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Wellingtoncrab

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Posts posted by Wellingtoncrab

  1. 2 hours ago, Melchior said:

    ...while those all seem to fit great for utilitarian/industrial/fortress settings - what about quaint manor homes and/or stone-castles, as well as rustic scenes? (examples included)

    The latch is just like any any other entity - you can use any model or func_static you like as long as the mechanism translates or rotates (or both).

  2. 20 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

    If it's dead, it can kill the inv. item, but I don't think it can resurrect the entity.

    I guess I want to be sure I understand the context of entity "death" - both purchasing the glasses and picking them up adds a atdm:xray_glasses item to the players inventory. You mentioned basically the inventory slot which should be the be pointing at atdm:xray_glasses is pointing at nothing

    So it probably got "killed":

    -In the process of being added to inventory (in this case it was a purchase)

    -Upon the first attempt at using it (it sounds like it immediately did not work)

    -Or in the very small window in between

    Unless the entity in an inventory slot can be "dead" prior to it ever being added?

  3. 5 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

    By the way, I also remembered that this mission does not allow to customize FOV.

    I know of no reason why it wouldn't - the xray glasses are really the only thing that does any kind of screen effect. There is no FOV slider in the game so it was not tested admittedly.

    7 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

    I don't see anything here that could kill an entity.

    I am not recalling anything really that interacts with the players inventory directly in the mission. Dropping the glasses with "Drop Inv. Item" and reacquiring them doesn't restore the item to the players inventory either I am guessing?

  4. 3 hours ago, stgatilov said:

    Every CInventoryItem (C++ object) stores pointer to entity in m_Item.
    In my case, this pointer is dead, i.e. it points to an entity which was removed some time ago.
    I guess for the glasses to work, it should point to the "atdm:xray_glasses" entity.

    If I understand correctly it sounds like something is basically removing the actual glasses entity from game so the inventory item points at nothing?

    Looking at the scripts this is the area where I see handling of the xray glasses overlapping with with other inventory items - basically it keeps the current inventory item as glasses after picking up other inventory objects so you don't have to constantly scroll through the inventory to to enable/disable them. 

    Not sure if something is going haywire here:

    // dirty workaround to stop the inventory from changing away from the xray glasses if the player picks up loot or items while wearing them
    void playertools_xray_glasses::loot_loop()
    {
        string frobHighlighted;
        string selectedCurrent;
        string selectedPrevious;
    
        while( wearing_xray_glasses )
        {
            selectedCurrent = $player1.getCurInvItemEntity().getKey("classname");
            if( $player1.getFrobbed() )    frobHighlighted = $player1.getFrobbed().getKey("classname");
    
            // has the inventory switched away from the xray glasses?
            if ( selectedCurrent != selectedPrevious && selectedPrevious == getKey("classname") )
            {
                // has it switched because the player has frobbed an item or some loot?
                if( selectedCurrent == frobHighlighted
                ||  selectedCurrent == "atdm:inv_loot_info_item" )
                {
                    sys.wait(0.65);
                    
                    // if the player still has that item selected, switch back to the xray glasses
                    if( selectedCurrent == $player1.getCurInvItemEntity().getKey("classname") && wearing_xray_glasses )
                    {
                        $player1.setCurInvItem( getKey("inv_name") );    //switch back to the xray glasses
                    }
                }
            }
    
            selectedPrevious = selectedCurrent;
    
            sys.waitFrame();
        }
    }    
  5. It seems like more and more "thief" and "thief players" is becoming a short hand to dismiss community members earnest  desire to improve the game - which happens to be a barely legally distinct "thief style" game which was made by thief fans for thief fans and is "designed to simulate the stealth gameplay of Thief". 

    Who is the predominant player base of the game supposed to be beyond fans of the thief games? Is there some better avenue to find feedback for the game beyond this forum? FOSS and linux forums? I have seen maybe half a dozen posts from that segment.

    I am a thief fan, I play thief fms, my association with those games is what drives me to play and make things for this game. 

    Are we supposed to pretend the original games are not a huge reason why most of us are here at all?

    TL;DR version:

    8d4coq.jpg

    • Like 3
  6. 2 hours ago, wesp5 said:

    I know and this is what I did, but wasn't the whole change about making it more intuitive for beginners?

    This is what you said:

    15 hours ago, wesp5 said:

    I just played the new beta mission and wondered why I couldn't extinguish moveable lights as I had already forgotten that I need to use hold-frob in 2.12.

    1) That while playing you found you could not extinguish moveable lights

    2) This was because of the need to use the hold frob and did not remember this

    I know you wouldn’t make a misleading statement about the implementation of the hold frob mechanic as a pretext to bring up your issues with the consistency with the controls, so I assume you forgot the original controls of the game or your custom keybinding for “use inv item” reset when you updated the game or something.

    At this point in the thread I am not going to recommend to you that you use an optional mechanic that you don’t like.

    There is a version of the training mission in development which tutorializes the hold frob mechanic - though eventually it would be good to develop a tutorial mission that is less freeeform than the training mission.

    • Like 3
  7. 1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

    I just played the new beta mission and wondered why I couldn't extinguish moveable lights as I had already forgotten that I need to use hold-frob in 2.12. This is completely counterintuitive to shouldering bodies and there is no global information about this, so please make it so that hold-frobing takes a moveable light and short frobing extinguishes it! This would also be more consistent to the static lights. The same should be done for consumables too: short frob eat, long frob pick up...

    You do not "need to use" hold frob to extinguish candles - you can use hold frob but the 2.11 controls also work exactly the same as they used to. Pick up the candle - and "use inv item" to extinguish it. Pick up food and "use inv item" to eat it.

    Do you have some other setting or keybinding which is preventing this from working?

    • Like 1
  8. 4 hours ago, wesp5 said:

    how many people download each new TDM mission compared to how many people do so with new Thief missions to learn how big our communities are.

    Yeah it would be cool to see some more detailed statistics and it’s a shame they aren’t really captured. Since we are talking about fan mission platforms, where players also make the content for the game, I feel like the best thing we’ve got is you can look at the number of content releases for the games. Keep in mind the graph counts campaigns as single missions - so for example NHAT and TBP both count as 1 mission. A good year for TDM has has approaching maybe 50% - mostly we’re 25-30%.

    https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152494

    You could also look at the number of ratings thief missions get on https://www.thiefguild.com/ vs TDM ones, but that is pretty iffy in that you could chalk that up to more awareness of the site in the thief community than TDM

    4 hours ago, wesp5 said:

     In that sense this isn't really about "new players"

    Out of curiosity is there a reason a thief player can’t be a new player? I kind of think a player is a player and new players would be ones who are playing the dark mod who weren't? Is there disagreement the base of players most likely to pick up the game are fans of the thief games? They are certainly the most fruitful place to find feedback on the game beyond the sphere of this forum that I have seen.

    When we were trying to finish up SLL there was a lot of discussion on the forums about how long it had been since there was a release for the game. I am thankful that the stats show at least some stability over the years in terms of releases for TDM, but the trend for all of the games is decline.

    Not doing anything is a valid response if that’s what the devs want to do - it is not possible to provide evidence that any effort will slow that inertia.

    As a player and content maker I would just prefer trying to find feedback where it is offered from players who were willing to try the game but ultimately could not engage with it and see if there is anything that can be done within reason to ease them into the game. The game has a lot to offer imo.

    All those players are potential contributors - contributions in turn attract players - it’d be nice to see the cycle go on as long as it can.

    • Like 3
  9. I was asked for feedback on some different mantle implementations. I liked the overall direction and the current 2.12 one not just because it is more responsive but because it also includes some other polish like getting rid of the kind of weird “double dip” mantle you would get when mantling into a crouched position with low ceilings.

    There are small things I would change were it up to me, but I prefer it to the original. It’s nice that there is some accompanying control in the main menu in terms of the animation intensity. I always liked the mantle feel of TDM and think now it feels even better, but that is just me.

  10. Just now, chakkman said:

    I'm not sure why you're so aggressive towards me.

    How do you mean? That’s certainly not intentional and I am sorry if I come across that way.

    My only point to you was that you don’t even have to apply the threshold of “realism” to have a valid opinion about how the game feels. 

  11. 1 minute ago, chakkman said:

    I don't think you really get my point.

    Do you get mine:

    With the new mantle do you have an opinion on what the default mantle roll value should be?

    You can say you don’t have one.

  12.  

    6 minutes ago, chakkman said:

    No. There are limits to what a human is capable of

    As I mentioned in my post, if the this is even an issue the devs modeled it off of actual human capabilities. ie watching actual people perform the task. Whose capabilities are you measuring that feeling against? Your own? That of a season thief? It really doesn’t matter, they are your perceptions of the game. That should be valid enough without worrying if your subjective feelings about how the game should feel meet “reality”.

    The game is inherently not realistic, nor are any of the games in the pantheon of immersive sims.

    That is another topic entirely though.

    Do you have an opinion on the default mantle roll setting?

  13. 2 hours ago, chakkman said:

    Would be great if this could be fine tuned a bit. I also think it's exaggerated. Again, I like TDM for its rather realistic movement.

    I am not really invested in realism being the criteria for a how a game should play, but it sounds like the devs modeled it using actual parkour videos - which would be people mantling in real life. Even if it was desirable I am not sure “realism” is an achievable result. The capabilities of people in reality is pretty diverse after all.

    I think what you are describing as "realistic" is just what feels subjectively natural or correct to you, which you can and should advocate for that.

    I am speaking specifically about the “mantle roll” - the tilting camera animation which plays at the last stage of the mantle. What I found is that the new mantle kind of clicks and feels subjectively “right” to me with the revised speed is a setting of .5 instead of 1. 

    But that’s just me, so curious if you or others have any opinion on this menu setting.

    • Like 1
  14. I like the new mantle speed a lot.

    Though I find with the faster speed the default mantle roll of 1.0 looks rather exaggerated and can be a little jarring, so I have been dialing it back. This is pretty subjective, but I have been dialing it back to around 60-50% and find that feels like a good balance to me.

    Might be worth looking at adjusting the default value now that the fundamentals are different, but maybe somebody else has an opinion.

  15. 1 hour ago, snatcher said:

    Sorry I don't know if you mean whether yellow have a positive or negative edge in that case. Without a proper thick outline issues will always popup here and there regardless of the color, white with newspapers, yellow with books or scrolls... Having a background is the safest bet, but for small recurrent pieces of text such as barks, the current background if off-putting.

    My guess was that it would have a positive edge and be more legible in slightly more circumstances than white (though not perfect) - but that is not based on any testing admittedly. Only a hypothesis as I know I have had issues with pure white text in guis I have made.

    • Like 1
  16. 24 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

    IIRC, unless you have written confirmation on that, and specific textures that were licensed on the old terms, it's not a thing. You are always bound by the current version of the EULA displayed on the website, and it's your obligation to keep up with the changes.

    Exactly the point that is made in my post:

    1 hour ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

     

    Ultimately if something is licensed, the terms can change. So buyer beware.

    • Like 1
  17. @Frost_SalamanderIf it is helpful, I have express permission from Marcel of cgtextures/textures.com that packaging his assets in a .pk4 is acceptable and at the time he was fine with packaging them in TDM projects:

    Also you mentioned not being able to use your images for just textures - do I take it this means you can use them as textures and within materials in the context of a mod - you just can’t package and release them as only textures correct?

    Lastly idtech 4 is an engine old enough it’s package files (.pk4s) can be opened with any archive software (would be difficult to mod otherwise). I will include your license information in my documentation if I ever get to release, but is there any special consideration I should give to packaging assets derived from your images in older game engines which lack modern security?

    Quote

     

    That's correct, but this is only allowed for the regular photo textures, not the special content.
    If a texture can be extracted from an pk4s file that's ok.

     

    The main thing I hope is to just ensure you include his license and that you do not distribute the textures themselves outside of the context of the fm. There is a bit of a slippery slope in that terms on the site have changed a lot over the years. The current licensing model finally seems to state that the photo ref textures are ok to use in "Scenes" for example, but for many years it stated it was only acceptable to use them specially in models.

    There are many many assets in core which are from this site, which were licensed under these much older terms:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20100818122748/http://cgtextures.com/content.php?action=license

    Ultimately if something is licensed, the terms can change. So buyer beware.

    • Like 1
  18. 12 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

    I just played a bit of Cyberpunk 2077 and there too, to shoulder a body you need to long-press a button. Because it takes time. Primary function for bodies there is looting, isn't this planned for TDM as well?

    If TDM were an RPG with an inventory system like CP2077 or a bethesda game yeah I imagine the primary function of interacting with a body might be related to inventory management.

    Again the developers of that game had a context sensitive input, they prioritized what it should do based off of their game and what the player is mostly likely to need. This is not making a stronger case we should not do the same thing for our game.

    You have never bothered to explain why in this game a player would need to prioritize dragging and manipulating a body over shouldering it beyond it being being “inconsistent”.

    • Like 2
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