Search the Community

Just wanted to say, Hello! From reading through various posts in the forums it seems like a great community and I hope to become a part of it. So I got the hankering for some Thief as of late and stumbled on TDM through some googling. After purchasing Doom 3 through Steam and instaling TDM, I have been nostalgiacly playing through many of the FMs and have also decided to d/l the Radiant editor and start making a mission, maybe many, we'll see. As it turns out also, I just started (today!) my 1 week vacation from work and intend to dive in to the Radiant editor and am currently going through the A-Z wiki on it. A bit of background on me, I 'used' to work in application support till the economic crash a couple years ago and was laid off and am now running a machining center at a local machine shop, using Mastercam daily, 2D/3D stuff and have always wanted to make a mission/game, and decided since I've always enjoyed the Thief series and stealth gameplay so much, this is where I would start. After getting to my third year in Mechanical Technology I changed my major to Information Technology (should have went with straight Computer Science but ahhh hindsight). I've always loved building things and designing things and also really enjoy computers, art, audio, and the entire visual experience as presented to a user. I have created a couple playable maps before using the older source engine editor so I'm vaguely familiar with 3D modeling, skyboxes, lighting, AI pathing, etc. That's been over 10 years ago though. I got familiar with 3dsmax, ProE, Autocad, and Mastercam in my first major during school so that helps a bit when familiarizing with a new editor and as previously mentioned I've dabbled around in the Valve Source editor. I'm also very much looking forward to the Crucible of Omens campaign created by the marvelous talent at TDM and would like to help in any way I can once I'm familiar with the Radiant engine. I can also do many many voices, I've often thought about moving out to Cali from Indiana and finding work in voice-overs, voice acting, etc. All this started as a youngster with little friends, time on my hands, and imaginary friends. Wow that's hard to admit. So anyway, I've been working on a shadowy Garrett voice, and can do guards and some women characters with old, old english, gruff, slippery, sneaky, terrifying, voices and personalities. Just thought I'd mention that as it may be a way that I could contribute early on and would also enjoy. So anyway, too much about me and not enough A-Z wiki, back to the tutorial! Glad to be here and hope for good things to come.

Had a problem with the web server yesterday that led to a crashed table in the forum database. This has now been repaired and things seems to work again. I was on travel so it took a while before I was able to fix it. Merry Christmas!

Hello there, been looking through the Wiki articles, and many of them contain spelling and grammar mistakes (and also in many cases not-easy-to-read formatting). I'd like to help out with improving the Wiki page if possible. I'm a fluent speaker and writer in English, even if it's my second language. How would I go about doing this? Who is in charge of the Wiki?

I can get on the main forum now but still get an error when trying to load posts. Anyone else?

Yes, you are still viewing The Dark Mod Forums I've just finished the upgrade of our IPB Board Forums to the latest release. Packed with new features, rewritten code and all that. Have a look around. The skin is currently the default one, but will sooner or later be converted to a darker skin, to fit the Dark Mod universe. Also note that the forums have been moved from http://modetwo.net/darkmod to it's own sub-domain: http://forums.thedarkmod.com - all forum links will still work tho, thanks to Apache's rewrite-plugin. Please report any bugs, requests and comments in this thread. PS: The forums will run a bit slow the first hours as the cache is being rebuilt.

Just a heads up that the header images are now missing from the top of the forum. I suspect due to domain forwarding or something like that?

Have I been hacked or is the site being rebuilt or hacked?

Please review this draft for a "Following Skybox" wiki. This describes how I'm doing the Home Again sky, and it allowed me to create the template for the scaled down skybox buildings on the first try, so it might be useful for others. Please comment and think about how you might go about doing this yourselves if you were to create a following skybox. Once I get all the questions answered and incorporate other POVs, I'll write the wiki and post it. Thanks ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Constructing a Skybox That Follows the Player Terminology Map – where the Player walks around Skybox – provides the background to be painted on the map’s sky Little Player – the 1/16th size Player in the skybox Skybox Building – a 1/16th scale building in the skybox Border – the “wall” that surrounds the map, representing the innermost encroachment of the skybox buildings Skybox Border – a copy of the Border, at 1/16th scale, which will form the template for placing skybox buildings Platform – a brush the info_player_start sits on, helpful in placing the info_portalsky Little Platform – a scaled down copy of the Platform, used in the skybox How it Works The info_portalsky’s camera in the skybox changes its position according to where the Player’s eyes are in the map. As the Player walks around the map, Little Player—whose ‘eyes’ are the origin of the info_portalsky—“walks around” in the skybox, but his moves are 1/16th the size of the Player’s. Finish the Map First Construct your map (using any prefab skybox) and get it to the point where you don’t plan to make any more major layout changes. The longer you put off making the following skybox, the better. For a city mission, you aren’t going to need to completely surround your map with skybox buildings. You’ll only need the buildings (or parts of buildings) the Player will see. And you’re not going to know where you need skybox buildings until you’ve completed your map buildings. No point in spending time constructing a lot of tiny skybox buildings the Player won’t see. Create the Border Build a Border around the map, and snap it to the 128 grid. What you’ll be doing later is making a 1/16th copy of the Border, and if you use the 128 grid size when creating your map Border, your skybox Border will be able to snap to the 8 grid. The Border is separate from the brushes you used to represent the sky when you were making the map. Those sky brushes are the canvas the sky will be painted on. The Border is just a helper to assist you in placing your skybox buildings. Once you’ve encircled your map with a Border, go to the various places in the map the Player will go, and see what kinds of sightlines you have to the Border. Delete the Border brushes the player isn’t going to see, and shrink the Border brushes the Player’s only going to see a part of. Raise or lower the tops of the Border brushes to the heights you’ll want the skybox buildings to be. What you’re after is a final template for where to place skybox buildings. Create a Platform beneath the info_player_start so it’s sitting on the Platform. It doesn’t matter whether the Player is starting inside a building or out in the open. The info_portalsky’s camera will be synced to the Player’s eyes at map start. Whether you start the Player on the ground, or a few units above the ground, or you have him dropping from a height as if he just scaled a wall, the sync occurs before he starts to drop. Create the Skybox Border Make a copy of the Border, including the Platform, and scale it to 1/16th size. The best way to do this is to enter Vertex mode and scale the vertexes in each direction. Texture all the brushes to something other than caulk. Reshape your existing skybox so it surrounds the Skybox Border. Turn the Little Platform into a func_static. Copy its origin to the info_portalsky. Raise the info_portalsky so it’s sitting on the Little Platform. Raise the info_portalsky another 4.25 units. (68/16 = 4.25) This places the info_portalsky’s camera at a position that syncs with the Player’s eyes at mission start. Add this spawnarg to the info_portalsky: “type” “1” This is the GLOBAL setting for having the Little Player’s eyes follow the Player’s eyes wherever he goes. You won’t ship the Platform or Little Platform, but don’t delete them yet. If you need to move your info_player_start, you’ll need these platforms to resync the info_portalsky to the Player’s eyes. Either delete the original Border (in the map) or move it off to one side, out of the way. If your Border is completely outside the bounds of your map to start with, you can skip this step. Be careful not to delete any Border brushes that are also part of your map’s sky. Test Dmap and test your work. In the game, you should see the Skybox Border in the places where you’re going to put your skybox buildings. This test will give you a sense of whether you’re on the right track. Convert the Skybox Border to Skybox Buildings Replace the Skybox Border brushes by 1/16th scale buildings. The textures on the buildings need to be scaled to 1/16th their size when used in the map. For example, if you’re used to using a certain wood texture at 0.5 scale in the map, and you want to use it on a skybox building, the scale should be 0.5/16 = 0.03125. Delete the Skybox Border brushes as you replace them with buildings. Models You can use models in your skybox. Use the ‘rotation’ spawnarg to scale them down. For example, scaling a model to 1/16th of its normal size is done with “rotation” “0.0625 0 0 0 0.0625 0 0 0 0.0625” You can then rotate the model using DR’s buttons if you need to re-orient the model. Lights You can use lights in your skybox. You’ll need to scale down the light radius, though. A light that normally has a radius of 320 320 320 should be scaled down to 20 20 20. The Moon You can’t use a moon brush in a following skybox. As happens with any skybox building, the orientation of the brush in the sky will change as the Player moves and the skybox camera moves in sync. If you need a moon, use a skybox night texture that has a moon as part of the texture. Skyscrapers If you want the lower part of a building in the map and the upper part in the skybox, do the following: Create the entire building in the map. Raise the top to the height you want. This can just be a simple brush, or it can be decorated. Split it at the height where you want the map bit to stop and the skybox bit to start. Add the upper part to the Border, so it gets copied and scaled with the rest of the Border. Delete the upper portion in the map. The 1/16th portion in the skybox can be decorated to represent the upper part of the building. Multiple Following Skyboxes If your mission changes the sky, you’ll want one skybox for each sky. For this discussion, let’s assume that halfway through the mission, the original clear starry sky has become cloudy and snowy while the Player was inside a building. So you’ll have one skybox with a starry night texture and info_portalsky1, and a second skybox with clouds and info_portalsky2. Each skybox gets whatever skybox buildings it needs to portray the part of the map the Player is in. Perhaps it’s the same neighborhood (the Player went through a door into a building and came back out the same door later), in which case you can create one skybox and just copy it. Put info_portalsky1 in the first skybox and sync it to the info_player_start. Now, where should you put info_portalsky2? You can’t simply place it in the same spot as info_portalsky1. You need to place it in the skybox in a spot that’s synced with where the Player’s eyes are at the moment some action of his triggers info_portalsky2. Maybe a certain door gets opened. Try to estimate where the Player’s eyes will be at that moment, and use whatever referencing method you like to find that spot in the skybox. Place the bottom of info_portalsky2 at that spot. Give each info_portalsky the spawnarg “type” “2”. This is the LOCAL setting.

Was searching for a md5 importer for maya 2009 saw the links on the DarkMod Wiki but unfortunately it is dead, can a working link be provided please?

Trying to create a custome moveable for Melan, went to the following wiki entry - http://wiki.thedarkm...Special_Objects but all that happens is the brush I select gets replaced with a no-shader box as shown in the entity selector.