Ricebug on 14/1/2014 at 18:39
Yeah, that screenshot is way too dark.
If you want to finalize your document into a PDF, use
(http://www.freepdfconvert.com/) this site. It's what I use on my walkthroughs. Using the converter in
Open Office always screws up the formatting.
I'd also enlist a couple of experts to edit parts you're not comfortable with--scripts, particles, whatever it may be.
ZylonBane on 14/1/2014 at 21:49
Quote Posted by fibanocci
I'd like to see a chapter about custom scripts (tnh/NV/KD-Scripts).
That doesn't sound like a topic for absolute beginners. That's more of an intermediate topic.
nicked on 15/1/2014 at 07:47
Had to look up some of these suggestions myself - Tools > Link Group was a new one on me. :)
I have now added and changed a few bits here and there to take most of your suggestions into account. The biggest change was adding a whole bit about OmniLightPoints.
I haven't put anything about using FMSel from the beginning; not sure if that counts as a beginner topic? Related, I think it's simpler for a beginner to just use the root directory for saving the mission. It's how it needs to be packaged later, so it seems like a pretty sensible place to me, at least for learning the ropes.
Thanks for all the suggestions and corrections!
LarryG on 15/1/2014 at 15:46
Quote Posted by nicked
I haven't put anything about using FMSel from the beginning; not sure if that counts as a beginner topic? Related, I think it's simpler for a beginner to just use the root directory for saving the mission. It's how it needs to be packaged later, so it seems like a pretty sensible place to me, at least for learning the ropes.
Simpler, maybe, but a horrible development practice. Please don't even suggest that.
Ricebug on 15/1/2014 at 17:05
Only about 900 FMs were made doing it this way and no one had any trouble. Now, it's pooh-poohed as a bad practice?
The Watcher on 15/1/2014 at 17:40
Thousands of operations were performed without anaesthetics before they were available. Doesn't mean you still want to do them that way, unless you like screaming and flailing.
Or, put less facetiously: sure, it's possible to make missions without it, but using FMsel to keep your mission-specific stuff out of the main tree makes life so much cleaner and easier, and less likely to accidentally screw something up.
LarryG on 15/1/2014 at 21:40
Quote Posted by Ricebug
Only about 900 FMs were made doing it this way and no one had any trouble. Now, it's pooh-poohed as a bad practice?
Actually you have no idea where folk stored their in-process work. They probably didn't use a CM tool to help them, but those that didn't use proper CM practices very likely got into lots of trouble with OldDark breaking their missions and them not being able to backtrack effectively. Just a quick look at posts about lost / broken missions should give you an idea that maybe there is a better way to organize the work than just dumping stuff into the Thief root. I, for one, never stored my in-process stuff in the root. I have everything organized into development folders for easy back-up and recovery.
nicked on 16/1/2014 at 06:39
I'll be honest - until you guys started talking about it here, I had no idea you could store missions anywhere else but the root. Never did me any harm.
Still, if this is considered a Bad Idea™ I shall take steps to adjust the tutorial. Might take me a bit longer though as I'll need to 1) figure out how to store missions elsewhere and still be able to use gamesys, custom files etc. and 2) have enough free time to go through and update the tutorial.
R Soul on 16/1/2014 at 15:08
It's very simple. You enable FMSel (open cam_mod.ini, remove the ; from the ;fm line), then you create a folder called FMs in your T2 root folder. In there you create one folder for each fan mission.
qolelis on 16/1/2014 at 15:10
Well, using FMSel for administration might actually be too advanced and even dangerous for newbies (see the last paragraph in my rant).
The way I set it up was something like this:
* Create a Thief install just for my FM projects.
* Edit cam_mod.ini and set fm_path (FMSel's install folder) to point to let's say "X:\Thief\MyMissions".
Make sure that FMSel is always started as you would usually do.
* Manually create one folder for each FM project inside "X:\Thief\MyMissions".
You would then have for example "X:\Thief\MyMissions\MissionA", "X:\Thief\MyMissions\MissionB" and "X:\Thief\MyMissions\MissionC".
* Create all the necessary resource folders (books, fam, intrface etc...) inside each FM folder and also store your mission and gamesys files here. It's the same structure as always. So you would have for example "X:\Thief\MyMissions\MissionA\books", "X:\Thief\MyMissions\MissionA\fam", "X:\Thief\MyMissions\MissionA\intrface" etc...
* Start DromEd and FMSel will now list the manually created FM folders as installed FMs and you can choose which one to work with (Select an FM and click on "Edit FM" and DromEd will be able to find the necessary files).
Note that FMSel now has no option for uninstalling an FM - which wouldn't make much sense, anyway. If there actually is an option to uninstall, then you have done it the wrong way (see the last paragraph below).
When it's time for distribution/release the process isn't very different from how it was done before FMSel, but this time you know that every file and folder stored in the FM folder is related to your FM, so it's a lot easier to copy what you want and you also just need one Thief install.
The way FMSel would normally do things is listing all the FM zip files (found in the FM zip folder (not the same as the install folder that we used above)) as uninstalled FMs. Then you choose to install one of them and FMSel unzips all files into the install folder (set above). Above we skipped the zip file and bypassed the install step and did that manually instead.
[rant]
The way I did it before FMSel was keeping one FM install for each FM project I was working on (so that I could keep the files separated and easily switch between projects), which meant a lot of unnecessary redundancy and it was harder to find the necessary files because they were mixed up with a lot of other, unneeded files.
I wouldn't say that doing it the old way is a lot worse than doing it the new way, but FMSel makes administration your projects slightly easier.
Unfortunately you cannot just zip up the FM folder and be done with it, because, if you do it like I do it, you have a lot of mission file (and gamesys) incarnations that you of course don't want to distribute, so you still have to remember which incarnation was the latest and save that with a suitable filename and then copy only that together with the resource folders. I would still say that the new way is easier, though.
If you started with a zip file for a new project (let's call it "MissionA.zip"), let FMSel install it, edit the mission file and save it with a new name, and then let FMSel uninstall it, FMSel would zip up the new mission file into "MissionA.FMSelBak.zip" and store that in the same folder as "MissionA.zip" - but, and this is important, only if you answer "Yes" when FMSel asks about it. If you answer "No", FMSel will ignore any new/edited files and delete them - and we don't want that. So, there are some caveats if you're not careful and do exactly what you're told to do, so maybe using FMSel is really too advanced and risky for a newbie!? (This gives me an idea on how to make things even cleaner and more streamlined (for advanced users), though, but I will have to experiment more and it might not be as useful as I think (it probably isn't).)
[/rant]
