Hello TTLG / New to Dromed

[Kingsal]

Hello TTLG,

I usually lurk around the TDM forums as a mission author and contributor over there. As a side project, I'm working on a humble T2/ dromed mission for release within the next month or so.

So far, I really dig dromed and I've had a lot of fun looking over the enormous horde of tutorials and community support for the dark engine games. Its impressive and daunting to say the least.


I've come across a few basic questions about dromed, any help would be much appreciated.

1. Is it possible to increase the move speed of the WASD controls in dromed?
2. Is there a way to dump a mission object list somewhere including the object IDs? How about brushes?
3. Does dromed have "fit texture to surface" function?
4. Can I scale brushes relative to and edge? for instance scaling only in the +y dimension rather than uniformly from the middle of the brush?
5. I've noticed some FMs import T1 characters into T2. Is there a tutorial somewhere for this?

Thanks everyone!

[skacky]

Hey, nice of you to drop by for some DromEding! I can answer some of your questions:

1. You can use the command speed_fac to increase camera speed, but it also increases rotation speed. You can use the command rotspeed_fac to decrease it. I like to use speed_fac 8 and rotspeed_fac 0.25 myself.
3. There is no auto fit like in Hammer or Radiant. There is, however, a new texture mode with NewDark; AlignExt. You can activate it by selecting a face and clicking on AlignNorm then AlignBr. You can then resize a texture to your heart's content until it fits the face. You can also flip it by entering a negative value.
4. No, brushes have to be resized from the middle. It's a bit cumbersome and takes some time to get used to. I rarely resize by hand now, I enter dimensions directly instead.

[LarryG]

2. Yes. There is a Generate Report menu if you are using The DromEd Basic Toolkit. You can also use the console command do_report.
5. Yes. See the thread stickied at the top of this forum: Important: Resources for Mission Authors

[Tannar]

Welcome to the Thief fora. Glad you decided to give Dromed a try.

5. There is a tutorials page listed in the link that Larry gave you where you can find lots of tutorials for lots of things. Unfortunately, there really isn't a very good tutorial for importing T1 resources into T2. Here's the only one I could find. But you might try dong a search here and see if you can find some threads that discuss it. There are probably many.

[Yandros]

Someone I thought (belboz or gumdrop maybe?) long ago made a pack which included some T1 creatures for T2 - I believe it was burricks, fire elementals and one other. It included the resources including sound files and schemas, and also I think a version of the T2 dark.gam which already had them set up. I know I've done missions based on this setup before, but am not sure if I have the original package - I'll look for it at home tonight. And welcome to Dromeding!

[Unna Oertdottir]

This is DarkArrow. Look in files/BCB.zip
http://darkar.mbnet.fi/

[Cardia]

Great! its good to have an experienced author in Dromed.

[Yandros]

Thank you, Unna!

[LarryG]

A Simplistic Process To Import T1 or TG Creatures into a T2 Mission

1. Open up a T1/TG DromEd instance
2. Open up the hierarchy to the creature you wan to import into T2
3. Inspect the properties of the creature, looking for any references to other T1 archetypes
4. Add those you found to a list
5. Open up the hierarchy to each archetype on your list, looking for any references to other T1 archetypes
6. Go to step 4 until you no longer find T1 archetype references
7. Open up a T2 DromEd instance (do not close the T1/TG instance)
8. Starting at the bottom of your list,
   
   1. Look for the referenced archetype by name in the T2 DromEd hierarchy.
   2. If found already existing in the T2 hierarchy, skip to the next item up on your list (go to 8a).
   3. If not found, create it, adding each property of the archetype exactly as found in the T1/TG hierarchy (i.e look at the the archetype in T1/TG DromEd and copy property by property to the T2 archetype).
   4. When you get to any property referencing an external file (bitmap, model name, texture, etc.) jot that down on another list.
   5. Since you are processing your list of archetypes to create in reverse order, by the time you get to one which references another, that other will already exist in the hierarchy to be referenced.
   6. Process the next archetype up on your list (go to 8a) until you have processed them all into the T2 hierarchy.
9. You've done a lot of work you don't want to lose, so save your gamsys either as a .cow or .gam (or both), with a new name.
10. Copy the external files you put on your files list from your T1/TG directories to your T2 directories, saving the files in the exact corresponding folders.
11. Using a HEX EDITOR of your choice, open up each .bin that you copied to the T2 directories and look for internal references to texture files. If found, copy them from the TXT/TXT16 folders in the T1/TG directories to the corresponding ones in your T2 directories.

That should get you started.

NOTE: There are some tools that others have written which might prove useful in some of these steps. I refer you to Important: Resources for Mission Authors.

NOTE: You are also likely to need to copy sound schema files and reload your T2 schemas. So be sure to find a clean copy of the T1/TG and T2 schemas. Copy any needed schemas from the T1/TG schema files to your T2 directories before you reload schemas. There are instructions on how to modify and reload schemas elsewhere. Again, Important: Resources for Mission Authors.

Note: You can save a lot of time and typing by using the NewDark Export feature. With it, you can export a hierarchy archetype's properties to DML. You can then import the DML to T2 using the dbmod_load command, but only after you have created the empty archetype in T2 first to receive the properties. The name of the archetype in the T2 hierarchy must be exactly the same as in T1/TG. Follow the steps above as written, just use Export/Import to copy the properties for you.

Note: A T1/TG creature .bin file can be upgraded to be a T2 .bin using the MESHUP utility. Again, Important: Resources for Mission Authors.

Note: There are remodeled, higher resolution, versions of most T1/TG creatures. Again, Important: Resources for Mission Authors.

[Kingsal]

Hey everyone, wow thanks so much! This a lot of good information and its already paying off.
I haven't played around with all the tools yet, but they look extremely helpful.

One more quick question for now. If I load Dark Arrows game sys will I be able to load the information I currently have in my own? I'm still a little fuzzy on how that works. Can I load elements from several gamesys files and save them out a single one for my mission?

I'm really excited to get the creatures in. I'll give it a shot tonight and report back.

[Yandros]

No, you can't merge gamesys files, so if you have already created custom archetypes and saved your own .gam, you will want instead to follow Larry's steps above although you can do it with Dark Arrow's setup instead of vanilla T1 if you want to. Otherwise, if you're still using dark.gam then just point to his gamesys, save your mission, then open it and you will have his T1 archetypes in your hierarchy just like that.

[Daraan]

No, you can't merge gamesys files, so if you have already created custom archetypes and saved your own .gam, you will want instead to follow Larry's steps above although you can do it with Dark Arrow's setup instead of vanilla T1 if you want to. Otherwise, if you're still using dark.gam then just point to his gamesys, save your mission, then open it and you will have his T1 archetypes in your hierarchy just like that.

Isn't there some gamesys tool? It definitely can't merge but what can it do again?

[Yandros]

There was something called ObjTree I think but I don't remember for sure what it could do.

[R Soul]

You can do it one object at a time.

Select the object in the hierarchy and select Export single as DML. Open another mission, create an archetype of the same name (its location doesn't matter) and go to File > Load DBMod and select the dml file.

If the archetype has links to other archetypes, you should export them all, and import the destination object first.

[Kingsal]

Excellent, I was able to use Dark Arrow's setup with no problems. I was also able to import one of the creatures on my own.

Larry- You mentioned a meshup utility. What is the name of the tool/ download? By upgrading what do you mean? How does the tool effect the mesh?

A couple other really quick questions that I can't seem to find an answer for.
When moving multiple brushes, they don't seem to want to grid snap. I have to move them and then hit "align all brushes to grid". Am I doing something wrong here?

Also is there a quick way to select brushes? Something like a marque selection?

[skacky]

You can have multibrushes snap to grid. Open USER.CFG in your Thief directory and add vbrush_snap on a new line. Save the file.
There's no quick way to select brushes as far as I know.

[LarryG]

Larry- You mentioned a meshup utility. What is the name of the tool/ download? By upgrading what do you mean? How does the tool effect the mesh?

It is called MeshUp and was written by Shadowspawn. It converts T1/G mesh files to the "new" T2 format. Try The Nameless Tower archives to get it. It should also be on Telliamed's website.

[Kingsal]

Larry- Thanks! Ill give that a try

skacky- The snap to grid is a life saver, thank you. Ha funny enough I may have found a way to select multiple brushes by accident. Draw an "area" brush around the brushes you want to select and hit "multi-brush-me" this takes everything within the area brush and groups it into a multi-brush. Pretty handy. You can also toggle on and off visibility.

[Kingsal]

Hey everyone, I ran into a weird problem in dromed and I can't seem to find any info on it.

It seems like my terrain isn't rendering light maps. Almost as if its stuck in light bright mode even when I toggle lighting on. Objects seem to light okay. Mono says "Lightmap resolution scaling isn't compatible with lightmapped software rendering, editor will render terrain unlit. Consider running editor in hardware rendering mode"

I ran the editor in hardware mode and that didnt go to well (full screen and same problem). I also checked my lightmap scale and its set to 2, which I think is the default.

Any ideas?

EDIT: This recently started happening and ONLY happens in my FM. Others work fine.

[LarryG]

What is your WR Quality setting?

Also, don't tag new topics onto old threads. Start a new thread with a proper descriptive name if you want folk who know about your issue to find it and respond.

[Syi]

Hello And welcome to dromed.....

[ZylonBane]

I also checked my lightmap scale and its set to 2, which I think is the default.

set_lighting_scale : Set lighting resolution scale (2 for double res, -2 for half)

You need to enable hardware rendering in DromEd, now. You've been working practically blind so far if you're still in software mode.

[Telliamed]

It is called MeshUp and was written by Telliamed. It converts T1/G mesh files to the "new" T2 format. Try The Nameless Tower archives to get it. It should also be on Telliamed's website.

That was made by Shadowspawn.

4. Can I scale brushes relative to and edge? for instance scaling only in the +y dimension rather than uniformly from the middle of the brush?

There actually is but it isn't very elegant. You have to SHIFT+Click the brush to make it a multibrush group. Then ALT+Click near a vertex. An orange box will show up to indicate the anchor. You can then resize and rotate around that point. After you're done you need to dissolve the group. And then resnap the brush because multibrushes don't align to the grid.

[LarryG]

That was made by Shadowspawn.

I meant Shadowspawn, yeah, that's what I meant.

[Daft Mugi]

I found my way here after searching for how to get a list of object name-id pairs, which is (2) in the list above. The answer I was looking for wasn't here, but I eventually found it. Here's how to do it.

List all object name-id pairs:

• sorted by name: list_obj_type object
• sorted by id: list_obj 1

Bonus - List all object name-id pairs currently visible in the 3D view: rend_name_list

The output will be in the monolog.