Geep

OK, here's 2 stupid questions -- 1) In DR, I'd like to rotate an object (prefab, model, brush) so that it is EXACTLY 45 degrees in the XY plane with respect to world coordinates. If I use the DR rotate tool (with coordinates & size info turned off so they don't interfere with seeing the angle) and drag the mouse far from the rotation center to get finer control, and fiddle around and fiddle around, I usually still can't get EXACTLY 45 degrees. And once I release the mouse, info about the angle WRT world is seemingly irretrievably lost to me. Really, what I ideally want is to just go somewhere, type in "45", and be done with it. 2) I occasionally switch the mouse to the left side to give my right hand a break. In Windows, I reverse the mouse buttons. This doesn't affect TDM, so I use the game control settings to interchange the mouse buttons for frob and action events. BUT doing that doesn't make the main menu use the right mouse button for selections! I think that's a UI bug, but is there a workaround, some console command I can make sticky?

Also worth thinking about using the cutscene tech, moving the player's view by moving a camera, then at the end teleporting the player to the new location.

I don't think the disable-weapons approach is so applicable here. The invisible brush method sounds reasonable. Speculatively, a variant would be to have the player stand on the brush, possibly in the form of an elevator with horizontal motion. But you'd have to keep him from stepping off the platform. Could perhaps be done passively (playerclip box) or actively (run a script that frequently forces the player back to the elevator platform's XY origin).

BTW, for anyone wondering about how tall the elevator is, here's a DR shot of the elevator-only test map. You can see the silhouette of the guard on the upper level.

With 2 second decel_time, speed of 120 is no problem for AI. That's brisk enough for me.

@Dragofer, although there's no inherited spawnarg starting with "accel", there is "decel_time". I changed the default value from 0.2 to 2 seconds, and sure enough, I can use a speed of 60 without AI damage. Let's crank this baby up and see what she can do!

I can try that. Didn't see them among the inherited spawnargs, but that's not so unusual.

SOLVED! @Springheel, thanks for the tip. As you said, the AI's damage was causing the elevator reversal. But the source of that pain turned out to lay elsewhere than worldspawn collision. Because this is a tall express elevator, I had doubled its speed from the default 30 to 60. Evidently the abrupt stop when going upward (but not downward... odd) inflicts the pain. If I reduce it to 55, the AI handles it fine, and everything works. It is possible that this max speed of 55 is the same for all AI. It is also possible that it varies, e.g., based on mass. I'll leave that for someone else. IRL an express elevator has a gradual acceleration/deceleration cycle. Too much to ask for here, methinks.

This all encouraged me to try again with the elevator-only map. Made various changes, but burying the aas_obstacle fully within the aas_solid broke the log jam. The good news: the AI guard can fetch the elevator from both levels. The bad news: using the elevator leaves him KO'd or dead! Specifically, he fetches the elevator from the top floor, rides it down, makes his rounds on the ground floor, fetches it again and rides it up. All good. But when it reaches the top, the platform immediately reverses and heads down again, inflicting pain in the process! When it gets to the bottom, the AI pushes the top-floor button, and the cycle repeats... more pain. And after yet one more cycle, he's flat and twitching. Morale: be careful what you wish for? Silver lining: possible new way to disable guards? So the mystery continues

@PranQster, just by way of empathy, we're also having a problem getting AI to use a elevator, under 2.07. This was a new, very tall elevator with just 2 stops. Worked fine for the player. The AI never used it, even in a map that had ONLY the elevator, and its two landings. Still, you might try creating a similar map to shed light on your hypothesis that it's the alternative path that's interfering in your case.

I was feeling guilty about not doing I18N for my first mission, so started looking into that for the next. It was nice to see that there was a page that indicated what translations were done... but shocked that it was so misleading (and with a warning about being out of date). It said there were no Russian translations, when elsewhere the forum indicates there's a hundred! I updated the I18N_Status wiki page with a new section under FM List: -------- FM List Translations Developed Under or Available through Language-Specific Third-Party Sites These translations may in some cases go beyond I18N-text translations, to include images and vocals. An example is DarkFate.org, which has Russian language translation of Thief-family games, including on the order of 100 TDM FMs. A current list may be found here. See also an earlier TDM forum post about Dark Fate resources for Russian-speaking translators of TDM FMs. I18N-Text Translations Available Within TheDarkMod.com FMs ---- I also indicated that the existing list shown is sortable (since it's unsorted initially, and there's no sort icon shown). With respect to being out-of-date, I wonder if someone could develop a different version of the list that could be automatically generated, say, with a python script that ran monthly?

Perhaps this is more accurate? Defining some terms: · A “guarded” flee point is one with spawn_arg “is_guarded 1”. · An “indifferent” flee point is one without spawnarg “team” specified, or the team specified is "neutral" to the fleeing AI's team (see [[Teams]]) · A “friendly” flee point is one with “team” spawn_arg set to either the same team as the fleeing AI, or one that is "friendly" (see [[Teams]])

@grayman Just trying to understand the "new" flee point rules, before I make some fancy flee handling. Evidently not updated in the wiki; I can do that update as follows, if you can clarify 2 things (see Questions): Defining some terms: · A “guarded” flee point is one with spawn_arg “is_guarded 1”. · An “indifferent” flee point is one without spawnarg “team” specified. · A “friendly” flee point is one with “team” spawn_arg set to the same team as the fleeing AI. Here is what the AI tries to do (as of TDM 2.03): 1 - If there's a guarded and friendly flee point, run there 2 - If not, if there's a friendly flee point, run there. 3 - If not, if there's a guarded and indifferent flee point, run there 4 - If not, if there's an indifferent flee point, run there. 5 - If not, pick a spot far away and run there. Questions: In steps 1-4, if there are multiple candidate flee points for that step, the previous code would reportedly choose the nearest one. Is that still true? In steps 1-4, once the AI has run to the flee point, if the enemy is still visible, the previous code would reportedly resume the search from step 1, but look for the farthest flee point in each case. Is that still true (assuming it was ever true)?

Glad to hear from a satisfied customer!

Just did a refresh of https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Text_Decals_for_Signs_etc. Mainly a new middle section with an example of how font resizing and wordwrap works, with comparison photos in DR and in-game. And some muddle cleanup in the first section. I left the last "customization" section as is.

There are so few female AI character heads in TDM. It sure would be helpful to my FM in progress to have more. Besides what's in the stock distribution now, back in In 2015, Bob Necro created more variation for female characters: · black wench · older white wench · old noblewoman, based on Dame Judi Dench. There's some remnant of the old noblewoman in the 2.07 distribution, but shaders are missing. For these 3, Bob provided a link to the required diffuse and normal images (at least in .png format) at http://goo.gl/photos/QzUvicYW8BqGQmfo8 Anyone know if there is some problem, such as changes in the model skel, that kept these from being in the core now?

Maybe this thread would help:

HMart, I'm guessing that for Bienie, manipulation of a forward vector would be needed, but probably not the dot product. He wants the AI to spawn more or less in front him. When that happens, I imagine the AI should be looking at the player. That can be done by taking the difference between the two origins, normalizing it, and making that into the AI's forward vector.

In all fairness to yourself, trigger_look is a fairly sophisticated piece of coding. If you do decide to pursue it further, the wiki sheds some light, and includes near the end a link to Obsttort's video describing the math. I think, if this script was (re)written today, it could use calls to now-provided angle conversion functions, instead of doing all the math itself. Regarding the AI that appears, maybe another approach is to have AI spawn at some fixed "station" location, and run like crazy to where the player is... you could have some special music & smoke effects play while waiting for him to arrive

Don't know exactly, but if I was doing it with scripting, I'd think about using $player1.getOrigin() and probably $player1.getViewAngles(), calculate the position I want the AI to appear, and then use setOrigin() to place it there. For the calculation, you could hardcode the distance, or create a more general script object and pass the distance as a spawnarg; the "trigger_look.script" might serve as an example of some of this. However, you have to arrange your trigger location environment to avoid the risk of trying to move your AI, say, to the middle of a wall. Maybe just living with a one or a few named teleport targets would be easier.

I'll do that now.... done

Hmmm, intermitant behavior, everyone's favorite. Good workaround, tho... I'll add it to my list of things to wikify, if no DR fix gets queued up.

One of the things I left unresolved when I wrote up the wiki entry for Model Scaling, is how to make duplicates. If you just hit the space key, it creates a new unscaled object, which is really not what you want. I just recalled this problem again, when I was set to make a dozen scaled items that I wanted to be identical in size. I don't know if there's a workaround.

@taaaki , could you contact me about use of TDM SVN for a FM collaboration? I guess your PM mailbox is full.

Do you think using monsterclip as the texture, instead of the original tdm_nodraw_solid_liquid, has made the setup more fragile?