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demagogue

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I had the exact same problem. Doors cannot trigger anything at the start of closing. Even if you use s & r it would be very tricky. You would need a stim a tiny fraction from the maximum open position and a response entity bound to the outer edge of the door. So as the door starts to close even a tiny amount the response entity comes into proximity of the stim and triggers the sound. To complicate it further you need a count trigger or something devious so it doesn't trigger when the door opens! Also, if the door can be blocked then the sound continues.

 

It might be possible to frob_peer the door with a button so when frobbed to close the button triggers a sound but the same applies that you need a method to do alternately so it doesn't sound when opening.

 

You can spend all week on something like the above. I gave up on it and instead used on the door:

 

"snd_close" "stone_movement_end"

"snd_open" "stone_sliding"

 

So, you get the stone sliding as it opens but silent as it closes but at least a satisfying bang at the end. It's the easy way but far from perfect. In my case the stone block moves slowly and is large so the 'stone_sliding' sound is not long enough even for the opening so I pretend to myself there is a lot of friction sound to get it moving but further along it is smoother!

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I have just thought of another possible solution. Create a second nodraw door at the same place. Make it frobable 0 and start_open 1 (need to check that name) frob_peer the first door to a button and target the button to the nodraw door. Needs experimenting but the idea is to get them to open and close out of sync so one is opening while the other is closing. Need also to set the property that makes sure the doors continue in the same direction if blocked. You can guess the rest. Make each door sound only on opening. On close use nosound.

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@Neb: No, the hidden door can be offside. It only needs to be near so the sound seems to come from the same place. That's the theory anyway!

 

@ bobrpggamer:

 

I think we could some more s & r info with examples but for now there is:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Stim/Response

 

Use the s & r editor which sets the properties but for more info on what each property does you can also look at http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Stim/Response_Key/Values

 

Glad it's working anyway. With you as guinea pig I might possibly change my own now to that method. Or a combo of the two so I get a slidy sound closing and then a whump! as it closes.

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I have just thought of another possible solution. Create a second nodraw door at the same place. Make it frobable 0 and start_open 1 (need to check that name) frob_peer the first door to a button and target the button to the nodraw door. Needs experimenting but the idea is to get them to open and close out of sync so one is opening while the other is closing. Need also to set the property that makes sure the doors continue in the same direction if blocked. You can guess the rest. Make each door sound only on opening. On close use nosound.

 

a brilliant idea! I have asked the same question about a month ago, but you didn't come up with this idea :)

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I think it's somewhere in between.

 

If you make it too big it gives you trouble with visportals. But if you make things too small (fill every gap between the roofs with skybrushes) your skybox may block the view in an unintended way. When you pass a large building you don't expect it to vanish just because you went around the next corner.

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The most performance-efficient way to lay out your architecture I think is as a series of tunnels (even if the roof and some of the side is skybox). Then you shouldn't have the problem of things disappearing when you round corners (the architecture naturally restricts lines of sight), and you can break up a lot of the space into relatively small visPortal leafs. I know my FM wasn't the most performance efficient in the world, but I was sort of happy with how I could visPortal all those streets into sections and it still feel like a pretty open neighborhood.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Hardware makes a huge difference, too. My level is fairly open in one big skybox, and I got some ungodly slowdowns on my laptop (decent, but not a gaming config). On my regular PC, the same areas breeze by, even though that's not state of the art either - it just has a bit more RAM (2 GB instead of 1) and a better GFX card.

 

But either way you build, building convoluted levels with a lot of corners and turns will generally help your performance tremendously even if you operate with a lot of small detail.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Although I'm not done yet, I already read a bit about making a FM ready for release. I saw that a lot of fms I played until now had different folders with some files in them. Could someone explain what kind of things would have to be in these folders? I created my own stairs and made a prefab of it, should this be in one of these folders?

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Yes, you need to read this:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=How_to_pack_your_Mission

 

Although I'm not done yet, I already read a bit about making a FM ready for release. I saw that a lot of fms I played until now had different folders with some files in them. Could someone explain what kind of things would have to be in these folders? I created my own stairs and made a prefab of it, should this be in one of these folders?

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Yeah I already did before I posted but it still doesn't clearly explain (for me) what I have to do with packing my mission folderwise. Everything that comes out of the dmapping process should be put into folders and nothing more? If my stairs would have do be put into a folder it will come as .mtr eg. when I'm dmapping? If it doesn't then it's not new material and anyone who will play the mission will see it as I see? That's how I see it at the moment, but please correct if I'm wrong.

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Im not 100% sure if anyone has asked this - and reading the wiki is far too academic for this question :

 

If I enclose an area with two visportals, think of an alley(with a dead end). I can close the horizonal and the vertical.

 

|
|
|VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
|``````````````````````````````V
|``````````````````````````````V
|______________________________V___

 

Where V is a visportal.

The area covered in `s becomes darker than the ambient area outside of the 'doubled' visportals. when you transition from one area to the other there is a smooth fade, is this intended? its quite nice for making darker areas. Does this even make sense for performance?

 

Also, on a topic that I actually have dug around for a while and not been able to find an answer : How do I change models/skins for a light that is both electric and has a switch?, at the moment when the lights are off I get bright glass, not ideal.

Edited by Serpentine
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Also, on a topic that I actually have dug around for a while and not been able to find an answer : How do I change models/skins for a light that is both electric and has a switch?, at the moment when the lights are off I get bright glass, not ideal.

 

You use the colorme skin on the light model (if it has one), which takes the color of the light touching it. I did it to some lamps in Patently Dangerous you may have noticed, e.g., the warehouse lights, lights in Damuddy's, etc... that you can use as a template, because just now I forget if you have to link the light and model somehow special... Just look at the model and light's properties and you should see.

 

One catch is that the wall light skins aren't entirely colorme'd, as you may have noticed, so only the bulb goes black but the glass remains bright. Someone needs to make new colorme skins for those wall lamps so the glass shell dims as well as the bulb, and until then we're just stuck with the shell being too bright (as far as I know).

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Yeah I already did before I posted but it still doesn't clearly explain (for me) what I have to do with packing my mission folderwise. Everything that comes out of the dmapping process should be put into folders and nothing more? If my stairs would have do be put into a folder it will come as .mtr eg. when I'm dmapping? If it doesn't then it's not new material and anyone who will play the mission will see it as I see? That's how I see it at the moment, but please correct if I'm wrong.

Sorry this is not clear. Yes, you need to include all your custom assets and their folder structure. This is what I recommend:

 

Create a new subfolder in your doom3 folder and name it the same as your FM eg, C:\doom3\mymap

Within it create a maps folder and move your map file, the aas, proc, and cm, files into it. script too if you have one.

Now create any other folders for your custom assets also in the C:\doom3\mymap folder and copy your custom assets into them. For instance, if you made a .tga texture and a mtr material file def for it you would need to create a material folder and a textures folder.

 

What you are creating above is how it will actually work when played by players (except it will be in a pk4 but not much difference.) You also need in the that game folder the darkmod.txt etc as described in the packing wiki article. Now zip that whole folder structure up and resuffix it to pk4.

 

To test it, first rename your test game folder to say C:\doom3\mymapORG to disable it.

Put the pk4 into the darkmod\fms folder

Run Dark Mod and it should appear on the New Missions menu ready to install.

When you install it then it should create a new game folder C:\doom3\mymap and copy the pk4 over where it is actually played.

 

So I recommend you test it like this. To do this edit darkmod\currentfm.txt and in it put just one line with the name of your game folder.

 

I recommend everyone to use startpack (see wiki) to build their FM and build it directly in the project folder then when done it is all together and only needs zipping up.

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More of a random question than a newbie one, but can someone tell where I could get my hands on the following textures I saw on this board about a year ago?

post-2023-126062167701_thumb.jpg

post-2023-12606220147_thumb.jpg

The source image for the first is a tileable from CGTextures, but I am lacking a normalmap; the second I am entirely unfamiliar with. However, they would be a great addition to my map.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I don't have every texture memorized, but neither of those look familiar to me. Where did you see them on the board?

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The first you might find something useful under sculpted such as textures/darkmod/stone/sculpted/carved_trim_wave but beware, I think many/all of these use the normal map to show the texture in relief so you may need to place a real ambient nearby or it won't show in fast ambient texture light.

 

The second one might be or at least similar to textures/darkmod/stone/flat/tiles_rough_grey

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Springheel: it may have been from a non-member; I don't remember. I am asking because that sort of detail wouldn't be easy to normalmap, so if someonehad already done the task, it would be a godsend. I will manage without if nobody knows it, of course.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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@Serpentine: the visportals shouldn't make that difference to ambient light. Probably something else. What ambient light texture are you using? Some do fade.

 

I've been playing around some more, to test that - and sure enough it does change the ambient level... Im not 100% sure how.

 

The 'lighter' shot is what ambient is everywhere else, the 'darker' is in the visportal cut off area.

http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/470/lighter.jpg

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/4968/darkerl.jpg

 

Using lights/ambientlightnfo for texture. Elevation of the point does not make a difference. Removing one of the visportals removes the behaviour...

:mystery:

Edited by Serpentine
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Im not 100% sure if anyone has asked this - and reading the wiki is far too academic for this question :

 

If I enclose an area with two visportals, think of an alley(with a dead end). I can close the horizonal and the vertical.

 

|
|
|VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
|``````````````````````````````V
|``````````````````````````````V
|______________________________V___

 

Where V is a visportal.

The area covered in `s becomes darker than the ambient area outside of the 'doubled' visportals. when you transition from one area to the other there is a smooth fade, is this intended? its quite nice for making darker areas. Does this even make sense for performance?

 

This would be the effect of the ambient light changer when you use info_locations. (However, if you do not add a new info_location_seperator entity to the portal, the area of the portaled off area would belong to the same location, so the light should not change at all).

 

Maybe it is a bug in my script? Can you make a (small!) testmap that shows the behaviour?

 

Here is more info: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Location_Settings

 

However, I think the dynamic ambient light is by default off, so I am unsure why it would apply to your map. (The dynamic part is what would make one location with streetlights have a slightly higher ambient level, while the same ally with no streetlights has a darker ambient light. This is intended for small rooms, for streets the dynamic part should be set so small as to be almost not existing (the idea is that there aren't much walls and certainly no ceiling on a street that would reflect the streetlight back to the ground)

 

Edit: It can also be because D3 thinks that some light does not shine through the visportal and thus takes it out. How is your ambient light set up, is it multiple entities or only one?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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@Tels

 

Ah, I had a look thought that and have actually found something semi-interesting.

I had suspected the location identifiers earlier, but checking their entities I didnt see anything changing ambient... but when you brought them up again I rechecked them, showing inherited items. There is an ambient modifier included in the base class.

 

Then checking again and removing all of the location markers I noticed that doom/dmap/something seems to identify underground/cave like areas and automatically give them a location. Since when all the markers were removed the issue remained, but spread to some areas nearby that were cut off but did not use location seperaters at first(they were now linked). Areas like this that then lead into enclosed visportal areas keep this ambient setting too, as it seems to use them to identify these areas.

 

I'd be happy to send the map, I dont think it would be too easy to reproduce in a super simple map, but it might be interesting to look at. It was at least for me :) But all in all, best to not call it a bug and more a 'just be careful of location's spreading via visportals!'... or similar

 

And during all of this I found a different slightly strange bug which I'll add to the tracker in a few min :)

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