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Newbie DarkRadiant Questions


demagogue

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LIkely it's taking up the same as any other distant AI - ie, reduced thinking. If you want it to be completely dormant then give it neverDormant 0 but then you might want to change that back to neverDormant 1 when you bring it out of the blue room. That can be done in script I think but not sure about any simple entity solution. Depending on the AI I think neverDormant 0 is fine (some disagree with me.) What you might see is an AI patrols out of a door out of sight then freezes when the door closes so if you wait 30 seconds for him to go clear then go out the same door he's really still there and springs back to life. This is not a problem is many situations. Use your judgement and test. Some FMs have already been released using this method and nobody noticed. ;)

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I could get almost everything to wok (including some triggered sounds), the zombie is fully functional but he's still not going towards his path corner, and the candle light turns off, but the fire model is still there floating! :)I should try a couple different variations, I linked the trigger to the relay entity, and from that to the path_wait, but I'll probably try a direct link to the trigger for both. Forget it, I should link the trigger to the AI instead.

 

BTW, since Im here, what values would anyone suggest to create a formidable opponent? I've met several particularly hard melee enemies around the missions, and I can see many args I think would increase AI skill/difficulty, but they are pretty scattered and Im not sure how to compare values? For example, auditive acuity levels are generally 100 (alert threshold seems to be around 20), what are reasonable values to make the AI quite sensible and hard to surprise (are those the right args at all)? How to make an opponent attack faster, more frequently and have harder blows? Many args have good descriptions, but most are very scattered which makes reverse engineering references in existing maps quite a lot of wasted time.

Edited by RPGista
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A good question. AI have a spawnarg called def_melee_set. This determines the speed, damage, and health of the AI in combat.

 

They're still a work in progress, and may still need tweaking, but the basic sets are:

 

atdm:ai_melee_set_novice_normal (also _hard _expert in place of _normal; useful if you're setting difficulty levels in the mission)

atdm:ai_melee_set_trained_normal

atdm:ai_melee_set_skilled_normal

 

If an AI has a knife, he can't block a shortsword/longsword, but he can attack more often.

atdm:ai_melee_set_knife_novice_normal

atdm:ai_melee_set_knife_trained_normal

atdm:ai_melee_set_knife_skilled_normal

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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I don't think there's a script for dousing lights. All I can suggest is a water stim. You might try a test for a quick bodge. Make a cube of nodraw 50 x 50 x 50 and make it a dark mod water entity. Place it over the flame. Place a door next to it. Bind the water entity to the door with bind <doorname> Make the door so it opens away from the flame. Give the door open 1.

 

Now in theory at game start the door should be open away from the flame. Frob the door to close it. If the flame goes out when the invisible water goes over it then you know it works. Replace the door with a different invisible mover. For example it could be a tiny nodraw brush that is up in the ceiling and descends, puts out the flame then is deleted. and make the water as small as possible

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@ Fidcal: That's very ingenious, but that silly idea I had before actually worked pretty well! Yesterday I was able to make it work by simply creating two normal candle entities, one lit and one unlit; I placed the lit one in the scene, and the other in the blue room with the enemy. When the player activates the trigger, a wind sound plays, the candle is teleported to the blue room and the unlit one teleported to a slightly different position - the light "go off" and the candle falls to the ground because it's teleported too close to the edge of the bench it's sitting on, thus simulating a mover function (to make it fall) in a cheap way. ;) Now I can either work on the positioning a bit to make the "movement" of the pushed candle look more subtle, or use the trigger facing way to ensure the player wont be looking at it and will just hear it falling. Its probably not the most economical solution to be having those extra entities around (and the lit one still there) but it is working ok. Thanks everyone for the support, I'll definetly try that invisible water trick in the future.

 

@Mortem: Thanks a lot, I found it, should be testing it tonight. Another thing though is that I wanted a very dangerous opponent but not harder to kill, so will increasing the level also give the AI more health? Should one increase the weapons damage accordingly then, to keep the player as lethal as the enemies?

Edited by RPGista
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There are different things you can do to increase AI effectiveness. Combat is already mentioned. You can change the health of AI to whatever you want (default is around 100, depending on the character). Just selecting the right type of character goes a long way...elite guards are already set to the best combat values, with higher hit points and better armour, which makes them more challenging by default.

 

You can also increase AI acuity values. Default is 100. I'm not sure how great a change is needed to have a noticable effect...I set the audio acuity in A Score to Settle to 110 on the highest difficulty, but I'm not sure I noticed much of a difference.

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I'll definetly look into those examples... I want a certain character to be particularly difficult to stealth around, so I'll go from your suggestion and make some tests in game. The alert threshold then isnt as important, I'm wondering?

 

Has anyone used this damaging moveables feature before (http://wiki.thedarkm...s_Damage_Things)?

  • Find or create a damage def. A good generic one is damage_generic. This does 20 damage with a small knockback.
  • Add the following keys/values to your moveable's def:

"damage" "<name of your damage def, INCLUDING the "damage_" prefix>"

 

I'm having trouble getting it to work, the point would be to add this arg to most moveables in the map so that any thrown object will hurt/get the attention of the npcs (simulating this with damage, as its a sense they lack right now), I dont know how to "create (or find) a damage def", I tried adding the Damage arg on an object and then put a value of 1 (or 20, etc) and it had no appearent effect. Then I used the "damage_generic" suggested. It SEEMS they are more responsive, but I couldnt really prove it, as there's no visible effect to observe after the initial suspicious reaction... I couldnt pinpoint if this is doing anything or if it was just the sound of the rock falling that alerted the AI (there was no pain animation, so Im guessing it didnt work?).

Edited by RPGista
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I was wondering what kind (if any) of invisible brush types could I use to block open areas for visportaling, WITHOUT blocking lights (as caulk and sky would), but without messing up geometry or blocking the view...

 

Now that I mention it, how can I do the OPPOSITE and block a very big light radius from crossing from one sky-closed area to another? My mission will have moonlight. Parallel lights wont work, point lights work fine but I cant have them shining on the next city block...

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I was wondering what kind (if any) of invisible brush types could I use to block open areas for visportaling, WITHOUT blocking lights (as caulk and sky would), but without messing up geometry or blocking the view...

 

Now that I mention it, how can I do the OPPOSITE and block a very big light radius from crossing from one sky-closed area to another? My mission will have moonlight. Parallel lights wont work, point lights work fine but I cant have them shining on the next city block...

 

Try NoDraw or even monsterclip texture on your brush. Both of those are invisible textures and will block players from going through.

 

For the second part maybe try Shadow texture on a 1 sided patch?

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Not sure what you mean by 'block open areas for visportaling' A visportal should let light through even if you are round a corner and can't directly see the visportal and it's closed I think it still lets light through if that light will fall into an area that the player can see.

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The difficulty is that the city section is divided in blocks - each block should have its own moon point light, which has to be pretty much constant inside it to simulate a general parallel moon light. The second block needs further visportals (only visportaling the interior areas is not enough), studying baddcogs tutorial and some maps, i see that the main brushes used to secure any portion of an area are caulks and sky brushes. I need invisible brushes (besides caulk, which seems to turn geometry invisible too) that would help me enclose visually open (if mostly inaccessable) areas, without glitches. I suppose i could stich a bunch of visportals together to do it, but i read that can be problematic?

 

BTW, thanks for the patch tip, i can see how to do it now, it should definetly work (its invisible from the players point of view but will keep the light from shining on the next block).

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Well, if you are trying to seal off portal areas from one another patches won't do it. And honestly I don't think NoDraw will seal the level either. Pretty sure Monster Clip wouldn't.

 

My map illustrates how you can see geometry through sealed terrain. Though you can go more indepth than I showed.

 

ie: you can make a 'skin' for an entire buildings outside, thin veneer if you like. and the walls can all be caulked on the outside, but regular tex on the inside where players are. Turn the skin into func_static and combine with a func_static in other areas. (build buidlings out of caulk, texture normally inside, put thin 1 or 2 unit thick decor walls on the outside, turn into func_statics)

The furthest I went with it was a roof, or tower trim...

 

Why are you not using moonlight anyway? Doesn't it achieve what you want that you are getting with a bunch of seperate pointlights?

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Why are you using point lights for a parallel light when you can just use parallel lights directly. Am I missing something here?

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 got it to work on the beginning of the construction, but then it wouldnt work or i would get all sorts of light/shadow artifacts and i assumed, like suggested on the wiki, that it was due to the increased complexity of my buildings, so i began working with very big point lights and never looked back. A lot of work was put into cleaning up geometry since, i will probably see if i can make it to work now...

 

In my case patches could be used not to seal map space but to obstruct point lights so they wont shine through city zones.

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Argghh, back to square one.

 

 

Forgot to back up my shortcuts before I reinstalled windows. Now I can't find that info anywhere on the wiki or forums.

 

And I'm trying to check out the skybox thing...7318 has this in his readme, but I suppose that should just be Doom3. If I put it in the target inside the quotes it says not legitimate path, if I put it outside the quotes it starts up Doom3, but not his mod, won't let me bring down console. :(

doom +set fs_game portalsky +set_allowconsole 1

 

-----

Happy to say I finally don't have to start DR up in compatibility mode (ie no Aero)

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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And I'm happy to say I was able to put that trick of making a building visible from a distance and it's working nicely, thanks for that! You can see part of the objective from afar now, that should give you an idea of the direction to follow.

 

Was also able to get the parallel light working, that solved some of my problems. With a couple of (big and faint) spot lights, I simulated bounced light on some of the background buildings, which looks better than plain ambient light. I have to say that the game is extremely prone to light "leaks", whenever I fix one I create another, light where there shouldnt be, or blinking shadows. They seem to be tied to overlapping brushes. I've fixed them all now anyway (by basicly redoing everything around the problem). I think the biggest risk is making your building completely hermetic from within AND without (so it will contain all interior lights inside the rooms and also work flawlessly as a 3D object to be casting shadows caused by the moonlight). Since it's often quite complicated to create clean geometry for both cases, that's why I was getting problems, I guess.

Edited by RPGista
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By the way, I couldn't find a FAQ of Editing Troubleshooting yet, so made one & put the link in the "Important Editing Links" sticky. (If there is another one already, then this could be moved to that and it needs to be better advertised; otherwise this will be it).

 

If you know some FAQ & Answers please contribute:

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

 

E.g., another one I can think of is when the door doesn't rotate properly because you have to move the center, but I can't remember the exact details, so that should be added.

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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Is there any cradle model and other stuff to fill a child room? I found just a doll and thats all.. Em I just blind, or should i model one for myself?

He was sneeking silently in the night, moonlight was his enemy.

(Im not a native speaker, sorry for all miscleanous caused by my english..)

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Is there any cradle model and other stuff to fill a child room? I found just a doll and thats all.. Em I just blind, or should i model one for myself?

 

I think there was a cradle in the Flakebridge Monastery by Jesps. I'm not sure but I think it was made from patches and brushes and it was not an external model. Looked nice nonetheless.

 

I wonder if Jesps would kindly give you the permission to copy the thingy from the map? At least I would, as long as you give credit of the borrowed parts in the mission package.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Thanks for the tip, Ill try to replay flakebridge monastery, and will ask him, if the model will fit to my mission.

He was sneeking silently in the night, moonlight was his enemy.

(Im not a native speaker, sorry for all miscleanous caused by my english..)

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How to make the model non solid? (Dont know how to describe it properly, Ive got a small model that is stopping player from going trough, I need it to be still visible and shadowcasting, but not blocking the player)

 

EDIT: solid 0 works perfectly.. Exactly what I needed, thank you

Edited by PPoe

He was sneeking silently in the night, moonlight was his enemy.

(Im not a native speaker, sorry for all miscleanous caused by my english..)

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Why is this happening sometimes after clipping brushes? The clipped side just disapear, and in game it looked same as in editor, also invisible.. Where is the problem.. Happened more than once to me..

 

dotaz2.jpg

He was sneeking silently in the night, moonlight was his enemy.

(Im not a native speaker, sorry for all miscleanous caused by my english..)

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I think there is a setting in preferences to make a clipped surface either same as other surfaces or last texture used or caulk or something like that. If caulk and you have it filtered out in DR then it won't show either in DR or in game. Just correct the surface to what you want.

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