Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[grodenglaive]

On 1/2/2024 at 3:49 AM, JackFarmer said:

Thank you for the info. What can I do about the lightening affecting the light gem?

I got it! Just needed to move the ai_see out of the brackets.

lights/biground1
{	
	description "Round point light."
	{
		forceHighQuality
		map	lights/biground1.tga
		colored
		zeroClamp
	}
	ai_see 0
}

 

[JackFarmer]

5 minutes ago, grodenglaive said:

I got it! Just needed to move the ai_see out of the brackets.

lights/biground1
{	
	description "Round point light."
	{
		forceHighQuality
		map	lights/biground1.tga
		colored
		zeroClamp
	}
	ai_see 0
}

 

I hereby award you the vacant title "DR Superbrain Problem Solver"!

[grodenglaive]

 also @HMart who suggested moving outside the 2nd bracket, which I would not have thought to try.

[HMart]

40 minutes ago, grodenglaive said:

 also @HMart who suggested moving outside the 2nd bracket, which I would not have thought to try.

Glad it worked it means that is a global material token, btw those 2nd brackets are called "stages" and a single material can have more than one stage (draw call). 

But I still don't get the reason why an AI vision feature, is handle at the material level?!

Normally you mark a entire entity/model invisible to the AI, not just a single surface on a model.

Edited January 4 by HMart

[peter_spy]

IMO that's more like a bug, rather than a feature. This is a property, not material keyword:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Light_Properties#Other_light_settings

[Dragofer]

Normally the aiSee property is set on the light entity, and in this case the property has been set on the light's material. The property sets whether the light makes things more visible to AIs, so its not meaningful to set this property on model materials. If you want to stop AIs from reacting to an object you need to disable its visual stim, and if you want AIs to be able to see through it you need to give it a material that doesn't contain visual clip.

Id say we can be grateful someone had the foresight to implement this as a material keyword, too, in cases like this one where you probably can't set spawnargs.

[HMart]

1 hour ago, Dragofer said:

you want AIs to be able to see through it you need to give it a material that doesn't contain visual clip

Oh that makes sense! I didn't thought of that, it was just that "ai_see" keyword throwed me off, because to me implied more "object is or not visible to AI", so I wondered why not put that in the object .def file or mark it in the editor with a spawnarg?

But, yes now I see why, you may want to mark some individual surfaces as see through for AI, but still imo the keyword could be made more descriptive, for a material, like "aiSeeThrough" for example. 

[Dragofer]

1 hour ago, HMart said:

But, yes now I see why, you may want to mark some individual surfaces as see through for AI, but still imo the keyword could be made more descriptive, for a material, like "aiSeeThrough" for example. 

Normally this is done by setting clipcontents, which is a number that represents the sum of all enabled bitflags for clip towards i.e. bodies, moveables, AI vision and opacity. Each combination of bitflags has a unique sum. I dont know - and doubt - there's a separate keyword that alters some of these bitflags.

When ai_see 0 is used in a material it means that a light that uses this material will not increase the visibility of objects in its radius towards AIs. I dont think theres any effect when used in a regular material for world or model surfaces.

[grodenglaive]

I just think of the ai_see property as " affects_light_gem"

[datiswous]

On 1/4/2024 at 12:58 PM, grodenglaive said:

lights/biground1
{	
	description "Round point light."
	{
		forceHighQuality
		map	lights/biground1.tga
		colored
		zeroClamp
	}
	ai_see 0
}

Why is there a second bracket at all?

Edited January 6 by datiswous

[HMart]

On 1/6/2024 at 1:25 AM, datiswous said:

Why is there a second bracket at all?

What do you mean? 

If you are talking of the second par of brackets then in my experience, materials are done like this.

[material name]
{
   [global material options]

   {
      //material stage 1 or draw call 1
      [local stage1 options]
   }

   {
      //material stage 2 or draw call 2
      [local stage2 options]
   }

  ...
}

So those brackets are used to define individual material stages or "layers".

Edited January 12 by HMart

[datiswous]

Ok thanks. I simply didn't understand how materials work I guess. I have to revisit the wiki.

[datiswous]

Looking at the material file wiki page:

Frob Highlight Stage isn't needed anymore since 2.11 right? I thought I understood that there might still be a reason to use it sometime. If not, I'll update that wiki page.

Edit: The info is actually already there, but in a confusing way.

Edited January 13 by datiswous

[Frost_Salamander]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

Looking at the material file wiki page:

Frob Highlight Stage isn't needed anymore since 2.11 right? I thought I understood that there might still be a reason to use it sometime. If not, I'll update that wiki page.

Edit: The info is actually already there, but in a confusing way.

It is confusing.

The first example shouldn't have the frob highlight section in it, and a note should be added to the text saying the example is for version 2.11 and greater.

The subsequent stages should be under a different heading clearly labelled as being deprecated/obsolete and they are only there for reference.

[datiswous]

Quote

twoSided Draw the front and back. Implies no-shadows, because the shadow volume would be coplanar with the surface, giving depth fighting

Use a nodraw surface with forceShadows to address this.

I think this text is a little too technical.

[datiswous]

On 1/13/2024 at 12:22 PM, Frost_Salamander said:

It is confusing.

I made changes:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Material_Files

Suggestions?

Edited January 14 by datiswous

[peter_spy]

Quote

Note: If there is no specular map then substitute _black, and if there is no bumpmap then use _flat instead.

This can be removed as well, you don't need to specify texture map slots you don't use. In some cases you even shouldn't.

[Frost_Salamander]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

I made changes:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Material_Files

Suggestions?

I don't know if it's mentioned anywhere else on the Wiki, but it's worth mentioning that the first global keywords are for sound:

    // Use on of the predefined surface types like:
    // none, metal, stone, flesh, glass, wood
    stone

And this:

    //surftype15
    //description "carpet This is a carpet texture."

I think this is sound as well, but I also think 'description' does other stuff, for example for using with vine arrows:

    stone
    description	"vine_friendly"

If someone has a list (or link to code) where all this is defined for TDM so mappers are aware, that would be useful.

I would also move the 'special keywords' section up so it's before the obsolete stuff - that old stuff needs to be relegated to the very bottom.  I would also change the title of that section from 'No ambient and frob -stages needed' to something like 'Deprecated stages' and say it's just there for historical reference.

Edited January 14 by Frost_Salamander

[datiswous]

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Material_Files

I made a link to wiki page Surface Types.

16 hours ago, Frost_Salamander said:

I would also move the 'special keywords' section up so it's before the obsolete stuff - that old stuff needs to be relegated to the very bottom.  I would also change the title of that section from 'No ambient and frob -stages needed' to something like 'Deprecated stages' and say it's just there for historical reference.

I renamed it to Deprecated stages and moved it to bottom and hid them.

Btw. I'm not sure if frobstages are entirelly deprecated, because I think they can optionally still be tweaked:

So I think you don't have to specify them, but if you want you still can.

Edit: I added info for optionally customising frobstages.

Edited January 15 by datiswous

[JackFarmer]

On 1/4/2024 at 12:58 PM, grodenglaive said:

I got it! Just needed to move the ai_see out of the brackets.

lights/biground1
{	
	description "Round point light."
	{
		forceHighQuality
		map	lights/biground1.tga
		colored
		zeroClamp
	}
	ai_see 0
}

 

hm..I I put a mtr file with that text in the materials folder...but then lightening is not triggered anymore in game on my end...

[grodenglaive]

@JackFarmer I just double checked - the lightning still works for me. Did you copy the entire lights.mtr and just insert "ai_see 0" under lights/biground1?  

btw, to test it I just used a func_fx for the lightning entity that the player triggers.

Edited January 18 by grodenglaive
stupidity

[grodenglaive]

Never mind, I was being stupid. The thunder sound effect still works but the lightning flash does not appear

Back to the drawing board I guess.

Edited January 18 by grodenglaive

[Baal]

Is it possible to override a single definition (from a .sndshd file for example) instead of whole files?

I want to replace some footstep sounds. If I include the sound shader defnition files, I'll have to keep them up to date with the base mod, and I don't want to do that. Instead, I just want to override single definitions in a separate file. Is that possible?

[cvlw]

Hello all.

I have a hopefully easy question.  I just can't seem to search it properly.

I want the player to select an item in the inventory (not drop to hands) and then USE (frob and then use key) on an object in the map.  But, the frob should only happen when that object is selected in the inventory and not just general frob.

If I am confusing this with triggering, I apologize.

Is there an example in an exiting map that I can study that does this type of thing?  I don't recall from any maps about this. Or, what is the general way to do this?

The intent is to have the player find this inventory item and then go to various objects in the map and USE this item on the map objects.

Advice?

Thanks

Clint

 

[datiswous]

2 hours ago, Baal said:

Is it possible to override a single definition (from a .sndshd file for example) instead of whole files?

On 12/2/2022 at 8:23 PM, stgatilov said:

* It is now legal to override a single decl of core game in your mission.
Recall that "decl" means a material, a skin, an entityDef, a particle, etc.
Note that overriding a whole file from core game always worked as expected, but overriding a single decl from a file did not work reliably before (despite the common belief that it should).

This was a fix in 2.11 beta, so it's included.

I asume sound materials are included as well..