Update goodies for mappers

[Fidcal]

I think this new update 1.03 is a milestone. For me it kind of rounds off what I would call real essentials for the mapper probably because of the addition of female characters. Yes of course, there are a lot more things to fix and endless features to add but if nothing further changed we have enough to make new FMs forever. We don't yet have mages or inventors etc but if we'd never heard of them we wouldn't know would we? But without female characters we have some strange manor houses and village streets. Now we have noblewomen and barmaids, rogues, etc and advanced mappers can improvise a female servant etc from those with adjusted skins and attachments.

 

There are a ton of fixes, updates, upgrades, new stuff at http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=What%27s_new_in_TDM_1.03 but that might not be a full list so search the assets in Dark Radiant. Remember to extract prefabs on all updates in case there is anything new.

 

So, it's Dark Mod Xmas under the tree: Unwrapping just a few of the new goodies:

 

Females: Remember to look for skins and heads. I think there are 3 or 4 clothing colours for the noblewoman and possibly two extra heads would work too (not tried yet) to give perhaps a sense of 3 or 4 different ones. Similarly with the rogue and barwoman.

 

Horse: Five variants of attachments but also check skins - you have black, white, brown, giving 15 variants of horse. Note that in use it is recommend if you have this patrolling you avoid sharp turns as it is naturally stiff in its length - give it plenty of path points to curve it slowly. There is a rideable variant. Need to check if this is in the release and if it works by default.

 

Werebeast: There is a stand up and a crawler variant. Wouldn't take much to produce a dark skin if you needed variety. These are slashers like zombies as I recall.

 

Statue: A great new aphrodite statue from Arcturus to grace any stately home.

 

New grass edges: These are decals for those places where grass edge looks hard against stone. There's an overlay, a patch, and also a path variant in almost every dirt and stone texture that works on any grass surface. Check out details at http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Grass_Edges and there is a thread somewhere with pictures.

 

New ladder sounds: When you come to make your drainpipe, chain, ivy, etc climbable, try the new ladder textures with new sounds. There's even a silent one just in case you have some special situation or none of the others is appropriate.

 

Loot: New gold ingots of various sizes and a gold skull. Likely be some royal loot later in 1.04.

 

New textures and skins and you can use random_skin which will be useful for cloning.

 

New sign text. You can now use any font, any size, on any sign or blank space of any kind - graffiti on a wall etc. on a signpost, on a shop sign, whatever. See here for details and pictures.... http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Text_Decals_for_Signs_etc.

 

Search through the stuff to see what else you get. Post here anything I've not included mappers should know about.

 

Enjoy!

[Melan]

I am already using some of them - female AI and vine ladders have been especially welcome, as well as pure text decals for some signage.

[Springheel]

Also, there are now six different kinds of spiders, including two "huge" varieties, and a small decorative one.

 

The werebeast has tons of specialized animations, including hunched over and eating, crawling out of holes, etc, that mappers can use (it uses the imp animations from D3).

 

There's a least a dozen new models as well--a new cart, lots of food, and I can't remember what else. Lots of new decals as well.

[Melan]

Something I noticed in the object hierarchy: the Aphrodite statue is listed three times as statue_aphrodite, statue_aphrodite_lod_medium and statue_aphrodite_lod_low. I hope if LOD models are incorporated here, they will be nested into a single statue_aphrodite category, or better yet, accessible with a spawnarg or something, because if everything will be repeated three times, that will create an ungodly clutter as the resource base grows.

[Aprilsister]

Congrats on the Official Release!

 

Now I can't wait to see the werebeasts (though I hope I don't come to regret saying that and they are terribly frightful (in either sense) and become overused: see frickin' zombies: for that matter see frickin' horror).

[Springheel]

I hope if LOD models are incorporated here, they will be nested into a single statue_aphrodite category

 

Yes, they're supposed to be in their own section...since LODE wasn't officially being included in this release I forgot about those models.

[Tels]

Something I noticed in the object hierarchy: the Aphrodite statue is listed three times as statue_aphrodite, statue_aphrodite_lod_medium and statue_aphrodite_lod_low. I hope if LOD models are incorporated here, they will be nested into a single statue_aphrodite category, or better yet, accessible with a spawnarg or something, because if everything will be repeated three times, that will create an ungodly clutter as the resource base grows.

 

There is an LOD entity, and you really should use the entities, not the model(s). The models result in a special func_static with the model, anyway, but they are static. With the entity, the engine can switch the model depending on distance. (Will be working in v1.04 again).

 

We don't have yet entities for everything, but models should only be used if there is no entity.

 

The models should be in their own folder, tho, to avoid clutter, as Springheel said.

[nbohr1more]

Haven't checked yet but Nosslak's "Bellows" model hasn't been added yet?

 

http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2358

 

[Nosslak]

Haven't checked yet but Nosslak's "Bellows" model hasn't been added yet?

 

http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2358

 

I was a little disappointed about that too, but then I realized that my collsionmesh was way too highpoly to work, so that's probably why. The collisionmesh has to use < 16 triangles apparently, no one told me this so I just went ahead and used a hundred polygons or so. I am not looking forward to going back and finishing all my models .

Edited December 23, 2010 by Nosslak

[nbohr1more]

Sorry to hear that.

 

There's plenty of cool stuff in v1.03 so I wouldn't fret about it. I just wanted to see if that entry was forgotten about.

 

I hope you stick around and we see more of your stuff in the upcoming releases

[Springheel]

I was a little disappointed about that too

 

Who did you send it to?

 

I tried to add the deer staff, but it has a weird issue with it that actually crashes DR. Greebo has since fixed DR so that won't happen, but not until the next update.

[Nosslak]

Sorry to hear that.

 

There's plenty of cool stuff in v1.03 so I wouldn't fret about it. I just wanted to see if that entry was forgotten about.

 

I hope you stick around and we see more of your stuff in the upcoming releases

Yeah, I'm not going anywhere. I'm having way too much fun making models for you guys.

 

Who did you send it to?

I uploaded it to the tracker and I think Serpentine said he'd take a look.

 

I tried to add the deer staff, but it has a weird issue with it that actually crashes DR. Greebo has since fixed DR so that won't happen, but not until the next update.

Weird. At least I've that 1.04 will come sooner than 1.03 so hopefully I'll get it into an official release soon anyway.

[Fidcal]

The printing press seems to be new (under mechanical.) The arm is separate. I can't see ny mover entity for it but I think you just make the arm a func mover up and down and trigger from a lever then teleport in a printed sheet! This might be fun to get an AI to do this and cycle a few sheets.

[Fidcal]

Also worth mentioning is that I did 4 rotations for all the big openable cabinet prefabs and upgraded the drawers so they can be lockable/pickable if needed. I didn't do the models which rotate OK nor the chests because it's only really the lockbar that needs adjusting. But those big cabinets have a lot of components and it takes a lot of effort to adjust all the origins, translations, rotates, etc. test etc.

 

There are now named <name>N, <name>S, E, and W meaning the wall they back up to so if you want a dresser against a south wall you'd use the S one.