grayman

I have a 5-year-old computer. It plays Doom 3 well, and for the most part plays TDM well. Though there are a couple spots in a few FMs where it almost freezes, and I can't get out of the starting alley in RttC, I've been able to play FMs just fine. Anything above 10FPS plays smoothly. In my Vertical map, I've added 3 guards in the opening scene, and by doing so, I'm encountering frame rates of 0 to 1 FPS. With the guards gone, my frame rate jumps to 30FPS. So I know it's not visportaling or the architecture. Displaying triangles and portals shows nothing excessive. Are AI really that much of a drag on the engine? Even if these guys are standing still, throwing things at me, the screen is virtually frozen. So, the question is: is there a recommended limit to the number of AI you should allow in a scene at the same time? In my case, I'm guessing 1 or 2 is as much as I can deal with. I noticed that just having a couple guys playing cards cut my frame rate in half. 'At's a lot of thinking. If everyone's running on computers that have no problems with AI, and that's the assumption FM-makers make, then I'll prolly have to switch production and gameplay over to my laptop, which is faster.

Bad assumption. Thanks to everyone for the discussion. I'm not on a hunt to eliminate unreachable areas. I was just curious how the engine treated such places and if there was a benefit to eliminating any that I happened to come across. Apparently any benefit would not be noticeable.

If there's an enclosed area not open to the void, w/o entities, and not reachable from any other part of the map, what does TDM do with it? Is there a performance advantage if I punch a hole through to the void?

Excellent! Thanks.

Would it be possible to have "Create Cylinder" create a true circle? ATM, we get a square with rounded corners. In the attached picture, the blue circle is "true", and the red line is what "Create Cylinder" gives us.

I've already used it twice in my Vert map. It holds up well. In Cleighmoor, where I'm using snow, I've had to architecturally work around the "snow falling through brushes" problem, but now I'll revisit the "faked" spots to see if the visportal box gets rid of some of the hoops I jumped through.

Here's the map (I hope). rain.map.txt

Well, I attached a *.map file to the previous post, but I don't see it anywhere. Are pictures the only valid attachments in these posts? If so, how can I make the sample map available to those interested?

There was some discussion here last December about the problem with rain and snow falling through brushes and showing up in areas where you don't want rain/snow. If a weather brush is in an area that isn't being painted, it stops producing particles. Given that, you could use the solution shown in the attached map. Dmap it and fire it up. Walk into the shelter on the right. Damp and rainy and moldy. You wouldn't want to live there. Walk into the shelter on the left. Nice and dry. You could keep your horse in there and he wouldn't get sick. Mantle onto the roofs of the shelters. Rain is falling onto each. Visportals box in the area above the dry shelter, and the area has its own rain patch. When you're up there, it's raining. When the visportals close, it stops. At least I think that's what's happening. Whether technically true or not, using visportals in this way can give you a few more dry areas if your architecture allows their use.

I haven't tried this, but can't you position the skybox camera based on the player's elevation, via scripting? Or maybe hide/show the appropriate camera from several cameras, again using scripting?

I'm all caught up. I re-extracted everything and my card-players are ready to start playing.

So DR requires the materials be extracted? I thought it simply read the pk4 files, and when those were updated, DR would pick up the updates automatically.

If you copy the func_static, create a new map, and paste what you copied, it will have the same coordinates as in the original map. Delete the original, and when you're ready to put the copy back, just do a copy/paste across the maps. Don't use "paste to camera", because that will change its coordinates.

Where can I find this prefab? It's not in the prefab set.

Ah, a prefab. Thanks!

How do you set up a couple guys playing cards? I've wandered around searching for a writeup and can't find anything. Thanks.

Good work, and just in time for the vert contest.

I tried a foglight in a 3d skybox for my vert map (buildings on the ground and the horizon fading into the gray of the fog) and it worked great except that if you looked up, the gray sky blacked out. Look up a bit farther and the gray came back. The fog would just snap in and out of the scene, depending on which way I was looking. I couldn't figure out why it was doing that, so I eventually abandoned the idea

Plant a fog light out over the water.

With the Summer Vertical contest now underway, I'm setting my WIP aside for a couple months. It's 2 maps, and has to wait for persistent data to be implemented in TDM, so it wouldn't have been released soon anyway. It's called "Cleighmoor", and starts out with you trying to retrieve your sword. http://s180.photobuc...n01/Cleighmoor/ Hope that link works. Look for the "slideshow" button. Enjoy! Critiques welcome. After all, this is my first TDM map. Edit (7/2011) ... Cleighmoor has now become the third mission in my William Steele series.

Heh. Here on the USA East Coast, the deadline is 6am. That definitely means a last-minute all-nighter! Start your engines, and get to work climbing. Or descending. Or maybe both.

Sign me up. I can begin at any time. My current maps are mainly horizontal, so focusing on verticality will be a nice change. I can't finish my current maps until the persistent data feature is available (so I can cross back and forth between maps), so they can sit on a shelf until that's supported. I'm comfortable with the current set of rules. Thanks.

1. Create the readable. Let's call it myBook. 2. Create a target_setobjective_visibility entity. Let's call it myBookRead. Add the key/value pair obj_id1/N, where N is the objective number you're adding after the note is read. 3. Add a new objective. Give it a Description of "Read My Book". 4. Edit "Read My Book". Set the proper levels. Check Mandatory and Irreversible. Uncheck Visible. 5. Add a Type and select it to edit it. Change the Type to "Readable is closed". Check the Irreversible flag. In the Readable section, select "Name of single entity" from the pulldown menu. Enter "myBook" in the field. 6. Up above this section, in the text field "Completion Target", enter "myBookRead", the name of your target_setobjective_visibility entity. That's it. When the player drops the readable, it will satisfy this new invisible objective, which will cause the creation of a new visible objective. Any questions, just ask.

I know that persistent data across maps isn't implemented yet, but I've been doing some prep work for when that day comes. I can use target_endlevel to switch back and forth between two maps. I noticed that if I have an AI in the first map and kill it, TDM crashes as it's loading the second map. I've tried this with a lanternbot and with a City Guard. If I leave the AI alive, the switch to the second map works fine. Worthy of a bug report now, or should I expect this kind of thing to get worked out when the persistent data support is added? Thanks.

Thanks. Good suggestions.