Search the Community

Got my new painting skins and was seeing the following in the console before the map is even been loaded - Here is just one example - line 116: Missing decal name line 137: Expecting '{' but found 'portra'And the skin definition in question - skin 06portra { model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_m.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_l.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_tearable.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_m_tearable.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_l_tearable.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_s.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_s_tearable.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_round.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_round_tearable.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_round_s.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_round_s_tearable.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_minature.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/painting_desktop_vertical.ase painting01 06portra painting01_m 06portra painting02_L 06portra } skin 07portra { model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_m.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_l.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_tearable.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_m_tearable.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_l_tearable.lwo model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_s.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting01_s_tearable.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_round.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_round_tearable.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_round_s.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_round_s_tearable.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/wall/painting_minature.ase model models/darkmod/decorative/painting_desktop_vertical.ase painting01 07portra painting01_m 07portra painting02_L 07portra } As it turns out the engine dosen't like having numbers at the beginning of file names in either the kin or material defs, and I imagine it wont like them in other text based files the engine use etc.

TTLG? That's Through the Looking Glass Forums. A looking glass fan community. Has been around for a long, long time. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/

I just read@motorsep Discovered that you are able to create a brush, then select it and right click "create light". Now you have a light that ha the radius of the former brush. Just read it on discord and thought it may be of use for some people in the forums here too.

OK, I was able to finish the script. For it's usage, you need two things. The script (obiously ): ase_export_blend.py.txt This material file: blendtexture.mtr.txt The texture defined in the latter is textures/common/blend. It uses the caulk editor image as I didn't replaced that, but it does not behave like caulk. You only need it to apply the blending effect. It does not get exported and don't need to be shipped with your FMS that use those models. As explained earlier, blending textures consist out of two textures, where the first one is marked with VertexColor and the second one is marked with inverseVertexColor. It could be vice versa, too. But for reference let's assume it is like that. To apply the blending effect, you just need to texture the appropiate parts of the later model with your blending textures. Then create some brushes textured with the blend texture and place them in a way, that all vertices that should use the second texture are included in those brushes. Note that vertices are not neccessarely the same on patches as what you can select in DR. The amount of vertices a patch has, depends on the tesselation. Every corner point of a triangle is a vertex. Note also that the script takes the AABB, the axis-aligned bounding box into consideration for checking whether or not a vertex is inside those brushes. So don't rotate them. Once you are going to export your brushes/patches as a model, make sure that the blend-textured brushes are selected, too. I will post some examples in this thread so you can see how to use it. Enjoy!

I think the reason the dev forums exist is to provide a place where the implementation of features can be discussed without getting mixed up with other debates when someone believes what the devs are doing is wrong. We often post public discussion threads for features with subjective elements like the frob outline, because community feedback is very important. But there will always be vocal defenders with strong views for or against certain features, or how exactly it should be implemented in their opinion. At some point a decision has to be made and be carried through, which is what the dev forums are for. Almost all of the threads are very technical, basically explaining and discussing recent or potential code changes with other devs. Its hard to say. Its a hobby the devs do in their spare time, so people come and go when they're in the mood and when they have the time. The team page is mostly accurate except for some relatively newer additions like myself.

Obsttorte was interested in what I learned while making the LQD with the modular building technique, so I'll write some words about it here. What is modular building? It is about reusing every piece you build. In the old building technique you make things by hand. Then you move elsewhere and make things by hand. Every time you start from scratch and do a lot of work until you have a small area that looks good. In Modular Building Technique (MBT), you make parts you need by hand, make them into .ase models and then clone them. You spend a lot of effort to make a single pretty detail piece. Once it is done, you can easily clone it. Also you can easily make derivatives of the existing piece. Ie. first make a wall. Then use the wall and make it into a 90 degree corner. And a wall with a doorway. And a T-junction. And a Wall with niche etc etc. Every piece you make, you create with the intent of making it reuseable. It takes a bit longer to make a single piece, but once you have a library of pieces, you can create good-looking rooms in few moments, just by cloning and bashing the modules in place. Some history I first thought about large scale modules, whole rooms and corridor pieces. The module would contain everything: worldspawn walls (the sealing geometry) and the details. In LQD the first floor was built with this principle. The corridors were repeatably cloned: straight corridor module, straight corridor module, straight corridor module, 90 degree corridor module, straight corridor module, T-junction module and so forth. When I reached the 2nd floor in LQD I started build smaller modules. Straight wall model piece, 90 degree wall model piece... Like seen in the LQ's study and this tutorial, for example. I personally feel this small module approach was far better than the large module one. The reason is you get more from the pieces: build sealing geometry, then clone the models in. Or the other way around if you prefer. Cloning entire rooms (mixture of worldspawn and models) is a bit clunky and error-prone. It is easier to make the location from several small reusable model pieces and then draw the sealing geometry around it. How to build modular? 1) Decide a grid size. This is THE MOST important phase. Try out different scales and decide what size factor your map will be. In LDQ I decided that the grid will be 144x144. It felt right for a castle. 2) Design the pieces so that they fit together and in to the grid. Here is a single example, which shows how the module pieces fit with the grid. Remember to leave room for sealing world geometry! That is, the worldspawn walls and floors marked in the screenshots below: The above example is in 2d. I mean the module pieces touch in XY plane. If you design your pieces properly, you can also make them fit in the vertical dimension too. That means you can mix and match pieces you build to have more variety: wall type A, ceiling type B and so forth. See below how the ceiling module fits on top of the wall modules. Pay special attention to the texture alingment. Remember, that the textures cannot be shifted anymore in an ase-module piece. Thus the texture alignment must fit nicely when the module is designed. 3) Build! Once you have the pieces ready, all you need to do is clone them and create the room. You might want to make the pieces into ase-models for lower memory impact (a model is loaded only once, cloning func_statics will eat more memory) and to protect your func_statics from DR corruption bug. 4) Decal modules! You can also make decal modules. When I built the wall modules seen in the screenshots above, I also retextured them with dirt decals and saved them into ase models too. This means I can simply clone a decal module on top of the actual module, thus griming it up with a single cloning. See screenshot below, actual module and it's decal counterpart. This simplifies griming things up a lot! You can also make modules for various other things, like wall damage, windows, vaults and the like. When you need a piece, you build it, make it into a module and place it. Then when you need a similar piece later, you just clone and place. No point in doing wall damage by hand, as you can just quickly clone a piece you made earlier and paste it all around the place: 5) Skins! Note also that this is not the limit. By writing a skin file, you could have variation within the modules, like the wall paper in the screenshot below: Summary All in all, you spend a lot of time designing the pieces. I would recommend building the pieces in a separate modules.map. This way you have a factory: you build pieces there, it is quick to dmap and jump in-game to inspect you work. Once you are sure your piece is perfect, you make it into an .ase model. Then open your map and mash the pieces you have together quickly and minimal effort to create a good looking location. Keep on mapping with the pieces until you need a new one. Then go back to you module factory and build a new piece. Make sure it is perfect, make it into a model and continue. Look at the wall in the above screenshot. Building that by hand via the traditional way would take a while. In the modular way, once you have built a single unit of that 3 unit wall, you can built the whole wall in seconds. Or any wall of any lenght! That is the power of the modular approach. Good looking details with low amount of work. Downside is that you are locked to a grid and you need to spend a lot of time with the modules initially. Also you need to have the discipline to plan your map a bit so that you won't waste time building modules you don't want or need. Special considerations: Note the part where the different modules touch each other. Pay special attention to this spot. You have to be very careful how you align your textures. There should not be a seam there. You could avoid the seam making the texture 'mirror' between the touching module brushes. This is very critical part in your module design so pay attention to it. Larger modules can be good too. For example, the spiral staircase towers (there are two in LQD) were a single module containing all the worldspawn and func_static walls. I made one tower and then just cloned it and placed it into the other location. Two towers at the expense of one. If I'm gonna map in the future, I'll just grab the tower from LQD and retexture. Assuming the next map uses same grid, that is... And one more benefit. Sticking to the grid makes later adjustments really easy. In LQD, there is the bedroom that was converted to a storeroom next to LQ's study. Initially this room was just sitting in the end of the corridor and there was no access from the spiral staircase tower into it. When I was drawing the in-game maps I felt that there should be an third option for accessing the second floor. Then I just added a corridor module between the store room and the staircase. Changed the wall modules into doorway wall module and the connection was ready. Hopefully this helps other mappers to explore alternative mapping techniques.

No. The Aeden's staff optional objective is the hardest of the game. To point out directions here, though, is getting into an area of heavy-duty spoilers ... so I'm constrained in my response just as I was constrained in my responses to the "endless keyhunt" complaints because to show the rather simple direction would be a huge spoiler. So I had to bite my tongue and take it. Aeden's staff is different, though - harder. I've never tried a no-KO ghost playthrough. Because I'm clumsy and have slow reflexes. I think it might be possible to do a stealth no-alerts playthrough. Are you allowed to KO? I think I've gotten the staff a few times in my playthroughs without alerting the builders in that room. The only switchable lights in the FM are table lamps. The cylindrical style wall lamps aren't extinguishable. The other fire and gas wall lamps are extinguished by water. In the Ox all waiters and commoners in the common room and outside are friendlies - except for the waitress in the upper lounge which is filled with enemies. You need water arrows. Moss arrows. Rope arrows. I've never used a gas arrow in a playthrough of the FM but one would make things easier, for sure. I'm going to replay the area and check through the locations that you mentioned - the loop etc. - then if it's OK with you I'll PM you with some info, tho' I'll ask you if you want the info first. So's not to spoil it for others who get that far in the game (few and far between!). I find it almost impossible not to click the "reveal spoiler" tags and read the info ... and, y'know, spoilers do spoil the real deal.

As far as I know the most up-to-date one is the script I maintain (there is a single tdm_export script which supports both ASE and LWO export). However I haven't specifically tested with the latest Blender 3.4 series, so it's possible that it will need an update. I believe this information is out of date. The problem of LWO losing smoothing information was caused by the Blender exporter itself ignoring object-specific data and enforcing a hard-coded smoothing angle. This is now fixed in my latest version, although the old behaviour is selectable at the time of export if you don't want to deal with object smooth groups. As far as I can recall, when I was testing this, the smoothing options did take effect in the engine (although I couldn't say whether they were 100% mathematically correct).

I just found this thread on ttlg listing Immersive Sims: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151176

Yeah, but also for vehicles. Vehicle is MD5, terrain is ASE.

Solid 1, if no collision surface is available, will use the model geometry itself for collisions (search for combat model in the code also), so yes is not the best approach, doing a custom collision model is always preferable for performance, but doing it on DR is something I personally don't do and IMO is at most, best for simple box like collision models. Like I said the best is to create the collision surfaces in a 3D Tool like blender, you can use the shadow model for it, just change the material from "shadow" to "collision" or even the lower poly LOD model, can't be easier. Btw isn't AFEntity for ragdool physics? I thought that was only for skinned MD5 models not static ASE or LWO models.

Is there an LWO exporter that works with Blender 3.4.1 ? I use some rogue ASE exporter and while it seems to work fine on small low poly models, it seems that it doesn't export properly larger higher poly models

There is no such model format as "CM". A CM is either an OBJ, ASE, or LWO with a collision texture. The cm data in the map compile cannot be natively manipulated, it is the result of a dmap operation.

Well, I am not sure where you get your information from, but I couldn't export selected ASE mesh in the map as CM model. It's either a bug in DR or the limitation is that only brushes can be exported as CM (which is in fact how dmap generate .cm files - only from brushes)

Recently revisiting the forums after a longer period of time I wanted to check the unread content. I don't know if I am doing this wrong since.. ever... but on mobile (visiting the unread content page on my smartphone) you have to click on that tiny speech bubble to go to the most recent post in a thread. If you don't click correctly you'll hit the headline and end up at post 1 in the beginning of the thread. It's terrible on mobile, since not only the speech bubble is really small and was to miss. But also the thread headline is just millimeters away from it so you go right to the first post that was ever made instead of the most recent ones. Am I doing it wrong? I just want to go through u read content a d the to the newest post from that topic.

A@datiswous Ah yeah, well sorry, I was quiet busy and only visiting discord. First time here on the forums since months now I think.. Thank you for the subtitles. I encourage everyone who is interested in using them to download it from here as I'm not sure when I'll be able to implement them myself into the mission. Again, thank you for your work.

Afternoon I have tried making the following model moveable - - models/darkmod/decorative/statues/gargoyle_fetus_pose.ase If I use the atdm:moveable_custom_item enity I get a collision related crash/error on map load, I then tried the old trick of using a different entity that has the origin in the same location and is roughly the same size. I dont understand why Im getting the collision error, as the model as a collision mesh. - atdm:moveable_pot_small but then I have the issue where the item dosent frob highlite. Any idea's would be welcome.