[[Obsolete as of TDM 2.07] Improve your TDM experience by playing with OpenAL Soft HRTF (better 3d audio)]

Yeah, Alchemy Universal is a muddy mess, if only for being proprietary bs. The modifications that make it work on all soundcards are either obsolete or trojan horses. We just have to wait until the EFX solution gets implemented in TDM for real reverb action.

 

On the 5.1 thing, this video by the Verge is all about binaural audio (which HRTF is all about) and even mentions what's the difference between 5.1 and binaural at the 4:20 mark.

 

 

I think I already had OpenAL enabled for TDM just because, but hadn't heard of these HRTF datasets. Will definitely get around to trying this.

 

edit: %appdata% IS appdata/roaming in Windows 7.

[So, what are you working on right now?]

Well godspeed to you, Nico A!

 

Couple of dark, spooky places that won't be that dark in-game but you could make them so if you're patient enough and blow out all the candles:

 

[Dishonored GOTY edition]

I was in the same situation, and I did get the GOTY for Christmas. It really is a better deal to get the GOTY as it seems the story DLCs will never go below 50% off.

 

If you remember the Missions page on the main menu, there's a new tab in the GOTY edition that allows you to play the DLCs without replaying anything. I'm pretty sure The Knife of Dunwall takes data from your end savefile though, to determine Corvo's actions.

 

I've not had a chance to play the story DLCs but I've been doing the City Trials and they're pretty nice to look at and play.

 

I have also had this bookmarked for a year or so and I'll finally be able to try it since it only works with the GOTY: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141188

[So, what are you working on right now?]

Sure enough Biker, I've been wrasslin' with visportals disappearing and having to cut them every other way until they work and could use some pointers on that.

[Newbie DarkRadiant Questions]

Why not putting it in an fm folder: darkmod/fms/myfm?

Yeah I never quite got this when setting up my directory settings.

 

My game is TDM2.0 and my engine path is D:/Games/The Dark Mod/. Works fine but all my fm subfolders (maps, env, etc) are in the dark mod folder where the .exe is. Should be fine when it's time to pack my fm into a .pk4 (i'll just pick and choose the folders/files) but I already know it's gonna get messy if I work on more than one thing. Do I use the "mod" or the "modbase" box to setup a dedicated project folder?

[So, what are you working on right now?]

I'm more or less done with visportaling. I'll probably come up with something smarter than building the map in one huge caulk box and compartmentalizing afterwards next map. A view from outside map bounds shows how much FPS the map had w/o visportals. I was supposed to do some more stuff with tilesets but I'm glad I got to get done with this horrid mess.

[Black Mesa (ex Black Mesa: Source)]

As someone who's friends with some of the developers, why yes, you should totally buy Black Mesa if you haven't already!

[Any way to stop Darkradiant from causing this?]

You can also try and export the railing to an ase with the script, I don't know if it'd help but it may be worth a try to see if it's dmap doing it, if it looks fine in DR.

[Crucible of Omens: Behind Closed Doors - by Bikerdude & the Crucible Team (updated 18/12/2015)]

@Bikerdude, it's the left side of the gable where the dormers are (top-left) in that first screenshot. Sorry, I did think of red circling it but I was in a hurry and I wanted to make sure to take a wide enough shot so the place in the map is recognizable. As an aside you can mantle onto the thatched roof leading to that gable and you'll go out of visportal bounds and the game will do its usual "freeze for a minute while all the visportals open".

 

@nbohr, indeed, it works okay when you lower it in game, it's when you set it at the menu and then attempt to start the mission is when it crashes.

[Crucible of Omens: Behind Closed Doors - by Bikerdude & the Crucible Team (updated 18/12/2015)]

Deleting and redownloading the files through tdm_update does fix it but hell if I know which one actually made the map crash. I spent 2 hours of trial and error testing - it seemed the .cfg was doing it but after replacing every option line by line until the old and new .cfg were identical it still ran fine. Beats me. If anyone is having problems though, yeah, backup then delete the .cfg and start your .exe so it generates a new one. If you have any custom keybinds just copy them over from your backup and it should be fine.

 

Now that I could look around, I'd say the performance is pretty good! I was getting 30 FPS average on most large areas, which is very playable compared to the 10 FPS I've sometimes gotten on some other FMs.

 

Here's a couple visportal hitches I noticed:

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/Ln1MbQ5.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/UEy8sVj.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/dN0Bwkz.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/j5TXHKO.jpg

 

 

 

edit: I've done more trial and error testing and I think I know what's causing the crash now. Setting your LOD settings below Normal will crash the map. I had mine set to Low and so had Thor judging by his .cfg. It will crash on Low or Lowest for me, if anyone can check if they can reproduce this behavior I'd be thankful.

[So, what are you working on right now?]

As I'm feeling pretty uninspired with where I am in my current map I've been tinkering about with them modular facades to make me feel more productive. I'm doing a grid of 64.

 

 

What you're not seeing is the half a day of figuring out how to align the pieces to the grid so there's room for sealing geometry and making sure the tileset can loop on itself. Gotta say it's made me think a lot more about the grid and being mindful of powers of two, so it's actually great to split from mapping for a bit. I've been poring over the walls in the Boyle Estate in Dishonored to see how Arkane did it and it's opened my eyes to the repetition and little tricks they do to hide their modular panels. I've already got edits for the corners of these planned but that's for tomorrow.

 

I may do a post on the MBT thread at some point later summing up some of my experiences with the method after I get some more mileage out of it.

[Crucible of Omens: Behind Closed Doors - by Bikerdude & the Crucible Team (updated 18/12/2015)]

I have to corroborate with Thor here, the mission makes TDM CTD about 1/8th of the way through Generating World every time. I have the 4gb-patched version of the .exe, tried with the original one but it's still the same. I also tried starting both on Normal and Expert difficulty with no difference. I should've probably asked to beta-test when I had the chance

 

Here's the Windows error report:

 

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH

Application Name: TheDarkMod.exe

Application Version: 1.0.0.1

Application Timestamp: 54d77b82

Fault Module Name: gamex86.dll

Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0

Fault Module Timestamp: 54d77d01

Exception Code: c0000005

Exception Offset: 0025ee8a

OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1

Locale ID: 1033

Additional Information 1: 0a9e

Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Additional Information 3: 0a9e

Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

 

 

 

e: and my .cfg too, just in case:

 

 

unbindall

bind "TAB" "_impulse51"

bind "ENTER" "_impulse51"

bind "ESCAPE" "togglemenu"

bind "SPACE" "_moveup"

bind "-" "_impulse50"

bind "0" "_impulse10"

bind "1" "_impulse2"

bind "2" "_impulse1"

bind "3" "_impulse3"

bind "4" "_impulse4"

bind "5" "_impulse5"

bind "6" "_impulse6"

bind "7" "_impulse7"

bind "8" "_impulse8"

bind "9" "_impulse9"

bind "=" "_impulse49"

bind "[" "_impulse14"

bind "\" "_mlook"

bind "]" "_impulse15"

bind "^" "_impulse0"

bind "`" "_impulse0"

bind "a" "_moveleft"

bind "b" "_impulse27"

bind "c" "_impulse24"

bind "d" "_moveright"

bind "e" "_impulse46"

bind "f" "_impulse44"

bind "g" "inventory_use '#str_02396'"

bind "i" "inventory_cycle_group '#str_02391'"

bind "k" "inventory_cycle_group '#str_02392'"

bind "l" "inventory_use '#str_02395'"

bind "m" "inventory_cycle_maps"

bind "n" "toggle r_showtris 0 3"

bind "o" "_impulse19"

bind "p" "inventory_cycle_group '#str_02389'"

bind "q" "_impulse45"

bind "r" "_impulse52"

bind "s" "_back"

bind "u" "_impulse51"

bind "v" "toggle r_showportals 0 1"

bind "w" "_forward"

bind "x" "_impulse23"

bind "y" "clientMessageMode 1"

bind "z" "noclip"

bind "BACKSPACE" "inventory_hotkey ''"

bind "PAUSE" "pause"

bind "UPARROW" "_forward"

bind "DOWNARROW" "_back"

bind "LEFTARROW" "_left"

bind "RIGHTARROW" "_right"

bind "ALT" "_strafe"

bind "CTRL" "_button5"

bind "SHIFT" "_speed"

bind "DEL" "_lookdown"

bind "PGDN" "_lookup"

bind "END" "_impulse18"

bind "F1" "inventory_hotkey '#str_02438'"

bind "F2" "inventory_hotkey '#str_02439'"

bind "F3" "inventory_hotkey '#str_02202'"

bind "F4" "savegame quick"

bind "F5" "loadgame"

bind "F6" "_impulse20"

bind "F7" "_impulse22"

bind "F9" "loadgame quick"

bind "F12" "screenshot"

bind "MOUSE1" "_attack"

bind "MOUSE2" "_impulse41"

bind "MOUSE3" "_zoom"

bind "MWHEELDOWN" "_impulse48"

bind "MWHEELUP" "_impulse47"

seta gui_mediumFontLimit "0.30"

seta gui_smallFontLimit "0.15"

seta radiant_entityMode "0"

seta net_socksPassword ""

seta net_socksUsername ""

seta net_socksPort "1080"

seta net_socksServer ""

seta net_socksEnabled "0"

seta win_ypos "0"

seta win_xpos "0"

seta sys_lang "english"

seta s_decompressionLimit "6"

seta s_useEAXReverb "0"

seta s_useOpenAL "0"

seta s_libOpenAL "openal32.dll"

seta s_numberOfSpeakers "2"

seta s_doorDistanceAdd "450"

seta s_globalFraction "0.8"

seta s_subFraction "0.75"

seta s_playDefaultSound "1"

seta s_volume_dB "-18.412697"

seta s_meterTopTime "2000"

seta s_reverse "0"

seta s_spatializationDecay "2"

seta s_maxSoundsPerShader "0"

seta r_screenshot_format "jpg"

seta r_debugArrowStep "120"

seta r_debugLineWidth "1"

seta r_debugLineDepthTest "0"

seta r_cgFragmentProfile "best"

seta r_cgVertexProfile "best"

seta r_forceLoadImages "0"

seta r_shadows "1"

seta r_skipBump "0"

seta r_skipSpecular "0"

seta r_skipNewAmbient "0"

seta r_renderer "best"

seta r_brightness "1"

seta r_gamma "1"

seta r_swapInterval "0"

seta r_useIndexBuffers "0"

seta r_customHeight "486"

seta r_customWidth "720"

seta r_fullscreen "0"

seta r_mode "6"

seta r_multiSamples "0"

seta image_downSizeLimit "256"

seta image_ignoreHighQuality "0"

seta image_downSizeBumpLimit "128"

seta image_downSizeSpecularLimit "64"

seta image_downSizeBump "0"

seta image_downSizeSpecular "0"

seta image_useCache "0"

seta image_cacheMegs "20"

seta image_cacheMinK "200"

seta image_usePrecompressedTextures "1"

seta image_useNormalCompression "2"

seta image_useAllFormats "1"

seta image_useCompression "1"

seta image_preload "1"

seta image_roundDown "1"

seta image_forceDownSize "0"

seta image_downSize "0"

seta image_lodbias "0"

seta image_anisotropy "16"

seta image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR"

seta gui_filter_game "0"

seta gui_filter_idle "0"

seta gui_filter_gameType "0"

seta gui_filter_players "0"

seta gui_filter_password "0"

seta net_clientDownload "1"

seta net_master4 ""

seta net_master3 ""

seta net_master2 ""

seta net_master1 ""

seta net_clientMaxRate "16000"

seta net_serverMaxClientRate "16000"

seta m_strafeSmooth "4"

seta m_smooth "1"

seta m_strafeScale "6.25"

seta m_yaw "0.022"

seta m_pitch "0.022"

seta sensitivity "9.285715"

seta in_toggleZoom "0"

seta in_toggleCrouch "0"

seta in_toggleRun "0"

seta in_alwaysRun "0"

seta in_freeLook "1"

seta in_anglespeedkey "1.5"

seta in_pitchspeed "140"

seta in_yawspeed "140"

seta gui_configServerRate "0"

seta com_guid ""

seta com_preloadDemos "0"

seta com_compressDemos "1"

seta com_product_lang_ext "1"

seta com_videoRam "512"

seta com_showFPS "1"

seta com_purgeAll "0"

seta com_machineSpec "-1"

seta g_spectatorChat "0"

seta net_clientLagOMeter "1"

seta r_postprocess_bloomKernelSize "2"

seta r_postprocess_bloomIntensity "1.174603"

seta r_postprocess "1"

seta net_serverDlTable ""

seta net_serverDlBaseURL ""

seta net_serverDownload "0"

seta mod_validSkins "skins/characters/player/marine_mp;skins/characters/player/marine_mp_green;skins/characters/player/marine_mp_blue;skins/characters/player/marine_mp_red;skins/characters/player/marine_mp_yellow"

seta g_mapCycle "mapcycle"

seta g_voteFlags "0"

seta g_gameReviewPause "10"

seta g_countDown "10"

seta g_password ""

seta g_testModelHeadJoint "Spine2"

seta g_testModelHead "atdm:ai_head_citywatch"

seta g_showBrass "1"

seta g_showProjectilePct "0"

seta g_showHud "1"

seta g_showPlayerShadow "1"

seta pm_walkspeed "70"

seta g_showcamerainfo "0"

seta g_damageScale "1"

seta g_decals "1"

seta g_doubleVision "1"

seta g_bloodEffects "1"

seta g_projectileLights "1"

seta g_muzzleFlash "1"

seta gui_CenterY "0.5"

seta gui_CenterX "0.5"

seta gui_Height "1.0"

seta gui_Width "1.0"

seta r_fovRatio "0"

seta r_aspectRatio "0"

seta ui_showGun "1"

seta ui_autoSwitch "1"

seta ui_team "Blue"

seta ui_skin "skins/characters/player/marine_mp"

seta ui_name "Player"

seta si_serverURL ""

seta si_spectators "1"

seta si_usePass "0"

seta si_warmup "0"

seta si_teamDamage "0"

seta si_timeLimit "10"

seta si_fragLimit "10"

seta si_maxPlayers "4"

seta si_map "game/mp/d3dm1"

seta si_gameType "singleplayer"

seta si_name "DOOM Server"

seta tdm_lod_bias "0.75"

seta tdm_voice_from_off_volume "0"

seta tdm_voice_player_volume "0"

seta tdm_music_volume "-33.015873"

seta tdm_ambient_method "0"

seta tdm_door_auto_open_on_unlock "1"

seta tdm_bow_aimer "1"

seta tdm_lp_debug_hud "0"

seta tdm_lp_pawlow "0"

seta tdm_lp_randomize "1"

seta tdm_lp_auto_pick "0"

seta tdm_lp_autopick_attempts "3"

seta tdm_lp_pick_timeout "500"

seta tdm_lp_sample_delay "10"

seta tdm_lp_base_count "5"

seta tdm_empty_model "models/darkmod/misc/system/empty.lwo"

seta tdm_lg_split "0"

seta tdm_lg_model "models/darkmod/misc/system/lightgem.lwo"

seta tdm_lg_weak "0"

seta tdm_lg_interleave "1"

seta pm_rope_snd_rep_dist "32"

seta pm_min_stepsound_interval "200"

seta pm_stepvol_crouch_creep "-7"

seta pm_stepvol_crouch_run "4"

seta pm_stepvol_crouch_walk "-2"

seta pm_stepvol_creep "-5"

seta pm_stepvol_run "8"

seta pm_stepvol_walk "0"

seta tdm_underwater_blur "3"

seta tdm_rope_pull_force_factor "140"

seta tdm_inv_use_visual_feedback "1"

seta tdm_door_control "0"

seta tdm_inv_use_on_frob "1"

seta tdm_inv_loot_sound "frob_loot"

seta tdm_inv_hud_pickupmessages "1"

seta tdm_hud_hide_lightgem "0"

seta tdm_hud_opacity "1"

seta tdm_grabber_reverse_control "0"

seta tdm_bounce_sound_min_vel "80"

seta tdm_bounce_sound_max_vel "400"

seta tdm_throw_max_vel "900"

seta tdm_throw_time "1200"

seta tdm_throw_max "3500"

seta tdm_throw_min "600"

seta tdm_phys_show_momentum "0"

seta tdm_ai_hearing_hardcore "1.5"

seta tdm_ai_hearing_challenging "1.0"

seta tdm_ai_hearing_forgiving "0.6"

seta tdm_ai_hearing_nearly_deaf "0.2"

seta tdm_ai_hearing "2"

seta tdm_ai_vision_hardcore "1.5"

seta tdm_ai_vision_challenging "1.2"

seta tdm_ai_vision_forgiving "0.6"

seta tdm_ai_vision_nearly_blind "0.2"

seta tdm_ai_vision "2"

seta tdm_melee_difficulty "normal"

seta tdm_melee_max_particles "10"

seta tdm_melee_forbid_auto_parry "0"

seta tdm_melee_auto_parry "1"

seta tdm_melee_invert_parry "0"

seta tdm_melee_invert_attack "0"

seta tdm_melee_mouse_thresh_ "0"

seta tdm_dragged_item_highlight "0"

seta tdm_drag_encumber_max "0.4"

seta tdm_drag_encumber_maxmass "55"

seta tdm_drag_encumber_minmass "10"

seta tdm_drag_jump_masslimit "20"

seta tdm_drag_af_free "0"

seta tdm_drag_af_ground_timer "800"

seta tdm_drag_damping_af "0.4"

seta tdm_drag_damping "0.0"

seta tdm_drag_stuck_dist "38.0"

seta tdm_drag_force_max "100000"

seta tdm_drag_limit_force "1"

seta tdm_collision_damage_scale_horiz "0.5"

seta tdm_collision_damage_scale_vert "1"

seta tdm_frob_fadetime "100"

seta tdm_frob_width "10.0"

seta tdm_frob_distance_default "63"

seta pm_lean_toggle "0"

seta pm_lean_door_bounds_exp "8.0"

seta pm_lean_door_max "40"

seta pm_lean_door_increments "10"

seta pm_lean_to_valid_increments "25"

seta pm_lean_forward_stretch "15"

seta pm_lean_forward_height "0.4"

seta pm_lean_forward_time "400.0"

seta pm_lean_forward_angle "2"

seta pm_lean_stretch "2"

seta pm_lean_height "0.4"

seta pm_lean_time "400.0"

seta pm_lean_angle "15.0"

seta tdm_reattach_delay "100"

seta tdm_crouch_toggle_hold_time "400"

seta tdm_toggle_crouch "1"

seta tdm_footfall_sounds_movetype_specific "1"

seta pm_mantle_minflatness "0.707"

seta pm_mantle_height "0.2"

seta pm_mantle_reach "0.5"

seta pm_weightmod "1"

seta pm_push_max_mass "200"

seta pm_push_heavy_threshold "0.15"

seta pm_push_accel_time "1000"

seta pm_push_start_delay "1000"

seta pm_push_maximpulse "300"

seta pm_pushmod "0.15"

seta pm_max_swimspeed_mod "1.4"

seta pm_crouchmod "0.54"

seta pm_creepmod "0.44"

seta pm_runmod "2.12"

seta tdm_savegame_compress "1"

seta tdm_force_savegame_load "0"

seta tdm_mainmenu_confirmquit "0"

seta tdm_debug_aastype "aas32"

seta tdm_allow_http_access "1"

seta tdm_proxy_pass ""

seta tdm_proxy_user ""

seta tdm_proxy ""

seta tdm_fm_restart_delay "0"

seta tdm_default_relations_def "atdm:team_relations_default"

seta tdm_show_trainer_messages "1"

seta tdm_menu_music "0"

seta tdm_wideScreenMode "10"

seta tdm_interaction_vfp_type "1"

seta tdm_ai_show_aasfuncobstacle_state "0"

seta tdm_show_health "0"

seta tdm_ai_debug_greetings "0"

seta tdm_ai_debug_transition_barks "0"

seta tdm_ai_opt_update_enemypos_interleave "48"

seta tdm_ai_opt_interleavethinkframes "0"

seta tdm_ai_opt_interleavethinkskipPVS "0"

seta tdm_ai_opt_interleavethinkmaxdist "0"

seta tdm_ai_opt_interleavethinkmindist "0"

seta tdm_ai_visdist_show "0.0"

seta tdm_ai_search_show "0.0"

seta tdm_showko "0"

seta tdm_showsprop_radius "0"

seta tdm_showsprop "0"

seta tdm_spr_debug "0"

seta tdm_sndprop_disable "0"

seta tdm_ai_acuity_susp "1.2"

seta tdm_ai_acuity_L5 "1.5"

seta tdm_ai_acuity_L4 "1.3"

seta tdm_ai_acuity_L3 "1.1"

seta tdm_ai_show_conversationstate "0"

seta tdm_ai_show_enemy_visibility "0"

seta tdm_ai_sight_scale "1000.0"

seta tdm_ai_sight_thresh "1.0"

seta tdm_ai_showelevator "0"

seta tdm_ai_showdoor "0"

seta tdm_ai_debug_blocked "0"

seta tdm_ai_showAASarea "0"

seta tdm_ai_showgoalpos "0"

seta tdm_ai_showdest "0"

seta tdm_ai_showalert "0"

seta tdm_ai_showtasks "0"

seta tdm_ai_showanimstate "0"

seta tdm_ai_showko "0"

seta tdm_ai_showfov "0"

seta tdm_ai_debug "0"

seta tdm_ai_bumpobject_impulse "250"

seta tdm_ai_tact "20.0"

seta tdm_ai_sight_combat_cutoff "20.0"

seta tdm_ai_sightmin "15.0"

seta tdm_ai_sightmax "40.0"

seta tdm_ai_sight_mag "1.0"

seta tdm_ai_sight_prob "0.7"

seta tdm_ai_showname "0"

seta tdm_ai_showbark "0"

seta tdm_ai_sndvol "0.0"

seta tdm_player_wait_until_ready "1"

 

 

[Random video of the day...]

 

bikes in TDM when

[What kind of fan missions would you like to see?]

Two of my favorite missions in Thief were Assassins and Song of the Caverns. They're missions where you start with a simple objective but end up somewhere completely different. The first time I played SotC I went "Whoa, I'm actually going in the opera house? In this mission right now? Cool." The sudden change startles you out of your expectations and shows the circumstances of the situation you are in are not entirely within your control. It's something you must adapt to on the go, rather than having the mission be all spelled out for you in the briefing, like a puzzle waiting for you to solve it.

 

With Thief-style games there's always this constant stream of micro-scale unknowns the player has to deal with - a guard or a light where the player wasn't expecting, what's really in the next room that's not marked on their map. Pretty much as soon as the problems are introduced, the player can formulate some way to solve them. Doink the guard, douse the light, check for hazards/loot/your objective in the new room. Put something like that on the macro-scale though and it makes the player look at the mission with a new set of eyes. The place they were meant to rob turns out to have completely burnt down last night, do they just go house to house now? The item that they had to get has changed location, how are they going to go about finding where it is? Grave robbing goes wrong when the tomb entrance caves in and they have to find a way out through the catacombs.

 

You can sorta see this to an extent in most of Thief's missions: e.g. both Return to the Cathedral and Strange Bedfellows contain previously established locations that turn out to house way more than you were led to believe. Even a tiny subversion of expectations like that can go a long way for me. That's not to say every mission should be like this, missions that play it straight like Framed or Shipping And Receiving in T2 are great examples of how a steady and methodical untangling of a level's knots can still keep you on your toes.

 

 

On a more banal note, I do love me city missions and the best thing for me is being able to just look at a house, say "I wonder what's in there?", then be able to actually break in and see for myself. Especially if the door is locked but you can find some very obscure way of breaking in that makes you feel smart. Oh it's hell to make every house on a street explorable, both for mapping and for gameplay focus purposes, but even a bit of it gets a big plus from me when it comes to any sort of city FM.

[Newbie DarkRadiant Questions]

When I select multiple func_statics made out of brushes and rotate/mirror their origin point remains unchanged/they don't rotate around it if the func_* entities around origin is enabled. Was this always the case or is my DR borked somehow? I swear I remember it didn't work like this.

[So, what are you working on right now?]

 

I've been cranking out facades for the edges of my first map the last couple of days. Kinda the only screenshot I can show since everything else is all over the place, but at least it's a show of some progress. So far it's been a slow, learning experience and I could probably start another map and do it way faster but I'm committed to shipping this first. I need to visportal badly as well, my sight lines are pretty crazy.

[Darkmod: Inspiration thread]

 

 

Rutter's Delineations of Foothill and its Abbey, 1823. Haven't read it, just looked at the pictures, but these high-res engravings are pretty amazing. If you wanna have a crack at making this go ahead, the damn book has floor plans and cross sections of the place and everything.

[Newbie DarkRadiant Questions]

Is there a reason why zoned ambient sounds sound awful compared to normal ones in-game? Put the same ambient .oggs, one normal and one zoned (e.g. forest_children and forest_children_z), on two different speakers/zones and you'll hear the difference. Mono and crushed down to like 22KHz.

 

The only difference in the sndshd files is the leadin, global, omni and loop keywords. Could it be silence.ogg is a mono sound? I dunno, it's bugging me.

[The witcher 2]

I'm in the same boat as STiFU, while W2 is recommended just on the grounds that it's the Witcher, it's def. the weakest one in the series. It sort of requires you got replay the game at least once to get the full picture. Because the game is wider rather than longer, then, it felt a bit less exciting than W1 for me. A lot of the crafting is also useless since you can just find better stuff on your travels.

 

I've read through The Last Wish and I have some of the other books laying around, but I'll go out on a limb and recommend the prose too. Very pleasant.

[Newbie DarkRadiant Questions]

Ooh, the visleaf information is very informative and I haven't seen it around so it's great to have it explained, thanks.

 

To be fair, I've only skimmed the Light Textures and Falloff Images wiki page as I'm still busy hammering out geometry in my map, but it's nice to know ahead. I've not seen any cubemap lights in TDM, but I do see them mentioned at the end of that wiki page, are those what you mean or something like using 'envshot' images for light textures?

[Newbie DarkRadiant Questions]

I've been wondering if I should put pairs of visportals on some of my windowpanes in my map, like in Komag's tutorial video, but just about the only thing about visportals I don't get is what's the actual difference, performance-wise, between a closed and an open visportal in a situation where there's next to nothing being rendered in the open visleaf anyway, like in the picture. Or is it that the entire visleaf is rendered anyway but r_showtris will only show tris that the player can "see" in there through that visportal, hence the need for pairs of them in certain situations?

 

 

 

And another thing I've been meaning to ask, I've thought of using a number of small ambient lights to simulate radiosity/light bounce paired with a principal, shadowcasting pointlight in order to avoid the light bleed of one big ambient light while still being able to change the ambients' color independent of the pointlight.

 

You can see how it's set up, 3rd light from left to right is the principal one, and the other three are biground ambient lights that overlap for better color blending.

 

Now the thing is, I know lightpasses on surfaces are the engine's biggest FPS eater. But is it so bad if it's just small ambients rather than shadowcasting pointlights? I know, I know, this is an extremely lazy method to do this sorta thing and I would be much better off creating a custom light falloff texture (and I probably will later), but I'm wondering for the sake of science.

[So, what are you working on right now?]

I've been on a DarkRadiant binge today and I'm coming down from the 20-something hour high. In the later part of the day I decided to experiment with cubemaps on textures and just generally try come up with good lookinpoint and ambient light, with satisfactory results:

Just the crappiest test map, but the materials weren't too hard to hack together. There's obvious oddities though, like the sofa being huge in that second screenshot. I know environment maps aren't supposed to align like real reflections do but the envshot command giving crappy pictures just exacerbates the issue. I guess there really isn't a proper cubemapping pipeline, you gotta make a material definition for every single texture, on every single cubemap you'd want to use.

I think it's definitely usable though, with some way blurrier and generic cubemaps (maybe even the default gen1) it gives a nice illusion of wood varnish, or a particularly wet surface. Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to crash to bed and sleep until next week.

[Newbie DarkRadiant Questions]

Thanks for the suggestions! I've been messing with particles tonight and I've some pointers on your particle question.

From my experience DarkRadiant always saves the particles made in the particle editor in DarkRadiant/particles, even if you specify a different folder. So if you have your DarkRadiant not installed in the same directory as TDM (as is my case), that might be your problem. The particles are supposed to go in /particles, which should be in the same folder that also contains your /maps folder.

 

BTW, I'm experiencing weird behaviour with the tdm_lamphaze_wide particle and its variations. The _color spawnarg works without "Use Entity Colour" being enabled, but only when r_usesoftparticles is set to 0. Other particles are fine, it's probably just the texture used in those ones that's somehow doing it. Don't know if it's that much of an issue being that most people won't have soft particles disabled but I don't know why it's the way it is and it's ticking me off.

[Darkmod: Inspiration thread]

So....using SVN resources and some experimental engine code I whipped up a facsimile of the above image and expanded the area a bit

Damn, Bikerdude, those soft shadows look sweeeet. They're making me salivate for the next release!

 

Ontopic, I've been looking at hillside Italian towns, I really like the winding streets and verticality. The map I'm working on right now is pretty much flat, but I'd sure love to try my hand at something like this at some point.

 

 

[Newbie DarkRadiant Questions]

On the subject of lights, is there a spawnarg or something to make a light seem to move about? I don't mean flicker. In atdm:fireplace_brick, for example, stand near the flame with player shadow enabled and you can clearly see the effect of the shadows moving. I can't seem to find a way to replicate the effect.

edit: Heyy, it's the light_moving entity. I ended up manually having to copy a bunch of inherited properties and then I found I could just use it instead. Oh well, you could say that posting the question made me look extra hard so the forums did help.