Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[Jesps]

Why is this happening sometimes after clipping brushes? The clipped side just disapear, and in game it looked same as in editor, also invisible

You probably have filter -> clip enabled

 

Regarding the cradle; it is made of brushes, and patches, not a model. Feel free to use it if you like.

[Baddcog]

You probably have filter -> caulk enabled

 

 

fixed

[PPoe]

Thank you for the cradle..

 

I dont even have this possibility in filter menu, the most similar is filter ->clip texture.. I disabled it, nothing happened. Even on new cuts of the same brush the missing face is still there. Other brushes worked (and work) fine when clipped..

 

EDIT: Thanks, that fixed it.. Now I see the face covered with caulk texture, so I just placed the wanted texture and everything is fine.. Thank you.

Btw, what is the difference between this brush and other brushes? Because other brushes have their own texture even on clipped sides..

Edited January 30, 2012 by PPoe

[demagogue]

I think there was a child's cot in Demagogue's first mission - the spooky one. I'm sure he won't mind if you ask him nicely...

 

I made a crib out of brushes. PPoe is welcome to use it, though he might be able to make his own just as easily. IMO a crib or cradle is something you can get away with making from brushes & patches, unless you want detail work on it.

 

Edit: Ah seems you got what you were looking for anyway.

[Baddcog]

 

EDIT: Thanks, that fixed it.. Now I see the face covered with caulk texture, so I just placed the wanted texture and everything is fine.. Thank you.

Btw, what is the difference between this brush and other brushes? Because other brushes have their own texture even on clipped sides..

 

In the prefs menu there is a 'clip' texture. That's where you can choose. I prefer caulk becuase most of those faces I don't want seen anyway. A lot easier to keep a 'clean' map that way.

 

I don't know why/how you'd get caulk and the regular texture both showing up. Is it possible you clipped one of the brushes, then selected the brush and applied the tex? That would have put it on all sides, even the clipped one. That's the only thing I can think of unless you had different settings and reinstalled DR (so now new stuff is set to default - caulk faces).

[PPoe]

That is the answer probably, downloaded 1.07 today, cause I was trying to find if there is a cradle model in new version of DR.. Thanks for advice. Finaly my mission is starting to take some shape=) But still a lot of work to be done.

[demagogue]

Alright I want to link to this post in the FAQ but it's in a publicly-close forum, so I'm going to repost it here so it's publicly available and I can link to it. This is Jesps little tut for bending patches. (Originally here http://forums.thedar...post__p__189824 .)

 

Is this usefull?

 

The exiting world of bending cylinder patches 90 degrees:

 

First create your cylinder:

 

Give the cylinder more vertices by appending 2 rows at the beginning or end:

 

Go to select vertices mode and select the buttom row of the vertices:

 

Rotate them 90 degrees, and move them to the side:

 

Now select the next row of vertices:

 

To create a normal 90 degree bend you will want the yellow marked lines to be right-angled:

Here one of them, the one on the left is already, the others will be.

 

Select the vertices and drag them down to form the before mentioned right-angle:

 

Success!

 

Edit: Are the pictures publicly available? I can't tell.

Edit2: I can just link to the wiki entry on this issue anyway. It's fine on its own.

[RPGista]

How could I go about simulating a "mess" awareness - I have this small house/room that has an owner, the point is to invite the player to move stuff around and see if he can find any loot, but since this is someone's house I want the AI to get alerted if he finds a mess after the player. I suppose I can set alarms on the doors of cabinets and chests (?), but what about junk that is now spread around the room?

[Fidcal]

Study this article. It should give you what you want...

 

http://wiki.thedarkm...Absence_Markers

 

Search down and there's a section about moving stuff rather than just taking it. Like if someone just moved a vase a little bit along a shelf then it need not be noticed but if it is on the floor then it would. You can set the distance.

 

Beware of things the player might not expect to happen though. Players might think it unfair if an alert is triggered when they don't expect it.

[RPGista]

Thanks, I'm aware of that feature, though I dont think its going to work very well in my case - its a similar situation as in the Thief's Den 1 apartment, theres a structure over the bed for storage, the player is invited to mess around it and find his way to some loot. Even if I place the emitters up there, chances are the AI wont see them, but he should be able to notice all the boards and pieces that were up there, now lying on the floor of the house... Its also pretty impractical to be doing that for all objects that might be moved by the player...

 

I think its common sense that people would get alerted to find his place all trashed when they get home - a good thief would put everything back in its place after investigating among objects, but right now in TDM this is mostly a conscious (completely optional) choice by the player, as AI has no way of knowing/noticing any changes to the environment besides those (rare) marked objects.

 

I think it would be necessary at some point to have a system where you could place an invisible brush volume for example, and any object that is found within its boundaries would be treated suspiciously by the AI - this could be placed on hallways or other important paths or interdict places, where passing AI would notice anything that is now sitting there and wasnt supposed to. This is different from the absence markers in the sense that AI doesnt need to see the marker and the source of the suspicion is not the place it was before, but where the object is now - it could be stuff that came from an entirely different room, so the AI would have no way of knowing its missing there, but actually that it isnt supposed to be here. Anyway, just food for thought.

[Fidcal]

It probably would not make good gameplay in most situations.

 

What you might try is a clip brush over the floor area and set up an invisible optional objective designating moveables class. It might also be possible to designate a number so that one moveable would not be noticed but 5 or more would be. The objectives management is more than just for objectives. What would happen here is if some moveables are in the clip brush then it completes the objective invisibly. Then in the target field aim at something to create a suspicious marker. It would need some experimenting though.

[demagogue]

Yeah that's a good way to do it. A hidden objective can trigger a script too. Or what you could do is even have a second "AI go to room" hidden objective that triggers when the AI enters the room, so you don't have to worry about him having to see the marker. Then in the objective logic, when you have "Obj1 AND Obj2" fulfilled, then that triggers some S&R thing or script or whatever to directly alert the guard, probably with some delay so it looks more natural.

[RPGista]

Thanks guys but this (scripting, custom objectives) is over my head, there'll be no time to look into this. The owner will get triggered by the player, yes, he's going to come in and go directly to his bed, to sleep, unless the players prevents him. The problem was a logical one, what if the player hides in time, but leaves a huge mess inside the room? The AI will ignore it and go to bed.

 

The point being: how is an AI supposed to notice objects flagrantly left around his path? Specially in areas where they werent before, last time he was there. That's the limitation of the absence marker IMHO. Im glad there's a way to simulate that according to this method you guys are describing, I'll try to get it to work in the future, for any specific situations like this one.

 

For the moment, I'll try setting up a few markers on some of the most obvious objects, and hope that will be enough to cover most scenarios. Now that I think of it, probably limit the players freedom by making most of the junk models instead of moveables, so I can control the moveables left.

Edited February 7, 2012 by RPGista

[Baddcog]

I think one issue would be performance.

 

To make an AI see soemthing requires a stim/receptron. So basically an AI needs to be aware of every object at every second. Then they need to determine whether it's stationary or moving every second. Lot's of processing power for a very small 'reality check'.

 

The worst area for performance in Doom3 is overlapping lights.

 

The worst area for performance in darkmod is that ai's think so much as it is. Adding more just for something so minor wouldn't make sense. Though making a trigger trap in one area of a mission wouldn't bog down the entire mod.

[RPGista]

Not to be too annoying or to go too off topic (this has become more of a request now), though I agree the impact of this "feature" might seem small, thats basicly because we can expect people to behave with some common sense, most players wont go around trashing rooms, not only because that could attract attention due to sounds, but also aesthetically. If you do insist on doing that though (there's no reason not to really), you'll realise it is quite a blank area in the AI senses, as you can literally move around every object inside a room while the AI is out, when he comes back, he will ignore all changes done within seconds of his last visit. If you see this from an abstract point of view, you would be hard pressed to worry about making AI notice ordinary objects that are lying around, as it could have been a maid or the wind that knocked it down, etc. But in a real game situation, this can potentially happen in every single room, its mostly left to the player not to exploit this hole, as in many normal circunstances you wouldnt waste your time messing rooms for the heck of it. If you also account for the fact that in many missions the AI occupies a space that is very familiar to him (room, office, etc), then it gets even more immersion breaking if they dont respond to such things. Yes, the AI is quite sophisticated as it is (awesome work, said many times), but Im just pointing out stuff that I notice as a player, for future reference. This is in the same category for me as AI not being able to feel the impact of any movables thrown at them (though they'll hear the sound of it falling on the ground and go there) - ideally the AI should not only feel the hit (pain anim), but also infer from which direction it came. Of course I realise this might be too difficult, just a suggestion as always. In any case, AI already do spontaneously notice objects lying around in the environment that werent there before, in the case of weapons (they must have their own way of warning the observer). Anyway...

 

In the wikis it says that the maximun fall without damage is 186 units, but does anyone knows what is the minimun fatal height? Or better yet, how can I set up a space that will kill the player if ever he falls on it (he wont have a chance to survive)?

[Baddcog]

You can make a brush with a damage stim on it in the stim/response editor. Haven't messed with it much but it's set up just like Dromed. The player takes damage from obvious stims...fire, impact, etc...

 

other wise you can make a quick test map with a couple tall ledges...

[demagogue]

... you'll realise it is quite a blank area in the AI senses, as you can literally move around every object inside a room while the AI is out, when he comes back, he will ignore all changes done within seconds of his last visit. ...

 

Your posting assumes the team hadn't already thought of this feature years ago and had a discussion about it that went on for pages & pages, which it did. There was a LOT of discussion about location-type features like AI noticing things not being where they're "supposed" to be ... messes, moved things, things that don't belong (like dropped keys, etc), doors that shouldn't be open, torches that should be lit... One branch of this led to the absence_markers (and things like should_be_closed doors and should_be_lit torches), but there are good reasons why it didn't go further into the open-ended & general behavior you're thinking about (and not because it's not a good idea in prinicple; everyone agreed it'd be cool if AI notice things like that).

 

One major issue with it is that it's very fact specific... It depends on the kind of room it is, the kind of objects involved, the kind of AI watching (their job & status, whether they're "on duty" in "familiar" territory that "they're responsible for" that "they've seen recently" that "isn't allowed to get messy" with "certain objects", etc, so now you have to mark the territory and all the status variables and room variables and object variables ... kitches vs bathrooms vs bedrooms vs stables vs dining rooms... for owners vs butlers vs police vs neighbors vs beggers), so if you had a general mechanism for this sort of thing it'd have to factor in like 50 things and it'd still not work 100% as expected unless you could tailor every little detail. But the clincher I think was that, with all the work involved tailoring it to such specificity it would end up being a lot like customizing it anyway, the mapper may as well just script or customize the whole thing outright, because it'd be the same amount & type of work involved, but then he could at least tailor it to his specific situation so it works as expected. (Notice the part where it's probably actually *easier* to script it yourself and have it work right than use a pre-made feature which is very prone to failure.) Btw, you may not even have to use scripts; you might be able to do it all with triggers and S&R. The point is some things are better for a mapper to do themselves than make a general feature, even if they're very cool.

 

That's why the best answer to this kind of issue is, it's just better for the mapper to make a custom setup, because making a general feature doing this sort of thing led to all kinds of issues, and it's been discussed from a 1000 different viewpoints to come to that conclusion. It's not just a knee-jerk thing they decided to leave out. (Another issue probably involved is that there's just not enough manpower to do everything & making a gen'l mechanism may be very labor intensive for little added benefit over custom work... but sometimes little parts of that feature do get made, like the absence markers, and shouldbeclosed doors and shoudbelit torches, etc... We're actually fortunate to have as much as we do.)

 

BTW I'm not criticising your criticism. Everything you say is a natural thing to want and your intuitions are good about what we should ideally expect from AI. I'm just trying to put things in perspective why things are like they are.

[RPGista]

100% Agreed, thanks for all the insight. I didnt want to come across as too "needy", I realise all the awesome work already done, just pointing out some issues as a fan/user, but I think it's great you guys have the patience to be answering this stuff all the time. I guess for my part, this brush that acts as a scanner for objects lying in it should do the trick, as long as I can manage to make it work. If I do, I would be glad to post it somewhere as a kind of "prefab" for this kind of situations, but first things first.

Edited February 8, 2012 by RPGista

[Fidcal]

If you ever attempt that, don't try to set it up complete in one go then wonder which part doesn't work. Do it in stages. If I were doing that I would first set up a visible objective to place one moveable class and make sure it works before proceeding. Just drop in any moveable to complete the objective. I think the clip brush entity is the same type as used for exit in the prefab or startmap objectives. I'm not 100% certain it will work for all moveables hence the reason for testing that stage first. You can always post again for help anyway.

[Baddcog]

Door entities used to be created with a handle.

 

No they just have a question mark in the door handle slot? What's going on, were handles removed? We have to type in the handle name? Handle entity name?

 

---------

[Fidcal]

I think that was an old method probably before TDM launch. Now you just create a door handle entity and bind it to the door and it works. You don't need to put anything on the door.

 

The simplest method is the double handle model but singles can be used too.

 

Details at http://wiki.thedarkm...oor_attachments

[Baddcog]

I admit it's been awhile since I mapped but it took me by surprise.

 

Was nice before just dropping the door in. But I guess this is nice too, since we have more handles now, and for the future too, would be good to have another handle or two available.

[Fidcal]

Can't seem to change pendulum direction.

 

This is strange. I've done pendulums before and changed their direction with angles but now I can't get my current one to change. This is the entity comment:

 

Pendulums always swing north / south on unrotated models. Add an angles field to the model to allow rotation in other directions.

 

What is different for me is I'm trying to apply it to a needle in a dial to get a flickering needle. Maybe the problem is that it's an upside down pendulum. But it does oscillate OK - it's just that it disappears into the gauge and comes forward again rather than left and right and whatever angles I put in makes no difference.

 

If nobody can explain this I think I might try a nodraw brush pendulum and bind the needle to it but surely we shouldn't need to? Or maybe create a patch and see if I can use the texture on it.

 

btw why is the needle model origin not inside the needle? Too late to change it now without breaking maps. At least it is in line with the axis

 

It's these little things which are irritating and time consuming. I spent half an hour decorating the room and half an hour just on this needle and still not done yet.

[Baddcog]

Tell me about it, I was mapping and found a light with a weird shadow which lead to 3+ hours of entity/skin fixes lol.

 

Umm, if it's the red needle it's mine. I'd have to look as it's been years, but the origin was probably set so the gauge and needles origins were in the same spot so it would be easy to align properly.

 

The pendulum thing I can't say. DR has major issues with rotations that can be quite frustrating for mappers who know what they are doing... I wish it could get fixed.

Everything from this to rotating func_statics which completly offsets their origins. Easy enough to fix but that shouldn't need done anyway imo. And for new mappers...

 

Anyway, the red needle is ugly and the texture is just red, the shape is the model. We do have a miniture clockhand texture now though (think it's in models), so just making a patch and using that is the best way to go. You could always export the patch as ase and add it to the model directoy on SVN.

If you don't I can do that this weekend as I'm trying to get some stuff done for 1.08. In fact it would be awesome to have entities with attached needles of varying movements. Might also help with the orientation and whatnot. Just place 'twitchy needle gauge' where you want and go... (but I'd have to mess with it to see how that works)

[Fidcal]

Yeah, won't be too difficult to find a workaround but it just broke my workflow. I might have done another hour's good work on other stuff but then I thought meh and spent the time playing Skyrim instead. hehe.

 

Whatever you do don't change the origin of the original model as it will break maps. The origin is not so critical here anyway since it is along the axis of rotation about 3/4th of a unit.

 

If I get something working I might just do a prefab.