Initial lighting experimentation (Important Thing: Adding properties to Concretes)

Stardog on 25/2/2005 at 17:49

Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man

Predictably, I jumped right in and made me a room with some beams and lights etc, and stuffed some Puppets in there (that's the predictable bit), but I was a bit flummoxed by altering the light actor properties.

Then it hit me.

T3Ed seems to be a bit of a hybrid between the styles of UEd and DromEd, and there's a nice flexible system of adding the properties you want to individual actors.

Right-click in the light's properties tree (lowest level: concrete actor sort of level, and click right at Lighting) and Add Property. Lovely big list of available stuff pops up there, very much like DromEd. Seems I have to get my DromEd brain back on.

Anyway, light colour / brightness etc got sorted out. Saturation levels are the right way around, not the weird reversie that UEd has... 0 Saturation MEANS 0 Saturation, not 100% like in Unreal. Score a point for Intuitive.

Additionally, there are damping, offset, shape, and dynamic params. Fun to mess about with.

(plus I just got my ass handed to me by a bunch of puppets... good times)

I've never used DromEd before, but I like this new system of right-click and adding all these new properties. I was confused for a while on how to change my light's radius, but doing it like this is pretty cool.

Hogwash on 25/2/2005 at 17:56

It seems that no matter what properties I add and change, my light stays the same: static, bright and white. I am adding properties to the second 'Light' tree but it isn't doing anything. For example, I added LightColor and picked a shade of green from the colour picker but it doesn't actually do anything. Am I being stupid?

EDIT: Yeah I'm stupid it works now.

Forje on 25/2/2005 at 18:42

I'm having the opposite problem. I've placed a static mesh of a hanging lantern in a room, added the LightColor property and upped the numbers, but the room is still black. I can fiddle with the "dummy light" just fine though, change the color and brightness etc. I deleted it after adding the static mesh though. Are we required to associate one of these dummy lights with each light mesh we place in our levels? Or is there another property I need to add to the mesh light?

darkcosmos on 25/2/2005 at 18:46

I think that dummy light *is* the light. It's a bit of trickery with the static mesh... different from Dromed.

That is to say, if you mean the light that automatically appears behind a torch when you add a torch from the browser. Actually I've only added torches so far...

Eshaktaar on 25/2/2005 at 19:12

Forje, did you insert the hanging lantern through the Static Meshes browser and then add a dummy light manually? You need to insert the Actor Classes equivalent (under WorldObj->Light_) to get the attached light.

Forje on 25/2/2005 at 19:18

Yeah, I just figured it out, heheh. I was using the Static Mesh Browser instead of the Actor Class Browser. *smacks forehead*

Hogwash on 25/2/2005 at 19:37

Yeah that's what I was doing, adding the light mesh and then a light on top of that, rather than doing it Esh's way and getting the mesh, light and emitter all in one go.

d'Spair on 25/2/2005 at 20:38

Now, THIS is the way to add CastShadows property to StaticMeshes... Oh, and I thought I was blind:)

Mandrake on 27/2/2005 at 06:36

Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man

Equipping Garrett works the same as in DromEd.

Right-click PlayerStart, choose Actor Links. Add Link button takes you to a bigger dialogue, and as long as you have the Actor browser open and WorldObj > inventoryObject > GarrettExclusive > GarretLockpickLeft (or GarrettLockpickRight) hilighted you can just hit Use Current Archetype.

That works for all player starting inventory, same as ever.
(This collision of UEd and DromEd is really neat)

Does this work for giving garrett a blackjack, dagger, and arrows ? I tried your procedure with those, and nothing seemed to happen. What's the proper way to give garrett a basic set of starting inventory ? Unless I missed something obvious...

Gingerbread Man on 27/2/2005 at 06:47

I think questions about equipping Garrett were superceded by Dave's further exploration on the subject. Certainly as far as upgrades are concerned (which lockpicks count as)

Stuff about lockpicks etc are (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91960) here, and a better version of inventory creation was actually still stuck in the Deadly Betatesting forum... I've dragged it out and stuck it (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94175) here

I'm just realising how much of the actual writing stuff down was done by Dave :D

Mind you, a whole lot of the Figuring Stuff Out was done by Dave, too. I was primarily concerned with trying to Break Things.

We are currently working on a permanent resource for this stuff, hopefully a wiki format so everyone can contribute as things are figured out. So keep eyes open for that.