Frost_Salamander

I've created a very simple tutorial on my Wiki home page on how to create a material/texture from an online source (e.g. textures.com) using GIMP. This is something I didn't know how to do and wished that it existed when I started. Yes, there are some existing Wiki pages that kind of describe how to do this, but they are wildly out of date with respect to the tools used and are full of gaps to the uninitiated. What I've pieced together mainly came from existing Wiki sources, but updated with the current version of GIMP. I obviously realise that to a lot of people here this is 101 level stuff, but for myself and other complete n00bs that want to build something, basic tutorials like this are invaluable. It's using GIMP just because it's free and does most things a n00b will want to do, especially when it comes to dealing with older file formats that TDM requires. Anyways, the point of this post is I would like to ask if anyone who DOES know what they are doing could cast their eye over the tutorial and point out any gaffes or downright incorrect/misleading information. Not so much in the proofreading sense or GIMP-specific things (although that would be welcome too), but more around the images/properties themselves. I've labelled some sections with (ADVICE NEEDED) for stuff that I really don't understand very well but the whole thing is fair game. The tutorial is very short, and if anything is glaringly wrong it should be easy to spot by knowledgeable people. The main things I don't understand are the image properties when exporting - there are a million options and I don't know what most of them do. I've looked some of them up, but I don't necessarily know what's best for TDM. All I know is that what I've written seems to work. Perhaps if this gets into a state that makes sense we can add it to the main Wiki and clean up some of the existing sections on this. Link here: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=User:Frost_Salamander#Creating_a_material_using_existing_images_(e.g._from_textures.com)_using_GIMP

https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity/scripts/blob/main/player/kill_player.script

Release 1.2 now available. Mostly minor fixes, but includes one fix that will hopefully prevent the prison key from not spawning. Full changelog: https://github.com/FrostSalamander/fsx/releases/tag/1.2 Download: Proton Drive: https://drive.proton.me/urls/4YTT2D72EW#FJ9furObjD19 Github: https://github.com/FrostSalamander/fsx/releases/download/1.2/highex.pk4 @nbohr1more could you do the honours and add to mission DB please?

Fair enough . Anyways thanks for taking the time to look into it, and I learned something new today!

OK that makes sense. Looking at some of the other window material definitions some of them don't have that keyword. Also, if you are outside and noclip up so you are outside the window next to the other lamp (the standing copper one), you can see the lightgem light up. So I guess one workaround if you really wanted to use that material is to just make your own version and remove the 'noshadows' from it?

what is 'noshadows' intended to be used for in a material definition? I see that it means 'don't cast shadows', but in practical terms does that also mean 'make the material transparent (to light)'? If so, why isn't the light shining through when the door is closed?

It's not that lamp - it's the one above it

I have no idea what's causing this. It's the oil lamp just inside that window on the upper deck of that room. Stuff like this drives me crazy. Also, while I was just sitting outside staring at it, sometimes the light bleed would just suddenly appear even when the door was closed, or it would remain visible after the door was closed and would disappear if you moved/looked around. I thought it might have been another door opening somewhere, but that doesn't appear to be the case. I can't seem to reproduce this at all. I thought it was a similar issue that I had in another section with the ambient light changing slightly, but I can't see any difference crossing between those rooms. Anyone else notice it?

But is the graphics VRAM not anything to worry about? To be honest, I'm not really that concerned or anything, but was hoping this PC wouldn't be obsolete in 2 years in case I got the itch to play some new AAA thing at some point.

I had this in In Plain Sight. I used a location script to only make the item frobable when the player entered the room (and turn it off when exiting).

It's becoming apparent that I miscalculated slightly when I bought a new PC at Christmas 2021. I only got a 6-core CPU, 16 GB RAM and an 8 GB graphics card. I looked at that game Chakkman posted the other day - the minimum requirements are an 8-core CPU, 12 GB card and 16 GB RAM (but 32 GB recommended). Oops. Oh well, good thing I pretty much only play TDM these days...

Thanks: will look at the lights changing - that might be the same ambient thing that happened in the square I've fixed the readable already for an update I'm getting ready the pool - the lights are magic

I just use a custom filter in DR:

hmm. okay maybe I can try it again in the debug build with a breakpoint there and see if I can tell what's clearing that variable...

@HMart You can find it here (under models/darkmod/weapons): https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity/mod-handheld-lamp direct link: https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity/mod-handheld-lamp/blob/main/models/darkmod/weapons/mod_playerlamp_model.lwo

I was going to deal with that just by adding a new skin...

Nice! I've got a branch where I'm converting it to a version that can be added to an FM. The scripts can be loaded via tdm_custom_scripts.script instead of tdm_user_addons.script. I got all that working, but then ran into the double lamp thing. I might separate these into different repositories - but then do we think we need both versions? What are the chances of anyone using this as a mod?

I tried both A New Job and St. Lucia, and couldn't get it to crash on either one of them, after trying for a good while too. With High Expectations I got it to crash a couple of more times. Seems easier to reproduce there for some reason.

while the bow is fully drawn (and you are still holding down the fire button), just hit tilde key (put away weapon), or some other weapon key. I haven't tried to reproduce it on any other maps but I can try...

Interesting. Maybe that explains why last time I got the crash dump, the arrow was missing from the animation when I was drawing the bow? I'm not sure what else I can try, but let me know if there is anything I can do to help. BTW to make this happen, I just started High Expectations and sat there at the start of the map drawing and cancelling the bow repeatedly. I was using the water arrow because those are the only arrows you have at the start.

OK here's a new one from my normal TDM installation: https://drive.proton.me/urls/FENCGJ3HP0#oTMvDlmSLfux It didn't actually happen while drawing the bow this time, it was in between draws when I was just walking around.

OK - so no local build, etc even needed. Didn't know that. I'll give it a go on my usual release install. It only took a few minutes last time to make it crash, but I may have got lucky...

oh sorry I complete misunderstood what you were talking about . I guess I thought that PDB would only be generated if you had 'debug' build config (see, told you I didn't know what I was doing). So for this to be useful, I would need to rebuild it with 'release' config, and then make it crash again (and generate new crashdump)?

This should be a release build, I checked out the 2.11 tag if I recall correctly. Here is the PDB: https://drive.proton.me/urls/94KE71F310#d1P16mz5aO7B

Can confirm. Any idea why this is? Is it because of this line? https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity/mod-handheld-lamp/blob/f871527938df96a7efc308fc3ee85c70d8271544/def/mod_weapon_playelamp.def#L38 Other weapons (like the shortsword) have this attachment as well, but they don't show up attached to each other like that. We could just have a separate entity of that model to just for the plater to frob and kick off a frob_action_script to set everything up instead I guess?