What new features would you like for the next NewDark update (Suggestions) - by Cardia
gamophyte on 24/5/2020 at 02:52
Quote Posted by PinkDot
The request is about scripting inside the Dromed itself - not the scripts that run in the game engine. So, this would allow writing custom tools, that would automate all kind of tasks inside Dromed.
Ohhh gotcha, misread it, and was wondering what was going on lol. That would be nice.
PinkDot on 1/6/2020 at 18:08
I'd love to have some kind of a rudimentary facial expression system, based on idea of blend shapes (or morph targets, if you like).
Similarly to the half-finished Face Textures system, that somebody somehow made working - can't remember who it was now - but this time, we'd be able to blend between different meshes. So, for each character, you could have a few facial expressions like angry, smiling, surprised, sad and a couple more... And also one for mouth open (or different vowel shapes) and one for eyes closed.
This way, you could blend them together for effects like:
- emotion expression - confused, angry, raging for alert states, scared when fleeing, surprised when spotted a body etc..
- blinking
- eye closing on death/KO
- simple talking system, where mouth could open, based on the spoken lines (a function of a volume to control the open mouth strength)
- optionally a more sophisticated system would involve blending different shapes of mouth, based on a meta file for each wav (it could have emotional hints, for conversations etc..) - again that guy managed to generate some files for certain sound files (I think he made the archers conversation from the Life of Party, IIRC, but I might be wrong). In case of lack of the meta file, it would reverse to the simple system as above or none, in case of missing blend etc...
For each blendshape (morph target), a blending time could be defined in ms, but even if it switched instantly or the time would be hardcoded (like over 2-3 frames), that would be already an improvement (although with a risk of looking a bit funny)
Now - the most important thing - you may ask who and how could make high poly models with all these facial features? Well, there are software, that could do just that, like Character Creator 3. Or even a custom setup of blend shapes in a 3D app. Still, some work involved, but with a group effort, it's not impossible. The amount of life this feature would bring into Thief's AI could really prolong the life of this game and FMs for another long while.
vfig on 3/6/2020 at 14:30
Quote Posted by PinkDot
I'd love to have some kind of a rudimentary facial expression system, based on idea of blend shapes (or morph targets, if you like).
Similarly to the half-finished Face Textures system, that somebody somehow made working - can't remember who it was now - but this time, we'd be able to blend between different meshes.
That "somebody" was me—the demo video, with links to the writeup and the .mis file in the description, (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIAyFXP-6NI) is still up on youtube. And since ND 1.26 this should be fully usable for speech. That demo didn't explore it, but the Face Textures system also supports facial expressions (which can be used together with or independently from the mouth animations), with five possible expressions. It should be straightforward to use these from scripts.
So a great deal of what you are asking for can already be done in T2 with the existing Face Textures system. But as far as I know, nobody has expressed any interest in using either the mouth animations or the facial expressions parts in an fm. If you or anyone else actually wants to get this up and running, start a suitable thread for it and I'll be happy to provide technical info and scripting support.
PinkDot on 3/6/2020 at 21:57
Ah, thanks for revealing yourself! :)
I thought that was a really good job you've done there, and clearly Le Corbeau must have been impressed as well, as I remember the update he did shortly after in 1.26, that fixed a bug you had encountered.
So, yeah - what I'm asking for is kinda similar in a concept, except, that I'm interested in having a 3D modeled faces these days, rather than just a texture. And ideally if the shapes could blend, rather than switch, that would be really awesome.
gamophyte on 3/6/2020 at 22:33
I've always been a fan of that video. I think I recall you could plot out the images for your own custom voice sets too. But I can imagine it's a lot of work, for kind of being reminiscent of south park. That's no bash, it's super cool as is. If I were an artist I might try to make more convincing mouth shapes. Then again, some of my monsters don't really talk, might be interesting to implement them in BD, if I have time. Then again also you aren't right up on guards most of the time when you're avoiding them, and behind them when knocking out. At a distance it might be very immersive.
Ascobol on 3/6/2020 at 22:39
Quote Posted by Azaran
I'm probably in the minority, but I'd love better software mode emulation.
I believe the main difference is that Newdark uses 32 bit colour, while 8 bit/256 colours were used in Old Dark - as a result, the latter has a grittier effect that I love. So maybe adding a 256 colour option?
Old software mode:
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/o0oaALC.pngYou are definitely not in the minority, I also want this and have heard people elsewhere mention that they want it.
DirkBogan on 3/6/2020 at 23:37
Others have mentioned this, but you can come much closer to achieving this look if you set "tex_filter_mode 0" in cam_ext.cfg.
In addition to 'looking more authentic', this also has the advantage of removing the obvious edges that filtering causes on badly aligned textures (compare the top and sides of the doorways):
Filtering ON:
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/9Vs4TVv.pngFiltering OFF:
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/LfMsWPn.pngPsych0sis on 4/6/2020 at 01:11
Texture filtering off has been a godsend since I learned about it, I recommend it for those who want that very old nostalgic feel :thumb:
vfig on 9/6/2020 at 17:10
Slightly OT: I recently learned that you can run squirrel scripts in Dromed in editor mode, and Daraan (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148055&p=2366253&viewfull=1#post2366253) made scripts specifically for this usage! But it's more like a hack than a reasonable option for editor scripting, as it has no concept of selection or terrain brushes and no good way of dealing with existing objects either.
Back on topic: in the absence of an editor scripting interface, something that would be of great practical use for me is a dromed console command to change the selected roombrush to belong to a concrete room (either by id or by name). Since I usually create roombrushes for the sake of sound and ai long before I figure out what concrete rooms I will need (combinations of script needs, eax settings, ambience zones, and automap zones), going one by one through the room brushes and the Create->expand concrete rooms, select one->Create workflow is very tiresome. It would be improved a lot if I could bind various concrete room ids to hotkeys to get rid of the need for the ui mousing.
