MirceaKitsune

Finished the night with this mission. Another great and detailed FM with every feature you'd expect, plus high quality mapping with excellent detailing and atmosphere. It also did an excellent job at using journals and notes to detail the story and exactly what was going on, putting accent on describing what the inquisition was like. Thank you for making another awesome and nearly perfect mission

Nice little mission, with some really good ideas! Even before starting the map, I love how the shop is used not just to buy classic items, but also to purchase information or select optional objectives. Playing with the vaults and using the clues to figure them out is also fun, so another +1 for that.

To be honest, I too enjoy and would continue playing single-player the most... only occasionally going to online servers. Just thought this could allow for some interesting scenarios and possibilities with missions. The way I see this in my mind doesn't feel like a different game, since all non-relevant mechanics are still the same. But it would certainly be a different mode and experience, putting an accent on different aspects. Such as cooperation with other players on a mission, or having to worry about a real person seeing you which is much more different from an AI... these could be some interesting factors on occasion.

I'm sure the idea has occurred in someone's mind before, and it's certainly made me curious: Has a multiplayer mode ever been considered? Obviously I'm not talking about DeathMatch, and players using bows and swords to frag each other and score... there are enough FPS projects designed for that purpose. I'm thinking of multiple players partaking in the same mission on a server. The most obvious way is a coop mod, where any player can join the mission and play it as usual (no attacking each other). When a player completes an objective, the objective is marked as completed for everyone. Players can form groups and go for different objectives to complete the mission faster. I believe this would automatically work for all existing missions. An alternative mode, which is what I think would make the effort worth it, are players being able to join different sides: When entering the server, each player is asked what role they wish to play. Each role changes where the player spawns, what objectives they have, and who their enemies and allies are (among both players and AI). For example, a mission can contain the two roles "thief" and "guard": Players who join the thief team spawn outside of a house which they must enter and rob, and will be attacked by both guard AI's and guard players. Players who join the guard team instead will spawn in the house and be friends with guard AI's, while their objective is to find and kill all players in the thief team. I imagine this would require greater coding and refractoring some existing mechanics though. Obviously there would be limitations and concerns to playing online. The most obvious is that saving and loading would no longer be possible, and once a player is dead they must be turned into a floating spectator. Another issue is that unlike FPS games, TDM would be more prone to trolling in an online environment. For example, if there's an objective which requires you to not kill someone, a troublemaker can do so and end the game for all players. Some players might also feel like killing everyone in sight, making others who prefer stealth feel that the game is being ruined.

Played it, and it was nice! I like the idea of each difficulty level representing a night, on the same map but with different objectives and something changing each time. This made the mission feel more progressive and complete than many, and it's an idea I'd like to see adopted more often personally.

Ok... I was hoping the new alarm entities mentioned above can do this too. Perhaps buttons (and other interactive entities) should themselves have an alert level parameter, which causes an AI to run to them and use them when alert... this way they can be used for more than just triggering alarms. Part of the code to do this might already be there too: Sometimes, instead of attacking you when seeing you, an enemy AI will run to another room and alert other guards. Perhaps part of that system can be reused?

Nice. What about the AI triggering an alarm themselves when alert? Can they be easily configured to push a button when getting past a certain alert level?

To partly answer my own question, and help anyone else who is looking for this: The md5 exporter for Blender can be found over on this page. The latest version appears to be for 2.63, but I assume it should still work for 2.73.

Thanks for the info, I will look. Note that for characters, I don't plan to create new animations, and mostly seek to rig new models to the existing TDM character skeleton and animations. And I have experience with doing both. I am however not very skilled at it... I've made few models from scratch, and a few more animations. Usually I improve / port / whatever content created and made freely available by other people... of course under a free and compatible license.

Aha... I now remember that taking those crowns off didn't add damage in the mission statics screen at the end. Good to know for when I'll start mission making, thanks.

I'm part of the minority who plays games on Linux using the free video drivers (MESA / Gallium / AMD BARTS). My video cart is an ATI Radeon 6870, which is a few years old but still very good. I didn't enable FPS display in-game, to measure exactly how much I get. Certainly I don't have 60 FPS all the time, and I suspect I rarely get so much at all... which is understandable considering the expenses of dynamic lighting. At the same time however, I cannot complain, and can say I get the performance I was looking for and expected. On my laptop things are different though (Mobility Radeon 5470). FPS is very low... I'd estimate somewhere between 10 and 30 at best. It's just enough to make TDM playable in reasonable conditions I guess.

This isn't really a bug although it is a technical question, so I hope it's in the right section. I use Blender 3D for some time, including to mod certain games. It's likely that I'll want to create a few models for DarkMod... not necessarily map props, but even new weapons and characters. I was wondering if there's a guide on how to export animated models from Blender 2.7x into the format used by TDM and idTech4. I noticed that most models are md5 files, so I assume I only need a md5 exporter? What about textures... can they be png, should they be tga, or is it best to export them as dds? Are there otherwise requirements to what the structure of a skeletal animation must be, how animations must be marked or ordered, how joints should be configured for ragdolls to work properly, or anything else I should be on the lookout for? Additionally, I was wondering if I can find the model sources for the existing weapons and characters. So I can import them in Blender, do modifications as appropriate, and re-export them. Ideally there are .blend sources of the characters and other stuff somewhere... if not is there a md5 importer, which preserves both the mesh (at maximum quality) and skeleton and animations?

I'll check that mission out, thanks. And I looked at Stim & Response in DarkRadiant briefly, although I couldn't understand them well yet (mainly because the menu is very buggy). But from what I did understand, poisoning a food item could be done by enabling a special property on it, then the AI interacting with it simply causes their health to become 0 or another effect. I am however not sure how well the AI understands picking up an item and delivering it to a character or location.

A few stealth games (such as No One Lives Forever 2) had this fun little feature for some assassination missions: A few minutes after the map starts or after the player enters a certain area, a servant brings your target a plate with something to eat or drink. If the player is quick enough, one way of completing their mission is putting poison inside the dish without being seen, then watching from a distance as their target consumes it and dies then everyone bursts into chaos. I was wondering how possible this is to do in TDM, if anyone wrote any scripts for it, or if some missions already attempted this. The first step would be adding a new item called poison... which the player can select, look at and highlight a food object in the world (such as wine glasses, plates, apples, bread, etc), and press the "use" key to poison that item. The second and more difficult step is programming an AI to consume food items... in some cases by randomly picking them from a table as they patrol near it, in others by sitting at a table where dinner is already prepared (the player must get there and poison it before the AI arrive to eat), and in others by having a servant go to another room and deliver the food to them. An obstacle might be the requirement of new animations (eating and drinking)... plus new voices for the AI ordering food / drink, talking to themselves as they take food from a table, as well as allies yelling "someone has been poisoned" when the victim dies in front of them. In any case, I think the implementation should be a flexible one... so missions can let the player booby trap any kind of special item. For example, one room could contain a music box, which the AI will eventually ask someone to deliver to them. The player is given a miniature bomb at the start of the mission, which they can plant inside this music box before that happens. When the AI receives the box and opens it to listen to the music, they blow up and die. Or the trap could be a gas bomb, and opening the music box releases gas and everyone in the room falls asleep. The system could also be used for constructive purposes... like the player hiding a dagger in a prisoner's soup (after guards checked it) in order to smuggle a weapon to a friend in jail, once the AI takes the plate and brings it to them.

Thank you, it is at last working! I had to put the new definitions in darkmod/def/tdm_ai_monster_spider.def. The file must be named precisely that to override the original... I was naming it zzz.def because I thought alphabetical order mattered more, which is why it wasn't working.

Okay, I have a solution for op! I finally managed to get giant spiders removed, and the trick should work for any other entity: First of all, create a directory named def in your darkmod folder, in it a file named whatever.def, and write empty entity definitions for all the undead AI. See this postfor how I did it with spiders, and simply modify the entity names to the undead characters... which you can find in the DarkRadiant entity list or if you open tdm_ai_humanoid_undead01.pk4 (as a zip archive) and look inside the def/*.def files for each entityDef line. Lastly, remove tdm_ai_humanoid_undead01.pk4 (move it somewhere outside the Darkmod folder) and the undead AI should now be gone from the map. I'm trying to make the addon not require removing the original file and just overwrite the default entities, but so far this didn't work for me. Please keep in mind that doing this means cheating, because it removes enemies from the map! I only suggest doing it if (like myself with spiders) seeing undead triggers a strong phobia that prevents you from playing in comfortable conditions. In your case I'd seek replacing undead with soldiers... but since they have different properties, that might break things much more than simply removing them.

Alright... appar ently this does work if I also remove tdm_ai_monsters_spiders01.pk4. The new def file is still needed in this case, since maps with spiders crash if the entity definitions aren't detected. Any thoughts on how to make it work without having to remove the original pk4? Or is overwriting the original entity definitions via a pk4 addon not possible?

Fixed, but still nothing

I tried the latest suggestions, but nothing is working. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong please? // Remove giant spiders for players with arachnophobia entityDef atdm:ai_spider{ inherit "target_null" "hide" "1" } entityDef atdm:ai_spider_child{ inherit "target_null" "hide" "1" } entityDef atdm:ai_spider_huge{ inherit "target_null" "hide" "1" } entityDef atdm:ai_spider_huge02{ inherit "target_null" "hide" "1" } entityDef atdm:ai_spider_thin{ inherit "target_null" "hide" "1" }

Hehe, I recently made a thread asking how to remove giant spiders, since those scare me badly. I don't have a problem with the undead, unless I'm looking at some from way too up close perhaps... either way I know the feeling well. All I know is that the official FM list on the website has a field mentioning which maps have undead and / or giant spiders. Not fully sure how to remove them yet, but this was discussed in my spiders thread... apparently you can nullify the entities to remove them, if you're okay with some cheating.

I understand they're not bad creatures as well. Even if insects creep me out, I hate the idea of killing any, and I even think most are nice in their way. Like I said, a phobia like mine isn't a conscious fear of spiders nor related to thinking I might be in any danger, but an uncontrolled hardwired reaction that gives me a strong negative feeling upon seeing one. It makes no sense really... but it's there.

I was thinking about that as well. But we'd need to suppress the animation system, so TDM won't crash when it notices a spoon doesn't have the properties of the spider model. I don't know enough about how idTech4 expects entities to work to say if this is possible, but I assume it would take some rather complex scripting.

That's interesting, and sounds like a different form than mine. For me, the fear isn't really about spiders being there, such as worrying that they might bite me or be a danger... but it appears to be strictly related to their appearance and the way they look, hence why they scare me both IRL and on a screen. I know that IRL, I could hold a normal spider in my hand and absolutely nothing bad would happen... yet for some reason it scares me like hell to even see a larger one.

I got to the third mission... but I cannot finish it due to a bug