A few new customizations, I would like feedback.

[dmpdesign]

I have a couple little projects I am working on to enhance SOM options a bit for some game builders.

The two things I am working on are ambient sound effects and breakable objects.

The first thing, ambient sound effects is something I already know I can do without much problem...so what I would like to do is compile a list of sounds people would like to see available and I will construct the 'enemy' profiles to stick in your maps to make continuous ambient sound.

I have one done already, its a wave crashing noise that works really well along shorelines and where rushing water is (such as a waterfall).

The few others I already have in mind to do are:

-trickling water, such as a fountain
-crickets and tree frogs, an ambient sound for a night time forest.
-howling wind
-lava bubbling
-gears grinding
-muffled crowd talking, such as in a public place to provide ambience for people in a bustling town
-bug screeches (similar to the sound of the termites in KF1 US)
-sword clanging (to simulate fighting nearby)
-thunder

Any other thoughts please post.  I will release what I make in a single download pack when I am done...they will be in the form of enemies so you will need to place them accordingly, I will also have instructions on how to do it.

Now for the second project, I think I can create some enemies that look like objects that would allow you to kill them to simulate breaking an object.  If I can get this working, I will probably start with the following objects:

-breakable barrels making a cracking wood sound
-breakable boxes making a cracking wood sound
-breakable doors with the wood sound
-breakable windows glass shattering sound
-breakable vases or ceramics again with the shattering sound
-breakable statues with a crumbling stone sound

If you can think of others list those here as well, though I havent successfully finalized this yet.  If I can get it working, it would be easy to trigger item drops etc from barrels based on the enemies drop loot.

[darchangel]

Todd, when I did the breakable barrel/enemy trick, there was a slight delay between the enemy dying and the object actually breaking, it looked a little weird.

Maybe you can figure a way to make it better.

***EDIT***

Sounds:

Some kind of crackling noise, maybe not electricity, but something I could use for that crystal pedestal/teleport effect we talked about

[dmpdesign]

I am assuming you are using a kill enemy event that removes an object when it dies.

What I am trying to do is actually create a static enemy model that looks like a barrel or box so when you kill it it will fade immediately (at which point you could have a show object event on death that made rubble appear).  I haven't been successful yet though.

It will be cool IF i get it to work, and right now its a big IF.  I am just trying to gauge how much it would be useful before I pour a ton of time trying to get this .mdl thing working.

[Madison Lastrega]

Todd I have been searching ALL night ...  Ya know somewhere out there in the world SOMEONE knows how to edit Japanese MDL files.... Oh yeah I tried Milk shape, every viewer you can think of , I even tried one of those molecule viewers just because it said it might be able ablen to edit MDL files, and I get nothing... But fret not my friends... I am on a mission, I had a little luck with Poser 8 but you can do about as much with it as the NPC/ENEMY editors............ Not edit or view or change animations,or even the shape... but I will not rest, or that much that is, till I unlock the mystery, ...The secret , that is NEW ENEMYS/NPCS..... *Someone should play the national anthem here*....... As not for just my game "...Fallen By The Way" will I find a way,....... As not just for the up and comming "Wicklow",will I find a way... As not just to make "Dark Destiny" an even more kick A** game than it already is, or anyother SoM game for that matter,will I find a way..... But for everyone that refuses to let a program made in 1999 (released in 2000) that has NOT been supported since 2002 (source Japanese SoM Site)
keep rational , sane people (LIKE ALL OF US) from making the first person Rpg of thier dreams...... All the other aspects are there people,..... For exellent titles even in the new dawn of tech.....  I love SoM and at 34 years old am making ONE game with SoM..... So I want it to be da biz-omb, and I want folks after me to feel like I did when I started, with out forking over 80 kabillion bucks on engines and other stuff that keeps the common men (or women) from doing what I enjoy now EVERY DAY.... So Do I hear an amen?.......................I said do I hear an amen?:) Anyway just wanted you all to know that I am searching like John has been since '08 for the answer:) , And thank you JDO for all your hard hard work , you have a partner that is researching everyday with ya:) Alright I'm gonna take a tylenol and go to bed... Night all I look more tommarrow:)
 

[Holy_Diver]

^Madison, it's not very likely anyone knows how to do much with the mdl files that come with Som unless they worked on Som or reverse engineered the file formats (do we have any evidence of this) ...you may yet have some luck with heuristic based tools designed to operate on raw data (I'm presuming such tools exist)

^Todd, do we know how to make custom enemies of any kind? Other than re-skins, that's news to me.

[dmpdesign]

Working on it...this is the hurdle that will make or break my desire to make any new SOM games or improve DD in any significant manner beyond 1.06.

My idea of breakable objects relies on figuring this out and I have a few leads I am following to get to the bottom of it.

[Holy_Diver]

Well don't drive yourself nuts over it. I will get around to to properly documenting the file formats sooner than later.

If you are successful in modifying the files it won't very likely at all be by using any format specific applications to do so. You might be able to make models you want and have some success copy/pasting stuff in a hexeditor between the file with the model you want and the file with the model you want to change. But if you really want to help you're better off just figuring out what parts of the files actually do things (by like randomly changing bytes in the file and see if that moves a vertex or texture coordinate) then write your findings up in a short paper (post/doc file/whatever) I can take that and make a custom tool that will transplant things for you.

In other words, if the file format is documented I can program anything to work with it. These are proprietary (distinct to Som) files so they need documentation first. I've spent some time thinking about this but I'm more interested in figuring out the PSOne file formats first because I expect them to shed some light on the logic behind the Som formats which appear to be adapted from Shadow Tower (a PSOne game) requirements/specifications.

[Holy_Diver]

Todd informed me earlier today that you all were able to more or less open the mdl files up in Poser as "Quake mdl" files. That being the case it should not be that much trouble to work with the file formats. I think it's probably in the cards I can build a multi-importer based on this project ("Ass Imp") here (http://assimp.sourceforge.net/index.html) in not too long that should let you convert the supported file formats (http://assimp.sourceforge.net/main_features_formats.html)* to mdl files etc in short order. I like the concept behind Assimp / think it's an important design goal, so if we need to support other import formats I'll probably try to add support to Assimp instead (I'd like to see Blender support there myself for purely ideological reasons)

*To the extent each format is/is-not fully supported by Assimp