Ansome
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Query: when playing a level, how sharp must a corner in the level geometry be for it to look bad to you? I'm sculpting my current FM from scratch as there aren't many prefab modules fitting my theme and the question has been nagging me for a bit. I've been using bevel patches to smooth out 90 degree corners made of brickwork for a slightly more realistic look to them, but I'm not sure where else I should be smoothing out the angles of my level geometry. Most notably I have a larger room where the main center piece is a large octagonal tower made of brick and I'm unsure if players will find its sharp angles unappealing to look at despite its ornamentation. Try as I might to smooth out those corners, an octagon is still an octagon.
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Turns out my 15th anniversary mission idea has already been done once or twice before! I've been beaten to the punch once again, but I suppose that's to be expected when there's over 170 FMs out there, eh? I'm not complaining though, I love learning new tricks and taking inspiration from past FMs. Best of luck on your own fan missions!
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Damn, 7 Sisters, wasn't that one made by the late Lady Rowena? I have to play it, I remember playing it right after she died and I didn't even notice, those news disturbed me enough not to play 7 Sisters for the time being.
Very sad that she died, she made one of the very best FMs out there. My very first FM was one of hers even, Lady Rowena's Curse.
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Yeah I still remember her too and the Seven Sisters FM...
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Now I remember what the other FM was. I wanted to have part of mine set in a hospital, and T2X, which came out right afterwards too, had a level set in a hospital. After that experience I thought for most ideas you have, someone is going to have thought along similar lines. But the thing is people can have their own takes with the same idea too. So I think it's okay to have the same idea played out, if you give it your own spin.
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Sorry for the late response, I hope ya found your way in! Fortunately, Nbohr1more always comes in clutch.
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Finally got my PC back from the shop after my SSD got corrupted a week ago and damaged my motherboard. Scary stuff, but thank goodness it happened right after two months of FM development instead of wiping all my work before I could release it. New SSD, repaired Motherboard and BIOS, and we're ready to start working on my second FM with some added version control in the cloud just to be safe!
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Wait, how can a SSD corrupt and damage a motherboard? I gotta know so I can avoid it.
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@The Black ArrowWish I could tell ya, but unless I decide to ship it off to a data recovery company to interrogate it further, I'm not going to be able to figure out how it got corrupted or why it was as catastrophic as it was for the rest of the system. All I know is that even when I removed my old SSD to boot from my backup HDD, parts of my bios, partitions, and even some parts of the built-in recovery options weren't functional. It wouldn't even let me boot from my trusty USB repair media! I don't think it was a virus or anything, the repair shop I went to has apparently seen something similar four times in the last two years with Samsung's 970 series, but whether that's a genuine issue or a coincidence is anyone's guess.
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Okay, that's very scary now...I really hope it was a coincidence because I also have one Samsung 970 and I don't ever want anything bad to happen to it, I think I've had it since 3 years now as well.
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The Dark Mod 15th Anniversary Contest - Entry Thread
Ansome replied to nbohr1more's topic in Fan Missions
I’ll throw my hat in the ring! It’d be delightful to create a mission to celebrate TDM’s anniversary, especially after how kindly I was received here. I’m excited to see what creative missions will be produced for the contest with the freedom we’ve been allotted. -
What Stgatilov mentioned about the psychological aspect of some lights being breakable and others not is going to be the toughest hurdle for you to overcome with this idea. Realism with the clear glass casing idea is nice, but you are still fighting against the rigid Thief programming that electric lights are always unbreakable. It needs to be very obvious, perhaps best identifiable at a glance, that it can be broken by the player. Consider how all explosive barrels in video games are red: it immediately differentiates them from regular set dressing barrels. I don’t believe that I would be able to consistently identify or interpret a clear glass bulb as different from any electric light. Add a red stripe to them, give them a specific recognizable light texture, make them look inherently damaged, etc. You may need to sacrifice a degree of realism in order to communicate what is thus far a contradictory mechanic to the player effectively.
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I was confused by this as well when I first started learning DR, the user guide is now slightly out of date. Dark Radiant now uses a modular system that you can freely rearrange and add elements to as you see fit. In your screenshot you can see the buttons to add new cameras and orthoviews, which you can move or resize like a browser window. You can do the same with the UI that contains things like the media and entities tab and even drag them out into their own separate UI element if need be. With a little tweaking you should be able to approximate the Doom 3 editor layout by hand. Hope this helps!
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Breakable lights might be an interesting concept so long as they are not implemented retroactively. Add a loud sound or other punishment for breaking them as you see fit, but it would still change the difficulty and design intended by level authors if you applied it to all previously made levels. I would also suggest that if you instead intend to make breakable variants of existing light models that you add a clear visual indicator that the light is breakable, otherwise it would require explicit messaging to the player that electric lights are breakable in that particular FM. I’m hesitant to see something of this sort added as it is in stark contrast to Thief precedent, but I would be more supportive of it if it was added carefully and responsibly.
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I intend to update the FM if any bugs/errors are found or updates to TDM necessitate it, but you're correct that I'm not updating it for content going forwards. The ambient tracks I used in this FM were a little bit busier than I normally would use, mostly because I knew this was going to be a very short FM going in and I had to deliver an atmosphere somewhat quickly. Rest assured that my next FM is going to be a bit less busy and more varied in terms of ambience. Don't worry, I don't view this as a major failing or anything. I don't really find Lovecraft's works "scary" in a traditional sense, if I wanted this to be overtly scary I likely would have gone way over the top and diverted too heavily from the source material. I've always enjoyed Lovecraft's works for their ominous tone, ambience, and mystery, which it seems from your feedback I more or less achieved. I'm glad you enjoyed my FM, Arrow, and thanks for the feedback!
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Well then, it's been about a week since I released my first FM and I must say that I was very pleasantly surprised by its reception. I had expected half as much interest in my short little FM as I received and even less when it came to positive feedback, but I am glad that the aspects of my mission that I put the most heart into were often the most appreciated. It was also delightful to read plenty of honest criticism and helpful feedback, as I've already been given plenty of useful pointers on improving my brushwork, level design, and gameplay difficulty.
I've gotten back into the groove of chipping away at my reading and game list, as well as the endless FM catalogue here, but I may very well try my hand at the 15th anniversary contest should it materialize. That is assuming my eyes are ready for a few more months of Dark Radiant's bright interface while burning the midnight oil, of course!
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That's the most compelling argument for using Linux that I've heard in a long time... might be time to go hunting for a good distro again.
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The negative though is that the toolbar icons haven't been made for them and although this has been improved, some icons are still more difficult to see. The other issue is that the keyboard-shortcuts in the menu are not shown.
So these (do work, but) are not shown in DR in Linux.
So it's best to test this before investing time.
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This info might also help you:
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The light coming from the windows was actually added in the very last update before release. Originally, only the windows facing the moon were lit up and projected moonbeams, but Dragofer remarked that following purely realistic lighting practices often results in an under-lit mission. Although I also find it a bit strange that such stark moonbeams are coming in from all the windows, I think the lighting of the pre-escape sequence is all the better for it. Thanks for playing my FM, Hightide, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
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I can confirm that book_hand_jd_hand.gui is not represented correctly in the Readable Editor. There were a handful of fonts I tried that had very small discrepancies between the editor and in-game version, but jd_hand gave me the most trouble when adding readables to my FM.
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Rest assured, I haven't received nothing but praise thus far. Most of the constructive criticism about this FM's design arose during beta testing, and Dragofer in particular gave me a very useful write-up about what can be improved next time. Some examples being that he FM is a bit too spacious at times, its difficulty is rather low (a sentiment shared by thebigh), and the house design is a bit strange or tubular as a result of the FM's more linear nature. It's all been invaluable feedback as I continue to learn DR, and I intend to write up a post-first FM release retrospective near the end of this week going over what I've learned. I'm quite overjoyed about all the positive feedback I've received thus far, but that's not because I'm afraid of criticism, rather I was afraid of how a less traditional mission would be received by the community. I wanted to make something a bit weird with my first mission, and I was wary of how a short, linear mission with a limited player toolset would be viewed. Fortunately, the community has been very welcoming and accepting of weird little ideas, and I intend to take what I've learned into my next project right after my eyes stop burning from all those late-night Dark Radiant sessions. I hope you enjoy the FM, Chakkman!