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Sotha's mapping thread


Sotha

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Thats pretty cool, I saved a few of your posts by now about variety on AI path maps, I look foward to more missions with strong sentry networks! The Beleagiered Fence is one of my favourite maps because of that. By the way, whats the mission scenario, if I may ask?

Edited by RPGista
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By the way, whats the mission scenario, if I may ask?

 

Certainly. This is gonna be the second-last Thomas Porter mission, and it occurs some weeks after Transaction. It involves preparations in order to get rid of a certain smokin' girl who has strong feelings towards Thomas.

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Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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A little progress report:

Progress is slow but steady. A few tens of brushes or entites per day. I'm mainly placing furniture at present, of which almost everything is in place. I'm not doing much brushwork anymore, the geometry is almost in the final form. I might add something simple, but no more big things.

 

I've done some optimizations for better performance in the heavy areas. I'm running around and adjusting lights and trying to place them so that I get a compromise between playability and interesting visuals. I firmly believe this is gonna be the best looking mission I've made thus far. It's not gonna contain Johannes/Biker level of detail, never expect that from me. I'm mostly aiming at simple but elegant detail: leaving for some room for the player's imagination. I want to have a few relatively big areas and because of tris counts, I need to find nice visuals, while saving tris. For those areas I'm preferring textures with detail over brushwork detail.

 

I'm gonna use a lot of relighting behavior and I'm aiming to have at least one relightable per room. No one would like to work in total darkness, right? So the player should expect that AI reaction to darkness is a norm. Also, I would like to have alarmed AI's to go fetch some help. To keep the player at their toes. My aim is to make the mission relatively easyish for those who rely on stealth. Those who get spotted (and let the AI walk away) should find themselves in a hard spot pretty soon, just like in a real burglar-gotten-caught-scenario.

 

I got one loot item in place. Lots if entitywork remains: pathing, loot, objective rigging. I'm thinking about readables but I've not yet written any. I'm also thinking of dynamic AI RITs. So far I got a few test AI paths with RITs and they work nicely. I'm also thinking about objective objects that would change locations between gaming sessions to further improve replayability. I'm not sure how that's gonna work, but I'm thinking about it. Probably a dice roll in a script that teleports the objectives around, maybe?

 

Let's see once I get to that part.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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To keep the player at their toes. My aim is to make the mission relatively easyish for those who rely on stealth. Those who get spotted (and let the AI walk away) should find themselves in a hard spot pretty soon, just like in a real burglar-gotten-caught-scenario.

 

That's my vision exactly, a strong network to make it pretty challenging and fun to survive/hide/run when things go wrong. I never reload, that's why realistic/fun chain of consequences for screwing up or getting discovered is a must for me!

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Yes, I like that as a design decision.

 

I mostly try to make it through as a one-shot.

 

(Or at least "I often forget to quicksave and must replay 90% of the mission because of that bad habit" )

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Hehehe, no I often save, because I like playing risky, being bold. The thing is, many times you feel you can exploit the missions if you are reckless - many times you are spotted but the guard is alone and there's no one around to hear the commotion, it is simple to take them out and, specially when there are no intersecting routes, just leave them as they lay, you could do this forever in many missions, just corner a lone unsuspecting guard and take him out. The difficulty and fun comes when the AI placement and movements is interesting and rich, some will stick and fight but others will run for backup, there are areas of intense armed opposition that you cant afford to let be alerted, etc. I remember the hide out in Score to Settle as being exactly like this - some loners, but also a bunch of pockets of opposition that you cant take out by yourself, with a real risk of getting everyone alerted by a couple of "runners" - it makes the whole thing really worthwhile to sneak into.

Edited by RPGista
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  • 4 weeks later...

Heh.. Time for my monthly progress report.

 

Briefly, I've had many days of inactivity due to IRL business, but on a few weekends I've had a few very, very productive days.

 

I got RIT patrol systems for all the AI now. It is quite neat, actually. You can never know 100% where the AI's are gonna go. The information the player can keep reliably is like: "there is guard activity in this room." There aren't guaranteed safe spots. Basically the AI enters a room, has 50% chance to do something interesting in the room: sit down, look at a painting, warm hands, etc. The other option is that the AI simply walks through the room. Exiting the room, the AI randoms between the next conceivable rooms, but holds the main patrol route as a high probability one. Even I, the author, got surprised by the AI.

 

But yep, a lot of things to do: final AI tweak, objectives, readables, conversations.. I might need to give one more monthly update before getting this out.

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Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Whatever you do - I'm looking forward to it!

 

Glad to hear it can even surprise you. =-P

"No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text-books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat,

Or ward the tulwar's downward blow

Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—

The odds are on the cheaper man."

 

From 'Arithmetic on the Frontier' by Rudyard Kipling

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  • 4 weeks later...

Monthy progress report:

All done, except objectives, loot and readables. This mission will be very RIT focused. It will succeed greatly or fall far because of it.

 

Hey someone help me, please?

EDIT: there was a request for help here but I got it solved. I removed the text so that I won't spoil anyone.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Looking forward to the mission :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Yay! It works!

 

Now my main mission objective randomizes its location upon map start. At present, there are seven different (logical) possibilities where it might be. At my option I can also make clues to appear pointing to the correct direction.

 

I suck at scripting so I did it the entity way. It is rather cumbersome like that and it might be clean to make it into a script. Also that way I could randomize easily some other mission parameters I might figure out later.

 

Can someone tell me how to script something like this:

1) randomize a number between 1 - 7. (or 0-6).

if random number is 1, trigger entity A

if random number is 2, trigger entity B

and so forth..

 

Thanks!

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Cool! Figured out it on my own. The script looks like this if someone wants to make similar stuff for whatever reason:

 

void random_object_location()

{

float rand = int(sys.random(7)); // can be 0-6

sys.println("Randomizing objective location."); // Print the text to the console

sys.println("I got a " + rand + "\n"); // Print the text to the console

 

if ( rand == 0 ) {

sys.println("Running location 1");

sys.trigger($entity1);

}

 

if ( rand == 1 ) {

sys.println("Running location 2");

sys.trigger($entity2);

}

 

if ( rand == 2 ) {

sys.println("Running location 3");

sys.trigger($entity3);

}

 

if ( rand == 3 ) {

sys.println("Running location 4");

sys.trigger($entity4);

}

 

if ( rand == 4 ) {

sys.println("Running location 5");

sys.trigger($entity5);

}

 

if ( rand == 5 ) {

sys.println("Running location 6");

sys.trigger($entity6);

}

 

if ( rand == 6 ) {

sys.println("Running location 7");

sys.trigger($entity7);

}

 

 

 

 

}

 

void main()

{

}

 

 

the entityX are then S&R entities that teleport stuff around.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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the entityX are then S&R entities that teleport stuff around.

 

You know that we have a teleport entity (there is even a testmap that teleports a bunch of stuff) w/o S&R at all, plus, teleporting an entity is as easy as setting it's origin to a new value :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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You know that we have a teleport entity (there is even a testmap that teleports a bunch of stuff) w/o S&R at all, plus, teleporting an entity is as easy as setting it's origin to a new value :)

 

Yup, I script-o-factinized all the work with "set.Origin."

Works well. If the mapper teleports something into a container with target_setfrobable, they must first trigger the setfrobable to open. Then teleport the object in. And then trigger the setfrobable to closed. Otherwise the teleported object frobability would be incorrect inside a container.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Yup, I script-o-factinized all the work with "set.Origin."

 

Cool, just didn't want you to waste S&R when not nec :)

 

Works well. If the mapper teleports something into a container with target_setfrobable, they must first trigger the setfrobable to open. Then teleport the object in. And then trigger the setfrobable to closed. Otherwise the teleported object frobability would be incorrect inside a container.

 

Do you think this is a bug that could/should be fixed? (e.g. should the object determine itself that it now is inside such a container and adjust itself?)

 

Also, as a workaround, is it possible to set the frobability on the teleported object manually to "false"? (If this isn't possible, I think we should add that at least).

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Do you think this is a bug that could/should be fixed? (e.g. should the object determine itself that it now is inside such a container and adjust itself?)

 

Also, as a workaround, is it possible to set the frobability on the teleported object manually to "false"? (If this isn't possible, I think we should add that at least).

 

No, I don't think it is a bug. Otherwise, the target_setfrobable should probably update it's contents occasionally. This would probably lead into silly situations where you bring moveables near a chest with target_set_frobable, and the moveable would suddenly turn non-frobable because it touched the target_set_frobable.

 

Teleporting stuff into cupboards is so rare, that it is no trouble for the mapper to do the double triggering to make sure the container target_set_frobables work properly. It is simply just something the mapper should be aware of when teleporting stuff around.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I would link the TP missions together to a campaign for 1.08 - seriously. :mellow:

 

I'll address this here to avoid off-topicifying the original thread.

 

I've considered that. I honestly have. I'd love the have the missions as a campaign.

But I'm low on free time time. I like mapping, so I use my low amount of spare time on mapping.

 

Mashing up the missions into a campaign is not that easy. I would need to rebuild the older mission briefing animations so that the style is consistent. I know instantly how to do that, no problems.

 

But! I would also need to research to find a way to make my button controlled briefing (SoBuCoB) to work with the campaign. The button controlled briefing works nicely with individual missions, but getting it into working with multiple missions... I've absolutely no idea how to do it.

 

I'd need to go through this: http://wiki.thedarkm...ng_up_Campaigns

And I would need to trial-and-error testing build a working mission briefing file for multiple missions. And test everything. My time would be better used mapping.

 

So no.. Not gonna mash the missions into a campaign. If someone else would figure out how to do it and provide me a file with examples, well... Then the story might have a different outcome! Anyone willing to spend time testing how to get it done? Let me know. I will hereby commit myself in giving guidance and info how the button controlled briefing works under the hood to help the person trying to get the campaign version working.

 

Please use the briefing in Mandrasola as a starting point as that is the best version of the button controlled briefing. Try to get three test missions running with the briefings. That is, make a test campaign with it.

 

1) briefing 1

2) test mission 1: a single room with a button that ends the mission.

3) briefing 2

4) test mission 2: a single room with a button that ends the mission.

5) briefing 3

6) test mission 3: a single room with a button that ends the mission.

 

It is time to step forth and contribute! Thanks!

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Why do you stick to the button controlled briefing?

 

It is better than

1) non-graphical text-only briefing

2) graphical timed flowing graphical briefing.

 

because it offers the benefits of both: you get pictures to liven up the briefing and you get all the time you need to read the text. There are no better options than the button controlled graphical briefing at this time.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Except timed briefings with voice acting, I guess.

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Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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