RPGista

I actually think the side view is the best view for this animation, because you cant notice the small seam that happens when the second step hits the floor (that was already greatly minimised by Arcturus), and it flows very well... If only there could be small adjustments to the head direction (it should indeed face the player, and not be so inclined IMHO), and maybe the weapon angle because of the clipping thing, this would be an awesome addition, great work.

Some really good activity going on here! Ungoliant - the model is looking really fine!, I would say that unless your going for the full blown learning process here, and you want to use this as an excuse to learn, this looks like a very good model already and I would probably save more work/experimenting for a second or third variation model, its simple really, you cant use one model and repeat it around the whole cave (no matter how good it is), so it makes sense to spread that effort on a bunch of different types so their expressive strength would be in the group, when you see the cave in its erosion glory. Serpentine - 15-25 fps? Very nice... The amazing work that goes on behind the scenes (the engine stuff) is an asset for every single player, so huge props for working on that front. Neb - Very cool, I would listen to Sotha's advice, its solid. A very simple way of creating the arch body is to select that botton curved patch, stretch its sides equally on both directions a unit or two, and then just press thicken patch on the patch menu, give it the width you want, and your good to go (press s and choose the level of faces you want the curves to have (tessalation) while they are all selected). Might be a bit of work to texture them though, you will need to apply the texture on each surface using the natural option. Sir - I like all the solid sculpting and the monastic look - my only suggestion, I would think about doing the same volumetric work on the streets!

Yep, that did it. It seems that the lack of a reasonable max and min distance values makes the speakers audible at the map start (this might be related to the fact that they are custom sounds). I think this was my last big problem (solved the new leak too by the way, also trigger related), now on to making the objectives work, place some more readables, then Im done.

Promess to play as soon as I finish my own, congratulations on the release, cant wait to take a look!

Then Im confused because the speakers are on the other side of the map (yes, they are targeted by either trigger once, trigger once entity and also a mover (door), most are intercepted by relays (so they are played in sequence)), and their radius dont get even near the player start. I have them on global 0, looping 0, wait for trigger 1, max and min distances... Im not 100% they are the only ones playing, because they are one over the other, but Im fairly certain the sounds in question are added (custom) sounds that come from my map.shader file, maybe that has something to do with it? EDIT, some sounds didnt have max and min distances, and some had the same value for both, I gave all a normal range for max and for min, let me see if it made a difference.

Hmmm... Im afraid that didnt change anything. I set the global to 0 just in case, but I still get to hear every triggered speaker at once when the map reloads. They work normally when you get to them later (well, actually one of them is getting clipped for some reason, only plays half, Im assuming its the whole triggered mess he's part of doing it somehow), but this is not good at all... Nobody else ever experienced this? Everything is working fine, again, if not for that happening. On to other things in the meantime.

Very nice work so far! Like i said, i'll be arriving a little late, but i'll be bringing some cake of my own!

Worry not my friend, nothing was lost, you just had a learning experience. That sympton can happen in any creative task that is up entirely to you (I got that in fatal moments in university); its very important to never do and invest too much on just one thing. Always have your mind busy with something else at the same time, to balance your concerns (drawing, jogging, making music, studying something completely different). If you have to work on it for very long, or feel excited about it and dont want to stop, dont stress on a single subject (say in this case, geometry building, or coming up with spaces creatively); writte a nice and interesting readable instead, or work on your briefing, how its going to be important to set the mood for the mission, or maybe devote some time to create an interesting route for a character, he will stop in front of the fire, warm hands, then he will go to a crossroads where he will choose between going to the bedroom or eating something in the kitchen, etc.etc.etc. This process often relieves the pressure from a certain part of your mind and you'll feel refreshed afterwards. Also important is to NOT let the hardest part for last (exactly what I do everytime and did here too), like its natural to feel like; knowing that you have a montrous task still not even started and the fact that you'll have to learn, test it, fix it, come back to it, all that near the end of the time, can be pretty stressful (more than used to it by now though) and makes you prone to errors.

No need to worry boys, its simple lateness due to bug fixing and bad timing. I could release it tomorrow, but id rather take a bit more time to get this right and have at least one more beta test. No need to be sad!

I like those odds. (Is there anything Fidcal doesnt know about TDM? Thanks one more time!) Im currently working on this, as well as finishing pathing, tweaking a couple of triggered events, and placing ambient sounds - while doing so howecer, found a new bug in the map, it will play all triggered speakers at the beginning of the map, at once, when you fail and restart it... Is this a common thing? VERY annoying. Also learnt bitterly that you can cause the "leak" problem with entities too (slowdown to a crawl) by overlapping triggers with things like paths and speakers. It helps to move them apart but ive been addind more stuff and i thought i was keeping everything in order, but im still getting this. Made some modifications but will only be able to confirm tonight after work...

Im not against this. To be honest, my hands are really full right now with work and im still getting my objectives to function (and some other things like sounds and readables) so you should expect me to be one or two days late. If nobody minds you guys should start without me, while i get this finished.

Wrestling with objectives now, my last big task, in a bit of a hurry here so excuse the insistance... I have implemented the main objective which was the simplest (get something), and the escape objective; I need two optional, hidden objectives that should only be checked and appear if the player happens to complete them (one is a put an item there and another is to kill a certain AI); I also would like to set a "dont kill a certain type of AI", which doesnt seem to be covered in the tutorials, only individuals. So: How can I make the escape and both optional objectives show up after a) you completed a necessary objective first (get item), or b ) you completed the actual objective. It says that you can set objectives to show up afterwards both at the end or at certain places in the list, but that they need to be triggered by something to do it, and no instructions are given to achieve that - will the completion of another objective or of itself trigger the hidden message to appear? And please if someone knows how to make an objective where you cant kill certain teams, while others are free (say for example, "innocents" - some might be in a neutral team, others will react against you, but are included in the same group of people) - there arent that many AIs like that, would it work to just list them all one by one inside the objectives manager?

This community tends to be overly critical sometimes, I think it was a cool initiative from demagogue, all that remains now is to find a site where they actually dont have that kind of stupid control where you cant post (whats up with that?).

I'll try editting a voice set then, thanks for all the explanations. I did try setting the spawnarg to something pretty large like Springheel suggested and the silence makes the character more believable, even though some idle animations are still somewhat out of place (like strechting, will look into that). Not all characters have all the sounds listed in the spawnarg list, but some do. I have successfuly changed the impact sound of an object that was bugging me (part of a triggered scene), I'll try doing the same with AI.

Thats something a really like, to add depth and subtleties to the AI's senses, Im all for that. I do believe however that features that tend to favour the player should always be balanced by some other thing, to keep things balanced and challenging. For example, even though some people disagree, its actually pretty simple to just walk to an AI and KO him; I was doing that to an AI whose acuity I increased by 50%, by the time he would go "Sounds?" I was already koing him, by just walking carelessly towards him. In a test with 3 AI, the only one that would turn before I got to him was one with huge acuity and increased alert thresholds, normal AI is really easy prey in optimal situations. If you are going to kill them, you can just run towards them, by the time they are turning its already too late. And thats where the balancing should kick in - if you can KO or kill them easily, maybe the sounds the falling body makes should be slightly increased so AI that are further away can hear it, increasing the likeness of the action causing negative consequences for you. Thats actually the only defense AI has from the player, their numbers and the fact they can help each other. Instead of being frustrated that they cant stealthly KO everyone in a dim lit room one by one right under everyones noses, people should just be able to find better alternatives to bypass the situation since they cant use violence. Or if they have to take someone out, they will have to follow him or wait for a chance, and thats all part of the fun.

Yes, this does sound complicated... I had the distinct idea that you could set things like "no random idle bark" or something for a character? There are two situations that I wanted to control, one is a builder AI that is supposed to be in a stressful situation so I dont want him to be saying casual stuff like praising the Builder, etc. Another would be one of the monsters, that I wanted to maybe do exactly like Fidcal proposed (will study Heart tomorrow then, thanks for the tip); start from a muted set and add sounds for specific situations, hopefully new sounds, but that seems hard to do? I tried doing just that with some Doom's sounds (swapping with the normal ones, using silence on others), inside the spawnarg list, but that didnt work, I now see its more complicated than that.

Though I completely agree with your last post and the thrill of lurking in the shadows, I hope you meant to say here that when you are far away from a guard, in full bright light, you get a chance he might not notice you before he gets a full understanding that he just saw a thief (the suspicion curve that people were talking about that wasnt implemented yet); having them unable to see you if you are far doesnt sound right. Its a simple test really, though there were talks at the time about AI being able to spot you from hundreds of meters away (never seen it happening myself, because theres never such long distances in any fms I played); if you can easily discern a guard from a distance, he should equally be able to spot you just as easily if you are in a bright lit area. This is simply reasonable I think. I really like the idea of having a small buffer between just spotting you and realising you are a menace (would give you time to jump into the shadows, depending on how long you were exposed, he might as well go to you direction to investigate), but I think it would be exciting only if it was a split second. Being immune to guards at X distance doesnt sound very interesting, really.

I dont know if this is supported, but can an unarmed AI pick up a weapon and use it if you give him a chance? How can I control not just the vocal set, but actually each individual sound an AI is capable of saying (including setting the ones I want to silence, or to new sounds), would that be too hard? I dont want for an AI to say random stuff praising the Builder for example, or to whistle; I want to make another one almost silent, and maybe add a couple of sounds for certain situations (say, pain sound, or different idle sounds).

Thanks a lot guys, I insisted on this hypothesis and found the criminal - it was indeed related to my big visportal, but it was not the portal itself that caused the problem, it was actually a group of caulk brushes that I embedded into the geometry around the portal, to regularize its limits. It seems that embedding the caulk into those brushes (which were of many uses - some were at the limit of the map, sealing the void, some were solid blocks inside it, some were walls to inner spaces sealed from that area I was trying to "portalise") opened the leak somehow, because I kept the portal as it is, turned the caulk into stone and now the map works fine again, tried it for 10 minutes, no problems! And I get to keep my nice portal in an area I thought I would never be able to optimize. Its not the first time caulks give me problems, I dont think I'll be using those guys anytime soon... I'm back in business.

I tried deleting a bunch of things yesterday on a copy of the map (including the big portal) and it didnt make a difference, it still happens. The portal worked fine, I was pretty happy with it because it helped me gain around 20% performance in the worst spot of my map (its a pretty complex area to visportal), I can confirm it was closing as well. Im kinda of stuck because I cant see what else could be causing it, the map was working fine a couple of days ago, I didnt do any heavy construction, like I said, only this visportal and a bunch of interiors (maybe its one of those small visportals), some entity work (basicly path nodes, triggers and conv starters). I usually playtest after every decent amount of work, and the portals were working, when I played for a little while longer thats when I noticed the problem. Its a pain to test this map... Takes me 5 minutes everytime I want to take a look. But is an internal leak capable of doing this? I thought it would be just a matter of a visportal not doing its job and you getting the worng sound propagation and the extra rooms rendered...

Okay, Im having a big problem in my map: yesterday I somehow introduced a problem in it, that makes the map suddenly start to lag considerably, and gradually become unplayable, next to freezing (I thought it was after a certain point in the map but it actually happens anywhere, after a few minutes playing). I didnt make any big modification - the most complex were decorating a couple of places (visportaling interiors) and also a pretty large stiched up visportal in the middle of the map, in a big open area, that had to be crossed by all sorts of noclip and nodraw brushes (I suspect he's the culprit, but in game he is actually working (shows up green). Anyone experienced this?

Well, I cant see why that would be a pile of work for anyone, worst that could happen is that the community would get a bunch of models and then they are stored for future use, whenever someone comes around that can do the work. Not only that, but spreading the word might actually result not only in models, but someone that might be interested in working for the mod itself, because they got to know it and like it. I dont see how that could be a problem?

Exactly, you could always release the mission if possible inside the time frame, and then later carry on tewaking it to you liking, for a 1.1 later version, thats also a possibility. Im joking around but this is going to be pretty tight for me too, a lot of professional work right now, but its always like this, the last part is always the hardest. Good luck. (That reminds me that I just broke something on my map yesterday and I need some more help!)

Thats kind of a bummer. I was actually in the same situation a couple of days ago but in a strike of luck (and help from some knowledgeable guys around here (Sotha *cough* Grayman *cough* Fidcal)), I was able to solve a bunch of problems that were really blocking my progress to a large extent, so I can now see the end quite clearly. As for the quality standards, though its important to feel happy about your work and to be proud of your achievements, this is also the first try, so care must also be taken not to demand too much from a first experience, and just get it out there. But if you feel it wont be finished by the date, there's really not much a problem, just realease it as soon as possible, to me you would still be a part of the competition if you do it in time for people to vote, if not, who cares about actually winning, its just an excuse to map, we want to play missions, so just dont take too long.

Maybe we are lacking actor material right now... Have you considered aproaching other forums where they might be interested in doing it for you? I know that on a site like http://www.freesound.org/ (got a bunch of sounds from there) it's possible to see sounds captured, worked on and uploaded on request, there might be one for voice actors?... I would help, but m not a native speaker.