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Tels Application Thread


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Well. Tel if you can read this, can you tell me your background? What we need is someone who can do either C++ 3D coding, or D3 scripting.

Wow, I got my own thread. I am humbled. ;)

 

I really don't want to drag my personal life into this, so only a little background:

 

*Old-die-hard-thief fan. I played it when it first came out. Somebody might infer a lot from the type of games I own, but then, I have also played games that I don't own and I own some games that I never played B) Anyway: http://digital-conquest.ath.cx/wiki/index.php/User:Tels

* I am a full-time programmer by living. I code usually in Perl, but have done my share in C, XS, Pascal, countless other programming languages, assembler (back in "teh dayz" when you called yourself "coder", drank lot's of coffee and went to bed when the sun started to get so bright that you couldn't see the letters on the monitor anymore - e.g. right at dawn). However, the language you use does really not matter, because saying C is better than C++ or vice versa is saying that Russian is better than Esperanto. Use the right tool for the right job.

* I gave up on windows a long time ago. (Before that, I used OS/2. Damn, now I feel really old :D

* Beside programming, I also take apart other programs, fileformats etc. (See Cowgen :D

 

Anyway, I am not qualified for C++ 3D coding. D3 scripting looks easy, though, after reading the tutorials. As soon as I get the dang radiant working I'll have a go :D

 

One of the things that "bothers" me is that even nowadays, you always start mapping from scratch. I mean, you take an empty space, and add brushes. And if you want a staircase, you build it yourself, out of tiny, weeny, little solid slabs. Sounds manly, but boring - that is sooo 1995. I thought in the last 5 years people would have finally gotten the idea that doing this wastes a lot of time and automated the level creation process (see Cowgen, again :).

 

So currently I have the idea that I can write plugins/tools/extensions to radiant, that lets you automate boring tasks, like creating a staircase, or other often needed things. Another possible idea is to build "building blocks" like archs, staircases and have them as pre-made "stubs" that you can insert into your level as to not waste time just because you need a 12x8 staircase *now* B)

 

Well, guess that doesn't sound all to impressive since I don't have definite projects or materials to show :o)

 

If you'd ask me what role I can see me in (in no particular order):

 

Mapper (I love architecture, especally red brick churches :), Scripter, Betatester extraordinaire.

 

If I had to describe myself: "Hacker" (in the old-school sense :ph34r:

 

Tels

"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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That doesn't sound so bad. :) Especially when you say that you would prefer to do scripting, because we only have one scripter so far and two C++ coders and one guy who can do GUI (which is rather similar with the scripting actually).

 

I also prfere your approach of providing building blocks like lego, because IMO that is what a good toolset is and what will incite more designers to create their own levels, as it is hard enough to get started. What we could use for example, are readily scripted machines which are complete. So that you can simply take i.e. a generator which has some moving parts attached and plug it in the map without the need of attaching all the moving parts manually and the sound, etc. If you can do this, and you sound like this would be a good job for you, then we could give it a try. :)

Gerhard

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That doesn't sound so bad. :) Especially when you say that you would prefer to do scripting, because we only have one scripter so far and two C++ coders and one guy who can do GUI (which is rather similar with the scripting actually).

 

I also prfere your approach of providing building blocks like lego, because IMO that is what a good toolset is and what will incite more designers to create their own levels, as it is hard enough to get started. What we could use for example, are readily scripted machines which are complete. So that you can simply take i.e. a generator which has some moving parts attached and plug it in the map without the need of attaching all the moving parts manually and the sound, etc. If you can do this, and you sound like this would be a good job for you, then we could give it a try. :)

Although I had more architectural stuff in mind (like church tower tops, archways, spiral staircases etc), the machines are important, too. I do not know what the state of the mod is, for instance, whether you have doors working or not. But I would like to start in these areas.

 

I posted in the other thread that I got gtkradiant to run on my machine, so I will now toy around with the tutorial maps I download and see if I can reproduce one and then load it on my doom3 here :)

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Tels

"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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Aye, we do have working doors in place.  A frob system.  Weapons.  :)  We're in pretty good shape so far.

Hm, frobbing, I love frobbing :ph34r:

 

My little grubby hands itch to get their fingers on your stuff :)

 

Anyway, I guess the inner sanctum er forum will have some info to get me up to speed on what the current status is, e.g. what needs to be done next?

 

best wishes,

 

Tels

"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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Well, did my first testmap in Linux. Some random comments:

 

Modding is really suboptimal under Linux (read: only for real man :D

 

Doom3 and Radiant are separate programs, and they do not run at the same time (at least in my system, doom3 just hangs at startup if radiant is already running). Meaning you have to:

  • start radiant
  • load your map
  • continue mapping
  • save your map
  • close radiant
  • start doom3
  • on console: "dmap yourmap"
  • on console: "map yourmap"
  • test your map
  • close doom3
  • restart radiant
  • load your work
  • continue mapping
  • rinse and repeat

That get's tedious really fast :(

 

Also, radiant crashes approx. every 2 minutes. Sometimes even faster :( So, save early, and very often!

 

Anyway, do you have anything specific in mind that I should do now? :D

"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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I don't have linux, but maybe it's the same:

 

when you're running the D3 radian simply press F2 and you get the D3 mainmenu - now open the console and write testmap xyz if you haven't compiled the map yet. ;) when you're done with testing - open the console and type 'exit' --> back to radiant.

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I don't have linux, but maybe it's the same:

 

when you're running the D3 radian simply press F2 and you get the D3 mainmenu - now open the console and write testmap xyz if you haven't compiled the map yet. ;) when you're done with testing - open the console and type 'exit' --> back to radiant.

 

No, under Linux it is not the same, the internal radiant inside Doom3 does not work. :)

"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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As mapping is concerend you should talk to Renzatic. If you want to go into scripting, You could look at the machines, or a generic system which can be used to create moving models.

 

I have no idea what machines you need (or already have). I guess it would be easy to add sound to, lets say, an generator. (OTOH, thats so easy, that you would already have done it :) However, moving parts of a model would be part of some internal animation, right?

 

And what exactly do you mean by "moving models"? Could you give me specific examples?

"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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IN Thief you could see machines whcih were animated (moving is not the proper word in english). So the have wheels which are turning and levers mving up and down and such stuff. Now the FM authro shouldn't be bothered to create all this animtions from scratch every time he wants to have a machine. Thus it would be the best to create complete machines which are already animated and you can simply plug it into the map. Don't know if this is possible like this but it would speed up the map creation.

Gerhard

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IN Thief you could see machines whcih were animated (moving is not the proper word in english).  So the have wheels which are turning and levers mving up and down and such stuff. Now the FM authro shouldn't be bothered to create all this animtions from scratch every time he wants to have a machine. Thus it would be the best to create complete machines which are already animated and you can simply plug it into the map. Don't know if this is possible like this but it would speed up the map creation.

 

I know what you mean and you are of course right :) I have to investigate how to do best this in Doom3. AFAIK, you can have animated brushes (like doors etc, and it is really great that you can animate pretty much anything!) and models (like monsters). Not sure yet which technique would be best for the machines, though.

 

Do you have a model of a simple machine that I could try to animate, say like a power generator? In similiar line, do you have a model of a lever (to switch lights on/off). If you already got buttons/levers working, fine, if not, I could have a go at such a system. As a warmup :D

"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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What's up with your writing lately spar? It's been getting steadily worse. :)

Dont nkow whatyuo mean,, his riting lokos purfectyl claer tu me.

 

:P

"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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Yeah, if you're using GTK that wont work. How come Doom's own editor aint running under Linux?

Dunno. If you try to start it, it says it "runs under win32 only". So, you have to put up with gtkradiant, and I am already tired of that crashing pile o' bugs - it reminds me soo much of DromEd :angry:

"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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Lever will not be animated by your extension. That would rather apply to stand alone machines which do something like turning wheels, moving stuff up and down and the likes.

 

As for the editor. Id only implemented the W32 version IMO. Maybe they thought that most people will use Windows anyway and those who don't have GtkRadiant to do their stuff.

Gerhard

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Lever will not be animated by your extension. That would rather apply to stand alone machines which do something like turning wheels, moving stuff up and down and the likes.

 

Ok. Since I am not good at modeling, respectively don't have any program with what to do that, anyway, do you have a model that I could animate? (Does need to be a usefull one :D

"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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I have searched now high and low for Doom3 tutorials, but haven't found anything beyond the most basic stuff.

 

Do you know of any thing I should bookmark and read?

 

Here are a couple I found:

 

http://doom3.planet-multiplayer.de/article.php?150.200 (only the most basic stuff - I already read it)

 

http://forums.glenmurphy.com/4/ (Not much there)

 

http://www.planetdoom.com/leveled/tutorials/ (Simple, basic, not good...)

 

There are a few that I think might be interesting (e.g. more than just "create your second room, create a ladder):

 

http://www.planetdoom.com/leveled/videotuts/

 

(Edit: Ah, crap, planetdoom is part of fileplanet, which wants you to register with the evil[tm] gamespy before you download. Screw that :angry:

 

Unfortunately, most of the "custom" objects (e.g. animated objects, textures) stuff deals with 3DS Max, which I do not have access to. So, there goes this idea.

 

Is there are a comprehensive guide to doom3 mapping/scripting? If not, would it make sense to start one? I wouldn't have a problem in hosting a wiki letting us pool our wisdoms together.

 

Best wishes,

 

Tels

Edited by Tels

"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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Thanx a lot! Bookmarked and devoured. I was getting doubtfull of my google capabilities :P

"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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