Spooks

TDM has two default cubemaps as far as I'm aware, env/gen1 and env/gen2. They're both pretty generic, so I made the cubemaps myself with the envshot console command. Right now it's a bother to be putting cubemaps directly into materials rather than having an env_light entity and if you want, say, a texture with two different cubemaps, you'd need to make/use two different materials in DR. However, I think keeping your cubemaps blurry and generic looking, and limiting yourself to about 3 max in your map might reduce the bloat in a practical scenario. The code snippet from the second post is what you'd want, since masking reflection by an image's specular map is the most logical way to do it, regarding how real life light works. The gl_dst_color method is also good, however, since it ensures you won't get shiny materials in complete darkness. On the flipside, it over-brightens bright areas, so watch out for that.

The patch error message bug is back on pre9. Just encountered it when shift+mmbing on a bevel endcap. edit: more like it's a very specific thing that hasn't been fixed... I'll see about putting up a testmap or something in the tracker. e:e: whoops uploaded the map to the wrong report by mistake, re-uploaded to the right one now but if anyone can remove the old one it'd be fine.

I'm gonna suggest an improvement on something that I've not even experienced yet! I know 2.05 is a ways away but I was thinking today about what would make a regular EAX reverb effect into a believable EAX reverb effect and I better jolt it down here. I think, obviously, places with tile and big halls should have more reverb, but as I was in a pretty echoey place today I noticed that the echo becomes less pronounced the closer you are to the sound emitter. The reverb in Thief felt kinda silly since even your own footsteps sounded like they were coming from everywhere. Will the EFX we'll be using do this sort of attenuation automatically? If it didn't, I wonder if you could have it that reverb lessens when coming closer to a speaker (but never quite goes away) the same way/with the same type of code that makes sounds lose volume when going away from a speaker.

Yes, liberally before the sewers as I was testing around for 2.04 bugs and selectively alerting AI. Tried being more thorough now and managed to make it work. Now with that out of the way I should post my thoughts about the actual mission. I definitely felt the mood the mission set up and sold me, but I feel it wasn't as cohesive as it ought to be. I loved a lot of the jokes in the readables and some of the random little things, I've always loved stories of just a lot of quirky, clashing characters forced to live near each other and the situations that unfold, I loved the twist too. The mission itself though, as if feeling guilty of trying to go its own way, tried to pull away at points and it rocked the boat for me. The visuals followed this, map and lightning played their own roles and their scripts had plenty to say about the spaces these people occupied, but I felt the lightning flubbed its lines - to continue with my analogy - at some points. I'm not saying go full hog or nothing, I think that one can find a good blend of grimdark thief-y motifs and more light-hearted, noir adventure-y ones. I actually think the accountant series is set good on its tracks (pun possibly intended) to finding its own style and I do urge you to explore it further if you really feel like it! I liked the custom assets (loot vases, doors, etc) and the consistency with which they were applied (not too numerous, not too few to make them feel like a gimmick). I liked the architecture in the last act, unlike others, it made me reminisce of certain Thief 1 levels. And no that's not a roundabout way of saying "lol ur map looks lyk it's made in dromed" haha. I think it actually invokes the atmosphere those particular levels did quite well. With that said the pacing of the final act was poor.

Yeah, I'm just being obtuse and hyperbolizing as to not overly spoil. But I did put the orb in and nothing happened. I may try again later and see if the event activates.

No problem, the fact that the longstanding rotation bug's finally gone makes me a happy enough camper as it is. edit: just FYI it's not just repeated rotation, it's also repeated movement like alt+up and down'ing a clipped brush a bunch of times. Really weird. I've formalized this in a tracker issue here: http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4329

The snd_ prefix is used in the location info entity to set up different ambient tracks to be later called on by the location settings. "sound_loss" is the correct spawnarg to use for location separators (and you can put negative values to actually increase the volume of all sounds coming through a particular VP, iirc), snd_loss is a custom spawnarg to put in a location info. As confusing as the fact that func_portals have to be set with portal_dist to hide, rather than hide_distance (like every other entity you want LOD on) if you ask me

Couple of questions. I couldn't seem to astral project to the 8th dimension. I found the pagan orb but when I put it in the chamber pot with a fart trapped inside nothing happened. Was I supposed to also put a carrot or something inside? Also, after the credit roll, is the mission supposed to end with the mission complete screen or just stay black?

If you're playing on easy where kills are allowed the quest should fail, but it might as well be I forgot to set the failure condition. Oh well, here's a note for whenever I release an update. If it didn't fail, feel free to still attempt it, you won't break anything, as far as I'm aware!

Thank you for your compliment! Yes, the mission is a bit on the backtrack-y side, but I tried my best to not make things magically appear due to objectives. You can actually Of course, knowing that those items are already there ahead of time requires meta-knowledge you'd only posses on, say, a second playthrough of the level, but I sort of like that. The only thing I don't allow the player to grab ahead of time are items the PC wouldn't have the foresight of knowing they needed unless they had certain information. Specifically,

There's a darkradiant.log at %appdata%/DarkRadiant. I've had that happen on 2.0.3 as well, I'm pretty sure it's just some sort of memory error when your map is too big, so it's a rare issue, but not a new one. EDIT: Greebo, is it possible something can be done about this - 4131 - by the time 2.0.4 releases? I've done some tests and it's actually the brush vert points that get moved. Flipping, rotating or moving will all cause the verts to go slightly offgrid. The bug even affects primitives inside func_statics, which is the worst part since going inside dozens of FSs and ctrl+Ging to snap the verts back to the grid is a huge pain.

You can make the AI target a patrol route that starts with a path_waitfortrigger and then when you want the patrol to begin just trigger the AI (not the path_waitfortrigger !) and they'll begin walking. How you could tie that with an AI raising their alert level I've not tried myself, but I assume an objective with an "AI is alerted" component and the AI in question as the completion target would do the trick. If it's about many sleeping AI a script might be more fitting, but I don't know. I'm sure if you set "start sleeping" on the AI but then make a looping patrol route, they'll sleep and do nothing else, but not go back to sleeping after they've been alerted/triggered. Obviously don't include the path_waitfortrigger in the loop, start with the first path_corner after that one.

On Windows, 2.0.3 didn't do this and 2.0.4pre7 doesn't do it either. Definitely sounds like a bug to me, unfortunately linux support for DR is pretty bare-bones but filing a bug report doesn't hurt and it might be easy enough to fix. If you press Play to play the sound but press Stop before you choose another one, does it still get greyed out? I'd hope that'd be an easy enough way to circumvent this for now.

Yes, but unlike floats it throws up errors to the likes of "wrong immediate type of boolean data type" when you try to set a value, unlike float. I'm just wondering why it's even a data type, for some sort of parity? We already don't have int.

Somebody needs to update the Scripting Basics page on the wiki then, the Boolean data type is stated to exist there. At the very least it should be noted booleans and entities can't have their values set outside of a function (i.e. at declaration time when they're global variables).

Hello. Your script looks okay, not sure if there's any better arguments to use than just addItemToInv. If you want the items to be added just once, it's as simple as an if loop that closes after 1 frob. float chestFrobbed = 0; void function() { if (chestFrobbed == 0) { entity newItem1 = sys.spawn("atdm:weapon_shortsword"); newItem1.addItemToInv($player1); chestFrobbed = 1; sys.waitFrame(); } } It's probably tidier to do it with a boolean, but boolean and entitity data types can't be immediately declared it seems, don't know why.

[source]

Thank you for the kind words and welcome to the forum! Yes, a person with a mechanic's helmet/upturned welding mask is patrolling around the Factory near where you start, look for him in the little back street or near the factory front entrance. For spoilers, put the thing you want to say like this: [tag]text[/tag] and replace "tag" with "spoiler". As for the chest in the fiddler's room:

I'm pretty sure that's just a default electric light buzzing sound that some mappers have decided to put on their lights. I don't personally like it either, how I fix it is I try to get out of the room containing the light

Sure, I'd like to participate. Note, I'm still a filthy Windows box-er. The roadmap is also a good place to review fixed bugs, methinks.

Ah yes, I'm guessing when the lod bias is a negative number the LOD entities won't work. Just temporarily change tdm_lod_bias to a positive value, like 3 which is the highest menu setting, and you should be good.

That's definitely an issue with LOD stages. I downloaded the mission from the in-game downloader and tested with all LOD stages, but I couldn't replicate your issue. Do you have some custom settings in your darkmod.cfg perhaps? Put it in a spoiler tag and I'll compare it to mine to see if I can pinpoint the problem.

Coming off fresh from finishing the mission: I entered the mansion through a balcony, then proceeded to knock a guard flat on his face. Hearing the clatter of footsteps I had to quickly shoulder the body as a guard emerged from a corner. With many lights around I had to creep past him, body in tow, as I frantically searched for someplace safe to store my sleeping friend - I came to stash him in a privy after a mad dash to keep safe. This mission oozes tension and doesn't let up! The layout of the mansion is intricate, with plenty of electric lights to keep you on your toes and many corners to hide in. It's labyrinthine in the same way Thief's missions were and while that level design always tethers on the edge of irritation through information overload(I'm looking at you, Thieves Guild), I'm glad to say this FM doesn't grate or overstay its welcome. Still, I would've liked one or two more readables to break up the core gameplay. I actually enjoyed the general lack of them - not every average Joe in the mansion's gonna spill their thoughts in their little diary - but in hindsight a pinned note or two here and there would've made the estate feel more lived in. The readables that are in there serve their purpose well enough. The mission's gameplay is hard but not irritating. If you need to find a key, there's probably a hint in a readable and some map reading to set you on your path. Your goals are always simple enough to remember in the back of your head while you focus on the gameplay and I appreciate that. The aesthetics and color choices felt a bit off to me... I can't quite put my finger on why. The architectural side of this mission is top notch, hear ye hear ye, but traversing the mansion multiple times over left the impression of it being too... monochromatic? This problem isn't present in the crypts, however, where this mission's spirit feels much more at home. Some things I liked in no particular order are: the inability to tell a guard's patrol route easily, the (limited) usefulness of rope arrows inside the mansion, the decals when the switcheroo happens, the architectural accents like coffers and truss in the crypts. Overall, I think this is a solid mansion FM through and through, well worth the play-time. Thank you for making it!

Here are some I took, resized and with raised gamma levels, click the thumbnails for full size: I'm playing the mission right now and so far I'm really feeling it! I'll get back with my full thoughts once I finish it.

Yeah, just to be sure when it comes to performance most doors will auto-close after a minute. Jarring, I know, but at least there were a couple of occasions when I was testing and I got scared shitless by the sound of a closing door just to realize it auto-closed. Guess they're good as meta-jumpscares at least!