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Help Darrin & Jessica?


Darrin

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We're on 'Cutting' through walls, Joining Rooms' on page 2 of Fidcals tutorial ... it's going so so ...

 

It seems that I have developed a few issues with my tutorial map for Thiefs Den.

 

It all started when this blue line showed up one day:

candles2.jpg

 

candles1.jpg

 

I can't seem to figure out how to select it, so I can 'backspace' it out of there for the life of me!

 

On another note, I get warnings ...

 

When launching TDM, and before I do anything I noticed these on boot up:

 

warning2.jpg

then I dmap and get:

 

warning3.jpg

 

 

and after map load:

 

warning1.jpg

 

 

 

I have uploaded my working map folder zipped up as td.rar ... I would love it if someone could DL it and give it a look over in DR ... get it HERE

 

It's laggy when I run it in TDM compared to the maps you guys made .... 4 days of work ... only on page two ... the going is slow ... worked really hard, and zoomed really close on this to get all surfaces to be lined up just so, but maybe I don't need to be zoomed all the way in, or cut it so close? most of the time I have the grid nudge at 0.125 ... tutorial is at 8 most of the screenshots ... although most of the time I'm in Camera mode to work when I can ...

 

Most of the time I work like this so I can be close enough to see when 'planes' touch:

 

DR1.jpg

 

Am I doing it wrong?

 

 

On another note ... I know I asked about an online model repository in another topic, but better yet, ... Is there a 'prefab' repository online anywhere? ... I have been saving my work as prefab, so Jessica can just grab it and bring it in and she does the same for me. ie: A table with items on it ...even a bowl with a spoon she took ten minutes to angle just right in the bowl ...why should I have to re-invent the wheel? .... she saves it as prefab, I grab and bring in ... saves time .... she needs chair rail for four walls, here ya go! ...

 

I could set up an OsCommerce shopping cart system for free, and through catagories, upload prefabs ... and set them as a download product for $0.00 ... It would be nice if we could Browse to Dining Hall/Tables/ and grab a table for 12 w/ chairs and place settings, food, bottles, etc ....

 

Thanks! - Darrin

Edited by Darrin
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It all started when this blue line showed up one day:

 

That blue line looks like an entity is bound or targeting something else. Click on them both and check out what spawnargs they have. I haven't found out how to delete that blue line after you delete a target or bind, but it will vanish after reloading your map I think.

 

 

 

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Those warnings you see? They're only warnings. If they were Errors, then you'd have a problem.

 

That blue arrow you see in Dark Radiant? That's when an entity has a "target" spawnarg. There are a few candle models that you have "target"ing a light. Func_statics don't need to target anything. Select the candle model, and in the E(n)tity inspector: Right-click and delete the "target" or "target0" spawnarg.

 

For the rest: I'm going to be painfully honest, because...well...I have to be in order to make your mission come true.

 

 

Big problem: Never (and I mean never) have I used a grid smaller than 1 for brushwork. I try to keep my grid size around 4-16 when I'm making rooms, doorways, etc. In fact, you are much more precise snapped to the grid rather than painstakingly "nudging" everything in place.

 

The main cause for your bad performance: You've got a lot (1) of shadowcasting (2) and moving/flickering (3) lights in one area (4) that is not visportaled between rooms (5). I count 8 lights, all of which cast shadows, and 6 of which are moving, just in the bedroom. Any and every shadow that has to be calculated sucks away fps.

 

 

One floor for multiple rooms is okay. What's causing the floor to turn black is actually the carpet. If I delete that and dmap, It's okay.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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I haven't found out how to delete that blue line after you delete a target or bind, but it will vanish after reloading your map I think.

 

I deleted the targets for each and the blues lines are gone! - Thanks Mort!

 

as for the lights, great! - easy to delete a few!

 

I don't have to be that presice in my resizing of brushes? ,,, I will try to work on a bigger scale .... I was just worried about not getting things to abut perfectly ... seems though toggling from one grid scale to another causes things to not match up later ....

 

 

The black on the floor is fixed after deleting the three walls around the metal door in the next room!?!?!

 

My 'corrected' map is here as a .rar

 

http://www.mainecustomdesign.com/tdm/td/td.rar

 

Thanks for the help it fixed everything! Now we can move on to "Ambient Light: Gloom not Doom"

Edited by Darrin
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Actually, the black floor is also fixed by visportalling (which should show up later on the then tutorial).

 

Yeah. This is unfortunately a good example of why you should start really simple when learning how to map. :(

 

Mainly, the danger with working on a grid scale of 1 or less is that you can accidently make a leak so tiny, you can hardly notice it, visportalling becomes harder, and moving, rotating, and shifting rooms around becomes nearly impossible. The absolute basic shape of rooms and architecture should generally be composed and snapped in a grid of 4 or greater.

 

And being extremely precise all the time is just so painstaking and tiring. Why not let DR perfectly align everything for you? :) That's why the grid is there.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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And being extremely precise all the time is just so painstaking and tiring. Why not let DR perfectly align everything for you? :) That's why the grid is there.

 

 

ahh ... I knew it had to be easier than what I was doing .... got my beams in and ready for page 3 of Tut tomorrow! Thanks! - Darrin

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Yep, I do most of my work at 16 if I can. Makes all the walls the perfect thickness, easy to see splits between brushes in the 2d views. Also is easirt to align tex. If your first floor is at 0 in the z plane, then the textures wil automatically start aligned with the bottom of them.

 

You should go into filters, click on shadow textures and collision textures. That's what the bright green and blue are on the lamp and candle. Really no reason to see them, they are just for ingame performance. It'll also help DR performance as you won't be rendering them too. Also easier to see what your scene looks like.

(There are filters for visportals, clip textures, etc...) which are very helpful when you get further into your mission and start to use those items, just be sure to remember which ones you have filtered.

 

It's really not a big deal, but I like to put caulk on a brush, then texture the faces I could see in game. So when you clip into walls like above, you'll see pink on stuff that's never gonna be seen. When your mission gets large and complex that helps alot to know which faces you don't need to deal with, align tex and whatnot.

----------

Lights are a bit trickier. If they are entities like candles then the light source is a fixed radius and it's harder to not get overlap. 8 candles in a room isn't bad if they are spread out. But 8 candles that all light up the same triangles IS bad. Normally 3 lights on one triangle is where performance will start to noticaby drop.

 

But more than that, it's 3 shadow casting lights on the same tris that hits performance. In some spots you can get away with turning off shadows on a light (good for a chandelier that just adds an overall glow to the room like the electric ones). Other spots you can turn off shadows for an object (like the electric chandelier) and save performance.

 

So lights are really a juggling act, because they are so important for atmoshpere as are shadows. But at the same time they have a large effect on performance.

----------

 

You both seem to have a great system going. I don't know if you've tried to load prefabs, but there are some like dining room tables with a full setting of plates, silverware, etc..

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Yep, I do most of my work at 16 if I can. Makes all the walls the perfect thickness, easy to see splits between brushes in the 2d views. Also is easirt to align tex. If your first floor is at 0 in the z plane, then the textures wil automatically start aligned with the bottom of them.

 

I am using 8 and 16 now ... I did those first three rooms at the lowest grid setting (.125) zoomed right in so as to make it perfect ... it was time consuming and made things worse for lining up ... thanks for the tip!

 

You should go into filters, click on shadow textures and collision textures. That's what the bright green and blue are on the lamp and candle. Really no reason to see them, they are just for ingame performance. It'll also help DR performance as you won't be rendering them too. Also easier to see what your scene looks like.

 

After the ambient world light section of the tutorial, I went in, deleted 3/4ths of the lights in my map, and sized the radius way down on the remaining few and everything got real smooth!

 

(There are filters for visportals, clip textures, etc...) which are very helpful when you get further into your mission and start to use those items, just be sure to remember which ones you have filtered.

 

Don't know what you mean quite yet, but I will in a couple weeks after I get through the tutorial ... do you have thiefs_den.pk4? I need it to procedd with the tut as it calls for a couple things I don't have ...

 

It's really not a big deal, but I like to put caulk on a brush, then texture the faces I could see in game. So when you clip into walls like above, you'll see pink on stuff that's never gonna be seen. When your mission gets large and complex that helps alot to know which faces you don't need to deal with, align tex and whatnot.

 

I am leanring a bit about those ... so glad to know that if I take the time, I can make my map as efficient on the PC as possible ....

 

Lights are a bit trickier. If they are entities like candles then the light source is a fixed radius and it's harder to not get overlap. 8 candles in a room isn't bad if they are spread out. But 8 candles that all light up the same triangles IS bad. Normally 3 lights on one triangle is where performance will start to noticaby drop.

 

But more than that, it's 3 shadow casting lights on the same tris that hits performance. In some spots you can get away with turning off shadows on a light (good for a chandelier that just adds an overall glow to the room like the electric ones). Other spots you can turn off shadows for an object (like the electric chandelier) and save performance.

 

So lights are really a juggling act, because they are so important for atmoshpere as are shadows. But at the same time they have a large effect on performance.

----------

 

After I read that I went back in to make sure no lights had radius that over lap - and have a smoother map - thank you, thank you!

 

You both seem to have a great system going. I don't know if you've tried to load prefabs, but there are some like dining room tables with a full setting of plates, silverware, etc..

 

PreFabs!?! - the ones we've made and swapped back and forth are great! LOVE em'! Why re-invent the wheel everytime, right? -

 

I can't seem to find any that came with DR, or any of the maps I DL'ed ... I'm going to start an online repository based on an osCommerce PHP driven shopping cart in a password protected dir, that we could all 'list new products' (the prefabs) as 'downloadable media' and set the price for free ... all catagorized! ...

 

Are there many I all ready have and don't know it? - Thanks Baddcog! - Darrin

.

Edited by Darrin
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right ... Jessica found it! . we have all the prefabs now ... and brought in the right skybox, and used the sky_portal ... but I must have somethings touching ... walls are invisible, ... black floors ... I'm having alignment issues becasue I worked so close in nudging at grid .125 at the beginning of the turtorial, now I have a bunch of stuff that doesn't quite line up with the new stuff I bring in as I use 4 and 8 for grid size .... I might have to re do my first room ... Thanks for the help all! - we're gaining ... DC

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Sorry - I browse these forums several times a day but somehow missed this thread.

 

The tutorial does mention keeping the grid size large but I guess I need to emphasise it better:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_-_Z_Beginner_Full_Guide_Start_Here%21#Hollowing_out_a_Room_from_the_Block

 

I see no easy solution for this except maybe start again. I suggest you save your map with a new name, set a larger grid size and grid snap the lot (or at least, the first room if that is the main problem area. To do this, turn off all filters and make sure you can see the whole map in grid view. From top left in Top view, Left drag the mouse over the lot to select everything at once. (may take a view seconds depending on map size and sometimes it fails so just try again.) With everything selected, set grid size of say 8 then use the snap to grid key (Ctrl + G by default.)

 

I was a little concerned that you 'fixed' the long blue lines by deleting the targets! Those lines and targets are intended and normal so hope you don't find something not working later. As said, you can't actually click the lines but only the entities which they connect.

 

Sorry about the prefabs. I always objected to them being included this way as I thought they would be better as separate downloads and most mappers won't even know they exist. Sorry also there is no provision or guidance for contributions yet. If you can upload elsewhere temporarily that would be great.

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Yeah, unfortunately a rebuild may be required. I've done the same thing before with Hammer. Sometimes the grid would say 16, but it was really on 1 from the last time I had it opened. If I clicked on gird the number would change to actual size.

 

So I ended up with stuff all over. Snapping the whole thing can leave some walls 0 thickness (they snap to closest grid) which really messes things up.

 

Then when one wall gets proper thickness it squeezes into your room too much, then you have to move everything...

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Sorry about the prefabs. I always objected to them being included this way as I thought they would be better as separate downloads and most mappers won't even know they exist. Sorry also there is no provision or guidance for contributions yet. If you can upload elsewhere temporarily that would be great.

 

I think the intention is that we will someday, hopefully soon, be able to implement pk4 support for prefabs into DR. DR can read textures from PK4, can't it? I know D3 ed is able to read everything from pk4's. Hopefully a future addition.

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Thanks for the link! - I'm actually doing what you suggest only a little differnet ... coping my td folder under maps and pasting as 'copy of td' ... now I'm going to go in, build the two rooms and corridor correctly just off to the side, then delete all my original walls, then slide my new walls over all my stuff ....

 

more later ... all caught up on work, and choosing to not start another website till the new year ... tired, need a break and can actually afford a good relaxing Christmas season this year .... one that includes DarkRadiant baby! ... so fun to build ... we're addicted all ready thanks again!

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Yeah, unfortunately a rebuild may be required. ...

 

It took us about one hour to re build our two rooms, corridor, door & frame ... all off to the side on the grid (grid set to 8!), then we deleted all of our old walls, and slid the new walls over our room contents .... worked out slick ... back to 0,0,0 and in TDM no errors, nothing touching after dmap and map ... I still had the skybox and ambient light, so i started the outer courtyard area and clipping was great! - Cut the walls where needed and re-size where needed!... super handy!

 

I am amazed at how quickly we were able to regain lost ground ... I guess that means that what we have learned from Fidcal stuck! - on to page 4! Thanks again! - Darrin

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so all is going well in the courtyard area ... except for one thing ... ALL I did was bring in the prefab and tell the top sections of wall to use the skybox, .. . and this is how the moon looks:

 

 

moon1.jpg

 

I tried the other 'tdm_sky_starry2.pfb' ... same effect ... any suggestions?

Edited by Darrin
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You didn't have texture lock on and probably moved it up or down a bit. The moon is just on a square, so you need to scroll the tex again so it's centered.

 

DOH! - You Mean Texture Lock is universal!?! - I thought each brush or entity held it's own value of wether texture lock was on or off ... ok, so i turn it on, then bring in the prefab ... yup ... that fixed it! - thank you! thank you! when working with walls texture lock OFF too match ... when working with rugs or beams, texture lock ON to retain the textures placement on the object ... got it ...

 

Now off to take kids sliding ... it's snowing here in central Maine like mad .... but while I'm sliding I'll be thinking about how later tonight I'll be learning how to bring in snow, ... it's just a little bit further down page 3! - out

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I actually leave texture lock on always, unless there's some special need, and I can't really think of one at the moment...

 

To get wall textures to align easily (the way you want them to) with texture lock on, you middle button click one, and then ctrl-middle click the other. There are tons of texturing tricks available in DR, many with decent explanations in the wiki.

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