Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[Serpentine]

A good question! (and one which I have a half written wiki article about!)

 

example map : http://syr.taaaki.za.net/tdm/maps/testl.rar (the default config uses a triangle corner VP, however if you delete that and move the two VP's that are under the passage up it will show the traditional method, try both! use BOTH r_showportals 1 and r_showtris 3 at the same time!!)

 

The common practice with visportalling an L-shaped corridor is to use two rectangular visportal brushes... right? well yes logically its nice and simple and with a boxy grid way of thinking its not a bad idea.

 

However, one must look at how visportals interact with each other. If you have a visportal that is open and a closed visportal in the next leaf(or area divided by the visportal surfaces) it becomes apparent that once the two portals touch, both will be opened. It doesn't matter if the 2nd portal is occluded by the corner, it will still open and now all 3 areas will be rendered (even if scissored by the edges of the portals, but that all comes at a cost)

 

Now what if we could make the same separation with just a single surface? well then the only way that all 3 areas are open would be when you are in line with the face, which is a very small surface area. So when seperating 2 rich, high detail areas it makes a lot of sense to use this.

 

Try the map, it's quite interesting to move to the corners of the end rooms and compare what is rendered, you'll be notice quite a difference. But after all, the reason for most of this post is to make people think and share interesting ways to use VPs to squeeze performance, just avoid bad situations or help with problems(sound).

 

(also this seems to help with sound propagation as the sounds come from the 'corner', but YMMV)

Edited June 11, 2010 by Serpentine

[aidakeeley]

Again...excellent!

 

This will (require) give me some thinking to do... and as you say experimenting.

 

I got into the mood, yesterday, to do the whole let's-DR-some-more-and-learn-the-VP-thing because I'd been reading about Springheel's AI->player sound propagation investigation. I found the same as he seems to have: VP sound propagation is only a one way trick. From all I read, and all the in game tools available the system seems to be about guiding the AI to the trouble-making player. I'm hoping the AI->player sound can be more reliably understood, but this VP mechanism, so far, does not seem to hold the key AI->player-wise...

 

Anyway, now I have another cool thing to mess about with as I slowly learn DR!

 

Thanks again to all y'all.

[PranQster]

I recently built a cannon in my test/tutorial/learning map. It has a speaker with explosion sound and 4 emitters for smoke, steam, sparks and fire, all currently triggered by a lever. I am quite happy with the results thus far, but I want to take it a little farther for the sake of realism. Near the back of the barrel I had subtracted a small cylinder to make a hole through the top half of the barrel (for lighting the charge).

What I want to do now is have the speaker and the particle emitters activate when I put a candle flame (or something else) very close to that hole.

Is that something for a Stim/Response using a small nodraw brush right by the hole in the cannon barrel?

[Mortem Desino]

Exactly. It should trigger its targets as a response to a "fire" stim.

[PranQster]

Exactly. It should trigger its targets as a response to a "fire" stim.

 

Thanks. I'll experiment with that. I have never tried using an S/R yet, so this may take me a while.

 

 

I had tried making a brush and assigning entity 'trigger_entityname' and setting 'entityname' to the name of a candle, and target set to the speaker for my explosion sound. But the candle touching the trigger did not enable the speaker.

[PranQster]

Ok... I'm missing something.

I created a brush and made it a func_static with nodraw texture, targeted my chosen speaker (for explosion sound), and then used the stim/response editor to add 'fire' to the response list. When I created the candle flame, it automatically has 'fire' as a stim, so that seemed fine.

 

When I run the map, the candle flame coming in contact with that entity does nothing... the speaker is not triggered.

I tried going through the S/R tutorial, but it only confused me. What did I miss or do wrong in the steps I took above?

Edited June 13, 2010 by PranQster

[Fidcal]

Don't target the speaker from the brush.

 

Put the fire response effect on the brush.

In the response editor add an effect in the right panel

Make that effect to frob a button

Make the button target the speaker.

 

Put the button nearby so you can hear it. If you hear the button click but the speaker doesn't sound then you know the speaker isn't set up right. If the button doesn't click then you know the s & r is not right. Once working then hide that button far out of sight and sound.

[PranQster]

Don't target the speaker from the brush.

 

Put the fire response effect on the brush.

In the response editor add an effect in the right panel

Make that effect to frob a button

Make the button target the speaker.

 

Put the button nearby so you can hear it. If you hear the button click but the speaker doesn't sound then you know the speaker isn't set up right. If the button doesn't click then you know the s & r is not right. Once working then hide that button far out of sight and sound.

 

Thank you. I'll give it a go.

[PranQster]

In the response editor add an effect in the right panel

Make that effect to frob a button

 

 

Ok, I tried two situations with that effect:

 

1. The default effect had these options... Effect: Activate Response, Active (checked), Entity: (the button I created), Stim ID Type: Frob

2. Then I changed Effect: Activate Response to Effect: Frob, then the only choice was Entity, which I set to the button.

 

No go doing it either way... the flame passes through the area of the brush and no button click

 

 

Edit: I'll keep trying

Edited June 14, 2010 by PranQster

[PranQster]

Got it working! Thanks Fidcal.

 

I increased the brush size to be a fairly big box and found that if my candle flame goes to the center of that brush area, it triggers the lever I have set up to fire off the speaker and emitters.

Now I just need to refine the brush size and the stim radius to get it how I want. And then I can tuck that lever away somewhere, possibly in the remote room with the player starting gear.

[PranQster]

Ok, next question.

How can I make it so that the response only frobs the lever once each time the flame (stim) activates it (response).

Or, how can I make it respect the "interruptable 0" which I applied to the lever, or at least respect the lever's "auto_close_time"?

My problem is that the response re-frobs the lever very quickly, making it difficult to move the candle flame away fast enough before the response is triggered again.

[Fidcal]

As well as interruptable 0 also give the lever move_time <seconds> or if it is a translating lever then translate_speed <units per second>. I had a similar problem recently with the combination lock buttons firing again before the number wheels had fully turned.

[PranQster]

As well as interruptable 0 also give the lever move_time <seconds> or if it is a translating lever then translate_speed <units per second>. I had a similar problem recently with the combination lock buttons firing again before the number wheels had fully turned.

 

Ok, I'll give that a whirl.

 

Here is a video of what I was able to do. The audio is slightly off timing because I had to use 2 different programs to record the audio and a desktop video in a frame. I simply trimmed the audio at the approx start & stop time of the video.

The color is off too due to codecs/compression etc. but it demonstrates what I was able to do so far.

Cannon video

Edited June 14, 2010 by PranQster

[aidakeeley]

Killer cool

[DeTeEff]

As a get it, there is now only one candle light that is moving to simulate flickering, and there is one that doesn't move. I have some candles in a group, so I would like to have some more irregular moving pattern so they don't move in unison...suggestions?

 

EDIT:

I just looked at the sources candleflame...I will instead use the prelit candles wich have more flickeringmodes

Edited June 14, 2010 by Fieldmedic

[Fidcal]

Looks good. Search for candles irregularity - BikerDude posted something on that recently. Can't remember if it was resolved though.

[Mr Mike]

A good question! (and one which I have a half written wiki article about!)

 

example map : http://syr.taaaki.za.net/tdm/maps/testl.rar (the default config uses a triangle corner VP, however if you delete that and move the two VP's that are under the passage up it will show the traditional method, try both! use BOTH r_showportals 1 and r_showtris 3 at the same time!!)

 

The common practice with visportalling an L-shaped corridor is to use two rectangular visportal brushes... right? well yes logically its nice and simple and with a boxy grid way of thinking its not a bad idea.

 

However, one must look at how visportals interact with each other. If you have a visportal that is open and a closed visportal in the next leaf(or area divided by the visportal surfaces) it becomes apparent that once the two portals touch, both will be opened. It doesn't matter if the 2nd portal is occluded by the corner, it will still open and now all 3 areas will be rendered (even if scissored by the edges of the portals, but that all comes at a cost)

 

Now what if we could make the same separation with just a single surface? well then the only way that all 3 areas are open would be when you are in line with the face, which is a very small surface area. So when seperating 2 rich, high detail areas it makes a lot of sense to use this.

 

Try the map, it's quite interesting to move to the corners of the end rooms and compare what is rendered, you'll be notice quite a difference. But after all, the reason for most of this post is to make people think and share interesting ways to use VPs to squeeze performance, just avoid bad situations or help with problems(sound).

 

(also this seems to help with sound propagation as the sounds come from the 'corner', but YMMV)

 

That's interesting stuff Seperntine, thinking out of the box and it saves on quite a few polygons.

 

I created a version with each type of VP and then made a friendly patrolling guard go back and forth along the west/east corridor. The version with the single VP sounded quite buggy though. Watching the sound trace it would often bounce from reaching the player from either side of the VP, depending on the guards location. This meant the sound would not only abruptly change in volume but also switch to predominantly the opposite speaker channel.

 

Going to go test some more to see if that can be resolved.

[DeTeEff]

Ok, I'll give that a whirl.

 

Here is a video of what I was able to do. The audio is slightly off timing because I had to use 2 different programs to record the audio and a desktop video in a frame. I simply trimmed the audio at the approx start & stop time of the video.

The color is off too due to codecs/compression etc. but it demonstrates what I was able to do so far.

Cannon video

 

Haha! That's some serious equipment you've got there PranQster Can't see how that can be inplemented into a stealth game though Maybe by blasting down a wall and escape? Hehe

Edited June 15, 2010 by Fieldmedic

[Springheel]

Here is a video of what I was able to do.

 

Very cool! You do know there is a canon model, though, right?

[PranQster]

Haha! That's some serious equipment you've got there PranQster Can't see how that can be inplemented into a stealth game though Maybe by blasting down a wall and escape? Hehe

 

That's what I was thinking.

Mostly I'm just trying to learn things in DR and see what I can build with brushes and what I am able to do with them.

 

The funny thing is that I used to have the cannon in a neighboring room and activated by a lever. An AI on my team patrols that room and makes no comment when the cannon fires, but questions the sound made if I break a window, LOL.

[PranQster]

Very cool! You do know there is a canon model, though, right?

 

Oh yeah, I knew about it. I just wanted to see if I could build one myself in DR to build skills working with brushes, etc. Then came the idea of making it fire.

Now I have bound a little fuse (STIM_FIRE) to the head of a battle axe with a glowing and smoking tip (tip of the fuse has a lava texture, neighbored with a thin band of coal texture and a smoke emitter nearby). The fuse itself looks kind of funky, but the effect as a whole looks cool. Now the cannon can be fired old-school style ala a soldier in the field with a fuse on the end of his battle weapon. I tried using a halberd first, but it was too long to wield effectively.

Eventually I want to use one of those cannonballs to be fired out of the barrel and hit something.

 

 

 

 

 

[Snakebite]

I am having a small problem. I am trying to create a double-door (not windowed or see-through). The wiki says both of the doors should touch the same visporal. I created the visportal and placed it where it should be. Problem is it is not recognized as a visportal. The r_Showportals 1 doesn't recognize that visportal (but I can see other visportals). If I move the brush with the visportal and place it on a simple door it works. Any idea why is not working? Am I doing something wrong?

 

EDIT: It seems I have a problem with visportal. I cannot put a visportal anywhere. I followed the steps in the wiki or Fidcal's tutorial but I cannot see the portals

 

The r_showPortals 1 will show visportals that are not working? The visportals give me a real headache.

Edited June 15, 2010 by Snakebite

[PranQster]

Please check my attached picture, I want to know what I can do with the cannon ball.

I got the cannonball to 'fire' out of the cannon and I set it to do damage. That part works because I tested it on a builder priest

BTW, the priest collapsed into a funny position because there is a little nodraw solid wall around his legs.

 

What I would like to do is one of two things...

A. Have the cannonball drop to the floor instead of staying there, defying gravity (I know that would not be realistic, but still better than floating in air).

B. Have the cannonball explode. I already have set the explode and health parameters (both to 1) and I tried having it hit another entity which also does damage.

[PranQster]

I am having a small problem. I am trying to create a double-door (not windowed or see-through). The wiki says both of the doors should touch the same visporal. I created the visportal and placed it where it should be. Problem is it is not recognized as a visportal. The r_Showportals 1 doesn't recognize that visportal (but I can see other visportals). If I move the brush with the visportal and place it on a simple door it works. Any idea why is not working? Am I doing something wrong?

 

EDIT: It seems I have a problem with visportal. I cannot put a visportal anywhere. I followed the steps in the wiki or Fidcal's tutorial but I cannot see the portals

 

The r_showPortals 1 will show visportals that are not working? The visportals give me a real headache.

 

When I tried the visportal part of the tutorial the first time, I had a similar problem. I had placed a door frame model around the door and had previously modified the walls nearby to put in a window as well.

What I found I needed to do was to move the door frame model out of the way, temporarily. I then resized the visportal to fix exactly to the edges of the walls and floor surrounding the door. For some reason, some of those walls were not perfectly vertical and I had to choose to snap-to-grid to get them to line up first. After doing that, the visportal then showed in the game.

[Springheel]

EDIT: It seems I have a problem with visportal. I cannot put a visportal anywhere. I followed the steps in the wiki or Fidcal's tutorial but I cannot see the portals

 

The r_showPortals 1 will show visportals that are not working? The visportals give me a real headache.

 

Visportals will only show up if the area they are creating is perfectly sealed. There is a method to test for sealing: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Visportals#Trouble-shooting