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Destined

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Everything posted by Destined

  1. Have a look at this thread: The cvar seems to be "r_newFrob", but there is also a description, how the highlight can be modified.
  2. Why not just reassign the "put away weapon"-key?
  3. This is interesting. Personally, I would not use ammonia, if I hoped to use whatever is left after the fire, because it is quite aggressive, but I think I can understand why it is more effective. And as a thief in TDM you would not care for some caustic marks. In fact, this may even make the water arrows function as a weaker gas arrow as well (it would most likely not knock out guards, but the stench would definitely irritate and maye for a short while incapacitate them)
  4. If you use a barbed arrow, that unfolds its barbs through traction, and it penetrates the wood deep enough, I could imagine that it might support the weight of a human (if the person is not too heavy), but I agree, in general the rope arrow is rather unrealistic. I think the main reason for its use are technical issues (and in case of TDM tradition from the Thief games). A grappling hook would require the rope to be pre-attached, which makes the flying behaviour more difficult to realistically depict. Also, the physics to determine if it actually holds is more complicated and it is more limited (you need a proper ledge and cannot simply use a surface). Regarding the tightrope arrow, a way I could imagine, that may require less scripting, would be to have the coil as a frobable object. When it is frobbed, it activates a damage response on the target and when it is damaged with a broadhead arrow, a line between the coil and the target is spawned or teleported in or maybe even simply unhidden. This would create the image (at least in my head) that you attach the rope of the coil on a broadhead arrow (by frobbing it), that you then shoot at the target. You may not see the rope uncoiling this way, but personally, I could live with that. I would also use a timer for the damage response, to avoid the case in which a player frobs the coil and later on shoots the target from a different position. Using broadheads would avoid to waste precious rope arrows if you miss (and make the broadheads more valuable). Another problem that just came to my mind would be that (if I remember correctly) the damage response cannot distinguish between projectiles, so it would also react to being hit by e.g. fire arrows. But I believe that it is possible via script to check which weapon is equipped. That way, the damage response could only be activated if the desired arrow type is eqipped.
  5. That is what I wanted to say: 3 dioptre difference is no slight difference. My right eye is more or less blind, while my left is much better (relatively speaking). For stereograms, the main reason that I can solve them is that they are supposed to be close to the eye. My right eye can see up to roughly 20 cm clearly, while the left eye can see up to 1 or 2 meters. So, if the stereogram remains in a close range, it is no problem for me. Anything farther than that will be a challenge or require glasses. So it is rather the distance up to which you can see with both eyes than the difference between the two (although related). As another example 3D movies with the screen several meters away are not be possible for me without glasses. Actually, the first time I got glasses was very much like putting on 3D glasses in a movie. The first time I saw a tree in 3D was very impressive for me
  6. I cannot completely agree with that. I have a difference of roughly 3 dioptre (short-sighted) between my left and right eye and have no problem seeing stereograms even without glasses on (I just tested it, just to be sure). It may depend on the way to look at them, however. I usually focus on a point behind the picture. I can also do the "cross eayed" way, but I find it is much more strenuous and only resort to it, if the images are too far apart (e.g. 3D videos that you can find that actually have two visible pictures side by side).
  7. Not sure if this is a region lock problem, but I cannot find the game on gog May have actually tried it again, if I had...
  8. Oh my god. I had completely forgotten about this game. I played it and thought it was great, but never finished it. If I remember correctly, I got stuck on a mission, where you had to fight off several waves of enemies and had some time to lay traps between each wave. I have finished the books only a couple of years ago and never made the connection between the two Still, I was able to enjoy both seperately. Makes me want to replay the game, but I fear that it is too old to enjoy for me now...
  9. This is really terrible news I drink to his memory and wish his family and friends the best!
  10. Ah, yes I remeber those. It should definitely be possible. Actually, a friend of mine wrote his "Facharbeit" (kind of a small thesis you need to write to finish your secondary school in Germany) in maths about generating these. In this case, it was only words that floated in space and no 3D models or something, but it should not be too difficult. It was "only" a small thesis for school, after all. However, for TDM I believe that it would be rather immersion breaking. And it can also be frustrating for people who cannot do it, so there should always be an alternative way to sove it.
  11. My idea would be to create a backup regular path_corner: When the player activates the trigger the target on the path_corner before the path_waitfortrigger (let's call it path_conrer_1) gets changed from the path_waitfortrigger to the backup path_corner. That way you have two cases: player is slower -> The AI reaches path_corner_1, continues to path_waitfortrigger, waits, player activates trigger, AI continues, the target on the path_corner_1 gets changed, but has no effect, as the AI is already past it. player is faster -> target on path_corner_1 is changed from path_waitfortrigger to backup path_corner, AI reaches path_corner_1, now targets backup path_corner, walks on without requiring a trigger. The only problem I would see is, if the player activates the trigger between the AI reaching path_corner_1 and the path_waitfortrigger, but if you place path_corner_1 right before the path_waitfortrigger (or even at the same place), this should reduce the time window so much, that it should not be nearly impossible to happen.
  12. I also agree: limiting screen time in general is at least as improtant as chekcing contents. I can see how easily children would spend their time in front of one, if they had a chance. I myself spent a lot of time with friends who had consoles in front of them (I never had one as a child; my parents did not like them and even at the computer we were not allow to plug in a joystick as my father had the opinion that a computer is no toy). But we also spent a lot of time outsiede, if the weather allowed it, so I believe that it was sufficiently balanced. I also agree about social media. For this I could not really give an appropriate age. There are even adults that fall into the trap of misinformation, so how should a child distinguish between "good" and "bad" content. Here, I think, a more or less constant supervision and proper education of children is very important. Not only about things they consume, but also about things they share. But this is really difficult. I would consider TDM as one of the less critical games regarding age. It contains some violence (even if you only knock out guards, in real life this would likely kill or at least properly hurt them, if you use a blackjack), but in general the goal is to avoid confrontations and find non-violent ways through the game. Playing a thief may also be considered critical, but most children know that stealing is wrong and should be able to tell that they are only allowed to do so in the game and not in the real world.
  13. I have chosen the "gap should not be too high" option, but would like to specify: I am a little torn about this topic. At first, I wanted to say that the example you gave is quite terrible, but then I remembered, that I was also exposed to games that were definitely not appropriate for my age. This was largely due to my brother (four years older), who played games that were also not really age appropriate for him and let me watch and/or play them myself. So, for example I got in contact Mortal Kombat (with all the blood and decpitation etc.), Doom and Wolfenstin, while I was in elementary school, but still I don't think that it was too damaging for my development. Of course, one could argue that the pixelated graphics made it easier to distinguish between game and reality, but when I think back on any game, the graphics I remember they had are always way better than they actually were. This lets me believe that it was still realistic enough for me at that time. Anyway, in my parents' defence I would like to say, these were games that my brother got from a friend on a disc, so they most likely did not know what these games were about or if they had any age recommendations and they usually did not bother watching us play. I am not sure if they even knew that there were such violent games at that time, so I believe for them, it was "just playing". I think your case is similar in this regard: Most likely the parents simply don't know and/or care, what their children are playing. Today, video games are much more common than then (in my case I am talking about gaming in the late 80s / early 90s) and it is more likely that parents know about violence in games, but still these parents may not have any connection to gaming and have no idea what the game is about. For me personally this would be even more reason to heed the age recommendations, but it is their choice. I want to believe that, when/if I have children, I am more involved in what they are interested in and can make an informed decision about what is appropriate for my child. I think the recommendations have their value, but if I think that my child can handle the contents of a game, I would allow it, regardless. On the other hand, if I would think that my child cannot handle a certain game even though it should be old enough, I would forbid it (or rather try to talk him/her out of it).
  14. If you are interested in more details: the spawargs are called alert_time# (with # going from 1 to 4). The lower alert states are reduced a lot quicker than the higher alert times. The times that are defined in the definition "atdm:ai_base" are: alert_time1: 5, alert_time2: 8 s, alert_time3: 25 s, and alert_time3: 65 s. These times are modified by the spawnarg alert_time#_fuzzyness, which can be (if I remember correctly) be added as well as subtracted. For alert_time4 this vlaue is 20 s, which means that the highest alert state has a range between 45 and 85 s. If you want to change these values for all AI, you can modify the aforementioned definition. However, I am sure this was tested a lot in the beginning, until people were satisfied with the times, so personally, I would not change them.
  15. This is how alerts are handled in general. There are several alert levels and each has a certain amount of time, in which no further "alert stimulus" may appear, until it is lowered to the next one below. As far as I know it is not possible to distinguish between the source of the alert level. So, even if a guard has fought against a spider, it has to go through all the alert levels to get to the "ground level". If you are interested in the exact numbers: It takes a guard 103 +/- 31.5 s to go from combat alert back to unalert. The game distinguishes between idle and alert_idle. The second state is used after a certain alert level is reached (not sure which one; it has been some time that I have looked it up and I could not find it right away, right now). This can be used by map authors for example to introduce other paths that the guards take after they have reached the alert_idle state by using the "alert_idle_only" spawnarg on path_corners. These path_corners will only be valid targets if the guard is in the alert_idle state. I am not sure if this also has other effects, like increased acuity or something similar, but cannot exclude it.
  16. This point has already been brought up, and if I remember correctly, it is currently looked into. It will still take some time to resolve, may be already included in the next update. Not sure about this. That guards continue looking makes sense. If fighting other AI contributes to the stealth score, this would be bad, but I have no idea if this is really tha case. Maybe someone else can confirm already... This is a question of style and nothing that was intended for the steampunk setting in this mod. This is an issue that mainly depends on map authors. There is always a chance that someone will like the idea and realise it for individual missions. However, it will not happen as a general thing for the mod. Please also keep in mind that this requires a lot of work: creating models for the weapons, create new definitions for these weapons and projectiles, create animations for AI (and/or the player) that use the weapons, and balancing the weapons. All stuff that many would consider not being worth the effort, given that the steampunk setting is what was intended for the mod. You may be right. However, the Thief series is the major inspiration for this mod and most people find it by looking for something similar to the series. Also, the title of the page reads "The Drak Mod - Stealth Gaming in a Gothic Steampunk World", so I think people will find the page, if they search for something like stealth or steampunk. Even if they have not heard of the Thief series, the trailer on the first page gives further insights on how the games looks like.
  17. Here is an older discussion about AI noticing shadows and what it could mean for gameplay:
  18. In TDM decisions on map design (including AI behaviour) are generally rather up to the mappers, so they can realise their own vision. As Filizitas mentioned this is also a balancing issue. If all lights can be relit by all AI it would drastically change the value water arrows. If the mapper intended for lights to remain extinguished, he/she will only provide a small number of water arrows throughout. Being able to change this behaviour in general makes balancing much more difficult. Another important part for the decision to let the mappers decide is the desire of the team to not break any old missions. I am not 100% sure, but I believe this behaviour was implemented later on and consequently could break older missions that were built without this feature in mind.
  19. I don't 100% get, what you did there, but it sounds as if the AI has several path_corners as targets. If this is the case, it will choose one at random and go there. If I remember correctly, they can even be weighted: as an example you can give the AI two targets and make it head for one in 30% of cases and the other in 70%; it can add some randomness to AI paths, which can be interesting. There is a wiki-page on how to set these random paths up. If you want to make sure that your AI always takes the same path, give it only one path_corner as a possible target. Regarding AAS I would like to expand on what JackFarmer already wrote (and you figured out yourself): Any area that an AI should walk in has to have the respective AAS (if it is not there, you will get the error message "AAS out of date" in the console), which is created during dmap. For this at least one entity with the respective AAS needs to be in this area. Either this is an AI or a AAS_flood entity (As JackFarmer wrote). If you want to check which AAS_flood entity you need for which AI, you can check the "use_aas" spawnarg of the AI. By the way this is also a common problem, when creating an elevator, since any floor that no AI starts on, will not have the respective AAS created during dmap. The need for the AAS_flood is mentionen on the elevator wiki page.
  20. The visual acuity can be adjusted in the game menu. When you go to Settings -> Gameplay -> Difficulty you can set AI vision to a lower setting. This will reduce the probability of AI seeing you. Not sure, which variable this would be in the config...
  21. I saw it just I after I responded here... Well, maybe repetition helps
  22. While I also think that Springheel's tone was rather sharp, I would advise you to watch yours as well. That way people will be more willing to help than if you call them incompetent, without knowing them or their programming level. Another thing you should keep in mind regarding your own experience level: The Dark Mod is a branch of Doom3 that was created before BFG and has made some major changes to the code, so a lot of your experience may not be applicable, because the stuff you are used to may simply have been changed. nbohr1more just gave the solution to the most common mistake that occurs for new users. And even experienced people can forget about some basic things, so I would not attack him for that. Maybe it was not meant as and attack from your side and it is just the way you write, but it sounded quite rough.
  23. The way Springheel describes the process in his videos (if I remember correctly, it has been some time), you create a room (by drawing a worldspawn block and hollowing it out) and connect rooms by creating holes in this sealing geometry that you fill with visportals. This is particularly easy, if you use the clipping tool to cut out a square and turn the resulting brush into a visportal with "Right Click -> Make Visportal" instead of deleting it. That way each end of the cross has a visportal and portalling should work without problems.
  24. But why did you artificially create a leak in a copy of the map? If this was a problem in your current map, you should simply have dmapped it and would have gotten a pointfile for your actual problem. FYI the pointfile only shows one leak, not all, so will likely not have seen your initial leak. This is also why good and sealing building practice really improtant. Leak hunting can be very time consuming...
  25. I agree that it made a lot of things more difficult. I also remember jumping a lot simply to increase Athletics. So, I get, why people found it annoying, but it also brought more variety to different play styles. Although, admittedly, I would most likely enjoy it as much today, in part, because I don't have the time to replay a game, anymore. Same with the "certain ways are blocked in one playthrough". I wanted to replay The Witcher 2 and try the oterh way in the second chapter, but never got to it...
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