Acolyte6's 1st TDM FM :)

[acolyte6]

Now that I have plenty of time, I'm gonna give this a try Downloaded 1.0.7 DR today (hope this doesn't confuse the Tutuorials too much), thought I'd have the latest stuff

 

I feel like a dummy, but I'm actually stuck on the 5th page of the tutorial. I downloaded the tut and icon explanations...but...

 

In the section "Making your first room" --- STEP 1: 'Select' the Top view in the Grid view.

 

How do I do that? I looked in the Grid menu, but I find nothing with Top view...

 

I'm sure way down the road I'm gonna look back and laugh at this, but for now I'm trying to keep my motivation going to get the ball rolling

 

As of now the first mission will be a simple mansion/steal the safe mission. Once I get the hang of it I'll make it more elaborate

[Johannes Burock]

Now that I have plenty of time, I'm gonna give this a try Downloaded 1.0.7 DR today (hope this doesn't confuse the Tutuorials too much), thought I'd have the latest stuff

 

I feel like a dummy, but I'm actually stuck on the 5th page of the tutorial. I downloaded the tut and icon explanations...but...

 

In the section "Making your first room" --- STEP 1: 'Select' the Top view in the Grid view.

 

How do I do that? I looked in the Grid menu, but I find nothing with Top view...

 

I'm sure way down the road I'm gonna look back and laugh at this, but for now I'm trying to keep my motivation going to get the ball rolling

 

As of now the first mission will be a simple mansion/steal the safe mission. Once I get the hang of it I'll make it more elaborate

 

the top view is the one with the visible X-Y (green - red) layer (like in a normal cartesian coordinate system) . to change the view use ctrl + tab.

also you can see this under "view - orthographik - XY (top)".

Edited December 6, 2011 by Johannes Burock

[grayman]

Good luck!

[Melan]

Good luck, have fun, and remember that a released mission always beats a perfect mission.

[demagogue]

Welcome to the Dark side.

 

I was given the advice, after doing the tutorial, to make my first mission around 15-20 "rooms" in size on around a 1 month deadline of building time to learn the ropes, and I found doing that helpful for me. But there's no hard rules.

 

The other most useful piece of advice I got was the "stepwise refinement" method, which means you build the *entire* space of your mission first in rough blocks (so you have it all planned out first), then refine the whole thing in increasingly more detailed steps. Helps with motivation, but that's also a personal preference thing and you might build individual areas in whatever way you think is best. Also think about visPortal placement early on when you're drawing your map, and the performance impact of shadowing-lights & AI when thinking about placing them. I think those are the big things to know.

[acolyte6]

Thanks guys

 

Another quick question.

 

After saving tut.map file DR will not open it again

 

Failure to read map file:

(Parse Exception)

 

What does that mean?

 

Don't want to start work if I can't save it! What am I doing wrong?

Edited December 7, 2011 by acolyte6

[acolyte6]

Is there a "newbie" section @ TDM for beginners? where this post should probably be? I didn't find it.

 

Still having the the problem opening a saved map file The pop up file states:

 

Failure reading map file: 'location'

Unable to parse map version (parse exception)

[nbohr1more]

What's the name of the map file?

 

Is there a space in the name?

[PranQster]

What operating system? You might need to find your DR configuration file (user.xml) and delete it so it isn't trying to load the previous map when it starts. It should create a new file when it runs.

Windows XP: Docs & Settings/username/application data/darkradiant or Docs & settings/username/local/application data/darkradiant

Vista/7 : Users/username/appdata/local/darkradiant or similar path

Linux: /home/username/.darkradiant/user.xml ( there is the following, but not sure you want to modify an .xml file directly : <MRU><map1 value="/home/john/.doom3/darkmod/maps/j11/j11.map"/> ) <<that shows it loading my "j11" map. The map path and file name should be along those lines... /darkmod/maps/mapname/mapname.map

[PranQster]

The other most useful piece of advice I got was the "stepwise refinement" method, which means you build the *entire* space of your mission first in rough blocks (so you have it all planned out first), then refine the whole thing in increasingly more detailed steps. Helps with motivation, but that's also a personal preference thing and you might build individual areas in whatever way you think is best. Also think about visPortal placement early on when you're drawing your map, and the performance impact of shadowing-lights & AI when thinking about placing them. I think those are the big things to know.

I have gotten into this habit too. I like it a lot. I start with dragging out plain worldspawn cubes for areas of future construction and texturing them with caulk. If for no other reason, caulk is extremely handy for doing initial brush work because the pink color is so highly visible.

Then position and resize them according to what I plan for them to contain. Then later, when I have a better idea how I'm going to use them, I adjust the size and use the make-room tool on them to make them hollow with walls. I often put a little cube inside them, convert it to be func_static, and give it a name like "town 01" or "forest path 01"... to act as a sort of place marker (to be deleted later when I start construction there).

The next step I do is to make visportals in all rectangular areas where I make those 'rooms' connect to each other. Then, for outdoor areas, I make visportals to divide large areas into smaller sections. I only adjust those visportals if I need to after creating any worldspawn brushes which intersect them (I mostly use patches for outdoor terrain, so I usually don't need to adjust those visportals).

[demagogue]

Is there a "newbie" section @ TDM for beginners? where this post should probably be? I didn't find it.

 

There is a thread for newbies here: http://forums.thedar...iant-questions/

So you can skim through it to see common beginner's issues and ask any questions there, but it doesn't hurt to keep all your questions here now that you have this thread.

[Fidcal]

After saving tut.map file DR will not open it again

 

Failure to read map file:

(Parse Exception)

Menu: Edit > Preferences > Game. What do you see in each of the boxes?

What is the full path to your map file and the map name?

[acolyte6]

Menu: Edit > Preferences > Game. What do you see in each of the boxes?

What is the full path to your map file and the map name?

 

mod = darkmod

mod base = EMPTY

 

D:\RealmsOfThief\Doom3\darkmod\maps\t.map

[Fidcal]

mod = darkmod

mod base = EMPTY

 

D:\RealmsOfThief\Doom3\darkmod\maps\t.map

 

Are you trying to load from the history at the bottom of the file menu or selecting the file to open in the open file browser? Assuming the latter, are you saying you can see the file OK but when you click it you get a pop up message saying cannot read the file: location.

[acolyte6]

Are you trying to load from the history at the bottom of the file menu or selecting the file to open in the open file browser? Assuming the latter, are you saying you can see the file OK but when you click it you get a pop up message saying cannot read the file: location.

 

I'm trying to open within DR. (File/Open)

 

DR opens with the default 'unnamed.map' file, but when I try to open one that I have saved 'T.map' I get the warning pop-up window.

I opened a New default map and saved that as well as 'T.map' and tried opening it, but I get the same thing

I haven't done any work yet so I don't mind deleting anything at this point. What can I do?

[acolyte6]

What operating system? You might need to find your DR configuration file (user.xml) and delete it so it isn't trying to load the previous map when it starts. It should create a new file when it runs.

Vista/7 : Users/username/appdata/local/darkradiant or similar path

 

I can't find any folder with the name Darkradiant...

[acolyte6]

Funny thing. For kicks I tried opening the file 't_autosave.map' and that works just fine.

 

Could it be that I saved the other with a capital 'T' ?

[Fidcal]

Possibly. Try it. I've never understood the rules about caps but I always use lower case.

[acolyte6]

Nope, that didn't work. Still get the reading failure pop-up

 

It sucks that I can't even start working on the FM due to save problems

[Springheel]

Never heard of this before. Please copy and paste your .map file here (it's just a text file) so we can look at it and see if it's a problem with the file itself.

[acolyte6]

I opened it with notepad. The only thing it reads is "Version 2"

That's it...

By the way, I just noticed the space in the 'Doom 3' folder. Would that have anything to do with it?

[acolyte6]

Nvr mind the space, I saved it to a whole other directory & I get the same thing

[Fidcal]

Did you create anything at all in the map or just try to save the blank first? If so, try creating a brush at least before saving. Does my tutorial recommend saving from a blank start? Maybe that doesn't work now.

 

I recommend nowadays you start by inserting the prefab: misc/startobjectives_shop_tools_ammo

[Springheel]

I did a test, and if you save a map with no content, that's exactly what happens. You get a file that just says "Version 2" and an unable to parse error when you try to open it. This shouldn't happen (obviously) if you add some content before saving.

[acolyte6]

Ahhh... Gonna give that a try