JackFarmer
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Posts posted by JackFarmer
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On 2/27/2025 at 2:38 PM, grodenglaive said:
stopped at the 3rd floor this time
So, this isn't always the same problem? AI refuses to enter the floors completely arbitrarily?
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1 hour ago, Frost_Salamander said:
What is tdm_ai_debug_blocked supposed to do?
That*s a good question, and I wished I had a good answer for you (I only used the other two methods in the past).
@nbohr1more: I cannot find a description for tdm_ai_debug_blocked in the wiki. Do you know what it is supposed to do?
There is another cvar you could try:
tdm_ai_showelevator - Debug output during operating elevators.
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47 minutes ago, grodenglaive said:
OK, I've got it mostly working on the test map. The grid snapping checked out, but I foolishly made a mistake in the path corner targets, so the 2nd floor was legitimately being skipped.
The AI will now ride from floor 1 ->2 ->3 and back down 3 ->2 ->1.
One remaining hurtle is the AI should repeat this loop indefinitely in this test, but occasionally he will stop at a random floor and not get off the elevator or continue. This could happen during the first loop or it could be several before it fails. Each dmap turns out differently. It seems like a bug.
(wow, youtube really butchered the playback quality!)
Have you tried
- tdm_ai_debug_blocked or
- tdm_ai_showdest or
- tdm_ai_showtasks
for further investigation?
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12 hours ago, grodenglaive said:
The AI's use of the elevators seems arbitrary and even whimsical. I'm using the prefab 3-floor elevator, modified only in height to fit my map. It works perfectly for the player, but the AI are afraid to take it. I do have other AI on each floor, so the AAS pathfinding should happen. I also tried adding an aas32_flood entity, but that didn't help.
I copied my elevator into a test map for faster iterations and made a little landing for each floor for the AI to exit. Here the AI seems to feel it is safer to ride! But even so, the AI will not go to each floor. I have a path loop to instruct him to go from 1 to 2 to 3 and back to 1, then repeat. He'll just go from 1 to 2 and stop. Sometimes he'll ride directly from 1 to 3, but not 2 to 3, nor will he come back down to 1. Depending on his mood, after reaching a floor he may get off or sometimes just stay on the elevator. It's like rolling the dice on every dmap.
I also tested the unmodified elevator prefab and it works a bit better (perhaps the shorter floor heights are more to the AI's liking). Here the AI will merrily do the complete loop nearly twice, but fail to return to the ground floor after the second trip and just stands on the top floor. I can't imagine why
Oh dear, please check the following
- make sure, that the surrounding brushwork is snapped to grid 8 or 16.
- make sure that the vertical bars are snapped to grid
- make sure that the green AAS brushes are snapped to grid
- make sure to have portals in the openings that are snapped to grid
If that does not help, then you can PM me a download link and I will have a look later today.11 hours ago, Frost_Salamander said:Not to be discouraging, but I couldn't get them to work properly with AI in my last 2 FMs and just decided to monsterclip them off. There were a lot of other problems than just AI not following paths (e.g. falling into the shaft and dying, getting slammed by opening/closing doors and dying, etc).
So if you have a complicated setup it might take a lot of work to get it bug-free.
If that's a test map you have there, it might be worth raising a bug report and attaching it. One of my main pet peeves with TDM is bugs that limit design choices. IMO these should be high priority for fixing over all these graphics features that keep getting introduced.
Yeah, the elevators are "good" if you want to provoke strange AI behaviour. When on alert mode, they fall through openings, they kill each other by pressing the buttons (while others on deeper floors stand in the shaft), etc.. A consequent overhaul should be considered as (as you say) this problem limits mission design significantly.
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On 2/15/2025 at 11:23 AM, chakkman said:
I pre-ordered it a while ago, and installed it yesterday soon after it was released on Steam. Just like the Tomb Raider I-III Remasters, it's fantastic.
And, yeah, time to get into Angel Of Darkness as well, now that they hopefully made it playable. Already played it a bit yesterday, but, I need more time with it, of course.
Lovely game, so happy that they were remastered, which I would never have expected before TR I-III remasters were released.
When you get to AOD, there are now two (improved) methods of control you can choose from:'
Modern Control: This is actually the original controls scheme (at least it was on the PS2). Does not allow for the "side jumps with a looping in the air" (you know what I mean). Lara turns around when you press the opposite move button. However, you can also do the tank controls flic-flac for that action now (I think that was not possible before).Tank Control: This is the old scheme from TR 1-5 transferred to AOD.
Check both. Keep in mind: both are far from perfect.
Turns out that I played the whole time with tank controls enabled. Switched then to modern controls and went back to tank controls after a few minutes because I think it works better (and I just managed some tricky jumps properly with the old scheme).
In the meantime, I made it into the Prague area. Playtime: 7:30.-
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16 minutes ago, chakkman said:
I pre-ordered it a while ago, and installed it yesterday soon after it was released on Steam. Just like the Tomb Raider I-III Remasters, it's fantastic.
And, yeah, time to get into Angel Of Darkness as well, now that they hopefully made it playable. Already played it a bit yesterday, but, I need more time with it, of course.
Lovely game, so happy that they were remastered, which I would never have expected before TR I-III remasters were released.
I went straight to play AOD last night and made it into the Louvre. The controls are really better and I have the feeling that it is "harder" to fall from edges. Nevertheless, the quicksave option is heaven sent.
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Comes with all the pros and the cons of the first trilogy remaster. New general feature in the new remastered three games: quicksave/quickload (!)
But actually everyone is just interested: has TRAOD really been improved? Well, they fixed lots of bugs in, restored left out content and it also comes with enhanced original controls; the latter is much better than 20 years ago, but still far from perfect.
The laughable RPG interludes are still there, at least (as far as I can see) the terrible fist fighting options with Lara have been completely removed. You can actually buy stuff in the stores in Paris now, and the second character Kurtis can now do some things that were removed 20 years ago due to time constraints.The original TRAOD was simply too “underdeveloped”. You can't expect miracles. I would have completely remade the game...not based on the terrible reboot series, of course.
However, when it comes to atmosphere, these three titles are in no way inferior to the previous bundle. And for 30 Euros you get around 30 - 40 hours play time.
@chakkmanCheck a view reviews if you consider buying. I for myself am deligthed though TRAOD still has its problems.-
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4 hours ago, Goblin of Akenash said:
theres not an alarm entity but what it could be is the noise the metal part of the scroll thing makes when you step on it and that your fully lit up when standing outside through the window and depending on how long you stand there the longer the npcs will notice you and become alerted, you can manipulate the paths the npcs are on to align with each-other if you do it long enough for them to stare at you and not alert them, everythings a bit clunky in the map but im glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you! I didn't know visportals were handled that and I can totally implement them next time i'm free, thanks for the advice and the tutorial (also thanks for watching the video!)
I think for my next map I'll avoid "dropdowns"/"one-ways" they are super common in left4dead2/Half-life1 map design due to the linearity and I'm not sure that kind of design works in a game like TDM where each map should behave almost like a counterstrike map where you can get to each section through atleast 1 other section.
Springheel created a video tutorial consisting of 10+ video tutorials for beginners.
If you want to learn the fundamentals of TDM mapping, then I strongly recommend you to watch this video series.
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On 1/23/2025 at 1:08 AM, cavador said:
After replaying this mission several years later, I see the scale issues that others have reported. Everything is scaled way too large with everything looking horizontally stretched. It's really distracting. Maybe after playing fan missions for so long, my perception has changed. I also experienced some bugs this time such as failing the mission when knocking out a sleeping guard because somehow that actually kills them? There was another bug too where my blackjack disappeared in the cabin area.
Yeah, feels like mapped after too much LSD, thus Hidden Hands: Blackstone Island will replace this mission sometime in the future. It will be a complete remake of HHI as a five-mission campaign. Each area will be build from scratch and two of the original locations (the cabin and the mansion) will be replaced with totally different areas.
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On 1/4/2025 at 7:37 PM, roygato said:
First of all, kudos for creating a campaign. Understandably we don't get very many of these.
In general the missions are fun to play, as I'd expect based on the earlier ones in the series, so I don't have a whole lot of meaningful critique for gameplay, but I do have something that bothered me, which is flavor-related. I skimmed through this thread, and didn't see it being brought up yet.
"Find three special locations (Reward X loot)"
I have a few issues with this kind of objective design. First of all, it has that immersion-breaking quality that Thief 3 also had. Aside from all its other shortcomings, what I particularly disliked was how they did away with the thematically appropriate objective descriptions from the earlier games. In T1/2, you have something like
"I've heard of this fabled item Y being hidden somewhere within these halls. I should find it"
But in T3, they just got lazy with this kind of
"Find X special loot objects"
These special location objectives instantly gave me that T3 vibe - too gamified, and none of that T1/2 immersion. Considering these are seemingly random locations, I think they could've just been regular secrets, with nice loot stashed inside as the reward. It's even stranger in the first mission with its "Break into all the rooms" objective. I don't think you need to tell TDM/Thief players to break into locked rooms like this, I reckon they're compelled to do so anyway. Just have an appropriate reward waiting, if the process is something more involved.
The other thing is having a loot reward for an objective at all. It can work, but only if there is an in-world reason for the thief to receive money then and there. But simply breaking into a bunch of rooms, and having money appear in your pocket, doesn't really fit that. Not to mention, if your objective is to steal stuff from someone's chest, surely the contents of the chest should be the reward, and there would be no need for an additional one.
Another immersion-related oddity that stuck out
When descending the elevator between missions 4 and 5, who is selling you items along the way? I understand the shop was put there presumably because all the other missions had one, and to let the player gear up before arguably the hardest mission, but I couldn't help but find it bizarre. Maybe instead either the guild office, of the underground lab, could've had a storage room with equipment that the player could find. Have more/less items based on difficulty.
Finally, and this might just be an incredible nitpick.
I wonder if having the interactivity of certain items be tied to certain conditions would make sense with these puzzles that require the player to collect strange objects. Of course, it's an adventure game staple, to collect random garbage for no reason, but it just came to mind, since we don't get these kinds of puzzles very often. I suppose it would come with the drawback of requiring the player to possibly re-search a bunch of places they've already been in, so I dunno if the immersive quality would be worth the hassle. Not a big deal in any case.
I also found an amusing bug, dunno if it's known already.
If you scare Jonus and Desmond before the final cutscene starts (like shoot a fire arrow near them), they'll just run off, and the cutscene will play without any characters or audio. The mission will conclude just fine, though.
Of course, at first I tried blasting them directly, but sadly this fails the mission.
But as I prefaced this post with, I really did have fun. I enjoyed the variety of locations, and the final mission in particular feels like straight out of some other notable immersive sims, which was cool.
Yeah, the shop after mission 4 is a convention.
Regarding your amusing bug: A future update will include a script event that hinders the player to do what you have done. -
1 hour ago, PsymH said:
Still in mission 2. What I have to do with the three skulls to unlock the 3 rings over Belmond's head?
SpoilerYou have to place them correctly in the middle of the room on certain round shaped objects.
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4 hours ago, datiswous said:
I was just wondering: Can you set an ai to open (locked) doors and let them walk through them, but only closing the door when they are looking in the direction of the door?
You mean "when they are looking in the direction of the open door?"
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13 hours ago, PsymH said:
Mission 1: I have the feeling that I'm going round in circles. Where can I actually find the safe with the combination of the paintings with the sea battles? I've already walked up and down the inn, but haven't found a combination lock yet.
SpoilerIn Room 3 you will find a readable with a clue explaining how to find the correct numbers.
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4 hours ago, taffernicus said:
Are there any games out there where we play as an invasive species?
The invasion has already begun!
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Can't see anything wrong there. What does "not working" mean? Does the player fall through the water brush or can the player not "jump" into the water and stands on the surface as the Builder's Jesus? If the latter is the case, then check whether there is another worldspawn brush covering your water entity.
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On 12/9/2024 at 11:54 AM, datiswous said:
Aparently this is from members of Underworld
Yeah, that is definitely the singer. I have their 1988 album.
@datiswousEDIT: Still available as download!
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I also think it looks worse in the new screenshots and like Frost, I do not understand the fundamentals behind this change.
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My stone-cold heart has been broken many times. Recently again, when I discovered this band from Holland on DLK (German Public Radio). Why isn't it played up and down on the radio? The EP is called “Holy Ground” and contains at least three other remarkable songs in the style of the New Romantics in addition to this track.
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Yeah, schöne Weihnachten to you, too.
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7 hours ago, TerrificTom said:
Absolutely epic campaign so far.
I have come up stuck. I've found Desmond in Mission 5, and gone into the cutscene. However, I never get control back over the character. Desmond simply begins to walk around and bumps into me, pushing me around. But I never get control back.I am afraid this is a rare bug that did not show up during beta (another player reported the problem here).
I can provide you with a workaround, however, that requires two things:
1. You need a working save game (best would be a save game as close to mission end as possible) of mission 4.
2. You need to replace an in game file within the pk4/zip folder.
If that does not work for you, I can provide you with a save game the continues AFTER the conversation in question. Then please let me know about your inventory (then I will make sure that you have ca. the same resources as you had before the problem), and what you have done so far (I anticipate you have not been to the "deep tower" till now?) and the mission version number you are playing under. -
2 hours ago, Uncertain Title said:
My fm recently started spamming the following message many times per second:
It also was spamming a similar message for two different models, but those stopped once I replaced them.
I tried selecting the 'world' entity via the entity list, and converting it back to worldspawn, but it accomplished nothing.
What curse did I unknowingly unleash upon my poor world?
Did you put properties on a worldspawn brush (which then will b e present on all wordpsawn brushes)? If so, then remove it. Objects of the worldspawn class must not include properties such as "clipmodel" or "rotation".
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7 hours ago, nbohr1more said:
Cool EFX def!
The map needs to be edited so that a new location is created for the attic so that the attic has it's own EFX
@datiswous: Will you do that?
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22 hours ago, datiswous said:
I just checked out Krita's animation editor. You can make animations and export them as video. Since tdm briefings are usually in image slideshows with Ken Burns effect and simple animations, I think this might be a better program to make briefings than a video editor. Especially with Krita's new ai capabilities.
Examples?
Edit: NVM, just understood how it works. Way too advanced for what I have in mind.
Fleeing AI Unable To Open Doors
in TDM Editors Guild
Posted
Try the entity "Path Flee Point". If my recollection is correct, flee points must not be targeted from the AIs; just place it in the location you want AI to flee to.