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Improving the presentation of TDM


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9 hours ago, stgatilov said:

The current visual style ("parchments") is spread across core files of main menu and custom GUI in missions (briefing, messages, etc.). If we change the core files to other visual style, that would result in inconsistent visual style in many missions. The end result would be uglier in general.

Well you don't have to change the visual style of the in mission gui's to change the main tdm menu's (or maybe you do?), just keep the style somewhat similar. I don't understand the problem really..

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34 minutes ago, zergrush said:

I personally wasn't bothered by the difficulty of Tears of St Lucia when I first played TDM (this was before A New Job was released), but I did ironically felt frustrated at the safe puzzle in A New Job. The book points you towards the workbench, but it doesn't specify it's located in the basement, so I kept trying to find something at the innkeeper's two desks at his room instead!

Anyway this is also the reason why I asked to include a couple of quality FMs in the main package, just in case the campaign doesn't immediately rub with them and so they could have a taste at how single missions work.

A New Job could use a rework too. For one, I'm not sure why the mission that's supposed to be played by TDM newcomers has a difficulty titled "TDM Veteran"...

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10 hours ago, stgatilov said:

It is not only technical issue, it is also an artistic one.

The current visual style ("parchments") is spread across core files of main menu and custom GUI in missions (briefing, messages, etc.). If we change the core files to other visual style, that would result in inconsistent visual style in many missions. The end result would be uglier in general.

Good point, but we don't actually know that and I disagree that it would be "uglier"

There would be a small handful of missions that have some discrepancy with the core, but it wouldn't be any more noticeable than the variety we have in hand drawn in-game maps, custom title screens, or custom briefing videos, ect.

EDIT: Also it would be easy enough  to give author's a packet of resources to update their custom guis to the new look. 

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50 minutes ago, marbleman said:

A New Job could use a rework too. For one, I'm not sure why the mission that's supposed to be played by TDM newcomers has a difficulty titled "TDM Veteran"...

Because it adds replay value for experienced players who want to revisit the mission. I still play A New Job sometimes on max difficulty.

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On 3/7/2022 at 3:17 PM, stgatilov said:

..

Don't hope for an official campaign though: there already was one such effort, and the cost was too high for the community.

..

Perhaps a visible FAQ button should be put into the main menu, where players can get a look at the most asked questions that the team knows, have a definite answer, this will probably help diminish this type of questions. 

For example questions like the following could be on the faq, "will TDM ever have a full campaign?", "will TDM ever be on steam?", "what engine does this game use?", "will you guys ever change to Unity/UE4?", "Why is 'this thief character' not in TDM?", "Is this the Thief universe?", "Can I give you guys money?", etc, etc. 

On 3/7/2022 at 5:43 PM, cabalistic said:

The problem with UI, I'm afraid, is first and foremost a technical issue. The existing UI system is an absolute pain to work with, and any effort to implement any reasonable modern UI concept in that system will drive every developer involved in the effort absolutely insane. I'm only half joking.

Before any such effort could take place, I feel that the system needs to be replaced entirely. But that is also a massive pain because there's no good option to keep backwards-compatibility with existing missions. And the most obvious candidates for UI systems are rather large dependencies. So while I agree with the necessity of a UI overhaul, I'm not very optimistic for it to happen anytime soon.

Indeed, idtech4 UI system is very laborious, specially when a good editor for it is non existent, Quake 4 GUI editor is very very simplistic, unstable and worse, better not use it to edit a already made complex GUI, because at save time, it WILL destroy/delete, all gui code that you wrote by hand that it doesn't support, pretty much the majority of the GUI scripting code.

But to be fair, compared to BFG engine that uses adobe flash, imo is way easy to make a simple GUI using original idtech4 system.

Spoiler

So having worked with GUI's myself, I learned and found a few things that really can make a GUI coder life better, the main one I found was to implement the ability to call onNamedEvents on the gui itself, instead of only calling them from c++, like you can on Quake 4 engine (don't know if they use the same system, but mine works...).

Is simple on the c++ side but has a big effect on real time GUI control!

may not work for everything but until now for most simple buttons I did, worked fine. 

 

// On c++ side

guiCommandDef_t commandList[] = {
...
	{ "namedEvent",			Script_NamedEvent, 1, 1 },
...
};


/*
=========================
Script_NamedEvent
=========================
*/
void Script_NamedEvent(idWindow *window, idList<idGSWinVar> *src) {
	auto* parm = cast(idWinStr*)((*src)[0].var);
	if (parm) {
		window->GetGui()->HandleNamedEvent(parm->c_str());
	}
}
  
  
// then on a gui you do 
  
// Quit button functionality
onNamedEvent Quit {
	localSound guisounds_click3;
	set "cmd" "exec quit";
}
  
  
onAction {
	localSound guisounds_click3;
	namedEvent "Quit";
}

Other thing I found that imo, makes things more or less easy (when it works fine), is that DoomScript #define macros, work in the GUI files.

And even thou seems logic now, was a surprise to me, because afaik, no original Doom 3 GUI's used that (apart from #include).

But it has some... particularities, it works in some situations but not others, for example in the case of colors, those defined with #define, don't work in transitions and when using the cmd "set", for that you need to use definevec4 inside the main Desktop window, perhaps that is why #define was not used. 

#define COLOR_WHITE			1,1,1,1  // global color, doesn't work in all situations, for example in transitions or with set, may give no error


windowDef Desktop {
definevec4 "COLOR_BLACK"         0,0,0,1 // local color, works in transitions and with "set"
definevec4 "COLOR_WHITE"         1,1,1,1

    windowDef wind1 {
    		...
            matcolor COLOR_WHITE // global color
    		...

			set "wind2::matcolor" "$Desktop::COLOR_BLACK";  // local color
			transition "wind2::matcolor" "$Desktop::COLOR_WHITE" "$Desktop::COLOR_BLACK" "1000"; // local colors
        }
}

Has you can see above, if you didn't already knew, you can even use "pointers" in gui script, using $ and I never knew that until recently!

And probably other stuff that I may have forgot or not know.

Btw apart from the namedEvent thing, that even Quake 4 devs implemented (something like it at lest), I don't claim any of the #define macro stuff is rock solid and reliable, it worked in the simplistic GUI's I made until now, after finding the limitations that is, but anything more complex may show problems.

So having said all of this, perhaps the best way to help improve the GUI situation for the TDM, maybe to make a GUI editor (but is wishful thinking I know), or improve the Quake 4 GUI editor somehow but be stuck on windows with it...

 

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7 hours ago, HMart said:

For example questions like the following could be on the faq, "will TDM ever have a full campaign?", "will TDM ever be on steam?", "what engine does this game use?", "will you guys ever change to Unity/UE4?", "Why is 'this thief character' not in TDM?", "Is this the Thief universe?", "Can I give you guys money?", etc, etc.

This is OK for a forum FAQ, and has nothing to do with the game.

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On 3/7/2022 at 6:35 PM, Goldwell said:

 

I did actually make a prototype which I thought was an improvement. But it wasn't liked and then we discussed adding more complexities which started to expand the time it would take me. Couple that with a lot of real life commitments taking up my time, it became hard to devote time to this. Now all of my spare time is put into finishing off the Shadows of Northdale campaign.

 

I like the current TDM logo but it just needs to be more high definition. No changes needed.

Reminds me of the cool red glow from Prince of Persia Warrior Within

 

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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1 minute ago, Anderson said:

I like the current TDM logo but it just needs to be more high definition. No changes needed.

 

If the team wants to do that then the easiest way to do that would be asking whoever has the source files of the original intro video and then re-render it at a higher quality.

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I believe that there is a console command to split ROQ videos back into images.

If this still exists, we could then take the resultant images and pass them through and AI upscaler and re-encode?

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

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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15 hours ago, stgatilov said:

This is OK for a forum FAQ, and has nothing to do with the game.

Hum, I get what you mean and in sense you are right but IMO having a generic faq on the game menu itself, doesn't hurt anything, specially for a game like TDM that is very unique in the way it's gameplay is so varied and disconnected, but I comprehend if is not normal or wanted.

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Recently figured out that you can lock unlocked doors with keys by pressing "use". I suppose that if the AI does not have the key, he can't unlock it and he's trapped. But idk for sure.

Idk if AI treats unlocked doors that should be locked as suspicious or not. Sometimes AI is aggroed but it's hard to tell what caused it - too many candles extinguished all over the place, doors opened, valuable loot missing etc. Only the wiki offers clues in this regard.

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

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2 hours ago, Anderson said:

I suppose that if the AI does not have the key, he can't unlock it and he's trapped. But idk for sure.

Usually this is not the case, so even though you have the key and he does not and you locked the door, he can still unlock it.

I guess you can script-change the ability of the ai to open the door based on the event that you lock the door.

Edit: Sorry I just responded to the last post, but see now this goes i.m.o. off topic.

Edited by datiswous
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33 minutes ago, datiswous said:

Usually this is not the case, so even though you have the key and he does not and you locked the door, he can still unlock it.

I guess you can script-change the ability of the ai to open the door based on the event that you lock the door.

Edit: Sorry I just responded to the last post, but see now this goes i.m.o. off topic.

Thanks this concerns the point regarding a better tutorial missions featuring all hidden TDM features.

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

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I question the value of the stock dark mod video that plays after clicking New Mission. If the FM author has provided their own briefing video then cool, but the basic one that autoplays if a custom one isn't available doesn't really serve much value since it's like, OK we know what game we're running.

If it's there to break up a sudden transition from the main menu to the briefing section, maybe add some quick black fade-ins/fade-outs to smooth the transition instead. If the stock video is still desired however, then I'd agree that it should be re-rendered to a higher fidelity so that it can make use of the improved video support.

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A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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