MirceaKitsune

I will keep that in mind as well. For now I have a problem that has been pestering me for some time: Whenever I cap a cylinder, the texture stretches around two ends of the circular surface. No settings I can find in the Surface menu offer any solution! I need to fix this in order to have circular islands for roads and the like. Any thoughts?

The legs work perfectly fine: I remember I had to adjust the vertex weights a few times, but they turned out very well and natural looking! I believe the tail is weighted to the spine bone and the ears to the head. I didn't add any new bones or animations, all characters use the builtin skeleton and its animations only. It should also be noted that I got the face rig working too, so blinking and lip-syncing also work great. But the tail doesn't have use for new bones anyway, since it's actually an attached lwo. The characters are made out of 4 parts: The body (md5), the head (md5), the tail (lwo, attached to the body), and optionally hair (lwo, attached to the head). This was both to make it easier to mix species using universal bodies, and also because I'll make the head and tail work with existing bodies too (for guards, priests, etc).

That's helpful, thanks! I must indeed keep in mind to isolate certain areas in the city via tunnels, so that I may use vis portals to keep performance acceptable. Otherwise I will be working mostly with square brushes, and it will be up to me to figure out how to add each detail and special effect.

Not the kind of thing I'm normally going for. But sure... any idea that makes for an interesting mission is welcome

Also, I apologize for the lack of screenshots: I didn't make a lot of good ones after normal / specular / cube maps were added. Most were posted in the "What are you working on" thread, but of course not everyone follows that. Here are a few I still have which I took during the final tests: The only things that upset me are the visible seam around the neck, as well as the hair looking weird sometimes (due to bad alpha sorting). I'm not sure if and when and how I can fix those problems, but until then the current versions will have to do. Putting that aside, I feel they turned out pretty realistic and fitting to the atmosphere!

Hmmm... I didn't think about laying that out better. In a nutshell, they are intended for FM's that take place in different time lines (of natural evolution) where anthro animals have evolved alongside humans, but are otherwise in the same medieval / steampunk style. As I later add definitions using the heads and tails with existing bodies, they will be able to have any job and be part of any social class... such as guards, maids, drunks, etc. So I imagine mission layouts generally being the same: You play as a human employed to carry out given missions in urban areas (usually to steal stuff), but in some towns and houses you will encounter other intelligent races too. They'll still have loot you can steal, notes you can read, patrol an area as you hide in dark spots, etc. The main differences will be in the story: Anthros will obviously have somewhat different habits and personalities, and it's easy to imagine a world where there is some racism between them and humans. If anyone wants a good example of the general mood I visualize, the webcomic Twokinds is a nice one. Even if you're not a furry, it's probably something you will enjoy giving a read to: http://twokinds.keenspot.com/

Well this is technically a newbie question. I do feel a little shy to post it, as I'm quite familiar with gtkRadiant in general (early Nexuiz / Xonotic days)... this is a technique question though. Does anyone have any good tutorials on how to create good looking towns and interiors in DarkRadiant (ideally a video)? Not to be confused with instructions on how to make brushes or place entities, which again I already know: I'm trying to understand what the most efficient way to design a city in DR is, and which brushwork techniques and design approaches and assets are best. There are so many features and aspects to be aware of that I'd rather not start mapping more before someone more experienced offers a few tips and tricks.

Some things I will just suggest, others I might take time to implement on my own. It depends on how difficult it is, how much it motivates me, and how likely it is that someone else could do it more easily. Making feature complete and functional TDM characters is actually quite complex... in this case my skill with Blender and GIMP ultimately helped me, so I could produce everything needed to make this fully functional. A variety of FM's are created frequently, so I imagine someone will use this at some point, hence why I share it as an easily installable plugin. Of course I plan to make my own FM's with it too at some point.

The TDM characters I made use transparent hair, as well as some of the females in vanilla TDM I believe. But it might take a bit of playing with the blend modes, namely to get around alpha sorting and brightness issues.

I know I'm reviving an old thread again... please don't kill me as it's (hopefully) with good reason! I often browse Blendswap for models, and recently found something that would be perfect for a TDM pet. It's actually not a dog, rather a wolf... still I think it would fit perfectly within the TDM universe for this purpose! What do you think? http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/24800 Frankly it has a load of advantages that make it a worthy candidate: Really good quality and visual fidelity, including fur using transparent textures.The model is very low-poly and therefore great for performance (1569 polygons).It already contains a set of animations, including idle / walking / running / crouching / sitting.Licensed under the permissive CC-BY (to Dennis Haupt).As far as I'm aware, the only additions that would be needed are sleep and attack animations, as well as a lower polygon version of the mesh for shadow casting. I'd try to integrate it myself... however I'm not experienced with exporting custom rigs and animation definitions, and I'm also burnt out after working on my own character set. If anyone wants, I can further prepare the blend file and generate the shadow mesh, and maybe make a few color variations for the fur... but I think someone else should mess with the animations and export it best.

Hmmm. I see the problem, but I wonder whether this is a good or bad thing. If we're talking realism, the torch should simply run out of oxygen and go out! Then again, if we're talking full realism, the cup would catch on fire or melt before that If my opinion matters, I think torches and candles should just go out if a physical entity is kept on top of them for too long (eg: 3 seconds). Not sure about the gameplay implications though: I imagine it can't be abused since the player must be standing near a torch to turn it off with this technique... still they can pretty much put off torches by using anything they can grab in the environment! That's pretty much the same result as this bug however, so not sure what solution is best.

Is the gamma affected system-wide, or only in TDM? If the gamma was permanently modified in Windows, find the gamma slider in the Display menu (somewhere in Control Panel) and simply move the slider back and forth once to reset it. I know because I've had many games do this to my system in the past, as well as permanently changing the resolution... on both Windows and Linux! This is typical after a crash, if Windows relies on the engine to tell it when to set the resolution back after a clean exist.

So I know this is a rather old thread. The reason I decided to revive it is because earlier today, I posted something that's relevant to what has been last discussed. More specifically one of the first examples of a TDM mod, which explains why I suggested a mod management mechanism. You can get the character set over here. It meets what I consider the three essential criteria: It's large (about 400 MB), complex (lots of entity definitions and texture combinations) and will be further updated in the future.It's meant to be used by fan missions.It's unlikely to be accepted as part of TDM by default, mainly due to thematic reasons.Obviously this is not to suggest that such a system should exist for just one mod! It's only one example I can offer right now, in response to the "let's think of a mod system once there are mods" argument. There might be more on the way too... someone seems to be working on a Martian character for instance. For now, the installation instructions I included suggest cloning the repository and copying the directories into the FM in cause. This will work but has the problems I mentioned at the time: Every FM that includes it will become huge, whereas any update I make will have to be manually integrated by each FM in part.

FYI: The anthros mod is finally available to the public! http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18439-anthro-characters/

I like this! I'm curious to see how it will look like in a mission

After several months of working on this project, I'm happy to finally announce the release of my anthro character set for The Dark Mod! The package contains anthropomorphic characters for use in fan missions, with which artists can include furries as part of their story. Below is the repository, as well as a short FAQ describing the mod in more detail. GitHub repository How do I install the mod?The character set is meant to be used with fan missions. To include it, first clone the GitHub repository mentioned above somewhere on your drive. Then simply copy all of the directories into the root directory of your FM (eg: darkmod/fms/myfm/). You should now be able to find the characters in DarkRadiant under the AI section and add them to your map! What characters are included?There are 5 species, 7 overall fur patterns, 3 character definitions per race, plus male and female versions of each person. Races include wolves, foxes, leopards, squirrels, rabbits. Voices, personalities, as well as other traits were carefully tweaked to match each character as closely as possible. What license is the mod, and who are the authors?The initial model and texture were created by Untied Verbeger, who publicizes his works under the CC0 license. As such, the anthro models and textures are themselves licensed under CC0 / PD. The characters included were based on his wolf model, to which I made several fixes and contributions in the past. Obviously it's meant to work with other assets in TDM, which have their own licenses (typically CC-BY-NC-SA). The original model and authors can be found on Blendswap at: http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/79735 http://www.blendswap.com/user/Verbeger http://www.blendswap.com/user/MirceaKitsune Wait... so was this made by furries?The mod was put together by me (MirceaKitsune) and I am indeed a furry. I chose to clarify this as I'd like to avoid negative remarks on the aspect; This is a contribution I made with enthusiasm and attention to detail for The Dark Mod, same as all contributions done by other artists in the TDM community. I've spent a lot of time adapting the mesh, rigging it, creating the materials, setting up definitions, and testing against long loading times. I don't care whether someone has a negative opinion of the furry community, but please respect the work that was put into this project at least. How can I support the mod?Although the mod itself is released under a free license, I won't accept financial contributions, in order to respect the wish of the community for The Dark Mod to not be used commercially. The most important way in which you can support my mod is to use it: If you're a fantasy mission creator who is a fan of anthro characters, include this into your FM and add the characters to your world! Also, if you notice any bugs or wish to improve something, feel free to inform me or send me your contribution or open a pull request on GitHub. Lastly, if you believe the characters might match the theme and quality standards needed for inclusion, support adding them to The Dark Mod!

Just for clarification: The screenshots I posted were before I added the normal and specular maps. Final versions include the normal texture for fur depth and other details, specular images that make the fur and hair slightly shiny, and I even put in cubemap reflections for the eyes. The models just made it to GIT last night, and more info will come during the course of today. I find them realistic enough for now, but in any case this is as good as it gets (unless we add realtime fur simulation to idTech 4 ). Here's some screenshots for those curious until then:

The model and texture are almost finished, I don't plan on making major changes. I am however happy(ish) with their realism! Especially now that normal and specular maps were done, after the last screenshots last night. I'm hoping to publicize the mod on GIT soon, after the final touches are executed. The character set does aim for equal quality to other TDM NPC's, though I doubt they will ever be accepted over thematic reasons.

Next up, kitties!

Guess what I'm back to working on

I'd advice a honest but technically understandable term for everyone in their descriptions. Something like: "Notice: Oscillating lights can't make use of light caching, and are more performance intensive than static lights".

Ah... I see. I didn't know of this difference until today... I'd imagine many mappers wouldn't either until being around for long enough. Maybe having a clearer distinction between the two can help, so mappers are aware and can be encouraged to use non-oscillating lights in most cases? I'm still curious about a few things however: - Was light caching tested and working for torch entities that don't use oscillating lights, as well as electrical lamps? Or does it only work for the classic light entities, which there's pretty much no point to using in TDM nowadays? - Would it be possible to cache movable light sources as well (like candles) as long as they aren't being moved? Since they can be repositioned by the player, I imagine dmap can't handle this kind of caching. - What do the devs think about my LOD idea for oscillating lights? Could the effect be distance based, so even lights that use it can have a lighter performance decrease on larger maps?

The problem is that as far as I'm aware, it's used by all of the torch entities. Radiant encourages mappers to go ahead and place those all the time, since they're the easiest solution... I attempted to make a map some time ago, and they were definitely the first and only option that jumped to my attention! So ultimately, maps end up using oscillating lights everywhere. There might be a better solution however: Oscillation could be distance based instead. This could rely on a multiplier, ideally cvar controlled... which let's say is 1.0 when the player is 5 meters away or closer, 0.5 when they're 7.5 meters away, 0.0 when 10 meters away or farther. This gradually decreases oscillation, then makes sure that lights farther than 10 meters disable it entirely and can make use of caching! At that distance you probably don't notice it anyway, so this would maintain the effect while improving performance for large maps. Perhaps this solution is more worth considering?

I didn't check the names specifically, but I am indeed referring to that oscillation. It's a nice effect, but if the light's origin moves all the time you can't make use of this important optimization. Couldn't movable light sources be cached in realtime somehow? As long as a candle is sitting still on a table, and of course nothing within the light's radius animates, this should theoretically be possible! Same for dropped torches (that have stopped rolling around) and even the player's lantern (as long as they're standing perfectly still). But this might be less of a problem for starters, since most maps don't have a lot of movable lights from what I've seen (like candles). Most lights are torches mounted on walls, and not the type guards can pick up and run around with. If even those could be cached, the performance improvements might be huge! I assume what you mentioned only works for classic light entities though, not lights that are part of any entity definition (which would include all types of torches).

I recently saw a post about the functionality of the idTech 6 engine, which brought this suggestion to my attention. It's actually a simple and trivial improvement, although I can imagine people missing it and not thinking about its absence. Also keep in mind I don't know the lighting code of TDM, and everything I say is purely out of observation. Like most engines that use dynamic lighting, TDM tends to have considerable performance issues when a lot of lights are rendered at once. This is often because of shadows and possibly other calculations. A common way to prevent extra computation in the renderer is caching all lights, and only updating each one when necessary. Meaning either the light itself has moved, or something is moving in front of the light. If both the light and the geometry it affects are static, there is nothing to recalculate, which offers a significant performance boost. TDM has a serious problem here: Even if the engine already knows how to cache lights, every torch has a moving light source! If you look closely at a torch, you'll notice its shadows constantly bob around. While this makes sense aesthetically, it also means that light will be recalculated each frame... even if the torch is mounted on a wall and no physical object or NPC is currently moving within its radius. Since most maps use torches and have areas where characters don't walk in front of them, I see a notable performance improvement being lost here. My personal suggestion: First of all, does idTech 4 support light caching for static lights + geometry to begin with? If somehow the original engine didn't have that, I definitely think it should be patched in! Once that's solved, I believe moving light sources for flame based lights should be controlled by a cvar; If people are okay with the performance loss, they can enable that to get bobbing shadows... if not, disable to allow torch lights to be cached and improve overall FPS. An idea to compensate for the visual loss: Can't we use an animated light texture to simulate moving flames altogether, as well as pulsating brightness? The light bobbing looks pretty extreme anyway: In real life, candles have a smooth flame that casts a neat shadow, and shadows don't always move that chaotically even when it's a noisier flame like a campfire.