Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[demagogue]

For the record, from the start the issue sounded familiar to me as dmap hiccuping on AAS pathfinding (crashes towards the end of dmapping being characteristic), which often means messy ground brushwork, the solution to which is monsterclipping over it to give a flat clean surface. So interesting to see my initial instinct seems to have been right. Happy you got it fixed anyway. Edit: And hello new page! o/

[Moonbo]

Nice, congrats on solving it. And sorry for telling you that monster-clipping wouldn't fix it . I would still recommend cleaning up the offending geometry though.

[RJFerret]

Phew, glad you got it sorted!

 

Yeah, I intentionally did my first map relatively small, but pushed limits in areas generally suggested not to do, just so that I could learn what would work and not work. Now on my WIP I'm easily cruising through everything, knowing how to approach the steps along the way.

 

If someone delves into their grand vision to begin with, I might go so far as to suggest setting it aside, making a small/limited scope mission to release separately, then return to their big project.

[SteveL]

...dmap hiccuping on AAS pathfinding (crashes towards the end of dmapping being characteristic), which often means messy ground brushwork,...

 

This conversation made me take another look at my first WIP. But it's working well right now, so if I take any of the advice I'm in danger of trying to fix what's not broken, possibly breaking it. Does monsterclip (and other nodraw textures) cause less hiccupping than visible brushes?

 

The floor of my map, which is mostly exterior, has 3 layers: a layer of flat, square, large-grid-snapped brushes, a layer of carved (clipped) brushes to give the rough outline of a more organic surface, and seamlessly stitched patches to provide the visible surface. The exterior visportals and caulk sealing brushes intersect the carved brushes and seal against the lower flat layer. They all work, and continue to do so despite me meddling with the carved layer most evenings.

 

Would it be a good thing to make the carved layer a clip texture? I'm probably not finished meddling with that layer yet, so I want to do whatever's most robust with it.

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention, AI pathing is ok too. I have 3 friendly temporary AI in my map, 1 for each of my largish buildings, and they walk all around the map and visit every room and every floor.

Edited January 8, 2014 by SteveL

[Garrett2014]

Hey Guys I was advised to post any questions I may have in here as this is a Newbie Thread. it seems a little long and cluttered though and to be honest sifting through all, what is it ? 170+ pages to find info seems inefficiant way of doing things. Im possiabally missing something as im tired. Anyway. I have a recurring problem and that is the Engine Path,Game Settings,Preferences ! The Engine Path field doesnt retain the path. Its a royal pain in the backside to check and restore the Engine path not just every time I launch DR but also start a new map ! Im not sure if its that which causes the loss but shouldn't that path, once set, remain untill you want to change it ? If its any help the fs_game field retains darkmod which i have entered as previously advised. Thanks guys . Your help is appreciated.

Edited January 9, 2014 by Garrett2014

[RJFerret]

@Steve, I did much more convoluted okay. So what you describe sounds good to me. Especially if on grid. I learned to be careful of clipper cuts.

 

@Garrett2014, just google the forum to find answers. I google the site to pull answers from forum and wiki. It's actually easier to read all the wisdom in one place, these pages go quickly a few a day during dmapping. I answered in your thread having seen that first. Just set and forget, but reset if you ever go into preferences again rather than making it blank.

Edited January 9, 2014 by RJFerret

[Garrett2014]

OK Thanks JR Ferret. Im back at it now and I seem to be able to load the textures with the media browser and any i click on are now available in my texture browser!. OK NOW while i know that restricting oneself to only a few colours and textures helps any design I do like to have all the available colors and textures available so that i can view them and make a decision as to which tectures id liek to use ! Now instead of selecting and then scrolling through all the textures to ensure they are in my Texture browser is there any way to just have them load by default ? What are my options in this regard ?

[Garrett2014]

Ok Guys another newbie question . Sorry. Ive started playing with the clipper tool and lets say i want to cut a hole in the roof of my first room ive made ! ok so the roof is a simple flat retangular brush and i select 2 points on that brush, the top face and the inner bottom face, ! Now instead of simply pressing enter which will cut or crop the brush I press Shift + Enter to slice it ! I now resize one side of or resize one of the two brushs that are now present along the same axis as the slice follows ! This forms a hole in the roof but the edge of the 1st part of the brush, the part that wasnt resized dosent display a texture but only a Pink color. I suspect this is to represent the lack of a face in that area. So my question is how do i repair this area ? Or am i using the clipping tool wrong and if I am is there a workaround to achieve this in a different way ?

 

Also I realise that by doing this im creating leakes to the void but I will be adding a second storey to my 1st room and a ladder. This is all just practice at the moment !

 

Finally is there a config file or a setting that i can adjust to reduce the amount the middle mouse wheel zooms by as my mouse wheel is the type that has defined steps in its movement and 1 step in its rotation is just to inaccurate to be very practical in the 3D window ! If i could reduce the movement in the 3D window by half or even down to a 1/4 of its current value in relation to 1 segment or partial rotation of my mouse wheel i would find this much more userfriendly !

Edited January 9, 2014 by Garrett2014

[SteveL]

The pink texture is called caulk. It's invisible in game, pink in the editor. There are some tricks you can learn to do with it later, but for now the quickest way to get rid of it is to copy and paste the texture from one of the other sides of your brush. No need to select or deselect anything to do that. Just point the mouse at the texture you want to copy in camera view, and click the mouse wheel. You'll see the name of the texture appears on your status bar. To paste the texture, point at the caulk side, hold ctrl and click mouse wheel again. That's also useful for aligning textures between adjacent faces.

 

Highly recommend Fidcal's tutorial linked above for familiarizing yourself with all the basics.

 

Edit: wheel scroll does move the camera in big steps. CTRL+shift+ mouse move does it smoothly

Edited January 9, 2014 by SteveL

[SteveL]

@RJFerret I never thought of using Google to search the forum! I've been using advanced search to display individual posts instead of threads. The default search is rendered pretty useless by master threads like this one. But even the advanced search won't let you search for short terms like AAS for example. I'll try Google tonight :-)

[Garrett2014]

SteveL Thanks for the info regarding texture manipulation and how to zoom smoothly ! I am going to look a fidcals tutorial now ! Do you know if there's any way to rebind keys in DR ? I dont like keyboard shortcuts so if i can rebind mouse wheel id be happier !. Any way to do this ?

[SteveL]

SteveL Thanks for the info regarding texture manipulation and how to zoom smoothly ! I am going to look a fidcals tutorial now ! Do you know if there's any way to rebind keys in DR ? I dont like keyboard shortcuts so if i can rebind mouse wheel id be happier !. Any way to do this ?

I am a keyboard shortcut addict, I hate having to touch the mouse so I've not tried binding new mouse buttons but you can get at the bindings under the edit menu> keyboard shortcuts I think.

 

Be wary of rebinding the mouse wheel click though, or at least put its functions somewhere easy. It does different things in camera view and ortho view, both very useful. When you come to make a map you'll use that texture copy / paste a LOT!

Edited January 9, 2014 by SteveL

[RJFerret]

Yes, searching for AI or AAS or other short terms is what drove me to Google for searching here in the first place, then the expediency of searching both wiki and forums in one step, since so much info is lacking in the wiki and so much info is lacking in the forums too, heh!

 

Very useful for Googling is choosing the website it returns results from, for those who don't know, like this example:

 

site:thedarkmod.com a - z

 

Pasting that into the Google search box will give you results of the A - Z wiki tutorial predominantly, plus an A-Z lights tutorial in the forums.

 

If you want to search just the forums use:

 

site:forums.thedarkmod.com searchterms

 

or

 

site:wiki.thedarkmod.com terms

 

for just the wiki.

[Garrett2014]

OK why are my brush lines in my grid view White ? making them look invisible or as if nothing is there but you can sorta see a whitish void where your lines should be ?

[SteveL]

OK why are my brush lines in my grid view White ? making them look invisible or as if nothing is there but you can sorta see a whitish void where your lines should be ?

 

You can end up with white brushes in both camera and ortho views... The 3d "camera" view has a set of 4 toggle buttons at the top of the window. One of them (the 2nd I think) will make objects untextured white, Just change it to the 3rd button which will give you the textures back. But reading your message again I think you mean the 2d ortho view as that's the one with the grid. White might be the default when you have nothing selected. If you open up preferences you'll find there are alternative skins or themes available. I changed mine to make stuff easier to see almost as soon as I started using DR, so I can't quite remember what the defualt theme looks like, but I'm sure you'll find a colour scheme in there that suits.

 

EDIT:

Now instead of selecting and then scrolling through all the textures to ensure they are in my Texture browser is there any way to just have them load by default?

 

Spotted I'd missed this question earlier. The media browser *is* your main textures browser, so they do all get made available at load time. You can apply textures directly from the media browser (right-click). Think of the separate Textures tab like a "recents" shortcut menu, that shows you the textures currently in your map, plus (optionally, it's a toggle button) the ones you've previewed. You wouldn't want all the textures loading into that tab -- there are so many it would be completely useless. In the media browser they are filed away in a tree structure so you can browse and preview all textures for wooden boards or whatever in one place, and you can apply them from there without using the textures tab.

Edited January 9, 2014 by SteveL

[Garrett2014]

Thanks Again SteveL, Very clearly explained and detailed response. Much appreciated. I will endevour to search for my solutions myself but dont want to spend days looking for something that could be relatively simple and easy for you chaps to answer and save me a lot of time which you all know were are very short of these days :/ tick tock goes the clock.

[SteveL]

That thing that particles seem to do, when you strafe around the emitter with r_showtris turned on. The decals seem to turn to face the player like the eyes of a picture following you round a room. Can that effect be used on other entities like func_splinemovers? I know I could do it with a script, but something supported by the engine would be far more efficient.

 

 

@Garrett2014: No prob, it's an incredibly steep learning curve to start with. I know, I did it 2 months ago It doesn't help that some of the info in the wiki only applies to previous versions of DR or is plain wrong, and the people who can edit the wiki aren't the same people who use the articles aimed at beginners, so it doesn't get fixed.

[hank morgan]

How do I get a particular sound to play when I open a readable? I can get the sound to play when I do a page turn (using the page turn sound param) but not on the opening of the readable.

[grayman]

How do I get a particular sound to play when I open a readable? I can get the sound to play when I do a page turn (using the page turn sound param) but not on the opening of the readable.

 

Use the objectives system. Create an objective that's met when the readable is opened, and have the completed objective target a speaker or a script that plays a sound on the player entity (in case the readable is mobile and can be moved from its original location before the player reads it).

[hank morgan]

Use the objectives system. Create an objective that's met when the readable is opened, and have the completed objective target a speaker or a script that plays a sound on the player entity (in case the readable is mobile and can be moved from its original location before the player reads it).

 

Thanks. I got it working as follows. I set up an an atdm:voice entity and an atdm:voice_trigger that links to it. Then it was just a matter of either triggering that by either using the frob_action_script spawnarg for the pickup event and for opening it by using the trigger_on_open spawnarg of the readable.

[Goldwell]

I have two conversations happening (different points of the game) both are layered pretty much identically except for the words spoken and the AI's however only one works.

 

Basically I have it setup as follows:

 

AI 1 - Talk

AI 2 - Talk

AI 2 - Activate Target (which is a trigger_once)

That trigger once is targeted towards AI 2 which is targeting a wait_for_trigger which is targeting a path_corner

 

What sounds broken from that?

 

My intention is for two AI's to have a conversation then once its all over one AI walks away to the path_corner

 

edit: oh I forgot to mention I can get it working if I place a 1 second delay on the trigger_once but the AI does a 360 turn which looks very very odd first before he starts walking. Surely there is a better way to do this?

Edited January 13, 2014 by Goldwell

[grayman]

The simplest way I know of is to have the last command in your conversation trigger an atdm:target_changetarget.

 

In that entity, give it these spawnargs:

 

"target" "<name of AI who's leaving>"

 

"add" "<name of path_corner you want him to walk to>"

[RJFerret]

I haven't done conversations, but you might be able to insert a path_turn before the path_corner to control direction of turn and prevent the 360° if that still occurs.

[Goldwell]

The simplest way I know of is to have the last command in your conversation trigger an atdm:target_changetarget.

 

In that entity, give it these spawnargs:

 

"target" "<name of AI who's leaving>"

 

"add" "<name of path_corner you want him to walk to>"

 

Ah perfect, thank you!

 

I haven't done conversations, but you might be able to insert a path_turn before the path_corner to control direction of turn and prevent the 360° if that still occurs.

 

Thanks for the help RJ but even with that the character still did the turn. However whenever you do conversations take Graymans advice as that works great

[Goldwell]

Also is there a way to get an AI to speak something without using the conversation system?