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Newbie DarkRadiant Questions


demagogue

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I am currently wrestling with bevels, basically whenever I create one it always textures only the inside of the curve

Patches are generally single-sided, in the editor you'll always see only one side of the patch textured.

 

This is making me completely crazy is there a way to stop it making an 'inner bevel'?

You can "invert" the patch, hit Ctrl-I or select it from the Patch > Matrix > Invert menu item.

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Looks like that's changed since I did that wiki article. Also the default orientation is different. It used to always create the bevel with its 'axis' for want of a better word in the vertical. So you saw the curve from above in the plan view; now it's the side view. I made a lot of wall corners that way in Den and never had to invert the texture or rotate the bevel (except around its axis.) I'll change the article to indicate you may have to invert or rotate.

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It's obvious that there can't exist a one-fits-all default, but maybe it's useful to have the bevels created depending on the current XY viewtype.

 

That's how the current implementation of creating a simple patch mesh is done. On creation it's oriented toward the currently active viewport. I like this.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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  • 1 month later...

I dont seem to be able to create lights properly on my map. Light propagates well on some parts, but then it will just cut off and leave everything completely black. Last time I worked on it was a couple of months ago and I really dont remember anything like this happening. Does anybody know why this happens? 43253425.jpg

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This happens to me when I leave something like a streched-sliver brush or a very tiny gap in the brushwork (e.g., can happen when a lot of tiny brushes meet at a weird angle, or one sliver brush peeks out, or you don't get one brush flush against or going into another brush), it blacks out the brushes behind the sliver as if the rendering gets stuck on it and doesn't render behind it. By sight this looks like that; and I've had this happen multiple times. Check to see if there's any tiny or bunched up brushes or small gaps right around that third step, anything like messy brushwork (you can probably guess. Generally it's a call to clean up the brushwork around there anyway). In any event, every time I've seen this happen to me, I've been able to fix it by cleaning up the messy brushwork and it renders fine again.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Since it seems there is not much until the mod's release, I might as well ask. While going through the A-Z tutorial, I am at the segment where it discusses placing an AI in the map. However, whenever the AI is selected, everything slows down to a crawl; manipulating the AI (moving it in the game-space, rotation etc.) is just about impossible by hand.

 

Is this normal? For reference, I am on a laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo T5670, 2 x 1024MB DDR-II RAM and an Intel X3100 video card. I experienced considerable slowdowns with the Saint Lucia demo on higher resolutions when in the proximity of multiple (torches), but not with AI. I didn't think this was a particularly weak HW configuration, but if it can't handle this stuff, I may have to stick to architecture for the time being and wait until my PC is repaired.

Edited by Melan

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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From my experience with onboard Intels, they are the performance hit. Basically they're not good gaming cards. Maybe they have high end ones though, I don't know. Nvidia and ATI typically run great for most high demand games including TDM.

 

Both of my work systems have onboard Intels, and they both run poorly (single digit framerates often) using them. The second newer system recently got an Nvidia upgrade, and I now rarely see framerates below 60. Best of all, it's only a GF7600 (it's a work machine; I didn't splurge to get top of the line). And still I get great performance. It cost me all of $17 on ebay.

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What render mode have you got set in menu > edit > camera > render mode?

 

Have you got doom running at the same time?

 

Does region set help? If you zoom in the top view in the grid view then press R (which I think is default but check menu > edit > keyboard shortcuts for region set) it hides everything but the area in the view. Doesn't solve the problem but might help.

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Thanks. I will wait with AI until I get my PC in repair, then. (And a new VG card)

 

[edit]

Fidcal: The render mode is 'Textured'; I get better frame rate if I exit Doom (although not radically); I doubt the third tip would help, since I am still in the one-room-and-a-corridor phase.

Edited by Melan

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I dont seem to be able to create lights properly on my map. Light propagates well on some parts, but then it will just cut off and leave everything completely black. Last time I worked on it was a couple of months ago and I really dont remember anything like this happening. Does anybody know why this happens?

 

I think I adressed this bug with a recent fix in SVN. You'll need to check whether this happens in the upcoming release.

 

Just dropping by to say that updating to the latest version did indeed fix the problem.

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Here are some questions, some of which I have asked before but embarrasingly still don't understand the answer for. Looking at the tutorial, I see how I can build some basic stuff (including a lot of possibilities with patches), but I am missing how I can add some features which could be easily made out of air brushes in Dromed, or how to do it efficiently. Here are four basic arhictectural dilemmas that mystify me even after reading the tutorial:

 

1. I understand that TDM works exclusively with additive geometry, meaning everything is made of solid stuff. Therefore, to make an opening in a wall, you either have to

a) copy the entire wall brush, open it up, and construct a protruding box to keep out the void (probably with Make Room to keep it easy);

B) use the clipper tool to cut the wall into pieces, say, this way, with the patterned area deleted afterwards:

 

Architectural2.jpg

 

From the two methods, B) seems to be easier, and would be useful in most situations. Still, I find the entire thing a bit wasteful - you have to add and move a lot of brushes to get what would be all of two operations (air+air) in Dromed. I guess what I am interested in is if it can be done more easily via a command I missed, or at least some trick to speed up the process.

 

2. It becomes more complicated once we get to the second exercise: a circular hole in the wall! The logical thing in Dromed would be to punch it out with a cylinder... not very circular but good for our purpose. In TDM, I first imagined it by creating a 24-sided prism, pushing it into the wall and hitting Make Room, which would yield a pipe-like thing with two "lids" you might remove. Unfortunately, this doesn't work, since the original wall is still blocking our "pipe", since brushes don't merge into each other; moreover, Make Room splinters my nice 24-sided prism into a lot of fragments that would be a terror to manipulate after creating it. Therefore, the only way I can currently envision is to construct a rectangular opening, and create the pipe walls with four patches in the corners:

 

Architectural3.jpg

 

Beyond being work-intensive, it may be a problem if we want the "pipe" to protrude a bit - patches can apparently be thickened, but I'd just like a clean circle-in-a-circle, which would - maybe - only work with returning to the first method and building the protrusion separately (potentially messing up the patch-brush connection). That's... not intuitive.

 

3. The third issue is where I am totally lost. Say if I'd like something complex, like the gothic window I did for Unbidden Guest, which looks like this:

 

Architectural.jpg

 

In Dromed, the window is made from five cylinders: a solid for the protruding base, and four overlapping airs for the opening. In TDM, it is ... made from ... what? Models? It baffles me.

 

4. Overlapping brushes. Let's imagine we are constructing a facade, and I wish to add something to the front whose flace is in plane with the facade, but protrudes above (like the brick decorations on old houses, as reproduced below, but this actually may not be the best example). How do I do this the easiest without Z-fightin? I can think of some method, but none intuitive. How would you experienced TDM editors do it? (Preferably without modelling; I really really don't want to learn another complex programme right now, and with IRL work, it would be hopeless anyway.)

 

Architectural4.jpg

 

IN SUMMARY, I guess I am still in a Dromed frame of mind, and might be missing the obvious - although it is also possible some things are just not done easily in TDM. Hopefully though, there are some useful workarounds that can be employed without much headache, and I don't have to say fairly basic architecture is easier done in a decade-old editor. ;)

Edited by Melan

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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You will definitely have to rethink your overall approach. In some circumstances the old Dromed way appears easier, but you'll find that building with DR is so FLEXIBLE that you'll never want to go back. Yes, building a single room in Dromed is as simple as putting one air brush and you're done, but the tools and limited angles and stuff you can do in Dromed I now find extremely stifling compared to the great freedom I feel with DR.

 

My first overall advice is to practice with patches, a lot! You can get pretty quick as using them for your above situations, and then when you see the power you wield with them and how you can bend them almost ANY way you want, you'll start to get excited about what to build with them. (You're on the right track with the pipe-in-wall)

 

I also use the clipper tool A LOT. for the doorway example, I personally would just chop the two vertical cuts, then unselect everything and select only the center section and move the bottom up, opening it for a doorway. I can do this so fast now it's nearly faster than placing an air brush in Dromed. And then if I want I can manipulate the corners and change the angles or whatever I want.

 

I plan to make some videos (hopefully soon) showing simple quick building techniques like this :)

shadowdark50.gif keep50.gif
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Im an old dromed dog, and going onto Dark Radiant has been awesome. I'm on my 2nd mission, with my first (Politics) being the largest TDM FM I have yet to play.

For the first while, cutting open the wall with the clipper tool seemed like a pain. Here is a good way to do it that I use.

Make your door and door frame first. Using the door frame (made of brushes of course), and place it into the part of the wall in which the door will occupy. Make sure the doorframe is thick enough to get through the wall, and through the next room/hallway you want it to enter. Place your doorframe in the part of the wall you want cut out, and with the frame/door still highlighted, use the CSG subtract tool. This will cut out the wall to the spec of the door frame, and you can now delete the portion of the wall inside the frame (it operates like a cookie cutter, only with DR brushes instead of delicious cookies). BEWARE, however, the CSG subtract tool tends to split everything into microbrushes (BAD BAD BAD!! This will = dreaded malloc errors), so quickly go over the now split up wall and CSG merge whichever brushes you can. Sometimes the CSG subtract does a good enough job and there aren't any brushes to be merged. This entire process usually takes me roughly 20 seconds. My doorframes are usually pre created loaded prefabs (complete with operating door in them :))

Its the intelligent use of prefabs, and logical building practices that excels the entire process. My FM I'm working on now is huge. Like, 2 Thief 2 FM's put together huge, and I've done it all in 2 months of on and off work!

Hope this makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't :)

GC

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Not sure if I'm missing something obvious here, but...

 

I'm going through the tutorial, at the Sky section, where it says to insert a prefab skybox, but I get an error 'C:\Games\Doom3\darkmod\ prefabs does not exist' when I try to. Creating that folder makes the error go away, but the folder is, of course, empty. From poking through the pk4's, the prefabs seem to be in tdm_prefabs01.pk4, but the editor doesn't seem to know about them.

 

So what I'm wondering is, is there some way to get at those prefabs in the editor short of unzipping the whole pk4 into darkmod\prefabs?

 

Also, the Load Prefabs dialog seems kind of odd, with a big square on the right that's either completely black, or shows whatever was in that part of the screen before the dialog was opened - is that normal? I ask since I've already had some graphical problems thanks to Vista/Aero, and don't know if this might be another one.

 

(Fantastic mod, by the way - can't wait to see what people come up with in it!)

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Make no mistake, I have a high opinion on the editor and see a lot of possibilities in it. Just keep in mind that my questions are not related to specific architectural features, rather building principles. Now, CSG substract looks very useful, something that might be used for roughly the same operation as an air brush. I have also seen its splintering effects on nearby geometry and will keep that in mind - although if I understand correctly, the engine can handle a zillion more polys in view than Dark? (Doom 3 had a lot of high poly areas that ran seamlessly on my deceased desk PC with very high settings.)

 

[edit]Here is a rough TDM implementation of the gothic window. It is doable, but

a) holy crap that's a lot of brushes (some can be merged, although the )

B) it would not be easy to adjust minor details

c) obvious, although avoidable Z-fighting where the substracted area touches the wall

 

Still, not bad. This may be the beginning of a beauuutiful friendship.[/edit]

 

Architectural3-TDM.jpg

Edited by Melan

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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