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Newbie DarkRadiant Questions


demagogue

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You should use the Hanna Barbara technique. Place an object over the seam.

 

For instance in a forest you could use a log. In an alley, a pile of trash.

 

 

 

If I remember correctly they worked fine in Doom 3.

 

Try making a test map in Doom 3 with those options. If it works there then it's likely an issue with TDM itself.

 

 

Hmm, don't think that would be suitable, because the fog I would like to add is around a TALL, complex building in the middle...so when I don't want fog inside, I will have to put one light at every side of the building and it will cause long seams :/

 

I would like some kind of anti-light, a light that just negates/overrides "the other" light smile.gif ..............Or If you could...hmmmm, I think I got a solution smile.gif After work I will test and then I will share the result with you smile.gif

Edited by Fieldmedic
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When I jump into DarkRadiant and look at maps made by you fans, they are always pressed into one layer. Is this some kind of standardization that just may happen or don't anyone besides me use the layers? Or do you merge the layers before release for some reason?

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Hm. There is a negative light somehow but I'm forgetting at the moment. I attached one to a preliminary shadow/ghost AI, so that when he walked around he "absorbed light" or brought darkness with him. Maybe I used a negative value, or perhaps it was done with a texture... I don't recall.

 

The range of 0-100 as shown in the light editor is actually just a more "human readable" scale of the actual 0-255 range, I believe. So if you open a .map file, you'll see the lights still use the expected ranges.

 

 

Edit: yes, look for 'shadow' type light textures and use those to create shadows using lights.

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Hmm, don't think that would be suitable, because the fog I would like to add is around a TALL, complex building in the middle...so when I don't want fog inside, I will have to put one light at every side of the building and it will cause long seams :/

 

I think someone demo'd a technique on Doom3World whereby a single large foglight would be bound to the player, and then turned on and off by scripting as the player entered particular zones, rather than using fixed foglights in map locations. Perhaps this would be more suitable for the purpose.

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I think someone demo'd a technique on Doom3World whereby a single large foglight would be bound to the player, and then turned on and off by scripting as the player entered particular zones, rather than using fixed foglights in map locations. Perhaps this would be more suitable for the purpose.

 

I had an idea of dabbling with the ambient world and change that to some kind of foglight at certain areas...but that wouldn't look right eighter because if you're standing in the house and look outside, the outside will look clear, and when you go outside the fog like creaps all around you AND into the house...

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Not a bad idea though. I did try to explore this with script but found it impossible to change fog density in-game (dunno if that is possible from the code.) Even turning off a foglight does not get rid of the fog - it just becomes dark fog. I then tried teleporting the foglight away. This works so I was going to have a set of foglights and page them in and out in sequence but I never pursued that idea further. I recall thinking about having dog leg corridors just inside buildings so just inside the fog was slightly reduced. As you went round the first bend it reduced more, then fully as you got right inside. Might work as a one-off situation but not for general use.

 

That 'dark light' thing could be useful. I remember in Thief I proposed a 'dark bomb' but no means to implement it. The idea is that it is like a flash bomb in reverse. The player throws a dark bomb into a well lit area and it produces a volume of darkness for a few seconds while the player slips through.

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That 'dark light' thing could be useful. I remember in Thief I proposed a 'dark bomb' but no means to implement it. The idea is that it is like a flash bomb in reverse. The player throws a dark bomb into a well lit area and it produces a volume of darkness for a few seconds while the player slips through.

 

Too over powered, takes the challenge out of challenging areas, and flash bombs are bad enough. Just my opinion of course :)

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Not at all. The same could be said for water arrows and blackjack and flashbombs. I could stroll through most of these FMs if I had plenty of them and was not afraid to use them. The mapper controls what tools you have and what areas there are and how large they are. It might be quite a challenge for instance to only have a single dark bomb and a large electrically lit tiled area with lots of guards. You might have to carefully place moss, judge when most of the guards are not close, judge exactly where and when to lob the bomb, race through to one small area behind a pipe, wait for the right moment, proceed.

 

A variation of the dark bomb - in fact possibly the best way to define them - would be for them to be accompanied by smoke. I'm not sure if smoke particles actually hide the player? If not, then accompanied by the dark bomb effect (which would seem like a shadow of the thick smoke) then it would appear that the smoke is hiding the player.

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And one more thing - the textures in camera view become blurry if I move around. I need to restart DR to show them properly again

 

I seem to have fixed this issue, will get the info to greebo once I finish testing on my boxes.

People with Intel/older AMD hardware rejoice, the maddening trippy textures might be coming to and end :)

 

Edit/Update : It seems I actually didn't find what I was looking for :(

Edited by Serpentine
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I've got a couple of more q's:

 

1) About door rotations: I am unsure about this part. I've read the article on the wiki, but still unsure how to get it right. Check this screenshot for the doubledoor:

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/4024/37818163.png

 

2) I've got a few areas as manor-grounds. Is there any nice way of doing a moonlight? I got the moonlight skybox, but emulating the moonlight on the entire outdoor area would be neat.

 

3) You only spend about 10-15 mins in the outdoor area of my FM. Is there any cheap, neat shortcut to not have to build up the whole estate? What artistic touches can you do to emulate that there's a big, big estate just beyond the hedgerow without having to draw it all up?

 

4) In an outdoor area, the roof is obviously the portal_sky. What good textures can you use on the 'walls'? I have hedgerows about 1.5 times the height of the player, but between the hedgerow and the skybox I am unsure what to texture.

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1) Looks pretty good to me. What, exactly, is going wrong?

 

2) Moonlight can be done with a gentle, low-intensity parallel light. After you make a light 'parallel', select it and go into Vertex Editing mode to move the direction that the moonlight is coming from.

post-2515-127846376392_thumb.jpg

 

3)There are a few pre-built facade building models under "darkmod/architecture/buildings" or "darkmod/architecture/building_facades". Some were built to go into the world, and some to go into your 3D skybox.

 

4)You can use portal_sky on your walls as well. Then, you might want to cover up part of it with a tall stone fence, or a brick wall, or maybe use one of the big building facades mentioned above. Use your imagination! :) If you've got builder's block, maybe start looking at pictures or walk around town for inspiration.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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1. Ditto what MD said. Can't see the problem from the image. But if that door is angled upwards then a couple of points to note:

 

If the doors are models then the rotation is the same whatever angle the doors are, eg, 0 90 0 on a vertical model door. If you tilt the door back then that won't change.

 

If the doors are brushes then it's a bit more tricky as it uses world coords. I think in your case you need probably something like 0 45 45 but to be honest I'd have to experiment myself. I suggest just do one door at a time. Just do one angle at a time as you tweak it. If I think about it when I next fire up DR I'll have a quick try.

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Only had time for a quick test but finding it quite tricky. By trial and error I am tweaking to -35 55 45 and this seems to be getting nearer but not quite. Must be a math person here who can calc this? (course it will depend on which way the door is facing too.)

 

Another approach if the above fails is a tiny hidden model door with the visible door bound to it but then it gets mess with peering.

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1) The doors are prefab models. The default opening rotation (0 90 0) makes it really, really wierd. I don't understand how to calculate it and make it look good.

 

2) Since the moon itself is from the skybox, where do I put the moonlight? in the skybox? I am also abit unsure what light radius the light should have, and how it should 'point'

 

3) Where/how do you apply them in the skybox? I havn't had much experience with it.

 

Cheers

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I'm not trying to do anything here, so I may be talking nonsense, but maybe the problem with this rotation is 'how' the engine is going to rotate it. When it's only one axis it doesn't matter, but 3d rotations are not 'commutative' so, for example: if you rotate in the x axis 90° and then rotate 90° in the y axis you will have a different result than rotating 90° around the y axis and then 90° around the x axis.

 

I couldn't find any illustrations on google, so I made one.

post-119-127852422791_thumb.jpg

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Is it possible to bind lights together? Example: A torch on the wall WITH shadowcasting and In the center of the room there is a ambient light without shadowcasting. May I link the torch to the room ambient light so when the torch gets extinguished, the room-ambient goes of also/relights if you relight the torch...?

 

Is it possible to link the light to the window of the outside material shader? When the light is on, the "brightly lit" texture is on, but when the light is out, the window is changed to a dark/unlit one...?

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All of those are easily done by trial and error, but I'll get you started.

 

1) The opening rotation also needs to take into account the other axes that you rotated those doors. One door might be "45 90 45" and the other one "-45 -90 45". You know your doors are rotated to a 45°, so you can play around with those values, positive and negative.

2) Your moonlight will be sort of like a big-radius ambient light.

 

a ) right-click and put a plain old light in the world where the moon should shine down. Give it the light texture "lights/squarelight", and a dark blue-ish color.

 

b ) Then adjust the radius of the light so it engulfs just the outdoor area where the moon will shine (It's okay if it's a little too big).

 

c ) Now select the light, and go into Vertex Editing mode (v). There's a little node in the middle of the light that you can select and drag up & around. This will make the light will shine downward and at an angle.

See my previous picture for an example of dragging this node around.

3) If you are not using the prefab skybox, disregard anything I said about putting them in your 3d skybox. There are a bunch of good full-size model buildings you can drag into the world, instead.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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Is it possible to bind lights together? Example: A torch on the wall WITH shadowcasting and In the center of the room there is a ambient light without shadowcasting. May I link the torch to the room ambient light so when the torch gets extinguished, the room-ambient goes of also/relights if you relight the torch...

Yes.

 

Make your torch light "target" the ambient room light. When the torch is extinguished, it'll trigger the ambient light to go out.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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What I said about model rotation and brush rotation was wrong. When I first started testing doors three years ago I'm sure it was true that models rotated relative to their own origin but I think since then we had a new door dark mod door entity. So anyway, they seem to both work the same and rotate to world orientation. So binding the door to a rotating hinge model won't work (apart from being very messy.)

 

The door rotation may be impossible. My best values now are -30 55 53 for a door facing west comes out pretty close to the final rotation wanted but to reach it the door goes through a strange motion. So even if I perfected those values and the door is perfectly rotated at the end, the motion may always be wrong. But it's not too strange so perhaps we can get away with it.

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WRT the door rotation . . .

 

The engine only rotates about the xyz axes, so for an object that wants to rotate about an abnormal axis, you have to script out the rotation.

 

Rotating an object about an abnormal axis requires:

 

1. Rotate from the current orientation so that one of the local xyz axes lines up with one of the world xyz axes.

2. Rotate about that world axis.

3. Apply the inverse rotation you used in step 1.

 

So if you have a door in the xz plane and you lean it back 45 degrees (like an outside cellar access door), and you want to rotate that door about its long hinge axis 90 degrees so it's open . . .

 

1. Rotate from the starting orientation back to the xz plane, which is a 45-degree rotation around the x axis. (i.e. stand the door back up straight)

2. Rotate the door -90 degrees around the z axis.

3. Rotate the door -45-degrees around the x axis. (the inverse of step 1)

 

The door would now be opened along its long axis, but it wouldn't look good in the game, because you missed all the intermediate positions the door should be taking as it opens.

 

So you have to break up the z-rotation (step 2) into smaller bits, say 3-degrees at a time.

 

Pseudo-code would be:

 

for (i = 0 ; i < 30 ; i++)

{

rotate the door 45-degrees around the x axis; // stand it up

rotate the door -3 degrees around the z axis; // rotate it (90/30) degrees

rotate the door -45-degrees around the x axis; // lean it back down

wait a frame; // the door gets painted in its new partially-opened position

}

 

Each frame would show the door in a more open position, rotating around the abnormal axis which is its long hinge side.

Edited by grayman
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