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Paul (eepcat) is interested in applying for a position. :) He is familiar with Dromed and is also a programmer.

 

I think his skills would be beneficial to the development of Dark Radiant and also some side tasks on the main mod.

 

Members..unite and interview. :)

 

Hello,

I got this e-mail link at the Editor's Guild (T1/T2). Your project, as I understand it, is a marvelous idea. I should be finishing up my current DromEd mission in a month or two, so I have some time to look at the tools. I've been a programmer for 10 years now and might be able to lend a hand in some development. I do not have any experience in modern gaming technology, but if there is any GUI development that you could use help on, I can find the time. Most of my experience is in Visual C++, with Visual Basic and Java a close second.

Thanks again!

 

--

Paul D Rotter

Software Engineer

Moritz Aerospace, inc.

paul.rotter@moritzaero.com

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Sounds good to me. :) I would prefer more folkls for the actual mod, but I guess a polished editor should also help. :)

 

Absolutely, the faster we get DarkRadiant up to speed, the more likely people will want to start using it...and that's when we should see some good beta maps come out. I think the complexity of setting things up in Doom3 Ed is a bit of a put off, so once we have things like the stim/ response GUI setup in Dark Radiant, it should make life a lot easier.

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We do really need someone to make a DarkRadiant GUI to set up stim/response, objectives, and maybe player reverb / AI soundprop stuff, since right now we have no user friendly way to set that up. Being a mapper and a programmer might be good for that, since you'd have some idea what's user friendly for mappers and be able to program it also.

 

Also we need all the programming help we can get IMO for the mod itself. Maybe we could set him up as a contributor with a DarkRadiant GUI for editing something being the initial task? Granted some of the things are going to change a bit so the GUI might need updating later, but speaking for the objectives system, I don't see any major changes in how you enter stuff in.

 

It's hard to judge how good someone is at programming beforehand, so what we usually do is just give them a contributor task right away. It also takes some time to get used to the D3 SDK and our formatting standards, so the sooner we can make him a contributor, the better.

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I agree with you, Ishtvan...it is very difficult to judge a programmer's abilities. My background may or may not be a match. I've had quite a varied experience, from embedded laser scanners, to CCD camera drivers, to PC applications, to Java applets. Several years ago I wrote an old-school D&D-type game series which featured my own cheesy 3d engine (node-based) sort of like Pool of Radiance crica 1988. Later I wrote a game (which I have since completely lost) which used the raycasting engine that Wolfenstein 3d used. I've also used the Direct3D API (not since 5.0, though), and started developing a game using 3D Game Studio (the A4 Engine at that time), but the project was too much to pull off alone. All in all, I have a decent understanding of 3d graphics and an appreciation for its development. The bulk of my experience in the past two years has been building dynamic GUIs driven by either a structured database, or multiple ".ini"-type files. If any of that seems helpful, I'd be glad to work on some small tasks to get a feel for the environment. If it doesn't work out, I've done several DromEd missions, so mapping would be second nature once past the initial learning curve for the editor. I was also a part-time musician some years ago and am currently working on some ambients for my next mission...so sound production is also a possibility.

I'm hoping to help the effort, but want the team to make the right decision(s) for the project.

- eep!

 

We do really need someone to make a DarkRadiant GUI to set up stim/response, objectives, and maybe player reverb / AI soundprop stuff, since right now we have no user friendly way to set that up. Being a mapper and a programmer might be good for that, since you'd have some idea what's user friendly for mappers and be able to program it also.

 

Also we need all the programming help we can get IMO for the mod itself. Maybe we could set him up as a contributor with a DarkRadiant GUI for editing something being the initial task? Granted some of the things are going to change a bit so the GUI might need updating later, but speaking for the objectives system, I don't see any major changes in how you enter stuff in.

 

It's hard to judge how good someone is at programming beforehand, so what we usually do is just give them a contributor task right away. It also takes some time to get used to the D3 SDK and our formatting standards, so the sooner we can make him a contributor, the better.

It pays to be nuts, unless you live with squirrels.

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Yeah, we'll see what Sparhawk says (he is head of the programming division), but usually we give people the benefit of the doubt and let them work on some fairly self-contained task and see how it turns out. OrbWeaver is heading up the editor programming so you may want to talk to him also. If you're interested, you could check out the Doom3 SDK (not the expansion pack one, but the latest version), which is all in C++, and there's a lot of stuff in there to kind've get a handle on. Although I guess the editor source wouldn't really need that. The editor GUIS would mainly just translate GUI selected options into some text to write to a file.

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Well, I think it sound good enough for me. :) I 'd say you contact Orbweaver to see what tasks he has for you. I guess this would give you a good introduction to the mod as well, and you can always check out the mod code as well. I'll write Orbweaver a Pm also so that he should get in contact with you.

Gerhard

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Hi Eeepcat.

 

The DarkRadiant codebase is available via SubVersion at https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/darkradiant/trunk. You will need Scons and GCC to compile (available as MinGW on Windows).

 

The code is all C++ and the GUI toolkit used is GTK, which you may or may not be familiar with. If you feel able to help then the Stim Response editor would be good to start looking into, as this is not an area I have started working on at all yet.

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Very well. I will take some time to acquaint myself with the tools and also mapping in GTKRadiant. I will let you know if I feel confident to continue.

Thanks for your time,

- eep!

 

Hi Eeepcat.

 

The DarkRadiant codebase is available via SubVersion at https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/darkradiant/trunk. You will need Scons and GCC to compile (available as MinGW on Windows).

 

The code is all C++ and the GUI toolkit used is GTK, which you may or may not be familiar with. If you feel able to help then the Stim Response editor would be good to start looking into, as this is not an area I have started working on at all yet.

It pays to be nuts, unless you live with squirrels.

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Sounds good. I would question doing stim/response editor specifically though, because that system is still evolving (we don't have a stim magnitude yet, and might want to add some more options like distance-dependent stim magnitude as well). Objectives probably won't change much, might add a few new objective component options but that's not going to change how the other ones are put in.

 

Something else that definitely won't change is the D3 reverb information. Our FM authors are going to want to design the sound environment of various locations, but the current system for doing it is a pain (it currently requires editing a separate text file by hand, and remembering info_location names and specific portal area numbers). IMO a DarkRadiant GUI to set up the EAX info (by writing to that file) for different locations is called for. I'm not sure if we'll be able to do it by portal area number, since we don't know how the D3 map compiler assigns those numbers (and it's not in the SDK), but we should at least be able to do it by info_location.

 

[EDIT: Also with a reverb editing GUI, we could set up certain reverb presets like "large stone hall" "bathroom" etc. Easier than having to remember or copy&paste all the specific numbers]

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Something else that definitely won't change is the D3 reverb information. Our FM authors are going to want to design the sound environment of various locations, but the current system for doing it is a pain (it currently requires editing a separate text file by hand, and remembering info_location names and specific portal area numbers). IMO a DarkRadiant GUI to set up the EAX info (by writing to that file) for different locations is called for. I'm not sure if we'll be able to do it by portal area number, since we don't know how the D3 map compiler assigns those numbers (and it's not in the SDK), but we should at least be able to do it by info_location.

 

So the information needed is a mapping between info_location names and some kind of data structure representing EAX info? Is there a specification available for what is required?

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Yeah, mapping between info location names and some data in a text file, and maybe a way to load up certain presets for that data with certain names for user-friendly reverb environments.

 

Here is a cut & paste from some posts on D3World:

 

I found the .EFX files [storing reverb information for each map, titled <mapname>.EFX] in D3/base/pak007.pk4. The syntax to assign reverb settings to a particular location or portal area is:

 

reverb "<area name or number>" 
{ 
  // EAX settings 
}

 

Sometimes this area name is a string, sometimes it is a number. The strings correspond to location areas (like what you see in the HUD when the mapper has set up a certain location like "Corridor 5" or "Security"). These are made by putting in a single info_location entity somewhere inside the location, and info_location_separator entities at the portals you want to bound your location.

When the area label is a number (and I forget if the number is with or without quotes), it refers to a specific portal area. I don't know if we'll be able to map to this in DarkRadiant, because we don't know how the D3 map compiler assigns numbers to portal areas, although I could be wrong. We'll at least be able to do it for info_location entity names though.

 

[EDIT: I think this file also allows a global reverb environment to be established for the whole map, and it gets overriden by reverb data on locations when present.]

 

One suggestion for this functionality might be to add a link to the reverb menu as an option off of the entity browser when you have selected an info_location or derived entity. Then you know the name of the entity because it's already selected, and you can read/write the reverb data to/from the <mapname>.EFX file under the block for that location name.

 

As for the actual reverb data: Well, we can look at what they put in the Id maps (in /base/pak007.pk4, *.EFX ) to get some idea of the possibilities, but there may still be variables that the sound engine allows but that they didn't use, and we don't know about (because we don't have access to the sound engine in the SDK). An email to Id asking what all the possible EAX settings in the EFX file are might help.

 

There are also a few AI soundprop settings you can set on an info_location, we could add this to the sound properties GUI as well, but I think we can focus on player reverb for now.

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Downloaded tools, but link to code is dead.

- eep!

 

Very well. I will take some time to acquaint myself with the tools and also mapping in GTKRadiant. I will let you know if I feel confident to continue.

Thanks for your time,

- eep!

It pays to be nuts, unless you live with squirrels.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks. I was able to download the source and have a look-see. Unfortunately, I've been doing some travelling for work, trying to finish a DromEd mission, and dealing with the death of a close friend. It may be a little while before I'm able to get started on anything. I have a question about source control: what is the procedure for checking out, modifying, merging, etc. I'm used to files being locked when checked out, but that does not appear to be the case with SubVersion.

- eep!

 

You need to check it out with SubVersion. For some reason it doesn't seem possible to view the repository with a web browser, although it used to be.

It pays to be nuts, unless you live with squirrels.

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"Locking" source control systems are generally deprecated these days -- SubVersion uses the checkout-modify-merge model.

 

Modifying and merging requires write-access to the repository, which ordinary users don't have. You can check out and modify local copies of whatever you want, however.

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  • 2 months later...

It's hard to believe that three months have gone by. I just endured one of the most stressful periods of my life. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say I am terribly short on energy and motivation these days. I had hoped to offer some help on DarkMod, but I have so little time that it would be a struggle from start to finish. I never even got the development environment set up.

I appreciate the time spent and apologize for having to bow out.

Best wishes on the project. It will be an interesting 2007!

- eep!

 

"Locking" source control systems are generally deprecated these days -- SubVersion uses the checkout-modify-merge model.

 

Modifying and merging requires write-access to the repository, which ordinary users don't have. You can check out and modify local copies of whatever you want, however.

It pays to be nuts, unless you live with squirrels.

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