Jnon

In hindsight, no moss arrows was a rather big oversight on my part. Mea culpa.

I'd say you earned that one.

I've had trouble with this before, but I usually just place loot with default values from the DarkRadiant Entity List.... if people are typically tweaking the frob distance, what values are usually used?

All the furniture is default assets from DarkRadiant, and going into it now to check I see regular wood textures responsive to light on all standing cabinets so I'm not sure what might be causing this. Does this occur with the same asset in other maps that you're aware of? I'm really glad you liked it, and in hindsight I can see some of the missteps and missed opportunities. I'll be sure to keep this in mind for future work. On the difficulty side, I do get caught up too much in plausibility ("why wouldn't they carry torches if they're walking in the dark?") vs playability/appropriate challenge. I guess I'll need to develop a better sense of restraint there. You're on a Linux installation same as me, so I wonder... did you at any point tab out and then back into TDM before this happened? This is a bug I've experienced frequently.. tabbing out/in causes aim/freelock to lock whenever either mouse button is held. The only way I can clear it is to quit TDM and restart the program, and avoid tabbing out at all.

No, that's definitely supposed to be passable. There's an invisible brush over each doorway that's meant to block opening the latch from outside as well as NPCs arbitrarily opening it, but frobbing the latch from the inside is supposed to remove them. In dozens of playthroughs, I never once had a problem with not being able to go through those doorways, and I'm really curious how that happened. Quite by coincidence, I was watching DS9 around the time I was working on this part of the map

This was the intent for the initial trip through (since zombies in the Plague Ward is kind of a trope, I wanted that hanging in the air only to never actually happen). But in hindsight, I agree with the return trip. I did add the lever in the small gatehouse on street level to allow for mostly skipping the sewer on the trip back, but it is still rather long and could have been tightened up. Still, glad you enjoyed it. Thanks.

Oh dear... these never came up in testing, I'll have to see if I can replicate them. The latter at least is probably just a clip brush misplacement.

"Out of all the districts in Bridgeport, the Pagan Quarter is probably the second worst... it's certainly the last place I'd want to live. Sadly, I don't have a choice in the matter." It's with great pleasure that I present my third Dark Mod FM, "The Maybury Idol, Part 1: A Trip to the Museum" https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?internalName=maybury1 This is the first in a planned 4-part series which is largely already plotted out to conclusion, and I'm planning to get started on Part 2 soon. Compared to the last FM I submitted, this one is a lot more linear and story-driven, but it also includes conversations and a mid-mission cutscene... which along with learning some basic scripting has really opened up a lot of possibilities in mission creation, and I'm looking forward to putting the lessons learned here to use in future. I'd like to thank everybody in the Beta Testing thread for ironing out the many, many wrinkles that came up and for offering helping advice in how to patch up the map's shortcomings: @Baal, @Cambridge Spy, @Bikerdude, @wesp5, @Bergante, @Keruah, and @tapewolf I hope you enjoy it.

Hi, hello. The conversation's more or less moved to the beta testing thread, if you're interested in helping out.

Thanks, much appreciated. I've started a Beta Testing thread here: Anyone else who wants to join in, please feel free to report there.

Hello again TDM Forums. I'm close to finishing a new FM, "The Maybury Idol, Part 1: A Trip to the Museum", and I'd like to request help with beta testing. Any assistance is appreciated, thanks.

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=In-game_Map_Entities The Wiki entry on In-game Map Entities focuses on just one page maps (replacing a dummy custom inventory item with a map_of item), but the script could be modified to simply add multiple "map_of" entities simultaneously from one frob, I think. That would result in multiple map pages from the player's POV (multiple presses of m would just shuffle through map pages), even though they'd technically be multiple individual map items in inventory.

I have to (rather sheepishly) admit that I can't reproduce this now. The last time I used def_attach to give lanterns to my teleporting thugs, the lanterns were definitely left behind, but this time I tried re-adding those spawnargs and now they teleport with the lanterns properly. It's possible I'd misspelled the pos_attach spawnarg that didn't attach it properly? I'm not sure what happened, tbh. At any rate, please disregard this... turns out it's a non-issue after all.

I suppose I'd better. I'll see if I can reproduce it first, then file a report once I have a test map for it. Worth noting that weapons def_attach'd to AI as part of their default configuration survives teleportation intact, not sure if that's relevant.

Perhaps a better way to phrase the question is "can I attach props like lanterns and torches to AI in the same way def_attach allows post-spawn, or can it only be done at spawn via spawnargs?" From what I know, bind only tethers props to an AI, but the def_attach method actually changes their behavior (ie, held torches and held up in an appropriate pose, etc). Based on what I've already done, I could theoretically just bind torches to their hands and use a different atdm:teleport to bring them along, but the torches would just be awkwardly glued to their hands and hanging at their sides, which is not ideal.

The wiki mentions that path_hide doesn't work well with AI https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Path_Nodes#path_hide I guess I'll have to try with scripting and see if it works.

Right now I'm just using spawnargs on the AI in the storage area outside the map, so they spawn with lanterns as normal/expected. The atdm:teleport just doesn't want to move them. If it were possible to add the lanterns post-teleport, that'd sidestep the issue. I just don't know if that's possible or not.

So far I've had no problems with patrols on teleported AI. For another area of the map, I had an AI with a target spawnarg for a path_corner inside the map while he was trapped in a box outside the map, unable to reach it. Post-teleport, he simply started following path nodes like expected. Maybe something under the hood changed in the most recent version, idk. I'll have to play around with some of these scripts and see what happens. Although I was thinking about this from another perspective, does def_attach only work at map start, or is it possible to apply to an AI after spawn? I know some of the eating animations have food props temporarily jump into AIs hands for animations, maybe it's possible to simply attach the lanterns to the AI after teleporting them, and sidestep the whole problem?

I wanted to keep some hostile thugs in an isolated box outside the map, but teleport them in after an objective is achieved and have them patrol the (previously safe) area. In basic terms, I can do that by triggering an atdm:teleport. The only problem with this is any props I attach via either bind or def_attach doesn't move with them. I expected with with the bind method (in my case, a note attached to the belt) and compensated with another atdm:teleport to move it too, though it was difficult to place it exactly where I wanted. But I don't understand why the def_attach method doesn't move the object with them. In particular, I wanted some of the thugs to be holding lanterns while they patrol. Adding the spawnargs to put lanterns in their hands results in the lanterns being left behind in their storage area when they teleport. Oddly, this doesn't seem to affect their weapons (which, afaik, are also given them via def_attach). Should I be using a different teleport method (ie. scripting) to make this work, or is there some other trick to it? Thanks if anybody can help with this.

Just this past few days I've been doing recordings for my own mission, so I'd be happy to help if you still need anything done. I have a decent quality mic and I know how to clean up my own audio.

With a significant price hike. OG System Shock 2 was around $10, usually discounted to less than half that. Post de-listing, your only option to buy it was to pay $30 for the Enhanced Edition and get the original as an add-on. Quite a markup. I understand the argument from the position of simplicity, standardization, etc. People might get confused and buy the wrong version, sure. But removing the lower priced option entirely so you can sell the higher priced one still strikes me as a little scummy

I agree with concerns that they're going to just slap TFix and gussied up textures on it, release it for 40 bucks, and then delist the originals like they did with System Shock 2

Thank you both! I just did a test of joebarnin's def beastmage and it does everything the archmage can do, so this is perfect. I'll try tweaking it further with kingsal's spawnarg suggestions as I work on the map and playtest how he responds to in-mission situations. And I'll be sure to add a credit in the FM for both of you, much appreciated.

Okay, turns out it actually half works. My initial test was in a close-quarters indoor area, but doing it again in a wider outdoor environment, the long range fireball attack works when he's far enough away. However, if I close the distance and he switches to melee, he just runs up to me and stands there doing nothing. The console only shows the following error message: WARNING:Framecommand 'sound' on entity 'shamantest', anim 'run', frame 11: Could not find sound 'snd_rustle_run' Doesn't seem related, but that's all that comes out. EDIT: I tried screwing around with more spawnargs related to melee, but with no success. Giving him a sword is possible, but he never uses it. Just swings at me with an imaginary sword doing nothing. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'm not familiar enough with what spawnarg does what. A second test involved giving a regular sword-wielding manbeast the def_projectile fireball, which kind of works... he only ever uses the fireball if the player is out of reach (like stone throwing by regular guards), but defaults to melee exclusively if it can pathfind to the player. I saw spawnargs related to attack distance and such, and I'm sure tweaking those could possible make a sword manbeast default to fireball more frequently if I knew what they were.