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Back in the day, Tels managed a squad of volunteer translators for TDM. I am not Tels, and could never do that. Nowadays, language translation using AI, either traditional machine learning (ML) models or large language models (LLMs), is common and increasingly fluent. It is often used as an adjunct to speed the work of professional human translators. By itself, AI translation can be imperfect but usually sufficient. Can this "sufficient" approach be used for TDM, to expedite translations? Let's see. I gave some initial thought to a bulk-translation daemon that might range across FMs and fill in all missing translations, without necessarily involving mappers. In the future, possibly AI could tackle that whole enchilada. I was at first visualizing something more modest: a backbone in a standard programming language (I sketched out C++ and C# projects, but lots of other possibilities) that would make calls to an API (I looked at those of Google Translate and ChatGPT). However, I changed focus due to certain concerns... Different FMs, and subsets with each FM, would likely have far better translations if they were properly grouped, ordered, and translated separately, with an appropriate context (e.g., phrase engineering) added. The FM's mapper is best placed to provide this grouping and context. I'll detail what I mean in the next few posts. The mapper would not be expected to know any TDM-supported languages besides English. Instead, each translated phrase could be back-translated to English and examined. Is the "round-trip" meaning OK, even if the English words have changed? Problematic translations could have their context tweaked and rerun. Many AI systems, particularly for API access, require a billing commitment (e.g., credit card). For a professional translator, this is no problem, and subscriptions allow access to more (and putatively better) models and higher quotas. This seems less appealing for TDM. A few paid AI systems have a no-subscription, pay-as-you-go account tier. The cost per translate is typically pennies. But it does introduce quota- and expense-management, and may exclude API usage. Access via API requires an API key (or at the higher end more elaborate security regime), with attendant key-security headaches. Which AI model is thought "best" for translation? Doesn't matter too much, because we can't afford the best. Furthermore, there's endless churn among AI models, with antidotal reports that a given model fluctuates in quality over time, and successor models can be worse than their predecessors. So, with these concerns in mind, I looked for public web-based AI sites that require no billing and provide low-quota but adequate AI. The mapper would enter and retrieve data manually. I will focus on ChatGPT in this exploration, after a quick preliminary test confirmed some promise. Also, as this exploration proceeds, I hope to propose changes to TDM to make it more viable for "sufficient" quality machine translation. Problem areas are incomplete fonts, space-constraints, and layout issues for translated strings. My proposals will likely surface as separate forum threads. That's enough for now. I'll be trying for 1 or 2 substantive posts per week, as I tackle a particular FM.

I've developed a Glossary for terms that I want to have consistent throughout a given language's translation: "Captain", "First Mate/Officer", "Second Mate/Officer", "Galley", "Mess", and "Sea Trunk". And corrected the previously-done piecemeal translations by hand. In some cases, extra translation was needed to go from the noun/subject case of the Glossary to get gender and other declinations correct, like the "accusative" case in Slavic languages. I then passed 4 of the Glossary terms (in text form from a private spreadsheet, and skipping the 1st and 2nd mates) as part of a new prompt to ChatGPT, to attempt to do all the remaining FM translation work in one big gulp. Four Glossary Tables:

Hidden Hands: The Lost Citadel ============================================================== Title: Hidden Hands: The Lost Citadel Filename : hhtlc.pk4 Authors: Jack Farmer with Amadeus & Joebarnin Date of release: 18.09.2020 Latest version: 5 (released June 2021) EFX: Yes ============================================================== Hidden Hands series: I - Initiation II - Vitalic Fever III - The Lost Citadel ============================================================== Available via the Dark Mod Mission Downloader (Version 4) ============================================================== Jack Farmer: Mapping & drafts Amadeus: Editing and revising of all texts for readables, narration and dialogues, testing of gameplay and gameplay mechanics, all alpha testing & performance optimization joebarnin: Beta testing lead, debugging and debugging reports Beta testers: Krilmar Joebarnin Cambridge Spy manzanita-crow Shadow Voice actors: New Horizon: The educated Builder & Brother Gilbert (Briefing video) Goldchocobo: The naive Builder, guard (A union of its own) Jedi_Wannabe: Two guards (Of monsters and master guards) AndrosTheOxen: Jonus, guard (A union of its own) Boy Lag: Guard (Evolution of the peasants) Malasdair: Narrator (Briefing video & in game comments) Special thanks to: - Springheel, Sotha, and Fidcal for the tutorials - VanishedOne, HMart, Destined, Grayman, Joebarnin, Dragofer, demagogue, AluminumHaste, STRUNK, Geep and ERH+ for patiently answering my questions and solving in-game issues - All voice actors & beta testers for their great support - All others not mentioned here who answered my questions in the Newbie thread or via PM Pilfered items: - Setup for the main menu animation originally developed by Goldwell for "Snowed Inn" - Portal sky with trees originally developed and arranged by Dragofer for "Down By The Riverside" - Selected cliff sections originally developed and arranged by Dragofer for "A Perilous Refuge" - The scary, red-eyed Builder ghosts that have been originally developed by Bienie for "Longhorn Lodge" - Floating boat set-up originally developed by Bikerdude for one of his missions Contributors from the Inventor's Guild: - STRUNK created a prefab (S.T.A.R.S) used for various puzzles and mechanical items, he also helped with models - Dragofer supplied the experimental func_mover entity (modified by STRUNK to fit the mission purposes) - Joebarnin provided the script alteration for the mechanical locks - Grayman adjusted the switch/door mechanics for all sliding doors and fixed several AI problems Additional ambient sounds by gigagooga All other new ambient tracks and sound effects produced and mixed by Jack Farmer Explosion sound taken from freesound.org produced by tommccann Drowning man sound taken from freesound.org produced by muses202 Engine room machine sound taken from freesound.org produced by Astounded Electric zap taken from freesound.org produced by Joel_Audio Briefing video by SirSmokeALot "Walk On Roses" (title screen reprise) RC Deickler - Drums & loops R. Recum - Keyboards gigagooga - Additional ambient outtakes This mission is dedicated to all past & present Dark Mod and Dark Radiant contributors - thank you for all of your hard work over the years. ============================================================= Listen to another crazy inventor and learn more about his sick brain! Marvel at the latest inventions from the Inventors Guild! Sneak through long forgotten ruins and face (yes. I know, once again) the unspeakable evil! Show the undead that the living are not to be trifled with! Solve puzzles the complexity of which would even melt the brains of Nobel Prize winners!

For the people eager to play with the latest state of development, two things are provided: regular dev builds source code SVN repository Development builds are created once per a few weeks from the current trunk. They can be obtained via tdm_installer. Just run the installer, check "Get Custom Version" on the first page, then select proper version in "dev" folder on the second page. Name of any dev version looks like devXXXXX-YYYY, where XXXXX and YYYY are SVN revision numbers from which the build was created. The topmost version in the list is usually the most recent one. Note: unless otherwise specified, savegames are incompatible between any two versions of TDM! Programmers can obtain source code from SVN repository. Trunk can be checked out from here: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src/trunk/ SVN root is: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src Build instructions are provided inside repository. Note that while you can build executable from the SVN repository, TDM installation of compatible version is required to run it. Official TDM releases are compatible with source code archives provided on the website, and also with corresponding release tags in SVN. A dev build is compatible with SVN trunk of revision YYYY, where YYYY is the second number in its version (as described above). If you only want to experiment with the latest trunk, using the latest dev build gives you the maximum chance of success. P.S. Needless to say, all of this comes with no support. Although we would be glad if you catch and report bugs before the next beta phase starts

They would rather sell the same silicon for $10,000+ than $1,000+. I don't blame them. You will not get the priority treatment you want. But they need a fallback if the bubble pops. I will say that I'm surprised we haven't seen more persistent use of budget node products. It's not like demand for allocation on older nodes completely evaporates when the new ones come online, but what sense does it make for AMD to stop making Navi 33 (RX 7600 XT through RX 7400), for example? Just keep making that for years, under the same names to avoid the Rebrandeon curse. X-ray or some kind of particle acceleration should be next, after EUV iterative upgrades. A company called Substrate recently announced it would take on ASML, but it's being called a scam. I did see the chatter about RTX 50 Super delays/cancellation because of rising GDDR7 costs. I guess the memory market is more of a disaster than I anticipated. You hit on a lot of TPU points. But AFAIK the top accelerators Nvidia and AMD make are purely AI-focused, not dual-use, with no display outputs. They do make workstation class GPUs that are dual-use but generally focused on AI or whatever applications can exploit high VRAM (e.g. 48 GB). Consumer gaming GPUs are dual-use because AI accelerators and format support have been added to them, and now AI acceleration is actually used in gaming, mainly for upscaling. While all these companies are competing for each other, there's only a finite amount of wafers to go around. The best you can hope for is that someone improves TOPS/Watt in such a revolutionary way, that a surge in performance outpaces demand for that performance. But then Jevons paradox comes to mind. It's plausible that some new approach using optical/analogue computing or something could leave the competition in the dust. If it's still using the same nodes/wafers, it might not matter. It also doesn't solve memory demand problems unless they revolutionize memory usage with some weird new processing-in-memory, lower precision, or something. I recommend the black pill of lowering resolution and settings, or playing older games. PS4 and earlier era games are obviously easy to run compared to the latest games, although some new games will scale well. iGPUs from a decade ago will play a lot (embrace the TDM 720p30 experience!). The world's most popular multiplayer games generally run well on old hardware, to ensure a large player base. Gaming on a budget is virtuous. You need to save up money for food and munitions. https://www.youtube.com/@BudgetBuildsOfficial/videos 7650 GRE is a lot slower than a 9060 XT 16 GB. Of course, if it's a pricing decision, you would know more about what makes sense. I don't follow these markets. There was a 7500X3D leak recently. Budget X3D is cool, although probably unnecessary if the CPU is not a bottleneck. We are likely to see large increases in L3 cache (X3D and standard) during the Zen 6 and Zen 7 generations, both of which should be on AM5. So that's exciting. We'll be able to find out which games really benefit from over 96 MiB (Dwarf Fortress is a safe bet).

I actually want GPU manufacturers to pay attention to gamers again, not just AI. Over time, I get the impression that gaming is no longer a priority or has become the lowest priority("at the bottom of the GPU food chain") Regarding affordability, there also seem to be other factors such as the cost of PCB fabrication, wafer and die size, VRM, DRAM costs, etc. (I also expect more competition in the field of EUV in the future. but what's next, could it be e-beam litography? ). Perhaps this one is unrelated and more about the dram memory crisis: look at the delay in the release of the RTX 50 Super because the focus of GDDR7 is directed towards AI, servers and data centres. Regarding TPU, Well, I am by no means experts in this area, so my view of TPUs or other AI accelerator cards may be a bit warped. I've always thought that AI usage doesn't have to be limited to GPUs, and that it might be better if there were ASIC options for users who want to use them. I still associate this with the case that bitcoin can be mined with ASICs(and more profitable). There are some scenarios where TPUs can be faster than GPUs and vice versa. This is what still confuses me. I'm not entirely sure about enterprise use cases, but perhaps TPUs still make more sense for enterprise environments compared to individual users? i don't bother looking at the TPU price's tag for individual use. I am convinced that this TPU will gradually have an impact on GPU manufacturers, starting with enterprises first. I have no comment regarding latest Google Ironwood. TPU seems to have many limitations in terms of its software stack support, which is not yet mature, or its toolchain. Compatibility for some AI models is also limited, not to mention that it is proprietary. TPU seems to be used more for Google's in-house needs and the hardware is not sold separately. GPGPU is indeed more mature and ready for this purpose in terms of support and readiness. even gpu has tensor cores but I rarely hear it being used compared to CUDA. I clearly remember the hype around TensorFlow by Google in 2017-2019 and their TPU units. I'm still puzzled why Google isn't promoting this further instead gatekeeping it..? Apart from TPU that can be installed on PCI-E, there are AI accelerators in M.2 form factor, but they can only handle a few million parameters (30 or 40 if I'm not mistaken) for 8-bit models and of course with lower TOPS than high-end GPUs. Not to mention other accelerators created by TenTorrent, Sambanova, Groq, Cerebras, etc. It seems there are many alternative options available, I hope that with so much competition, it will also impact the GPU pricing

Hidden Hands: Blood & Metal Available via TDM Mission Downloader ============================================================== Title: Hidden Hands: Blood & Metal Filename : hhbam.pk4 Author: Jack Farmer Date of release: 01.09.2024 (Version 1) - 14.09.2024 (Version 2) - 28.09.2024 (Version 3) - 28.11.2024 (Version 4) - 25.07.2025 (Version 5) EFX: Yes Subtitles: Yes ============================================================== Hidden Hands series: I - Initiation II - Vitalic Fever III - The Lost Citadel IV - The Anomaly V - Blood & Metal ============================================================== Jack Farmer: mapping & drafts, briefing videos Amadeus: revision/editing of all texts for readables, narration and dialogues Joebarnin: custom scripts & prefabs and trouble shooting Datiswous: subtitles for all conversations, broadcasts, recordings and thief comments Dragofer: consultation for scripts, models and trouble shooting =============================================================== Beta testers: Cambridge Spy Mat99 Bergante Joebarnin wesp5 grodenglaive TheUnbeholden Acolytesix CrisiusXIII Release testers: Mat99 AluminumHaste =============================================================== Voice actors: AndrosTheOxen (all missions) Bikerdude (mission 1 and 2) Boylag (mission 1) Goldchocobo (mission 2, 3 and 5) Malasdair (all missions) Mary-Anne Stanke (mission 4) Narrator (mission 1 and 4) Purgator (mission 1 and 3) scodysk (mission 4) the double dutch king (mission 3 and 5) Xander Grant (mission 4) Yandros (mission 2 and 4) ================================================================ Pilfered items: - roulette wheel and alien model with thanks to Goldwell (taken from "AC II: New in Town") - pagan woman character and a select building facade with thanks to Fidcal (taken from "Heart of Lone Salvation") - skybox in mission 4 taken from Sotha's "TP: The Transaction" - mission 3 ("Down we go.") previously known as "The Cloister" - taken from the abandoned "Crucible of Omens" campaign, mainly created by the Dudes (JDude and BikerDude) and some other legacy missions makers ================================================================ New assets: - radio model and skin by Epifire, prefab produced by Bikerdude - several technical drawings provided by wellingtoncrab - keypad designed & coded by MirceaKitsune - flying bats designed & coded by STRUNK ================================================================ New sound fx / music: - factory and machine noises by inspectorj - machine sounds by lupalenzuela - rocks_falling_in_cave by unidentified contributor from freesound.org - vinyl_record_pop by joedeshon - ambient_battle_noise by pfranzen - distorted-wolf-howl by hail_pinson - roaring_sea by allthingssound - slideshow_projector by andreaskg - whistling-in-cave by retroguy23 - scary-ghost-wolf-howling by brainclaim - "Rivercare" by Adrian Wilaert - "Leave Her Johnny" by Roger McGuinn used under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ All other new ambient tracks & sound fx created by Jack Farmer, occ. with gigagooga sound samples ================================================================ Special thanks go to: @joebarnin, who completely altruistically analyzed many game bugs, provided several clever scripts and even played through the initially very buggy game twice. It was an ordeal not even described in the first Builders book! Jeff, thank you very much! @datiswous, who, despite the enormous scope of the game, did not let himself be deterred from creating suitable subtitles for all dialog, comments, briefings and recordings. A truly monumental task! @Mat99 & @Bergante, who tried out things I would never have thought of and showed me once again that I absolutely have to take part in the next brain function enhancement surgery! ...and finally our friend, the incredible @AluminumHaste, who dared to do another detailed run-through at the end of the beta testing, which allowed for several more improvements and polishings. ================================================================ Thank you everyone at Fractured Glass for consultation and help in general! ================================================================

Perhaps the thought that ‘GPU pricing will never recover from the COVID era’ continues to haunt me and also contributed to my earlier view, Not to mention the local pc market anomalies here (where many sellers like to jack up prices as high as $20-$30 for older GPUs like the RX 6600 and 3060 — you get the idea for RTX 40/50 or RX 7xxx series, or even when the price of some GPU series has dropped in several countries, the price remains unchanged here which is insane. i like to have price diffs feature and compare it to other countries pricing) coupled with a quite weak currency and a bit high taxes There's no equivalent of MicroCenter here that occasionally offers big discounts. But I've seen many people get an $80 discount for online store, lucky for them. the so called "twin date sale" concept is more prevalent here. Every time I visit the local PC builder forum, many people are still fixated in the mindset that for $450-$700, you can get a PC to play AAA games on high settings. I always share the hardpill that to build a truly capable new PC (without any second-hand parts), you must spend at least $1000-$1500. It’s a bit sad that some people still have to resort to older GPUs like the GTX 760, GTX 950, or RX 570/580 because the fact is that MSRP prices aren’t as affordable as they were 8-9 years ago, and inflation also plays a role. But it can't be denied that the MSRP pricing for the GTX 1070 Ti is cheaper compared to the 5070 ti, and the 1050 / 1050 Ti launch price compared to the 5050, is significantly different—that's just the reality. I will donate my RX 6600 to my little cousin when I get an RX 9060 XT 16GB or 5060 (at this age, he already knows that GPUs are expensive, probably because he compares his PC with his friends' PCs). Well, I also didn't realise that China has granted a 240-hour visa-free transit policy for this country. I'm curious about the RX 7650 GRE, which is exclusive to China. It's tempting to visit some electronic stores there I know AMD really likes to make products exclusively for China like 5500X3d . they can even get the Ryzen 9500F earlier

I have problem with unintentionally translucent models in gui: [img]https://imgur.com/a/ctxvu6P[/img] windowDef Desktop { rect 0, 0, 640, 480 backcolor 0 ,0 ,0 ,0 visible 1 nocursor 1 renderDef rosary_cord1 { rect 0, 0, 640, 480 visible 1 model "models/erh_rosary_cord_bow_b.ase" needsRender 1 modelRotate "gui::Offset_vert"/4, "gui::Offset_horz"-22.5, 0, 1 modelOrigin 0, 0, 0, 1 viewOffset ("gui::cord_horz1"*250)+50, "gui::cord_vert1"*250, 80, 1 lightOrigin -200, ("gui::light_Offset_vert"*100), "gui::light_Offset_horz"*100, 1 lightColor 0.8, 0.8, 0.8, 1 } renderDef dice1 { rect 0, 0, 640, 480 visible 1 model "models/erh_rosary_dice.ase" needsRender 1 modelRotate "gui::Offset_vert"*2, "gui::Offset_horz"+45, 0, 1 //+135 modelOrigin 0, 0, 0, 1 viewOffset ("gui::dice_horz1_n"*250)+50, "gui::dice_vert1_n"*250, 80, 1 lightOrigin -200, "gui::light_Offset_vert"*100, "gui::light_Offset_horz"*100, 1 lightColor 0.5, 0.0, 1.0, 1 //purple } } (-there are 8 models of cord and 8 of bead.) This is a rosary, reacting to the player's viewing angles. But you can see the model's back. Sometimes it goes away at some angles of the player's rotations. In some arrangements of renderDef bracelets, a few models work fine, the rest don't.

I should start by saying the suggestion was inspired by this exact feature being successfully implemented in the FPS Red Eclipse (Cube / Tesseract engine) for a long time with very good looking results. I'm a developer or at least mapper for RE as well, if you need more information I'll ask its admin Quin for more technical data on how the system works. I can also find or create a video showing how the wind mechanism functions if anyone can use that. TheDarkMod currently lacks any real system for simulating wind: If you want to make a FM that takes place in a stormy environment that looks good, you're out of luck. All we have is a handful of animated props animated to appear as if swaying in the wind, namely a tree and banner that move slightly: You can't adjust the intensity nor the direction of the wind effect, at best you can maybe tweak the animation speed to match the wind strength you'd like to depict. There is a much better way using vertex shader deforms defined in the global shader. The first step is defining wind direction, this can be done as a property of the location info and / or using an entity for radial wind direction. When touched by a wind value above zero, models (static or animated) will play a sine wave animation on vertices, its direction and distance and frequency defined by the wind entity spawnargs and the entity's distance from its epicenter. Obviously models must specify which vertices should be wavy, the most common way is using vertex colors though an intensity texture also works if that's preferred, in any case models must include per-vertice information to specify which points should sway in the wind and by how much. Particles also need to be blown away by the wind but that should be very simple, further effects like affecting the direction of noise transmission are optional and can be done later at best. Existing assets will need to be modified to make use of this. This includes every tree and grass so branches and leaves are affected by wind the further they are from the trunk and the base of the tree, obviously this should also be done for all banners and even the clothes on AI so you can see the the sleeves of characters flutter in the wind. All particles should be affected including flames and smoke so torches blow to the side. Note that old maps would not be affected even after the assets are modified since they'd need to specify wind information for the effect to activate.

Contributions downloads are at http://fidcal.com/DarkMod/index.htm Note that there is no dedicated beautiful sortable webpage list. I don't have time and also this means less delays. Just browse the folders and click on readmes and images and grab any zips. If anyone submits anything I can just upload it in a few minutes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you wish to offer coding, modelling, or any other kind of help got to the I want to help forum for discussion. If you have any extensive assets you wish to discuss also you can go to the I want to help forum. If you simply want to share an FM, prefab(s), textures, whatever then post details in this thread (there are other websites for FMs too.) Generally these need to be zipped up with a description.txt plain text file and optionally an image, and uploaded somewhere I can get them such as a fileshare website like rapidshare. Any problem with that and if you have ftp I can arrange a direct upload to a private temporary folder on my website. All submissions to this thread should be accompanied by a short description summary to go on the download page and optionally a picture(s). Such submissions will be placed on my website download page (wip) at fidcal.com. Anything suspect for any reason I reserve the right to delete. I accept no liability for downtime or even no-continuance of the download section or even the entire website for any reason. Downloaders: I accept no liability if you download anything you'd rather not: download at your own risk. Oh yes, and I am not responsible for global warming, economic depression, you name it; I'm not responsible. From there, any mappers can download what they want. The Dark Mod Team may or may not assess some items for inclusion in future Dark Mod updates. FMs may be assessed for inclusion on the Dark Mod website. Anyone feel free to mirror the download folder. Any suggestions post in this thread too.

[EDIT] This matter has been resolved, and no fault of the website. I wanted to add a different look to my Venice map by buying a street of models to use. I found this and bought it. It's a lie. What you get is a set of OUR (Dark Mod Arcturus Rocks and assorted .ASE models from the Grass Demo; packaged up with random textures and images. This has given me a complete head fuck as now I can't trust this bastard with my credit card details so I have to cancel my card and notifiy everyone I do business with in direct debits of the new card which I won't get for 10 days.

for those still dabling in retro hardware heres some interresting sites https://windowsupdaterestored.com/ windows updates for win 9x to xp https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-nostalgic-hardware-club.108251/ links to various sites with old software and information on setting up older systems hardware.

A set of some 200 missions is a lot to sift through to find what one likes. I never used your site but if it provided functionality to search missions for parameters like approximate playtime, series v standalone, and tags like undead, spiders, mansion, city, etc, then it sounds plenty useful. Can the functionality be incorporated into the main web page? Perhaps even integrated to fetch underlying data from the wiki (so that trusted editors can keep the parameters up to date)?

============== -= IRIS =- ============== WELLINGTONCRAB TDM v 2.11 REQ Ver. 1.3 *For Maureen* -=- "Carry the light of the Builder, Brother. Unto its end." -Valediction of the Devoted "What year is this? Am I dreaming?" -Plea of the Thief Dear Iris, I am old and broken. When we were young it felt like the words came easily. Now I find the ink has long dried on the pen and I'm as wanting for words as coin in my purse. I can tell we are nearing the end of the tale; time enough for one more job before the curtain call... ============== -Installation- Requires minimum version of TDM 2.11 **Dev build dev17056-10800 (2.13) fixes several visual effects which have been broken in the mission since the release of 2.11. For that reason playing with that version or later is currently recommended** -Iris does not support mods or the Unofficial Patch- Download and place the following .pk4 into you FMs directory: Iris Download ============== *Thank you for playing. Iris is a large mission which can either take as quickly or as long as you are compelled to play. I hope someone out there enjoys it and this initial release is not completely busted - I tried the best I could!* *Iris both is and isn't what it seems. If commenting please use spoiler tags where appropriate. If you are not certain if it would be appropriate a good assumption would be to use a spoiler tag* *Support TDM by rating missions on Thief Guild: https://www.thiefguild.com/* ============== WITH LASTING GRATITUDE: OBSTORTTE - Whose gameplay scripts from his thread laid the foundation which made the mission seem like something I could even pull off at all. Also fantastic tutorial videos! DRAGOFER - Who built upon that foundation and made it shine even brighter! And whom also provided immeasurable quantities of help and encouragement the past couple years on the TDM discord. ORBWEAVER & GIGAGOOGA - For generously offering their ambient music up for use. EPIFIRE - Who lent me his fine trash and trash receptacle models. AMADEUS - Who was the first person who wasn't me to play the damn thing and provided his excellent editorial services to improving the readers experience playing TESTERS AND TROUBLESHOOTERS: AMADEUS * DATISWOUS * SPOOKS * ALUMINUMHASTE * JAXA * JACKFARMER * WESP5 * ATE0ATE * MADTAFFER * STGATILOV * DRAGOFER * KINGSAL * KLATREMUS - What can I possibly say? Playing this thing over and over again could not have been easy. Deepest thanks and all apologies. -=THANKS TO ALL ON THE TDM DISCORD AND FORUM=- ==SEE README.TXT FOR ADDITIONAL ATTRIBUTIONS & INFORMATION== HONORABLE MENTION: GOLDWELL - If I hadn't by chance stumbled into Northdale back in 2018/2019 I would probably still be trying to get this thing to work in TDS, which means it probably would not exist - though more details on that in readme. ============== Boring Technical Information: *Iris is a performance intensive mission and I recommend a GTX 1060 or equivalent. I find the performance similar to other demanding TDM missions on my machine, but mileage may vary and my apologies if this prevents anyone from enjoying the mission.* *Iris heavily modifies the behavior of AI in the game, how they relate/respond to each other and the player. So they may act even stranger than they do typically in TDM. Feedback on this is useful - as it can potentially be improved and expanded upon in future patches.* -=- This is my first release and it has been a long time coming! If I forgot anything please let me know! God Speed. 2.10 Features Used:

yeah you can actually still get browsers that work online on win9x though i would discourage using online to much because of the risk of malware etc. though in retrospect i bet all the malware makers have long since moved away from targetting old systems as there is really no point. unless ofc. you keep sensitive data on the retro box . so why are there still people who use these you may ask. well older games especially dos based and some of the first opengl or directx based ones actually run better on said hardware. also it gives you an insight into the inner workings of later versions of windows (you used the commandline way more back then especially with the first windows models to setup hardware and other tasks). these commands still exist in todays computers but people rarely if ever use them cause they have no idea they are there. the syntax for one is allmost the same as used in CP/M . and back then the first windows boxes barely had the nessesary memory to even run windows so we used memory compressors to optimize it. my first windows 9x box had 4mb and it ran quite ok. this was the first version of windows 95 and came on floppies (about 24 if i remember correctly). it was a pain in the a.. to setup and needed a lot of handholding but it worked.

Upon opening a map I have been working on, I am missing some of the ase models like shelves, stairs, door handles etc. They load within the game fine but all I see in DR is question marks on a small box. What is the fix?

You can mix two different bumpmaps (scrolling and static) using vertex colors. Here's attached to a pendulum: It should look even better on animated models (md3, md5), except those don't support vertex colors, so no bumpmap mixing there. With vertex colors you can also have two sets of bumpmap + occlusion mapping animated independently, moving in different directions, at different rates and with different scale. Could be useful for water surfaces as an alternative to the stop motion method.

Ahh I understand. I may someday take the idea to the lab but I will have to re-think how many things are structured, ie: objectives, items that can spawn in one room but should be used only in that room, ambient light and/or music from room to room... The idea is that each map (room) is completely isolated from others so that authors can do whatever they want without interfering with anything else. Each room can have its own set of scripts, materials, textures, models, music, anything! Sure, a basic set of rules must be respected but mappers will be for the most part free to do whatever they please. Anything and in any form.

As my custom assets work has increasingly shifted from models towards scripting, I'll open a new thread here to contain any scripts that I write which can be reused in other missions, starting with the A ) Presence Lamp This is a Lost City-style lamp that brightens and dims depending on the presence of the player or an AI. It fades between 2 colours and can trigger its targets whenever it switches fully on or off, so it should also be viable in various other situations. The standard setup consists of the following: - a trigger_multiple brush. The spawnarg "anyTouch" controls whether AIs, too, are able to activate it - a presence lamp, highly recommended with a colorme skin - one presence light, or any other light with appropriate spawnargs The targeting chain is trigger brush -> lamp -> light When the player or an AI stands in the trigger_multiple brush, the lamp switches on and starts a short timer. Subsequent triggers reset the timer. If the timer runs out because no one's standing in the trigger brush anymore, the lamp switches itself off. Notes - Multiple trigger brushes can target the same lamp, and one trigger brush can target multiple lamps. However, each presence lamp can only target one light, so if you want i.e. a bouncelight you'll need to hide an additional silent presence lamp somewhere and target it from the same trigger brush. - The lamp and the light use their own colour spawnargs respectively, since setting 0 0 0 on a lamp would make it appear pitch black. - Technically the trigger brush can be exchanged for anything else that triggers the lamp every 0.5s (this number can be changed via "update_interval" on the lamp), i.e. a trigger_timer. - This was originally named the proximity lamp and was one of many scripting jobs for The Painter's Wife. I've renamed it to "presence lamp" because the mapper may place the trigger brush(es) wherever he wishes: proximity to the lamp is not a factor. Credits go to Bikerdude for putting together the crystal lamp models. Download Presence Lamps - Google Drive Place or extract the .pk4 into your FM archive, then look up the presence lamp prefabs. If you already are using other custom scripts, remember to add the presence lamp's .script to your tdm_custom_scripts file. B ) Teledoor This is a Skyrim-style door which opens just a bit into a black_matt "void" before teleporting the player to a different area of the map, which may represent the other side of the door. This is used for connecting physically separated map areas with each other, such as when there's an exterior/interior split of a building or ship to allow for more mapping freedom. [Full Thread] C ) Mass Teleport This is a teleportation setup designed to seamlessly teleport the player and any moveables between two identical-looking areas. This allows the mapper to link 2 physically distant areas with each other while maintaining the illusion that they're connected. The teleportation zones should be free of AIs as they can't be teleported like this without their patrols breaking. [Post] D ) Automaton Station A station for Sotha's automatons (includes the automatons) which can be switched on and off by patrolling automatons. (Part of core assets as of 2.10) [Post] E ) Camgoyle A sentient turret originally made for the FM Written in Stone. It's based on the new security camera entity and augmented with scripting to allow it to fire magical projectiles at the enemies it detects. People are more than welcome to use it and to convert it into something else, such as a mechanical turret. [Post] [Download] F ) Audiograph The audiograph is an Inventor's Guild device for playing back recordings stored on spindles, which are small metal cylinders the player can pick up and store in his inventory. [Post] G ) Turret A new companion to security cameras familiar to Thief players. It will become active as soon as an enemy is detected by a targeted security camera, firing projectiles to fend off the intruders. Similar to the security camera and the camgoyle sentry, turrets are highly customisable in their behaviour and appearance. [Thread] G ) Fog Fade Dynamically change fog density depending on what location the player is in. [Thread]

Indie Game - Window/PS/X-Box I am not native English, but for my German ears the English voices sound very German. The voice acting in the German trailer is much better though...and ends with a much better statement! Anyways, looks promising and since @chakkmanintroduced me to the genre with "Arx Fatalis" (which I am currently playing), I think I will give this a shot.

So DDR5 and SSD prices have really gone up, and many sellers have jacked up their prices (even for older production batches of DDR4 RAM (NOS - new old stock), for example, have also been affected after the announcement that DDR4 production would be discontinued). This is all due to demand from AI. This also reminds me to stockpile WD Blue HDDs (for cold storage) and Seagate Ironwolf HDDs (for future NAS projects, and it's CMR, baby). The mass flooding incident at the Western Digital factory in Thailand back then made HDDs unaffordable and left a lasting impression. even seagate has factory in there. thailand is the key player here. For some reason, I have a hunch that something like this might happen again in another form. Maybe it's just my confirmation bias. I can't imagine if GPU prices rise again someday and the price difference reaches $100-200. That could be the end of the "PCmasterrace", or maybe I'll switch to GeForce Now. Maybe a price hike as severe as during the COVID era will be hard to happen again, but we'll never know. For now, it's still at MSRP, thankfully. So right now in this very second I'm just hoping that TPU devices like the Coral PCI-E TPU will be able to surpass GPUs in the future when it comes to AI. Even though GPUs are still superior in many aspects today. There might be a huge shift when they become affordable to consumers, especially if their prices suddenly drop to near the MSRP of the RTX 5080 (just hypothetically speaking). I don't have any expectations here; maybe in 6-8 years there will be a seesaw effect. And lately, with the rise in PC component prices, for some reason I've become interested in the PS5/PS5 Pro, even though the downside is the increase in console game prices—though not significant—and there are some PC-exclusive games unavailable on consoles and vice versa. Every platform has its pros and cons, but at least the price hikes for consoles aren't as intense as those for PCs...

I wanted to see if you can have more then one idle animation for a head just like there are for the body. I quickly made several md5.anim files and added them to a list in tdm_ai_heads.def anim idle models/md5/chars/heads/npcs/head_idle.md5anim anim idle1 models/md5/chars/heads/npcs/head_idle_1.md5anim anim idle2 models/md5/chars/heads/npcs/head_idle_2.md5anim anim idle3 models/md5/chars/heads/npcs/head_idle_3.md5anim anim idle4 models/md5/chars/heads/npcs/head_idle_4.md5anim They are all just 2 frames long, except the one with the open mouth which is 12. It takes a lot of time to cycle through them. Did you know that TDM head has two joints for the tongue alone? It seems like a new animation is picked at random only after NPC says something?

That's the list of files: /trunk/dds/models/md5/chars/undressed /trunk/dds/models/md5/chars/undressed/undressed_old_man_01.dds /trunk/dds/models/md5/chars/undressed/undressed_old_man_01_hair.dds /trunk/dds/models/md5/chars/undressed/undressed_old_man_01_s.dds /trunk/def/tdm_ai_heads.def /trunk/def/tdm_ai_undressed.def /trunk/materials/tdm_ai_undressed.mtr /trunk/models/md5/chars/heads/npcs/head_old_man_01.md5mesh /trunk/models/md5/chars/undressed /trunk/models/md5/chars/undressed/tdm_ai_undressed_old_man_01.md5mesh /trunk/models/md5/chars/undressed/undressed_old_man_01_hair_local.tga /trunk/models/md5/chars/undressed/undressed_old_man_01_local.tga