Things that could be improved

[nbohr1more]

Try adjusting r_ambientGamma

It will override the gamma of just the ambient lighting

[AluminumHaste]

That works, I totally forgot about that CVAR

[nbohr1more]

13 hours ago, AluminumHaste said:

That works, I totally forgot about that CVAR

When we encountered issues with postprocess affecting GUI behavior I strongly lobbied for r_ambientGamma to replace r_postprocess_gamma as the underlying setting in the GUI. It has no effect on GUI's and allows you to adjust the visibility in scenes without altering standard light falloff or postprocess gradation.

Anyway, it is a precious cvar to me as it allows me to play missions with overly bright ambient lighting with a more visually appealing ambient look.

[AluminumHaste]

It has now become precious to me also, it's way easier to manipulate compared to opening the .map file and changing the ambient light values manually.

[Xolvix]

Hmm, I experimented with both r_postprocess_gamma and r_ambientgamma, toggling between one active and one not. Need to play around since I'm not sure what I prefer. r_ambientgamma will at least not mess with the menu and HUD elements, but the lights are stronger in intensity if I use r_postprocess_gamma.

Solution: if the gamma is too low, use a bit of both. In my case I found that instead of having ambientgamma at 1 and postprocess_gamma at 1.2, I split the difference and set both to 1.1. The end result is the same amount of ambient gamma in the level, but I also get a partial increase in light intensity without it being overblown/washed-out.

Anyway, everyone has their own preferences but that's what now works for me and I'm happy I finally got a balance I like, since my obsessive nature was causing me to... obsess over this until I worked out a solution.

Edited December 4, 2021 by Xolvix

[datiswous]

I previously posted about the transparently level of the image shown for a mission in the menu. What I want to add to that:

Currently, the mission description text starts at where the image is placed. Why not place that above (with a scroll-bar when text is longer), so the image doesn't have to be transparent at all. Also, don't stretch the image (now it is stretched), keep it's original aspect ratio. At the moment the way the image is shown, most mission creators don't bother adding an image at all.

The notes section should also have a scroll bar, so that the ok button is not overridden with text in the background and text always fits in that window no matter how long.

Spoiler

This shouldn't be possible:

 

[High John]

This is my first visit to this very long Topic, and I strongly suspect someone will have raised these suggestions before.  But anyway.

From a gameplay point of view, I would like to see the following.

1)  Locking of Doors:
It would be good to be able to lock doors as well as unlock them.  Either to avoid pursuit, or to lure guards into a room then lock them in (if they don't have a key).

2)  Guards should hear doors closing:
This would just be more realistic.  And then they'd come and investigate.

3)  Guards should notice valuables have gone missing:
Particularly if an item was prominently on display, a guard should notice it was missing.  And then raise the alarm, and/or start looking for a thief.

[nbohr1more]

2 hours ago, High John said:

This is my first visit to this very long Topic, and I strongly suspect someone will have raised these suggestions before.  But anyway.

From a gameplay point of view, I would like to see the following.

1)  Locking of Doors:
It would be good to be able to lock doors as well as unlock them.  Either to avoid pursuit, or to lure guards into a room then lock them in (if they don't have a key).

2)  Guards should hear doors closing:
This would just be more realistic.  And then they'd come and investigate.

3)  Guards should notice valuables have gone missing:
Particularly if an item was prominently on display, a guard should notice it was missing.  And then raise the alarm, and/or start looking for a thief.

1) This is already possible. If you have a key for a door you can lock the door via the use button

3) There is already an "absence marker" that controls how aware AI are of missing loot:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Alert_%26_Suspicion_Triggers#Making_AI_Notice_a_Missing_Object

mission authors can decide where to use it

[Oktokolo]

"help" and "?" typed in the console could list available commands with a one-liner about what they do.

[AluminumHaste]

42 minutes ago, Abusimplea said:

"help" and "?" typed in the console could list available commands with a one-liner about what they do.

in the console type:

list

then hit TAB on your keyboard to see all the various listings you can do.

You should get:

]list                                                                          
    listAnims                                                                  
    listCollisionModels                                                        
    listLines                                                                  
    listSpawnArgs                                                              
    listMonsters                                                               
    listActiveEntities                                                         
    listEntities                                                               
    listEvents                                                                 
    listThreads                                                                
    listClasses                                                                
    listTypeInfo                                                               
    listModelDefs                                                              
    listSoundDecoders                                                          
    listSounds                                                                 
    listModels                                                                 
    listImages                                                                 
    listRenderLightDefs                                                        
    listRenderEntityDefs                                                       
    listGuis                                                                   
    listHuffmanFrequencies                                                     
    listAF                                                                     
    listParticles                                                              
    listFX                                                                     
    listEntityDefs                                                             
    listSoundShaders                                                           
    listSkins                                                                  
    listMaterials                                                              
    listTables                                                                 
    listDecls                                                                  
    listLoadStackStrings                                                       
    listDictValues                                                             
    listDictKeys                                                               
    listBinds                                                                  
    listCvars            <-----Probably the one you're looking for (there's over 1000 cvars)   
    listToolCmds                                                               
    listGameCmds                                                               
    listSoundCmds                                                              
    listRendererCmds                                                           
    listSystemCmds                                                             
    listCmds                   

 

If you want to know what a CVAR does, you can type it in without a value and if there is a description in the (there should always be one), it will display it.

For example, if I type

r_newFrob

in the console and hit Enter, I get:

]r_newfrob                                                                     
"r_newFrob" is:"1" default:"0"                                                 
Controls how objects are frob-highlighted:                                     
  0 = use material stages by parm11                                            
  1 = use the frob shader                                                      
  2 = use nothing (no highlight)                                               
Note: outline is controlled by r_frobOutline                                  

[datiswous]

It would be nice to have a realtime g_showviewpos 1 shown the same as fps count top right (but then maybe top left). Or even better, have the option to include it in the screenshot.

This is great for screenshots in beta testing.

[jonri]

16 hours ago, datiswous said:

It would be nice to have a realtime g_showviewpos 1 shown the same as fps count top right (but then maybe top left). Or even better, have the option to include it in the screenshot.

This is great for screenshots in beta testing.

This can be done by binding a few commands to your screenshot button. I have done it to give map feedback before, I'll see if I can dig up how I did it later...

...and here it is:

bind "KP_SLASH" "con_noprint 0;wait;wait;wait;getviewpos;wait;wait;wait;screenshot;con_noprint 1"

I bind all my various development commands to keypad buttons, change the KP_SLASH to whatever you'd like.

Edited January 19, 2022 by jonri
Found the commands

[datiswous]

Cool thanks! I think this should get a sticky in the beta forum.

[thebigh]

In the mission selection screen, mission names longer than a few words get chopped off at the right. Would it be possible to have line wrapping, with lines after the first one to be right-aligned?

[datiswous]

On 1/21/2022 at 10:42 PM, thebigh said:

Would it be possible to have line wrapping, with lines after the first one to be right-aligned?

I think making the font size smaller also helps. But then the background image (in the mission list on the right) has to be changed as well.

Edited January 25, 2022 by datiswous

[wesp5]

On 1/21/2022 at 10:42 PM, thebigh said:

In the mission selection screen, mission names longer than a few words get chopped off at the right. Would it be possible to have line wrapping, with lines after the first one to be right-aligned?

This can be circumvented by shortening the mission names which I do in the Unofficial Patch and which works good for campaigns, but not good for long single name missions. In that case maybe the mission authors should think about it?

Also recently somebody complained that the new interface to install missions is not easy to understand as sometimes it talks about selecting a mission, then about installing, while it also mentions install in regard to the whole mod. I would suggest to replace select/deselect and install/deinstall with activate/deactivate! This should make it clear that nothing is removed and I will do this in the Unofficial Patch...

Edited January 27, 2022 by wesp5

[SuaveSteve]

Does anyone else find that when you play in a dark room, the objectives readable is very bright?

[AluminumHaste]

Haven't noticed no. Do you have bloom turned on?

[datiswous]

Having the fire arrow only shine light when you aim or after a second, so that you don't light up during scrolling through your weapons.

 

[Geep]

On 12/23/2021 at 5:42 PM, High John said:

From a gameplay point of view, I would like to see the following.

1)  Locking of Doors:
It would be good to be able to lock doors as well as unlock them.  Either to avoid pursuit, or to lure guards into a room then lock them in (if they don't have a key).

This will not always be effective: the AI might have "can_unlock" powers for the door in question, even without the key.

In any event, for the benefit of mappers, I just added a few lines to the "Doors" wiki article about this (and @nbohr1more's response about the Use key.)

[thebigh]

It would also be necessary to decide how to AIs trapped in a room would behave. Should they try to look for another exit? Walk against the door like a fly bapping its head against a pane of glass? Panic and yell for help?

I think this is something that, if it's important, the mapper would have to decide and script up themselves.

[Geep]

In theory, if the AI has a path it was following before being lured and locked, and there's some AAS-legal route (by another room exit) back to a path node of that path, it should eventually take it.

But to throw a fit, other than standard alerting... yeah, that's not going to happen automatically. I don't see a mapper dealing with this generally, but there could be a particular situation where there's a strong hint to the player that AI trapping is the thing to do.

[datiswous]

On 2/16/2022 at 12:07 AM, thebigh said:

I think this is something that, if it's important, the mapper would have to decide and script up themselves.

One could make a script and/or sound trigger upon locked, for example shouting sounds and a sound of ai bumping on the door to get it open (and after a while the door opens), so the player gets the feeling he has to quickly hide/flee, although the ai inside does nothing (player can't see that). I mean I just came up with this, although it's obvious I guess.

[datiswous]

Maybe too much to ask:

Profiles for Settings. This is for example handy for different gamma and brightness settings depending on missions.

Maybe it's also possible to include this with a mod.

[nbohr1more]

23 minutes ago, datiswous said:

Maybe too much to ask:

Profiles for Settings. This is for example handy for different gamma and brightness settings depending on missions.

Maybe it's also possible to include this with a mod.

I know that it used to be possible to put the DoomConfig.cfg into the darkmod/fms/mission_name/ folder. I haven't tried it with darkmod.cfg. One thing that has worked fairly recently is adding an autoexec.cfg to the same mission directory. The downside is that you will also need to include an autoexec.cfg in your darkmod directory that will revert to default values.