Geep

@STRUNK That is another way to go. Again, the same concern... will a trigger that targets an AI still work after a remove/spawn with the same name? Dunno.

@Dragofer, I oversimplified my description of the case. For some situations setSkin would be fine, but I really do need to have a different body.

@Destined , your comment about changing a model relates to a upcoming issue for me. I've got an AI character that will have 2 different bodies, though only 1 will be seen by the player at any time (think: a change of clothes). I could imagine one approach, elegant if it worked, would be to instantiate both versions, but swap their names somehow. If there's a renaming method that works on AI, then I imagine you'd use the usual pattern: rename(AI_2 --> AI_setaside); rename(AI_1 --> AI_2); rename (AI_setaside --> AI_1) to avoid having 2 objects with the same name momentarily. So, is it possible to rename an AI character in mid-game? If so would that break things? I'm guessing that scripts that reference the AI name would be just fine, but that triggers that target the AI may break Anyone tried this in the past?

JackFarmer's "Hidden Hands: Vitalic Fever" also has a lute player.

@MirceaKitsune Just another thought on the gramophone. You probably want to put a spinning disk on it. Create a disk, make it into a func_rotating with spawnarg "speed" of (say) -100, and an appropriate texture. textures/darkmod/decals/metal/drain_cover worked for me.

My large-building-interior info_location overlap problems have been solved. Here's what I learned - The majority of my problems were due to missing locationseparators. In a large, complex spaces (say, the inside of a duct network), it is easy to overlook an opening or two. One fail was caused by a worldspawn wall which I had stupidly made way too thin (0.125 thick!), which the engine decided was non-sealing. There was only 1 traditional seam leak. Given that most causes were not leaks, the recommended leak-finding techniques were not fruitful. Instead, what worked was "divide and conquer". More specifically, for each reported overlap: Subdivide one or both existing info_locations by temporarily installing more locationseparators (usually in new visportals) and named info_locations. Dmap to check any new visportals, and correct them. (Did a visportal fail because it crossed a seam leak? If not obvious by inspection, try a pointfile). Map (but don't actually press "attack") the game, in order to get updated overlap information in the console. Which subspace is now reported? Repeat until you've gotten the culprit area down to manageable size. If there's no obvious missing locationseparator, eyeball the walls closely for seam fails. (Helpful: filter entities; select walls of interest and hide deselected) When done, any new visportals can be left as non-harmful/maybe-helpful; remove the diagnostic-only info_locations and locationseparators.

Thanks for that refinement of Dragofer's suggestion. Probably the tea leaves I'm basing my analysis on are too muddled so far... Further visportaling and location_separating may clarify the situation. And cutting back on speaker-based sound sources, at least some of those previously used for ambience.

Another tool to try.

Thanks. Of the three methods, my thoughts are - (1) seems unfortunately insufficient for a preexisting large building with 2 dozen rooms and a set of worldspawn rooflines that are complexly-angled and clipped. (2) and (3) are equivalent in power; probably (2) is the lighter lift, so I'll start there. But first, I'm continuing the further planned subdivision of the space into various info_locations. This may (or may not) narrow down where the problems lie.

Just converting over to info_location sounds, and having some problems, as indicated by dmap warnings of form: WARNING:location entity 'Info_location_x' overlaps 'info_location_y' in area n For context, imagine x and y are separate adjacent rooms with a single entrance each. Each entrance has a visportal with a locationseparator, and each room (and their common corridor) has its own info_location. No errors are reported concerning the visportals themselves or their locationseparator embedments. So presumably, there's some crack between rooms x and y that's treating both room as a common portal area. The crack may be some indirect path through adjoining spaces. What would be most helpful here is a way to generate a pointfile that would run between entities info_location_x and info_location_y. Absent that, is there some other way to discover where the leak is?

Sounds worthwhile. Implementing new particle effects is not something I know anything about.

You'll want to check out particle effect tdm_flies.prt . BTW, _Atti_ placed a nighttime swarm of these outside a window, circling in the outward cast beam. (This effect is part of our WIP that will see the light of day in 2021.) You can't really tell what creatures they are... moths, bats, whatever

@Petike the Taffer, please add a Synopsis page for 'Away 1 - Air Pocket, and help propagate its Description to www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails. It's OK to continue to list it as a "single mission" for now. PM me if needed. @darksilence, please add the Description to your db. From the pk4's darkmod.txt "Description": On the run from her husband, me and my girl. With a bribe to a ship's captain, we're away. What could go wrong now? Oh, dammit.

I've got the old noblewoman working in my WIP, but it's evidently the first version that Bob Neon created. There was a later "Edit 2", wrinkles much improved, referenced here: But following the link to that Google Photos page, the photos appear corrupted, or at least I can't gather them. Does anyone have another source for the diffuse & bump maps? The forum discussion suggested Penny Dreadful 3 - Erasing the Trail might eventually use this AI, but it didn't.

Thanks, I see that within newjob, prologue9.map contains a reference to it. I can track it down from there.

Yup, just what I needed. Thanks. 1 down, 1 to go.

Here's 2 quick questions I can't seem to locate answers for: 1) I have a rectangular area that I want to make a "hot zone", so if you linger in it, your health decreases. Think lava, radioactivity, etc. I could imagine entrance/exit triggers and scripting for this, but am unsure that's the best way to go. 2) There's a standard 3-piece safe model, "metal_safe01", that I'd like to use without a lot of effort. It includes a horizontally sliding bar. Can someone point me to an FM that uses that, so I can review <cough>steal<cough> the mechanism that makes it work?

Actually, never mind. I've just created a very thin brush panel with the duct texture that I can apply to each face: along the thin dimension, the panel straddles the patch skin; along the other dimensions, it fits inside the brackets. Obviously, positioning a panel on each face is a bit tedious, but does the job. BTW, I'm repurposing your generator prefab, by replacing the generator itself with heat exchanger pipes.

@Aosys, I need to decide how to go forward with ducts in my FM. I don't know that I can add the twosided keyword from my end, to your prefab items. Do you plan to work on either twosided versions or external shells? If not, or not this year, I'll solve this another way.

RE PM, maybe just a full in-box? Dunno. Yeah, I agree that draft's a bit wordy. Looking forward to your GIMP coverage. Do you want to take the lead on the wiki page revision, or should I?

@peter_spy, oh, you're not taking PMs. Here's the text.

@peter_spy, Thanks. I also thought a new first section was needed, and drafted a few paragraphs yesterday. I'll PM them to you for your consideration.

Trying to figure out DDS creation. The existing wiki entry by that name is pretty sad. For instance, it wants you to use a specific version of an obsolete, vendor-specific compression tool. I'm kinda sure anyone doing it now would use Photoshop or GIMP. Playing with latest GIMP, I'm guessing the setting might be, in the case where 100% opacity is desired: 1) Flatten Image (to merge layers and remove Alpha channel) 2) Use File/Export As, then in the Name field, change the file extension to .dds (must be lower case). 3) In the "Export as DDS" dialog, change these fields from their default values to new values: - Compression: BC1/DXT1 - Mipmaps: Generate mipmaps - Mipmap Options – Filter: Box Could a DDS-GIMP expert here weigh in on these options, and whether one needs to change other things (sRGB, Gamma, etc.)? I'd be happy to update the wiki about this when the dust clears.

If this gets implemented successfully, I see a potential follow-on project that could use some of the same architecture, but for a mapper audience. Namely, find all official FMs that use a specific resource (e.g., texture, material, model, audio file, AI character, script or script function). Essentially, there would be a similar search form, a new backend database with this information, and new indexing scripts to gather it (run whenever an FM is released/updated). Some of this scripting would be easy; some would require inference (e.g., usage of prefabs). The search results would have not just each FM hit, but a link to detail info (e.g., where the resource is defined; where it is deployed in the particular map). As it stands now, a mapper can use generic full-text-search tools on their dev box (and some manual poking around) to do this, but only over FMs they have downloaded and retained.

Related: For a WIP FM, I've been gathering additional 2D art images, and NOT seeking obscure art, but trying to restrict it to originals with either CC or public domain sources. The latter is satisfied (in the case of paintings or prints) by using only artists that were dead by 1920 (100 years ago), and images that are not high-resolution (having to do with potential copyrights on the scans or digital photos). To fit in with the TDM epoch, I prefer images painted no later than 1870... I may crop or (in special cases) retouch out more-modern anachronisms. Some preference for European (including UK) art as well, fitting with the generalized TDM locale. As opposed to, say, US or Asian art.