Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[grayman]

Good.

 

This has bitten several people.

 

I'm in the habit of putting that spawnarg on every info_location entity in my maps. For me, it's too jarring to have the ambient suddenly ratchet up or down for no apparent reason.

[Garreth]

can i have an ai folow me when he sees me?

i know that i can have him wait for me and then folow a path

 

scriptobject : char_sentry

lead_player : 1

is folow_player 1 a valid spawnarg?

 

and it tells me that char_sentry is not found on mapload.

[Airship Ballet]

http://puu.sh/6M5BS.avi

 

What's up with this? Everything's just vanilla spawned in, not intersecting and not spawned inside the table, but they act weird. Is this just an engine quirk?

[grayman]

The plate is just doing that on its own?

[Airship Ballet]

The plate is just doing that on its own?

 

Yup, the moment it gets nudged. Still, I haven't messed with anything so I assume it's just an odd coincidence.

 

[Garreth]

Light binded to an entity shines right trough the walls and even light up the backside of walls and objects. how can i fix this?

the lanterns do not seem to do that, what is the difference between the light from a lantern or just a projected light entity?

Edited February 7, 2014 by Garreth

[SteveL]

Not sure why it's happening, but have you checked the spawnargs? Worth double checking the light/entity doesn't have noshadows set. You could try using def_attach instead of bind too. The lights on lanterns and torches that AIs carry are def_attached, not bound.

Edited February 7, 2014 by SteveL

[Springheel]

Sounds like the light is no shadows. They go through walls.

[Garreth]

Noshadows is set to 0 only when binded it behaves like this, def attaching a regular spawned light is not working

[grayman]

What entity are you binding it to?

 

Does that entity cast shadows?

[Garreth]

yes it is an AI

[SteveL]

It does work... here's a 2-minute test map. An ordinary light def_attached to the back of an AI's belt, which is why his shadow casts forwards as he patrols round the wall. Nothing else in the map, so you should be able to spot the difference with your setup.

test_def_attach_light.map.txt

Edited February 7, 2014 by SteveL

[SteveL]

EDIT: Just spotted I forgot to texture the wall in the middle! Well, at least now I know how to produce a plain black surface, which is something I have been wanting for a few spots like the inner recess of my sash window and a couple of other unlit holes where I want the bottom to appear further away than it is, and invisible! I never thought to leave "no shader found" in my map, but that's what it looks like

 

EDIT to EDIT: Ack, I keep messing up edits! I apparently get confused by having 2 text boxes on offer

Edited February 7, 2014 by SteveL

[Garreth]

This is just a standard light, no texture and not projected, if i use the name of a light that i have set up in my map and def attach it, it is not working

It is for a cyborg with light eye's so it needs to be projected.

been using that no shader for a long time, pure blackness.

 

wait never mind, i think i have a work around

Edited February 7, 2014 by Garreth

[SteveL]

That's right, you cant def_attach a light that's already in your map. Def_attach spawns a new entity, so any tweaks you want to do to it like size, color, and projection etc have to be done after map load through spawnargs on the entity you attached it to. Those spawnargs look like "set <spawnargname> on <nameofattachment>" "<spawnargvalue>"

 

You can set up a temporary light how you want it to look in the editor, then open up entity inspector and look at its spawnargs. Make a note of size, color, nospecular or whatever you changed in DR. Then def-attach a standard light and give it a name (name_attach spawnarg). So in my example, if you wanted to make that light pure bright blue, you could add the extra spawnargs:

 

"name_attach1" "belt_light"

"set _color on belt_light" "0 0 1"

 

The same applies to projection, nospecular, or whatever.

[RJFerret]

Well, at least now I know how to produce a plain black surface, which is something I have been wanting...

 

There's actual black in textures/darkmod/sfx/

Both black_matte and black_near (I have no idea the difference, tend to use the first).

 

There are flat colors in darkmod/textures/debug/

[SteveL]

There's actual black in textures/darkmod/sfx/

Both black_matte and black_near (I have no idea the difference, tend to use the first).

 

There are flat colors in darkmod/textures/debug/

 

The debug folder doesn't have black, and I wouldn't use it anyway because I use those shaders for my test buttons. They show up even in darkness and it'll be easy to remove all the buttons by searching the texture names for /debug before I package the map for beta. I hadn't spotted the sfx textures though. Great, I'll definitely use those rather than leave stuff as untextured, which might glitch on some systems or look different in future releases etc. i currently have iron_rough as my "black" but of course the illusion is destroyed if the player has their lantern out.

 

EDIT; just checked the material files for the difference. black_matte is black, black_near is "the darkest texture distinguishable from black"

Edited February 7, 2014 by SteveL

[ungoliant]

Did SEED or anything else ever achieve random dispersion of stuffs along the face of a patch? and i mean like a really weird patch, like a odd shaped cylinder patch with an endcap on it. is it possible to disperse stuff all along the surface, sticking out tangent to the surface, even if some of the patch is vertical.

Edited February 8, 2014 by ungoliant

[RJFerret]

Not as far as I know, in my experience SEED puts all at the same level, or using the Floor spawnarg, can lower stuff to the patch surface along the vertical axis, height limited by the origin of the seed entity and the object entity.

[hank morgan]

I've been trying to set up a remote security camera view in a gui. Based on guides I've read online I've set up a simple gui as follows

 

windowDef Desktop
{
rect 0,0,640,480
nocursor 1

 windowdef panel
 {
 rect 0,0,640,480
 visible 1
 background "textures/cameraView1";
 }
}

 

On my map I have a func_cameraview and I've added the cameraTarget spawnarg to my cameraview and pointed it to my viewscreen model (I've also tried setting that the other way around)

 

All I get in game is a black screen on my gui. The camview will activate and switch views when I activate it via script but the gui will not work for me.

 

The first problem I can see is that can't seem to find the cameraview1 texture in my installation. Is it included with TDM or is it a Doom 3 only material? Other guides mention other camera related materials that I can't see any of them in the list of textures.

Edited February 8, 2014 by hank morgan

[SteveL]

Did SEED or anything else ever achieve random dispersion of stuffs along the face of a patch? and i mean like a really weird patch, like a odd shaped cylinder patch with an endcap on it. is it possible to disperse stuff all along the surface, sticking out tangent to the surface, even if some of the patch is vertical.

 

No idea whether this applies to your case, but if you have a static patch to decorate, and what you want to distribute can be made of patches too, then it can be done in DR using the python api. You can access the base patch's vertex coords and normals easily, and you can copy and move patches and create new ones with full control over vertices, rows, cols etc. Could be a nice technique for creating static organic surroundings, like rocks poking through the ground or weed decals on a wall. No idea whether seed already does that, must look into it.

[RJFerret]

Oy, this is going to be one of those nights. (It's been that kind of day the past couple days, so I'm not surprised.)

 

This is ridiculously simple. I'm trying to ignite a candle. Yes, really.

 

Simply targeting it doesn't do anything, no big surprise there, why should it be straightforward? ;-)

 

Setting up a trigger response on a nearby func_static with "Turn extinguishable light on" doesn't do anything , but having a door trigger it causes, "Tried to call a function on nonexistent entity (#0)".

 

I've got to be missing something obvious...web-searching the forums/wiki is failing me too tonight, any pointers?

 

Edit: I worked around it with multiple triggers in sequence, a trigger response and a fire stim, but would still like to know a less complex manner that doesn't take a half hour, heh!

Edited February 9, 2014 by RJFerret

[ungoliant]

No idea whether this applies to your case, but if you have a static patch to decorate, and what you want to distribute can be made of patches too, then it can be done in DR using the python api. You can access the base patch's vertex coords and normals easily, and you can copy and move patches and create new ones with full control over vertices, rows, cols etc. Could be a nice technique for creating static organic surroundings, like rocks poking through the ground or weed decals on a wall. No idea whether seed already does that, must look into it.

yeah, i'm looking to insert patches randomly along other patches, and not in a fashion where they plop straight down sticking straight up like for trees and grass. I guess I could start learning python, but that seems like a pretty long-term effort to achieve a nifty throw-away effect in an FM. Also, I think having access to LoD and culling with SEED here might be important.

[RJFerret]

Just FYI, there's a bug in SEED that causes crashes on reloading saved games with func_static SEED sources (which bit me on my first FM with patches).

 

If you don't need completely vertical or overhanging sides, SEED will do it, and you can specifically control the angles. The other solution might be to do what I did, SEED all the surfaces you can, manually place the others.

Edited February 9, 2014 by RJFerret

[SteveL]

This is ridiculously simple. I'm trying to ignite a candle. Yes, really.

Is it a standard candle made up of a base entity that spawns its light as a def_attach(ment)?

If so you should be able to reignite it using the scriptobject on the base entity. Create a target_callobjectfunction and give it the base entity as the target, plus the spawnarg "call" "LightsOn".

I'm away for the weekend so can't try it before posting, but the relevant wiki article is here: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Combined_light_entities#Turning_lights_off.2Fon