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Springheel

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Posts posted by Springheel

  1. 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).

    • Like 1
  2. 1 hour ago, ERH+ said:

    We definitely need those assets, could be just new voice set for any AI if not for player character (I think there are two female voice sets at the moment). Remember, as long as the new content appears, we all winning. ;)

    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.

     

    • Like 1
  3. 8 minutes ago, duzenko said:

     

    About game being too dark in general forcing people to crank up gamma that causes color banding and greenish color noise.

    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.

     

    8 minutes ago, duzenko said:

    But most often there's ambient 'dark' - that's where you hide, and 'light spots' - danger zones. You can easily identify them with any exposure. Anything of ambient brightness is safe.

    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. 

  4. 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.

  5. 6 hours ago, wesp5 said:

    Speaking of promoting TDM, I emailed Blues News and they agree to make announcements for each new mission :)! This would result in TDM regularily being mentioned on at least one gaming news site. Maybe we could contact other news sites too? Also is there a way to get download numbers of the mod? To see whether something like this has any influence at all. And where would I get info about newls released missions? The internal downloader or the board here?

     

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

     

  6. 8 hours ago, Alberto Salvia Novella said:

    I could contact each of those still alive sites, and ask them if we could use no more than the already gotten textures under the CC-BY-SA license with the warrant that the Dark Mod will never become a commercial product.

    This way the original intention of their license scheme is preserved, to monetize if you monetize, and the copyright holder will see no compelling reason to oppose or to report those textures.

    And in the unlikely situation that someone I couldn't contact decided to report in the future, it would be for a fraction of the assets. Then it would be viable to handle the situation.

    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.

    • Like 3
  7. Quote

    Mappers don't need high number of materials per model to have versatility, they need a decent number of skins.

     

    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.
     

    • Like 1
  8. 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 //

    • Like 2
  9. 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.

  10. Quote

    That's a textbook example of how not to make assets, for any engine really.

     

    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.
     

    • Like 1
  11. 1 hour ago, grayman said:

    @demagogue,

    If you achieve your goal with the Werebeast, would I be able to use it for just "standing around"? I'd wanted to put it into WS6 as a museum exhibit. Not alive, just a statue. I couldn't figure out how to do that with what's currently available.

     

    thx

    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.

     

    • Like 1
  12. 7 hours ago, demagogue said:

    I seem to remember somebody posting that they had a few animations already working for it, so I assumed that meant the AF was working. But I wasn't entirely following what was really going on, and you're the one that would know.

    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.

    • Like 1
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