Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[Obsttorte]

Worldspawn splits up each other, creating additional tris. It is a good advise to turn everything not meant for sealing or editional purposes (like nodraw_solid or monsterclips etc...) into func_statics. If you reuse such a thing quite often, it even makes sense to export them with the ase exporter and use models instead. This will reduce loading times and memory usage.

[buck28]

@Obsttorte

 

Thank you sir. I thought I'd read that somewhere. That is what I will do.

[SteveL]

The splitting tris issue applies only to brushes, not patches. Patches don't do that. Your main motive for making them FS is to stop them casting shadows as Sotha explained. Another tactic to get the same benefit is to use a noshadows texture. You can add the noshadows keyword to any material definition if you wish, but there's no reason to prefer that over simply using a func static unless your map is so huge that you're worried about exceeding the entity limit.

[Obsttorte]

The splitting tris issue applies only to brushes, not patches.

Worldspawn patches split up worldspawn brushes, mista. I think I've shown that in one of my youtube videos, if not you can simple test that yourself. Create a simple cube room in DR with a bend patch touching the bottom (for example a cylinder). Check the difference with r_showtris. You will see that there is a splitting done.

[SteveL]

Well I'll be damned! Ok I begrudgingly admit that patches can add an occasional vert I can't make vertical patches stuck in the ground do it... it seems to be where floor patches dip below ground at an existing wall junction they can add a vert. Not that anyone should worry about an extra few triangles. Have you found a way to make them add thousands?

[Obsttorte]

It depends on the scene. They may not add thousands, but in a scene that is already performance houngry it is a good idea to keep the tris count as low as possible, especially if you have overlapping lights.

[Goldwell]

I'm having problems getting the steam punk elevator working (models/darkmod/mechanical/steampunk_elevator.lwo). I placed the model in game and attached it to a mover_multistate and it goes to the correct positions however when I press the first floor button and im inside the elevator goes up but I stay on the ground. I have tried attaching a func_static playerclip to the bottom but even that doesn't work.

[SteveL]

Try making your Playerclip block a func mover instead of func static. That'll make its clip model moveable. That might even work with the elevator itself, i.e. without a separate block, if the elevator's clip model is just a block at the base.

[Goldwell]

Try making your Playerclip block a func mover instead of func static. That'll make its clip model moveable. That might even work with the elevator itself, i.e. without a separate block, if the elevator's clip model is just a block at the base.

 

Fixed the problem! Thank you

[VanishedOne]

A couple of things that are confusing me:

 

1) In this map, the walls are opaque alabaster and the floating block is milky warp. The only light object is an ambient_world with _color set to 0.0 0.0 0.0.

 

 

You can see from the lightgem that I'm in darkness. So why do these textures look so bright if there's no light? (It's not my gamma settings; only certain textures act this way. I made a room with alabaster walls and a white marble ceiling, planning to adjust the lights so the higher part would be darkened; the ceiling looks almost black, but the walls barely darken, so it feels like being inside a big, unshaded box.)

 

DR's lighting preview mode looks like this:

 

 

2) I tried to make a conversation with the Conversation Editor. The dramatis personae are testman, an armed commoner, and testwoman, a whore. conversation_info looks like this:

 

// entity 10
{
"classname" "atdm:conversation_info"
"name" "atdm_conversation_info_1"
"conv_1_actor_1" "testman"
"conv_1_actor_2" "testwoman"
"conv_1_actors_always_face_each_other_while_talking" "0"
"conv_1_actors_must_be_within_talkdistance" "0"
"conv_1_cmd_1_actor" "2"
"conv_1_cmd_1_arg_1" "tdm_ai_wench_greet_civilian_to_civilian"
"conv_1_cmd_1_type" "Talk"
"conv_1_cmd_1_wait_until_finished" "1"
"conv_1_cmd_2_actor" "1"
"conv_1_cmd_2_arg_1" "2"
"conv_1_cmd_2_type" "AttackActor"
"conv_1_cmd_2_wait_until_finished" "1"
"conv_1_cmd_3_actor" "1"
"conv_1_cmd_3_arg_1" "tdm_ai_cync_convo_response"
"conv_1_cmd_3_type" "Talk"
"conv_1_cmd_3_wait_until_finished" "1"
"conv_1_max_play_count" "-1"
"conv_1_name" "testconv"
"conv_1_talk_distance" "60"
"origin" "-851.505 -907.524 24.2703"
}

 

What I expected:

 

1) testwoman greets testman

2) testman attacks (kills?) testwoman

3) testman makes a cynical riposte

 

What I get:

 

1) testwoman greets testman

2) testman says 'Huh?' or 'What?'

3) A long pause, during which testman might warn testwoman about an intruder if they're on the same team

4) testman draws his sword while announcing that he's giving up a search

 

Log contents:

 

[game\ai\Conversation\ConversationSystem.cpp ( 104):INF (CONVERSATION) FR:   65] Trying to start conversation testconv.
[game\ai\States\ConversationState.cpp ( 179):DEB (CONVERSATION) FR:  126] Actor testman is too alert to continue a conversation
[game\ai\Conversation\Conversation.cpp ( 329):DEB (CONVERSATION) FR:  126] Conversation testconv: ai testman is not in conversation mode anymore.
[game\ai\Conversation\ConversationSystem.cpp ( 164):DEB (CONVERSATION) FR:  126] Terminating conversation testconv due to error.

 

(I get the 'terminating due to error' message whatever I put in the conversation, e.g. if I reduce it to the first greeting it'll appear to play out successfully, but I'll still get the message.)

 

It looks as though the AttackActor command (or AttackEntity if I try that) is making testman get alerted and that's interrupting the conversation. It's odd alert behaviour, though, and I don't understand why this is happening.

[SteveL]

I'm using my phone so I'll just answer question 1 for now. Transparent materials like those two don't react to light. They always appear the same whether or not they are lit. You have to tweak the brightness using rgb settings in material file if it doesn't look right in your setting (or the color spawnarg for materials that support it). If you need glass that reacts to dynamic light, you have to go opaque or make a "translucent" material from an opaque material instead. Translucency is the screen-door style of transparency. It lets through exactly 50% of the background color, so it's not especially glass-like, but it does react to light.

[VanishedOne]

Thanks. That makes sense regarding the milky warp; I'd expected alabaster_opaque (which I used for the walls/ceiling/floor in the screenshot) to behave like a normal opaque material, but apparently it doesn't.

Edited October 18, 2014 by VanishedOne

[Springheel]

Translucency is the screen-door style of transparency. It lets through exactly 50% of the background color, so it's not especially glass-like, but it does react to light.

 

Huh? Please explain...I didn't think we had any kind of partial transparency that reacted to light.

[SteveL]

Huh? Please explain...I didn't think we had any kind of partial transparency that reacted to light.

I haven't seen it used much in tdm but I'm 90% sure it works... I won't be able to test it until the morning. It can react to light because it turns your texture into a checker board of alternating texels that are all either completely opaque or completely see-through. Like alpha testing with a very fine mesh.

 

If anyone wants to try it, just take an opaque texture and add the keyword "translucent" in the global section at the top. Important: there mustn't be any alpha blended stages in the material, or it won't work, so try it with a fully opaque material.

[Springheel]

Huh, what do you know? It does indeed appear to work, and responds to light properly, unlike additive or filter blends. Don't know how I went so long without knowing about this.

[Obsttorte]

Yeah, filter and additive blend stages are applied differently. The light texture interaction is taking place ina shader (interaction.vfp iirc), and makes use of the diffuse, bump and specular map only. The translucent parameter just seem to tell the engine to blend it with the pixels rendered behind. Additive and multicative blends (so add and filter) behave more like post processing steps, like the blend add stage which gets used if the ambient lighting method is set to simple. The images just gets drawn all over without taking lights or shadowcasting into account.

 

You can btw. see this behaviour come to use in some aspects, like the glass texture created by arcturus with the dripping water on it, which actually only uses a bumpmap to create said effect (bumps aren't visible, they only interact with light), or if you create an invisible decal only using a monochrome specular, to create a secret message only visible if illuminated by a certain light color (I never tested the latter, but it should work).

 

Lot's of possibilities for creative mappers

[Tels]

Yeah, filter and additive blend stages are applied differently. The light texture interaction is taking place ina shader (interaction.vfp iirc), and makes use of the diffuse, bump and specular map only. The translucent parameter just seem to tell the engine to blend it with the pixels rendered behind. Additive and multicative blends (so add and filter) behave more like post processing steps, like the blend add stage which gets used if the ambient lighting method is set to simple. The images just gets drawn all over without taking lights or shadowcasting into account.

 

You can btw. see this behaviour come to use in some aspects, like the glass texture created by arcturus with the dripping water on it, which actually only uses a bumpmap to create said effect (bumps aren't visible, they only interact with light), or if you create an invisible decal only using a monochrome specular, to create a secret message only visible if illuminated by a certain light color (I never tested the latter, but it should work).

 

Lot's of possibilities for creative mappers

 

Is it possible to change the intensity of the translucency, maybe via the shaderparms? That way you could make things fade out and it...

[Obsttorte]

Only for additional and multiplicative blends. The translucensey key does not seem to provide anything like that. But it is possible to provide something similar by using an alphatested image with a suitable texture for alphatesting. I've once uploaded a youtube video called fading wall iirc, which demonstrates that effect.

 

The ai in Requiem which is only visible in light uses additional blends. If you try to tone down the diffusemap using the rgb parm, it will fade to black.

[nbohr1more]

Huh, what do you know? It does indeed appear to work, and responds to light properly, unlike additive or filter blends. Don't know how I went so long without knowing about this.

 

Uh oh... time to make new hair?

 

Or wait until we've got dedicated shaders for that...

[Springheel]

Not sure it would be useful for hair, but certainly glass. Now that you mention it, it might be effective for beards.

[161803398874989]

Is there a way to prevent the mousewheel scroll from moving the camera forwards and backwards in camera view? I've installed Windows on my Mac, but the Apple Mouse is very sensitive and to make matters worse has inertial scrolling, so it's very annoying when working in DarkRadiant.

 

Also, I'm currently on page 2 of Fidcal's A-Z guide, but I can't get the copy shader function to work (in "New Rooms: Extending the Mission"). I select a single wall, but it says: "Can't copy Shader. Please select a single face or patch." Normal copying does work, but then it doesn't place the texture on the new room. Can you help?

Edited October 20, 2014 by 161803398874989

[Moonbo]

Make sure you're selecting only one face of the brush that you're trying to copy instead of the whole brush :-).

[SteveL]

I prefer not to have anything selected when copying and pasting shaders. It's quicker and it works just the same, as long you're using middle mouse button clicks to do it. Erm... is that possible with a Mac mouse?

[demagogue]

There is a quick click copy way to do it but I keep forgetting how.

 

I believe to select a single face you hold down shift or cntl when you click the surface. I think the catch is you want to clear all possible selections, by esc was it?, before you do it since it's easy to inadvertantly have multiple things selected.

[161803398874989]

I managed to get it to work by holding down control while also holding down shift to select the surface. Didn't read the instructions correctly, it seems.