Drat on 12/10/2005 at 13:44

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I made a start on an article on the Dark Engine. I figured this was the best place to post about it. It's got very little info currently, and what I wrote is mostly what I've read, having no experience with editing in the engine.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Engine)

TF on 12/10/2005 at 16:52

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Five levels of awareness, you sure about that?
0 - unaware
1 - thought I heard something
2 - come out, come out, wherever you are
3 - thou shalt not escape this time, have at thee

edit: fix'd

Old Man on 13/10/2005 at 11:35

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It's been a while and I've just had a quick look at the res/snd.crf file for alert messages. I'd checked into this once before to attempt to distinguish the spiders' alert levels from sound. Anyhow, we as Ghost Mode players call it level two alert when an NPC goes into search mode. That busts a Ghost Mode playthrough. And changes from level zero to level one bust a Supreme Ghost Mode playthrough. In fact, this is alert level three as far as the sound files go. The difference between level one and level two alerts is fogged in the players perspective. We players key off NPC movement -- our mode busting alerts involve the NPC changing behaviour and moving from their normal path.

For many of the NPCs the alert level is incorporated into the sound file name. I can't get at snd.crf right now for some reason to see what's in it (7-zip rather than winzip?) but from memory level 1 alerts are paired with both an alert and a stand down comment. For none-language NPCs this is the only way to determine level one alerts from level zero since there is no change in movement behaviour. And in the case of spiders they can sound quite similar. There is also some randomness built in. An NPC might issue from several sound files with any of these alert levels.

Somethings not right here since I have a vague memory that there must be a level four (and five?) alert as well since neither level one or two cause the NPC to change movement behaviour. Probably just my memory not working again. :|

TF on 14/10/2005 at 11:07

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Why the hell would it be in Thief Fan missions? It doesn't need LOLOL :THUMB::THUMB::THUMB::JOKE:, at least I don't think so. If anything it could be moved to TEG.

ZylonBane on 14/10/2005 at 20:47

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No it isn't. At level one, AIs emit barks like "What was that I saw there?", or "Who goes there?".

This is a good start, but even as a non-DromEder I can see some stuff that needs adding or fixing--

It should mention that the Dark Engine got its name from Dark Camelot, the game it was originally intended for.

Dark was one of the first engines to use object-oriented management of game objects, with prototypes, inheritance, etc.

Dark is not subtractive-based. DromEd is. Dark and DromEd are separate things. Dark, IIRC, runs off pure vertex data generated by DromEd.

The level editing is more accurately described as subtractive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_solid_geometry) CSG.

"One advantage that the engine has over contemporary engines is that it allows very detailed placements of objects, which have to be manually picked up." This paragraph had me confused. It sounds like you're saying that most games don't require you to click on objects to pick them up, which is completely false, and a very peculiar to detail to include regardless.

Dark supports 8-bit PCX, 8-bit GIF, 8-bit BMP, 32-bit TGA, and CEL (whatever that is) textures. Actually a full section on assets could fill a page... probably well beyond the purview of Wikipedia.