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Newbie DarkRadiant Questions


demagogue

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@Rantanko: Yes, you must unzip those because DarkRadiant cannot reach the insides of pk4s yet.

 

@Melan: I generally never touch CSG subtract. If you do use it: keep in mind that it does not act the same as placing an air brush.

 

Subtract may splinter geometry apart into microbrushes that will make the map compiler choke. It also creates more brushes than neccessary (and therefore more tris to draw, and a larger map file). And Doom 3 can push the tri count, but when calculating shadows, you want as few brushes as possible, or else the compiler will begin to suffer.

 

....And I've got your gothic window done. gothicMelan.txt. Rename it to gothicMelan.pfb (the forums only allow certain filetypes to be uploaded).

 

post-2515-125606859829_thumb.jpg

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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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!)

 

Rantako: Yes, you have to extract the prefabs for now. The big square on the right - you may have to zoom out to see the prefab (mousewheel I think) But if its only showing the screen below it then there's some problem. I do recall someone mentioning a problem with Aero and you may have to turn it off.

 

Melan: You'll get there in the end. Don't worry about some things be non-intuitive. Not everything is; you have to learn it. The same was true for Dromed. Also, some things like that gothic window may indeed be easier in Dromed but we can show you lots more that are easier in Dark Radiant and even impossible in Dromed. What I'm saying is I wouldn't bother comparing the two to see how DR measures up. You are looking at relatively ambitious non-obvious concepts that many of us would have to scratch our heads for a while to figure out. You will have a ball when you learn a bit more. And you cannot easily make one of those in Dromed like you can in DR. ;) Hope you also browse the wiki - on patches for instance. I look forward to see what you come up with in the future. :)

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@Rantanko: Yes, you must unzip those because DarkRadiant cannot reach the insides of pk4s yet.

 

@Melan: I generally never touch CSG subtract. If you do use it: keep in mind that it does not act the same as placing an air brush.

 

Subtract may splinter geometry apart into microbrushes that will make the map compiler choke. It also creates more brushes than neccessary (and therefore more tris to draw, and a larger map file). And Doom 3 can push the tri count, but when calculating shadows, you want as few brushes as possible, or else the compiler will begin to suffer.

 

....And I've got your gothic window done. gothicMelan.txt. Rename it to gothicMelan.pfb (the forums only allow certain filetypes to be uploaded).

 

post-2515-125606859829_thumb.jpg

 

Nice window, but you messed up the texture alignment on the corner inverted bevels. It can easily be fixed but for a prefab it should be corrected.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Mortem Desino: you made it out of patches, correct? I can see the sides with slightly misaligned textures. I have been experimenting with merge, and it can reduce some of the miniature brushes that have been generated, although you are correct that it is still a lot in comparison:

 

Architectural3-TDM2.jpg

 

Fidcal: if I weren't ambitious, I would never have released Bad Debts as my first mission. ;) And as I wrote, there is a lot of impressive stuff here. Normalmaps alone lend a depths to levels previously unimagined, and patches look quite powerful.

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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Mortem Desino: you made it out of patches, correct? I can see the sides with slightly misaligned textures. I have been experimenting with merge, and it can reduce some of the miniature brushes that have been generated, although you are correct that it is still a lot in comparison:

 

Architectural3-TDM2.jpg

 

Fidcal: if I weren't ambitious, I would never have released Bad Debts as my first mission. ;) And as I wrote, there is a lot of impressive stuff here. Normalmaps alone lend a depths to levels previously unimagined, and patches look quite powerful.

That doesn't look too bad, although there's still many brushes. Select the entire thing, hit "make func_static". This at least makes it easy to drag around, and AI pathfinding will thank you for the reduction of brush complexity, at least to my knowledge.

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Mortem Desino: you made it out of patches, correct? I can see the sides with slightly misaligned textures. I have been experimenting with merge, and it can reduce some of the miniature brushes that have been generated, although you are correct that it is still a lot in comparison:

 

Architectural3-TDM2.jpg

 

Fidcal: if I weren't ambitious, I would never have released Bad Debts as my first mission. ;) And as I wrote, there is a lot of impressive stuff here. Normalmaps alone lend a depths to levels previously unimagined, and patches look quite powerful.

 

The misaligned textures takes only a few clicks, I could do it but I'm at work so can't til later. You just need to middle mouse click the big texture, the Ctrl+Middlemouse click all the patches that have misaligned textures, problem fixed.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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That doesn't look too bad, although there's still many brushes. Select the entire thing, hit "make func_static". This at least makes it easy to drag around, and AI pathfinding will thank you for the reduction of brush complexity, at least to my knowledge.

Very impressive. Multibrush-entities that don't suck. (I found this stuff when I was trying to take apart bits of the training mission, but couldn't make heads nor tails of it. Fascinating!)

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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Very impressive. Multibrush-entities that don't suck. (I found this stuff when I was trying to take apart bits of the training mission, but couldn't make heads nor tails of it. Fascinating!)

 

Keep in mind the AI cannot pathfind over func_static unless you populate a monster_clip brush over it.

Yeah, pretty "multibrush" takes on a whole new meaning... prefabs that is. Whenever I make something cool, like a house, or a table with plates, goblets, cutlery, I save it as a prefab for future use. I even prefabbed guards with 6 patrol points so I could just drag out the patrol points to wherever I want, without doing the grunt labor of it.

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Fidcal: if I weren't ambitious, I would never have released Bad Debts as my first mission. ;) And as I wrote, there is a lot of impressive stuff here. Normalmaps alone lend a depths to levels previously unimagined, and patches look quite powerful.

Yeah, I'm guilty of Nightwatch I must admit. Seems there's no holding us back. :)
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Normalmaps alone lend a depths to levels previously unimagined, and patches look quite powerful.

Heh... I'm so used to having normal maps, that sometimes I forget Thief didn't have them! B)

 

Curious, if you select a bunch of brushes (the gothic window in question here) right click, then "Make func_static", does that eliminate micro brushing issues, compiling issues, tri's drawn, and pathfinding issues?

func_statics have no impact on BSP compilation and are ignored by pathfinding generation, but you'll still have more triangles than you need. This is annoying, but not so bad, until you start casting shadows off 'em. Lots of tiny polygons casting shadows = glitchy shadow visuals (sometimes) and terrible performance. Remember also that you take the performance hit for every shadow-casting light you add.

 

For all of these reasons, patches and models are best for detail work.

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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@Rantanko: Yes, you must unzip those because DarkRadiant cannot reach the insides of pk4s yet.

 

@Melan: I generally never touch CSG subtract. If you do use it: keep in mind that it does not act the same as placing an air brush.

 

Subtract may splinter geometry apart into microbrushes that will make the map compiler choke. It also creates more brushes than neccessary (and therefore more tris to draw, and a larger map file). And Doom 3 can push the tri count, but when calculating shadows, you want as few brushes as possible, or else the compiler will begin to suffer.

 

....And I've got your gothic window done. gothicMelan.txt. Rename it to gothicMelan.pfb (the forums only allow certain filetypes to be uploaded).

 

post-2515-125606859829_thumb.jpg

 

I've modified the prefab to fix the patches textures and moved the prefab back to origin.gothicMelan.txt

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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For "path_turn" what do you target it to/from?

 

 

Have you seen this page? http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Path_Nodes#path_turn

 

path_turns are "behaviour" nodes.

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Just in case this hasn't already been posted:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Patches

 

There's a neat advanced patch tutorial at the bottom, originally from a user on the doom3world.org forums. Good stuff, shows how to manipulate patches so it's almost like working with brush splitting.

 

For completeness, here's a jump to the DarkRadiant general page (tons of useful links):

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=DarkRadiant

 

 

Regarding the window above, to echo what others have said: I would definitely attempt it in patches, and if the desired result couldn't be achieved, most certainly make the brushes into func_static. CSG is eeeevil.

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Architectural3-TDM2.jpg

Woah! If that makes my brain spin, think about how confused the map compiler will be! THAT's why csg subtract is not the same as an air brush.

 

New window. 4 outer circles made a little tighter and closer to 220degrees instead of 180d. Fixed tex alignments. gothicMelan.txt (rename to .pfb)

36 patches

12 brushes

 

post-2515-125609815181_thumb.jpg

(The thin grey seams in the picture do not show up in TDM)

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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Woah! If that makes my brain spin, think about how confused the map compiler will be! THAT's why csg subtract is not the same as an air brush.

 

New window. 4 outer circles made a little tighter and closer to 220degrees instead of 180d. Fixed tex alignments. gothicMelan.txt (rename to .pfb)

36 patches

12 brushes

 

post-2515-125609815181_thumb.jpg

 

This one is much better.

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That looks pretty good there. As long as patches can do most of the detail work I need, it is fine. Learning advanced modelling is just outside my possibilities with my current workload, and will probably stay that way even after I get my PhD (next month if things go well). Were the gothic windowframes in the training mission created using patches or models?

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 have just had a look at most of the tdm textures and they are really high quality... mostly! :D Check out darkmod\roof\shingles_red:

shinglesred.th.jpg

The handdrawn thin black lines, which are supposedly the borders of the rooftiles, don't match up with those in the normalmap and they also don't match up with the vertical bold borders of the rooftiles in the diffusemap. Fortgot to delete this one?? :)

Edited by STiFU
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Maybe I haven't understood properly, or I'm missing something obvious, but I've been through the materials for creating readables over and over, and I still can't get them to work.

 

If I have "xdata_contents" "my_message" assigned to a book then I have to create a path inside my map folder called xdata with a file called anything I like? Then at the top I put what exactly?

 

I bet I'm just making a silly mistake somewhere.

 

EDIT: I've worked it out. I didn't know that you need to make an xdata directory in darkmod rather than your mission folder. I guess I need to learn about the structure and how your mission files work.

 

 

Edited by Neb
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