What are you working on RIGHT NOW - T1/2 Dromed Edition

[Yandros]

I've been dividing my time between base work for DCE and 7SoM (HI #1), which should begin its second round of beta testing within a week.




I've, erm... reworked the torches a bit.





These were a mess, and happily in the process of redoing them correctly, I got to upgrade to NV's EP version. Actually, I had to upgrade the model to fix them...

[Sliptip]

Great ! I love how the lights go out when the missile explodes.

But I expected to see human beings as merchants, I hope it won't be only robots robots robots.

The lights flickering out when there's an explosion was a bit of a chore - I wanted them to turn back in on in sequence (though I'm not sure how much sense it really makes, but whatever ). You can't really tell from the vid but all the lights flicker occasionally - which I think looks neat-o.

There will be humans added eventually - trying to get them to fit in visually is proving to be a bit of a drag.

[Sliptip]

Yandros that Karras model is awesome! . . .how the hell did you manage to get 3 coronas on that chandelier That's cool!

[Yandros]

I don't think, at least, that's supposed to be Karras. Just one of the AI from HI. But given his history and the timeframe of the mission, who knows...

The coronas are simply set on the flame particles, no biggie.

[Digital Nightfall]

I moved the discussion about the rope-crates into its own thread.

[qolelis]

I moved the discussion about the rope-crates into its own thread.

Thanks, a whole new thread just for me

[Wille]

I started working on Mystic Gems 3 again:

[R Soul]

That looks incredible

[redface]

Looking great, Wille

[Yandros]

Wow, amazing Wille! Is that an AI or statue in the last shot?

[Digital Nightfall]

I love it, Wille!

[Wille]

Wow, amazing Wille! Is that an AI or statue in the last shot?

It's kind of both .

[clearing]

Beautiful screens, Wille

[Yandros]

I'm stuck working from home for the third day in a row for a number of reasons (weather, illness, child's school is closed) so I've been polishing up Beta 2 of the first HI mission. Thought I'd pass along an interesting little trick I used earlier this morning to make testing easier.

I wanted to be able to speedrun through the mission, just to check that all objects looked to be intact, objectives worked, loot, etc. but I didn't want to have to deal with the AI. I needed to play through thief.exe instead of Dromed, so I couldn't just turn off ai_aware. So, I placed a lever right at the start and linked it to a marker with NVRelayTrap, and set the Design note to NVRelayTrapTOn="[100.0]KOGas"; NVRelayTrapTDest="@Human". This allowed me to knockout every AI in the mission from the start.

[R Soul]

Haha, very effective.

[Nameless Voice]

Sounds like fun.

Another easy trick is to just add an invisibility potion and give it an insanely long Script->Timing and remove its "Use Ammo" FrobInfo, so that it lasts forever and can be repeatedly reactivated if it does run out.

[The Phantom]

Looks fantastic, Wille
Very nice textures and lightning.

Yandros, keep up the good work

[Yandros]

This thing isn't wanting go to quietly. Plays fine through my editing install folder, even through thief2.exe, but playing through Darkloader (to a different install folder) it crashes to desktop within about 15 seconds. One more damn thing to figure out...

[LarryG]

Whenever you are ready and want betatesters ...

[Yandros]

Thanks Larry, but we're full up already.

Got it sorted out too - well, at least, I fixed it. Not sure exactly why, but playing with the EP caused the crash, and deactivating the EP prevents the crash. So I'll have to include an empty EP.crf in the mission ZIP. Normally that would make me sad, but in this case virtually every object in the mission is custom or already taken from the EP anyhow, so playing with it wouldn't have made much difference.

[Nameless Voice]

Sounds like an extra (object) texture is being loaded and surpassing the palette limit.

[SlyFoxx]

Work on Rose Cottage continues while I await the arrival of new objects.

Today I had to sus out a strange lighting issue. I guess the detail of a certain area of tunnel was stumping the engine...the result was dark square bloches on the floor and walls. Odd since there are two such areas both lit exactly the same way and the problem was only found in one of them. Reducing the light level by half fixed the problem with the odd artifacts but now that area just looks a tad odd compared to the rest. Not a deal breaker but a tad disapointing.

[R Soul]

Could some terrain detail be replaced with objects?

[SlyFoxx]

Actaully looking at it again there was a subtle difference between the two areas. Deleating two brushes (marked in red) like the ones marked yellow cleared up the problem. Nobody would notice the difference anyway.

[nicked]

Awesome health bar and light gem in those pics Sly! I'd never have thought to make it purple but hey, it really works!