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Hello and thanks for checking out this post. I'm delighted to announce that version 1.1 of my fan mission "Cole Hurst 1: Eaton" is now available to download and play. This post is spoiler free, so please don't avoid digging into the details below if you are interested. I'm just using the spoiler tags to organize this post a bit. Let me start by saying "thank you" to anyone who has either previously played - or is considering playing this mission. It really means a lot to me. I have been away for a while, but following a round of beta testing that took place some time last year, I've only just recently managed to finish this update. I'm slightly embarrassed by how long it has taken me to complete, but I wanted to make sure that the valuable feedback I received was all properly addressed. Mission description "Tonight, Eaton's wealthiest citizens will gather at Lord Mayor Zelmer's estate to celebrate the city's founding. Nobles, dignitaries, a famed musician, and even the Queen will pass through its gates. While the guests celebrate Eaton's future, Cole Hurst is looking for a way out." For those new to and/or curious about this mission: I guess I would describe it as a traditional heist-style mission - although with a couple of major plot twist along the way. It's a very large map and I think it should take most players at least a few hours to complete. Screenshots Changes in version 1.1 Countless additions and a large amount of smaller tweaks and changes have all made it into this release. I may have already forgot a few things, but here are what I consider to be the main highlights: * New secrets & optional side quests * Story tweaks and reworked readables * Subtitles * Difficulty tweaks and related changes * Stability fixes * Various cosmetic changes * Audio tweaks * TDM version 2.13 now required Contributions and acknowledgments A special thanks to all of those listed below. I'm sincerely grateful for all your contributions! Mission testers and technical support @nbohr1more, @stgatilov, @duzenko, @Acolytesix, @Dragofer, @JackFarmer, @Shadow, @Cambridge Spy, @wesp5, @madtaffer, @prjames, @suzy8track, @datiswous, @boissiere and @Bergante Story Kelly Hrupa Voice actors twhalen2600 (AKA @Benny_the_guard) and Kelly Hrupa

ok so i did what i said i would newer do again. i tried out different distros to see which could handle old hardware properly and i was sorely dissapointed. not one of them supported hardware acceleration on the nuveau driver on my old gtx 560 ti. and installing the nvidia driver turned into practically rebuilding the kernel because it was no longer compatible with the newer models sigh... so if you want yes it is still possible but it is by no means easy and people who dont know how to do kernel rebuilds dont stand a chance. the last cards officially supported by the new kernel models are AMD rx 5xx and nvidia gtx 9xx series. so i stand by my suggestion that it would be better to just use an old windows install. for my 560 ti it depends on whether you want dx 11 support in which case windows 7 is a nice to go (it does work in later windows versions as well). but if you just want to play old dx9 games then xp or even windows 2000 will do. there is a site that still offers the old patches and service packs for 2000/xp by redirecting the defunct windows update site to they're servers. i would discourage going online for anything but updates but if you do need a working browser for 2000/xp then mypal does work.

So TDM has a lot of textures with alpha, and an added level of detail I like to make this textures cast shadows. Where said textures are twosided this isnt possible, but when said texture is on a model you can remove the twosided line and still see both sides of the texture. And because you have remove the twosided line that textures with then cast a shadow. I have attached a stock fern that I have tweaked to cast a shadow. The issue I'm running into is I am trying to do the same thing on the palmtree leaf texture and for the life me I cant get the alphatest to work on the leaf texture. Its just casting a shadow of the whole patch, instead of the edges of the leaf... So any idea's on what I'm doing incorrectly in this instance?

This is a problem that started out of the blue ca. two (or three?) years ago. At first I thought, there was maybe something broken with my Windows install, but after migrating to Linux, I see the same problem: I create a map with a leak (or defective portal) and save it (name, for example: m1) dmap , console shows leak when going back to DR for the pointfile, a message appears stating that there is no pointfile for this map then I save the map with a new name (m2) dmap again back to DR: then there is a pointfile Anyone has seen this problem as well and if so, is there a fix?

I still would like to know what kind of extra content they're working on. But, it seems like they are very secretive about that still. Appears to me that there might be something about the rumours of a new campaign.

Mandrasola is a small sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter steals some herbal products from a smuggler. The mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank Bikerdude, BrokenArts and Ocn for playtesting and voice acting. Thanks goes naturally to everyone contributing and making TDM possible. This mission occurs chronologically before the Knighton's Manor, making it the first mission in the Thomas Porter series. Events in chronological order are: Mandrasola, The Knighton's Manor, The Beleaguered Fence, The Glenham Tower and The Transaction. The winter came early and suddenly this year. Weeks of strong blizzards and extremely harsh cold weather hit Bridgeport hard. With the seas completely frozen, a rare occurence indeed, most of the City harbor commerce has stopped completely. Vessels are stuck in the ice and no ship can leave or enter the City, resulting in the availability imported goods declining and their prices skyrocketing. One of these imported items is Mandrasola, a rare herbal product, which is imported overseas from the far southern continents. Mandrasola has its uses in alchemical cures and poisons, but mostly this substance is used for its narcotic qualities by commoners and even the nobility. The problem with Mandrasola is that excessive use is extremely addicting and the withdrawal effects are most grievious. Many are utterly incapable of stopping using Mandrasola and are transformed into quivering human ruins if they do no get their daily dose. And now this expensive and rare substance is running out from the whole City. Me and my fence, Lark Butternose, would love to grab this monopoly to ourselves: selling the last few doses in the City would probably be worth a fortune. According to Lark's sources, there remains only one smuggling lord who still has Mandrasola in stock. The problem is that this individual maintains an exclusive clandestine operation and only supplies a few nobles. Despite our best information gathering efforts we couldn't learn who the smuggler is and where he or she operates. Luckily we have an alternate plan. While searching for Mandrasola related information, we learned that a noblewoman called Lady Ludmilla is addicted to the substance and has paid high prices for small amounts of it. We also know that she has visited frequently someone in the Tanner's Ward waterfront, and since she goes to the area personally we believe she is visiting the smuggler. The plan is simple: I must monitor Ludmilla's most likely entryway to the Waterfront and then follow her to the smugglers hideout. I'd better be very careful around Ludmilla. She must not realise I'm following her or she probably won't lead me to her dealer. Hurting her is also out of the question. After she leads me to the smuggler's hideout, I can take my time to break in carefully and steal all the Mandrasola I can find. While I'm there it wouldn't be a bad idea to grab some loose valuables as well. I've now waited in the blistering cold for a few hours already. Looks like there are a few city watch patrols in the area to complicate matters... I think I heard a womans voice beyond the north gate. That must be lady Ludmilla, I haven't seen many ladies in these parts. I'd better get ready.. Links: Use the ingame downloader to get it. WARNING! Someone always fails to use spoiler tags. I do not recommend reading any further until you've played the mission.

I just want to share this: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai-token-spending-harder-justify-2026-5 https://lantian.pub/en/article/fun/ai-agent-bankrupted-their-operator-scan-dn42lantian.lantian/ https://www.verysane.ai/p/did-anthropic-ask-for-this By the way, today I was surprised by a website demo created with Vibe Coding by a colleague of mine. One developer was bragging about how cool the new Claude Fable is. Others were complaining about frequently running out of tokens and encountering bugs. I’m often looked at strangely by both my colleagues and acquaintances for rarely using AI for work to create X, Y, Z, and so on. Behind all that, personally, I feel that the excitement and passion were still there before the current LLM craze, back when everyone was still focused on ML buzzwords—how cool Word2Vec, GRU/LSTM, RBMs/DBMs, MoE, Google BERT,probabilistic graphical models, geometric deep learning going beyond euclidean data, and various neural networks were. I followed these discussions on HN throughout 2016–2019/2020. since ChatGPT became a sensation and AI started training on people’s data indiscriminately, it all stopped being fun. From there, I also came across discussions about books authored by Peter Norvig and Marvin Minsky, as well as articles about them. I also learned about Geoffrey Hinton from there. I’m glad I found that forum. The overuse of AI-related jargon has also contributed to that dwindling excitement. What I’m still curious about for the game developers here is: how does AI help with your workflow? *edited : An interesting topic from Ilya Sutskever’s podcast,i remember this came up there : Ilya Sutskever — We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research

I somewhat agree with the part about “making us dumber.” I try not to rely too heavily on AI or show cognitive surrender when using it. Especially when it comes to completely eliminating fact-checking. In my opinion, AI can certainly be used as a second opinion, but the decision ultimately comes down to you. Lately, many people have been touting AI’s ability to boost productivity by 10x—including some of my acquaintances who’ve said the same thing. The “10x developer” buzzword, which has been around for a while, is starting to make more sense. It’s undeniable that there are many types of AI, but I’m particularly concerned about these large language models (LLMs and gen AI). Back when buzzword like “deep learning,” , "reinforcement learning", “expert systems,” and “neural networks” were all the rage, it was clear that many people wanted to dive into the technical aspects especially the calculations behind them. AI development actually teaches you not to hate math like advanced statistics and when it comes to LLMs, there’s SFT, RM, and RLHF behind the scenes. But what’s worrying now is that many people I’ve met (including the developers mentioned earlier) have been more focused solely on the prompting aspect for generaive AI or LLM. Of course, people do tend to focus on specific areas of knowledge based on their needs so i cant fully blame them Whenever people mention “Gen AI,” I always think of generative adversarial networks which were all the rage back in the 2015 and that just shows how out of touch and outdated I am with the world of AI (and this isn’t even my field). 2022-2026 AI progress is basically too much for me and hard to keep up i am concerned with reassurance seeking and validation epidemic, Here's an article that's pretty close to that : When AI Becomes a Compulsion: Reassurance Chatting. Sometimes AI pleases you too much and i think they're optimized to please, not for the truth Basically, I treat AI as a tool for executing mundane tasks and am aware of its limitations.

If token prices are unsustainable and it causes the bubble to pop and big companies to collapse, there's still going to be a number of users who want to vibe code, run agents, and do other things. They should be doing it locally with hardware that would hopefully become cheaper in the aftermath. Such as Strix Halo, DGX Spark, RTX 6000 Pro Blackwell Workstation, M3 Ultra Mac Studio or later (256-512 GB models were discontinued), etc. It becomes a matter of electricity and heat rather than tokens.

Miscellaneous asset fixes done: * More fixes in fonts and better support for Cyrillic and Romanian (post, 6642, 6661). * Added all missing mipmaps in DDS textures (post). * Fixed shop description of slow match (6629). * wood/panels/trim_wood_grunge_moulding_desat: fixed parallax confusion. * models/md5/chars/builders/guard/builder_armor material: brought back specularmap. * textures/darkmod/stone/brick/blocks_light_stained_trimmed material: fixed specularmap. * prefabs/doors/trapdoor_w-padlock prefab: fixed wrong particle (6662). * prefabs/mechanical/switches/wall_lever01 prefab: fixed frobbox of the lever (6060). * models/darkmod/architecture/doors/door*hinge models: fixed gaps in almost all versions (6671) [02]. * models/darkmod/furniture/wardrobe_open model and prefab: fixed clipping through frame (6272) [02]. * models/md5/chars/heads/female03_head_local and dds/models/md5/chars/heads/face_freckle textures: replaced (5545) [03]. * models/darkmod/readables/book_* model: fixed UV maps in sp1 and red1 versions, texture fix (6672) [03]. * prefabs/doors/curvedtop_door_96x48_3hinge_w-frame prefab: fixed hinge material (3212) [03]. * models/darkmod/readables/book_tome model: minor fixes [03]. * models/darkmod/containers/bucket model: gap fixes (6675) [04]. * models/darkmod/containers/barrel_wine model: fixed shadowmesh (6685) [04]. * New assets added: * atdm:ai_undressed_old_man_01: added new character model, including LODs, ragdoll, swappable head. * textures/darkmod/wood/panels/trim_wood_* material: added red variants. * textures/darkmod/wood/panels/panel_decorative_redder_grated material. * textures/darkmod/paint_paper/gold_pedals_* material: added RGB versions. * textures/darkmod/paint_paper/fleur_* material: added RGB versions. * textures/darkmod/stone/brick/red_worn_dirty_trim_wet material. * textures/darkmod/stone/brick/old_bricks_darkgrey_wet material. * models/darkmod/lights/non-extinguishable/painting_downlight model. * models/darkmod/containers/openable/safe_door_003_* and safe_wheel_003: added wall-in-safe door model and prefabs (6590). And there is a big set of assets added by @Wellingtoncrab and @Amadeus from the upcoming mission "Displacement". New models by TDash: * models/darkmod/furniture/beds/rustickingbed with skins DRustBed* * models/darkmod/furniture/seating/darmch1 with skins ArmCh* * models/darkmod/furniture/desk_pagan with skin JPagDesk2 * models/darkmod/furniture/steps_library with skin LibStepup1 * models/darkmod/mechanical/typewriter * models/darkmod/kitchen/wine_bottles_shelved*: versions A, B, C, D * models/darkmod/kitchen/whiskeyglass_silver * models/darkmod/kitchen/bottle_simple_* * models/darkmod/containers/crate_long_* * models/darkmod/containers/crate_simple* * trunk/models/darkmod/containers/wine_crate_03 * models/darkmod/furniture/cabinets/cupboard_* More models: * prefabs/mechanical/switches/red_button prefab along with models/darkmod/mechanical/switches/switch_redbutton* and switch_toggle* models and redbutton_glow* skins * models/darkmod/decorative/statues/bust_emperor_* model (and bust_emperess) * models/darkmod/kitchen/food/bread_loaf*: new versions 02, 03, 04, 05, 06 * models/darkmod/kitchen/food/croissant * models/darkmod/lights/non-extinguishable/streetlamps/streetlamp_iron_01 with skins streetlamp_iron_01_lit, streetlamp_iron_01_unlit * models/darkmod/decorative/trophy_plaque_* * models/darkmod/decorative/stuffed_hart* * models/darkmod/decorative/statues/statue_face_cover* * models/darkmod/loot/loot_golden_goblet* * models/darkmod/loot/loot_golden_vase_* * models/darkmod/decorative/ashtray * models/darkmod/decorative/cigar* with skins cigar and cigar_unlit * models/darkmod/loot/loot_crystalore* (and loot_rareore) New skins: * cabinet1_* for furniture: versions A, B, C * book_sp1_gold_crest for various books Stone, cobblestone, brick materials: * textures/darkmod/stone/brick/bricks_old_light* * textures/darkmod/stone/brick/blocks_sandstone_grime_trimmed * textures/darkmod/stone/brick/blocks_concrete_small_trimmed2 * textures/darkmod/stone/cobblestones/flagstones_bricks_multicolored* * textures/darkmod/stone/flat/tile_dirty_terracotta * textures/darkmod/stone/flat/tile_herringbone_grime* * textures/darkmod/stone/flat/tile_checkered_grime_tricolor* * textures/darkmod/stone/flat/tile_checkered_grime_small* * textures/darkmod/stone/natural/gravel_multi_color Other materials materials: * textures/darkmod/paint_paper/wallpaper_grunge_* * textures/darkmod/plaster/plaster_worn_painted_peeling_autumnal* * textures/darkmod/roof/rooftiles_clay_red_decorative* * textures/darkmod/wood/boards/planks_floor_* * textures/darkmod/glass/glass_brick_clear [03] * lights/watercaustics01 Note: [03] at the end of line means that this change appeared only in beta214-03.

The TDM Unofficial Patch is a personal project of mine to modify some small details that annoyed me in the core game. It wouldn't be possible without many others, so thanks to the whole TDM community for discussions and help, but especially to friendly modders who directly contributed code for it, like Obsttorte, Dragofer, Kingsal, Goldwell, Destined, and snatcher! You can find it under the link below and while over the years there was little progress, in recent times many things have been improved that I never even thought of when I started and some might be worth to be included in the core game. https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/addons/the-dark-mod-unofficial-patch Version Changelog: ------------------ v2.4 16.06.2026 ---- Updated to 2.14 and packed mission changes into dedicated pk4 files. Added missing main menu music for Lucy's Quest, thanks to snatcher. Improved German translation and added several hard-set option lines. Swapped the in game menu objectives button with a quit game button. Added mission title to statistics screen and removed prefab changes. Made compass always stay visible behind the lightgem once obtained. Fixed frobing items animation for all items that was lost in update. v2.3 26.02.2026 ---- Updated to 2.13 and restored many mission names because of new list. Made reading newspapers look less bright and improved training map. Added any 10 minutes auto save game feature, thanks to chumbucket91. Removed invisibility potion as this is a part of the core game now. Added sortable inventory, thanks Snatcher, datiswous and nbohr1more. Removed numbers for non stackable inventory items, thanks Snatcher. Followed requests to restore map that shows Bridgeport is in France. Fixed bad text for flint in shop menu and added a shop flint image. Removed more ko alert immunities and NPC reaction to electric mines. Made keys droppable by default to make perfect ghosting achievable. Fixed reversed door handle in Vengeance for a Thief Part 1 missions. Removed Blow and Whistle for differentiation to Snatcher's Modpack. Added compass name, made it less bright and all tools not droppable. v2.2 23.12.2024 ---- Readded Whistle tool because font issues were fixed, thanks to Geep. Fixed possible problem with item taking animation, thanks Snatcher. Modified internals so the patch can be used with Snatcher's Modpack. Included fragile bottles which break on impact, thanks to Snatcher. Fixed bug with the William Steele 3 mission and invisibility potion. Renamed some new and updated missions for the alphabetical sorting. Reduced mission list font size and removed stripes, thanks Snatcher. v2.1 03.05.2024 ---- Increased torch glare by using new particles, thanks to nbohr1more. Packed non mission files into pk4 archive and updated mission names. Changed several subtitles that imply death if target is knocked out. Removed Whistle and Peek Door to make distinction to modpack clear. Unified frob distance of keys and other entities to the default one. Fixed inventory grid title color, position and cropped loot numbers. Updated final mission statistics, rogues and moors to work in 2.12. v2.0 04.03.2024 ---- Added names being shown on frobing bodies or items, thanks Snatcher. Resorted mission list including "A" and "The" in alphabetical order. Updated to version 2.12 and removed several fixes that are included. Moved helper options from the gameplay page to the difficulty page. v1.9 29.07.2023 ---- Removed statistics button from mission statistics, thanks Datiswous. Arranged mission statistics into groups and commented stealth score. Added blinking to frob highlight of loot and items, thanks Snatcher. Fixed cut off final_save name by hexediting the main TDM executable. Made the default frob outline black, thanks Snatcher and nbohr1more. Fixed inventory overlay when wearing magic glasses, thanks Snatcher. v1.8 13.04.2023 ---- Added peek through door keyhole skill, thanks Snatcher and Dragofer. Improved handling of lit lights that start unlit, thanks nbohr1more. Restored original holy water usage as a backup, thanks to Snatcher. Updated patch for TDM 2.11 and restored option to show frob helper. Changed some defs and script to make "Seeking Lady Leicester" work. Made mantling while carrying somebody possible, thanks to Snatcher. Corrected container bottom fix for jewelery boxes, thanks Snatcher. v1.7 20.08.2022 ---- Made loot icon change right back to last tool icon, thanks snatcher. Added new whistle player skill to distract NPCs, thanks to snatcher. Made more lights extinguishable and added info for 4 beta missions. Corrected container bottom fix messing up drawers, thanks Dragofer. Improved unlit behaviour of moveable light sources, thanks snatcher. Corrected lit lamps set to extinguished in maps, thanks to Dragofer. Changed western empire maps so the location of Bridgeport is vague. Added several major city names to the small map, thanks to Kukutoo. Fixed frobing animation not working with bound and carried entities. v1.6 23.07.2022 ---- Improved extinguishing oil lamps, thanks to Dragofer and Obsttorte. Added frobing animation, thanks to Obsttorte, Goldwell and snatcher. Fixed container bottoms and training mission chest, thanks Dragofer. Made doors open faster when running, thanks Obsttorte and snatcher. Added more player tools to training mission and improved text there. Fixed Holy Water doing no damage and Hazard Pay not starting at all. Made all five oil lamps in Sotha's "The Bakery Job" extinguishable. Added blow player skill to snuff out small flames, thanks snatcher. Changed Unarmed icon to make clear that the player always has a bow. v1.5 02.07.2022 ---- Created Invisibility Potion out of cut Speed Potion, thanks Kingsal. Increased arrow head shot damage to both living and undead enemies. Replaced slow matches with easier to handle flints, thanks Kingsal. v1.4 10.03.2022 ---- Replaced Frob Helper with dark Frob Outline and updated to TDM 2.10. Made electric mine stun elite guards too and improved mission names. Renamed mission installation/selection UI mishmash to "activation". v1.3 21.02.2021 ---- Changed flashmine to stunning electric mine and updated to TDM 2.09. Edited more mission names and made threefold candles extinguishable. v1.2 26.08.2020 ---- Updated to TDM 2.08 and fixed custom holywater script compatibility. Added Numbers Scroll showing stealth and loot info, thanks Dragofer. Edited more mission names to avoid truncated descriptions in menus. Added default keys info to training mission and repaired cut lines. v1.1 03.02.2019 ---- Moveable candles can be extinguished directly by frobing the candle. More blackjack immune enemies and inextinguishable candles modified. The key frob distance has been decreased to be that of lockpicking. Holy Water bottles must be thrown directly, but they do more damage. The controls settings menu additions have been updated for TDM 2.07. New mission names have been fixed to fix format and spacing issues. Added looking up and looking down controls for people without mouse. Pointed bad prefabs container open/close sounds to existing effects. Added version info to starting screen and edited some new missions. v1.0 06.05.2018 ---- Many enemies will not become immune to blackjacking when alerted. Oil lamps can be snuffed by frobing, thanks Destined and Obsttorte. The controls settings menu lists that "use" can work on held items. Mission names were syncronized between download and online lists. The controls settings menu lists that "frob" can get or drop items. Astericks were added to official missions to move them to list top. Minor text and format bugs have been fixed in some mission infos.

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?

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]

If they have they're way 1500 dollars "will" be the new price point. But prices are market bound to some degree so it also depends on consumer willingnes. It will probably flatten out at some point but i expect higher prices are here to stay though not at the levels seen now. Maybe at something like 750 to 850 dollars for the steam machine when things have settled. Self built will like allways be better if you know what you are doing. My older builds have served me quite well for more than a decade, and while they are no longer record breaking monsters they can still run most games if you take there shortcommings into account. Even my old gtx 560 ti still kicks it runs the old crysis 1 to 3 at ultra in sli and it still looks great doing it. Only downside is that it draws an obscene ammount of power to do it so watch that electricity bill

There are signs the ai bubble is weakening so lets see. New tech is always exilerating at first, but in this case i would have opted for a more regulated approach. With ai the old gung ho method of putting no guardrails on at release date and just fix problems later might eventually end up biting them in the ass. We allready have companies in denmark who have scrapped ai completely because it went haywire and ended up costing 10x what said companies saved on firing normal personnel. I expect this number to grow worlwide as it gets implemented. My country while having a small population is actually one of the most digitalized in the world, so i would not take it lightly when we warn against something in that category. EDIT: to make matters worse the trump admin has shuttered access to the anthropic AI which many companies and even our government was using making it clear that we have to look at european digital sovereingty now. this will not bode well for the digital services the US have had a monopoly on. in essence when this has been implemented they will loose 100's if not more billions and this market will newer come back.

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

I think it's time to replace the frob material stages with a shader (probably add a param to the existing ambient shader) There is more than one angle to this issue but I am mainly concerned about too many stages in materials that are somewhat taxing in terms of performance. Imagine rendering of 3K surfaces interacting with 3 lights in average and using materials with 7 stages in average. The renderer loops through every stage for every surface making it ~ 20K checks per loop. It has to happen during the depth stage, then each light and then the ambient pass resulting in 100K checks. It makes sense to try to reduce this load, especially considering that the frob stage is relatively rarely invoked and the checks happen on the backend making it hard to parallelize the computation. I am thinking adding a top-level material keyword that would apply as frob color and get passed to the ambient shader when the surface is a part of a frobable entity. I would like to hear your thoughts from the mapper/designer POV.

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.

If we see cuts in DDR5 pricing, SSD pricing, and GPU pricing, then prices can come back down. 1000 USD doesn't have to be the new normal, but you obviously need the AI bubble to pop. Rough but faster pre-built equivalents of the Steam Machine, also using 8 GB GPUs, were available around 550-600 USD on sale last year (ebay ones are refurbished). Steam Machine may not be as DOA as expected depending on where you live, and if people see it as a desirable SFF gaming PC, but I heard it's shipping in low volume anyway. And there are going to be many examples of prebuilts outperforming the Steam Machine around 1050 USD, but especially at around 1400 USD which is outrageous. You can install SteamOS, Bazzite, etc., especially if you get an AMD GPU, and buy a Steam controller separately if you wish. It appears that even an RTX 5050 will outperform the power-constrained 7600M-equivalent in the Steam Machine, so it's very easy to undercut it. RX 9060 XT 8GB is much faster, and it may be possible to build with relatively expensive RX 9060 XT 16GB while matching it on price. I would be surprised if the CPU is bottlenecking much despite being pretty weak, but Valve is not promising more than a single stick of 16 GB, in other words, single-channel memory. They claimed this doesn't affect its gaming peformance but I don't see how that could be the case. The silver lining is you can drop in one more stick for a relatively cheap upgrade.

Hmm i know nvidia used the tile based rendering tech from guillemot's hercules cards in some of they're older models (the 900 gtx series alledegly had it). What it does for efficiency is that it only renders what is in the users view cutting out a good deal of horsepower needs for games that push it a bit much. I wonder if newer models are going to bring it back with some ai magic. The funny thing showing it worked was that my 970 gtx ran hzd with no problems even though the card only had 4 gb vram (3.5 gb useable due to some weird internals). But my 4 gb vram amd r9 290x could not run it unless i did some hackery to lower vram requirements (config hacking).

My view on current hardware prices is becoming increasingly contorted and biased. I think $1,000 might eventually become the standard price for all hardware, given how random and unpredictable pricing is right now. Or maybe that will be the benchmark for “cheap” prices starting in 2026 and beyond until the next AI boom crash which is nowhere in sight. to put it simple : perhaps $1000 is the new "cheap"? If it’s priced that high but performance is capped at 1080p and isn’t all that great, it seems like a big loss and a DOA.

So following on from the conversation here - Here is the first draft of a basic block-out of that church, if there is interest I will complete the creation info a flashed out prefab and model - church.pfbx

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? )

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.