geegee

A triggering problem. Thanks. It happens rarely (in my playthroughs). I'll put it on my list. Glad to hear that the portals did the job.

Yes, it takes out the neverDormant=0 spawnarg globally, not just in the Belcher. Because I have no way of knowing where else the problem might occur, and on what machines. Shadow's report does confirm stgatilov's diagnosis of the problem. What I can't understand is how on the same machine Noble Affairs gets 175-200 fps most of the time. At the same video settings (maps, med soft shadows, everything else off) I get nothing close to that on my machine, and most of the time Lucy scores better. For example, on the dock at the start I get 45-55 fps as I rotate 360. In the first corridors I get 25-35 fps, and in the manor it's the same with spots going down to 20. Such variation baffles me. Comparing with shadows stencil and soft shadows off, Noble Affairs gets 80-100 fps most of the time, which is pretty good. But half what Shadow gets. On Lucy with stencil and soft shadows off the increase in fps is much more modest. I'm running v2.10. I'll switch to v2.11 dev build, although this problem doesn't happen on my machine, or is near imperceptible.

Yah, changing of the guard often takes thieves by surprise. That's why the taffers do it. Fortunately in this case they were half-assed when they did their change act and with the thief having prior knowledge of the layout it's rather a cakewalk.

I have updated the download link to a version 1.1 that hopefully addresses the issue of AI immobilized in T-pose in the Belcher (and possibly other places). Version 1.1 will probably break the savegames from earlier versions (I''m not certain of that). Apologies to everyone.

That's a wandering minstrel or troubadour, although in truth his home turf is the tavern made famous in King of Diamonds. So he's seen everything and I can't picture him being perturbed. When it came time to renovate the interior of a structure decorated with the Belcher's sign made originally by Springheel construction I believe, I'd just been hypnotized by the tavern in KoD, by the lighting and ambience, so I had that tavern in mind when I copy/pasted from Spooks' work.

@esme @boissiere @Shadow @Marbrien @pwl I don't get this scarecrows-at-the-Belcher glitch on either my PC or my laptop so my hands are tied without help. This glitch seems new so that narrows my hunches re. what might be causing it. If anyone who has this glitch wishes to help out - it's asking a lot to be sure - could you send me a PM so I can send a link to a possibly fixed map?

I'm glad to see you're still playing it!

F5 is default quicksave in a lot of games so it becomes an unthinking action. So I've configured both F4 and F5 to quicksave, leaving F9 as quickload since that's also a common default and unthinking action. Hitting F5 to quicksave after completing a complicated gameplay and getting loaded back to the start of the qauntlet can be irritating.

@nbohr1more , a problem has been reported and I wonder if this FM could be taken off the database and I could retract the release until the issue is resolved?

The .jpg shows AI standing in "skinning" position with arms stretched out. This isn't good. It doesn't effect gameplay in the Belcher because of the way triggers etc. are set up, but if it happens elsewhere it might break the game. Regardless, it's totally immersion breaking! This isn't consistent. In esme's case it happened once but didn't happen again after a fresh restart. In your case different AI are effected. @stgatilov I wonder if this erratic behavior could be produced by the spawnarg neverDormant=0 that's on those AI? It only happens on some AI with the spawnarg. There's been no report of the AI in the "yard" area (first area of the FM) behaving like that though the spawnarg is set on all of them.

Look up. The ducts go in 3 dimensions.

Thanks for the report. I've never seen that in my hundreds/thousands/millions of playthroughs of the area. There's nothing special about those AI or the area. Do you know the cheats? Could you start a new game, open the console with ctrl-alt-` and type in noclip (enter) then notarget (enter). You can then quickly fly through walls to the belcher and check if it happens every time. noclip and notarget are toggles, so typing them in again will exit from the cheats.

The Adventures of Thomas: Lucy's Quest Author: gg 2022-06-20 Version: 1.1 Required TDM Version: 2.10 or higher EFX: Yes ============================================================== Cautionary note: This FM needs a strong CPU/GPU combination sufficient to play the more demanding TDM FMs. Just as for many or most of the new FMs being released with the new gfx possibilities opened up it does a world of good to tweak the advanced video settings for the best combination of settings for your PC. For example, on my weaker laptop I set shadows as stencil and soft shadows off. On my desktop I set shadows as maps and soft shadows medium. Bloom off. Ambient occlusion off. Since the FM was built and extensively tested at these settings I believe either should produce a satisfactory experience. ============================================================== Sound Credits: freemusicarchive.org music Aislinn04_-_Aislinn_-_Lovely_Maria freesound.org klankbeeld_horror_1 freesound.org/people/CarlosCarty/sounds/522687/ om_aum_mantra_male_chant_bb freesound.org/people/Still%20Frames/sounds/37720/ still_frames freemusicarchive.org music The_Mind_Orchestra_Bruwynn tecknic.bandcamp.com/album/the-dark-mod-ambience-and-atmospheres Zack Bower Ancient_2, _3, _5. Solemn_1 freesound.org/people/Jagadamba/sounds/256006/ group_chanting_om_aum ============================================================== Thanks to: The TDM/DR developers for producing such a beautiful machine. The keepers of the wiki pages which are looking very good these days. Sotha for his invaluable tutorial "The Bakery Job". This tutorial is a jewel. Springheel for creating an atmosphere. Bikerdude for... ideas how to do things and scale things. Playtesters and advisors Dragofer, wesp5, datiswous, shadow. datiswous pointed out some immersion breaking lighting faults, so I got the idea. wesp5 gave me some good advice on how to tell the story - so it's more understandable. Dragofer gave me some early advice on optimizing the mission, which gave me a couple of months work with results that are well worth it. Dragofer wrote a script which optimizes CPU calculations of AI interactions. Shadow helped by testing the script, as well as testing other attempts at optimization. With the script in action only the minimal of AI interactions in the player's vicinity are called to be calculated. The script provides a general benefit but the results vary from computer to computer. The script targets a CPU task. ============================================================== Gameplay: Notes attached to objectives contain essential information on gameplay, on who the good/bad guys are, on what the player must do, and why. Mandatory objectives are linear, directing the player along a route to the goal. Optional objectives can be completed anytime. ============================================================== CAUTION: spiders, rats, undead, necrophiles, cannibals, psychotic thugs, and some generally unsavory characters. No snakes, though. The spiders ate them. ==============================================================

or "The adventures of Thomas: Lucy's quest" This isn't a short mission - it takes awhile to play through - and for a first run I'd like beta testers to play without cheats (no godmode flythrough, please!), so gameplay issues are put to the fore. I'd also like this beta test to be "closed" - so I'll start a thread in the beta forum but PM links to testers, if there are any takers .

@datiswous and the other kind souls willing to help, I apologize for being out of the loop for the past while. Dragofer saw my FM and offered some advice which I've been following. Like some earlier advice from Cabalistic (which I followed, and finished - and it was a shitload of work), Dragofer's suggestions were global and required very extensive global changes to my map. Those changes are 90+% done - with corresponding global improvements. A very good learning experience indeed! That's what's been taking up my time. I've also been implementing volumetric lighting throughout - this lighting improvement is fantastic! I want my FM to go straight to beta after this, and this should be soon. I simply haven't got it in me to do more global fixes.

My timing was off on this one. Work on beta-testing is much more needed elsewhere as there are several missions for the contest alone. So I apologize.

Hey, now I can use maps in my WIP with no artifacts! Thanks for all your work, stgatilov.

Excellent mission from start to finish. Played on expert mode and had a hell of a time finding the last two artifacts. Finally got them by repeating to myself: both Grayman and Jack Farmer can be sneaky as hell hiding stuff. The whole team of mappers and actors were pitch perfect.

I like this effect. I suppose it's known that the volumetric effect is switched off when a save is reloaded? I use stencil shadows. Generally with maps I get lights flickering on/off at distances 1600/1800 units from player as well as occasional nearby artefacts. In most missions this isn't a problem but in a few it is and in my WIP it breaks the game in too many places. The volumetric effect is easy to use and with the entity spawnarg it'll be a breeze.

I thought that might be the case. I'll use your method and make R and L pairs. Thanks for the quick answer!

To assign the rotation point of a func_static made into an atdm:mover_door I go into vertex mode, select the axis of rotation (the only selectable vertex) and move it to the right spot. When I export that same func_static as .ase, import the .ase and make it an atdm:mover_door everything works, except the axis of rotation isn't selectable. When exporting as .ase I check the option 'Center objects at 0,0,0 origin', and the axis of rotation is now centered at exact center of the model. If I leave this option unchecked (default) the axis of rotation is centered at 0,0,0 of the DR grid - so when I put the cursor at a point of the grid and 'create model', that's where the axis of rotation is created while the model itself is offset accordingly. In neither case is this center, or axis of rotation, selectable or moveable independently of the model. eta: A kludge is to extend the door to be exported as .ase with a nodraw brush so the center of the combo is at the axis location desired. This works but is an abominable kludge which only gets worse since for double doors kludged versions of both L and R are required. Likewise for every other axis adjustment that needs to be made.

The map was designed to tell a story and I think it succeeds. The playable area is large, perhaps comparable to that of Hidden Hands: The Lost Citadel, and like HHTLC has several visually distinct areas. After converting 17 func_static light fixtures to models, and replacing about 70 func_statics in my map, the .proc file was reduced from 201MB to 188MB so a saving of 13. Zipped, the size went down from 24.6MB to 23.4MB for a saving of a measly 1.2MB. There's more that I can convert and for that I'm going to take your advice and study entity def's, and convert them into entities. I doubt these changes will have much of an impact on this map, but for my next FM it'll help produce a tighter and more optimized structure. By the way, I use nurb curves a lot in my map. Perhaps that also goes into the .proc size. eta: now down to 161MB, a cut of 40MB. This is going well and I've learned a new trick! I noticed a small drop in fps in some areas, most to shrug off but one in an area where the drop put the map into the red (it was already too close). But I slept on it and woke with a visportaling answer (which had eluded me 'till now), making for a significant increase in fps in that whole sector. Yippee!

@OrbWeaver Yes, that's what I figured from the discussion. Copy/pasting around a func_static creates multiple un_precalculatable individuals whereas copying a model around creates multiple instances of what TDM pre-calculates to be one individual. So I've spent the last few editing hours creating models of the statics. I don't know how to include a light and emitter in a light fixture model, so the models are just of the func_statics, so I use a sensible iterative naming formula to create a S/R trio of the grouped model/light/emitter. Now I can copy/paste that around, deleting the old func_statics as I go. That's going to take awhile, for sure. I doubt I can whittle it down to anything like Painter's Wife size. Even if technically possible, which I doubt, Painter's Wife is a collaborative effort made by seasoned veterans combining many specialized skills. How could I possibly produce something that rivals the optimization of that? That's an impossible dream. Thanks for staying with this discussion, OrbWeaver. I appreciate it. I

ah, with the *_ed.jpg files deleted, the compressed size is 445MB. Painter's Wife is 174MB. I can see several ways to reduce size now, after this discussion, so I'll see how it goes. But the comments have been negative and I doubt I can reach an outcome satisfying the TDM community, so ... it's like seeing the finish line of a marathon and WHACK, a blackjack to the back of the head

Too bad - it would have saved 70MB. I think I read something about "only .tga for env files" way back when. When reading-and-doing, so following along and integrating, I tend to remember, but when I just read a tutorial and I'm not immediately doing, I tend to forget. Then it becomes a total mess and I have a cold beer.