Springheel

I updated SVN to see if I could confirm the problem, but when I try running the game all I see is a black screen. I can hear the music and the sounds of the options, but can't see anything, even when trying to pull down the console.

Given that we don't even have the manpower to get the updated werebeast working well enough to release, who are you expecting to "do some different fantasy humanoids"?

The term "werebeast" implies that it's a shapeshifter. I don't know if that's in the wiki or not, but I know my original intent when I added them was that they were some type of lycanthrope. They're not a race and wouldn't have their own culture, though pagan tribes may look on them favourably (shamans or druids might learn to shapechange into beasts).

There's a massive difference between the lines needed for the PC (mostly grunts) and the lines needed for an NPC (500+ lines of dialogue). Frankly, the necessary vocals for a female PC could probably be gathered from the three existing female NPCs. What is harder to accomplish is replacing the player hands with female versions.

She pops in on discord from time to time.

I think it's fairly obvious to anyone who has been here a while that the community is smaller than it used to be. Video games tend to have a short shelf-life. Ten years for a fan project is pretty impressive, really.

It's not really a money issue, it's more of a manpower issue.

Did the game get darker recently? I'm unaware of any history of complaints of greenish color noise caused by the game being too dark. Ambient brightness isn't necessarily safe. It depends how bright the mapper chooses to make it. The ambient brightness of an outdoor, moonlit scene might be significantly different than that of a deep cave. The difference between being totally invisible and being able to be seen by AI a few feet away can be fairly subtle.

So the intended effect is for things to change brightness when you turn your head? Given that so much of the game revolves around being able to identify dark/light areas, I'm not sold on that as a good idea.

There's nothing special about caulk in regards to visportals--any worldspawn brushes will do. Sound cannot travel through worldspawn brushes, regardless of type. It does travel through open visportals. I'm pretty sure I have something about sound propogation in my New Mappers tutorial series, though I can't check where atm.

Visportals have to touch non-transparent worldspawn. I typically filter out all entities when working on visportals. (ninja'd)

I used the script in A New Job in more than one place, if you're looking for a reference. Haven't noticed if anything is broken in 2.07.

It's more likely to succeed if one person takes on responsibility for it.

Who is going to be responsible for putting together press releases and sending them to these sites?

It's not just textures, it's also models, sounds, maps, animations, dialogue, and particle effects. Even just putting together a list of all the necessary artists to contact would be futile, let alone actually making contact with them and getting them to support changing the license. This is a non-starter.

The scream AI make when killed propogates to nearby AI. I don't recall if sleeping AI make that scream though.

Skins can be created in two ways. 1. Use a single texture map on a model, resulting in a single set of image files (diffuse/normal/specular) that cover the entire model. This will perform better because there is only one material, but as a mapper you're stuck with the texture the modeller provided (or perhaps one or two other options if you're lucky). if you wanted to change part of the model from wood to metal for your mission, you would need to manually edit all the diffuse, normalmap, and specular image files in a way that fits the model's uvmap, something many mappers don't know how to do. 2. Use models that reference existing textures where possible. This results in multiple materials and can be a drain on performance, but allows mappers to change the appearance of the model with nothing but a skin file. No manipulation of image files is required, and mappers can theoretically replace a texture with any other existing texture they like. The tudor modules, for example, come with 24 possible skins to choose from, and I still see mappers creating their own unique combinations. No model using a single texture map has that kind of flexibility. So again, it comes down to which goal you want to care about more. You can certainly argue we went too far towards the versatility goal. It's much easier to focus only on performance when you are making models to be used in a pre-planned scene that you have complete control of, which is the position most game companies find themselves in.

A little necromancy here, but I tested the things in the package and couldn't get any of them to work. Although there were no errors, none of the animations would play (when the AI was supposed to run it just walked, no pain was played when damaged, etc) and the ik didn't appear to do anything (AI bounced up steps as before). I don't know what to make of that, but I've uploaded them to SVN in case anyone else wants to have a look. When opening up the animations that work vs the ones that don't, I see the two have different numerical values for each bone. I suspect that's a problem, but don't know exactly what those values mean. Working animation: "origin" -1 0 0 // "Bone001" 0 5 0 // "Bone002" 1 32 2 // "Bone003" 2 56 3 // "Bone004" 3 56 6 // "HeadBone" 4 56 9 // Non-working animation: "origin" -1 63 0 // "Bone001" 0 63 6 // "Bone002" 1 63 12 // "Bone003" 2 63 18 // "Bone004" 3 63 24 // "HeadBone" 4 63 30 //

So this is the last I can see on the topic. I guess those animations/ik was never tested? edit: Ok, gave it a quick whirl...the ik isn't very convincing at the moment (if it's working at all), and I can't get the included pain or run animations to work. In fact, none of the animations offered by Destined appear to do anything, though I don't see any obvious reason why.

Actually, I just went in and tested this, and the werebeast DOES appear to have a ragdoll--he collapsed when I killed him (though the legs bend the wrong way). So now I'm not sure what's keeping him from being usable, beyond a limited range of animations.

If your primary concern is performance, that's correct. However, TDM has a goal most game companies do not, and that's making assets that are flexible and easily modified by casual users. Using multiple materials is an obstacle to the first goal, but is highly useful for the second goal. Exactly where we should have drawn the line between those two competing concerns is open to debate.

You can probably do that now with what is on SVN, using the ambient AI method. Although if you don't want it to move at all, you might need to hack a new animation by isolating a single frame of the idle.md5anim.

It does have a few animations, though not many. I think it has the basics (idle, walk, run, attack). I remember getting it to move around a map. But the AF is needed in order to create a ragdoll for it. I can't remember now if there were other issues.

Until we can get a working AF for the werebeast, I don't think it's going to be appearing anywhere.

Yes. Can't tell you why, but that's what I've observed.