Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[Moonbo]

It would need to track item use, so if they had three arrows and used two, they should only have one when the script gives them back their inventory. So I'm not sure the blue room method would work. Maybe scrolling through the inventory at the start of the script is the only way?

[SteveL]

It depends whether the script can detect how many arrows the player is currently holding, and whether the weapon inventory is accessible to the same scriptevents as the item inventory. I'll have a quick play when I finish work later.

 

Presumably it would only be certain equipment that wants swapping. You wouldn't be taking loot or readables off the player.

[Moonbo]

Thanks Steve, and let me know if you want me to pm you. Ideally I would want to remove loot and readables too .

[SteveL]

It can be done I reckon, although I haven't found out how to remove the blackjack or dagger. Turns out there are three types of inventory to consider: loot, weapons, and other. Loot and other are easy enough to get handles on, weapons are trickier. I haven't found a way to remove the melee weapons without borking the player's weapon capabilities entirely, but I've figured out how to remove arrows safely after saving the info re how many there were so they can be put back correctly later. The melee weapon part *might* be fixable, but after a couple of hours' testing I'll wait till I know what you have in mind before experimenting further! Happy to adapt it for your purpose if you want to PM me.

[RJFerret]

Is there a way (via visual stim perhaps) to make item(s) suspicious to AI?

 

This is the reverse of "absence_noticeability", in that the area containing the item is behind a closed door, but the object is likely to end up out in a hallway on the floor in whatever location the physics system leaves it.

 

Nevermind, I just thought of and found "atdm:absence_marker", bound it to an item and voilà.

Edited January 27, 2014 by RJFerret

[PranQster]

Is it possible to have more than 1 anchor on a spline? What I want to do is have multiple entities follow an identical spline curve, but at different places along the curve.

Or would it be better to make multiple splines, with their anchors to start at different locations, then shaped to be clones of each other?

 

My idea is to make a firefly using the firefly particle. I'd like to have it follow a spline, but have triggers also moving along that spline at a slower rate than the particle. The triggers would turn the particle on and off as it passes them. Since they are moving, and at a different rate, the firefly would then glow at different parts of the curve each time it makes a lap.

Edited January 28, 2014 by PranQster

[SteveL]

Guys, what's a blend light and where might you want to use one?

 

I've searched the wiki, the forums and doom3 mod sites (where I guess they didn't exist) but no joy. I've leaned that they're like volumetric decals (???) and are good for performance and are similar to fogs under the hood, but not what they're for.

 

I'm actually casting about for ways to make my outdoor lighting a bit more interesting and to achieve a bit of glow around point lights, so any hints or links for that would be welcome too. I've got parallel moonlight currently looking lovely and not glitching but it's rather upstaged my artificial lights in shaded areas.

 

@PranQster: don't want to hide your question but I can't answer it either, so I'll chuck in an uninformed response Do you have simpler options? Could you achieve the same effect by turning the particles on and off at intervals, the interval being out of sync with the time taken to path round the spline? Could that be done with the material shader properties or a timer?

[RJFerret]

I totally stand to be corrected by someone more informed, but my impression is blend lights eliminate all the light "casting" aspect of lights, and simply apply a surface decal (just like our dirt decals that blend with a surface texture) of brightness to surfaces in the space/volume.

 

Hence they can do "negative light" by darkening surfaces instead of lightening them.

 

I believe you might desire "light glow" instead? Which usually appears too heavy to me, but would be appropriate in a smoky or fog environment. I've seen that in some FMs and believe there was a forum discussion a couple months ago that isn't jumping out at me now, oh, perhaps done with particles? (Yes: lantern_glare_simple, other glares, and lamphazes.)

[Springheel]

Blend lights work differently than normal lights. They're a bit hard to explain. They basically use a texture overlay rather than an actual light. You know dirt decals? They use a "filter blend" which means they can darken textures behind them, but not lighten them. Windows that glow in the dark have an "additive blend" which lightens them. Neither are affected by lights...you can shine a spotlight on a dirt decal and it will still be black.

 

Blend lights use one of those types of blends. They either lighten everything in their radius, or can darken everything (if you use a blend filter).

[SteveL]

Hard to explain? Maybe but that was extremely clear, thanks The same blend add/filter effect that you recommended using to making clear glass dark or bright for looking out or in of a window. Now I know what effect I'm looking for I'll have a play with them.

 

Yes I do think I was after light glow RJ, although having thought about it more.. no, you're right, they'd be far too heavy especially since I want a crystal clear summer night. So I'll just have to be more imaginative about what gets hit by the point lights to add interest.

[Obsttorte]

I'm actually casting about for ways to make my outdoor lighting a bit more interesting and to achieve a bit of glow around point lights, so any hints or links for that would be welcome too.

For the glowing around lights you may use particles. There is already a stock light glow for electrical lamps IIRC.

[PranQster]

@PranQster: don't want to hide your question but I can't answer it either, so I'll chuck in an uninformed response Do you have simpler options? Could you achieve the same effect by turning the particles on and off at intervals, the interval being out of sync with the time taken to path round the spline? Could that be done with the material shader properties or a timer?

Ahh. Thanks. A timer makes more sense. I'll experiment with it one of these nights.

[ungoliant]

trying to get back into the game. looks like startmap wiki page hasn't been updated in a long time, so i figure i'll just ask here. It seems if i want a project based editing workspace, I can now just dump all required files into darkmod/fms/mymission folder, TDM will install and run mission this way, then when done editing, zip up the necessary stuff as is to pk4 for distribution? Also doomconfig.cfg no longer required? Anything else new or interesting about editing setups i'm missing since 2.0?

[Garreth]

How do i reload entity's again? i have the following commands

reloadxdata - readables

reloaddecls - textures

reloadmodels - models

reloadsurface - surface sounds

I am missing one, on doom 3 there is reloadentitydefs but that is not working since the engine changed i guess.

Edited February 1, 2014 by Garreth

[Obsttorte]

reloadEngine

[SteveL]

I discovered r_showlightcount yesterday and found something that contradicts a common piece of advice: cutting up brushes using the clipper tool does not help reduce light count hitting the faces, because dmap simply stitches them back together again if they and their textures are perfectly aligned.

 

So far the only solutions I've thought of or found on the forum seem a bit ugly: deliberately misalign the textures or move brush verts out of alignment and cover up the crime with some trimming. Is there a better way?

 

Thanks RJFerret for pointing out to me in another thread that you don't have to cut up patches to solve the problem: you can just increase the subdivisons so you don't get long tris. I'm hoping there's a way to do that with brushes. I guess they could be replaced with patches. Are there other handy ways anyone knows about?

[grayman]

I've used these:

 

1 - misalign textures by 1 unit. The player probably won't notice.

 

2 - if you think the player will notice, or your beta testers point it out, then split the brush face into sections, with alternating different textures, or cover the separating sections with func_static (like a column if you're dealing with a wall).

 

I'm not aware of any other solutions when worried about light counts on a brush face.

 

If you're going to cover your brush faces with patches, then the patch solution comes into play. Just be sure that the backing texture on the brush face is caulk, otherwise the renderer will paint both the brush and the patch, instead of just the patch.

[RJFerret]

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Performance:_Essential_Must-Knows#Brush_Carving

 

There are multiple methods listed in the Performance wiki article., the latter ones quite cumbersome.

[SteveL]

Thanks guys. I did try the texture tool which will (apparently) let you misalign by a picapixel if you zoom all the way in and come off the grid, but they still get rejoined. I have a straight tunnel I made by extruding a prefab arch, and found the entire interior was already being hit by 6 lights. 60fps right now on the empty tunnel, but I want to add junk plus 4 ai bunched up and holding candles. It's one of the routes in to my objective location, kind of a puzzle to get past, so I didn't want to compromise anything. If I get performance probs, caulk+patch surface seems the way to go.

Edited February 1, 2014 by SteveL

[SteveL]

Also on the subject of light count: I found something that conflicts with Xcen's expert observations on this post: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/10003-so-what-are-you-working-on-right-now/page__view__findpost__p__275012

 

He obviously know his stuff -- I drool over the lighting he created in that thorough study of the effects of fog and blendlights. But he found that his ambient_world didn't add to his light count whereas for me, it does. I've had ambient world set to 0 0 0 while I've been getting my moonlight right, but when I give it a non-zero value the light temperature goes up on every surface. Hmmm...

[Obsttorte]

One possibility is to use the dmap option "lightcarve". I think there is also an option to disable the reconnection of surfaces, but I forgot how it is called. You can google for these options.

[RJFerret]

Thanks guys. I did try the texture tool which will (apparently) let you misalign by a picapixel if you zoom all the way in and come off the grid, but they still get rejoined.

1 - misalign textures by 1 unit. The player probably won't notice.

 

Right, as expected. Shift it a greater amount, or flip it, or rotate it, just make a change big enough to be recognized/split by dmap, IE, much bigger than what would get rounded off (your picapixel meant no change, it was just lost as a change of zero).

 

Also on the subject of light count: I found something that conflicts with Xcen's expert observations on this post: http://forums.thedar...post__p__275012

 

He obviously know his stuff -- I drool over the lighting he created in that thorough study of the effects of fog and blendlights. But he found that his ambient_world didn't add to his light count whereas for me, it does.

Correct, ambient alone displays red, next light adds to it. The only stuff I've seen black is particles.

One possibility is to use the dmap option "lightcarve". I think there is also an option to disable the reconnection of surfaces, but I forgot how it is called. You can google for these options.

I believe you'll find that does a couple pretty bad things. It will create more tris, especially long thin ones, which are, according to articles, hardest for graphics cards to deal with. They want as close to equilateral triangles as possible. I have done the same maps with lightcarve and without, the drawcalls and tris went up significantly with lightcarve, and there was a noticeable performance hit.

 

I have done the same map with manually shifting the texture enough on walls and ceiling, which lowered both drawcalls (1400ish to <1300) and tris (150k to 134k), with lightcount going from five colors (up through purple) to four (only through teal). Ironically FPS was not noticeably impacted.

 

Edit, links with more info:

dmap lightcarve: http://wiki.thedarkm...ization_Options

tris: http://www.humus.nam...Comments&ID=228

Edited February 1, 2014 by RJFerret

[Obsttorte]

It's obviously wise to keep an eye out on how the algorithm works during mapping (as described in the article).

 

The easiest solution to reduce the light count however is to reduce the light count (thus meaning the amount of light sources)

[SteveL]

Just did a test on texture displacements and I find you need to move a texture by 2 min-grid units in the texture editor to cause a brush to split. 1 grid unit doesn't cut it (pun intended).

 

I guess you could also add an extra visportal or two if your big brushes are worldspawn, but mine are FS.

 

I'll go with a patch. The 2-unit displacement was visible in several places, though not in others. So its usability depends what texture you're using and how obsessive you are about texture alignment. I just spent a week texturing a wall, so I'll go with the patch

[RJFerret]

Both "slick" and "ice" textures seem to produce a tile-like footstep sound. Putting a nodraw solid of another sound over them eliminates the slippery feature. Any way to have ice with a snow sound?