Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

MirceaKitsune

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1922

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    22

 Content Type 

Everything posted by MirceaKitsune

  1. MirceaKitsune
    Very nice work so far. As a reminder, I'm still interested in the project as well! However I haven't had the time and / or energy to get around to finishing those models, and I apologize for that. Please be patient, and when I find a moment to get onto working on that again I will.
  2. MirceaKitsune
    They seriously wouldn't sue for the use of such a generic word, though it's still best to avoid it so we don't look like we're being unoriginal. I wonder if, for the sake of added realism, we could go ahead and simply call it Bitcoin Also I was thinking of modifying the meanings of the 3 loot types of vanilla TDM, into the following categories: Cash (normal money), information (documents not relevant to the player's quest but generically valuable to others), software (programs the player can steal off computers or pirate which others find of value). Any thoughts from anyone on this model? Another thing to keep in mind: The mod will be aimed a bit more toward story-based campaigns, and less toward single fast-paced missions (though of course still friendly to both). Therefore one of the systems I want to integrate are shops, and the ability to use the loot types to buy items from people in-world. There was a shop script floating around... I might use it altogether depending on license, or make my own if it's not GPL compatible.
  3. MirceaKitsune
    The plan is to get even better, though at least as good will definitely do. Vanilla TDM already has great quality assets, and the new ones will definitely be as good if not higher quality!
  4. MirceaKitsune
    Right now I'm working on various things, and have taken a short break from those Xonotic models. I managed to get the body rig in its final form, which deforms acceptably for now (fingers and some special parts still look broken). Just need to finish the face rig, create the shadow meshes, write up the defs... then maybe someone can put them on a map and give them a go, once I create the repository.
  5. MirceaKitsune
    Not bad... now bad at all The ammo and item panels could perhaps be a little smaller is all. Also is it possible to make the color customizable via a cvar?
  6. MirceaKitsune
    What is the progress on this? Last time someone was working on a cat model I believe, which was nearly done? Also I spent time optimizing that dog / wolf model, and posted it above for inclusion in TDM... has anything become of that as well? I assume they won't be making it to 2.05 as I got the impression that's happening relatively soon, but maybe 2.06 is a possible target!
  7. MirceaKitsune
    Wonderful! I really like how that's looking I might change the text to The Dark Machina or something else for my repository, but other than that the design fits pretty great.
  8. MirceaKitsune
    That makes sense. That is if we consider that bad games take their share of drive space to host, so if no one buys them that's a loss. Then again, there are services that offer many GB of hosting for free... so if a game isn't bigger than say 1GB, they could just not care about its quality. Making people pay for something that was previously free... that's generally speaking one of the worst things a service can do.
  9. MirceaKitsune
    Huh. I heard that announcement yesterday, and thought it's just Steam's way of saying "hey... how can we ruin a good feature and make more money in the process"? I was not aware so much spam was actually being put on there however... I guess it makes some sense. Though seriously, I don't understand why they can't just let people upload whatever games they want (long as they're not copyright infringement and are *spck* socially acceptable *spck*) like Youtube lets anyone upload whatever they want regardless of quality.
  10. MirceaKitsune
    Thank you very much, that is highly appreciated! I'll keep in mind, and likely post about new demands in this thread once they pop up. The current priority remains finishing the port of the Xonotic characters. This has proven an ordeal because of weight painting, and Blender's automatic weights needing a lot of fixing for the Doom 3 armature. The fingers go all over the place in some of the animations, and I have to use parts of their original rigs to define the weight groups properly. I'm hoping that today this will finally be done. After that my next priority is porting some of the scifi texture packs, enough to make a simple map out of. Static models for props might come afterward, not sure. The next priority then is finding out how to define weapons alike to those in Doom 3 (weapon and ammo as separate items, reloading, ammo display on a weapon screen, etc)... I'd also like a blend example of how you must define and animate a 1st person hand with a gun.
  11. MirceaKitsune
    Yep... including a 64bit engine, so it can run on x64 machines without nowadays outdated dependency libraries *runs away* Though honestly, it is true the engine is pretty good: First of all idTech 4 was super modern for its day to the point where even today it has great graphics, and it's also received updates from the TDM developers. I do still think it's a department that more attention could go to however, but that's just me... I understand TDM might not have a team of engine developers like that behind Darkplaces / Daemon / other modern engines modified from idTech <= 3.
  12. MirceaKitsune
    All I can say is, the project definitely deserves it. I hope it reaches the top soon, and Steam may even help TDM gain a huge popularity boost! Gamers everywhere need to know this exists
  13. MirceaKitsune
    A heads up: If anyone's using these characters for a FM, I suggest doing a Git pull; I added 5 different hair styles (meshes) which I back-ported from another project where I made them. My defs use them rather simplistically, but I don't feel like creating more character settings right now. I also realized I might have to make a few more corrections later; The head doesn't seem to have the same origin as other models. I counter that by using a different offset, but it's still arguable if I should use the same one as the other models. Also a check for later however.
  14. MirceaKitsune
    I thought more about how I should proceed with certain aspects. First of all the licensing: Although I still plan to keep the mod NC-free, I am aware that at least for a while I'll rely on some of the existing TDM assets (especially defs and character animations). So my policy for now will be "include no NC stuff but link to some NC stuff from vanilla TDM for functionality" (mainly definition inheritance). I'll likely document all dependencies on builtin definitions in a text file, so that I know what could be rewritten at a later stage. Unfortunately this means that this might have to become a secondary project for me, which I won't be able to give full attention to: My hope was to avoid any connection to NC assets, both because it's how I want the mod to be but also because I hoped to make this a Patreon project (to some extent). I know some might want to grab their pitchforks and torches at me merely considering that, even with the non-commercial assets being excluded from the equation... hopefully it's understood that what I want to achieve is going to take years of dedication, and with Patreon being the only thing keeping me off the streets this would have been extremely helpful. Unless I make a full break from the NC assets and rely only on the GPL code however, I'll have to treat this as a free project in the meantime and only make limited informative mentions of it... meaning progress will be slower, though I'm never the less determined to make it come true. Back to the above announced models: I've decided that, in case I am able to code new weapons using my own scripts, I'll also try porting some of the guns from Xonotic in addition to the player models. They will however have different functionalities and purposes if I do. Also I think I'm going to keep the original names and lore behind everything I take from Xonotic; For instance, the Erebus model will likely still be called Erebus! That way I can also bring the world of Xonotic into TDM rather than just the assets, which I think will be an unique and interesting crossover I've also devised a repository structure: Each component of the mod will be included in its own sub-directory. There will be a shell script that automatically generates and updates every pk4, converting changes in GIT to playable content easily. As of yet the repository has not been created, and this will happen once the player models are ready so that there's something to include. Lastly, as far as names go, I'm still going with the name Dark Machina for the mod, which is both theme correct and similar sounding to Dark Mod. If no one has a better idea I'll likely use it. I'm in the process of re-rigging them to the Doom 3 animation skeleton, like I did with my anthro models. Right now I just need to finish correcting the weights so that the limbs bend properly, set up the face rig for a few of the models (most have masks which saves me from that work) and we should be good! For starters at least, they will be defined similarly to the default guards. The def files will be created and license by me, but they will rely on class inheritance from original TDM defs to work.
  15. MirceaKitsune
    That would be a really nice addition, better than the rocks IMO.
  16. MirceaKitsune
    A heads-up: I have begun working on porting ALL of the Xonotic player models into TDM, which will be the first step in the creation of my mod! This not only includes the stock models, but also custom player models I've made based on the originals over the years. A total of 18 new models are going to be included as part of the package Unfortunately it will be a few days until they are ready; Blender's automatic weighting isn't always that smart, and the TDM armature doesn't help it either. The arms and legs bend incorrectly by default, and each model needs its weights carefully balanced. Once that's out of the way, the low-poly shadow meshes should be a cinch to make and they should be ready for export.
  17. MirceaKitsune
    Ah... sorry about that. Wonderful work both of you then!
  18. MirceaKitsune
    Wonderful trailer, couldn't have made it better! You should narrate stuff or make voices more often... your voice is perfect for this
  19. MirceaKitsune
    Argh... why did the forum decide not to notify me by email of replies here all of a sudden? Good thing I checked this. Love diiiis! Is that a mission you're working on that will use the models, or an existing FM modified? Note you might want to also add the tails to the body... just needs two lines in the def for the attachment.
  20. MirceaKitsune
    I definitely understand what you mean. And I better understand now something I didn't consider at first: People will gain real interest once there is something to actually show in action. Also it should be noted that I've already ported a player model of my own into TDM, for which I was able to tackle all of the challenges and add all needed features (shadow mesh, face rigging, etc). Therefore I have the knowledge as to how and what needs to be done in order to get new characters in. I've also worked with gtkRadiant over the years and have my own FM's in the works. For now I'm thinking of using The Dark Mission as something to look at for inspiration. Especially since there isn't much new content in terms of new assets, and said new content is what I'm planning to start with, I'll probably initialize the project with my own planned asset ports. Starting with the Xonotic player models re-rigged for TDM, and ports of popular texture packs such as philipk or ex or track#. If I can throw some automation into play (such as a bash script to automatically generate all materials per texture set) I should be able to handle this on my own and produce something usable.
  21. MirceaKitsune
    We could say I was raised more in Xonotic's all-GPL environment I don't have anything against the NC license of course, just prefer avoiding it when possible as NC and ND are the most restrictive. Most FOSS projects do this as well, which further got me in the habit... Tuxemon for instance has some NC licensed music and assets, and the community has a pull request I watch about finding replacements to them. As for crediting, I always like to do that, even when something is Public Domain. Anyway I gave the mod a try. The only differences I noticed were the main menu skin and music, the HUD, and the screen having blue tint. Those are very helpful examples, as both the menu and the HUD will of course be remade. In my case however, I might want a cvar or other kind of variable to control them, so that the menu and HUD are only modified when a mission using the modern mod is active. Also I believe some of the screenshots showed some kind of warehouse map, as well as a pistol somewhere. Is a version of the mission containing those available?
  22. MirceaKitsune
    Hmmm... that might be just a little bit tricky. Like I said the aim of my mod is to steer away from anything CC-BY-NC-SA, and break free from non-commercial dependencies. Obviously this means I will be writing all definitions from scratch, whereas the assets themselves will only be CC-BY-SA at most. Scripts should be okay since they're software and as that file describes, they're covered by the GPL license, which is what I plan to go with for my code too. Of course this is mostly a technical thing for my own conscience... I have no legal fears here, and concerns are mostly related to not disappointing the creators of TDM. In any case, it could mean that I might have to rewrite a few things in my version to be sure the defs and scripts are original. Then again, original is a tricky concept when it comes to code; If you say have the line "for(i = 1, i == 2, i += 1)" but another code has a line exactly like that, who's to say whether you copy-pasted it or it just happens to resemble something existent? Just something I'll need to be careful about in this case, though compared to other things it's lower on my list of exaggerated worries Anyway I'll be giving The Dark Mission a try soon, then maybe looking a bit at how it's structured and your code changes for inspiration. Still need to take time to think on what the best approach is, so I don't end up starting something that will never draw any interest and die off soon.
  23. MirceaKitsune
    Sorry for the multiple posts in a row: There's a limit to how many images you can embed per post, so I made one explaining each character I'm planning to start with. I wonder if there's some way to automatically convert all Xonotic characters to TDM, by converting the weight groups of their existing rig... it will definitely take its fair amount of work in any case. I understand. Would it be alright in that case if I was to create a Git repository and upload the latest version of The Dark Mission to it in my suggested modular (non-FM) format? I didn't get around to trying it just yet, so I need to decide whether I will do that altogether... for now I'm only asking if that would be alright with you. As for licensing: Is every asset in the mod credited in a text file, with its license also clarified? Once again I'm sorry if I'm a little paranoid about such things, I just seek to do everything right And about branching out commercially: That is of course your decision if you'll be continuing a version of the mod separately... the one I'm making will always be FOSS though. Personally I wouldn't advice it for two reasons: One is that, although our mod(s) are composed of non-NC assets so legally it would be fine, TDM has a stronger non-commercial culture around it, which I'd like to respect at least as thanks to those who made TDM possible... even taking donations for creating FM's is frowned upon last I checked, and I will need to ask about some of those aspects later. The second is because like you said, FOSS is awesome, and the charm in such a project is precisely its openness... commercially there are already way better games available, and what I wish to do is offering something special to the open-source gaming community exclusively.
  24. MirceaKitsune
    And of course I will also include the original Erebus / Nyx, for more diversity in the same style. Original thread and screenshots of that: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=529
  25. MirceaKitsune
    An additional sneak peak into my plans: One of the models I plan to include is my modification of the Erebus / Nyx player model from Xonotic, called Terminus. They are the only characters I'm planning to port myself for now, granted I worked with and am familiar in their regard... since they wear helmets I don't need to worry about the face rigging either. They will obviously be troopers of sorts, likely an advanced police force or army. Original thread and a few screenshots, showing both the male and female versions: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=4464
×
×
  • Create New...