Project: Extinguish small lights with a blow

[wesp5]

So I just tested version 0.4 of the blow mod and I really like it! This would indeed be an easy way to make any small flame extinguishable without too much effort. The main problem is indeed blowing out flames through walls or through lamps themselves if they e.g. hang down and you blow from below. Also you can blow quite a large margin to the side of a flame and it still goes out! The sounds are fine, but the icon does not fit with the graphical style of TDM and of course if I would use that for the patch, I would remove ignite, as this is what the flint is for and it might be important in some missions to not have it from the start.

[Obsttorte]

1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

But I would really like to fix the issue that candles you just extinguished by frobing get taken automatically, because the main idea behind the direct frobing was to remove possible sounds when picking them up. Obsttorte, can you please help me out here?

That's because they are still grabable. The pickup is done by the engine code. You have to make the light holders non-grabable.

[snatcher]

55 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

The main problem is indeed blowing out flames through walls or through lamps themselves if they e.g. hang down and you blow from below. Also you can blow quite a large margin to the side of a flame and it still goes out!

Yep. Few more battles ahead before victory is ours.

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, Obsttorte said:

You have to make the light holders non-grabable.

This would be a huge change basically removing all moveable light sources. Or is there a command like e. g. setGrabable(0) (this one isn't recognized) to do this only after you extinguished them, when they became pretty much useless anyway?

Edited July 21, 2022 by wesp5

[wesp5]

49 minutes ago, snatcher said:

Yep. Few more battles ahead before victory is ours.

I would guess the easiest solution to that would be to lower the distance below even the thinnest wall in the game. As for the icon, a small picture of the player's mouth in the same style as the main game would be cool, because the player's arm is already shown on the inventory screen! And maybe get rid of or hide the "aquired blow" message if that is possible...

Edited July 21, 2022 by wesp5

[wesp5]

Okay, so I lowered the distance to 30 which needs you to get very close and even blowing through a dressing screen isn't possible anymore in "The Bakery Job". I also merged the two playertools scripts into one and removed ignite because we already have flint. Now all that is left is a suitable icon, then I would like to add this to the patch with your permission as a contingency plan for all flames that can not be extinguished by normal means!

Edited July 21, 2022 by wesp5

[snatcher]

8 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

I would guess the easiest solution to that would be to lower the distance below even the thinnest wall in the game.

The current distance between the flame and the player's eyes is the minimum distance (plus a buffer) required to extinguish a standing chandelier without the need of a jump.

We'll have to determine if something else is between the player and the flame but we aren't at that stage yet.

1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

[...] you can blow quite a large margin to the side of a flame and it still goes out!

We must determine if the player is looking in the direction of the object. We need help from Obsttorte, Dragofer or any other guru.

8 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

As for the icon, a small picture of the player's mouth in the same style as the main game would be cool, because the player's arm is already shown on the inventory screen!

You need to review my posts in this topic

In any case, the idea is to do without any icon.

----------------------------------------------------

And before you come and say: the blow doesn't work in this mission! - know that I am well aware of. Some mappers employ their own custom flames.

[snatcher]

4 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

Okay, so I lowered the distance to 30 which needs you to get very close and even blowing through a dressing screen isn't possible anymore in "The Bakery Job". I also merged the two playertools scripts into one and removed ignite because we already have flint. Now all that is left is a suitable icon, then I would like to add this to the patch with your permission as a contingency plan for all flames that can not be extinguished by normal means!

Geez man, relax and enjoy the ride

We aren't there yet.

[wesp5]

8 minutes ago, snatcher said:

Geez man, relax and enjoy the ride

We aren't there yet.

But I like playing around myself a bit :)! Do you have an example mission with that chandelier you were talking about? Already I often have to jump to extinguish hanging oil lamps for example. As for the blowing working from the side, this doesn't really matter, especially if the distance is low. About the icon, I disagree! With a new feature like that it must be visible to the player and clearing the inventory would mean using another key. Also I merged the def into playertools!

Edited July 21, 2022 by wesp5

[snatcher]

5 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

But I like playing around myself a bit

And I encourage you to do so. The more feedback, the better.

5 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

Do you have an example mission with that chandelier you were talking about?

Briarwood Cathedral.

5 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

About the icon, I disagree! With a new feature like that it must be visible to the player and clearing the inventory would mean using another key. Also I merged the def into playertools!

You can do what you please, Sir. Just make sure to have fun.

[Obsttorte]

52 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

This would be a huge change basically removing all moveable light sources. Or is there a command like e. g. setGrabable(0) (this one isn't recognized) to do this only after you extinguished them, when they became pretty much useless anyway?

Alter the base entity definition!!! And no, the light sources are still moveable, even grabable. But the latter would be handled by your script instead of the engine, which is, as I understood it, what you are aiming for.

[wesp5]

16 minutes ago, Obsttorte said:

Alter the base entity definition!!!

Thanks, that did it! I still don't understand half of what I am doing, but the end result is fine ;). Also I found a great (probably unused) icon for blow called fog_swirl.dds...

[Dragofer]

Most walls in TDM are 8-16 units, so reducing distance won't be adequate. You can let the script do a trace to detect whether there is something solid inbetween you and the candle. My camgoyle turret's scriptobject, as found in my scripting thread (see signature), makes use of traces.

[snatcher]

Which base objects do the below flames get attached to?

• light_candleflame_moving
• light_oilflame_moving

I don't know what these are for

[Dragofer]

16 minutes ago, snatcher said:

Which base objects do the below flames get attached to?

• light_candleflame_moving
• light_oilflame_moving

I don't know what these are for

You'll find them in "def_attach" spawnargs of candle holder entities. I doubt any holders use the moving versions, though.

Can unpack all your TDM .pk4's and use Notepad++ to search in .def files for such spawnargs.

[wesp5]

I found a way to silently adding Blow to the inventory, copying from Dragofer's statistic scroll:

1. Remove everything except entity blow = sys.spawn("atdm:playertools_blow"); from void playertools_blow_init

2. Add "inv_map_start" "1" to entityDef atdm:playertools_blow

Speaking of details though, to not get any silly connotations, shouldn't we rename it to Snuff?

Edited July 21, 2022 by wesp5

[snatcher]

14 minutes ago, Dragofer said:

You'll find them in "def_attach" spawnargs of candle holder entities. I doubt any holders use the moving versions, though.

Can unpack all your TDM .pk4's and use Notepad++ to search in .def files for such spawnargs.

Thanks, Dragofer. I will have them included the same, just in case.

11 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

I found a way to silently adding Blow to the inventory, copying from Dragofer's statistic scroll:

1. Remove everything except entity blow = sys.spawn("atdm:playertools_blow"); from void playertools_blow_init

2. Add "inv_map_start" "1" to entityDef atdm:playertools_blow

Very nice!

11 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

Speaking of details though, to not get any silly connotations, shouldn't we rename it to Snuff?

English isn't my native language so I cannot tell what works best. Let me say though, the more recognizable a name is for an international audience, the better.

[Obsttorte]

The moveables get indeed used rarely afaik as they are very performance hungry. A compareable effect can be achieved via the light shader at a way lower cost.

[snatcher]

@Dragofer the trace works, thank you very much

vector player_pos = $player1.getEyePos();
vector flame_pos = small_flame.getWorldOrigin();
if(sys.trace(player_pos, flame_pos, '-0 -0 -0', '0 0 0', CONTENTS_SOLID, self) == 1)
{
// go!
}

A question for everybody: what are '-0 -0 -0' and '0 0 0' for? A tolerance? Not sure I should use them.

[Dragofer]

1 hour ago, snatcher said:

@Dragofer the trace works, thank you very much

vector player_pos = $player1.getEyePos();
vector flame_pos = small_flame.getWorldOrigin();
if(sys.trace(player_pos, flame_pos, '-0 -0 -0', '0 0 0', CONTENTS_SOLID, self) == 1)
{
// go!
}

A question for everybody: what are '-0 -0 -0' and '0 0 0' for? A tolerance? Not sure I should use them.

It's the positions of the top left and bottom right corner of the box that the trace moves from the player's eyes to the flame. If the box hits anything else on the way the trace returns less than 1.

If you don't want to use a box you may as well use tracePoint instead and delete those two vectors.

[snatcher]

I don't see why I would need a box in this case and tracePoint does the job pretty well.

Thank you very much.

[snatcher]

You can find in this post version 0.5.

• Added detection of light_candleflame_moving & light_oilflame_moving
• Both Blow & Ignite abilities get silently loaded on mission start - thanks @wesp5 !
• Is player looking in the direction of the flame? Check! (from the Flash-bomb script)
• Is there anything in-between the player and the flame?  Check! - thanks @Dragofer !

I appreciate if the code gets reviewed for potential errors or improvements.

I have been looking to see if I could detect if a flame is on or off. getKey("extinguished") apparently doesn't get updated "live". Any ideas on this matter?

Blow_Ignite_v0.5.zip

[wesp5]

I just tested it a bit in the training mission and everything worked fine!

Edited July 21, 2022 by wesp5

[snatcher]

And here is version 0.6

I managed to detect if a flame is lit or not and that allowed me to do something I wasn't sure could be achieved.

The idea keeps growing, evolving and taking new forms and now Blow and Ignite have been merged into a single skill:

Find the download below.

FlameMaster_v0.6.zip

[wesp5]

That is contraproductive for the patch as it already includes a flint, so I have released an update including version 0.5 :)!