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Newbie DarkRadiant Questions


demagogue

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Hi,

 

Can anyone remember the name of the mapper who was working with super HD textures - making the whole level as a single model and then painting it..? It had a kind of TF2 "softness" to it. Was a big castle, a spiral staircase with large, rounded stones for the floors and walls.

 

Wanted to see how he'd progressed, but I can't find the threads!! D:

 

Thanks!

 

 

That's EpiFire's: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/10003-so-what-are-you-working-on-right-now/?p=387296

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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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I've got more than a handful AIs which I know will only be active at a certain time. Is there a way to manually shut down their thinking until they are needed, similar to interleaved thinking for decorative AIs but reversible?

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Hide only makes the AI invisible. They're still there making barks, etc. I'd teleport them & use interleave thinking when they're far. There's a trick to get them to use pathfinding post teleport that I forget now though.

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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Hide only makes the AI invisible. They're still there making barks, etc. I'd teleport them & use interleave thinking when they're far. There's a trick to get them to use pathfinding post teleport that I forget now though.

Hm, the most convenient would be an on/off toggle for thinking if there is one, but making use of LOD thinking by putting them in a faraway blue room is workable in this case. About your last sentence, you're meaning aas_flood entities for areas with no AI at map start?

 

My terminology in my OP was somewhat off - with interleaved thinking I meant the never_dormant spawnarg. It doesn't work here because they need to be full-functioning AI's, while that spawnarg means that as soon as you close the door on them they freeze in time.

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Sorry I think I meant getting them to use a patrol route post-teleport is tricky. It's been a while since I had the issue.

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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Sorry I think I meant getting them to use a patrol route post-teleport is tricky. It's been a while since I had the issue.

What's been working for me, as I remember it, is to link them up to a path_waitfortrigger as the first path node, then trigger them after the teleport. If I misremembered that I can fall back on the working setup in the second phase of One Step Too Far.

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  • 2 weeks later...

For environmental foley, my advice is to rip the sound from a youtube video. Environmental or anyway non-composed sounds like that usually aren't copyrightable because there's no artistry/authorship involved, but I can't imagine anyone minding in any event.

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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Thanks! I will see, if I can find and convert something (Have not made custom sounds, yet, but there's a first time for everything ;) ).

 

After a quick search I have found an interesting physics simulation for tearing cloth:

 

https://codepen.io/dissimulate/pen/KrAwx

 

It would be nice, if this were applicable for TDM, but I have absolutely no clue, how hard this would be and how far it would be beneficial for the mod. The first application I could think of, would be to have curtains that can be frobbed and torn down without cutting. But I will leave it to people with more insight, if this would be desirable/applicable.

Edited by Destined
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I have a problem setting up the sound I want. I have found an wav file and have converted it with Audacity to .ogg (44.1 kHz). I have a soundshader file called "tdm_sfx_textile-tearing.sndshd" that looks like this:

 


// ================
// SFX - Custom
// ================

textile-tearing
{
description "Tearing Cloth"

minDistance 1
maxDistance 64
sound/textile-tearing.ogg
}

I can choose and play it with the "sound" spawnarg in DR if it is inherited in the object, but when I set it up with the stim/response system (stim: frob, response (among others): Play Sound Shader, active, Sound Shader: textile-tearing, Sound Channel: empty. With this setup the sound does not play in game. What am I doing wrong?

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I would suggest that you first add a speaker playing this sound. This way you can check whether the sound is the problem. If it is not the sound, something is wrong with your S/R setup. Can you post a screenshot of the S/R menu were you've setup the response?

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Ok, thanks. I will try it this evening or tomorrow morning. The S/R setup should be fine, as all other response effects are working (i.e. the object it is on changes its model and turns itself unfrobable). Since I can play the sound in DR without any problems, I assumed it should also work in TDM, but maybe I was wrong here... As I said: I will try using a speaker later on and post the results.

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I have tested it again with a speaker. The speaker plays other sounds, but not my imported one. So, apparently, the mistake lies somewhere in my sound files. The sound shader appears in DR and the sound can be played in the sound editor in DR. But for some reason it will not play in TDM.

Increasing the volume (I set it to 50) also did not help. All seems to indicate that it is the ogg file that cannot be played by TDM.

Edited by Destined
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Sound Channel: empty.

It might be worth trying to use ANY as the sound channel.

 

Edit: also, the Sound Format wiki entry says sound files need to be 160kbps if stereo, or 96kbps if mono, aside from being 44.1kHz. I remember having the same problem as you when I had an incorrect frequency.

Edited by Dragofer
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It might be worth trying to use ANY as the sound channel.

 

The setup works for other sounds, so this shoud not be the problem.

 

Edit: also, the Sound Format wiki entry says sound files need to be 160kbps if stereo, or 96kbps if mono, aside from being 44.1kHz. I remember having the same problem as you when I didn't know these requirements yet.

 

Ah, I did not know the requirement of the 160/96kbps. Where can I set these in Audacity (and what do they stand for?)? Currently all I see is that I can set Format to 16/24-bit PCM or 32-bit float. This might be the problem.

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Making doors and windows is my main stumbling block in TDM, though I've gotten better at it over the last few months.

 

I still seem to be missing something crucial, though.

 

Is there any way on building the sides of a simple door way without the pink "Caulk" highlight showing up on my building blocks ?

 

I don't want to harm performance. I was just following komag's video tutorial and he doesn't seem to have the same issue when he copies bits of walls and resizes them to build hallways for doors and so on. I must be doing something wrong.

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I have tested it again with a speaker. The speaker plays other sounds, but not my imported one. So, apparently, the mistake lies somewhere in my sound files. The sound shader appears in DR and the sound can be played in the sound editor in DR. But for some reason it will not play in TDM.

Increasing the volume (I set it to 50) also did not help. All seems to indicate that it is the ogg file that cannot be played by TDM.

I don't see anything wrong with the shader, but a note on volume:

 

A volume of 0 is the native volume (the default if you don't set anything), and you should almost always use that and, for custom sounds, change the native volume with audacity. It goes =down= from there 0...-60. You should usually not increase volume because it overloads, but even if you do, only maybe 1..3 or so.

 

It's logrithmic so every 10 squares the volume, so 50 would be like a nuclear bomb if not louder. It means you squared the native volume 5 times. Your soundboard probably checked out after 4 or 5 with nope, too loud, lol.

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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I don't see anything wrong with the shader, but a note on volume:

 

A volume of 0 is the native volume (the default if you don't set anything), and you should almost always use that and, for custom sounds, change the native volume with audacity. It goes =down= from there 0...-60. You should usually not increase volume because it overloads, but even if you do, only maybe 1..3 or so.

 

It's logrithmic so every 10 squares the volume, so 50 would be like a nuclear bomb if not louder. It means you squared the native volume 5 times. Your soundboard probably checked out after 4 or 5 with nope, too loud, lol.

 

Well, I learn something new every day. However, without any volume setting, it still won't work :(

 

Thanks to Google I have found out, that the Quality for ogg files in Audacity determines the kbps. I have tried 96 kbps (Quality 2) as the file is stated to be mono. After this did not work, I still tried 160 kbps (Quality 5), but this did not work either. I am pretty sure right now, that it is the ogg file that cannot be played in TDM. I just don't know why...

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I had a custom texture not work because it was only in a "/textures/dema" folder and I needed to put it in an existing subfolder "textures/darkmod/dema". After that it worked. See if putting your sound in a subfolder like "sound/sfx/[your_FM_name_or_whatever]" helps maybe.

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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I just checked the Wiki page "Sound File Formats" and saw that the sound also needs to be 16 bit. If I remember correctly I saved it as 32 bit. So, hopefully, this will finally solve the issue. I will check it again this evening. If this doesn't help, I will also check your suggestion, demagogue.

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So, no advice on how I can avoid leaks and minimise caulks ?

 

I also have a question about the editing of readables. One of the main tutorials on the wiki seems outdated (last edited in 2009, mentions some non-existent xdata folder) and it seems to contradict Fidcal's (admittedly, simplified) tut on readables from the A-Z guide.

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I don't understand about your caulk issue. You only normally use caulk for surfaces facing the void or another brush, so they shouldn't be facing inside to start. They don't even help performance all that much (outside surfaces are already not rendered, maybe caulk would help a big brush with a lot of lights on it facing inside but unseen) so are generally safe to just not use if they annoy you. And you avoid leaks by avoiding leaks. Build cleanly on grid and make non grid stuff func_statics. But maybe I didn't get your problem.

 

Are you talking about when you copy or make a new brush the texture(s) the new one takes? I thought it was the texture(s) of the last brush you selected.

 

On readables, the old tut probably tells you how to do readables yourself from scratch. You make the xdata file and put it in the xdata folder, like a custom asset. At some point the readables editor was added into DR that does this automatically, and that's probably what the new tuts and revised Fidcal tut refer to. So that's how you can reconcile them. Stay with the readable editor and think of the xdata folder stuff as what the editor is doing behind the scenes. (If you want to do something custom, there are situations when you may want to do the xdata stuff yourself beyond the editor, so it's good the info is still on the wiki.)

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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