MirceaKitsune

So here's a fun little two-part question. I'll refrain from spoiling exactly what I'm doing, but I'm interested in having a video with sound on a surface in my FM. I know video on surface is supported by the idTech 4 engine though haven't seen any existing FM use it yet. So far I read a Wiki page on the matter though it seems to be pretty ancient but clarified a few things... such as the fact that I need to convert the video to the roq format, which I understand ffmpeg can do so I'll hopefully have no issues there. First question is: Is there anything beyond that wiki article I should be aware of? I understand some of the bitrate restrictions may have been lifted or be lifted later... does the audio still need to be separate in its own ogg file? Note that I'd like to make it possible to stop and replay the video with a button, that part isn't explained... how would I go about doing that? The second question is technically a bit off-topic but it's for the same purpose so I can include it here: Do you know from where I can download any movie or cartoon sequences that would fit the steampunk universe of TDM? Namely ones that went into the Public Domain, such as the first black & white stuff that had sound made in the 1930's, obviously I'm not adding licensed stuff. I imagine any 30 - 60 second sequence that can loop well should do.

From my personal experience, you need to explore them and learn where each asset is located, which is knowledge obtained after a bit of mapping and playing with DR. Select a brush, press S to open the surface inspector, then look at the subdirectories under "darkmod". I'd do the same with models, prefabs, entities and sounds... learn which are commonly available and what folders you generally find them under. The wiki may have a page on this too but I'm not aware of any.

Got an error on the script: "Builtin functions cannot be called without an object". How do I properly call it? I used the line: addInvItem("atdm_key_simple_iron_dark_1")

Thanks. Ouch... 1) is a big limitation: So an AI can't normally talk with the player at all? Even if the AI can't look at the player, is it not possible to have the player work as an actor and say a line in conversations? I could have sworn I've seen player to AI conversations in a few FM's (looking included) but they probably used a complex workaround then. 2) requires a script? I like keeping that only for more complex stuff, but if that's the case I can live with it. 3) is what I did too. For some reason however it didn't work in my test, no idea why. Perhaps I shouldn't have the actor trigger himself at the end of the conversation?

Looking at the Conversations wiki page there are a few things left unclear that I need a little help with: How do you define the player as an actor, to make the AI look toward you in a conversation and hear your voice from your own location when talking? I tried tags like "Player" / "player" in the actor field but it doesn't validate. Can I make the player gain an item the AI is holding or wearing after the conversation is over, as if the player frobbed it to pick it up? In my case, a key on the AI's belt which is given to you after talking with them. That is if the player didn't pickpocket it off them during the conversation, in which case nothing will happen obviously. To make the AI start patrolling after talking, the wiki encourages using an atdm:target_changetarget. This works I guess but I was curious about something: I tried using a path_wait entity as well, targeted by the AI and which targets the first path_corner. If I have the conversation trigger (using ActivateTarget) either the AI or this path_wait entity, nothing happens. I used path_wait before and it works when triggered by stuff like buttons, why not here?

Sorry, I'll keep in mind for the future. I reported a lot of things at once and worried it might be a little overwhelming to have so many new tickets in a short time. I offered a little extra info on the second issue... if something specific in my setup is needed to reproduce it I'll have to figure out what that could be. The texture browser thing is a very minor issue, kinda reported it out of perfectionism and so that it's known too, definitely not something urgent that hinders the mapper in any way.

Ah, so they don't work like normal readables as I had assumed. I'll do it as described on that page to correct, thanks.

Thanks again for the remaining fixes today! I just reported what should be the last 3 bugs I'm aware of: After this I should have nothing new to report for the time being and all obvious issues are hopefully over. Clipper tool: Resulting faces have an unpredictable scale Surface Inspector: Random offsets are sometimes assigned to faces when using Natural (*) Texture Browser appears empty until scrolled through * Potentially two issues in one, see Additional Information for the second problem described.

Any idea why atdm:readable_immobile_sign_small01 isn't working for me? I gave each one a proper readable but in-world they appear empty. I've seen them work in other FM's so I must be doing something wrong.

Thank you as well for helping to resolve them so quickly! I reported three more minor inconveniences I keep running into while mapping over the past days... nothing serious by comparison, just things you can bump into which might be overhand at times. Filtered textures aren't edited when modifying textures on the whole brush, no obvious way to tell which textures are locked Surface Inspector: Can't set scale / offset / rotation for multiple surfaces simultaneously Undo / redo system records cycling through textures (previewing) in the Surface Inspector shader browser

Okay. Another quickie before bed: Is it possible to have an AI who always turns their head toward the player as a fun little effect, whenever the player is within a given range from the character? Must work as the player moves around of course. Obviously I want this for a non-hostile AI as for a hostile one this would logically imply they're seeing you.

I know there's a lot of work being done on fixing bugs in DR thus new features are likely not on the table at the moment. I still wanted to suggest a little feature which I think would be very powerful, and hopefully not that difficult to implement either. Maybe we could even see this in 2.9.0 if it's simple enough to code? There already seems to be a preliminary but limited search system. If you open a browser such as the entity browser then start typing a word within its window, you'll be able to use search similarly to searching for words in Notepad; You're taken to the first entry containing that word, can use the next button to select the next one, etc. This is helpful itself to some extent, however I believe filter based searching would be much better and make it easier to find things you need without clutter. A practical example of what I mean: Let's say I'm quickly looking for a table to add to my scene. I open up a model browser. I type the word "table" in a filter field. This causes all models except those containing the word table to be filtered from the entity browser: The directory tree structure remains the same, you still expand folders and subfolders to see and select their contents... it's just that everything else is treated as it doesn't exist in that window, and empty directories (which don't contain contain assets matching the filter or subdirectories with such) are also not shown. This would make it easy to look at all tables available in the asset repository without being hindered by anything else, as if tables are the only models that exist in TDM at that moment.

That seems to be the one, thanks! I prolly need to look for the ones ending in _polished then. Only annoyance is that the cubemap it's using seems to be both super low-res and also has sharp edges around the corners due to the cube faces not connecting properly; Would be nice if that could be improved. I currently have a dark unfinished interior which makes this easy to see. What about a proper toilet and sink? Any way to find those in the default assets so I don't have to make unfinished bathrooms with very limited alternatives?

Oh... I did before posting this but it seems I missed it. Looking at their page again, I understand a path_* can target other entities the same way it targets other paths, in which case they will get triggered? So for instance: If I have path_corner_0 and path_corner_1, and path_corner_0 has the spawnargs "target0 path_corner_1" and "target1 trigger_relay", the AI will continue to path_corner_1 but trigger_relay will also be triggered at that instant?

Another one before I forget again: Is it possible to make path nodes trigger an entity when an AI reaches them? I'm mainly thinking of path_sit / path_sleep / path_anim here: It would be very useful if paths that cause the AI to temporarily spend time on them could trigger an entity. First when the AI enters that path (eg: sat down) then when the AI exits that path (eg: stood up). Could be used to have something like a gate that only opens while an AI is sitting on the chair and closes again once they get back up, so the player has to sneak through while the character is sitting.

There's a bunch of different issues in experiencing in DarkRadiant (Git master, Linux version) which are either obvious annoyances or prevent using certain features of DR. I reported them on the bug tracker, but to help bring attention as responses there are usually slow and I'm not sure when they get seen, I figured I'd share them here as well... especially since 2.9.0 is about to be released and hopefully all those problems can be fixed for it. Here are the ones I have so far... if I encounter more I'll add them to this conversation so I won't open new threads for everything. Conversation Editor won't add new actors, entity names are seen as null Model browser renders 3D previews for past models, overlaps current selection Select Group Parts does not work Darkadiant occasionally freezes when browsing sounds DarkRadiant crashes when using Map - Find Brush

Any news on the assets I was looking for please, if any exist in TDM by default? I was looking for shiny marble stone floors, as in ones that have cubemap reflections (realtime would be ideal but I haven't see any of those). Also is there anything resembling a modern toilet and sink so that normal bathrooms can be designed? I also wanted to double-check something else, so that I can better understand visportals and not make the same performance mistakes as my previous FM; I have an outdoor map where the boundaries are textured with textures/smf/portal_sky. Is it safe to use this texture on brushes that can be seen from all sides as well, in order to create sealed portals around them? Like can I make a sky pillar? Obviously the player will not see what's behind it but see the skybox through it as normal, that's the intent... just making sure it will work that way though. The idea is to use additional sky brushes along rooftops (where the player can't normally reach and see any anomalies) to create additional sealed areas.

Tried "rt-prio = 1" with "period_size = 1024": The issue still occurs the same way, that doesn't help it.

That covers it I think. Yeah running was one idea I had, "run 1" on the path_corner does what I want. For the rest "replace_anim_* anim" is exactly what I was looking for... I mainly needed "replace_anim_idle" and "replace_anim_idle_sit". https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Idle_Animations

Sure. Just please contact the OpenAL dev (I don't know who he is) to ensure he sees this thread and is aware of the problem and my new results. And I now have a Ryzen 7 3700X CPU which means 8 cores and 16 threads @ 3.6 GHz to 4.4 GHz.

Ah yes: Copying alsoft.ini to an alsoft.conf makes the changes there matter. I've been playing around with some of the settings now. So if I use anything other than "drivers = alsa" I get no sound. ALSA seems to be the only one it will work with, or the others need to be further set up. Preliminary testing shows some great news: I may have found the culprit! The issue appears to go away once I set "period_size = 64". Going at the other end, "period_size = 8192" also doesn't seem to do it oddly, but that causes a huge delay for all sounds. The issue is when I set it to a middle value like "period_size = 1024" to "period_size = 4096", that's what seems to cause it almost constantly... the distortions differ slightly based on this value. I can even add other improvements like "frequency = 48000" and it works! I'll update if I still encounter it with these changes too. In the meantime please consider if based on this results, it might be a good idea to change the default value of period_size to something lower, seeing how this helps solve the problem. Any reason why it can't be 64 by default? The problem only seems to occur from 512 (very rare and brief then) and up (almost always starting from 1024), even a 256 should be safe if a slightly higher default is needed for other reasons.

Thanks, that clears up quite a bit. I now remember reading about those frame commands briefly a while ago. This sort of thing is why I love idTech4... people can point out it's a 15 year old engine all they want, it's still cutting edge tech to me So simply giving the AI an animation with effects using a path_anim node should work, the effects happen automatically for existing ones? Like peeing animation has particles, dice playing animation has the dice roll sounds, etc? I'm still assuming that to override the animation of a specific AI, I need to use a spawnarg on either the path (ideally) or the AI entity. Like if I want the AI to walk using a specific walking animation, can I give the path_corner a direction in that sense? Or like my previous example... if I want an AI to sit on the ground using the beggar animation, can I tell path_sit I want an override when the AI uses it?

How did I miss that? I just tried it but apparently there were no changes, neither value affects the issue. I'm fairly certain some options there should have stopped the audio from working at all though, so maybe alsoft.ini is ignored? It's an ini file after all, those are usually for Windows not for Linux. Digging through my notes from back when I had sound issues with the 32-bit engine (RIP at long last) it seems I was able to add "seta s_driver oss" to Darkmod.cfg instead. However I just tried this now and even when I set s_driver to all of those values nothing happens. To my surprise, if I don't attempt to set the cvar at all but check its default value, s_driver is now seen as unknown when I type it into the console o_o s_device is there though. It defaults to "default". I tried changing it but this does nothing either. I also used tab to look at the other cvars beginning with s_ but nothing relevant jumped to my attention... surprised there's nothing about the buffer length which is where I suspect this might be coming from.

It's a small bug with an obvious feature, no crime in reporting it. Smaller things have been reported over time. Some bugs take years to fix (as a general rule, even outside of TDM) so I'm sure time can be found at the devs own pace. Any thoughts on my last question about complex character animations and effects please? I forgot to add another little question to it last night: Whenever I design the bathroom of a house, I run into having no proper toilet and sink... there is a metal bathtub that's perfect but what about toilets and sinks and maybe even a cabinet with glass doors? I know I've seen them in at least a few other FM's, I think one was Not An Ordinary Guest which had complete and modern bathrooms in its hotel. Also I've seen some FM's with marble floors that reflect a cubemap. What are the reflective types of stone called so I can find them in need? I've experimented with different textures in the Stone directory but never found shiny surfaces.

Thanks: Changing the "gravity" spawnarg in worldspawn does just what I want. Though like many untested features it's not free of bugs: The player remains stuck in the air after setting that to any custom value, they only fall again if they are moving. No idea why horizontal movement is required for vertical movement to work then, I need to open a bug report. I was going to next ask how I can create AI conversations using the existing voices, but I already figured that out easily: You can explore any voice on a speaker, then even point directly to that ogg file from the conversation editor. Something I couldn't find on the wiki still is how to have characters do some more complex animations; I already know how to find an animation in the "md5 animation viewer" then set it on a path. But for example: How do I override the default idle animation, or walking animation, or sitting animation... so when a character normally does those things they use a special override for each one? For instance: When they sit down, sit like a beggar instead of like on a chair. I've even seen some FM's make guards pee on trees (particle effects and all) but how is even that achieved? Also many FM's have characters armed with non-standard weapons, like spears or maces... where do I find those in a format that allows me to def_attach them on an AI so it also changes their fighting behavior? And I'm assuming that if an animation doesn't show up in the md5 viewer, something like it doesn't exist? I was hoping for a few extra ones... such as praying (eg: for builders) or dancing (could have sure used that at the banquet in my FM).