Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

So, what are you working on right now?


Springheel

Recommended Posts

  

5 hours ago, thebigh said:

I'm in the early planning stages of my next mission. I'm tentatively calling it The Ring of Despair and much of it will take place in an Inventors' Guild establishment laid out a bit like a university building.

 

Cool. For my campaign I scripted, one mission took place in the Inventor HQ for Bridgeport, called Secrets of the Inventors. I was thinking a lot about how to represent them and their areas, and I'll be really interested to see how other people portray them, because there hasn't been that much representation of them in FMs.

  • Like 3

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

update on the boid system, not TDM related.

Spoiler

My last post on this, is not really something about editing TDM, so I should not bother you guys with it but now that I posted about it before, at lest I should show the latest and perhaps final work on my boid system.

The most important updates are:

Instead of moving to infinity, unless they collide with something, I can now limit boid movement within a fixed area.

Implemented a simple LOD system for the boids, now distante boids get shadows disabled, and their models swapped for low poly ones. 

Instead of ignoring the player and going through him, if a boid detects the player in his path, will now be "afraid" and run away (they don't detect the player on the sides, only directly forward).

Changed boid collison detection system, to use a single tracebounds per boid, instead of stupid 3 tracelines per boid of the old system.

Improved collision to the point, where boids now hardly get into the void and was able to improve performance, to where I can now have 600+ boids moving around, with the same performance of the older system.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zDyWDAA8Ci1HKGdQLuNjvaGpvosTXP7S/view?usp=sharing

ps. the penumbra like system in the video, was just something I did for fun as well.

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I felt that I needed some practice before I sank my teeth into my main map (which I won't reveal), and so I did a test map. This test map in turn turned into my apartment, which is a good tip for anyone wanting to map, but doesn't know what to map: Just make your apartment, or some other area you know well, and put a Dark Mod spin on it. If you release your map, you don't even need to tell anyone that it's your apartment, or your neighborhood, they're running around in.

...and alongside that, I've just finished writing a 23 page manual on basic mapping with Dark Radiant, so that I don't have to watch through Springheel's video tutorials yet again. I know just how unstable YouTube accounts can be - I've given up on trying to make accounts on that platform altogether now - so don't count on anyone's tutorials being around on the internet ten years from now. Write them down!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first map (way back as a wad file for original Doom 3) was of my basement. I had a demon popping out of my refrig. So yeah, there's a tradition to map what's close at hand.

Vids are great, but it's hard to use them as a reference, to try to remember where you saw a particular problem solved. A general Google vid search (relying on YouTube's automatic speech to text transcripts) I don't find too effective.

For written content about DR mapping, some reasonable starting points are the Dark Radiant user manual and Fidcal's A to Z Beginners Guide, https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_-_Z_Beginner_Full_Guide_Start_Here!.

I'm doing my 2-cents here and there on the wiki too. The writing continues!

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is this euphoric moment, when you've spent over two hours doing skybox brushwork, expanding it more and more to engulf one building after another, having it fit perfectly against every detail of every trim of their far facades (since they're not yet detail entities), sneaking into a slim crevice of together-blending, neon-blinding caulk, to find a slim 4 unit wide gap which you almost missed, and after looking at this huge puzzle of brushwork, in which you hope not a single brush overlaps another, but all touch edge to edge, and corner to corner, you going into The Dark Mod, and you type "dmap", and it compiles without a single leak on the first try.

That's such a huge sigh of relief, and such an assurance of your craftsmanship.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've just discovered how to do OpenAL EAX. It sounds like few maps use EAX soundscapes, and I'm surprised by hearing that. After all, this is a game about listening. Surely trying to make out footsteps amidst environmental echoes, is part of basic gameplay.

Of course, EAX is - much like bloom - easily overdone to the point where it just assaults one's senses. It needs to be done with subtlety.

In general, I feel like 3D sound is often neglected, which is a shame. Ideally, you should be able to compile a 3D soundscape from the brushwork and its materials, and then let your soundcard relay that in real time, like the graphicscard handles visual rendering.

...but I guess for now, EAX will have to do.

Edited by Nort
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Nort said:

I've just discovered how to do OpenAL EAX. It sounds like few maps use EAX soundscapes, and I'm surprised by hearing that. After all, this is a game about listening. Surely trying to make out footsteps amidst environmental echoes, is part of basic gameplay.

Of course, EAX is - much like bloom - easily overdone to the point where it just assaults one's senses. It needs to be done with subtlety.

In general, I feel like 3D sound is often neglected, which is a shame. Ideally, you should be able to compile a 3D soundscape from the brushwork and its materials, and then let your soundcard relay that in real time, like the graphicscard handles visual rendering.

...but I guess for now, EAX will have to do.

EAX in TDM seems very mild compared to Thief Deadly Shadows. I wonder if a soundcard increases the effect or not.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, Anderson said:

EAX in TDM seems very mild compared to Thief Deadly Shadows. I wonder if a soundcard increases the effect or not.

You can micromanage the EAX, but since that's so complex, I only use the stock presets, so it depends on the presets OpenAL has. I bet that since the years of Thief, the EAX devs scaled back the echoes of their presets a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At times while building I've thought something like, this room is half stone and half wood. So I'll take the preset for WOODEN_MEDIUMROOM and CASTLE_MEDIUMROOM and average them. That's about as much micromanaging as I'd want to do though.

  • Like 1

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In the basement of my map, ominous dark figures have gathered to conspire. They are called "The Skinless Ones" by those who have encountered them and lived to tell the tale. A year have they waited, for the Skin Dresser to once again return...

Spoiler

mymap_2022-05-17_23.17.02.jpg

Edited by Nort
Spoilered the image so that it won't bother people.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Team Vantablack.

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I don't want to spam this thread, but one screenshot a week, is probably better than no screenshots at all, right?

Here are some crates that I just added. There is Daddy Crate, and Mommy Crate, little Kid Crate...

(I'm not trying to inspire you to add crates to your levels, though. Crates are notorious for being the worst kinds of fillers.)

Crates.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Staircases are scary, and spiral ones are particularly scary. I can do those through patching and cutting, but in the end I just vertex edit things. It feels neater. ...and after that it's just the pixel perfect setting of all the textures that end up at arbitrary angles. There is a natural shader paste, but it doesn't work half the time.

...but I feel like I did a nice job here so far. Now I just need to align the stair textures a bit more.

Staircase.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If Dark Mod was a point & click adventure game on Windows 3.1    ;)

  • Like 1

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Cool. That eyeball-searing pink sure will make it stand out in DR. What's it for; how does it differ from regular caulk?

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, thebigh said:

Cool. That eyeball-searing pink sure will make it stand out in DR. What's it for; how does it differ from regular caulk?

Well, the way that meshes work, is that each mesh has to have a shader. Right now the devs have chosen to just use shaders which doesn't exist, and this will generate console warnings. ...and so I made a file called "tdm_placeholders.mtr", in which I aim to define all these shaders. They don't even use a texture - just the caulk color.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Moved the image editing software discussion to its own thread in the Off-Topic forum called "Image editing software" in order to keep this thread reasonably on topic.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Recent Status Updates

    • Petike the Taffer  »  DeTeEff

      I've updated the articles for your FMs and your author category at the wiki. Your newer nickname (DeTeEff) now comes first, and the one in parentheses is your older nickname (Fieldmedic). Just to avoid confusing people who played your FMs years ago and remember your older nickname. I've added a wiki article for your latest FM, Who Watches the Watcher?, as part of my current updating efforts. Unless I overlooked something, you have five different FMs so far.
      · 0 replies
    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
×
×
  • Create New...