Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[Darkness_Falls]

Oh, nice! Thank you. I'll do those, too. I see some other filter options not assigned a hotkey yet, so will experiment.

I wonder if there's a Backface Culling option? I don't see one after trying all the filters. It's a handy feature in Maya's viewport when trying to work on something inside a room or when an area is blocked by building walls and such. Screenshot from the interwebz (backface culling enabled on right side):

In DR, I remember wishing I didn't have to always be inside my rooms with the cam to see all the objects inside, etc. Otherwise, you only see this when outside your rooms:

PS: Ohhh, I'm so glad I just found a camera option to disable far-clip plane! Having far-clip plane enabled and no backface culling before was a bit claustrophobic and cumbersome trying to navigate from room to room. I used to sometimes have to truck my viewport cam down a hallway so I wouldn't lose track of where I was

So nice to be able to see all my rooms at once (please don't make fun of the low quantity of them)

 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Darkness_Falls

[Dragofer]

@Darkness_Falls
What you can do is to texture void-facing surfaces with textures/common/caulk and enable the filter for caulk. This lets you choose what rooms you want to peer into from the void.

[Obsttorte]

9 hours ago, Darkness_Falls said:

In DR, I remember wishing I didn't have to always be inside my rooms with the cam to see all the objects inside, etc

That's what I meant when I wrote about looking into the map from the outside. And having a filter for both caulk and portal_sky and using those materials only for outside facing sides will basically serve the purpose. There is a modifier+mousekey combo to copy a material to another surface. So you can fastly copy one caulk surface onto other surfaces and, if the filter is enabled, can let the surfaces disappear by that way.

[datiswous]

On 4/2/2021 at 11:08 PM, Darkness_Falls said:

In DR, I remember wishing I didn't have to always be inside my rooms with the cam to see all the objects inside, etc. Otherwise, you only see this when outside your rooms:

An alternative way is to use Layers. You can select something and then right-click -> move to layer (the layer has to be already created). Then in the layer window you can disable that layer and then everything under that layer disappears.

Here is some more info about this: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Layers

Edited April 9, 2021 by datiswous

[datiswous]

Question: Is it possible to have a pool of water, with under it stained glass, with under that a light source in such a way that you can look through the water and see the stained glass behind it lighted by the light source. I tried this, but I can only see the light behind the water, not the stained glass.

As an example I have this upside-down view (test):

The texture is applied on both sides, so I should be able to see it at the bottom.

But if I look through the bottom viewpoint I look through it without seeing the glass surface.

If I add a stone texture instead, I see a stone texture behind the water.

Spoiler

The actual reason I had this pool of water placed upside down is to see if the water would fall down. I have no previous experience in how this works in game engines.

 

[demagogue]

Does it work if you have a small layer of air between the glass and the water?

[Obsttorte]

@datiswous I guess this has to do with rendering order. First of all are solid surfaces are rendered. Everything that is more complex, because it is translucent for example, gets rendered afterwards. I barely remember that the water shader uses the currentRender image as base for its calculation, that is the image containing the solid stuff rendered. The translucent window texture is not part of that image, so it gets ignored and does therefore not been rendered.

Question: You wrote that you want the window/glass material to be light up by the light behind it. So you don't really want the actual lamp to be visible, but more the effect of light shining through the glass. Is that correct? In that case, your setup in unneccessary complex. Instead of a translucent window texture you can make an additively blend texture. There are lit window textures where you can check how this is done.

[datiswous]

4 hours ago, demagogue said:

Does it work if you have a small layer of air between the glass and the water?

I will try this out.

 

2 hours ago, Obsttorte said:

Question: You wrote that you want the window/glass material to be light up by the light behind it. So you don't really want the actual lamp to be visible, but more the effect of light shining through the glass. Is that correct? In that case, your setup in unneccessary complex. Instead of a translucent window texture you can make an additively blend texture. There are lit window textures where you can check how this is done.

I basically wanted to test this, to see how this works and what does not work. By better understanding what is possible and how, it is easier to implement in a proper way later. I will try the lit window texture and see how that looks.

Although a lit window texture doesn't give shadows. But it's probably better to let this slide for now.

[OrbWeaver]

It sounds like you need the additive lit window texture to give the appearance of a glowing window, and an upward-pointing light to provide the actual light which shines into the room (including its shadows).

Remember that this is a game engine not a ray-tracer, and certain physical-based effects that would happen in the real world need to be simulated by hand. Translucent materials in this engine just allow you to see through them, they do not provide full light transmission, caustics or any other effects that a raytracer might simulate.

[Obsttorte]

7 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

It sounds like you need the additive lit window texture to give the appearance of a glowing window, and an upward-pointing light to provide the actual light which shines into the room (including its shadows).

Remember that this is a game engine not a ray-tracer, and certain physical-based effects that would happen in the real world need to be simulated by hand. Translucent materials in this engine just allow you to see through them, they do not provide full light transmission, caustics or any other effects that a raytracer might simulate.

Nuff said.

[datiswous]

19 hours ago, demagogue said:

Does it work if you have a small layer of air between the glass and the water?

No that doesn't make it work.

10 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

It sounds like you need the additive lit window texture to give the appearance of a glowing window, and an upward-pointing light to provide the actual light which shines into the room (including its shadows).

Yeah this works. Thanks for the help everyone.

 

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by datiswous

[Frost_Salamander]

I've tried to build in I18N support into my FM by running the perl script on it and putting all strings into a 'strings\fm\english.lang' file.  I did this several weeks ago and it seemed to work fine.  However we since changed all the readables and I wanted to run it again before release.

But now when I run it I get this:

c:\dm\I18N>perl I18N.pl --english hareinthesnare_v0.6-beta.pk4
I18N.pl v0.19 - The Dark Mod Fan Mission translation helper.

Cannot read 'strings/english.lang': No such file or directory at I18N.pl line 1084.

My .pk4 has a 'strings/fms/english.lang' file as mentioned - not sure why it's doing this?

Also, the other thing I was never quite clear on is how this works for the readables.  For things like inventory names, the entity will have something like '#str_20018'  for the inv_name spawnarg, but I couldn't see anything like that for readables (or did I just miss it somehow)?

Anyways, the way it is now I've got everything in english.lang and I can create the separate .pk4 for I18N, but it's missing the readables text (and there are quite a lot of readables in this FM).  I'm not sure what I should do with this next to make sure I18N is fully supported?

 

[Frost_Salamander]

and also, we're pretty much ready to release this FM.  However the wiki says to PM people in this list to get it on the official servers, but it's just a missing page.  Do I instead just upload to wherever and post that in the release thread, and someone will add it later?

[Geep]

I added that link to the wiki a while ago, and I see that you are correct, the page is now missing. I couldn't find an equivalent replacement thread to link to. Assuming your FM has had some beta testing, you could ask a beta tester to release it, or maybe @Dragofer or @nbohr1more can help.

Long term, it would be good if TDM had a more formal and maintained way to know who to contact for FM release... there is an @admin contact, but is that the right way to go, given there are many types of admin (forum, db, wiki, FM release, source, art assets) ?

[datiswous]

2 hours ago, Geep said:

Long term, it would be good if TDM had a more formal and maintained way to know who to contact for FM release... there is an @admin contact, but is that the right way to go, given there are many types of admin (forum, db, wiki, FM release, source, art assets) ?

Like a website form on the site. A forum topic only for submission requests that the Admins who usually upload missions all track would also work probably. A request topic for Wiki edits is maybe also an idea. I'm actually missing a whole forum/website/wiki feedback section.

[OGDA]

When I use several emitters for the particle tdm_ceiling_dust.prt, they all start with a big dust cloud in the first stage, then few particles in the second stage and then it repeats.

As they all start at the same time, it looks very unnatural.

Is there a way to do a time offset or a length variation for func_smoke and func_emitter over the entity spawnarg, without defining a prt-entry for every entity?

I only found shaderparm5, time and speed in the wiki and forum, but none of those seem to have any effect.
If there is a spawnarg, would it affect both parts of the definition (see below: dust2 and dust2bits) or do I somehow have to specify it in an array style way?

particle tdm_ceiling_dust { 
	{
		count 				63
		material 			textures/particles/dust2
		time 				3.200
		cycles 				2.000
		timeOffset 			0.000
		bunching 			1.000
		distribution 		sphere 32.000 32.000 32.000 0.000
		direction 			outward 15.000
		orientation 		view
		speed 				"0.000"
		size 				"8.000" to "16.000"
		aspect 				"1.000"
		rotation 			"0.000"
		randomDistribution 	1
		boundsExpansion 	0.000
		fadeIn 				0.750
		fadeOut 			0.600
		fadeIndex 			0.000
		color 				1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000
		fadeColor 			0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
		offset 				0.000 0.000 0.000
		gravity 			world 6.000
	}
	{
		count 				8
		material 			textures/particles/dust2bits
		time 				6.000
		cycles 				0.500
		timeOffset 			0.000
		bunching 			0.950
		distribution 		sphere 32.000 32.000 0.000 0.000
		direction 			outward 0.000
		orientation 		view
		speed 				"0.000"
		size 				"8.000" to "10.000"
		aspect 				"1.000"
		rotation 			"0.000"
		randomDistribution 	1
		boundsExpansion 	0.000
		fadeIn 				0.000
		fadeOut 			0.150
		fadeIndex 			0.000
		color 				0.690 0.690 0.690 1.000
		fadeColor 			0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
		offset 				0.000 0.000 0.000
		gravity 			world 6.000
	}
}

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by OGDA

[Jedi_Wannabe]

Anybody know why my .pk4 stays a zipped folder after I rename it with the right extension? 

I guess I should note this is my first time packaging a mission on my new PC, maybe there's an Administrator setting somewhere I'm unaware of?

Trying to push out a new beta ver and this is stopping me in my tracks, oh the humanity! 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Jedi_Wannabe

[nbohr1more]

Post a link.

It sounds like you have an alternate zip format or your folder setup is wrong somewhere.

[Jedi_Wannabe]

4 minutes ago, nbohr1more said:

Post a link.

It sounds like you have an alternate zip format or your folder setup is wrong somewhere.

Here's what I've got: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eDeam61rAMkdT1Ylya9BhmBviXBbREuI/view?usp=sharing

[AluminumHaste]

More than likely you might have file name extensions hidden (default setting for windows)

So when you rename the file like mymission.zip it's a mymission.pk4.zip

[AluminumHaste]

Yeah that's exactly what it is. You have to go View->Options->View Tab->Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types

[datiswous]

I think this setting usually does more harm than good.

[AluminumHaste]

I don't know what world Microsoft lives in, but whoever thought that was a good idea should be punched in the face.

I think that default goes all the way back to XP maybe? Maybe it was Vista.

 

[AluminumHaste]

Just now, datiswous said:

I think this setting usually does more harm than good.

That's the thing, there is no Good aside from maybe it looks better? The problem is also, it's for ANY file of KNOWN type. So if you have a .bat file that you've set to open by default with say notepad, you won't see the extension anymore. Now, if you download a file that's a virus, you have NO idea what kind of file it is if it's a known type. That's pretty freaking important.

[datiswous]

This was already in Win Xp maybe before that.. (maybe it came from MS Bob)

I think virusses or Trojans have actually used this feature in the past.

 

Edit:

This is a quote under one of the video's from Springheel:

Quote

I had the same problem. I found it's the darkmod.txt file extension. My file was darkmod.txt but for the other FMs, it's just "darkmod" without the .txt. Remove the redundant extension and it should work. Even if it doesn't, you can still access your map anyway (I did,) you just need to type more: dmap workshop/man1 and map workshop/man1 rather than just dmap man1 and map man1.

I think this is probably the same issue, but this guy didn't learn the cause and he's not alone probably.

Edited April 13, 2021 by datiswous