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Things that could be improved


Berny

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Like most all things tdm, it was designed to mimic Thief.

Ok but TDS didn't have it and I don't recall anyone missing the skull death screen.

"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.

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The death sequence is the way it is for a reason. The death lingers long enough in-game so that the AI's "killed player" bark doesn't get cut off. The death screen is not likely to be dispensed with, although adding a "load last save" might be a nice addition if someone had the time and know-how to do it.

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The death sequence is the way it is for a reason. The death lingers long enough in-game so that the AI's "killed player" bark doesn't get cut off. The death screen is not likely to be dispensed with, although adding a "load last save" might be a nice addition is someone had the time and know-how to do it.

I'm pretty happy with the post-death sequence. The cut-off to the death screen with the skull doesn't bring good emotions.

Hope that eventually it will happen. Is it possible to get the code from some other Doom 3 mod (surely there must be something) and import it here to make it work? Seems like a minor thing. Doesn't touch anything globally.

Edited by Anderson

"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.

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The death sequence is the way it is for a reason. The death lingers long enough in-game so that the AI's "killed player" bark doesn't get cut off. The death screen is not likely to be dispensed with, although adding a "load last save" might be a nice addition is someone had the time and know-how to do it.

 

Also, there are times when the killing AI will kneel over the player, as if checking whether he's still alive. I think that adds a nice touch when it happens.

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The cut-off to the death screen with the skull doesn't bring good emotions.

You've died. You shouldn't have good emotions :P

 

Besides that it seems like a pretty individual thing to me. Others may like it the way it is.

 

Regarding the "load last save": If you tend to use the quicksave option mainly for saving then you can press the quickload button in the death screen to load your quicksave. The same works in the main menu btw. So there is no need to get to the load/save screen in that case.

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Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

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Something which I found during beta testing

When crouching just behind and to one side of a seated AI where he just can't see you - the act of leaning forward to pick up an object doesn't appear to move the body forward into the cone of vision of the AI

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  • 2 weeks later...

Can someone familiar with the code give me a ballpark estimate how difficult it would be to enable shaderParm3 to be modified at runtime?

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=List_of_shaderParm_variables

 

It says it's set once, but there's precedent in the engine adjusting it at run-time when it's used for alphatest. It would be really useful to me for foglights. If you could modify shaderparm3 at runtime you could make fog thicker or thinner depending on what part of the map you're in. Combine this with the stim/response system that allows you to fade lights it could make for a more robust fog system.

My FMs: The King of Diamonds (2016) | Visit my Mapbook thread sometimes! | Read my tutorial on Image-Based Lighting Workflows for TDM!

 

 

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Can someone familiar with the code give me a ballpark estimate how difficult it would be to enable shaderParm3 to be modified at runtime?

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=List_of_shaderParm_variables

 

It says it's set once, but there's precedent in the engine adjusting it at run-time when it's used for alphatest. It would be really useful to me for foglights. If you could modify shaderparm3 at runtime you could make fog thicker or thinner depending on what part of the map you're in. Combine this with the stim/response system that allows you to fade lights it could make for a more robust fog system.

See here:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14394-apples-and-peaches-obsttortes-mapping-and-scripting-thread/page-7?do=findComment&comment=310445

 

fog can be dynamically altered via scripting.

 

(Though we should have a hard-coded SDK attribute for this...)

 

See also:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Alpha-fading

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Some way to create a delay between audio barks because if multiple AI is alerted they tend to all bark at same time. Sounds silly.

 

Apply a random delay between 0 and 1.5 seconds before barking?

 

We can't have them barking in sequence, so if there are a number of them, there will be some overlap.

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  • 1 month later...

It's been a while since I've posted (Thank the Builder, right!? :P ) So I can't remember the best place to post this.

 

Anyway, since I've updated to 2.05, the enemies' downward attack is doing very little damage. I think this was an issue a few updates back iirc.

 

Btw, great job with the whole Steam Greenlight thing!! I voted with both my Steam accounts :D

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  • 1 month later...

There are no magic "one-size-fits-all" tricks here. But you can design a map in such way. You need to use projection textures and non-shadow-casting lights to sort of "manually lightmap" your level, just like modern game engines would do. This requires a lot of work and design, but it can be done. And what is most important, the lightgem will react correctly, so you don't need any other special hacks to maintain that illusion.

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I heard several times about soft shadows in dark mod. Any news on this topic? Maybe some mod? Some unofficial patch?

A soft shadows implementation does exist, but there are hurdles to getting it out there. I don't know what the current state is or if the author has touched it in awhile, bit it looked lovely. It can be a performance killer, and there were glitches but I do hope it is released sometime soon.

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I didn't really undrstand why it wasn't released yet since the effect is way more than worth the occassional glitch and performance hit. It looks amazing, and professional games have worse glitches & performance hits. But I imagine they had their reasons and there's a deal-breaker somewhere.

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

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I'm not sure there were any reasons beyond SteveL disappearing. He had a few things he wanted to fix, but since he left I don't think anyone has really looked into it very much.

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