So, what are you working on right now?

[Baddcog]

Nice detail there

 

Directories may have changed a little bit since that tut, but most stuff should be pretty close.

 

Patches come in handy for tons of stuff. Pipes, columns, rugs, arched ceilings, arches, decals...

Basically you create a brush, then in the top menu you'll see patch. Simple patch mesh will give you a 'plane', perfect for a rug. If you can't see it hit ctrl-I, that'll flip the normals (ie:direction the visible face faces). You may also need to pull it up out of the ground, or rotate to desired psoition.

 

Also in that menu are cylinders (pipes/columns) , end caps and bevels are for arches. There's a decent tut on the Wiki.

[Fidcal]

When you see AAS out of date in the console it's the data file to help the AI pathfind their way around. There are different ones. Generally you need to dmap again to clear it but if that does not clear the error then delete the aas files in the map folder.

 

btw make sure you make LOTS of backups of your maps - every five or ten minutes or so make a save and every 10 minutes to an hour make 'save copy as' in a new name or else have autosave on. To lose 10 minutes work is not so bad as 10 weeks work.

[SiyahParsomen]

bah! it would be really better to write all of these to newbie dark radiant topic. So, others would see or benefit from the solutions. Anyway, it is good to see you get your hands dirty on DR

[Darrin]

Directories may have changed ...

great ... we don't want to use the wrong AI!

 

When you see AAS out of date ...

right, ... dmap did fix ...

 

btw make sure you make LOTS of backups of your maps ...

well, I did turn off the autosave and am in the habit of CTRL + S after every everything, ... and copy every hour ... Do you think I should save more than the one copy? Save in stages?

 

bah! it would be really better to write all of these to newbie dark radiant topic.

 

I feel guilty, ... I should be posting individual posts for my questions ... but I don't dare post one for anything that the answer is in the tutorial we haven't finished yet ... although the tutorial is technically 'what we are working on right now' so to speak ... MUST finish it! - DC

 

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Edited November 29, 2009 by Darrin

[Fidcal]

Definitely save many backups not just one. Just keep renumbering. It sometimes happens you get a problem and it's easier to go back to the previous one but then find the problem is in that too. Make a subfolder say namebaks then save in that and no need to keep typing a name just a number. I decrement so start at 999.map. Next one 998 etc. That way the last one is at the top of the list so each time you go to save you don't need to scroll down to see what the next number is. But then I'm a lazy soandso! Just delete the older stuff when it gets too much. (and yes, in old projects I have actually reached zero and started again.) Just my way - everyone has their own way but minimum have several backups. Also don't forget you must have a general external backup system daily or weekly for all documents anyway. External hard drive or onto dvd or flash drive or internet. Ideally in another place in case of fire or theft. . What if you spend months or years on a project and your hard drive crashes or you come home and your PC has been stolen? That's just money but nothing like the utterly gutted feeling of losing a year's irreplaceable work.

[demagogue]

Yes. To be clear about it, that "AAS out of date" error happens when you change something about path-finding then "map" the game before re-demapping it. You get that warning because very often the change completely wrecks the path-finding and you'll have AI walking in circles, even if it's some little change on the other side of the map.

 

Edit: whoops, looks like I missed this whole page when I posted!

[Sonosuke]

Can anyone halp me find the right texture?

 

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2009 by Sonosuke

[SiyahParsomen]

that looks really nice I would advise you to use wood for its material but there isn't any suitable. So use metal > flat > tiling_1d> gen_smooth_gold or gen_smooth_silver. But they are reflective. I don't know if it suits.

[Fidcal]

If you mean what I think then try Other Materials/modesty_screen/black_laquer. You might find it easier to paste that straight in to Surface Inspector. But whether it is suitable I don't know.

[Sonosuke]

that looks really nice I would advise you to use wood for its material but there isn't any suitable. So use metal > flat > tiling_1d> gen_smooth_gold or gen_smooth_silver. But they are reflective. I don't know if it suits.

 

Thanks but it does not quite fit.

 

"If you mean what I think then try Other Materials/modesty_screen/black_laquer. You might find it easier to paste that straight in to Surface Inspector. But whether it is suitable I don't know"

 

Well its not perfect but it looks ok. Thank you.

 

I am not posting another screenshot because hopefully you will see soon anyway

[PinkDot]

Time for me to show up something. Currently I'm working on a pagan forest setting. I'd like to have really large and wild forest. What you see below is a forest map at its very beginning - more like a model test map, but it gives an idea of the direction I'm going.

 

 

 

 

As you can see, most of the forest is not dressed yet and not populated enough with trees. I hope engine will manage.

[Springheel]

Wow, that looks awesome! I'm so excited to play some of these.

[SiyahParsomen]

impressive and nice atmosphere! that builder must lost his way:)

[Diego]

Wow! What an impressive atmoephere! :-o Keep it up

[Arcturus]

Looking great

[Noisycricket]

Really love that lighthouse painting. I've always felt that most of the paintings in the Thief series needed a lot of help. Also, love the forest pics.

[Crispy]

Beautiful work as always! Gotta love that green fog.

 

If I have any crits, it's that the ground texture is a bit blurry up close; but that's a hard problem to solve without creating ugly patterning at a distance.

 

If you do run into performance problems, I believe GoldChocobo was working on ways to efficiently visportal open forests using distance checks. I'm not sure of the details, but he may be able to help.

[Serpentine]

If I have any crits, it's that the ground texture is a bit blurry up close; but that's a hard problem to solve without creating ugly patterning at a distance.

 

Im not 100% sure, but wouldnt applying a detail texture to the ground material for 'up close' but allow the distance to not get aliased by overly high res textures?

I really havent worked much with any iD engine, so not 100% on how they do things.

 

Besides that, shots are looking great

 

What area is TDM most lacking in textures atm? I've noticed theres a need for some roofing tiles! - wondering if any of the new mappers had noticed stuff lacking that I could get to work on now that I'm free for a few months.

[Mortem Desino]

Actually detail textures aren't a bad idea. I know it's possible in IDtech4; I've seen it done in doom 3 in just the texture definition.

 

Stone grit, wood grain, metal rust flakes, and carpet noise would be good to have available (even if it's just a semi-transparent texture applied as a decal patch.) Outdoor scenery, tight crawlways, even some models could benefit with detail textures. Depending on how you make it, and how patient you are, one could create a detail texture that doesn't darken or lighten the original too much depending on the mix of dark and light spots.

 

If you, Mr. Serpentine, can PM me with some TGAs, I can write the definition code and get them in-game. Maybe even release an unofficial add-on pk4? (Only if you're totally okay just donating them for the community to use freely.)

[Ladro]

As you can see, most of the forest is not dressed yet and not populated enough with trees. I hope engine will manage.

 

OH-MY-GOD!

 

It's incredible, really the best forest ever seen for Thief!

 

I'd like to get lost there!

 

My congratulation for your work until here.

[PinkDot]

Thanks, I'm glad you like it.

 

As for the ground texture - it won't stay as it is. I'll make a new texture - just haven't decided how many textures I want to blend together for the ground. And it will be scaled down - you won't see it from a distance anyway, as ground will be covered with plants, trees and other stuff, so it should look OK.

I haven't thought of using detail texture. I don't like the way they try to cheat me, but I always disntiguish between base texture and detail anyway. But if anyone can come up with some nice method of blending them in a believable way, then I could try them.

[Noisycricket]

A current trend is covering the ground with 2d sprites, which doesn't look too shabby. I wonder if the D3 engine could handle that. Your sreenshots looks pretty good as is though to me.

[STiFU]

I guess we'll need some pagan AI models now...

 

Those Screens look nice. Hope you'll get acceptable performance. I guess you should add some cave passages and stuff like that to make visportaling the place easier...

 

 

[Serpentine]

Actually detail textures aren't a bad idea. I know it's possible in IDtech4; etc etc

 

Im sure I can sort the defs out and such, I have a bunch of old detail textures from UT2k4 and HL1 work, should be good enough to test.

Just need to come up with a decent test map for different areas etc as I am not so sure how lighting etc works with them, hopefully they dont react at all and leave it up to the bump/specular etc If anyone has such a map, let me know.

 

Now, to learn about DR as I seem to be all feet with it!

[SneaksieDave]

Those glasshouses seem to penetrate the fog more noticeably in this image than in-game. I'll fix the texture if I can.

Yeah, if that's caused by glass transparency and fog z-order (or whatever the heck it is) problem, I'd just as soon say get rid of the transparency for the integrity of the scene.

 

Everyone's work looks really great, BTW!