thebigh

Obviously this is to stop people spamming the like button. Imagine if I decided one day that, because datiswous is a terrifically excellent person, I'm going to go to every post they ever made and upvote it. The "like" feature would soon become meaningless. What is the limit? Ten a day? I think that's pretty reasonable for a forum that doesn't see a huge amount of action.

Nice! The map files are just text files, so if you open them in a text editor you should be able to see what's going on.

That does seem kind of lazy. I suppose it was intended as a catch-all for other kinds of files that might be produced, eg, leak files, error diagnostics, and so on. That strikes me as poor design. Cleanup functions like this should have a list of files it's safe to remove, not just go "rm *".

And it may be worth checking to see if your hard drive isn't faulty.

That's an awful shame, sorry to hear it. But if you decide to start again you'll probably find it will go quicker the second time. Good luck!

It gives the portal leaks a different name than missionname.lin, it calls it something like missionnameL_m1234_567_890.lin but DarkRadiant loads it just the same as a sealing geometry leak. Or, if several portals are leaking, you get a menu allowing you to select one. Previously, you'd have to rename the portal leak line file back to missionname.lin to get it to load in DarkRadiant, but a recent update has fixed this issue. Although the portal and geometry leak lines are plotted in the same colour in practice it's easy enough to tell the difference. Portal leaks tend to look like closed loops curling around a visportal, and geometry leaks are usually long squiggly lines bouncing around your whole level and eventually escaping through a tiny gap between walls.

Even a single ramp made of nodraw_whatever can work well sometimes.

Ouch! Hope you can get your files back. Try doing a search to make sure they haven't just been moved somewhere, for instance into the directory of the other map you were loading. But yeah, backups are the way to go.

I suppose there has to be a distinction between shallow water and deeper water. You'd want swishing sounds when the player is wading, and splashing sounds when they're stamping around in puddles.

Thanks! True, story and gameplay are paramount but a decent map layout helps with both obviously.

I think I can show off a little bit. One of the hallways in the mansion I'm working on. The panel textures at the bottom of the walls need to be aligned and there's still another door to go in, but this has been looking awful in DarkRadiant for so long that I'm feeling pretty pleased at how it's turning out. This level is (tentatively) called "A House Call", and is about breaking into the mansion of a famous but corrupt physician in search of the recipe to an antidote he's hoarding and selling for exorbitant prices.

Note to self: change door sounds and chest sounds to something different and unique in my next level

Yeah, when I'm wearing sneakers tile floors are actually the quietest. Then carpeted floors, and wood is the loudest. I'm not sure why Garrett and Corbin and all the other master thieves insist on wearing tapdancing shoes wherever they go.

You could also consider setting ai_see off for the ambient. I guess it's a matter of taste whether you think of ambient light as a hack to let the player see dark places, or a property of the environment that really should make it easier for guards to spot you. I personally prefer to turn it off.

I generally prefer small to medium missions anyway. Give me an hour-long mansion heist any day of the week. They're the missions I like to play, so they're the ones I'll make

Still chugging along on my mansion level. It's so easy to get disheartened because what you're building looks like poo, but it all looks so much worse in DarkRadiant than it does in game. Even a stark, empty room looks not so awful in the actual game.

I believe you can still see topics started by a user you have on your ignore list, which is different to other forums I participate in where the whole topic is invisible. The first post will be invisible, but you can see all the replies.

This is something I suggested a while back, here. Basically it would work like the floor feature does now, except in all six directions. Let's say you want to align a painting to the north wall of a room. You'd go to your top down window, put the cursor north of the painting, and hit Ctrl-Alt-F or whatever the hotkey combination would be. This seems like a super useful way of aligning objects to walls, lights to ceilings, and such.

I just end up fiddling around with details rather than doing the floor plan. When I make a room it just looks like a big empty horrible-looking room and I immediately lose motivation to put things in it and make it look nice

I'm still hoping to get another mission out this year. I just got a bit stuck and lacking motivation.

Maybe if the arrow activates far enough from you it shouldn't blind you but could briefly illuminate dark areas, like a flare arrow.

Sometimes I use them to knock over candlesticks I can't easily reach. The noise is a risk sometimes but it's nice to have this technique available.

Realistically, they'd be searching for more spiders. But if they happen to find a thief instead then too bad for the thief.

Gas arrows are one option.

Oooo, "times loaded" is new. Nice!