Sotha's mapping thread

[demagogue]

We've mentioned it a few times, there are a couple of causes of it. If your AI is doing strange things with default patrolling and chasing etc, its usually bad visportals.

 

For the record, this was one of my early questions in the DR Newbie thread when I started it. In my case I accidentally set the texture of one side of a visportal to concrete and it had the same behavior you (Sotha) mentioned; AI wouldn't walk through it as if it were a wall. So that should be added to the wiki too as something to look out for too. I guess the punchline is that visportals need to be pretty much pristine to be happy.

[Sotha]

Question:

I'd like to have an AI seeing or hearing the player to trigger something? Ie. Something gets triggered as soon as an AI sees or hears the player.

 

How to do it?

 

What do visual, sound and the player stims do anyway?

 

I tried to give player, visual or sound responses to the AI, but they did not result in anything.

 

 

EDIT: I figured it out.

Basically I have a hidden objective, with AI-gets-alarmed -component, which targets the thing I want upon objective completion.

 

This basically reduces this problem into a curious question:

What do visual, sound and the player stims do anyway?

[Fidcal]

Wish I knew. I seem to recall trying different ones out without success while trying to force alerts in Alchemist.

[Sotha]

Ahoy!

 

I was thinking of maybe spending some time to edit the animated briefing gui for my upcoming mission so that it would contain next and previous -buttons instead of the timings.

 

So basically the gui would contain the moving images and appearing text, but in such a fashion that the images stop somewhere and the text remains on screen until the user clicks forward button. After that the next screenful of images and text appears.

 

I do not have yet any clue how to achieve this, so does anyone know a gui-creation tutorial or similar information I could research before embarking on this exciting journey? Thanks!

[nbohr1more]

I was positive there is a GUI wiki but thus far I have only found this:

 

http://modetwo.net/d...ing#Definitions

 

and

 

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

Edited October 20, 2010 by nbohr1more

[nbohr1more]

I think these would be the relevant Modwiki references:

 

GUI Scripting:

 

http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/GUI_scripting

 

Transition

 

http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/Transition_%28GUI_command%29

[LEGION]

It would be soooooooo cool if you could achieve this, Sotha! Sometimes I don´t even have time to watch the Screenshots while re-reading the text before I couldn´t get all on the first run. And the more I play the briefing the more I lose atmosphere...

 

BTW, do you have EAX-support implemented?

[Fidcal]

If you can get this working I'd much rather it proceed slowly with a keypress override rather than just sit there and wait for a key. Else it will just feel like a web page or readable instead of a smoothly flowing pseudo-video. Ideally we want a cvar setting so players can choose either. I'd hate to see all future briefings just a click page by page. Graphic briefings can and do have overlapping actions that never end; they are not separated pages that display something, stop, then display something else.

[Sotha]

If you can get this working I'd much rather it proceed slowly with a keypress override rather than just sit there and wait for a key. Else it will just feel like a web page or readable instead of a smoothly flowing pseudo-video. Ideally we want a cvar setting so players can choose either. I'd hate to see all future briefings just a click page by page. Graphic briefings can and do have overlapping actions that never end; they are not separated pages that display something, stop, then display something else.

 

I'm sorry, Fidcal, but the system I'm fantasizing seems to be exactly the kind you'd not prefer.

 

I do not like the delays, because they're never right. They're either too short or too long. When I did the briefing for The Beleaguered Fence I hated the arduous and boring task of getting the delays right. I loathed the delay setting so much that I didn't do an animated briefing at all for The Glenham Tower, even when in principle I wanted to do it. I certainly had time.

 

Just for the record: if the briefing was a spoken narrative, then I'd prefer the delays over next page buttons. I agree that pressing next with spoken briefing would be stupid.

 

But without the narrative the briefing is exactly a readable. I'm considering it is a sort of story book with animation, where the reader turns the page once (s)he is finished with the current page. Then another page with animations open.

 

Few points in random order (my mind is in a flux at present):

• When/if I manage to pull it off, then I'm going probably going to always use it in my missions, because I had enough of the delay setting.
• It's not a TDM change, but a file a mapper can use for individual FMs as needed.
• I'm certainly going to make it available for other mappers, but they do not have to use it.
• So you shouldn't worry about every future mission using this. Probably it gets only embraced by the few like minded mappers who hate the delays. And with this alternative, everyone gets better briefings, when they can be exactly what the mapper has envisioned.

 

Surely more options for the mapper is always a good thing.

 

But yeah, first I gotta figure this out.

Thanks for the links nbohr, they got me on the right track already!

[nbohr1more]

You're welcome Sotha.

 

If you get stumped trying to achieve your effect you can always use an external movie maker package then add your work as triggered ROQ videos

 

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

[Sotha]

After one evening of fiddling I'm making progress.

 

Now I have next and previous buttons, with which I can cycle between the first two briefing paragraphs.

 

It's ugly, and no floating pictures yet, but I'm optimistic...

[Fidcal]

That's good progress. I think that was the main challenge wasn't it? If you already have forward and back buttons then you're more than halfway there I think.

[Sotha]

That's good progress. I think that was the main challenge wasn't it? If you already have forward and back buttons then you're more than halfway there I think.

 

Yeah, I think this is the main thing. But the most important and maybe difficult thing is to get the pictures to work, so they float nicely around while the screen is on.

 

I'll try to make it as 'universal' as possible so that later people only need to change text and replace image-files to make their own briefing.

 

I added also a start mission button which can be used at any time to go the the difficulty screen.

 

The coding experts are probably going to laugh at me, but basically the system is going to work like this:

• Briefing starts. Show paragraph1. Show Next-Button1.
• Clicking Next-Button1 hides Next-Button1 and shows paragraph2, previous-button1 and next-button2.
• Clicking on previous-button1 hides previous-button1 and paragraph2 but shows paragraph1 and next-button1 (giving the exact starting situation)
• Clicking on next-button2 shows again new set of hidden buttons which then form a sequence which shows the paragraphs in the desired order.

I don't think its gonna be really difficult to add moving pictures to this series of hidden and shown things. Lets see. Now, gotta sleep...

[LEGION]

Cool Sotha!! After you´re finished I´ll try to implement it to my copies of the existing FMs.

[Sotha]

I've just now completed all the next/back buttons.

All the text in The Beleaguered Fence briefing can be cycled back and forth with the next and previous buttons. The middle cross button is the exit button.

When the user reaches the first page, only the next-button is shown. In the final page only the back-button is shown.

The system supports 6 pages, which can be easily reduced by commenting out one line at the screenstage the mapper wants the pages to end.

 

 

I know it's ugly at present. The arrows are only placeholders. I'm also definately putting them somewhere else.

I'm proably going to change the exit briefing button into text "exit" and place it in the lower right corner of the screen, where the forward options are for the difficulty selection and the shop menu.

 

I'm open to suggestions how to place the next/back buttons on the screen.

 

Next task: get the floating images to work...

 

 

Cool Sotha!! After you´re finished I´ll try to implement it to my copies of the existing FMs.

 

Nice. It is motivating to see that someone is already interested in this.

I think its rather easy to implement existing briefings to this format. All you gotta do is to copy-paste the contents of the "windowDef BriefingText1"-thingies from the old briefing to this new file. If the mission has its text as .dds, then it is not possible, unless the user types in the text.

[Fidcal]

I see no arrows. ???

[Sotha]

I see no arrows. ???

 

Look carefully. Black arrows on the top left and top right corners. Black arrows with tiny white contour.

[LEGION]

Very good, I would place the arrows in the middle, left and right of the text. Maybe some evolved version of the menu-mouse-pointer as graphic...

Maybe there is an old pointer available? Team-members?

 

I wouldn´t like the 'Exit'-text, a symbol would be more fitting in my opinion. The X-idea is not bad.

 

Actually I´m working with 7upMan on the German translation of Crown of Penitence, I would love to implement this as an option (Player would have to copy/paste manually).

[Sotha]

Actually I´m working with 7upMan on the German translation of Crown of Penitence, I would love to implement this as an option (Player would have to copy/paste manually).

 

Well, if you would see the trouble, you could create the next/previous gui-file and add it to the mission package. The player could then get it into use simply by renaming the mainmenu_briefing.alt -> mainmenu_briefing.gui.

 

 

Now I got the images to work. They float around like they should. There are a few bugs which emerge, when back and forth buttons are pressed rapidly many times, but I think it is easy to fix. Already fixed one image, just have to apply that solution in all of the sections which show/hide images.

 

After fixing those, it is basically button graphics creation, placement and floating image position and movement fine tuning.

 

Always nice to learn something new and make progress.

[Sotha]

Okay, everything seems to be working, so I think it is ready now.

 

 

Here is a simple test mission to show how the alternative briefing works.

http://www.mediafire...ewg8ws3s9atth8g

 

The package includes also a challenging mini-survival mission to entice people to test this!!

 

As always, feedback is appreciated...

[nbohr1more]

WOW!!!!

 

That should be in an updated Start Map example.

 

Looks great!

[Fidcal]

Yes it's a good implementation although as I said, I prefer a unified flow like a video rather than paging. I don't know if you could allow currently scrolling, rotating imagery to continue into the next page so they overlap if the player click the next button early. Or indeed keep something scrolling on the same page if the player leaves it alone. In other words, keep the text within the pages and start imagery at page start but don't stop imagery (keep cycling it around) but when it reaches a new page then flag it to stop and fade out when it reaches the end of its cycle. Don't know if that's possible.

 

Also the X button is non-intuitive. I thought it meant close the briefing and exit back to the menu. I would put two more different arrows (double arrows like fast forward/rewind?) at left and right of the page bottom. Press the right one any time to skip or if the briefing is finished the player should instinctively know to hit that button to proceed rather than X. The left arrow returns to the menu like Esc.

 

If only it could have a cvar option but I don't know how to read those into guis; might need code. It seems possible it might then with the same gui show it either way depending on the player's choice. But it would be important to get the image overlap working so you can two or three images scrolling together, ie, one still there as another scrolls in etc.

[Bikerdude]

Sotha, do you mind If I have a go at using this in my Haloween mission..?

Edited October 24, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Aprilsister]

This is great.

 

I even survived.

[Sotha]

Sotha, do you mind If I have a go at using this in my Haloween mission..?

 

Of course not!

I'm just glad if someone finds this good enough to be willing to use it.

 

Check the mainmenu_briefing.gui file:

I tried to write there clear instructions how to edit the file to mapper's own needs. Feel free to ask here if you run into trouble.