Hello !

[Smittiox]

Hi ! I figured I'd finally poke my head in here and say hey. I kinda found all this by accident really. Around christmas last year I wondered if there'd been a new KF release so i did a search. I'd only ever played the 1st US release when it was new and TAC on n off over the years.  I Had no idea Agetec had officially discontinued the series when I stumbled across SOM and eventually in here.

  All I could say was "WOW" I quickly realized what was goin' on.  I thought , instead of one new game I'd found three with others in the making plus the ability to make another! I was excited . It was like getting a new box of lego's for christmas lol.  So I downloaded Som and the new games. got stuck in DoM where the rising symbols won't come back down though lol. read some fixes for that somewhere.

  I soon learned Som's map editor wouldn't run on our win 7 machine so I figured out how to set up virtual box with XP.  The editor runs fine but I test on the real machine. The little .bat file for direct test really came in handy. Thank you :)

  Over the past month I've scoured the forums here looking for tutorials and info along with the information at the main tutorial page (some topics weren't up and running yet) and have learned quite a bit i think. I've never even thought about 3D modeling or making my own game before but now I'm hooked lol.  Even the wife doesn't mind. she's as interested as I am. :D

   So far I've downloaded metasequoia and have learned most of it's ins and outs I think. At least enough to make models. UV was tricky at first but the info here really helped. Learned to use the hex editor for the .prf & .prt files. I've made a few items and weapons that work in the editor so far. I noticed SOM has no leather helm so I made one. I made a bmp of the texture on the leather armour and got it looking close to the other pieces in the set. I got an idea to mabey have your character collect & trade in the old 'antique' set to someone later who's eager to get them for a more powerful set or weapon. I dunno lol. Just thinkin. Been keeping a note pad of ideas as they come.  Haven't played with keynote just yet but I will eventually.

   I am currently figuring out custom map pieces. Making the custom .mhm files is messing with me though. I tried dropping the .x file into x2mhm with and without the .bmp. Didn't think it made a difference (and it didn't) but tried anyway just to satisfy my curiosity. I tried cutting the model into more polys (it only had 5 to begin with) got the same results. It's just a 2m x 2m slope with a 1m rise. It looks like a typical ramp with 5 faces, 6 verts ... nothin special.  I tried 'borrowing' a .mhm from an almost identical piece (outdoor set 1m slope) but it didn't work either for different reasons. It had me sunk into the piece up to my knees and I fell through when coming down lol ... wheee ! My friend said it would make a good 'quicksand' piece though lol.

   I dunno why x2mhm isn't mapping the collision to the shape. I made a hillside of ramps 5 tiles by 3 tiles wide rising from 0m to 3m. everything lines up great. I can walk up the ramp and go east to west across the ramp as you face it (screen jumps at the seems) but as I go down the ramp or west to east i get invisible walls. Is it something simple I'm missing ? going to try it without faces on model. just verts and lines. I remember reading in Verdite's post to be careful with faces. I also thought about making a seperate .x file for the .mhm file with the model below the ZX plane to lower the collision but i dont think it will work. I can stand on the tile just fine. Any help would be much appreciated.

  Well, this post has gotten very long. Had more to say than I thought I guess. I do want to thank all of you guys for the work you've put into this project. I'm not much for programming but I'll contibute what I can.  I'm really enjoying this guys ... One of the best christmas presents I've ever gotten :) Thank you all very much. I have a greater understanding and appreciation of how much effort is put into a game now. Gotta get DoM fixed and played through. Then DD and Tris and eventually Rathmor. 

                                                                         Take care :)
                                                                                                Chris


Edit : Please forgive me if I ask any question concerning a topic thats been answered elsewhere already. I search the forums but sometimes I miss things :P . Judging by the dates on a lot of these posts I feel a litle like a 'johnny come lately". Better late than never though right ? Again, Thanks folks for all the effort and addons :D 

[Holy_Diver]

SOM really isn't even fit for a VM. You are doing things all wrong

Other than that sounds good. Try Verdite's demo.

[Verdite]

As you probably know ive been working on Rathmor for 3 years so anything custom, im your man.
Ill do you a custom tutorial on 3d map pieces.

[Holy_Diver]

As you probably know ive been working on Rathmor for 3 years so anything custom, im your man.
Ill do you a custom tutorial on 3d map pieces.

Has it been 3yrs? I've been working on fixing SOM for at least that long; just about full time no less. Apparently hardly anyone notices

[Verdite]

Yes it has been 3 years who would have thought it! I share your feelings for sure.

Update on MHM creation for Smittiox.
http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=504.0

[Smittiox]

Hey guys !
@ Holy Diver : Well, what I'm doing with the VM is just editing the map and placing enemies, objects, saving , compiling etc. Only thing I've really done so far is make a couple of test areas to get a feel for whats going on and play around with events and timers. It's all new to me so a way to do it right would be the better way :D I'm making the custom items and map pieces in meta, converting them and running the tests on the main computer. I couldn't keep the editor from crashing on the main comp because of the newer ati graphics card I'm figuring. Turning it off and on and restarting all the time was kind of a pain in the neck.  I didn't know of a better way to do it. I was just following the troubleshooting advice on the download page and it worked is all I know.  *shrugs*  lol . I have SOM installed on both the VM box and the main comp with a shared folder mounted to the VM drive to save the maps in one area. Seems to work ok. I have to copy n paste 2 sets of files though & that gets old. I agree I'd much rather be able to run the whole thing on the windows 7 machine and trash the VM. I learned a lot about making, mounting and/or burning bootable iso's in the meantime  though. 

@Verdite : Yes, you are definitely the SOM blacksmith as I've seen and read :D . I used your sword placement mqo file for the axe and shortsword I made. Worked like a charm man :) saved me the time of guessing where to put the weapon till it showed up in game. Thanks!  I made a mistake at first thoug like someone else did. there was a large flat pointed piece angled 90 degrees from the two swords above the ZX plane I thought I was to follow. I was clubbing skeletons with a giant sword handle lol. Any Idea why the mhm isn't lining up with the map model ? it doesn't get much simpler than a 5 face/ 6 vert map piece other than a flat square. looking forward to the tutorial. Thanks again man :)

[Smittiox]

Yeah, I noticed the time frame too. Thats dedication. I did run the Rathmor Demo for a bit. gotta figure out the screen jerkiness on my end though. lookin good :)

[Holy_Diver]

I see you've made an account over at som.net. SOM has been working with Windows whatever for more than a year. You just need to use Ex.

I'm sorry if you read a tutorial somewhere that said setup a VM. A lot of things are out of date. Any tutorial online that wasn't written by a dead man should start with Step #1. Setup Ex. If it doesn't say that... well then the writer really isn't thinking about your well being. Shame on them.

Games, DOM, Trismegistus, whatever, should be using Ex too. If they don't you should go to the trouble to add it yourself before you start a new game. They are not really maintained by their creators. Just like SOM itself

Yeah, I noticed the time frame too. Thats dedication. I did run the Rathmor Demo for a bit. gotta figure out the screen jerkiness on my end though. lookin good :)

You need a pretty hefty CPU to play a SOM game. I am working on remedying that. If trying a lower resolution doesn't help then likely nothing will.

There is sometimes some jerkiness when walking in certain ways. There is a patch to fix that in the demo's thread.

[Holy_Diver]

This looks refreshing. But I have to be away for the rest of the weekend so I won't be able to take part. Good luck everyone

[Smittiox]

@Holy Diver: Yes !! I sure wanna know all I can about SomEx and get it going on my end. It seems I've came on the scene very late in the game. Been told I'm a quick study though. Been reading through  posts back n forth here and at SOM.net over the past month trying to figure out things. Best I can gather, Ex is like a shell that SOM operates inside of to basically tweak each and every aspect of Som and then some, correct? I've found so many versions and updates , I wasn't sure where to start. I just download the latest edit and drop it in the tool folder and run main.exe from Ex I'm thinkin.  From what I've read, you don't seem to let much if anything go unchecked so this oughtta be fun.  Looks like great stuff man. :D.

  Wasn't too much trouble setting up a VM. Tried 'microshafts' version and quickly got rid of it. Virtualbox seemed way easier to use. I'd never played around with VM's  before so I guess I'll chock it up to a learning experience.  Take it easy and have a good weekend.

@Verdite : I looked over the updated tutorial. Is it making the plane from a primitive that makes the difference when making the .mhm for a map piece? Or dividing into 4 with the texture smoothing ?  I'm just trying to understand the mechanics of it all. The model I made was a perfect 2m x 2m plane with a 1m rise on one end like a solid ramp. (200Z x 200X flat plane with the two back corners raised at 100Y then connected to the two lower corners to make 5 faces. Didn't really need the bottom face though. If that worked, I was going to make a perfect 2m x 2m x 2m stone cube piece to put them on when they were elevated.  Just kind of a test pieces really since they were nothin fancy.
  Whole reason it came about was I'd made a test area with a dry moat section like an empty swimming pool 2m lower than the ground and had no way out when I'd fall in so I put 2 tiles of the stone steps in to get out. the step tiles had no sides so I thought mabey a map piece of solid steps with sides could be useful later to me or someone else. If nothin else it was a good excuse to start learning map tiles.  Kind of like the rampart towers only shorter. I experimented by making a slope with sides 1st but the .mhm kept giving me fits and I didn't know why lol. I'm gonna experiment some more later. Hadn't been feelin too well today. stomach bug or somethin I think. gonna have a rest and get back on here later on.


 Take care man n Thanks :)