DarthStevenus

Yeah I know, I don't see why that would be a problem, I would just create some custom NPC using pre-existing models, like the rebel guys. Unless there's a limit to how small you can make them or something.

Oh yeah, sky portals. I've used them before, but kind of forgot about them. That's one way to try it.

Okay, I have what I think is an interesting solution to a problem I'm going to soon be faced with. I have an idea for a SP campaign mod, where a small militia led by a self-taught Jedi wants to commandeer an old Imperial Star Destroyer that is being kept in a New Republic facility which houses a bunch of old Imperial assets like weapons, stormtrooper armor, ships, etc for the Republic's future use. During a cutscene I want to show a quick shot of the Star Destroyer being kept inside a massive underground docking bay (the facility is hidden of course, they wouldn't want the Remnant knowing about it's location). I want to show a bunch of Republic personnel inside an observation area looking out a window at the Star Destroyer. I might even want to show a quick shot of some engineers tinkering around on the outside of the ship. Since I don't want to have to create this enormous map, I figured I could just shrink the NPCs down to the appropriate size and set everything up that way. I guess I'm just worried that camera placement is going to be tough since I'll need to move with lots of precision. Anyone ever tried anything like this?

Well I was working at it last night when I started this thread actually. I got to the part where I wanted the script to check for weapons and I realized I had no idea how to do that. For the dead bodies (so morbid to type it out like that) I was going to run a cfg when the player started the game that would set corpseremovaltime to 0 so that the NPCs bodies would never disappear. You can move bodies with grip, but you can tell the game doesn't like it when you do that. They're sort of hard to lock onto, and you tend to drop them unexpectedly, so your way sounds better. Plus if I made it so NPCs were never removed, it would probably cause performance issues eventually. For the pressure pads I was using two big square brushes on the floor that I turned into two separate func_buttons, pretty sure I tried this with something else before and it seemed to work. And I'm all set on the mind control and force push stuff. I made some func_statics with the push flags checked out of some super thin caulk brushes and put them in front of my control consoles, which are actually func_buttons with on/off textures on either one. I guess it's mainly the weapon checking thing that is going to give me trouble. If all else fails, I'll just have the player walk up and "use" something and when they do, run a script on them that takes away their weapons.

Would be nice to be able to map a function to a key that will drop the player's lightsaber though. I was thinking of adding a gameplay element to this mod (it's a SP campaign mod that I'm toying around with BTW) using g_saberPickupableDroppedSabers so that you could pick up a fallen sith's/jedi's lightsaber or sabers, and I might even go so far as to add a menu screen on your datapad where you can drop your saber/sabers, like if you're using two sabers and you want to switch to just one. I've even considered giving special attributes to enemy sabers, like a longer blade or increased parry strength, so you could upgrade and mix and match as you play. Which begs the question, would it be possible to show those kinds of .sab file details on a menu screen?

Damn. I had an awesome idea for this whole big puzzle (it was like a security checkpoint thing). You were going to have to do all this neat stuff like pick up some bodies using force grip and drop them on some pressure pads, use force push to use two consoles within seconds of each other to open a door, mind trick a guy, etc. My ideas and ambitions are always forcing me to try things that it turns out aren't possible in these games.

On a related note, could you bind a .cfg file (or something else maybe) to a key to make the player drop their lightsaber, in SP? I know there's the console command g_saberPickupableDroppedSabers or whatever it is, so that you can grab other jedi's/sith's lightsabers when they die. Seems like it might be possible to drop them as well.

EDIT: And I want the player to be able to pick them back up again. It's part of the puzzle. There's a scanner you have to walk through that scans you for weapons, and if you have any on you the room goes into lockdown. So you have to drop your weapon, go through the scanner, do the thing with the bodies on the pressure pads, hit the switches, mind trick a guy, finally the door opens, so you step through the doorway and use force pull to get your lightsaber back.

Is it possible to use a script to check if a player has any weapons, and then perform some action if they don't? I know I'll need an 'if' block, but how do I set the conditions? This script will be running from a trigger that the player will use, and I want it to check the weapons of that player.

@@KENNITHH -- Couldn't you use a specular map on your wall surfaces where you want more brightness?

I would try this. If the specmap comes off TOO bright then you can tone it down to your liking by using "rgbGen const ( 0.X 0.X 0.X )" in the shader.

Sweet, thanks Asgarath83, I'll try editing that. Question though, what the heck is this

qer_editorimage gfx/effects/sabers/blurglow

doing in there? Isn't that to specify what texture is shown if you load a shader in Radiant to put it in a map?

Having a problem with Radiant 1.5. Whenever I try to compile a map that has already been compiled once in the past (so there's already a bsp file for it), Radiant compiles without any errors, but won't overwrite the old bsp with the updated one. When I load my map in the game it looks the same as it did before all the changes I made. It works if I open my map, save it under a different name and then compile it again, because that way it's not overwriting anything, but obviously I don't want to have to do that forever. I looked in the settings to see if it was just a simple option I could turn off, but couldn't find anything there.

I vaguely remember seeing some tutorial somewhere years and years ago where you could open up a compiled lightmap, in Photoshop or something, and you could actually go in and manually smooth out the shadows that way. Am I crazy? Because that sounds crazy.

This is something I'm interested in as well, lighting is the main thing I'd like to improve about my maps. I just saw a tutorial here about making "fake" shadows using shaders and patch meshes which produced some impressive results, but obviously that's not ideal for an entire map.

Another thing that I had made but never put out anywhere, a little TARDIS prefab.

Might post that too if I still have it somewhere.

Looks great! I love old temple style maps. Your lighting looks really good as well, that's something I've been trying to get better at lately.

It's not that it's being loaded before assets, it's named force_pike_black.pk3. Can you really just slap a shader on that swordtrail? Has this actually been done? Because I don't think the shader will do anything. I can't even find swordtrail.jpg in any of the default shaders.

Yeah, the texture is in the pak, but for some reason it doesn't show up in MP. Works fine for me in SP though for some reason. Maybe someone with more knowledge on using custom models can enlighten me, because I'm not sure what the problem is right now.

Let me just give you guys what I have here. Here is a shot of the sword, you can see the black blade itself shows fine.

And here is the swordtrail.png image.

I also tried as a targa, but no dice. The trail still shows up white, even with that shader you posted Ashura.

Here is the .sab file.

force_pike_black
{
    	name		"Force Pike black"
    	saberType	SABER_SINGLE
    	saberModel	"models/weapons2/force_pike_new/force_pike_new.glm"
    	saberLength    	32
	noDlight	1
      	noBlade		1
      	trailStyle	1
	bladeEffect	"force_pike/electricity_black.efx"
    	soundOn		"sound/force_pike/on_spark.wav"
    	soundOff    	"sound/force_pike/off_spark.wav"
    	soundLoop	"sound/force_pike/on_loop.wav"
}

Yeah, it's the swordtrail texture that I've edited, I want to make it black but to do that I need to save it as a .png to get the right transparency. But when I try it out in game, it uses my custom trail texture, but it's white and not black. I'm sure it's some kind of blending issue, not sure if it's worth all the trouble to get it working.

Isn't the sword trail white though, not black? This is the weapon I'm working on BTW:

It doesn't have a lightsaber blade in the .sab file. It uses a custom effect.

Is it possible to have a black sword trail (trailstyle 2 in the .sab file) with a .png image? I just tried it and the trail came out white. Not sure if this is even possible, just trying to get a small weapon mod finished for a pack I made.

I'll try a little later maybe, got homework to do.

The Batcave is up.

It would fail while uploading the zip file, usually around 20% of the way there. I tried it with the basic uploader and the advanced uploader, with Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Just submitted the Batcave map to Moddb, again have to wait for it to be authorized but that shouldn't take too long.

I tried multiple times to upload it here, but for whatever reason it wasn't working 

Since I may not get around to expanding on Ahto City, I'm thinking I might release the map files and everything so other mappers can add to it if they want. Might do that later today. I guess I'll do the same with my batcave map whenever I upload that.

Here is Ahto City, have at it. I'll post a link in the original post as well. Gonna try and upload my Batcave map later today.

Sure, whatevs. I found some old screenshots of the two effects.

Bout to go for round 2 trying to upload Ahto City. Wish me luck.

EDIT: Uploaded the file to Moddb, just have to wait for it to be authorized.