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TDM 2.05 official introductory missions


Springheel

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Excellent level of detail, only the lightning feels a bit TDS-era. many of those excellent modular sections are kept in the ambient darkness.

 

 

@Judith: I think you have a valid point here. How would you deal with that? It didn't make much sense to me to have lit candles at night in unoccupied rooms, and I could only have the light from the windows reach so far.

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@Judith: I think you have a valid point here. How would you deal with that? It didn't make much sense to me to have lit candles at night in unoccupied rooms, and I could only have the light from the windows reach so far.

One suggestion which I immediately thought of that I'm sure Judith is accustomed to seeing in TDS, and I know you or Grayman did a test map of a while back - thin blue fog? With the jump in perf of 2.05 is this something we could implement..?

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No. The solution here is what was done in Sir Talbot's Collateral. Bounce lights representing the lighting from the illuminated window.

And perhaps at least one light source (candle, etc). Fog will just make the room look strange.

 

This:

 

newjob_2017_02_15_11_07_39.jpg

 

vs:

 

16ae88p.jpg

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No. The solution here is what was done in Sir Talbot's Collateral. Bounce lights representing the lighting from the illuminated window.

 

 

Is it reasonable for light to bounce far enough in the top pic to do any good? That window isn't facing the direction of the moon so isn't getting direct light. I can't see it reaching all the way to the shelves.

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@Judith: I think you have a valid point here. How would you deal with that? It didn't make much sense to me to have lit candles at night in unoccupied rooms, and I could only have the light from the windows reach so far.

 

Basically what nbohr1more said. Since this is not mission-critical area, you could make the ambient light from the window go at least to the middle of this room. Fake some light bouncing on both walls, floor and ceiling. Even this example from Sir Talbot's Collateral is too subtle. I was thinking more like this:

 

julien_lefebvre_192_168_40_107_20141121_

 

You have projection lights and bounce lights everywhere in this location. Generally, you have to start thinking about and using (faking) indirect lightning in your scenes. There's no engine, realtime or otherwise that will make well-looking a scene with direct lights only. Even architectural renderers like mental ray or vray use stuff like fake light-emitting surfaces near windows to get more light inside a room.

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Is it reasonable for light to bounce far enough in the top pic to do any good? That window isn't facing the direction of the moon so isn't getting direct light. I can't see it reaching all the way to the shelves.

 

In a real-world lighting scenario, even the meager amount of light from the window would produce some directionality. While the bounce-lights in Sir Talbot's aren't fully realistic,

they convey an instinctive realism that is no less inaccurate than the other shortcommings of our lighting model. (Remember also, that you can set the light level very low

so it's influence is very subtle. I briefly mentioned to Rebb that we should consider allowing mappers to specify directionality in ambient lighting for this same use-case, currently

it's hard-coded to sky facing...)

 

If we are in complete darkness here, then Sotha's attached ambient is a better solution to convey the sense of darkness while making the area playable.

As the ambient in the room is rather bright, it would seem more natural (to me) that bounce lighting is a better fit for this use case.

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

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No. The solution here is what was done in Sir Talbot's Collateral. Bounce lights representing the lighting from the illuminated window.

 

Ah yes I forgot I did this.

 

@Springheel, what I did above -

  1. have an 'lights/ambientlight' inside the window
  2. then a projected light
  3. and then placed a bounce light with 'falloff_exp1' at a 1/4 or 1/3 the luminosity of 1st light, that it filled part of the room nearest the window (I made sure the radius side nearest the window on went partway into the wall) - you may have to play with this till it 'looks right'
  4. then some FS moonlight patches.
  5. and lastly a floating dust emitter.

And for room where there was a inside light, I triggered the projected, bounce light from the inside light so that when said light was switch on it was turn them off. I only did this where the internel light was bright enough to close to the window.

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Very nice indeed. What kind of light is that hitting the walls? Is it omni or projected?

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Projected, one per wall. One stretched omni with proper falloff would be easier to place, but probably harder to control. The wall with the window would probably be too bright as a result. Will check that next time. Good thing noshadow lights are cheap. A small subtle light at the bed frame would probably a good idea too. And yeah, the window should have proper skin, I forgot to switch it ;)

Edited by Judith
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Im sure I can get the same effect with an omni, using the method I described above. Give me an hour to know something up and tweak it..

 

You need to have a bit of darkness at wall edges and in the corners, and the light on all surfaces except the window needs to look a bit like a gradient. One omni light will be too simple for that.

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Just thought I would chime in and say that I finally nagged one of my friends hard enough to try TDM, and that they had a really good experience! They displayed a tendency for murder at first, but I eventually managed to convince them to try being a bit more stealthy. They had a lot of fun with A New Job (and avoided the bug, although I did forewarn them that it might occur).

 

On the topic of the desk bug (and the name bug), I think it will definitely be important to have it fixed by the time the game releases on steam. At the very least a separate build should be put up if there is no desire to fix it through the regular updater until 2.06.

Wouldn't it be relatively easy to update through the updater though? Aside from the difficulty creating a new build, doesn't it work on a differential basis? I didn't have to download the whole game again when I patched from 2.04... Changing just one mission should be a small update.

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Im sure I can get the same effect with an omni, using the method I described above. Give me an hour to know something up and tweak it..

You need to have a bit of darkness at wall edges and in the corners, and the light on all surfaces except the window needs to look a bit like a gradient. One omni light will be too simple for that.

Ok here is a rough draft using 3 lights on the window and 2 on the fireplace, sorry for the low qaulity video and YT seems to have darkened it as well..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggwFY62_3q0

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You don't have to rebuild lightning, whatever you mean by that. Just add the light and load the map in TDM. You only need to dmap if you change worldspawn geometry.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

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My wiki articles: Obstipedia

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Well, that's something. Rebuilding the whole map every time would be a major pain. Rebuilding lightning is basically recalculating lightmaps, so basically every current and last gen engine uses it. TDS had that option as well, but can't remember what for.

Edited by Judith
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Curious: Has anyone else had the loading screen for Lucia freeze on them? I'm not sure if it was just me, if it was loading but very slowly, etc.

Because in mystery novels, the first suspect is almost certainly never the murderer. No matter how much unmovable evidence there is, it will all be smashed in pieces by the wrath of the remaining number of pages of the story.

 

-"The Evil Spirit of the Zushi Clan" from Virtual Carnal Pleasure by Yamada Fuutarou

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Finally we have a fire elemental. Description says its still WIP, could it be designed to modular and customizable, so author can easily i.e. make default model invisible, bind any custom model or emitter to joints? There is wide variety of small AIs that can be done out of it - flying eyes, hornets, steambots, spectres, fishes - so simple transparent drag-and-drop layout will be really beneficial imo.

S2wtMNl.gif

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You could, but it will still behave like a fire elemental (ie, probably not swim).

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It was designed to be a fire elemental. It dies in water, shoots fireballs at you, and either wanders around or follows path nodes.

 

If, during the work on 2.06, there are opportunities to extend the basic behavior via spawnargs, then other AI could be based on it.

 

Atm, I can't anticipate the feedback I get from the FE as it is, so I can't predict (or sign up for) any extensions to the basic behavior.

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Hey Springheel,

 

The intro mission was fantastic, really well-planned stealth, visuals, and ambience. One thing in particular I liked was that the encounters felt fair and well-balanced. Thanks so much for this and I'm looking forward to playing Lucia v2!

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