Sotha's mapping thread

[nbohr1more]

75% already! You are industrious! (Looks nice BTW)

[Fidcal]

Looks very good but I still think you have too much faith in the strength of wooden beams. Imagine a group of heavy thugs jumping up and down in the middle of the room above (as they do.) Well, at least you have joists (horizontal beams.) Makes me cringe to see vast unsupported expanses of floorboards.

 

Suggestions:

 

Increase the width but most especially the height of those horizontal beams.

 

I don't know if you can squeeze in some wooden pillars? Maybe reduce the size of the table a little?

 

Side angled beams might also help.

 

You will also find the above adds character to the room and gives other opportunities to place lights more centrally while giving shadows and places to hide, etc.

[Sotha]

Thanks for good advice. I added some support beams to prevent collapse.

 

Also added a lot of new areas: 80% ready.

 

Hey, am I imaginating things, or does TDM really fire every single speaker upon map start. Normally it does no harm, but if I put one global sound I'd like to target and play once at a certain moment during the mission, it plays also once when the map is loaded. And it is audible everywhere.

 

Is there a way to prevent this map-start playing?

[Fidcal]

You need s_waitfortrigger 1 - see http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Sounds:_Background_and_Local#Triggering_a_Sound

[Sotha]

You need s_waitfortrigger 1 - see http://modetwo.net/d...ggering_a_Sound

 

Perfect! Thank you!

(How on earth did I manage to miss this info in the first place?!)

[Fidcal]

I think there are three or four speaker articles on the wiki and I had to search for this myself (even though I wrote it!) to remind myself.

 

[edit] what I mean is, the wiki is possibly a bit confusing here because if you happen to read one article you might not know. Maybe it needs coordinating.

[Sotha]

Still progressing nicely.

Basic geometry is there and I'm adding details as I go. AI placements is also going on. I have crystal clear vision of the objectives, but have not yet implemented them. Nearly all loot is not placed yet. Most of the plot readables are there.

 

Some WIP screenies for your enjoyment.

 

 

 

 

I'm particularily pleased with the vaulting in the above image. Never really thought I could do something looking like that. But I surprised myself! Most of the time went to the constant texture swapping. It was hard to find the nicest textures for the scene.

 

I used this image as an aid.

 

I don't think I'm very far from beta testing phase. A week or three.

[nbohr1more]

Looking good Sotha!

 

I'm not one who likes posting nits (and I don't want to be guilty of delaying a release from a mapper who has astute game-play skills...) but I think some large stain decals on the tunnel walls might be nice.

[Bikerdude]

I'm particularily pleased with the vaulting in the above image. Never really thought I could do something looking like that. But I surprised myself! Most of the time went to the constant texture swapping. It was hard to find the nicest textures for the scene.

Amen to that, bloody vaulted ceilings, what ever textures Ive tried they always give me agro...

[Sotha]

Oh and by the way:

 

Does anyone know how do I get a list of animations for a certain AI model? Am I guessing correctly, that the zombies are using basic Doom3 zombie animations? This means that they should have this eat-someone-lying-on-the-ground -animation. I'd love to use it...

[Fidcal]

There is a general list at http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Animation_List but the most up-to-date list can be found in the def folder (or pk4) in tdm_ai_guard_proguard_devel.def.

[Springheel]

The zombies don't use the proguard list. You would need to open the zombie.def file.

[Sotha]

The zombies don't use the proguard list. You would need to open the zombie.def file.

 

-Thanks! Found it! The animation is called "zjump_eats_zfat_loop"

Too bad it cannot be used: it looks very choppy when the zombie starts the feeding animation and blinks into the eating position. Otherwise it would be ok, but the zombie faces entirely the opposite direction. Shame.

 

Can I play animations backwards in path_anim/path_cycleanim?

I mean that

*first the zombie to moves to the feeding position.

*I play path_anim "zjump_eats_zfat_getup" backwards, so the zombie kneels down to the eating position.

*Play path_cycleanim so that zombie eats a while.

*play path_anim "zjump_eats_zfat_getup" normally so the zombie gets up.

 

Is there a mystical spawnarg, which plays animations the other way?

[Sotha]

Easier question:

Is there something wrong with underwater guis?

 

I tried to do as said in the Swimmable Water wiki pages, and made waters with different underwater guis but I seen no difference in any of those. Looks like NONE of them have an underwater gui: I'm just swimming in clear water.

 

Any help?

[Fidcal]

No, they are working OK. Check path names. Check you have the correct dark mod water entity. Dmap. Don't know what else to suggest. Note that the gui only provides murk when you are actually underwater. It is still clear from above which is why you also need the other overlay on the surface.

[aidakeeley]

On my system the textures referenced by the guis do not exist

 

example?

 

"textures/water_source/blue_plain_flat_midmurk"

 

nonesuch

 

here D:\Games\Doom 3\darkmod\pk4s unzipped (1.02)\textures\water_source

 

 

nor here

 

D:\Games\Doom 3\darkmod\pk4s unzipped (1.02)\dds\textures\water_source

 

Edited July 13, 2010 by aidakeeley

[greebo]

You're looking at the directories, but the name you posted references the shader declaration:

 

textures/water_source/blue_plain_flat_midmurk
{
qer_editorimage textures/water_source/blue_plain_flat
noshadows
twosided
nonsolid
{
	blend blend
	map textures/water_source/blue_plain_flat
	alpha 0.75
	rgb 0.4
}
}

[Sotha]

Okay I've now found out what was wrong.

 

In my water box, the surfaces (except the air-water -interface surface) are common/clip.

 

When I changed the texture to /common/nodraw the gui works.

 

Thanks for helping out!

[Fidcal]

I didn't know that made a difference to the overlay. I think I always use nodraw so there is no z-fighting - I think that's recommended on the wiki - but I didn't know it also affected the underwater overlay. One to remember.

[aidakeeley]

Thanks, greebo.

 

I had no idea what I was looking for obviously; but now I have yet another distinction of sorts half-assedly (mis)understood -- the .mtr file.

 

I am now, rather than really getting a full grip on the internals there, going to go through all these directories and confuse the fuck out of myself. .af .vfp .ase! Found .ase files ... AsciiExport... aha!

 

Or, rather: aaaaaaaaaahh (down the abyss) ... I'm going to (try and) focus on these, the .ase files; see if I can't get it to relate to gmax as it should.

 

Sorry for the intrusion, Sotha and Fidcal and whomeverselses.

[Springheel]

Is there a mystical spawnarg, which plays animations the other way?

 

Not that I know of.

 

You could create a new animation by manually copying each frame of the animation and pasting them in opposite order...someone did that successfully once already.

[Sotha]

Got some nice suggestions from the beta testers. Got a nice idea for an interesting addition, which I am implementing.

 

I'm running into trouble here with a really simple/stupid problem:

*I want to have a door which is locked. And later I want to open the door remotely.

*If I simply target the locked door it won't open, because it has the spawnarg "locked 1"

*There is no "unlock"-response effect I could use.

*I tried Set spawnarg -response effect. So I set the locked property to 0 on the door. This does nothing and the door remains locked.

 

Please help, how can I do this? It's probably dead simple but I can't figure it out.

 

---

Alternatively:

Is there any way to make a door absolutely not openable by the AI. At present if I have a nonfrobable not-locked door. AI will mystically open it if I shoot a noisemaker arrow next to the door.

 

The AI looks for the noise source and opens the door, even if it is nonfrobable.

[Sotha]

Okay I still do not know how to unlock doors remotely, but it does not matter since the AI door opening problem can be simply solved by adding spawnarg

 

ai_should_not_handle 1

 

to the door.

 

Phew...

[stumpy]

you can unlock doors via a script

 

$nameofdoor.Unlock();

 

it basically changes the value on the door key value for locked 1 to locked 0

 

you can also lock doors via a script

 

$nameofdoor.Lock();

 

this basically changes the value on the door key value for locked 0 to locked 1

[greebo]

You can trigger the entity atdm:target_changelockstate to unlock any movers it is targetting.