Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[Moonbo]

I had to rename all 3 of the files sitting in the appdata folder but that did the trick. I'll send them over to you (I think it was input.xml that was crashing DR).

[Moonbo]

Two quick questions:

 

1) Since I had to erase my filters/input/user.xml files:

a) I can't see the texture editor. Before I just had to press "T" and it would pop up, but now nothing. It's also not a tab on on the entity screen. I can still access the texture browser and apply the textures that way, but it was a nifty tool.

b ) I remember I did something that stopped Darkradiant from shifting by one unit items that I had copied. Whatever I did is gone now though and every time I copy something, it's shifted downwards, which is a real pain when trying to set up visportal areas. What's the option/preference to stop that from happening?

 

2) I've never done anything complicated with patches (just your standard arches and bevels), and I'm trying to wrap my head around how I can possibly create a patch into this spot:

 

Edited January 1, 2013 by Moonbo

[Obsttorte]

1a) Go to edit -> keyboard shortcuts and search for texture browser or something like that

1b) It's the second-right button on the top showing a black and a red box

[grayman]

2) I've never done anything complicated with patches (just your standard arches and bevels), and I'm trying to wrap my head around how I can possibly create a patch into this spot:

 

You could try this:

 

1 - Add an end cap to each of the three bevel patches.

 

2 - Each of those end caps will have a common point in the corner.

 

3 - Select the three end caps and enter vertex mode.

 

4 - Highlight the single vertex in the corner (which grabs all three vertexes there) and manually pull it out from the corner so it lies somewhere on the plane between the three bevels. Adjust to your taste.

[Fidcal]

rough gestimate to patch as I'm not certain but this is what I'd try: Select top patch and experiment with patch menu - the cap or thicken options to form a side piece that is like a triangle with the big side is a curve. Check carefully and be prepared to undo to get it right. You might need to delete some side pieces and might need to adjust things like patch tesselation in Patch Inspector.

 

Now, starting with that, use the vertex thing so you can move vertices around. Drag the point on the square side down to the bottom to meet the vertex of the other two vertical curved pieces. You'll probably also need to turn orthoview to drag the vertex in the other dimension as well. Now you might need to adjust tesselation to get it line up. You might finish up with more vertices to drag.

 

If you can get that lot to line up then try pasting in the texture using the different paste options. If it won't look right then create a brush and texture it then copy and paste from that. If that don't work then I'd bodge it with a gargoyle on top to hide the mess! That's what I do!

 

[EDIT] HAHA! I knew that no matter how fast I typed that grayman would beat me to it!

[grayman]

If that don't work then I'd bodge it with a gargoyle on top to hide the mess! That's what I do!

 

Ha! Good suggestion.

 

HAHA! I knew that no matter how fast I typed that grayman would beat me to it!

 

[grayman blows the smoke away from the end of his gun barrel...]

[Moonbo]

If I wanted to have a light slowly increase in intensity (i.e. start turned off and then slowly get brighter and then stay fully lit) how would I do that?

[demagogue]

I looked up the script function, so I can give that, and maybe it's enough to experiment. But if you need more explanation I'd have to look more into it or someone that knows can answer.

The script function is:

 

[name of light].fadeToLight( [RGB light level], [time in ms]);

 

So trigger a script with that line. That one does color, but I think if you set the initial light at (0 0 0), then fading it (to like 1 1 1) would have the effect of growing in intensity I think. Experiment.

 

You could also have a look at this list, search "light", and see if any others look promising & experiment with them.

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

[Moonbo]

Hrm...scripts. Don't think I have the confidence to try touching those yet. Had another simpler question though:

 

I'm trying to create a low layer of fog hugging close to the ground (something similar was done in Deceptive Shadows and some other FMs). I thought the way to do it would be to make a patch and apply a fog texture but the patch didn't show up in game. Not sure what else to try.

[AluminumHaste]

Simple; open those maps with darkradiant and see how those authors did it.

[Moonbo]

Tried doing that with Deceptive Shadows before posting, went to the place where I had seen that fog but couldn't find anything special there (no patches, no unique fog lights). Made sure I didn't have a filter turned on by accident, so that wasn't it.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Moonbo

[Fidcal]

Either a texture or a light or a particle emitter. Search the map in a plain text editor and look for fog or mist etc then note the entity name and you can find it in DR's entity list.

[Moonbo]

Thanks Fidcal, found it :-). It was a particle emitter.

[Moonbo]

I have a question about rat AI: I'm trying to get the buggers to stay still and can't figure out how. All I want is for a rat to stay in one spot and play its idle animations, but whatever I try they keep running around. I've made sure that they're on team 0, and I tried setting up two wait paths and linking them together so that the rat is constantly waiting, but nothing is working. I'm sure there's an easy answer to this one, but I'm stumped.

Edited January 10, 2013 by Moonbo

[Springheel]

I think you need to add "patrol" "1".

 

[grayman]

"patrol" "0"

 

A setting of 1 is the default, and makes them run around randomly when they don't have path_corners.

[Moonbo]

That did the trick, thanks Grayman.

[Moonbo]

Oof, this one should be easy but I'm having no luck with it: want to create a window that the player can look out of and see a camera view instead of actual world geometry (i.e. sort of like a security camera screen). I'm pretty sure I've tracked down the entities I need to set this up: a func_cameraview for the camera shot, a null entity to point the camera at the right angle, a func_static patch to act as the surface to display the camera image.

 

But for the life of me I can't get the image from the camera to show up on the func_static. I've tried the four camera textures in darkradiant (cameraImg1, cameraImg2, cameraView1, cameraView2), and then put the "cameratarget" spawnarg pointing at the func_cameraview, but nothing. The closest I can get is if I use the cameraView1 texture, then a single image shows up on the patch, but it's completely static. In fact, if I erase stuff, and dmap, the image stays exactly the same and still shows the erased stuff.

 

Anyways, I'm stumped.

[demagogue]

Interesting. There are things like mirrors that project camera views on to surfaces too, so the capability is lurking in there.

 

I don't have the first idea. The only thing I can think of is a hack where, if it's inside, you teleport the skybox camera to the scene and use a skybox-texture for that surface, and then when they leave, you teleport the camera back to the skybox, uh, box so the sky renders normally again. But that's a really cheap hack. Hopefully there's a more direct way somewhere out there.

[nbohr1more]

Possibly quick question...

 

When invoking a lightFadeIn script via call_on_exit for the Location System, do you need to prepend it with the example "sys trigger" call or can you simply call the lightFadeIn directly?

[Obsttorte]

Not sure if I understood your question correctly, but any function you want to call directly needs to be of the form void functionname (entity zone)

 

What function do you mean exactly by lightFadeIn (I did not find it).

[nbohr1more]

It's from the Script Events "User Friendly List" wiki:

 

$<light>.FadeInLight(<time>); and $<light>.FadeOutLight(<time>); (fade the light in/out)

 

So based on a little more research:

 

 

first, ensure that script/tdm_custom_scripts.script exists.

 

 

void main()

 

{

#include script/light_fadein.script

#include script/light_fadeout.script

}

 

Then:

 

light_fadein.script

 

void fadein(entity light_zone)

 

{

$<name_of_light_entity>.FadeInLight(3);

}

void main()

{

}

 

light_fadeout.script

 

void fadeout()

 

{

 

$<name_of_light_entity>.FadeOutLight(3);

 

}

void main()

{

}

 

 

Finally add the following spawnargs to your Info_Location entity:

 

 

"call_on_entry" "fadeout"

"call_on_exit" "fadein"

 

Does that look correct?

[Obsttorte]

Well, first of all fadeout has no argument. It should be like fadein: void fadeout(entity zone).

 

How do you want to find out the name of the light entity to fade in/out?

 

The #include lines goes to the top of your script file, not into the main routine.

 

For the lights: I'm not a hundret percent sure what entity is passed as zone, but maybe it's the info_location object. If so, you could let it target all the lights you want to fade starting with target0, target1,..., target(N-1), where N is the number of lights to fade. Pass another spawnarg that holds the number of lights on it. You're free to choose an appropiate name. Let's just assume you call it "light_number"

The script for fadein would then look as followed:

void fadein(entity zone) {
 float N=zone.getFloatKey("light_number"); //get the number of lights in this zone
 float i=0;
 for (i=0;i<N;i++) {
   zone.getTarget(i).FadeInLight(3); //fade all the lights in
 }
}

But again, you'd have to make sure that the info_location is passed as argument. I'll see if I can find that out.

[Obsttorte]

Another thing. Obviously I don't know what you're trying to achieve. But if it's something like in the lost city mission of the original Thief games, meaning that the lights in a specific room go on once you enter and go out if you leave, you would use

 

"call_on_entry" "fadein"

"call_on_exit" "fadeout"

 

Another thing. It may be better if you call the functions "fadeIn" and "fadeOut" (like in FadeInLight, start every new word with a capital letter). But that's just cosmetics.

 

EDIT: OK, I've tested it. The entity passed is really the info_location object. So the above mentioned code should work. Good luck.

Edited January 20, 2013 by Obsttorte

[nbohr1more]

Thanks for the clarifications.

 

Time to test some things when I get home.