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Things that could be improved


Berny

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The only surface rope arrows stick to is wood, as otherwise the player could shoot them into a carpet hanging at the wall for example and climb up there, which is neither what most players would expect nor very believeable. Of course there would be the more elegant solution of having the rope arrow stick into the same materials as the broadhead does, but only deploy the rope on hitting wood. This would require changes to the scriptobject used by the rope arrow.

 

I guess it was done that way asit was the more straight foward implementation.

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the player could shoot them into a carpet hanging at the wall for example and climb up there, which is neither what most players would expect nor very believeable.

 

I would expect that as a player. It's not realistic, but it would be fun. Let's say you see a banner, and you already know it's climbable, but it's out of your reach. You shoot the broadhead arrow, and it sticks. You wonder if the rope arrow could do that too, so it acts as "an extension cord". You shoot the rope arrow, and it does pierce the cloth, awesome! You climb the banner to see whether it leads somewhere.

 

That's the kind of having fun with the systems immersive sims are known for.

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I would expect the rope arrow to get ripped out of the banner once I attempt to climb it, but I am maybe a bit heavier then you are ;)

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FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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IMO the automatic dot that is toggleable is the minimalist and best compromise here.

 

Well if you have a toggle at all, then you have the option of pressing it to toggle on and off the automatic dot and holding it down pops it up after a number of seconds while you still hold it down in any situation (or it's an independent always-on/always-off toggle). I'd be in favor of that, even if few ever even know about the holding-down ability, it's useful (in the ways we were talking about for the people that care about it) when you do know it.

 

Edit: If there's a menu option to turn this thing on & off though, then the options could be "off, automatic (frob assistance), and always-on". That could be fine and stay away from a keyboard toggle & key-creep.

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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The only surface rope arrows stick to is wood, as otherwise the player could shoot them into a carpet hanging at the wall for example and climb up there, which is neither what most players would expect nor very believeable.

Actually, if you're a Thief veteran you'll expect them to stick in earth as well. (https://thief.fandom.com/wiki/Rope_Arrow says 'grass' but from memory it can be hard soil too.)

 

I just learnt from that wiki page that rope arrows deal no damage in T1 but the same damage as broadheads in T2.

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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I would love to see more challenge with the AI. Most specifically more options to the hearing values in the difficulty settings. Like at hardest hearing setting the AI will notice if the player is moving the mouse too abruptly to look around at close range while in shadows and also hearing lock picking from a particular distance. Long ago I suggested the concept of the player making a soft coin in bag sound when moving the mouse abruptly. Similar to Alien Isolation.

Edited by Taquito.
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You can use the non-pbr workflow (diffuse/normalmaps/speculars) to full extent, and have like 2k textures everywhere, it's just stock TDM assets are old and don't do that.

 

I know pretty much nothing about OpenGL but you mentioned "speculars" and 2k textures, do the speculars have at least Phong Shading support? And with 2k, is that the actual limit or just the "convenient limit"?

 

I might get bored of the world and interested in a specific game to play with the textures.

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Of course they do, and the engine uses smoothing groups as you set them in your modeling software. And you can use both B&W and colored speculars for certain effects. 2048 is a reasonable limit, the real limit is probably 8192, as in other engines of this era, but I didn't need to try that high yet. You can have more complex models, and all the tricks like baking averaged normals for unwrapped uvs work as they should. You can basically port models, textures, and materials between idtech4 and UE3/UDK, and idtech4 can have most of the UE3 material effects.

 

The only problem with textures and materials, as with all non-pbr engines, is that they're relative to lighting, so you have to either experiment with TDM stock lights or assume your own model (I prefer the latter).

Edited by Judith
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The only surface rope arrows stick to is wood, as otherwise the player could shoot them into a carpet hanging at the wall for example and climb up there, which is neither what most players would expect nor very believeable. Of course there would be the more elegant solution of having the rope arrow stick into the same materials as the broadhead does, but only deploy the rope on hitting wood. This would require changes to the scriptobject used by the rope arrow.

 

I guess it was done that way asit was the more straight foward implementation.

What I want to know is, when I can pull a "scorpion", peg an AI from the shadows with a rope arrow, and then drag it to my current location. :)

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Of course they do, and the engine uses smoothing groups as you set them in your modeling software. And you can use both B&W and colored speculars for certain effects. 2048 is a reasonable limit, the real limit is probably 8192, as in other engines of this era, but I didn't need to try that high yet. You can have more complex models, and all the tricks like baking averaged normals for unwrapped uvs work as they should. You can basically port models, textures, and materials between idtech4 and UE3/UDK, and idtech4 can have most of the UE3 material effects.

 

The only problem with textures and materials, as with all non-pbr engines, is that they're relative to lighting, so you have to either experiment with TDM stock lights or assume your own model (I prefer the latter).

 

That's actually amazing, gives me more chances to easily work around with, still sad there's no PBR for it though, but I might be able to code a material shader based on Phong (Beckman for example) for once.

 

For the lights, I'd rather do both, in another game I found an issue in a map because of the new shader, I only needed a tiny change in it that didn't change anything except for that one specific part.

 

IMO The textures are still holding up nicely, but it would be cool if whoever made props like the vases could spit out higher poly versions of the models and then just plop them into the game. (don't know if it is actually that easy)

 

With OpenGL3.0+ it would be possible, by use of "Tessellation" I'm sure, no need to remake a model so it's higher poly.

NOTE: The video provided is an example, a bad one though, because that whole engine seems to have been made to over-emphasize on tessellation, stairs don't need tessellation to not look like a "slide".

And of course, some cards don't support it, we have old timers here after all.

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For the lights, I'd rather do both, in another game I found an issue in a map because of the new shader, I only needed a tiny change in it that didn't change anything except for that one specific part.

 

That's a good idea. IMO stock entity lights for TDM are on a bit too far end of the light intensity, and they use biground falloff texture way too much (instead of standard inverse square for example). While that gives you a very contrasty image between shadows and light, which is easier to read navigate, it makes creating the speculars almost impossible, and stealth is rather binary.

 

IMO it's better to either use other games as a guideline, or prototype materials using custom "average light", like RGB 128, with falloff_exp1 or 2 texture. This way it's easier to make speculars for everything, and you can still have some room for postprocessing. Typically I have a rule that the specular hotspot can't be overblown for no postprocess, and it should look "decent" with postprocess set to 1. So, a candle or small torch will have the intensity of 96 (rather than stock TDM's 150), and the most bright electric light will be 192 max. The added perk (flaw, for some) of such system is that AI reactions will be a bit "softer", more like in Deadly Shadows, giving you a second or two to run/hide when you screw up. To me, this room for failure is an essential component of im sims, so I'm happy to have it.

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IMO The textures are still holding up nicely, but it would be cool if whoever made props like the vases could spit out higher poly versions of the models and then just plop them into the game. (don't know if it is actually that easy)

Complications are possible.

Edited by VanishedOne

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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I'd prefer a dot that's toggle-able rather than comes on and off automatically too, although I'm ok with the automatic functioning being default and turning a toggle on by console or something since I don't have the same key-bind allergy in this case.

So, you basically want a toggleable crosshair? I don't like it from a design perspective, but I could easily add a cvar tdm_frobhelper_alwaysVisible. With that activated you could use "bind f toggle tdm_frobhelper_Active 1 0" to create your keybind. I would be against adding this feature as an official option though.

 

 

So, for a modeful frobhelper:

 

* One possibility is that turning on the frobhelper would force sneak speed until you turned it off. This would keep players from using the frobhelper 24/7 which I think is something developers didn't want to happen?

 

* Another option is having the frobhelper turn on when you lean forward and turn off when leaning back. I kind of like this option as it feels kind of natural, you're leaning closer and want to be more precise. This also doesn't preclude it from using it for standing ledge jumps... but makes it harder to use for running jumps... which "feels" like a good compromise.

The intention of the current approach was that you concentrate on picking stuff up and become more accurate because of that, i.e., the frobhelper blends in.
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The cvar would be appreciated.

 

My official position is I prefer a toggle over an automatic pop-up if we're going to have the added GUI at all. I get suspicious of a game popping up stuff it thinks i need, but I acknowledge sometimes I need it... It's just about the relative feeling of control. But your design has the majority support and it makes sense on its own terms, so you should go with that. I'm fine with a backdoor bind, and the handful of people that think like me probably too.

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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Done! Actively toggling the frobhelper will also use the existing fades and delay, so you can tweak those cvars to your desire.

 

Thanks, I was about to request though, the crosshair itself indeed.

 

Is it possible to have the "frob helper" dot appear permanently, no matter what (except maybe when aiming the bow, we got the immersive "aim helper" option for that)?

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Yes, that's what that cvar (tdm_frobhelper_alwaysVisible) does. It turns it on permanently, either through entering it in the console (... = 1), or binding it to a key if you want to toggle it off and on in-game (bind F toggle tdm_frobhelper_active 1 0), or I guess (bind F toggle tdm_frobhelper_alwaysVisible 1 0). It won't be in the menu or have a key-bind natively, but it's fine because people that really want it can probably look up how to do it and it avoids menu or key clutter.

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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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The latter will only toggle context based FrobHelper alpha off and on. The name of that cvar was probably a bad choice. A little bit misleading. Maybe I should renaming it? Use tdm_frobhelper_active to toggle it.

 

hmmm, if that means the frobhelper will still blink in and out of existence even if tdm_frobhelper_alwaysVisible is 1, then this is not really what I'm looking for.

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hmmm, if that means the frobhelper will still blink in and out of existence even if tdm_frobhelper_alwaysVisible is 1, then this is not really what I'm looking for.

I agree. For now I have the frobhelper turned off because it appearing and disappearing is more of an immersion breaker to me...

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