Feedback Wanted

[greebo]

Hello all,

 

we (that's angua and me) fiddled around a bit with DarkRadiant lately and as this level creating thing is totally new to us, any feedback is helpful and would be greatly appreciated.

 

We know it's not very creative, but for getting into the "business" we thought it would be best to rebuild an original level, as the goal is to create something thief-inspired.

 

This is what we accomplished so far, I've included some "original" shots for better comparison:

 

[snip]

 

The whole thing was built from scratch in DarkRadiant, models > Blender, textures & normalmapping > Photoshop.

 

Thanks in advance!

[New Horizon]

Looks very promising thus far. Keep us posted on your progress.

[Arumakani]

Where did you get Dark radiant from?

[Komag]

That was my question too!

 

Looks good, plus new textures and models is always a good thing

[New Horizon]

That was my question too!

 

Looks good, plus new textures and models is always a good thing

 

It's available on SourceForge for anyone who would like to look at it. There isn't really much reason for someone without the Dark Mod assets to use it however...although there are definately some nice tweaks over that of vanilla doom 3 Ed.

[Fingernail]

OMG HAXX

[Arumakani]

So would I be able to use DarkRadiant?

[SneaksieDave]

Wicked cool start! Now that's what I'm talkin about. This will be very interesting to watch.

[sparhawk]

Impressive! I love it. Somebody should post a link on TTLG.

[bob_arctor]

To be honest I'd work on something tailored for TDM. That is to say do a "spiritual successor" rather than a direct exact copy. I'm not sure the old games fit in the new engine.

 

However the old shots remind me of how gloriously gaudy TG was. Plus the crazy beams just for rope arrows.

 

Maybe someone with a careful hand can make some TDM textures in that style.

[OrbWeaver]

It's available on SourceForge for anyone who would like to look at it. There isn't really much reason for someone without the Dark Mod assets to use it however...although there are definately some nice tweaks over that of vanilla doom 3 Ed.

 

The plan is that all of the Dark Mod stuff will be customisable via the game file and won't get in the way of regular editing, so DarkRadiant will be usable as a better Doom 3 editor as well as a Dark Mod editor.

[Arumakani]

So would I be able to use DarkRadiant from that site?

[OrbWeaver]

It depends how hard you try I guess.

[Arumakani]

Though it's a good tribute, I find the maps on the frontpage of DarkMod better to look at.

[angua]

Wow, thanks for all the positive feedback!

 

So would I be able to use DarkRadiant?

Yes, we downloaded it from SourceForge as New Horizon said, but you have to compile it before using it, which is not that trivial.

 

To be honest I'd work on something tailored for TDM. That is to say do a "spiritual successor" rather than a direct exact copy. I'm not sure the old games fit in the new engine.

We are not planning to rebuild the whole level, but we found it much easier to rebuild something for getting used to the dimensions and learning the basics. If you take a closer look, you will also notice that there are some differences from the original level. All the textures and models are custom and there are other small alterations as well.

 

However the old shots remind me of how gloriously gaudy TG was. Plus the crazy beams just for rope arrows.

As if you had any of them at Bafford's

[OrbWeaver]

Yes, we downloaded it from SourceForge as New Horizon said, but you have to compile it before using it, which is not that trivial.

 

No you don't, you can use a precompiled binary:

 

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...ckage_id=182228

 

(unless you are editing on Linux, for which there is no binary package as yet).

 

Still, kudos on getting it compiled and running without any assistance. It's ironic that the only people to build anything substantial with DarkRadiant are not even members of the team.

[bob_arctor]

Did you not have rope arrows at Baffords?

 

I really can't remember. Actually in TG were the arrows handed out type by type, really slowly, like in TDS?

 

I only played TG two years ago or maybe even less...

[greebo]

No you don't, you can use a precompiled binary

Oh, thanks for the link, didn't see that one... my first compile was somewhere around July 3rd, and I just synchronized with the SVN repository every second day since then. Scons does a good job on recompiling the changed bits. I'm still reading your code changes regularly, but I couldn't get myself into the position to change something myself (still planning to do something, but the recent mapping ate all of my Dark Mod time budget...)

 

Still, kudos on getting it compiled and running without any assistance. It's ironic that the only people to build anything substantial with DarkRadiant are not even members of the team.

Thanks and kudos back to you, since you are doing the substantial work with DarkRadiant here, I suppose. We thought it would be best to get used to DarkRadiant, even if it's not as packed as the native DoomEdit. It's quite stable, I could only get it crashing once - but we are still far away from pushing the limits, I reckon.

 

Still, we fired up DoomEdit once in a while (e.g. for using the preview function of the particle effects). One thing we missed was the "light_center" property which is present in DoomEdit, since our light sources are all centered within the light volume for the moment. You can still add the property by hand (leaving a "unrecognised property") to get it working, but I did not get a grip with the appropriate coordinates yet.

 

What I really like is the new context menu in the orthographic view, that's a real plus!

 

Did you not have rope arrows at Baffords?

 

I really can't remember. Actually in TG were the arrows handed out type by type, really slowly, like in TDS?

 

I only played TG two years ago or maybe even less...

No, there are no rope arrows at Bafford's even at Expert difficulty, but I admit that the wooden beams look really tempting. Ah, I can still remember my first thieving experience at Bafford's (frickin' 8 years ago), I ran around like a complete retard firing broadheads at random guards.

Edited August 15, 2006 by greebo

[Komag]

There ARE rope arrows in Baffords ... in the DEMO!

[greebo]

Ah, ok, didn't know that! I never got my hands on the original Thief demo...

[bob_arctor]

The TG demo was awesome. Assassins. Loved it. Made me get the game pronto.

[Dram]

It's ironic that the only people to build anything substantial with DarkRadiant are not even members of the team.

 

I feel quilty I have it installed and checked it out but am more used to the D3Ed style of window placement, so I have'nt really had a huge look at it.

 

I promise I'll try to do something with it though, thanks for the effort on it, it IS appreciated.

[bob_arctor]

On mine the preview has textures that say "RENDER NOT FOUND" or something. To be honest it's not very inviting for someone still quite new to D3ed.

[OrbWeaver]

One thing we missed was the "light_center" property which is present in DoomEdit, since our light sources are all centered within the light volume for the moment. You can still add the property by hand (leaving a "unrecognised property") to get it working, but I did not get a grip with the appropriate coordinates yet.

 

I added the light_center as a recognised property, so it can be edited as a simple vector3 (not yet committed to SVN though). It appears though that dragging the centre like in D3Ed is not possible, and it also seems to be using world coordinates which is a bit strange (unless D3Ed does this as well and I never noticed). I would expect that a centre of <0, 0, 0> would be at the geometric centre of the light, not at the world origin.

 

I feel quilty I have it installed and checked it out but am more used to the D3Ed style of window placement, so I have'nt really had a huge look at it.

 

DarkRadiant uses the same child windows as D3Edit, which you position where you wish. I have mine set up exactly the same as D3Edit.

[greebo]

I added the light_center as a recognised property, so it can be edited as a simple vector3 (not yet committed to SVN though). It appears though that dragging the centre like in D3Ed is not possible, and it also seems to be using world coordinates which is a bit strange (unless D3Ed does this as well and I never noticed). I would expect that a centre of would be at the geometric centre of the light, not at the world origin.

Angua played around a bit with this option and found that the light_center values in DoomEdit are measured relatively to the center of the light volume. What we don't know is, if the values are being translated in the background by DoomEdit, where they could be saved as world coordinates. We can do some more fiddling with this to find out. Thanks though for adding the property!