Search the Community

thanks to you and the other person as well. That's how this all started with the old Ionstorm forums and TTLG. We all asked questions, why dammit why. Deus Ex was a masterpiece and IW was not even close. I'm just glad that Deus Ex 3 is close to being made. Just need the green light from Eidos. Maybe I should start a petition. Couple thousand signatures and send it to Eidos. Hmmm

As you can't see the internal developer forums, I thought I'd drop a note here as well: the problem/crash in Linux is due to the dynamic_cast operator not working when used on classes created in the shared libraries like the entity plugin. The cast returns NULL where it is expected to return something useful. This works in Windows, but not in Linux as it seems. OrbWeaver is currently investigating the linker options to find a way around it - if you're feeling adventurous, feel free to play around with the compiler flags as well.

It would be nice if that worked, but it only works on a few computers. I've tried every single fix on the face of this earth, and nothing works. I get the menu fine, and everything, but as soon as I load up a mission, black screen and nothing. I checked the forums all over the intraweb and nothing

A compiling darkrd on Ubuntu would be cool and would it make possible for me to do some little changes (vbos etc) myself. So far I always got a scons related error: scons: Building targets ... scons: *** Directory /home/cc/Projects/darkradiant/trunk/darkradiant/libs/string found where file expected. scons: building terminated because of errors. I searched the forums and the suggested way to fix this is to install an older version of scons. However, this is no option for me since two of my projects rely on the recent (96.92) scons-version.

There's also the problem that md5 models default to nonsolid, and the last time I looked into the issue, no one knew of a way to fix that problem. You can check out the grandfather clock entity for an example. It's an md5 file (for an animated pendulum) but when you put it in a map you can walk and shoot arrows right through it. Here's the original thread about the gfather clock. I checked around on D3W and other forums at the time and no one had a real solution for this.

I suppose this is a debate about how much control FM authors should have over what the player does. THe answer is that the FM author has already almost complete control over the player's actions anyway, every brush on the map, every little bit of story or readable, every guard placement, every loot placement controls what the player has to do to some extent. I don't think giving the FM author control over where the player saves is too much. THe FM author is trying to his best to craft an experience for the player, and knows his level better than anyone. He puts a shit load of time and effort into making the level and all the player has to do is ataff around it for a few hours.

I posted a thread at ttlg, asking what people liked/disliked about t2 bots: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?...340#post1594340 and got a few comments. the lockpick idea was mentioned, Digi posted a cool T2 concept bot...

I personally wish we had/have some day (whether TDM official, or community contributed), a big selection of prefabs to use. They remain optional, so people who may not have as much design ability can make things easier/faster, or if anyone wants that level and type of detail, but at the same time, teh power of DOOM allows them also to use custom made brushwork. Can't lose by having them, so I hope there will be many! As far as the original point goes, yes common sense and circumstances should indicate what to use. However I see that there can be question. I was working on a cathedral type window a while ago and thought, while I was laying down patch and brush here and there, "hey wait... maybe this should all be a normal mapped texture..." So, "Should we model..." - I'd say if it's do-able, yep.

My final concept? I'm kindof running dry on ideas. This is a rough concept, so of course things like thicker legs are absolute changes. Anyway, before i start any new bots I'd like to get not only opinions but I would like some help with more concepts. Even just basic pencil scrathes on napkins. I guess I big problem I'm having, and I noticed this in other bot threads is that everyone has their idea of what they want, but it's different from what everyone else wants <IMG style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" alt="" src=" http://forums.thedarkmod.com/style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif" border=0 emoid=""> So what I propse is a brainstorming of everyones ideas again, but to help finalize exactly what we want/need. ------- I suppose it will be : 2 combat bots: One arrow attack (thru the mouth?) One gas attack (thru the tail?) with some kind of gargoyle/animal head (hopefully like above) Legs not wheels. Yes the T2 bots did do stairs. Of course they had limits of ladders/small holes, will the Darkmod Ai climb ladders? I don't know, wheel and leg combo just seems odd. If they did have wheels how can we stop them from using stairs. Don't know what happened there: Anyway, I know T2 ai were stopped by walls, but how would we stop a bot from stairs? I stimmed blockade? Then I need someone up high to just say "this is what we want, shuddup and do it"

Excellent. Welcome aboard drac. Let's take this to the Programming forum so we can discuss tasks to assign you. In the meantime you'll probably want to get set up, and start browsing the private forums... there's a lot to read!

WARNING: EXTRA LONG (but thoughtful) POST AHEAD I don't normally post on political topics in forums, but seeing as this is a topic that touches me (I'm a student in at college in Boston, but I grew up in Philly, and went to public school there), I feel inclined to say something. Maximus in not exaggerating. Everything he says about the public school system here and the conditions of the neighborhoods they're in is, for the most part, accurate. Gangs, violence, schools that are falling apart, fifteen-year-old text books, the works. I'm pretty sure I remember a globe with the of the Ottoman Empire marked off on it in one of the classrooms. The teachers are, at best, tired and burnt-out, underpaid and extremely cynical about the situation. It's all completely borked. I did survive the public school system, but only for a few reasons. First of all, Philadelphia has a system in which students with good grades can apply to get into more exclusive magnet schools. It's a terrible system that whisks all of the bright minds away and leaves the neighborhood schools to deal with the dregs, but at least it saves those few from being swallowed up my the insanity. I had the luck to get into one of these schools, but I'm sure there were dozens of equally qualified cantidates that could have took my place. It's all a crapshoot. At the magnet schools, you at least have a chance to survive, since the people around you are hand-picked to be good risks for the school. It's a discriminatory system that favors those who come from families with a reasonable level of education and income, and tends to have the side-effect of sorting people by race, but it works, sort of. The magnet schools are much safer, have less problems with drugs and violence, and the level of education sometimes approaches acceptable. They're kept afloat by alumni endowments, which ensures that they don't fall into the same level of disrepair as the other schools. The problem is that for the students going there, this creates the illusion of a working public-education system, when in reality all that has been done is educate small percentage of the students and leave the rest to the wolves. These schools are being supported by private funds, because the government refuses to pony up enough cash to improve the school system as a whole. It's a stop-gap solution, ensuring that the best and brightest can make it out alive while the whole system collapses around them. Meanwhile, out in the suburbs, public schools have more money than they know what to do with. I have a friend who lives out near Allentown, an hour or so drive from Philadelphia, and he went to a public high school that had more money than they knew what to do with. Every time they found themselves sitting on a new mountain of dollar bills, they would just build a new athletic field, or a computer lab. What's the reason for this huge amount of disparity? Well, first of all, the funding for education in this country is tied to property tax values. Property taxes! Can you think of a stupider way to fund education? So the schools in poor areas that need it most get the least money, and the ones in rich areas that need it the least get the most. The government is supposed to help balance the situation by subsidizing schools in poor areas, but it's never enough. Education is a public service, and the money that people put into it doesn't go directly back into their own pockets, so it never gets enough funding. Now, I don't have the amount of scope that some of you people have, so I'm not used to thinking up problems for geopolitical problems, but I think that one thing this country needs is FLAT FUNDING for education. That means that funding for public schools is no longer tied to property values, but instead every school gets the same amount of money per student. The way, if education is underfunded, EVERYBODY knows about it since every person would have to deal with it. That would certainly exert enough political pressure to get the government to fund education at a reasonable level, and it would ultimately improve the school system in this country. It certainly wouldn't solve all of the problems with poverty, violence etc. that we have been discussing, but it would certainly go a long way toward alleviating them. 'course, the problem would be to actually get people to swallow the idea that the central government should dole out the money to all of their schools. Given the extreme paranoia of centralized government ANYTHING in this country, I'm not sure I could see it happening without a massive political movement.

OK, I scoured the forums for all bot related topics and Dled as much as I could. Took em home and read thru em. I'll summarize what I think the team wants (my opinion of what I read): oDDity wants cannonballs, almost everyone else isn't too sure about this. Personally I never liked the T2 cannons bots too much, kindof goes with that gun issue. If we have cannons why not guns. I don't think guns fit the thief enviro very well. I do think a side mod of a victorian/gun enviro would be a cool game, but a different one. Alot of mentions of arrows/crossbows/gas (maybe flametrowers) Here are a few concepts: Gas bot, I imagine this could be very similar to the size of lantern bot. Even working in tandem would be cool. This one has eyes, the lantern bot has the ears so to speak. Imagine one of these coming around front of crate, one around back, where to go? The face is just a mock-up for now, see below. Crossbow, good way to fire arrows. This would be the loading system? problems, bulky, too many polys? What happens to arrows, when they run out, would it be possible toanimate/attach arrows in this fashion. Need animator input I guess. Propulsion concepts. Wheels? legs? 4 legs on all? maybe elite bots are biped? Problems with wheels- stairs. can certian AI be made to avoid stairs? I suppose there is a stair anim for legged creatures. edit:looking for gargoyle pics, good face for bots. I think an animal type head would be cool, different than T2 human faces. I also think opening jaws to emit projectiles might be cool, the player would know the bot was 'winding up' I think mean looking, but not so much evil looking as face on the bot pic above. I like the one at top of this page http://gargoylestore.com/ http://www.geocities.com/gargoyleppa/photos/UPFF01.jpg

Let's not forget the mechanical finger: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113820

What Springheel just posted is pretty interesting to me to read, though. It wouldn't hurt to maybe quote some selective posts from the internal forums, like even just bullet point "I did this this week" sort of posts, here just to give a flavor of some of the inner workings of progress. It doesn't have to be so formal or regular, but it's nice on occasion. I don't think it's such a big deal though; the normal updates have been fine for what they are. I do hope, though, that you'll archive the development discussions after release, though, for posterity's sake, because I think it would be pretty cool to look into the reasoning or genesis of some of the mechanics after it gets released (even if it isn't such a good idea before release).

I'd like to get started with the Stim/Response editor in the next few days. From fiddling around with stim/response stuff back in September when setting up the fire-secret in the Bonehoard, I know a thing or two about it, but I'm not an expert on this area. I will certainly play around a bit with the existing system and come up with some designs before I actually start coding. Before I dash ahead and start planning the actual GUI I would also like to post in The Editor's Guild on TTLG and interview a few Dromeders about common Stim/Response tasks, as I haven't any Dromed experience myself. Would that be ok for the team or would you rather leave the planning within these forums?

Fingernail did a wrought iron sign hanger for our city shops. He left out the actual sign part so people can make a brush and texture it with a sign of their choice. I'm doing a bunch of signs that FM authors can use by default. Nothing too fancy, as they'll be shrunk down quite a bit. These are the diffuse maps. I'll do a heightmap for them shortly.

It's just the feet for me. If they ended in a knob or something that would be fine. It's not even a big problem the way they are now, just somewhat noticeable. Odd did a very T2-looking one back at the beginning. Deep Omega modeled one based on GIMG's concept art, which I really liked, but then he disappeared. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...90&hl=robot

In RL, you can walk by keeping the weight on one foot, and probing the floor with the other, VERY GRADUALY putting weight on it. If you feel any movement, or start to hear a slight sound, you pull back. While this method works, it is very, very, very slow, requires a lot of practise, a very good sense of balance, and you couldn't really simulate this in a game (unless it is the Holodeck on the Enterprise). It is a technique used by special ops etc for infiltrating buildings stealthily. Nevertheless, I see no reason why floor creaks should be given away as obviously as a visual marker, you should have to watch guards, see what sounds the floor made as other AI walk over them. It certainly makes no sense to have visual markers for floorboards hidden under carpets or rugs. And it would take more than one little creak to set the AI on alert - in RL floorboards settle and squeak as the temperature and humidity in a room fluctuates, so a guard might brush of one or two squeaks, but will get suspicious if there are a number of squeaks consistent with a person walking emanating from a nearby hall or room.

Yep, its basicaly the same technique as the ivy, which can be made into a bush pretty easily, except with this one i've made a few improvements which save on texture memory at the cost of a few extra polys. If you compare the diffusemap for the ivy and this tree you should see what I mean, the tree has less wasted uv space. Im gradually going to be making alot more nature type assets for the Ground Zero mod and The Dark Mod, it would be great if you guys could contribute some of your nature assets to the Ground Zero mod aswell because they're badly in need of them too. But I also want to make it perfectly clear that we will be releasing all assets to the community regually, Im not really too sure where you guys stand on asset sharing between mods but I think it would benefit both mods. yeah, I totally agree about trees being difficult to make, i've made about 6 so far, gradually improving the workflow after each one through trial and error, you need good references, images found on google.com quite often are'nt enough to really grasp the shape and structure of a tree, it helps to have multiple photos of the same tree around that same time period, otherwise you might start mixing seasonal differences onto the same model wich can look quite wrong. I'd advise getting out and actually photographing some trees yourself, good references online are hard to find. Also crack open call of duty or any other games you have wich have good trees in them and study the texture maps and how they are layed out onto a UV space, I learnt alot from doing this. this was my first tree model, I made it shortly after doom3 came out and I was quite proud of it at the time, so as you can see you're not doing too bad Badcogg but I think you'r pine could do with some more variation and some spiney bits going up the trunk, but I think you've got a pretty good looking tree there . http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=5854

Oh, can you make it swing if it's a brush? That's good to know. I'd be happy to make some textures for them.

I've just made/making a wrought iron signpost hanger-thing. I've left out the actual sign part, so people can make a brush, texture it with a sign and perhaps make it a func_movable so it can swing or something neat like that.

Hi guys! I've been psyched about the Dark Mod since I first heard about it. Your goals are well-focussed and not too large, the chances for success as a project are really good when so many other projects of this type fail for one reason or another. I feel confident you're going to make something really great and in fact I'm getting involved now. I watched all of the Doom3 editing videos I could find and they really make a difference. It's so much easier learning the editor by watching a video than by reading even the most graphically beautiful, detailed, well-organized text or HTML tutorial. So I'm going to start my first ever room tonight, then move on to joining two rooms with a hallway, then see what I can do from there. I want to be ready when you release your toolset. I guess I have the ultimate Thief modder's dream in mind. A huge, single level city. I have had most of it planned out for a few years, actually. Streets and rooftops both. It may take me a couple of years but that's my goal. It would be great if you someday added an automap to TDM. The downside of a big city is that it's easy to get lost and confused. My idea is to organize the city into distinctive sections, each connected to one another by only one or two "chokepoints." Not only would this make it harder to get lost or confused, but it would probably be good for framerates too. I've planned the basic architecture pretty carefully so as to avoid really long lines of sight, even did a few mockups in Dromed with good results (stumbled across some tricks to make a thieve's highway easy too). These sections would be visually distinctive (slums, taverns and restaurants, a business district, civic center with lots of marble, docks, a park). That way you'd always know immediately where you were just by looking at the style of everything. And if that isn't enough, there would be plenty of very unique landmarks to keep you oriented. Sewer exit points would be labelled too so you knew where you were coming up (most of the time, heh). And of course lots of secrets. Big, meaty secret areas, rooftops and neighborhoods. From what I know about Doom 3 I could create something pretty enormous with lots of actual usable buildings with people and rooms in them and such (and not have to resort to the Dark Engine way of most building being empty fakes) and, provided it was well-planned and divided up, it wouldn't take too long to load. In reality I may not go that far due to gameplay considerations, but it's nice to know it's possible. So I imagine I can start on the geometry and that at least will be usable in TDM eventually. I'm resigned to retexturing, re-AIing, and probably relighting eventually, but that's okay. I'll probably screw the lighting up the first time anyway and want to redo it eventually when I know a lot more. Lighting sounds really tricky in Doom 3. Don't overlap light volumes, don't illuminate a single brush face with too many lights. Plus Doom 3 has no ambient lights! Yikes. That sounds like the biggest drawback to the engine. One question for now. Does anybody know of a source of decent quality medieval style textures? Either a free source, or a paid source, or even another game whose textures I can "borrow" just while I'm working. I know I'll have to retexture everything eventually anyway. I can't think of any games. Thief 3 city textures weren't really my cup of tea but I plan to look at them again. Maybe Hexen 2. As I remember it kind of had some textures like that. Oh, and I still have Daikatana around someplace, it had some good textures as I recall. Any other ideas? I'll post some newbie map pics soon.

There is nothing wrong with cheating in a single-player game. But that doesn't change the fact that unlimited saves are cheating. Players should be able to access unlimited saves, but only through using a cheat cvar. I can't remember where, but I've already seen entire articles suggesting this approach in MMO design forums. Except, they went even further, suggesting a whole pyramid of different levels: For free, players get a basic MMO hack'n'slash game with collecting items, slaying dragons, going on quests, maybe basic crafting, etc. If they purchase a subscription, they also get to buy and sell tracts of land, construct buildings, craft and sell advanced items, etc. If they purchase a premium subscription, they get to be royalty, and tax the land-owners in their kingdom, or recruit armies, etc. The general idea, was that since a player who wants to be king depends on a large range of other players to be their subjects, they should effectively subsidize the other players' subscriptions as RL payment for them pretending to be mere adventurers/peons. Even an inn-keeper or a blacksmith needs other players to pretend to be clients, so even they should subsidize adventurers' subscriptions to some extent.

Yep, agreed, there's should definitely be room for a one-liner. What would you suggest as a catchy description? "open-source Doom 3 level editor" or specialised Doom 3 editor for the Dark Mod? I'm not very good at these titles, obviously. You mean the icon that goes along with the executable? I can look into this, I think I had such an icon software some time ago, I'll have to dig through my software folder. Let's see if my creativity has run out for today. I'm in a split mood, the page is public after all. I don't know if it would it cause any problems, but I can of course go Komag's way and put up a non-linked page which is referenced within these forums only.

What the heck are you talking about? Looks perfectly normal to me. I'm at the office today aswell and I didn't have to login, I browsed the forums from home before I went to work. No problems at all. Can you do me a favour and either upgrade your Firefox (if you don't already have the newest version) or try another browser, like Opera. Anyway, don't you use the password manager in Firefox? In Opera I only have to press Ctrl+Enter to be logged in to a website if I've saved the password.