing the definitions for the base sounds making it in vanilla as an option for all mappers, being stuck with a male player by default can be a bit of a limitation... then again it would be just as nice if the player wasn't always a thief and you could as easily play as a guard or builder or heck even a reverent! With the more silly aspects included I'll say this felt a bit like a steampunk No One Lives Forever On the one and only negative note I can think of, there was just one thing I had a disappointment with...

Wanted to ask here before reporting on the bug tracker. I use Manjaro Linux with KDE / Plasma: Due to numerous bugs I stuck to the X11 session and avoided Wayland, with most finally solved over the past years I decided to try switching to Wayland Plasma session again. TDM seems to be working great, DR starts up well but has one massive issue. On Wayland mouse capture and acceleration no longer seem to be working correctly. If I right-click the 3D viewport to go into mouselook or right-click-drag the 2D view, it will go in the direction of the mouse (or reverse) but greatly accelerated throwing the view to one side immediately. Currently this makes DR unusable as there's no way I can control the view. Looks like a hopefully minor thing to solve, but I'm curious if anyone else can reproduce it. If not what else do you suggest I look at? I tried toggling Discrete Movement in Settings - Camera but it seems to have no effect on the problem.

This is a case where supporting bug-free model scaling might have been useful: You could create the illusion of more different trees and rocks by randomly giving each a slightly different scale, including in the Z axis to make some plants shorter or taller while they remain as thick. I figure it's not that big of a difference but would help with an added illusion of randomness. Random rotation helps the most and that I believe we have. Both a different spin so you always see the same trees from different sides, as well as slight angling. I think seed brushes randomize at least the Z axis, but I forgot if grass and trees also follow the rotation of the patch surface they spawn on so a diagonal slopes have a chance of spawning a diagonal tree.

It definitely sounds like instancing would help on outdoor maps with lots of trees / bushes / rocks. We don't have many of them at the moment, likely because performance is already a concern given the difficulty of vis-portaling huge open spaces: This could perhaps help improve that, since if an open field only has trees and rocks repeating the same mesh this might reduce the impact of large portal rooms enough to make it bearable. Of course lighting would remain a concern since instancing doesn't save you from the need to calculate each object and shadows in their own draw call, you'd need to add just a few torches to such a place. Other things might still tank performance in this scenario, but still it's a nice thought: I'm sure I'm not the only one who imagined what giant nature spaces might look like in a TDM FM.

True. It's 0 now however, I disabled it due to the cutoff entities. So it's likely happening for a different reason. I changed the structure of the original room a bit and that seems to have improved it. It might be reacting differently based on the visportals around it and other geometry parameters.

Thanks. And that's correct: portal_sky may cause cutting and the sky showing through or a black rectangle rendering instead, using caulk seems to be safer and not do that however.

2.11 Beta 2 (and earlier) clearly has an issue with rendering reflections. At first I noticed it with the puddle decal, now I'm seeing that using the mirror texture will also result in weird effects. Should be noted I currently turned off all custom performance optimization cvars after noticing they no longer improve FPS or work reliably, thus this is a bug everyone should be seeing unless it's driver / platform specific. Again it's an early map I'm not ready to share yet, if necessary I'll look into splitting that structure into a different map and share it here. But this should be possible for anyone to achieve by making a closed building inside the world brushes (textures/smf/portal_sky) then using textures/common/mirror on the floor.

I have a more conventional question myself for a change. I'm working with the building modules which are very awesome and helpful. I'm trying to understand how I can use them in ways that play nicely with vis portals and the need to isolate large areas. I want to know to what extent it's considered safe to put a roof model inside a brush block textured with textures/smf/portal_sky in hopes that it will always show properly when seen from below. The issue is you typically want the brushes of your your buildings to be blocks stretching up to the ceiling, so you can put portal surfaces in between them without any leaks. However the roof model is triangular now square. For this reason I initially went with making the brush a triangle in its shape with the tip edge stretching up to the ceiling, but of course this only lets me draw a portal across the axis where the triangle touches the world roof. It would be easier to just make the whole building a sky cube, put the module parts on its surface, then stick the roof inside and leave only the front sticking out. This seems to work in practice: If any part of the model is outside of the brush, the entire model appears to be rendered accordingly. But is this a safe practice to rely on? Should you intentionally allow large models to go through brushes like that? Can you officially rely on caulk and portal skies not to mask models that go into them or break their lighting? Here's a mockup screenshot to show what I mean and how I'd want to do it in the future:

Oh: My thought on instancing was that you're using a single geometry reference for all static and animated models alike. For animated ones of course you deform each one independently, but I imagined the geometry data stored on the GPU is common. Obviously even static meshes are rendered from different angles and lighting. So say you have 3 guards of the same type rendered in view: The GPU only stores the model for one guard... one might be standing (idle animation) another one moving (walk animation) but they're both rendered from the same geometry / texture cache so common aspects are only processed once. Actually wasn't that called VBO which we already have? Glad to hear scissors will get improvements! I should mention the volume light issue there as well later. For now I'm happy I could confirm it makes a good difference on some maps so fixing entity scissors is worth it

Thanks, that's very helpful! For some reason I thought those tables were hardcoded functions in the engine or some fancy script, didn't realize how easy it was to make your own. Definitely should be using that, very easy to achieve this way

The same button doesn't exist for the mission selection list though, only the downloads screen. Is it possible to have the same sorting options for both lists? Another thing I'd have loved is a favorites / pin feature: Something to put FM's you really liked at the top so you can find them more easily and play them again. A 1/2/3 star rating system would be great, but even a simple flag to pin favorites at the top would be lovely if it's not too hard to do.