simplen00b

Those tutorials look amazing - I've gottem bookmarked for when I've got time to go through them.

Hi guys – RL's been pushing in recently but I've managed to do a bit of work on this and (good news) I finally got one of my textures showing in DR. I applied it to a wall, where it seemed to show up fine, but (bad news) when I hit F3 I got a 'Shader not found' message showing. Also (more bad news) when I try to dmap the map in TDM, I get a bundle of error messages. Nooby q - is there a way of copying and pasting console messages so I can look at them outside of TDM and see where I'm going wrong?

I thought you had to import them into the mod (that means DR, right?) to preview them, but if it's easier to use Blender first, that's cool. That would be fantastic. If you include some basic instructions, or a link to a wiki with instructions, that may help (what you call 'simple' may be a fathomless pit of pain and confusion for me. ) Many thanks.

I'm just going for understanding them first. Enthusiasm will follow. Those words are going to haunt me.

OK, first nooby help request re material files. 1. Texture creation wiki says: Create a material for the texture (see Basic Material File). In the materials folder, locate the material file where you texture fits in best. 2. Basic Material File wiki says: All material files should be located in the darkmod/materials folder and have the extension .mtr. I'm probably missing something obvious, but I can't find the materials folder - in fact, I can't find anything labelled 'materials' or with an .mtr suffix anywhere in my Doom 3 folder. Do I need to create one? If so, how do I 'locate the material file where you texture fits in best'? What am I missing?

@Melan: That screenshot looks great - love the dark textures. If you have the time to upload a couple and send me a link, I'm happy to have a look at them. @STIFU I was wondering if I needed Blender – nice to know I don't. I looked at the texture tutorial (it was the comment about removing seams being "usually the hardest, most time consuming step" that prompted me to offer help) but my brain still seizes up with the diffusemap/normalmap terminology. Testing my textures is the next step, but I'm likely to have loads of noob questions. I'll fire up DR later tonight if I get the chance and report back with nooby-q's/screams of pain/etc etc. @Baddcogg Grateful for the overall encouragement.

I think I may have had a bad experience in a fairly early FM I played - very possibly Sons of Baltona – where every time I failed a KO (which happened a lot back then), running and hiding didn't really solve anything because in the process I usually alerted loads of helmeted AI who were then forever on high-alert and creeping past them seemed impossible. So I may have got into the reload habit on an unrepresentative FM (there were a lot of guards in the first part of SoB) and other FMs may be more forgiving. Only one way to find out I guess . (Although KO'ing the last patrolling guard in SoB was still pretty satisfying, reload-overuse or not.) Yeah, I need to flexibilise my gameplay. My style for playing a level for the first couple of times has nearly always been to KO everyone if I can (I generally avoid killing) and then scamper around unhindered. I try to be more stealthy when I've got a bit more of a handle on the terrain. I love most of it. Just have the occasional tantrum is all .

That's the thing – I like trying to make more organic textures (I just like making things difficult for myself ), plus there seem to be plenty of the straightforward regular textures in TDM already. But if there are others needed I'm happy to have a go at making them. I think I am going to have to go in that direction but I'm still at the stage where I open Blender or Dark Radiant and my brain just panics. I am utterly clueless about the more advanced stuff. I can EASILY imagine!

How big would that need to be (in pixels)? http://simplen00b.minus.com/ I've started uploading medium-res 1024 x 1024 jpegs which I can do tgas for if anyone wants them. Like I say, just started working on tiling again for the first time in years so not many up yet, but I'll keep on adding when I get the chance to make them.

I would love a sub-easy/ultra-noob level setting where they do eventually put their swords away, as I'd be more willing to try running & hiding when I do a failed blackjack attempt. At the moment I usually just reload, as trying to run & hide usually results in unblackjackable AI stomping around for the rest of the game. Reloading is so quick it isn't a huge immersion breaker for me and I still enjoy playing the game. But man, I'd love to be able to run and hide and still have the chance to blackjack AI, even if I have to hole up for quite a while (10 minutes? 20?) And I personally haven't noticed the AI super-vision. And just so's this isn't just a 'TDM is too hard' moan, I want to make the following point: - Climbing/mantling Rope-arrowing Crate stacking - not just easier in TDM, they're an ABSOLUTE JOY (never thought I'd say that about rope arrows). And the mod is great. That is all.

Thanks for the encouraging comments guys. A few more comments and questions: - 1. I know the 'grungey' textures lose their grungey quality when they repeat nicely and neatly over a large area , but might they be useful for texturing smaller objects like bowls/trays/pots/whatever? If so, I can provide 1024 x 1024 tga files if anyone's interested. The guy who created the source textures states that if they get used and changed in the process (which they have been), he doesn't mind whether he gets any credit or not, so copyright shouldn't be an issue. Let me know. 2. I've read a couple of posts from people saying they have photos they'd like to try to use as textures but they don't have the time to work on them. I'm happy to have a go at tiling them if it could help. Finally (and maybe most importantly): - 3. I suspect there's more work involved in making textures that look good in 3D-modelling than there is in making textures that look cool on my desktop. I'm happy to keep posting up samples of what I'm doing - if someone can see that I'm missing/messing up something important, let me know. (If you pm me with a message like "Your saturizers need more pixelflexing in the z-quanta dobly range", that should hopefully be enough to help me find a relevant tutorial via Google.) And this is even before the bump (normal?) mapping process, which I am completely clueless about. Thanks again for the encouragement!

I've started to quite enjoy messing around turning pics into tiles, and from browsing the forums I'm wondering if I could help with textures (the 'turning them into tiles' part, at least). No idea whether what I do would be up to TDM standards, so I've attached some samples for you to check out. If you think they show enough promise for me to be useful, let me know. Just to be clear, I'm not submitting these as potential textures, just as examples of my ability (or otherwise ) to tile. Source image for brick wall: http://ipadwallpaper...1-wallpaper.jpg Sources for other textures are from http://shadowhousecr...ns.blogspot.com

And some screenshots (warning: auto-levels and rather silly captions have been applied): -

Upfront confession time - I'm really not a fan of these kind of levels, and the only way I can play them is by actively avoiding getting too immersed in them. This usually means: 1) having the sound turned down quite low (creepy sounds freak me out way more than creepy visuals), and, if necessary, putting an Adam & Joe podcast on in the background; 2) mucho use of reload. So, apologies to all you scary-FM makers (NB: not scary FM-makers. Although some of you may be ), and apologies to Sotha especially for point no. 2 after seeing his views on saving & reloading, but, I yam still a TDM newbie and that's the way it is (at the moment anyway). Given that, if anyone's still interested, this is my gameplay experience (warning: very long): - Sotha, to save you wading through the above, this is the only thing that comes close to a criticism: - Overall, a really well-designed FM with a good story that kept me in it despite my dislike of the subject matter. Good stuff!

OK - last one (for now, anyway - ai generally seem to be behaving themselves at the moment). This is a series of shots from the beginning of Sons of Baltona. No Photoshop trickery, scouts honour (I'm not clever enough) - the guard just seemed to touch the wall and shoot up on an invisible elevator. I had done a quicksave just before this happened so I was able to go back and take screenshots, but then I overwrote it - however, I did go back and managed to get a saved game where the guard does something very similar on the other side of the entrance. It's too big to upload here (800KB zipped) so if someone did want to give it a try to see if the same thing happened on their system - erm, not sure what to do...pm me - ???

Hi gx, and welcome! As far as I'm aware, the default gameplay setting is you have to press 'shift' to run (whether standing or crouching). So not sure what you mean by 'disabling' it - like badcogg says, it should just be a question of 'don't hit the shift key'. Gotta say I don't find it that quiet - like badcogg, I usually alert ai if I crouch-run near them. I think Garrett (oops) Farrell is noisier in TDM than in T3 but at least he isn't wearing his wooden clogs from T1/T2. *gets coat

Very interesting. To go even more off-topic: maybe it's just me but I really like coming across a readable giving a hint to something I've already found. Gives me a lovely warm glow of self-satisfaction about what a clever observant thief I am. On the other hand, the extreme opposite - reading a hint and then still not being able to find the d**n thing - gives me a dismal cold glow of vengeful frustration. (Interestingly, both of these happened in Heart of Lone Salvation. Fortunately the LWGs outweighed the DCGs.)

Hope I'll be able to help!

Yup, especially for someone who's borderline OCD about it (like what i is)(grammatical joke there). Wouldn't say it's been a huge problem in the 20 +/- TDM FMs I've played so far - T2 FMs (the ones I played anyway) seemed to have loads more typos, although your second point may have some bearing here: - This has got me thinking (and possibly taking the post slightly off-topic) - how do the mission makers who may struggle with English* get their readables done? Is there any need for help in that area? I'd be interested to know. (I may be picking on an isolated example here - I played Silencium18's excellent 'A Special Delivery' last night and even though it's a short mission, I missed having much in the way of readables to add to the atmosphere.) *I.e. Not those of you who speak/write English better than many of my fellow countrymen

This may be of pretty limited helpfulness, but just wanted to say I'm happy to do any proofreading of readables, objectives, mission briefings etc of any WIP if it's any help. (Double-double-triple-checks above to make sure there are no mistakes in it.)

Really well-designed mission, nice and straightforward with enough challenges to keep it interesting. I did wonder whether the electric lights could be turned off somewhere, but that would probably have made it way too easy - as it was, having to lean out into brightly lit areas to check where footsteps were coming from really ratcheted up the tension. Good one for TDM newcomers to try out I reckon. Thanks silencium.

Thanks for the list demagogue. 2nd-hand copy of HL2 is on order and (assuming it's playable) I'll check some of your suggestions out.

Yep - downloaded & installed Desura, and it needed HL2 in order to play DE. So I guess next question is, apart from Dear Esther, are there many (any?) Thief-like atmospheric mods for HL2? Enough to make it worth forking out £2-3 for a s.h. copy of HL2? (Cap'n Tightwad in full control here.) Just had a quick look on moddb and it looks like there's over a thousand HL2 mods, most of which seem to involve either (i) killing zombies, (ii) killing zombies, or (iii) killing zombies (none of which I'm particularly interested in). Any advice welcome!

That's why I ended up asking here - couldn't find any clear statement one way or the other on any other DE-connected websites. Anyway, I'm downloading Desura now and will report back for anyone else who may be interested. I have a back-up OS image I can reinstall if it all goes horribly wrong...

I'm definitely intrigued, but I do need to ask - do I have to have a copy of HL2 to play the original mod, or (given HL2 source code has been open source for quite a while) is it now a stand-alone mod? Can i start playing if I install using this Desura thingy? Sorry if this is a 'facepalm-the-newbie' question, but, y'know, i'm a newbie (and also a tightwad ). Just wanted to check before I started downloading anything.