MirceaKitsune

I've been giving more thought to this, and to what I'm looking to achieve exactly. This is most relevant to my long dream of creating a lengthy FOSS single-player game based on stealth and interaction with large open worlds... series like DeusEx or No One Lives Forever are great examples of what I have in mind. Since such campaigns focus more on art and visual representation compared to simple missions, I'd want each area to offer items and weapons related to its activity or culture. I even plan to create custom items that do miscellaneous things... like foods you can take in inventory and consume to regain health, alcoholic drinks which make the view shake when you consume them (get you drunk), or cigars which cause a smoke puff when used and reduce a bit of health. Some examples: If one area of a city is controlled by guards and another is controlled by a gang, the part under authority's control should contain quality swords used by soldiers, while the gang controlled zone should instead offer daggers and bats for melee. Further more, some campaigns might spread their action across different countries, with a different mission taking place in each. So for example, a town in Europe would use the existing bow + arrows and sword, but one in China would use suriken and a katana sword instead... and we'd want the player to be able to drop his European sword for the Asian one(s) if and where he sees fit. Same with eye-candy items like beverages or snacks... you should find (the steampunk variant of) chips in a British tavern, but rice inside a Japanese restaurant. This would be awesome! But I realize it pushes the boundaries of what TDM is intended for. Since the scripting system is so flexible however, it's hopefully not crazy to consider either. In any case, what I'm looking for is clearly custom weapon definitions. Now that I understand some TDM mechanics better, I wanted to ask a few specific questions, if anyone knows and could kindly take the time to answer: Is it possible to simply not load the default weapons inside a mission (blackjack, sword, bow + arrows) so they can be replaced with custom weapon definitions, by allowing missions to blacklist or exclude the default weapon scripts? Simply not placing them on your map might suffice... but custom weapons could also need the weapon slots freed, so a custom sword can still use the "2" key (even if they're limited to 13).Is there any way to limit the number of weapons the player can carry at a time? I assume that at worst, a script can be called on each weapon pickup... which checks how many weapons you are carrying, and if you have more than the limit it simply erases one from your inventory and drops it in front of you, then gives you the new one. Is there another way too?Is there any way to make weapon keybinds more flexible, or is every weapon definition assigned to a specific key and nothing can be done? A configurable hotbar where you drag items on any slot is likely out of the question... but maybe multiple weapons could be forced to use the same key (so "2" cycles through all swords if you have many), or the number keys could represent weapons in the order in which you pick them up. The 1 to 9 keys could use custom commands rather than the engine's impulses, if a mission can override them however.What are the exact features custom weapon definitions currently support? First of all, can they have all existing behaviors of the default weapons... such as swords being able to also parry attacks, or the blackjack only knocking people out when hitting the head? Second, I was wondering if bullet weapons are possible to define, and if reloading could be scripted.Can the weapons an AI uses and drops on death act as pickups? I noticed that if you kill a guard, his sword drops to the ground... but if you pick it up, it's just a dynamic object which you can move around. In this case I'd want the item to still be a physical object, but act as a pickup instead when highlighted and used.How do the player's hands seen in 1st person perspective work, in regard to object definition and animation? Are the hands themselves their own entity, with the sword / blackjack / etc attached separately? I'd like to know if for each weapon, you'd have to export a whole new set of 1st person hands, or if the model of a new weapon can simply be attached to the existing ones. A crowbar model can then just replace the blackjack's model, since the appearance and animation of the hand would stay the same.Lastly, I'd love to see any example scripts or missions that do this, and play a map with custom weapons. If you know of any, please mention them here!

Yeah... one annoying thing about Linux is that some programs have to put up versions for various distributions specifically, rather than just THE Linux version. I heard this is due to varying library paths, not sure if there are other reasons involved. Still, there are programs which work around this, and simply offer a tar.gz package which any Linux user just unpacks and runs the binary from. Is this not possible for DarkRadiant too?

DarkRadiant already has a lot of awesome features, and it's hard to imagine what could be even further improved from this perspective. Something might come to mind as I get even more familiar with it. My biggest wish would instead be better Linux support: I'm getting tons of bugs after I managed to compile it on my openSUSE 13.2 machine, which I reported around this forum section. And most of all release versions for Linux please, as the Sourceforge page offers only the Windows software. That forces us Linux users to compile DR on our own... which usually works out, but can get problematic and buggy quickly.

Ahhh stupid me, I do have wxWidgets 3! The package is named differently so I didn't notice... there's wxWidgets-devel and wxWidgets-3_0-devel, and I have the later installed. But some libwx packages (non-devel) are 2.8 whereas others are 3.0, but they're only libraries. Not sure if this mixture of versions might be relevant... although I'd likely get severe compilation errors or greater issues if a package conflict was taking place, so it's likely something in the DarkRadiant code.

I found and reported many major problems in GIT master during the last days, some making DR nearly unusable on Linux. I'm not sure which are specific to the 2.0.2 pre-release, but I'll mention the relevant threads if anyone can please take a closer look: Distant geometry renders in front of closer geometry Incorrect VIS portal format in mapname.proc "Wrong type" error window spam in certain menus

That's kind of overkill, and I'm not even sure if it will work. But I might try it, sure. Is this certain? All other menus in DarkRadiant work well for me, it's only a few that create this popup. Which from what I understood in the thread I linked, is just a check the wxWidgets developers added a while ago, though without a way to disable it... meaning it's not a fatal problem and could be ignored. That thread also discusses a solution I believe... this is supposedly related to a type conversion. But I certainly believe DarkRadiant should remain able to work with 2.8 for the time being! My distribution (openSUSE 13.2) doesn't offer 3.0 anywhere, and this would mean DR would be unusable for another half an year until they update it Some programs rush to use the latest libraries all the time, and this is often bad news for Linux distros with slightly slower release cycles. http://software.opensuse.org/package/wxWidgets

Ah... didn't know about that. Hope all traces of this personal war were removed from the TDM engine, so it can run as fast as possible on ATI cards as well. For me, performance is currently as good as I'd expect it to be, and not a noticeable problem at all... although I do feel that it could still be much faster and even more optimized.

Yet another weird error appears to happen in latest DarkRadiant GIT master, causing an infinite window spam and even blocking me from normally closing the application at times. Apparently, the menus for some DarkRadiant plugins (I notice this in the Stim/Response, Objectives, Conversation Editor windows especially) constantly cause popups containing this message, when entries are added or selected in some lists: Apparently this is related to wxWidgets. My version is 2.8.12. I found a thread on their forums discussing this problem. Can someone please fix this in all of the affected plugins, or point out a way to get rid of the spam somehow so I can use the menus? As a separate issue, it also seems that right-clicking the list field in the Stim/Response window crashes DarkRadiant, with this getting printed in the console: mircea@linux-qz0r:~/Games/Quake/TheDarkMod/DarkRadiant_GIT/install/bin> ./darkradiant ATTENTION: default value of option allow_glsl_extension_directive_midshader overridden by environment. (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_path_is_selected: assertion 'path != NULL' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_select_path: assertion 'path != NULL' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_path_is_selected: assertion 'path != NULL' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_select_path: assertion 'path != NULL' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_path_is_selected: assertion 'path != NULL' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_select_path: assertion 'path != NULL' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_path_is_selected: assertion 'path != NULL' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_select_path: assertion 'path != NULL' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_view_set_fixed_height_mode: assertion 'gtk_tree_view_column_get_sizing (c) == GTK_TREE_VIEW_COLUMN_FIXED' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_view_set_fixed_height_mode: assertion 'gtk_tree_view_column_get_sizing (c) == GTK_TREE_VIEW_COLUMN_FIXED' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_view_set_fixed_height_mode: assertion 'gtk_tree_view_column_get_sizing (c) == GTK_TREE_VIEW_COLUMN_FIXED' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_view_set_fixed_height_mode: assertion 'gtk_tree_view_column_get_sizing (c) == GTK_TREE_VIEW_COLUMN_FIXED' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_path_is_selected: assertion 'path != NULL' failed (darkradiant:21462): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tree_selection_select_path: assertion 'path != NULL' failed Segmentation fault mircea@linux-qz0r:~/Games/Quake/TheDarkMod/DarkRadiant_GIT/install/bin>

Yep... that was it. I remember that I saw a message saying DarkMod plugins are disabled during ./configure, but didn't know what that meant at the time so it slipped me. I added --enable-darkmod-plugins and now I get these menus and even a few more (like a conversation editor). Thanks for the help!

I didn't look at the latest Unreal engine. But in my opinion, idTech 4 is a fantastic engine, and even now after so many years its rendering techniques give me everything I want to see. Of course technology will advance, and its current lighting / texturing / modeling systems might be seen as ancient a decade from now... at this day however it's modern enough for me. Also, I have an ATI card, and even run the free Linux video drivers. TDM works perfectly with it, and there are no graphical or performance issues of any sort. idSoftware and AMD are both closer to the world of open-source, and overall I don't think they hate each other at all

I found a few things I think, I will look at them soon. http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Scripting_basics http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Scripting

I followed the entire tutorial, and it was very helpful! If yesterday I had no idea how DarkMod mapping even works, I think I could now create my own missions... at least after I fix all the problems DarkRadiant throws at me. I have one more question however, which is not DarkRadiant specific but related: Is there a tutorial on defining your own entities? How would you use the existing models to create your own AI characters, functional candles, custom item and weapon definitions, etc? I know these defined in a text file, in def format with examples existent in tdm_defs01.pk4 or the various AI pk4's. But are there some basics to easily creating my own?

I run DarkRadiant from latest GIT master... which I have to given that official releases aren't distributed for Linux Anyway if there's anything specific that needs testing, let me know and I can look anytime.

Sorry for opening yet another thread about a DarkRadiant issue. I noticed that certain menus and features are referenced on some pages, yet I cannot find them anywhere. I'm thinking this might be related to the plugin system and modules not working, although I didn't see any compilation errors during make. Important things I could find which appear to be missing are: - Stim/Response editor: - Readable editor: - Objective editor: I'd really like to get them running, since they would save me a lot of manual work. Why is it that I get some features (like the Light Inspector and Particle Editor) but not the above menus? I used 'configure' followed by 'make install' to compile DR, and here my modules from the About menu: ArchivePK4, Camera, Clipper, CommandSystem, Counters, Doom3BrushCreator, Doom3EntityCreator, Doom3MapLoader, Doom3PrefabLoader, EClassTree, EntityClassManager, EntityInspector, EntityList, EventManager, FileTypes, FilterSystem, FontManager, GameManager, Grid, ImageLoader, LayerSystem, MD5AnimationCache, MainFrame, MainFrameLayoutManager, Map, MapCompiler, MapFormatManager, MapResourceManager, MaterialManager, ModelCache, ModelLoader3DS, ModelLoaderASE, ModelLoaderFM, ModelLoaderLWO, ModelLoaderMD2, ModelLoaderMD3, ModelLoaderMD5MESH, ModelLoaderMDC, ModelLoaderMS3D, ModelLoaderOBJ, ModelLoaderPICOTERRAIN, ModelSkinCache, NamespaceFactory, OpenGL, OrthoContextMenu, OrthoviewManager, ParticlesEditor, ParticlesManager, PatchModuleDef2, PatchModuleDef3, PreferenceSystem, Quake3MapLoader, Quake4MapLoader, Radiant, RenderSystemFactory, SceneGraph, SceneGraphFactory, ScriptingSystem, SelectionSetManager, SelectionSystem, ShaderCache, UIManager, UndoSystem, VirtualFileSystem, WaveFrontExporter, XMLRegistry

Fixed in the original GIT master, it now compiles and works properly. Thanks for the help!

I discovered an issue with VIS portals while working on a simple test map. It might be a compatibility problem between the TDM 2.02 engine and DarkRadiant GIT master, but anyway: When starting up the map, I'm taken to the console where an error of the following format is printed in red text: I opened up the mapname.proc file in a text editor and looked at the line in cause, which is apparently the definition of a VIS portal as 4 corners. Apparently DarkMod doesn't like it when the values are defined between a single set of parenthesis, and expects each point to be defined between its own. To fix the problem, I had to manually change this line into this: /* iap 0 */ 4 2 1 ( 128 76 160 128 116 160 128 116 232 128 76 232 ) /* iap 0 */ 4 2 1 ( 128 76 160 ) ( 128 116 160 ) ( 128 116 232 ) ( 128 76 232 )Is it the engine's fault for not understanding the first line, or the fault of 'dmap' for not generating the second line? In any case, how do I fix this, so I won't have to correct those lines manually?

I'm from Romania. Also a game dev (sort of) for a few years, so I might look into contributing a translation at some point.

I use Linux and prefer sticking to open-source software exclusively. Epic Games aren't as awesome as ID Software, and never outsource their engines after a number of years

Sorry about that: Linux openSUSE 13.2 x64. ATI Radeon HD 6870. MESA 10.3.0, Gallium 0.4 on AMD BARTS.

Hello. I am experiencing a strange issue with the 3D viewport in DarkRadiant; Distant geometry cuts through closer geometry, causing some surfaces and objects to show in front of those closer than them to the camera. Has anyone else gotten this glitch, and does anyone know how to fix it? I'm running latest GIT master of DarkRadiant. A screenshot of the problem: [EDIT] The cause of the issue was at last found and a patch was posted. See this post for more details.

Thank you! I will check those out, and ask if I have more questions.

After many struggles, I managed to get DarkRadiant compiling and starting up on my Linux machine. Since I'm an old Nexuiz / Xonotic user, I'm familiar with the original gtkRadiant and its fork netRadiant, and all basics regarding brushes and texturing. The brush tools in DR are almost the same, which makes getting started a lot easier. But DarkMod and its mission creation systems are obviously a lot more complex than what I did in the past, and there are a lot of new features and changes. I looked for video tutorials, but couldn't find much to get me started. First of all, I'd like help understanding the various new features in DR, which didn't exist in gtkRadiant. There are new menus and concepts... such as a window to edit and preview particle systems. I also don't understand how Darkmod entities are defined or placed on maps yet, and how you can create your own NPC characters or items or weapons for a mission. Then how to teach NPC's to patrol a specific area, and how they navigate the world and walk to targets to begin with (I assume there's no dynamic pathfinding system). And how do you do simple stuff like switches controlling specific lights or doors, as well as complex scripts to add advanced actions and reactions across a level? Lastly, I noticed that idTech4 doesn't use bsp files, which Radiant would previously compile the map into... instead map files appear to be used directly by the engine. I was wondering if I understood this right, and if clicking the "save" button in DarkRadiant updates the real map file used by DarkMod... or do I still need to compile parts of the map separately (such as VIS)? On top of understanding the technical functionality, I'd also like some tips and tricks on how to create a good looking map. What's the most efficient way to make a detailed city... with doors and windows that open, lots of physical objects like crates and vases, as well as the eye candy like the god-rays and dust seen in front of some windows?

Awesome. Sounds like what I'm looking for is a campaign... where each map is an individual single mission, but you go through them in order and as a whole. Will certainly dive into it eventually, after I learn to make simple missions first.