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Newbie DarkRadiant Questions


demagogue

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It's also worth making sure you're on the latest version of DR, since it's been getting easier to use it to find where definitions are stored. For example, entities in the Create Entity list now show in which .def file they've been defined. Definitely worth unpacking your .pk4's, too.

If you find more things that you'd like to become easier to find, such as that the Skin Chooser should show which .skin the skin is stored in, or that right-clicking something should show its definition in a new window, you can always post that on the DR bugtracker.

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Hi I'm getting two warnings in the console I didn't find a mentioning / solution here:

  1. mage (xxx.yyy.zzz) can't sit: too far from sitting location path_corner_6 (xxx.yyy.zzz)
  2. portal 1250 at (xxx.yyy.zzz) is useless

Can or should I do anything about this? The mage seems to sit down properly from what I saw. Also I don't know how to find Portal 1250 in Dark Radiant.

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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19 hours ago, SeriousToni said:

Can this please be added into the wiki immediately by someone before it gets lost in this thread?

Assuming you are referring to Dragofer's report about wild cards in skin, there is a Wild Card section at the bottom of wiki entry "Creating Multiple Skins For A Model" that touches on it. Perhaps that would benefit from Dragofer's examples too.

UPDATE: Examples added to wiki

Edited by Geep
update
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Is the water arrow more visible than the blackjack?

How much more visible?  In my FM when hiding with the blackjack enabled and the lightgem black or almost black I'm invisible, I can move around freely in the darkness, but if I then switch to the waterarrow to shoot out a light I'm suddenly visible to an AI across the whole room, I can't seem to hide, as if I'd lit a torch.  

What are the default acuity_vis, _aud, _tact, settings for when I put in an atdm:ai_guard_elite?  answers seem to point to 100.  Trying to find a setting where I can hide I set. 

{
$sgt1.setAcuity("aud", 50);
$sgt1.setAcuity("vis", 40);
$sgt1.setAcuity("tact", 50);
}  

But the elite guard spots me instantly I bring out a waterarrow, like I'm suddenly fullbright although the lightgem remains black or near black.  This can't be right.

Are the defaults for an atdm:ai_guard_elite the same as for an atdm:ai_citywatch or atdm:ai_guard_thug?  Where can I find a list of these settings?

Sorry for so many questions.

Edited by geegee
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Does this seem to help?

Debug cvars:

tdm_ai_showalert

Shows the underlying values used to calculate alert levels and the roles of AI in regard to search

tdm_ai_showstate

Shows the final results of the above values along with other state details

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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@geegee
It's been a thing already in the original Thief games that your sword and your bow slightly brighten your lightgem, while your blackjack doesn't. This is especially pronounced when equipping a fire arrow, since it glows in the dark.

Something worth considering if AIs seem to see you too easily is the intensity of your ambient light (for that location). My personal preference is a relatively dim colour setting of 0.06 0.06 0.07.

Note that if you have a large location containing many bright lights, the ambient light intensity is dynamically increased to match. You can disable this dynamic via a spawnarg on your info_location entity.

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Using tdm_ai_showalert and some testing I found that only one AI produced this problem.

With black/near_black lightgem I switched between blackjack and waterarrow and there was no alert differences for any of the AI, except one named "sgt1" that I'd altered from Acuity_vis 0, _aud 0, _tact 0, via the script 

{
$sgt1.setAcuity("aud", 50);
$sgt1.setAcuity("vis", 40);
$sgt1.setAcuity("tact", 50);
}  

For sgt1, after acuity was reset by the script, changing from blackjack to waterarrow caused a change from alert 0 to full alert wherever sgt1 was in the large area.  So there's something wrong with the script?   

Reverting to an earlier map where I'd simply teleported out the sgt1 with acuity 0 and teleported in a sgt2 with default acuity settings there was no problem.  sgt2 didn't go on full alert, didn't notice the waterarrow and the scenario played out as it should.  

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Could be that the script event expects 0.50 instead of 50, it's not immediately clear from the code. IIRC the AI spawnargs work with 50.

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42 minutes ago, Dragofer said:

Could be that the script event expects 0.50 instead of 50, it's not immediately clear from the code. IIRC the AI spawnargs work with 50.

Yes, that's correct.  By setting $sgt1.setAcuity("vis", 1); etc. the AI now acts as it should, so the range is 0->1 with 1 default, and I guess setting 100 makes the AI into a superhero.

That is, the range is 0->1 in the scripting language. 0->100 when setting the spawnargs in DR.  

 

 

 

Edited by geegee
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/24/2021 at 12:36 PM, Dragofer said:

Something worth considering if AIs seem to see you too easily is the intensity of your ambient light (for that location). My personal preference is a relatively dim colour setting of 0.06 0.06 0.07.

You could also consider setting ai_see off for the ambient. I guess it's a matter of taste whether you think of ambient light as a hack to let the player see dark places, or a property of the environment that really should make it easier for guards to spot you. I personally prefer to turn it off.

 

 

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Not DR but engine-related question: is there a reason for idMoveables collision model to have such low polygon limit?

Quote

"max vertices = 32"

"max edges = 32"

"max polygons = 16"

"max edges per polygon = 16"

I know the game can be wonky, but it's impossible to make even a really basic round shape with such low limits.

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Yes, all collision is done on CPU for physics, so keeping the collision shape as simple as possible is ideal.

We had an issue years ago when the coiled rope model didn't have a physics collision model and used the high poly one.
As soon as the player touched it, the game slowed to crawl and sometimes crashed.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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That makes sense, but going from that to 16 polygon limit seems really extreme to me. In practical terms, you can't create a shape more complex than this:

Clipboard01.thumb.jpg.f572916a36012af7c518875fa1727da8.jpg

Since physics is done on CPU, it should be pretty scalable too. I doubt that mappers or content creators will want to go beyond something like a bowling mini-game :D So perhaps it would be worth trying to set it at, I dunno, 1024 polygons per CM, testing it on a few objects, and going down until the game works in a stable manner?

Btw. I was trying to find any info on any hard CM polygon limits for engines like Source or UE3, but couldn't find anything.

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I'm not sure if that's a best example, but I was trying to stress the physics system a bit. I'm using moveable ball models, all having that 16-polygon CM above. Just for fun I gave them friction 0 and bouncyness 1, to make physics work harder than usual. And I was able to get to 150 balls without going below 60fps:

buildercompound_2021-09-07_12_04_24.jpg.818217d93d488b72d2fa813cfadb3709.jpg

buildercompound_2021-09-07_12_04_47.jpg.d16805fe2f51bfec63f2c6d5004413ab.jpg

Given that this is a synthetic test, and in typical situations you won't need more than, let's say, 10 objects interacting with each other simultaneously, it seems to me that those limits could be raised like ten times, and it shouldn't hurt the performance.

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Have an issue with my level. It was working fine, then I repositioned something, now it won't load. 
I get this error: Anyone know how to fix it?

couldn't exec autocommands.cfg missing

 

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9 minutes ago, NeonsStyle said:

couldn't exec autocommands.cfg missing

Put an empty .txt file in your darkmod root directory and rename it autocommands.cfg

autocommands.cfg serves the same function as autoexec.cfg - console commands put in there will automatically execute on loading, e.g  

bind F1 toggle r_showportals 1

r_frobIgnoreDepth = "0"

If it's suddenly missing, somehow the file got messed with since last good load map.  Perhaps reinstall the game in case other things got messed with.

 

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Thanks, Dragofer sorted it for me. Odd the console gave me that error when the actual
problem was caused by a circular binding in the entity inspector. 

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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In my map under development, I see the following message in the DM console log:

DepthStage: missing vertex or index cache

What does this mean? Should I be concerned? I found the code that generates it (DepthStage::ShouldDrawSurf), but I'm not smart enough to know what it means.

Thanks.

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On 9/7/2021 at 7:21 AM, peter_spy said:

That makes sense, but going from that to 16 polygon limit seems really extreme to me. In practical terms, you can't create a shape more complex than this:

...

Btw. I was trying to find any info on any hard CM polygon limits for engines like Source or UE3, but couldn't find anything.

Just to clarify, if someone maybe wondering, the 16 poly limit, is only for dynamic rigid body physics, not the normal static world and mesh collision mesh's.

Now IMO, you can't really compare idtech 4 physics engine, to any other in the market, is a very basic and simple physics engine, done inhouse by a single developer at idSoftware, made to be more complex than Quake 3 physics but still a very performant and fast simple physics system, "good enough" for a 2003 game. 

In reality, is inferior to any third party physics engine on the market, ODE (used in Stalker), Newton dynamics (used by Frictional games), Bullet, Havok, PhysX and others, are way better and more complex physics engines, today any of them, are a better choice for a game engine than idtech 4 physics engine, why, because they are all multicore physics engines (not sure about ODE), while the one on idtech4, afaik still runs on a single core!

And if someone is thinking this, even thou it would be awesome, I don't think the TDM physics engine will ever be replaced, the source of it, was the first thing idSoftware released in 2004 and no one, apart from AAA dev houses, have to this day, at lest that I know, improved it further or even replaced it entirely.

So imo If 16 polys is the limit than so be it, time to be cleaver and creative with shapes! ;) 

Edited by HMart
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What is the console command to reload the mapname.efx file? Quitting, going back in, and dmapping again is becoming time consuming.

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                The Wizard's Treasure                             A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

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