Cutscenes Part 3: Lighting, Placing the Player, and Conversations

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NOTE: This article is under construction until this NOTE goes away.

Download the file [snitch3.zip.txt], remove the ".txt" from the filename, and extract it into your darkmod folder. This includes our Snitch work from Parts 1 and 2.

Open snitch3.map in Dark Radiant.

Lighting

Remember how the Guard's medium shot in Part 1 was dark? snitch3a includes a few lighting changes. A light has been placed over the bulletin board, with an ambient light at face-level to soften the shadows from the down light. Both actors should be properly lit now.

Placing the Player

When a cutscene plays, the player is frozen, unable to do anything. If they're too far away from the actors, they won't be able to hear what's being said. So it's important to place the player in a spot where they can hear a conversation without being in the way. Even though the player is invisible in the camera's view, the player is still there, and can obstruct actor movement.

For Snitch, the best place to hear the actors' lines is to stand just behind them. Since the player can't walk to this spot on their own, we have to move the player in the script code, with help from a func_teleporter.

  • Just behind the actors, create a func_teleporter entity (darkmod/func/func_teleporter). Give it these Property/Value pairs:
  • "name" "Tport1"
  • "angle" "90"

angle sets the player's orientation when they arrive, and is important so the actors' voices come from the correct directions. When Tport1 is triggered, the player will be brought to it from wherever they are in the map.

  • For the player to leave after the scene, place another func_teleporter back on the porch with the player start. Give it these Property/Value pairs:
  • "name" "Tport2"
  • "angle" "90"

If you have multiple shots strung together that require the player to move from one to the next for sound reasons, simply move the player along via func_teleporters.

That's it for the scene setup. Let's move on to the conversation.

The Conversation Editor

For a background on the elements of a conversation, please read Conversations.

Dark Radiant provides an easy-to-use editor to create conversations.

Building a basic conversation

Vocals

Animations

TO BE CONTINUED

Wrapup

In Part 3, we built the conversation for our scene, learning how to add vocals and animations.

Alongside snitch3.map and snitch3.script, which we've been using above, you'll find snitch3a.map and snitch3a.script, which include the conversation from this lesson. You can build and run snitch3a.map and compare it to your own work.

In Part 4, we'll look at extras you can add to your scene.