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The Worst TDM Missions


Shadowhide

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Things I'd like to see are...

 

- More textures. General quality is okay for me, but I just want to see more and more variety so I have a bigger selection to pick from, more 'families' of styles, more textures good for borders and detailing... More specifically, it feels like we have one family for Tudor exteriors, and I'd be happy to see two or so more urban-texture families. Another thing is we just have the one good "grime" decal and a "dirt" decal (IIRC), which is good but we need a few more IMO so we don't feel we're using the same decal on every other surface, and for some variety.

- Related to that, there's been a longstanding culture in T2 mapping where people felt free to make and use custom textures (and models) that other mappers could use, and I think that'd be a good culture to encourage for TDM too.

- The hard shadows don't bother me much because that's offset with them being dynamic, which makes a scene come alive. But when I play other games I noticed how radiance makes a big improvement to the feel & softness of the space. If somebody got a system for that working with the source, I'd be interested to see it. (We do have the location-based system that gets some of that effect through the ambient light, that's better than what we started with & still fast, but not the whole way there.)

- This isn't directed to the mod, but to mappers. I was so impressed by those FMs where some geometry was done in a modeling program and imported. I'd like to see that technique used more. It just blows the door open on the level of detailing you can achieve. Also the SEED system.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Textures: I have contributed a lot of them, and they are making their way into the mod (some may still not be in; Serpentine would know that). But the question is, since TDM has a "central" texture source which is being downloaded with version updates, I don't know how far we can push that. My main source, CGTextures does not allow the distribution of texture packs, only inclusion along with game mods / missions, and I wouldn't want to absue it.

 

So the question is, do we need more stonework/bricks?

Trims? Panels? Architectural detail and windows?

I think we definitely need more good metal textures, some machinery and of course decals. I have not made any custom decal textures yet, although I have a bunch of source images.

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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some of the complaints are sound, ai behavior that feel (lol) plasticy.

 

Really? In what way? I could see complaining about some of the animations, but are there other games out there with AI that are more versatile and reactive than ours? I'm not aware of any.

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- Related to that, there's been a longstanding culture in T2 mapping where people felt free to make and use custom textures (and models) that other mappers could use, and I think that'd be a good culture to encourage for TDM too.

 

Textures: I have contributed a lot of them, and they are making their way into the mod (some may still not be in; Serpentine would know that). But the question is, since TDM has a "central" texture source which is being downloaded with version updates, I don't know how far we can push that. My main source, CGTextures does not allow the distribution of texture packs, only inclusion along with game mods / missions, and I wouldn't want to absue it.

 

I recall that the idea of a central repository for mappers and asset creators to share their work has been discussed in the past, as a better alternative to the current choices of (1) expanding the core mod with loads of additional resources or (2) requiring map authors to produce lots of custom assets for their own maps.

 

It seems like a good idea to me, but of course it requires somebody with the knowledge and the time to actually set up and administer an online content management system, which is a non-trivial task. Obviously any shared assets would need to be made available under a suitable free licence, like CC or equivalent, so anything based on restricted works would be excluded.

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I go away for a week - I come back and a Shadowhide thread called "The Worst TDM Missions" is top of the list of new stuff.

 

Why was this thread not throttled at birth and Shadowhide suspended for shit-stirring?

"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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I recall that the idea of a central repository for mappers and asset creators to share their work has been discussed in the past, as a better alternative to the current choices of (1) expanding the core mod with loads of additional resources or (2) requiring map authors to produce lots of custom assets for their own maps.

 

It seems like a good idea to me, but of course it requires somebody with the knowledge and the time to actually set up and administer an online content management system, which is a non-trivial task. Obviously any shared assets would need to be made available under a suitable free licence, like CC or equivalent, so anything based on restricted works would be excluded.

 

However, I am not sure this is a good idea from a users perspective. If only one mapper uses the asset, why bother with the repository? And if more than one mapper uses the asset, why not add it to the mod - otherwise the user has it twice on their disk.

 

Theoretically it might have some benefits, but as you said, there is a high hurdle to set it up. Maybe it might be much easier to write a web-front-end-browser that can display the core assets - although it is not updated as frequently, it would come very close.

"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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However, a concrete example would help.

 

Here you go:

 

http://www.textureking.com/content/img/stock/big/DSC_3514.JPG

 

But I am not sure how such concrete example alone will help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SCNR;)

"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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One more reason (which was raised by Zylonbane): higher graphical quality means you need more stuff to make a scene come alive.

  • In Thief missions, you can have a room (cube air brush, cylinder air brush for the vaulting... another cube air for trim if you are feeling fancy) with a stool, and a niche with a torch in it. That's a scene.
  • In TDM, that's not a scene yet. You need more detail, decals (grime, cobwebs) and little objects to impart the same feeling of completeness.

I am generalising here, but we accept a level of abstraction from Thief that we don't accept from TDM. Hence why some missions - which lack that extra work - may feel less organic, less lived-in. Sometimes people don't do that work, and it shows. On the upside, I believe it is not much more work, just a matter of a little more attention.

 

On the other hand, there are zillions of Thief missions which don't feel organic and never did. The default Thief 2 texture families for example are monumentally unsuited for building game spaces that look alive. They look incredibly flat unless lit very well. Some people have managed to do it, but many more have failed. Thief 1... for some reason, though, Thief 1 missions, even if fairly plain, tend to look at least decent. I think it is about colour contrasts, and a feeling of grittyness in the rough 256-colour palette. So it is also a matter of choosing your textures. That's like a painter choosing his or her colours. Supremely important.

 

I think this effect can be seen in paintings and comics vs. computer rendered "photographs". It is perfecty fine for a comic to be "realistic" with only 8 colors, but a computer rendered file will look completely wrong unless it is VERY detailed AND has a lot of artificial dirt, smudges etc in it. Or you do what was a way out a while back and use a cell-shader :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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However, I am not sure this is a good idea from a users perspective. If only one mapper uses the asset, why bother with the repository? And if more than one mapper uses the asset, why not add it to the mod - otherwise the user has it twice on their disk.

 

Repository allows mappers to share assets they've found or created, without having to make individual threads for "asset donations" or whatever. Having it all in one dedicated place could help mappers find stuff they hadn't heard about. Repository could have advanced search options using tags, file size ranges, color ranges, duration (audio), etc. Popular, high quality assets could be added to the mod, there could even be a simple voting system to help determine this. I don't really see making the repository CMS to be the difficult bit, as much as potential bandwidth/storage issues and a modicum level of security.

 

User might delete missions to save space, but won't be deleting mod assets (aside: could a script be used to identify duplicate assets in multiple missions?). Also, how would mappers #2-X get texture/model Z now, by noticing it in a mission and asking the mission author? Creating a central location for legally/license acceptable materials to reside could help promote variety, quality and notability.

 

What are the criteria for assets to be added now? How often do assets get overlooked?

Edited by jaxa
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Repository allows mappers to share assets they've found or created, without having to make individual threads for "asset donations" or whatever.

 

But can't you just use the assets provided with the new released maps?

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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ok,there is few problems with TDM textures : some of them is too flat and some them is too clean

there is a problem with gameplay in TDM : player (Thief) running slower than heavy-armored guards

Post-processing effects is quite good and adjustable

Edited by Shadowhide

Proceed with caution!

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But can't you just use the assets provided with the new released maps?

 

Yes, I believe that's basically the agreement of a released FM, though it never hurts to be nice and ask.

 

However, if you don't know it's released... Nice to have a repository for people to look at. But like someone said, it takes maintenance, and I found with Low Poly Guild (model hosting site for T2) that I spent WAY more time trying to keep it up then I wanted.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I'd say so. B)

 

One thing that you may be having an issue with is that Doom 3's reliance on normal maps has two troubling consequences:

 

1) Since they eat Gallons of texture memory, your budget for unique textures is lower and hence more repetition

2) With older static lit engines, you could use hand-drawn "bridge textures" to add nuance and detail to material transitions...

....with normal maps these transitions would need to be made as high-poly models and baked to a model that is a copy of the brush geometry (unless you've got an eye from drawing normals by hand...)

 

Problem 2 is something that I've been considering awhile now. The answer to how "solvable" it is comes down to:

 

1) Is there a tool that can convert Normal Maps back to geometry (Oneofthe8devils had a doom3world thread that implied there was...) ?

2) Might it be possible to modify the "renderbump" command to work with brushes and patches?

3) Are there any tools that can convert normal mapped brush prefabs into "virtual high-poly models" in real-time to "sculpt normals"

 

Blender plugins (etc).

 

I'm surprised that such solutions would never have been discussed before given how widespread the use of Normal Maps are but

I guess that since UE3 is heavily biased towards Modelers (as the core content creators) that the topic has not really been broached that

much by the industry...

If DR ever gets the ability to blend between textures using vertex colors on patches and brushes (as opposed to only models with ready-made vertex colors) this article from the Amnesia guys might be worth a look:

http://frictionalgam...n-textures.html

About 1/3 down the page (close to the articles end) they discuss a nice way to blend texture that looks a lot better than the regular linear interpolation. Their tecnique requires that the textures that are to be interpreted between will need an additional alpha so there would be an initial extra effort for that but I think it'd be worth it.

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there is a problem with gameplay in TDM : player (Thief) running slower than heavy-armored guards

 

The player is faster than guards.

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However, I am not sure this is a good idea from a users perspective. If only one mapper uses the asset, why bother with the repository? And if more than one mapper uses the asset, why not add it to the mod - otherwise the user has it twice on their disk.

 

You're right that there is going to be some space wastage, but this is unavoidable in any case:

 

Adding to asset repository

  • Initial Mod download size kept to a minimum, individual FMs increase in download size by a percentage that depends on the amount of additional assets used in that one mission. Some of these assets may be redundantly included in several maps.
  • Mappers have access to new assets as soon as they are made available in the repository.

Adding to core mod

  • Initial Mod size increased by the total amount of additional assets that are used across all missions, even if the user never installs or plays those missions.
  • Mappers do not have access to new assets until a new Mod release, unless they re-use them from other released FMs which results in the same redundancy as with the asset repository, as well as additional redundancy since the assets are now in the core mod and the already-released FMs.

But can't you just use the assets provided with the new released maps?

 

In addition to all of the points jaxa has raised, you also can't easily search for assets of a particular type this way, or see at a glance what is available from the entire community.

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If DR ever gets the ability to blend between textures using vertex colors on patches and brushes

 

That is actually now a possibility with the open source D3 engine. There was never any point in adding such a feature to the editor before, because the game has no support for it.

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Im going to stop bitching about it now.

 

About the the ai, really think you should keep improving this, especially speech and animation.

I know it would be tough to get high quality voice acting, especially when this is a no money project, but if the oppurtiny shows up i'd say go for it.

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Are mappers automatically announcing every new texture, model, sound, scripting technique, etc. that appears in their missions?

 

No they aren't. But if someone cares about it, one could open the .pk4 file which includes all things that are not actually provided by the stadard game. I guess you would have to do the same with the online repository .. instead it's online :laugh:

 

Yes, I believe that's basically the agreement of a released FM, though it never hurts to be nice and ask.

Sound's good! And since every mapper is continous online here in the forums, asking would not be a problem ^_^

 

not much

I personally like that. Especially if you recall how it was in Thief 3: You just had to run around two corners and the even slower guards stopped and took a breath :wacko:

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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