Strider

That works! It only needs to be a single unit in front of the static model for the painting to be visible and the marker to be seen by the AI. Now to test it in the actual map. Edit: Works fine in the real map now. Thanks guys. Also, for the record, part of the problem was that the painting was just slightly too high in the AI's field of view -- I lowered it a bit and it works now. Still doesn't answer the candle question, though...

Okay, so, in hindsight I maybe should have thought of this, but apparently the absence marker absolutely refuses to be lit by candles; for example, a candle sitting immediately next to a loot item on a table (AI standing a couple feet away, directly facing) will not light up the absence marker (the item used in this case was the moveable_loot_chalice). However, a light set to 75 brightness value whose radius extends only about 8 units beyond the loot item (so the chalice was almost totally in shadow) is apparently enough for the marker to be lit and the AI to see it. The ambient_world was set to 4. Now to try to set up the painting.. Btw, is there a way to modify the candles so they would light up the marker? I'd much prefer that to another sort of light in this area.

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. I'll run a test map that's well lit and everything and fool around with it, just to see if I can get the system to work, then I'll progressively add in the features of the painting that I want. Hopefully that'll let me know where I'm going wrong. Is there a way I can actually edit the absence marker that will be created when the item is taken, or is that entity only created in-game? Will let you know what happens asap...

So I decided to do like Sotha did and post miscellaneous progress/questions/problems and such to a single thread to avoid cluttering up the forum, so here goes. My first question here is about the absence_noticeability property. I'm trying to get it to work on a painting that tears out and leaves the empty frame there, but no matter what I do I can't get the AI to notice it (even when well-lit and sitting a few feet directly in front of him). Is this because the object is replaced with the blank picture frame instead of just being absent altogether, and if so, can I work around that? Edit: After several tries, again with a well-lit item (not a painting this time) placed mere feet in front of an AI, I can't get him to notice the absence. What am I missing?

Amongst their weaponry are fear, surprise, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and a nice red uniform!

That's basically what I've been going on so far -- and I'll be sure Builder's Influence is the next one I load up. Will there eventually be some unique Inquisitor AIs in the game? I can make do no problem with the Builders we have available right now, but that would be pretty cool, I think. Particularly if they were given their own voice acting

Having not had the chance to play through all of the available FMs yet, I'm wondering if anyone would like to supply me with some brief info on a couple of topics, so that I can continue developing my storyline without fear of stepping on anyone's toes. Basically I just need to know to what extent the higher-ups (both of persons and locales) in the Builder Church have been represented (directly or indirectly) so far -- for example: Has the "Grand Cathedral" been located in a specific part of the City yet? The Wiki says it's "on the hill," but that's it. To what extent, if any, have the Inquisitors and their power structure been fleshed out? My mission(s) will deal heavily with them, even to the point of perhaps creating a headquarters of sorts for them in Bridgeport (unless that's been done already). Feel free to point me to the missions that might include this sort of information, rather than just telling me outright If this clears up what sort of info I'm interested in: I'm working on what is likely to be a handful of missions dealing with the Church and how it would deal with heresy in the upper echelons society.

The texture warping only appears after I start messing with vertices to align adjacent bevels that meet at a corner of a brush. Returning the vertices to their original position fixes the texture, but obviously looks bad. How do you guys correct this?

I'm running into some weird texture warping on patches that I haven't seen before. I'm doing some bevels, and when I copy/paste the shader from the flat surface to the patch, the texture is matched up at the edges, but it's distorted on the patch -- for example, lines on bricks or wood will be slanted instead of following the same direction as on the original brush. Help?

Thanks for the tip, stumpy, but as I'm new at this, I'm not sure how to employ that information. Can you elaborate...?

How would I link a bunch of lights to a single switch without having the switch target every single one of them? I'm talking about a LOT of lights, like a master switch for the whole building. I've tried the def_attach method I found in the forum search, but I'm getting an error in the dmap log and the switch isn't turning all the lights on -- only the first one, the one that the switch is directly targeting.

@Baddcog & Fidcal: I agree that the seal is the more interesting item to be involved in the process (though in this context the player will already have it in their possession at mission start). I'll fiddle around with the heat stim/special candle idea, but maybe it would be sufficient to just require the player to be within a certain range of a particular candle in the map? Like a candlestick on a desk in the study? Heh, I sound like I'm accusing somebody in Clue... @HappyCheeze: Complete with custom failure movie, no doubt. "Congratulations, you were clumsy at precisely the most inopportune moment."

So I'm working on a mission that will require some in-game alterations to an inventory object. Specifically, I want one of the objectives to say something along the lines of "Read this letter, then find a way to re-seal it so no one knows you opened it." Any suggestions on what might be the easiest way to contrive such an event? I'm not looking for anything especially complex -- maybe just make the player find a candle and "use" it on the letter (to apply a wax seal), preferably with a change in the object's appearance from a page of paper to a closed envelope. (Do we have models for closed envelopes? Don't remember seeing any.) Thanks!