RPGista

I wanted to create some models that go a bit more in depth into the pagan culture and heritage. I thought about working on things that could make up for sacred shrines, scenes you would find in a clearing inside an old forest, or deep inside pagan country. A place marking where an ancient artifact was buried, or where you need to leave that amulet and summon the earth spirits, stuff like that. Im starting with a menir, this one has an engraving on it, just to make it extra clear this is something man made, but I should also provide one or two more variations with just the naked stone and slightly different texturing, if you want to make a circle, or group them. Im working on a dolmen as well. Things you can use to create sort of blessed, cerimonial grounds.

Thanks guys! And demagogue, thats great!

Okay my boys, time to dig out the old thread and share some of the models I had lying around, thought I should get them out finally. Im releasing the medical tools I started modeling a while ago. Its a varied set: 4 kinds of needles; 2 operating hooks; 1 (ice)pick; 1 saw; 2 scalpels; 3 scissors. Unfortunately, I wasnt able to make them moveable entities. They all possess a collision box, however, so it should be simple enough, I just cant get it to work for some reason, something is missing in my defs or pathing and I cant really remember how to set it up correctly. So Im only releasing the fixed models version. They are all ready for being included in maps. https://1drv.ms/u/s!Al4XNpzYMsVva9OLawvtG0lAWsE

Hey, thanks... Indeed I had forgotten to carry over the skins and def files. Its been a while. I should have a few new models for the community in the next days.

Ok guys, so I was going to play test some models I had lying around here so I could release them, but alas Im stuck with a DR problem, the models are not showing textures, they are not black, as if the textures were in the wrong format, they are nodraw, which means the pathing is wrong somewhere. I have already tested these sword models in game before and Im pretty sure they are the same ones, I checked the links in the ase and materials and what not and couldnt find anything wrong. I know a couple of details changed regarding pathing for DR after the standalone thing, so, what am I missing here?

Maybe we could be a bit more ambitious, since this is such a cool opportunity. If we could get a poster done (I guess any cool ingame screenshot would do), it could be used to start forum discussions around (the thief forum, for example), post it on facebook, on steam or whatever it is (have not used it), moddb, on the news section of the site... Maybe that would bring a few more guys to join up.

Be sure to let me (us) know if you would require any help to set this up, I know everyone is busy but its cool to be able to help with things like these, even if you can only afford a small contribution.

This is an amazingly beautiful idea, to have a TDM developer tutoring new mappers, who can learn and help each other as they go, all the while having that focused roadmap that you can only get from someone experienced in the subject. Ive only had great experiences from this model of learning and interaction, so Im in total favour of this. I love the idea of a plataform where you can collaborate, talk to each other and get personal feedback as you go. Its an incredible opportunity for anyone looking to start mapping or looking to learn with others. Plus, all the material that will be recorded or have to be created for this will certainly become quite a useful starter kit for anyone coming into the community after the workshop.

You can see a mage in Shadowhide's Winter Harvest. I've been working on a stone golem for a long time, bits here and there. Maybe i'll finish it sometime, who knows.

It would be great to see more storytelling-based missions in TDM, but those are particularly hard to master and produce. I would suggest you taking a look at The Creeps and Winter Harvest for mystical stories based on experience rather than normal sneaking gameplay.

Blender is also a pretty decent video editor as well, I've done a few experimental videos with it. The only problem is performance, it struggles quite easily, specially with certain video formats. But then again, my laptop is very weak.

I dont remember watching someone being so anal about a free contribution asset they were just gifted in a long time. Perhaps when you actually spend more time working on mood, flow, storytelling in your mapping, you'll realise technical details are not really an issue, you get whatever is available, whatever technical limitations there are, and you tell your story and thats all there is to it. Springheel could have gifted us models with a zillion polys and who cares, people would still happilly find a way to use them to enrich their maps. Its well known by everyone that its the mapper who is in charge of budgetting polys and lights and AI inside each of the scenes they create, trading between geometry detail, lighting setup, AI population to find the balance they need to tell the story they want in that particular area of his map. Its his responsability, alone. You'll use whatever is available to you (map manually, use prefabs, import models, model your own, etc), and find that balance, it as simple as that. So, please dont let us hear anymore of unoptimised models and how inconsolable that makes you. Just start using them. Scene getting a bit heavy? Go in there, change some things around, find that balance. Simple. Springheel doesnt have a "circle". But the amount of work he has put in, innumerable to count, plus the amazing quality of it (his was the first map I played and it is still my favourite (Score)), that must have gotten him a good number of fans, thats for sure. I know I am one. Specially of his impecable work leading tdms art direction to where it is today. Lets just appreciate what people are contributing and try to match it with our own quality contributions, or simply aprreciating it by playing the damn thing. Which I just might, a Springheel mission is a pretty good reason to dust off your copy of tdm and give it a go.

Thank you for the tutorial, its always great to see someone put in the work to benefit the whole community. I would consider making this a wiki article, so it wont eventually get buried inside the forum. As for the model itself, the material and texture look quite good, but I agree with those who say that scene budgeting is a mapper's responsability, and that individual models (modular or not) should obviously be rational, but the trade off must always be on the side of style and art. In your example, the trims for example, should have been kept as the high poly model version, while only the panels should be simplified. Thats because the attention, when modeling, should be to focus care on the profile of the objects. And a simple sloped surface just wont do when the player looks at one of the wood panel corners. As springs said, the trouble with performance begins when you start adding AI to the game, and lights. But most problems can and should be solved by good visportals, cutting the map into confortable pieces the machine can handle fine. Also, by making your models no shadow, you can take them out of the equation pretty much. You can save your prefab with a very simple shadow mesh inside, to cover for any scenario.

I often follow this channel from quite a bright guy that does a lot of cool video tutorials for Blender. Today youtube brought my attention to this video of his, and the title got me. Appearently he has a series of videos on creating a stealth game from scratch. I thought it was really fun to see how you would go about tackling the basic features of this sort of game mechanics. It also gives you a new appreciation of all the amazing work put into the Darkmod. Edit: rather, hes started a series on it, should be cool to follow, see how it all comes together.

Sorry guys, dont want to be insistent, and it makes me happy that we are all here talking in such a cool, friendly manner. But theres something that was addressed by springheel right at the beginning and it puzzles me how believing people can reconcile with this fact. Unlike what many of us seem to think, religious texts are not vague at all, at least not the bible. It has strict rules to follow, precise "moral" stories to serve as proof of concept. You cannot mistake their meaning. While nowadays we obviously see religious tradition as another cultural and personal resource to enrich our lives (not mine, but you get me), to do so, to adopt your own view of divinity and religious dogma has always been prohibited. Its all written there. No mistakes are allowed. The penalty for not believing in the one true god, is death. It tells you how many silver pieces you owe the father of a girl you rape, in case you are caught and forced to marry her. It tells slaves to serve their masters. It tells clear stories of what happens to those who dont share the religion, how god punishes them, what god wants his followers to do when they get a hold of the infidels (kill everyone including the animals, capture the virgin girls, plunder the riches, in case anyone is wondering). At no point do they make a concession that it is allowed to doubt or interpret the text. In fact, to try to do so meant death, up untill recent times, but only in western culture, this still applies today to many areas of the world plagued by religion fanatism. The main defense against religious extremism today, coming from other religious communities is that, if anything, the fanatics follow the text by the letter, and that you cant do that, if you want to live in any kind of decent world. Interpreting god and having your own personal relation with the dogma is a recent innovation that, though I havent studied the subject in detail, I suspect cost a lot of people their lives untill it became an accepted possibility. I dont know how people of faith simply ignore this fact. The bible is sacred and right, it tells you exactly what you can or cannot do, if you disagree with any of it, it instructs other believers to kill you. I dont see any ambiguity in this at all. Ps: The fact that we do not follow these rules in our daily life, that our human understanding currently goes well beyond anything preached by religious texts, is obviously not a result of its teachings, as a significant part of our shared values today directly contradict most of what the texts contain.

No, as a matter of fact, most of the western humanist evolution you refer to was originated in greek phylosophy, which greatly influenced christian thought throughout its history. It was actually the rise of philosophy, (which then gave rise to science) understood as the "search for truth", as opposed to religious dogma, that set the road to continuous improvement in abstract thought, human understanding and social relations we recognize today, always in direct opposition to religious and cultural dogmas of the day. The "search for truth" eventually laid bare the fact that human beings are all equal, despite religious text, which contradicts it. Though it is true that charitable ideologies were a positive aspect of christian tradition (and one of the reasons for its popular domination), and that it was likely a major factor in gradually easing opressive practises condoned by its own church, it is also a matter of fact that the christian/catholic religious empire legitimized, protected and participated in human slavery for all its history up to recent times, their texts understanding it as tradition and having not a single word to say against it. It is also a fact that those who opposed slavery in any form had to do so against the might of the religious, cultural and political forces of their time, extremely regressive by nature, which meant (for progressive thinkers, even religious ones) isolation, persecution, and often violence and death.

Yes, I quite like the imagination involved, he obvisouly has a very creative mind. I particularly like the urban sculptures idea/concept, and the way it was presented.

Could not find any of his work...

Thats pretty amazing my friend, its awesome to see a trully sculpted map. May the tdm gods allow you to fulfil your megatexture vision. I also hope you'll find the time to model other sections with different kinds of architecture in your map, the tower looks great but there are other sort of environments that would also be ideal for a sculptural aproach, like a ruined palace or a dense urban maze. Sky is the limit for a talented modeler like you to create that truly authentic world that you cant get with brushes.

You definitely did top notch work here, and Im judging by the renders only, and the description - the attention to detail, how everything was thougt out and organized. Awesome contribution man, hugely appreciated. By the way, whats with all the likes and the silence, lets speak to each other more, you shy people. Love that ocean as well, never got into physics simulation myself...

Wow, the whole thing is a beauty...

Epi, first of all, its awesome that youre going to try and use the megatexture feature, by the sound of it, yours might well be the most detailed and visually complex tdm map yet. Thats pretty cool. As for the lihtmaps, Im guessing they would look great on outdoor scenes, with moonlight and so on, or sections of the map where you will only be going around fixed, perhaps non extinguishable lights. Because Im not sure how baked shadows would look like when you pick up candles and move them around the place. Maybe you can ban moveables in your map, and water arrows. But you can still get rid of the ambient light on certain areas, to get realistic depth on dark environments, by using location entities. Theres a function that allows for different ambient light levels between areas, all you have to do is to mask the transition somehow, because when you enter the new area, the ambient will adjust and you can notice it. You can get true dark areas like this, while still mantaining an ambient on brighter areas, like the outdoors. Another trick you can use to get depth is to use fog, a black or dark blue fog to create that sort of eye perception radius, to simulate how far you can see details in dark environments. Tels was even doing a few tests where you would attach a fog light to the player, and by giving it a wide radius, give you that subtle feel that things far off have less detail than whats up close. I dont think hes been around much hese days, but his swiftmaze site offers a description of that, Im sure it could give you ideas.

I like this this research, even though, for artistic reasons, most people will probably stick to their interpretations of how the light should feel in their maps according to spaces and texture colors, rather than to keep realistic values in mind. I quite like your environment there, its a sweet, interesting little urban spot. Consider adding a moon (parallel) light to your scene, it will instantly become more expressive. You can find a working one in my map, or at katsbits'. SteveL was working on an awesome script to make moonlights dynamic, changing intensity as the clouds go by. Lots of possibilities.

Pretty sweet man, I really like the lighting on that one, and the classic "storytelling" feel of the image. I see what the Thief's mistake was there, he came in from the lit window, but he'll learn for next time.

Lovely... Makes you wanna dream about fantasy adventures set inside an old, mysterious forest.