RPGista

Im liking that mansion in the background! I would however try something different: build the hedges completely out of patch surfaces (make enough copies of them and turn them to patch surfaces on each different plane, then align them on the grid as a whole "solid" again), then by moving vertices, create a completely "organic" shape, instead of simply rouding the edges. Remember, for that to work, you need to select the edge vertices with a bouding box (so you can grab the overlapping vertices of the shared edge and move them as one). That would be true of all edge and corner vertices, where the different planes meet (the vertices inside each plane can safely be clicked and moved individually though). Also, to avoid any gaps between the curved surfaces, they need to have the exact same number of vertex rows/columns, no matter their size - just convert them ALL with the same number or rows, for simplicity; you can always just set a low subdivision level on the whole group afterwards, to save some tris I guess (shift + S). I would also, after modeling the shapes, maybe place a bunch of bush and plants models just inside the hedge volumes, so the leaves would be sticking out - this should create a more natural feeling. This whole process is exactly what Im planning to do in a couple of places inside my map.

Sometimes paste shader alone works when natural is getting distorted. And the direction of the face you copied the shader makes a difference (as well as, appearently, the size of the brush, it should be about the same as the patch or group of patches), I would try copying the bottom surface and try to apply it, see if it works.

Hehehe, no I often save, because I like playing risky, being bold. The thing is, many times you feel you can exploit the missions if you are reckless - many times you are spotted but the guard is alone and there's no one around to hear the commotion, it is simple to take them out and, specially when there are no intersecting routes, just leave them as they lay, you could do this forever in many missions, just corner a lone unsuspecting guard and take him out. The difficulty and fun comes when the AI placement and movements is interesting and rich, some will stick and fight but others will run for backup, there are areas of intense armed opposition that you cant afford to let be alerted, etc. I remember the hide out in Score to Settle as being exactly like this - some loners, but also a bunch of pockets of opposition that you cant take out by yourself, with a real risk of getting everyone alerted by a couple of "runners" - it makes the whole thing really worthwhile to sneak into.

Indeed, being able as a mapper to set up a fully functioning neutral AI with a few spawnargs would be incredibly useful; by fully functioning I mean exactly what Demagogue described, a npc that has common sense (and degrees of) reactions to assault and signs of agression/dishonesty, instead of the pretty much "braindead" neutral character currently present that basicly just ignores the player even exists (they are not useful right now for anything more than being scenery).

That's my vision exactly, a strong network to make it pretty challenging and fun to survive/hide/run when things go wrong. I never reload, that's why realistic/fun chain of consequences for screwing up or getting discovered is a must for me!

Maybe we should now vote on which of the remaining missions for each of the 3rd, 4th and 5th places we would prefer, to break the tie? Yes, I think a sticky here on the forums, a mention on the main page (news and download list), wiki, etc., would be enough. I also vote for including Saint Lucia for sure, I always wondered why it wasnt in the first place - the training mission is a great map to get to know the potential of the mod, but I dont think anyone would not like to have a "introduction" mission to play with right after downloading the whole thing, specially if its such a nice one like Tears.

It would be cool if you participated too Fabes, maybe someone more experienced can give opinions, but to my knowledge, Dark Radiant seems to be a very aproachable editor that although a bit clumsy in a number of ways, is also very streamlined and user friendly in other aspects. Furthermore, if you follow Komag's video tutorials first, and then follow closely Fidcal's tutorial (A-Z Beginner tutorial, which is a complete mini-mission with pretty much everything you would need for a first map: http://wiki.thedarkm...uide_Start_Here!), you will have enough knowledge to create something in a very short time. Completing the tutorial itself takes a couple of days, after that you would already have a proto-mission done; if you can focuse on doing not more than that, a very small map with an interesting situation to solve and maybe a challenging gameplay obstacle to overcome, in like a few weeks of geometry making, you would still have one month for doubts, troubleshooting, and some beta testing before releasing. Just take a look at the Thief's Den, the demo map upon which the tutorial is based on - it's a neat little map with about 5 challenges - a guard you have to lure, discovering how to jump over the wall, avoiding a body guard, finding your target inside the house and then look for a certain treasure. All is done in a small street section, a bit of architecture for you to climb, and a small hideout with 3 rooms (and an outside patio). If you consciously focuse your map into something like that, a small challenge, you should have enough time for sure. You just cant get too ambitious, my mission isnt even that big or complicated, but my style of architecture building would take too long to finish in that time, for example (and Im already adjusting because, like I said, certain things in DR, like complicated buildings, take a long time and lots of mouse clicks to get done).

Thats also a great mechanics right there, I really like the idea of "sensitive" areas and the subtlety of allowing for different degrees of reaction, depending on your behaviour. But I dont see why both shouldnt work together, complement each other, that would make it even more logical and richer. I'm remembering Fidcal's description of an experiment he did with neutral guards, that sounded pretty interesting - please guys, whenever you pull off something like this, and whenever possible, could you make it a prefab situation for new mappers to utilize? Triggers alone are pretty challenging for people getting started, it would be great to have a set of prefabs for "missions with neutral npcs", or "missions with conversations", etc.

Actually i quite like the original idea, it makes a lot more sense to have people going hostile if you are caught right in the middle of doing something illegal like lockpicking (or if you are spotted inside a private/off limits area, something really nicely done in Reap as you Sow). If it is not that hard, i wouldnt mind using this on my own mission ( a neutral civillian that should go bananas if you try opening the door to his house right under his nose)

Brilliant work indeed, artwork is definetely hugely important to set the atmosphere and mythology of any game!

Welcome Robb - maybe you should take a look at this topic before choosing your missions: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13323-pick-your-top-5-tdm-missions/

There have been many attempts already of capturing what we would call historical buildings in TDM maps, specially cathedrals, or the monastery in No Honor Among Thieves (the first map I believe?) - all great efforts; even though a lot of information might go unnoticed to the "untrained eye", I think real case-studies (like these) can not only give you enough knowledge to recreate similar shapes in your own model, but also teach you a lot of fantastic ways of doing structures and organizing spaces that you probably would never have thought of.

I got some inspiration for you guys - some pretty interesting reports on accurately modelling historical buildings (in Rhino, but nevermind that), with abundant visual information on real structural system and architectural language/elements, of important buildings in Spain; thereare palaces, cathedrals, monasteries (search the page), and even though the text is in spanish, the drawings (plans, sections) and models are self explanatory, and should be a good source for anyone looking to map a mission in that kind of environment, with that added feel of reality and coherence. Example of a page (Siguënza Cathedral document) : http://download.mcneel.com/s3/mcneel/misc/docs/Aproximaciones_a_la_Catedral_de_Sig%C3%BCenza.pdf The complete page with other examples is here: http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/geometriainformaticaarquitectonica

Those are interesting coloring works in a style that could be used for your briefing or loading screen, I generally like those interpretations (done in Photoshop?). I think however that concept art is more related to planning/sketching ideas - next time you are faced with designing a room/building, try to create it on paper first, like I said, it makes it a ton easier to go about executing it inside the editor.

I really like those docks, they look quite good indeed. The fog adds a lot to the atmosphere, Im considering going for a very subtle fog myself... I also like the reflective water better than the clear, volumetric one sometimes used in TDM, it works much more realisticly in pitch blackness. Looking foward to it! PS: This reminds me, are Arcturus fishes from the grass test map available to other mappers yet (like added to DR)? Open waters llike this could really use them I think...

I have been trying to make a moveable object to cause damage when it hits something, but this article seems a little confusing: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Making_Moveables_Damage_Things, and the Damage spawnarg is not clear about how to implement it. I basicly created a cannon ball, gave it the damage spawnarg and a 40 value number (just under a sword hit), but throwing it against AI does nothing at all...

Though I would agree with you to some extent, about the non-existance of widespread video tutorials for beginners done by this community, one must also remember that the Radiant map makers are fortunately very similar throughout games, and its possible to follow many, many video tutorial series with a lot of great information, for games like Quake 3 or even CoD series. There's a ton of material there for those games on basic to advanced Radiant editting that would almost always apply to TDM/DR too (apart from clear differences in entity names and textures). Some advanced techniques are not present on Dark Radiant (such as the terrain clay modeling that exists for new CoD games, or the real time texture blending), but if you can follow Komag's videos first, and then read through the brilliant A-Z Tutorial by Fidcal, you will have, in like a day or two, already a good enough idea of how to extract the generic information from all those other tutorials - I know because that's exactly what happened to me. Just look at this CoD radiant Detail made Easy series of videos, for example: What could be cool is to have a Tutorials sticky listing the most interesting videos around with info that would be easily applied to DR, maybe I can start listing some of the ones that were useful to me. As for the numbers, I wouldnt be so fast to jump from the fact that the Thief series community might be slowing down, to the fact that Stealth games are somehow loosing popularity, and thus TDM is going to have a hard time. Thief has been around for a lot of years and interest from that community is bound to diminish with time, as with any game. That has nothing to do with TDM, which is inspired by them, but has its own community and its own life span.

Thanks a lot guys. I also created a new plank and applied the spawnargs listed on that breakables wiki article - health, and then broken, that works but I wasnt able to use the def_flinder set of variables, you can hear the plank breaking but it doesnt disappear, and no pieces were spawned (actually, is it used on the bottle entities, because though I've seen them breaking, I never saw any glass shards like in the example?). This will work perfectly.

Brilliant, thanks a lot for taking the time, this works great! I'm afraid I dont really understand how to make a func_static hidden? If I understood the scene correctly, the board and its "replacement" pieces are overlapping (and dont seem to zfight because they have the very same texture mapping?), so wouldnt pieces on the floor be visible the entire time? Or do the "replecement" pieces only appear in game when the boards' health become zero? Sorry, Im not really good at this! Is there a way to spawn seleceted piece models at the moment of the hit (that will fall naturally)? This is not crucial as Im more than happy with how its set up right now.

Yeah, that fog is looking really cool, I think a general, subtle fog works quite well, its been a while, but I believe thats what happens on Heart of Lone Salvation?

@ Grayman: That sounds great, I would surely like to take a look at your example, if thats ok. But this is sounding a bit too easy? I wonder if there's any scripting involved in any of these methods, because if there is then its probably out of my league for now... @ Toni: show us some screenshots!

Hahaha, I wouldnt say nearly done, I got a bit of free time and was able to advance some, but there's a lot to do still and I wont be able to progress as fast from now on. I also said 30% basic geometry, which to me means I was able to replace 30% of the maps' "boxes" with true buildings (textured and some decoration, but no work on the interiors for now). So no need to worry at all, there's still plenty of time for anyone to start today and still come up with something nice (there are in fact some awesome missions that took like 1-2 months to be made, like Fiasco or the Outpost).

According to this breakable objects wiki article (http://wiki.thedarkm...eakable_objects), could I set up a plank to be broken and invoke junk wood pieces (instead of the broken bottle model, to which the article refers to)? The point would be to free open a door barred by a couple of wood planks nailed to the walls, if the opening direction goes against the plank models, the door wont open, so if I can set the planks to break and disappear after a few hits, it should then be possible to open it normally - am I right?

Thanks guys, there is a lot more to show, but I dont really want to spoil the mission too much. Yes, many historic buildings are particularly hard to model in 3d, let alone with mostly brushes, so simplification must occour, but at the same time, I find that references are a must to keep track of the "feel" of the city landscape or the overall coherence of a building, things like materials used, finishes and architectural language (openings composition, for example). There are many differences, between medieval and victorian architecture for example, nothing really THAT crucial to gameplay, but still interesting if you want to achieve a more authentic feel, without actually more work besides the research (you can either model the windows as you please, or based on a real example). The aesthetic complexity of victorian architecture Pretty much a gothic/medieval building (functionality and economy above all) I have some nice drawings and layouts of romanesque religious buildings by the way, if any one is interested. Just as an update, I would say I'm 30% done geometry-wise. I have a pretty good idea of my AI placement already, so I would say I'm keeping inside the time budget (hopefully).