Search the Community

edit: TL;DR: I've tweaked the .lwo exporter to preserve autosmooth angle Ahem. When I started writing this post a couple of days ago, it was supposed to be a "please help me, models won't smooth" kind of thing, but as I started taking screenshots and such for a comprehensive view of the problem, the question morphed into a "is there a hack to get .lwo's to export the way .ase's do", then to "how to get the same surface smoothing from Blender as you can get from Lightwave" and eventually to "does anyone around know python and blender enough to fix the export plugin". But then I fixed the addon myself, so it was almost as if there's no point to the thread. However, while googling around for a solution I stumbled upon a whole bunch of incomplete (1,2) or outright wrong (1,2) information, and whenever the question came up the issue was never really resolved completely. That might be because the problem isn't obvious, since a lot of exported models will actually end up correctly smoothed on export, leading one to believe wrong shading in rare cases is due to modeling mistakes / bad shadowmesh / etc. Point is, having the definitive .lwo smoothing post seems useful. Identifying the problem: Here's the mesh. I add an 'edge split' modifier (I use sharp edges while modeling the low poly, so I can uncheck the 'edge angle' option). I can now apply the modifier(s) and export to .ase (triple the mesh either in export options or in modifiers beforehand). The .ase looks alright in-game: Now I'll export it to .lwo using this script. Depending on export options, here are the results: If I also check "remove doubles", I'll lose all of the split (sharp) edges: (recalculating normals on export can be unpredictable as well, so clean up the model beforehand instead) Right about this point I start searching for a solution online, stumble upon this and try the renderbump hack. However, all it seems to do is weld all of the vertices back together at runtime and attempt to smooth the whole surface, similarly to "remove duplicates", but with no upper threshold. (to anyone possibly reading this in the future: don't forget to revert your changes to the materials!) Source of the problem: At this point I still wasn't sure if it's even possible to get .lwo's identical to .ase's, so I installed Lightwave. Naturally, it took some time to eventually stumble upon Surface Editor (F5), and the "smoothing threshold" contained therein. But then I just had to crank it up to 180 and export to "LWO2". That fixes everything in-game: So the issue is trivial, I just have to find a way to somehow pass on a smoothing angle through the exporter. However, the "auto smooth" option on the object data tab doesn't seem to affect anything regardless of angle. Long story short, after some hex-comparison magic, I home in on SMAN block in the exporter script: So what it actually does is set your smoothing angle to either 90°, 86°(??), or 0°, depending on whether you've chosen "idtech compatible", "smoothed", or neither. The solution: Now, I don't know Python and I don't know Blender scripting, so I can't say with full certainty that I didn't break anything. But I did cobble together a version of the script that seems to do the job. Here it is, mirror / do whatever you want with it. If your mesh has autosmooth enabled, and you've checked "idtech" or "smoothed" on export, your chosen autosmooth angle will now transfer to the surface in .lwo: I took the liberty of changing the default export options to what seems to suit TDM the best, you can just open the script in notepad and edit them to your taste. Wrapping up, there are still some mysteries I didn't solve, such as "idtech compatible" models taking up only half the size of models exported otherwise (including from Lightwave itself), there doesn't seem to be any visible difference in-game, at least in TDM. That "1.5 radian" in the code still makes me scratch my head. And I still don't know if the 4-8x size savings over .ase matter for in-game memory at all (but at least I know I won't have to edit the *BITMAPs manually anymore). Even after all this, the .ase still has just slightly better shading, but since the outputs of the exporter and Lightwave itself are now identical, seems safe to say it's as good as it gets.

I "vibe code" the old/amateur way by asking for specific functions to be made. But from what I hear, the most advanced workflows encompassing entire projects and actually spending money on frontier model tokens are yielding stupendous results. And it will only get better, and probably fast, because coding is a major area of focus, and adjacent to the effort of trying to use models to create better models. On local AI, the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB price has doubled to $16,000, Gorgon Halo 192 GB will probably be at least $5,000, and you can buy a GB300 DGX Station with a 748 GB memory pool for around $95,000. I believe those kinds of capabilities will become dirt cheap after 3D DRAM takes off.

https://github.com/Inkub0/dude DUDE is a fork of dhewm3 (itself the GPL source port of DOOM 3) that modernizes the renderer while keeping the classic DOOM 3 look and gameplay faithful. The stock renderer's ARB assembly shaders are translated to a shared GLSL source tree serving two new backends — OpenGL 3.3 core and Vulkan (1.4, with hardware ray tracing where available) — selectable via the r_graphicsAPI cvar, with the original ARB renderer kept intact as the faithful reference. All visual enhancements are opt-in, driven by in-game quality presets whose floor is the unmodified classic look. Renderers: Legacy OpenGL/ARB path (opengl, the default) — untouched, the faithful reference. OpenGL 3.3 core — the stock look re-expressed in GLSL, plus the enhancement suite. Vulkan 1.4 — same enhancement suite, plus Vulkan-only features below. VMA-managed memory, persistent scene buffers, GPU timestamps (r_vkGpuTime). Opt-in enhancement suite (GL3 + Vulkan; presets Potato → Nightmare in the classic System menu, "Potato" = unmodified classic rendering) Shadow maps: cube shadows with rotated-Vogel PCF, sun/parallel-light shadow maps (stencil shadows remain the fallback and the faithful default). HDR pipeline, SSAO, PBR (GGX) with screen-space reflections, parallax occlusion mapping, soft particles, baked per-material AO maps. Anti-aliasing: SMAA 1x / FXAA, and AMD FSR2 in Native-AA mode (motion vectors + jittered projection) on Vulkan. Smaller touches: depth-of-field on weapon reload, self-lit pickup glow, emissive GUI surfaces casting light, smoke-in-darkness blending, hi-res GUI font atlases. I am sure RTX is pretty hard to implement/port to existing TDM project, but what about PBR ?

I'm trying to get burn-away to work like it did in Doom3. Basically, I've given Benny a skin that's his usual outfit but with an irregular, clumpy alpha channel over the top of it. I also made similar skins for his head and sword. These have things like { blend diffusemap map models/md5/chars/benny/benny_body_d alphatest parm3 } in the material definition so that by varying shaderParm3 in-game I can get Benny to look like he's dissolving into clumps of ash, like the imps did in Doom3 when you killed them. Works perfectly for all the materials on his body, but not his head or weapon. void alphadjust( float x ) { entity Sword = $Benny.getWeaponEntity(); entity Head = $Benny.getHead(); $Benny.setShaderParm( 3, x ); //works perfectly $Sword.setShaderParm( 3, x ); //does nothing $Head.setShaderParm( 3, x ); //does nothing $Sword.remove(); //does nothing $Sword.unbind(); //does nothing return; }

It seems a driver problem, not really strange for me. I don't think that it is really a TDM problem. In other Forums I see a lot of different issues with Logitech Mices and drivers, myself I had also problems with Logitech Mices. Nerer had again Problems buying specifically gaming mices with cable, these are way more robust and stable for obvious reasons. Maybe changing the Mouse will solve the problem. Currently I use the Rival 3 Gen 2 from Steel Series since several Years, very precise and responsive, apart with a good price (some Years ago I paid ~€30, now it costs somewhat more as I saw in its Homepage.

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

such gear mostly gets maintenance from a dedicated server that is only connected when the need arises . some gear even used OS2 untill pretty recently such as some atm's though i think most of them are gone now. we had an old NT 3.5 server on a 386 when i worked for the local government which was mostly used for tape backups due to the software for the dat (well dds actually) recorders not working on later models (very old dat/dds models but they had enormous capacity). it was luckily not allowed access to the internet but the other machines could connect to it. to clarify, we could easily have updated the backup system but for one fact. our backups dated back to when this machine was new and the newer recorders could not read the old format ,to make matters worse they were SCSI drives and the drivers only worked for NT of that time. with literal decades of data stored it was more cost effective to just keep the old gal running until it couldnt. and it ran for a very very VERY long time hehe. each night the other machines we used connected to it to make backups and that was its single purpose . if something went wrong we could restore the backups to all machines at once.

@stgatilov, could you confirm that your new all.lang --> latin-x process, still invokes (after that conversion) the use of .map files like strings/hungarian.map (or a comparable procedure)?

Is this implying I am discouraging you in some way? This isn’t your project, so I am not sure why you would feel any attachment to it, but I am sorry if that is how it came off. It isn’t even the first source port with any of these individual features. Claude can’t actually make anything, so it get’s all this stuff from somewhere. You can say that combining them is novel in someway, but it is inherently not “new” as you graphic would position it. I also don’t even have a problem with people using an LLM to help them solve real problems. But you can just look at this guys commit logs and profile and just tell he’s an “idea guy” letting the computer do his homework for him. Specifically like over 90% are done with Claude, as well as all his planning docs are written with it. Ideas Guys are quite abundant. Compute power is not. Recycling the effort of real programmers over and over again is a waste of compute resources imo, and it ultimately devalues the result, as almost no one if going to sift through the code and chances are high the person who prompted it doesn’t understand it. But anyway I did not intend to make you feel bad for posting it either way. Thanks for bringing it up.

Dear TDM folk, If anyone would like a break from the lovely summer weather, I'm offering you a couple of hours sitting at your keyboard in a dimly-lit room. Thank you if you can spare some time. Cheers, Groden

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.

On a lighter note (and because my holiday started today, oh yeah!), let's have a new thread for music, that you just enjoy and probably is not so well known...or somehow obscure but does not sound as strange as the songs we report in @STiFU's progessive music thread. Here is one of my new favourites, a similar recording of this track by other artists has been used in an US show broadcasted last year ( @Amadeus: What is the name of the show? )

How you can help depends a lot on what skills you have. I can Record Video Recording "Let's Play" videos or simple walkthroughs of existing missions and posting them to Youtube is great exposure for the mod (see example .) Be sure to let us know so we can link to them. If you have some editing ability, Video tutorials, where you explain how the mod works, or how to use specific tools, would also be great. Video trailers, showcasing interesting places and features, are also great for publicity. An example is . I can Write Writing reviews for missions are always nice, especially if they include good screenshots. Not only does it give us something to post on other forums, but it makes mappers feel good when their mission gets attention (especially if it's positive). We have a collective thread to post reviews in: http://forums.thedar...s-walkthroughs/ Writing reviews of the mod as a whole, targetted an an audience that doesn't know much about TDM, is also very useful. You could also try offering your services to mappers to create interesting readables, or to proofread for their mission. I can Act and Record Audio We are always on the lookout for good quality audio recordings for vocal sets. If interested, you can pick a few different lines from this script: http://wiki.thedarkm...t:_Average_Jack and send the recordings to Springheel, who then writes a script based on the type of voice you have. I can Translate We could always use translations of our menu/hud into more languages. Also, only a few FMs are aavailable in more than one language, so there is a lot of work there, see the I18N Translator's Guide in the Wiki. I can Model Great! Take a look at the model request thread:http://forums.thedar...-requests-here/ and pick something that interests you. Or just post a, "Hey, anybody want a model?" thread in this forum and I'm sure mappers will get back to you. I can Animate Fantastic. We can always use more good animations. Our current character rigs use a Maya skeleton. PM Springheel for more info. I know C++ Have a look at our coding section in the wiki, pick an issue or feature from the bugtracker of the mod or the leveleditor, download the recent sourcecode release (or better ask for an SVN checkout) and get cracking. Make sure nobody is already working on that specific issue and feel free to ask questions. I can Edit Images We can always use completely new textures and/or improved versions of older textures. How to get started and how to import them into the mod. I can Take Photos Good quality photos of useful textures (medieval-ish building facades, dirt, rocks, wood, etc) are always welcome. The fewer directional shadows and higher resolution, the better. I don't have any skills Even if you can't do any of the above, you can still help out. Talk about TDM in other forums; share your (preferably positive) experiences with other gamers you know. Last, but not least, compliment people when you like their work. Saying "thanks", to a developer or, "I really enjoyed your mission" to a mapper will make their day. -------------------- I'll update this further as more things occur to me.

hmm several things like its amazingly stable when you look away from the current problem with kernel updates breaking nvidia gfx (hope it gets sorted soon). i also like the interface on the KDE variant of solus. and so far i had no problems getting any game to run on it. it does use flatpak but it is not forced unless the app in question has no port to they're current kernel or runtimes. so far the onlly user app i have that uses flatpak is kodi and it works just fine so no complaints in that regard. i had it on all but one of my pc's but untill the nvidia situation is resolved im going to try out the nightlies of bazzite with the fix for scaling. the only pc i currently run windows on is my main gaming machine and it is mostly due to it having so many titles that it would take me months to setup on nix . at some point im going to do it though but currently been busy with the house building a new terasse and fixing the walls on my garage which were rotten (previous owner had not reapplied wood protection in decades).

I see we have independently noticed this problem. I have proposed named strings for these instead of numbered strings in https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/23204-proposed-i18n-improvements-for-tdm-215/ Would you be willing to change your patch to use those names? I'm translating those strings into the 16 languages now. I'll look to your translations for the German versions.

My new mission, A Night in Altham, is available. We are already up to version 2! @Dave the Tafferfound an problem that deserves a fix, so here is version 2: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y4r1dmziuq6clh2im3qz1/altham2.pk4?rlkey=m3cv5v6v70lxbc9xha61nuxoj&dl=1. I will ask @nbohr1more to update the databases. A special thanks to JackFarmer for several pieces of custom ambient music. They "complete" the mission, providing a unique feel to its locations. Also thanks to the many beta testers (jaxa, Shadow, wesp5, Cambridge Spy, thebigh, datiswous, Mezla, MirceaKitsune, Melchior, Acolytesix, TheUnbeholden, prjames, Bergante). Thanks to @peter_spy for his beautiful Builder Compound assets. This is a large mission, so be ready to take some time. I recommend that you do named saves occasionally (I actually implemented auto-saves for this mission, but it was causing crashes on Linux, so I removed it). This mission has a lot of keys, so it implements a key management mechanism. Keys are removed from the game when no longer needed. This includes when you use a key to open a door, or if you pick a door/lock that also uses a key. Most keys are automatically removed, but there are a couple that aren't (for example, if they open up more than one door). In a certain area, this mission uses the Keyhole Peek feature of TDM. Typically, this is when you lean forward (F key) into a door keyhole and you can see into the next room. But in this case you don't lean into a keyhole. It's a hole of another kind. It's an unconventional use of something that isn't used a lot in TDM; hopefully the mission context will make it clear when to use it. The mission does not use Keyhole Peek for regular doors. Be aware, there is a known problem on Linux, where the peek feature can cause a crash. Peeking is not required for mission completion. This has been tested on TDM 2.11a and the current dev build of 2.12 (dev16854-10518). Scary things warning: Difficulty settings make a difference. Things that are affected by the difficulty level: Enjoy!

Just to be clear, what is corresponding English? I see the new "HUD" section has introduced new hard-coded strings

there are still adapters sold for both com and db9 since many firms use matrix printers or other specialized hardware that would be to expensive to just upgrade unless they totally melt down . matrix printers are pretty much stoneage but also solid as rocks as they usually newer break if taken care of. and many cnc machines dont need overly complicated cad programming so the older models are still in use.

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.

Right now we just make new placeholders string-based, but I guess nobody wants to do massive renaming of existing ones. The problem is that if you massively reorder the strings and someone adds new strings in trunk, then those new strings will probably we dropped. Basically, any massive change either on trunk or on your side makes it unmergeable in the future. I guess I'd better start with UTF-8 part. I really want to make the basic operation Perl-free. As far as I understand, there is no need to change format: all.lang should be perfectly consumable as it is. I think 2 weekends should be enough, but the next one I'll be on vacation... so should be ready in September, I suppose?... As for the full-text replacements... I think it will be clear after the first part is done. It will require some kind of format extension, so it is hard to predict. Mmmm... maybe we can reorder all.lang without breaking anything: [English] "#str_02001" "Warning" [French] "#str_02001" "Warning French" [English] "#str_02000" "Error" // comment with english [French] "#str_02000" "Error French" // comment with french [English] "#str_02002" "Connection Error." [French] "#str_02002" "Connection Error French." Depending on how the parser was implemented originally, TDM might eat it fine, and you'll have this grouping. Isn't it better for everyone, no?

I think it is actually quite weird that we don't have a thread on graphics technology, yet. So, I would like to encourage you to share awesome new demos, talks, articles or papers about graphics technology here. I recently came accross this brilliant analysis of the rendering pipeline of "Rise of the Tomb Raider". I would love to see something like that for Doom Eternal, but so far, I could only find this rather superficial (but nevertheless interesting) review by Digital Foundry. Epic revealed Unreal Engine 5 today, which looks absolutely stunning. That Nanite-Technology will probably save game developers quite a bit of time. I do wonder, 'though, how the actually do it? Do they dynamically generate LOD-models? Also, does their Lumen technology require RTX?

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/dishonored-co-creator-harvey-smith-launches-a-new-studio-and-it-literally-has-the-word-immersive-in-the-name/

I'm going back to work on my OP item 2b (new strings translated by AI). I hope the pivoted file can help build a targeted glossary of a few select TDM terms in multiple languages. I could then include that glossary in a multi-language AI translation prompt for the new strings. After 2b is done, I'll probably postpone OP item 3, to consider reordering parts of all.lang (similar to yaml). Do the [English] part by hand, and ask AI to reorder the rest?

Hello again TDM Forums. I'm close to finishing a new FM, "The Maybury Idol, Part 1: A Trip to the Museum", and I'd like to request help with beta testing. Any assistance is appreciated, thanks.