Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[grayman]

EDIT: Sorry, replied at the same time as Grayman...

 

What's funny is that if I'd been using my PC instead of my iPhone to reply, I probably would've said pretty much what you did. Then it would have really looked weird. iPhone use tends to cut down on words used. "Hmmm, how can I reply using only a few words?" (I'm typing this on my PC, so I'm being verbose now.)

 

Pressing the "Natural" button sets the horz and vert scale to whatever's in the "Default" text box. Textures themselves don't have default values.

[simplen00b]

thankyouthankyouthankyou

 

Sorted.

 

Aside: Given my initial response to both of your replies was 'No idea what either of them are talking about', I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and work my way through all of Fidcal's A-Z (instead of just page 1) so I have a larger frame of reference.

 

I may be some time.

 

*dons hard hat and stocks up on Kendall's Mint Cake

[jysk]

Hi

 

I have to questions:

 

1. What should i use to prevent players from reaching areas they are not supposed to enter: Playerclip, nodrawsolid or just clip? I wonder what the difference is between the textures?

 

2. There are textures in my texture browser which are not used in the map. For some of them i dont even have the texture (displaying "shader not found"). How can i make them disappear? Flush and reloaded dont works. Hide unused is already activated.

 

Thanks.

[Fidcal]

Use player clip to block the player, monster clip to block AI and clip to block both; both of them allow moveables and projectiles etc to pass through. Note that this only applies to worldspawn. If clip is converted into an entity then it's different. For example, a clip brush location entity isn't solid to anything. and has other uses. A common one is to detect if the player enters as an 'escape zone' to complete a mission (see objectives on wiki or startmap or objectives prefab etc.)

 

nodraw solid blocks all including moveables and I can't recall whether arrows stick in it (like wood) or bounce off it (like stone.) There are variants of nodraw solid for each material so they sound like the material etc. I would expect nodraw solid wood would let arrows stick in it. This is why you should not normally use it to just block the player or AI. I often use it inside a non-solid visible object for various reasons.

[Fidcal]

I overlooked the other question about textures. My guess is that the textures are there but on hidden surfaces. I would suggest that you back up the map then use the swap textures function to change them to caulk (button on the texture browser.) You could also search the map in a plain text editor but it's not obvious where a surface is if it's worldspawn I don't think.

[AluminumHaste]

Don't forget that if you are using any prefabs or certain models that use darkmod textures they will show up in the texture browser

[Baddcog]

^some models use the 'terrain' textures (stuff like metal and wood planks are good for a lot of stuff)... the ones that don't show up are in the models/props/textures (typically model specific) folder just so you know the difference.

 

There's really no difference between them except location. You can also use model textures on terrain but they are hard to find (bottom of list ../other materials I think)

[RPGista]

On adding invisible objectives later in game (http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Objectives_Editor), it says that you can use some triggering entity or stim system to activate it - how would I go about making an optional objective appear after youve read a certain readable?

 

Could optional, unfulfilled hidden objectives be nullified and disappear if a certain AI is killed? What about AFTER it was fulfilled? (Example: you killed a monster and saved a princess, so you get the recognition ("You just saved the princess" check), but then you kill the princess for some reason, so the objective wouldnt make sense and should disappear again (and never show up if you killed her earlier).

[Fidcal]

Create a readable objective. If you look in the objectives editor in the components section where it has type the drop down list at the bottom there is book open (read) or even the page. This objective can be invisible if you don't want it to show but if it's critical you need to think what will happen if anyone doesn't read the book. (I think you said it's optional so no matter.)

 

Either way, set it visible at the start while testing and get it working so you got objective complete when you read the book. Now, add to the objective in the completion target the make visible entity that will reveal the optional objective appear. Personally I recommend you put in a delay trigger - a timer trigger in between so completion targt - timer - set visible just so there is a second or two after closing the book.

 

The same as above applies if you kill an AI. Make a kill AI objective and in its completion target make another objective invisible. I'm uncertain without testing about the mandatory part if its not completed but become invisible I don't think the mission will end so as well as making it invisible you need to set it completed - but you also need a delay timer trigger so its invisible first otherwise you will see an objective complete message.

 

Hope the above makes sense it was a bit rushed.

[jysk]

Thanks at Fidcal and the others. It seems those textures appear only when i open a different map (to look something up) and then open my own map again. If i open my map with a fresh DR start, i dont have those textures in the texture browser.

 

The problem with find and replace would have been anyway that for doing that i need the correct path for the textures, but for the textures i dont have ("shader not found" etc.) i dont know the path so i cant replace them. But now there is only one texture of this kind left, so it does not matter that much anymore.

 

Nevertheless i still have abother question ( )

 

Its about visportals. I have some kind of open scenery (a market place) so its really hard to VP there. The question is how i have to handle VP's which touch some other VP's to seal an area of. Reading the wiki i understand that only the area of the VP Brush works, on which the VP is applied, but how do i have to handle such situations like that:

 

 

In P1 they do not clip into each other, but as result a small surface of nowdraw is left. Would that break the VP? In p2 the brushes clip into each other, but i dont know whether this is correct and would work? (sry for the large pictures, scaling them in the the post does not work)

[Fidcal]

It probably will work though I've never needed to do it that way. I've always put the face on the inside so they touch but I see you've got another one at the other side. If it doesn't work that way try reversing the one on the right and shortening the one in the middle. Ultimately you have to test it in-game.

 

Incidentally, even if you line them up correctly it isn't guaranteed they'll be of any use. It all depends on the area you're putting them in.

[grayman]

Only pay attention to the face that has the visportal texture on it. Given that, the first picture won't work because of the gap.

 

The second picture closes the gap, but since the top edges of the visportal faces are hanging in the air and not flushed against worldspawn brushes or another visportal face, those two visportals will fail. (Perhaps you left the top open, for presentation purposes.)

 

Most times touching visportal face edges to each other works, but sometimes it doesn't, as Fidcal mentioned. In those cases, other factors come into play.

[grayman]

It seems those textures appear only when i open a different map (to look something up) and then open my own map again. If i open my map with a fresh DR start, i dont have those textures in the texture browser.

 

Yes, this is a known reported problem with DR. (#2881).

[Springheel]

You can actually butt visportals up against each other and they still work???

[Fidcal]

Yes, so long as the visportal surfaces butt against each other.

[Springheel]

Huh, never knew that.

[jysk]

Ok again thanks to all. I hided the sky to for those screenshots. Unfortunetely after i placed a number of visportals now i cant dmap my map anymore without causing a malloc error, even if close all other programs (wasn necessary before). :/

[AluminumHaste]

Only pay attention to the face that has the visportal texture on it. Given that, the first picture won't work because of the gap.

 

I thought that didn't matter as the visportal itself is an entity. If it's a case that just the visportal texture be applied then why can't we use a patch instead?

[PranQster]

You can actually butt visportals up against each other and they still work???

Yes, so long as the visportal surfaces butt against each other.

Nice to know this. I have lots of open outdoor areas and found that dropping in rows and columns of VPs, spanning the length and width of the area, helps with keeping the framerate high when using lantern or torches, even if the VPs are clipping through other entities. I had no idea that they could be terminated against each other, as long as the faces met.

[Fidcal]

A visportal is always worldspawn not an entity.

 

Dunno technically why it can't be a patch but it has to be a brush. Prob general rule about patches not sealing.

 

Don't get carried away with visportals butting. Don't go building vast boxes of visportals and filling cities up with them. The most reliable, most stable and efficient, most understandable visportal is going to be in a tight little twisting corridor. Soon as you go into open spaces it can get complicated. You can get strange effects. Sometimes they won't work technically and even if they do they might not be of any use. Think how a visportal works. It has to completely seal off a volume from the player and it has to be out of sight. Both are needed for the visp to close. So if you've got a visp round the next street corner it doesn't mean it will close if the street is open from another direction. If you can draw a twisty line from the player to both sides of a visp without that line passing through solid worldspawn or another closed visp then the first visp will remain open.

 

Malloc errors - might be coincidence. How many entities in the map? (see menu - map - map info) If around 4000 or higher then that might be the problem irrespective of visportals (there's a patch to fix this.) If it's definitely the visps then convert all the suspect ones to stone and then test by changing them one at a time back to visps. This is a good strategy anyway for experimenting with visps in fairly open city areas to see what works best where.

[RPGista]

About the objectives, thanks a lot Fidcal, you are always extremely helpful. Will give it a go immediately after I somehow control this zone setting thing...

 

As for visportals, I spent an hour stiching a perfectly flush group of visportals just as I had done in previous areas of the map, around complex geometry, it failed for not appearent reason no matter what - deleting and making a single one, right through brushes, entites, movers, and now it works... So yeah, you never know with them I guess.

Edited March 24, 2012 by RPGista

[grayman]

Two more comments about visportals:

 

1 - make sure only one face of the brush is the visportal texture

 

2 - all other faces should be nodraw

 

Using "Brush->Make Visportal" on a brush in DR guarantees 1 & 2.

 

If 1 isn't followed, dmap will select one of the available faces, and you can't control which one's selected.

 

If 2 isn't followed, then AI won't be able to walk through the portal created by the visportal brush.

[jysk]

Well i have tried to find out what caused those sudden malloc errors but was not able to find out. It was always a different VP which suddenly caused a this error. I removed a number of them and it works, and if i add another one to close smth off it crashes during dmap again. I already tried it on my laptop too. It makes no sense. As result i have nearly no VPs at all there now (the state before i started mapping today). I cant even close a gap i have recognized in one of the VP's i already had in, because if i do that i cant suddenly dmap my map again...

 

I have 3152 entities atm (and 5225 brushes + 1138 Patches).

 

I already have made VP's where they fit easily for the whole map, but in this street part of the map its impossible to make any good fitting VP's. Its playable on my mid PC, but i dont know whether lower-end PC would have problems there. I have given up on VPs now there. That took me hours for today and i made 0 progress. :[

[SeriousToni]

Does the console say anything or is it just crashing with the whole doom3 process?

Are you placing the vis portals in the streets like the ones you did in the buildings? Maybe you did something wrong like grayman said. Use "make visportal" at its best.

[RPGista]

Sorry to hear Jysk - if your street section is linear, having many visportals will only help once you get into some other area connected to it (will be easier to split it in parts that you can and cant see for the engine), so as long as you isolate well all spaces leading to it, even if you are rendering the whole street at once it wont be too bad (that happens in my map). Take a look at Baddcog's visportal series of tutorial, they are specifically devoted to street and city areas.You probably know this all by now, but its a bad idea to cross visportals with brushes (turn crossing elements into statics), and many sections of visportal brushes stichted to each other sometimes do not work in my experience (you'll often see some pieces of the group that are green and working while others are simply not there, for example).