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MirceaKitsune

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Everything posted by MirceaKitsune

  1. I might have played that one and vaguely remember it. I believe the crown is a normal loot item attached to the head, you simply frob to pick it up like everything else. Helmets are part of the head mesh, I need to make the head itself frobable and change its model accordingly... I should get to trying it out at some point and see how that might work. I think I played that one recently. The disguise isn't changed dynamically, it's a story thing with some AI set to be always friendly: This offers a flexible and customizable system to wear disguises in realtime, with the possibility of getting caught if you're seen for too long. Closest system I remember is a FM where you play in a large hotel and there's a needle indicating your suspicion level, bumped when going in other people's rooms and back when returning to a hallway. The disguise changes the team of the player, team relations don't even need to be altered which is great. So if you wear a Citywatch helmet the player goes from team 0 to team 2 then back when removing it or getting caught. This has the added benefit that AI on other teams will also treat you accordingly, so anyone allied to a guard will be fooled by your disguise while enemies of guards but not the player would instead only attack you while you're disguised.
  2. When I was a teen I used to play a game called Hitman: It was also a 3rd person stealth game focused on assassinations and disguises. Its main gimmick was the player stealing an enemy's clothing and dressing up as them to infiltrate, while disguised you avoid acting suspicious or your enemies would realize you're not one of them and your cover is blown. I've thought about attempting something similar in TDM in the past. Since it's impossible to customize the player model 1st person hands, I realized custom outfits are out of the question. Then it dawned on me that I could go for a simplified version, by implying the player only wears a helmet or large hat to disguise theirself, enough so it makes sense and throws the AI off. So I got to work and after 3 days of tweaking I'm ready to share my latest mod: Working disguises How it works: The player can pick up headwear and equip by using the item, making you a member of the target team when active. While worn a bar appears at the top of the screen indicating the status of your disguise: This bar slowly fills up over time... it will drain when a member or ally of the team you're disguised as sees you the closer you get, further draining if the AI is alert. When the strength reaches 0 the disguise deactivates, you must wait for it to reach 1 again for it to be active again. When the disguise is inactive the bar will be gray and the icon black, when active it's colored and the full icon shown to make that clear. By default only helmets for the Citywatch were included thus far, with the normal Citywatch helmet offering less cover whereas the Elite Citywatch disguise gives you a greater distance and time at the expense of a cumbersome overlay. It even changes the player's person type / gender / rank so AI salute you as one of them... unfortunately this doesn't seem to have an effect in practice, maybe it can be investigated why. Further more the item sets a custom head model and skin, so when the player sees theirself in a mirror the hat accurately reflects the associated head... sadly this functionality had to be disabled due to a crash that occurs if you try to modify the model of the player's head causing a -1 model index, I filed a bug report about it and hopefully it can be resolved soon. If enough people like this to motivate me to continue, my plan for the next release is to allow stealing the helmets off guards. This might be tricky as I need to make the head frobable and have it execute my script action, which must change the model of the AI's head to their non-helmet version: Unless the same crash as the player head risks occurring, this should be doable in theory... this would also allow it to be used as an universal mod (with any FM) as you no longer rely on the items being placed by the mapper. Below is the latest version: If you're a mapper maybe add this to your FM and let me know what you think! I'm eager to hear your thoughts and see a field use case, this was only tested in a simple box map not in a practical scenario. As usual copy everything in your FM except tdm_custom_scripts.script you'll need to mix the include line with your existing one. disguises_1.0.pk4
  3. Yes, needs to be switched back and forth in realtime. I just posted my mod so you can check it out here for more info:
  4. Thanks everyone. If all goes well I might have a nice little mod ready by tonight I hope you'll enjoy https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6326 This bug is currently the last thing limiting me: Please let me know if anyone ever ran into that and knows a workaround or what I'm doing wrong, till whatever causes that can hopefully be fixed. I'm trying to change the player's head and use a custom one for seeing yourself in a mirror, it works but randomly introduces a crashes due to a negative model index.
  5. Fair enough. Trying to think back to when I first discovered TDM, which is already almost a decade ago: I don't remember finding it that difficult, though for the greatest amount of time I played on the easiest AI difficulty for sight and hearing, eventually settling for Forgiving (2nd easiest). Also I still play every FM on its Easy difficulty which is pretty lame, I've been wanting to do Normal and Hard modes of ones I know and hope to get to that once I finish playing with some more modding ideas.
  6. Doing it in DarkRadiant sounds easiest: What's the best texture to put on a bush to screenshot the item behind, is there a fully white or black one by default? Main issue is cutting out the outline and getting the same consistent style across items, but I do lots of editing in Gimp so this shouldn't be a problem. As for the AI vis check it turns out to be a bit more complicated: visScan() only notices the player if they're an enemy to the AI, while the AI is friendly it stops working. findFriendlyAI() does work instead, but the name makes it sound ambiguous to use it to check for the player although it seems to work, also the documentation says it's costly and not to call it each frame which I'd have to do in my case, lastly it only detects the nearest entity so if another ally is standing closer to the AI than the player this won't report them. Am I out of luck with this one and need to not implement the check? I'm not seeing any other way to trace the AI's FOV cone.
  7. Thanks for the feedback. I can see the eye argument, but large movements imply turning either your head or body around... hence I agree this would be best done as a speed based increase so only rapid large movements count. Keeping the mouse still isn't the challenge: The challenge would be that you can't safely turn to look around if you're in a very dangerous situation, you're stuck where the camera was last pointing unless you want to risk drawing that extra bit of attention from an AI searching for you. It's the thrill of an enemy being in the corner of the player's view, but the player has to resist the temptation of looking to see exactly how close they are.
  8. Thanks. Seems it's either visScan() or findEnemy() I can't quite tell what the difference between them is supposed to be. Will give it a try... doing a little experiment that might have fun results! Does anyone have an inventory icon for the Citywatch helmet, or know a FM I can get one from? Doesn't seem like there's one in "hud/inventory_icons" and I'd need it for my little idea.
  9. I have a scripting question I may use for a mod: What is the function to check if an AI is seeing the player, and the extent to which the player is visible in their awareness based on distance from the AI as well as lightgem and any other factors? Till recently I thought this isn't possible, until I played through Iris which found a way: In the FM most AI are friendly unless they see you steal things or pick doors or enter restricted areas, they only become hostile if that AI is looking at the player while being close enough to make out what they're doing. Technically I could dig through its scripts but there's probably a lot bundled together, so if anyone knows I could use a simplified description of that part.
  10. I realized a fun change we could consider for the lightgem, which should also be fairly easy to implement if agreed upon. We know how aside from the amount of light shining on the player, some FM's increase the lightgem based on movement and crouching, you become more visible while walking and especially when running. I'd like to ask if anyone thinks we should additionally support a slight increase to the lightgem based on mouse movement. Explaining how the idea came to mind is the best way to illustrate why I feel it would make the experience more fun. The player often hides in a dark corner waiting for a hostile AI to pass right by as they patrol: In any real scenario you'd be holding your breath as to not make any sound or the slightest movement, even breathing would stand out slightly and could get you spotted. Thus from a perspective of realism, it feels out of place that I can zoom the mouse all over without any consequence... merely turning your head would draw a bit of attention, let alone looking behind which implies the player turning their whole body around. Meanwhile from a gameplay perspective, it could be a welcome challenge having to not move the mouse when a guard is right next to you, keeping your mouse steady similar to how you'd hold your breath as you wait till the danger passes to look away... this would feel more exciting and add a new form of tension, especially as many players complained the AI feels too easy even on the highest difficulty settings. Obviously the increase should be minuscule, possibly just 1 lightgem point: We don't want players feeling they can't look around while hiding, just not doing it too much when an enemy is right in your face. The best way seems like making it based on the movement speed: Moving the mouse very slowly could have no penalty, whereas jerking it suddenly could increase the lightgem by a few points so even in total darkness the AI sees something and may even catch you if you keep looking around rapidly while next to them. Another debate is whether this should be a spawnarg new missions have to configure, similar to some existing visibility properties and lightgem offsets. Personally I'm in favor of defaulting it to a low value, just 1 lightgem point increase if it's fixed or something like 3 if it's speed based. Alternatively we could tie it to the difficulty setting... if it's controversial maybe just implement it as a hidden cvar we can try out? Very curious what you think so let me know your thoughts, I'd definitely like to at least see the concept tested!
  11. Very enjoyable FM overall! I got stuck on the main objective but managed with some hints. Plays well and looks very beautiful: If you noclip you can see several mapping artifacts but it's not a serious issue.
  12. From what I understood last time, lights now use portal culling and solid walls to dump unreachable entities, correct? So if a torch is located in a room and its radius box covers entities in a neighboring room but the light doesn't also touch any portals through which it can reach that room, those entities are ignored. I'm curious if lights also use a projection check like the player view. So even if a room is opened by portals from the perspective of the light, an entity is still ignored if the light's origin can't shine over the bounding box of the entity through any open portals leading to it. Hopefully this is the case by now, hope it's planned if not as it sounds optimal. Last time I asked, it couldn't be determined if spotlights still calculate entities in an omnidirectional 360 field like normal lights, instead of only looking at portals and entities within their cone. If this is the case I support making some of the default hooded lights targeted as an optimization, given some are omnidirectional and self shadowed in a way that the upper area is covered but still calculated. An obstacle I remember encountering is at the moment, there's a limitation in both DarkRadiant and TDM engine that prevents targeted lights from having an origin offset, even if the origin spawnarg is set the center falls back to the entity's position making this unusable on some lamp models.
  13. And completed! Amazing FM overall, it did a lot with a relatively small space. One of the creepiest FM's I've played, even if Exhumed is the one I remember terrifying me the most many years ago.
  14. Had to wander in and out several times to find that one. If you want a clue...
  15. A nice FM for a quick run, I liked it. The architecture seemed a bit surreal at first but it's in a good way. Seems to have slight performance issues compared to the average FM, though this is unavoidable when working with large areas so it's understandable.
  16. Was going to try this one out but apparently there's an error that doesn't even let the map load: FM installed from the official mission download menu, TDM dev16829-10455 on Linux.
  17. Congratulations on your first FM! Not bad for a first one: It was simple and a little rough in places, but played very well and did what it intended to. I'd definitely like to see a continuation and what happens next after the events here.
  18. What a beautiful FM! This absolutely rivals some of the best made recently such as Seeking Lady Leicester. It's filled with secrets and unique interactions, as well as a huge city divided into differently themed areas which is something I love about such city hubs. It was lovely to go through and offered quite a few days of fun, thank you! I suspect I found most secrets in terms of hidden areas items and objectives, though with how large and complex the world is I know I must have missed something and still would if I played for months. Other than that...
  19. I was just thinking about this last night and mentioned it on Discord: One of the advantages of leaning should be that using it to peek past a wall shouldn't make you so visible to an enemy AI. If there's a light past the corner, leaning will currently increase your lightgem about as much as just strafing there, which begs the question why should you even use it instead of just strafing? A strong light should make you visible even when leaning, but only a fraction as much as walking there. I'm thinking of it like this: Leaning should be like sticking just your head beyond a wall. It makes you a little visible if the area is well lit and the AI close by to see you, but far less than your whole body sticking out and being spotted.
  20. All in all I like the new mode judging from that video. Hope we can give it a try in the next dev snapshot! Pro: More movement over rotation... more logical and realistic, before it's like your head was just falling to the side. Con: The overall distance seems to be a little bit less than before, which may make leaning less efficient than it was.
  21. I turned off both bloom and sharpness filter, yet AA continues to generate fully sharp edges around that newspaper. Now it's really peculiar... wonder if anyone else can reproduce this? FM Iris, getviewpos: 4251.78 123.7 -271.75 9.2 -30.5 0.0
  22. Is bloom causing it? Didn't think to try that: Just started the FM so next time I pass by the area I'll try that as well. Also the sharpness filter even if it's at a low setting, I'll feel silly if that was literally undoing the effects of AA I was thinking the newspaper being so bright compared to the background might have something to do with it. Though IIRC AntiAliasing scans geometry edges only and shouldn't care about brightness per say.
  23. There's at least one thing I felt I need to ask about: I keep seeing this and it's making me think even conventional AA must be broken sometimes. In any case it's clearly not doing its job right at the moment. I enabled 4x MSAA just to alternate. As can be seen on most objects, it usually works as you'd expect. But then why do I get such sharp edges only on the newspaper? It's not an alpha texture, the model is fully opaque and this is its geometry edge... it should this be subject to AA as anything else, yet it doesn't seem to be affected and still looks jagged. I see this effect on bright lamps sometimes. I didn't report it as I presumed it's a high-res alpha channel which I know current AA can't address. But this clearly isn't the case so now I'm curious what's happening? Edit: The forum insists on scaling the image to a lower resolution so here is the full res.
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