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This is an experimental GUI app for managing and packing Dark Mod missions. It's a successor to FM Packer but with a GUI, that I've been working on for some time. It's now at a stage where I feel somewhat comfortable sharing. Having a GUI unlocks potential for more in depth management of fms, which I intend to explore in the future. You can download the binaries here: https://github.com/Skaruts/tdm_packer_2/releases Currently: it can pack your selected mission into the pk4 at a click of a button you can specify which files to exclude from the pk4, by editing the .pkignore file (Package -> Pack) you can edit the mission's files with syntax highlighting (xdata, scripts, skins, definitions, etc) you can view both the included and excluded files in a handy tree list (you can Shift+LMB to fully expand/contract branches) it can launch TDM or DarkRadiant for the selected mission, or run a second installation of TDM to test your pk4 in isolation (see the menu Settings->Paths) it automatically puts your map sequence into the appropriate file all maps, except the ones in the map sequence, are auto excluded from the pk4 Important: This is still an experimental alpha version, so backup your missions before using it. Note: For now I provided binaries for Windows and Linux. I don't have a Linux system to test the binaries yet, though, so they may or may not work properly. As a last resort, one can still run this app from the source code by running the Godot Engine itself from the terminal with the "--path path/to/project" argument. (Godot itself is just a simple executable and requires no installation.)

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.

ThiefGuild has some tags: https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/?advanced_search=&series=&collection=&table=&page=&works=&work_lists=&sort_by=newest&search=&games=5&released_from=all&released_to=all&genre=all&original_games=fms Not sure how complete or accurate those are, after all either the author or users add the tags to the missions.

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

Right - what you are doing is manually creating the distance culling I was speaking of! And you are right. One of the issues with distance culling is that things can suddenly appear/disappear when they traverse the boundary. A way around this would be to have TDM implement a distance fog zone that objects beyond it are not visible, and items in the zone are partially or wholly visible. That is what I am trying to work on with the different culling ideas. My thoughts are that map makers shouldn't have to worry about micro managing their map - the engine should handle those things. In that way the map makers can focus on their creativity to make fantastic scenarios faster. And to be clear, again, you area a MASTER map maker already. I apologize if my comments didn't translate well from English.

I uninstalled my old 3.1 Dark Radiant and did a fresh new install of 3.9.0. I created a new empty map in DR via "new" and then saved it into my "fms" folder. However after loading up, as soon as I click into one of the 4 grid views it just crashes under Windows 10. Also I tried to manually open it via "file > open" but that throws an error "failure reading map file" "Unable to parse map version (parse exception)" AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor 3.60 GHz RAM 32,0 GB AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT (20 GB) Windows 10 x64

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wJeDZUHzlrY?si=a_LYYrPh1vs1sUEF Yes, it has been mostly possible due to AI doing the heavylifting, but it wasnt a cheap one prompt slop, every part of this project planned, designed and built step by step. But yes AI did the coding labor Works with all existing fan missions toggleable new climbing mechanic for mappers weapons, bows, item physics, inventory, door physics, lockpicking and more overhauled for VR controllers work in progress(open to ideas): -some climbing and grabbing bugs to fix -Main menu, mission selection, settings etc. are a pain to control with controllers, still need mouse for that. Have to fix it. -flashmine, potion, and food usage added -a small motel room for main menu and mission selection, missions come in envelopes as if gigs from contracts -Enemy AI overhaul to introduce more unpredictibility and personality to guards -a medieval skyscrapper raid mission for demonstrating climbing mechanics Link to the current build for anyone wanting to test, i appreciate any ideas and feedback, I'd love to have Thief community have their say in how it should be experienced: https://mega.nz/file/HB8FmT4L#hfcjRdphQWIK-CXu9-ZuP3c8h9hd4wdOAkSUWP907Bw Controls guide Bow - left shoulder Quiver - right shoulder Sword - left hip Blackjack - right hip Lockpicks - on either wrist Looting - Drop items at your stomach/chest area Sprint - L3 Inventory - Left controller button opens it up, circled with joystick, grabbed to take into the hand Arrow selection - same as inventory but on right hand Doors, lockpicks, keys, readables etc. are interacted with trigger button when grabbed Tools go back into their holsters when dropped by default to avoid losing them. This can be toggled off from console with : vr_toolsReturnToHolster 0

I don't know who has what skillset, as I am still pretty green on the forums. However, I do know that shader development does require some voodoo black magic! I understand the fundamentals of shaders, but understanding the basic how and why is very, very different from creating them.

Nice work! Is there a build/code that other users can download and try? Please merge back the code with TDM VR, see topic: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20468-the-dark-mod-vr-210-alpha-is-now-available/ === Reddit topic: link Video of JAKE's work:

For more info, read this topic: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/23261-i-made-full-vr-support-for-the-dark-mod-new-bow-climbing-mechanics-and-more/ He based his code of TDM VR, so I referred him to this topic.

It's among my favorite missions and played it several times in Difficult with 0 score, except the first time with some Suspicious points. A mission with a great atmosphere, well designed map and challenges not too difficult (Museum somewhat tricky). Love it.

"Out of all the districts in Bridgeport, the Pagan Quarter is probably the second worst... it's certainly the last place I'd want to live. Sadly, I don't have a choice in the matter." It's with great pleasure that I present my third Dark Mod FM, "The Maybury Idol, Part 1: A Trip to the Museum" https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?internalName=maybury1 This is the first in a planned 4-part series which is largely already plotted out to conclusion, and I'm planning to get started on Part 2 soon. Compared to the last FM I submitted, this one is a lot more linear and story-driven, but it also includes conversations and a mid-mission cutscene... which along with learning some basic scripting has really opened up a lot of possibilities in mission creation, and I'm looking forward to putting the lessons learned here to use in future. I'd like to thank everybody in the Beta Testing thread for ironing out the many, many wrinkles that came up and for offering helping advice in how to patch up the map's shortcomings: @Baal, @Cambridge Spy, @Bikerdude, @wesp5, @Bergante, @Keruah, and @tapewolf I hope you enjoy it.

I do have some thoughts. My original idea was to implement a simple renderer culling distance as a CVar and intercept the rendering process, but that raises a whole set of questions I can't answer, yet. For example, take a large building where part of it falls inside the culled distance, but part of it is outside that distance? What do you do? Do you render the whole thing? If so, it would most likely be the only thing projected beyond the cutoff point, and it would look weird. If you don't render it, a large structure would just disappear when it should be visible. Without a serious amount of dev kungfu to rendering process itself, a hard render distance is probably going to be a non starter, at least for me. There are, however, a couple of other interesting ideas I am playing with. One is the light/entity interaction system. During play, the renderer maintains "idInteraction" objects representing the relationships between a particular light source and the surfaces it affects. For example: Street Lamp -> Wall Street Lamp -> Road Street Lamp -> Wooden Cart Street Lamp -> Barrel Street Lamp -> NPC A single light source will make multiple idInteraction objects, each of which must be evaluated separately. If an object falls into the radius of multiple light sources, then an idInteraction object is created for *each* one. Just having the interaction defined isn't that big of a deal, other taking up some RAM. It is the evaluation of that interaction that costs alot from a CPU/GPU standpoint. As the amount of lights and the amount of surfaces in an area increase, so do the computations for that area. Hence, a large open area with lots of lights and things usually brings the system down to 10-15 frames per second unless the mapper does some design magic to control things. Shadows also play into this, which complicates it further. Since there is no distance culling, the bigger the area, the more likely of a performance drag. But with respect to this, there is an interesting possibility. Within the idInteraction class are a couple of functions to add an interaction and to create one as a deferred action. By implementing a new CVAR like "r_lightInteractionCullDistance", a very fast and quick check can be made from the camera to the closest part of that interaction. If it is outside that distance, don't activate it. If it isn't activated, it isn't calculated or rendered. This could add in a simple distance culling mechanism and I think it could be huge in performance. As I stated, shadows are an extra wrinkle here. The engine keeps some things around which are not directly visible because their shadows may project across the camera, even though the light source causing the shadow is not visible. This can have added ovehead, and again, this increases with the amount of lights in an area. There is also another option I have been looking into that could actually be better. That is calculating how much of the screen is being occupied by the object. A relevance factor, if you will. An example is a large building, say a Templar church, and it is 8000 units away. Maybe there is something needing to be frobbed on the ground about 3000 units away, like a potion. With pure distance calculation, the church would disappear even though it can be plainly seen, but potion wouldn't even though it is most likely not visible or very, very small. As part of the calculations, the screen projection sizes are already computed by the engine. It would be fairly academic to query the engine for the onscreen rectangle size and cull it based on if it is too small. I have been leaning toward this idea more and more as I run scenarios through my head. Things usually don't work out the way they are intended to in the first pass with stuff like this, but as I dissect the source more, it is what I think the better solution. In a similar way, portal traversal can follow the same idea - if the visible projection of a portal on screen is below a certain threshold, do not go through it. Basically, when the map is created, the compiler breaks up the map into areas, separated by visportals. This is actually a super important function because it provides hard separation between to disparate locations on the map. A closed visportal prevents the engine from searching through it for things that are beyond that "could" visually affect the current view from the camera. Much of the time, things behind visportals do not affect the current view in the camera at all, but if the portal is open, the engine will search through it every time, regardless. Good map makers (ahem...JackFarmer?) know how to use all the tricks in the book to force occlusion - doors, 90 degree turns, short alleys, tall structures that obscure, and visportals. Closing a door/portal immediately halts the search for anything past it from an engine standoint. But an open portal beyond an open portal causes searching into a third area which most certainly won't have any relevance to the current view. It can cascade from there because the engine will continue through all open portals it finds during that rendering pass. So, this is great for interiors, closely confined towns, etc. But a large outdoor space is harder. Breaking up a large area with multiple visportals is worthless since they would all have to be open to see the area in the first place. Interestingly, the engine does clip out the stuff that can't be seen behind a portal. But the problem is that it has to search through it at all to figure out if it needs to clip it. So, I am thinking another CVAR for portalScreenSize or something like that. If the portal occupies less space on screen than the size specified in the CVAR, then don't traverse it. As an example, assume the map is a long alleyway. At the far end is a portal that is only showing on screen as a 2x2 pixel square after it is rendered. That is something you wouldn't even really see, but the engine sure can. Because the engine can see it, the renderer goes through the opening to find a bunch of stuff behind it - lights, surfaces, etc. It then has to compute all of that stuff it finds through that little tiny opening because it "may" affect the current screen view. After everything has been calculated, it then just simply clips it out anyway because all of that stuff isn't visible through the portal or the 4 pixels it takes up don't change. All that work for literally no reason. I don't want to sound like I am putting down the engine - quite the contrary. I am amazed that anyone could come up with this at all. For it's time, this thing is a marvel to be sure. The renderer does do plenty of screen culling, to be sure. The engine could never achieve real playability if it didn't. It just doesn't do anything that is *distance* related, or screen size tested to determine that culling, and that is why large open areas die horribly: too many lights and surfaces to compute because it doesn't know not to. The last thing I have found, I am not sure how to handle/fix. In any area (as defined by visportals), walls and other things are not actually doing occlusion from a calculation standpoint. They block things visually on screen, sure, and this does go a long way in performance. It is also the expected behavior. I mean, lights shining through walls is a bit silly. But if you place a large wall in front of a light source, and stand on the other side where you can't see the light, the engine still has to check the idInteraction objects that the light it connected with to see if it is interacting with the viewscreen. Of course, it isn't, but the calculations take place because from the engine's viewpoint, it could. So those are my ideas for now. Finding the engine really fascinating. In many ways, it is much easier to understnad than the beast that is Unreal Engine. Obviously, it isn't nearly as mature and developed as Unreal but it wouldn't be realistic to expect it to be. In reality though, knowing what I know about UE has really made me appreciate it that much more. Bottom line is that all of these guys were geniuses. Incidentally, there are lots of good comments througout the source code - big time kudos to whoever did that. It would be very, very hard to digest this if they hadn't documented it.

Ok so I still have the archive on my pc an checked it out. Castles and caves consists of the following map files: castles.map castles2.map castles3.map caves.map caves2.map I think @JackFarmer only used caves.map. The other 4 I don't recognize from HH4 and I played the fm kind of recently. I think they could be useful. Castle and castle2 are not small maps.

Summary Greetings dear friends! To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the release of my FM, I have published a (hopefully) worthy update to it. Version 2 of my FM called "Sneak & Destroy" uses many new features that have been added to TDM over the years, fixes numerous bugs that were overlooked at the time, but the FM still remains true to the original one. So if you had problems playing this FM lately, if you never played this FM or if you wish to revisit a tiny but lovely part of the TDM history, this update is for you! Download the latest version via the in-game downloader and celebrate the past 10 years with me together! Improvements Visual improvements to city area and interior rooms Enriched the scenes with additional audio Fixed critical bugs that were introduced as TDM was updated Added triggered Conversations for NPCs Added EFX support to all areas Changed multiple aspects of the map in terms of better gameplay and progression Corrected and inserted new writings in books and notes Reduced amount of loot necessary to end mission Added lantern and looking glass to inventory Made use of new particle effects to enhance visual quality Screenshots Credits Thanks go to: bikerdude for being on call to bugfix and improve the map with me Dragofer for pushing ideas for scripting things jysk, Baal & datiswous for finding even the tiniest bugs Springheel for reintroducing me to DR after almost 10 years with his tutorials Greebo for working on the newest tools to update my rusty FM Grayman – I hope I made you a little bit proud Have fun! SeriousToni - 12.04.2012 - 17.11.2022

Today I am happy to announce the release of my first FM for The Dark Mod. After 6 years of using this lovely game creation engine, I'm finally able to contribute my own project for it! It took roughly two weeks of non-stop work to do everything from start to end... there's always some little detail to come back to when mapping, thus there were a few little things left out to prioritize others, but at the end of the day this came out almost exactly as I envisioned it. In this mission you play as the typical professional thief. You've been hired to retrieve a scroll containing forbidden knowledge from the mansion of a wealthy noble, put there by the builder church who is close to its owner and found it a more suitable spot. A banquet is being thrown by the lord who owns the mansion which is the perfect opportunity to make your move. Nothing out of the ordinary: You're to retrieve this scroll and get paid for your work... simple, right? Notice: Performance in some areas may be poor. I optimized the lighting setup as much as possible, trying to use as few long range light sources as I could. To achieve the desired theme however I had to leave parts of them map relatively open. Hopefully this won't be a hindrance to anyone... if it is you may need to lower some graphical settings. For people who don't like surprises and may be sensitive to certain themes, read the spoiler below. If you're okay with anything don't as it will ruin the experience! For people who are stuck and don't know how to proceed, instructions are provided in the spoiler below. Only read them if necessary. A tip that needs no spoilers: The key in this FM is exploration and reading everything carefully. There are secrets to be found: Always look everywhere and closely at everyone! I'm eager to hear what your experience with this FM is. Use spoilers when referring to specifics, but do let me know what your thoughts are! Especially with this being my first FM I could use tips, including technical ones if you look at the map in DarkRadiant. Here are a few screenshots of the main areas (intended for the installer): And finally the download links. Unzip and place the main directory inside your fms folder, this should get it to show up in the mission list. Mirror 1 Mirror 2

Following the discussion of the Released and Upcoming thread Fidcal and I came up with some ideas how we could save abandoned labours of love. We came up with the following for contributing and adopting unfinished work maintained in this thread: How to contribute? If for any reason you decide to quit working on a map, map parts, etc. please consider contributing your abandoned work to the community! Proof of concepts and appealing results from "just playing around" alike may be interesting for other people to pick up. To do so just send a private message to a team member (preferably a mission manager like nbohr1more) with all relevant information about your work so far (see format below) and a link where it can be downloaded. Please do not post any download links in this thread. Your work will be archived on one of the Team's TDM servers. FM's (WIP) Name: ... Former author(s): ... Current author(s): (If any) Status: (free for adoption / in work) Due Date: (the next date I expect a new WIP version and progress report) Type: (Mansion, City, Crypt, Wilderness, ...) Theme: (Gold Heist, Horror, Story Focused, Inventors, ...) Progress: (Geometry, Details, AI, Gameplay, ... in some rough percentage) Informations: (anything the authors like to share about the work so far) How to adopt? Send a PM to a team member (ideally a mission manager). If you have already released an FM for TDM then most likely adoption will be granted. If you have never released an FM it'll be less likely.. If you did release FM's for Thief or a mod for any other game please send details that help us to decide. If you're the original author you can always pick up your committed work again as long as it is still (or again) "free for adoption". What do we expect from authors who did adopt assets? All former authors must be given credit upon release. You may like to use the unfinished assets the way you like: use parts in your own map or continue finishing the abandoned map. We and the former authors have to trust anyone given responsibility of the assets of a possibly already superb unfinished map. We all know that it sometimes happens that people cannot continue a work for various reasons (if so, please PM the team member), lose interest or in the worst case just disappear! In this case, or if we try to contact you for a status update and do not hear from you in a reasonable amount of time, we will offer the map again for adoption to someone else who might want to finish the FM. We hope to see some great unfinished works being worked on again and completed. So, fellow authors ... contribute your unfinished work List of Abandoned Works _________________________________________ Please check the wiki for details of abandoned work free for adoption and adopted maps: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Abandoned_Works

the code is actually compatible with other culling standards so i would wager it could be used for specific in game purposes. a lot of what you mention is pretty much what it does . it prerenders a small quad representing the game world entities then it tests for occlusion between this prerender and the game itself. transparent entities are not tested as they would not occlude anything anyway. the code is pretty old (2007) and more fine grained methods have since popped up so there is room for improvement (masked occlusion culling etc). a distance cull is actually pretty easy to pull off but it rarely looks good because of pop ins. a better method would be to fade it in when close enough (we used a rather nasty hack in quake with fog density to make objects appear slowly the closer you got. but this still renders it so it is not real culling). hardware occlusion culling can even be done with shaders

caves and caves2 are also very different from each other. But caves2 is pretty small. Edit: Not 100% sure. Ok maybe not relevant, since caves2 is so small.

I think you only used part of that map. Or there were 2 maps: castles.map and caves.map in the fm-archive. I have to look into it. I think you used caves, but not castles. I mean the info can be updated, but (if I'm right) maybe the castles part can be rereleased as an abandoned map?

Okay, I had a quick go and if this guy is really going to listen to your feedback, please report this to him: - For me a stealth game with Souls-like saving is a no go. That's almost as worse as Spector's time pressure! - Why do we need to sharpen the sickle already after two or three hits of a supposendly spongy soft tissure? - The push hard to kill move is almost useless, it takes too long and the first push usually does nothing at all. - There is no way to extinguish the small lights like candles and water arrows on enemy torches didn't work. I couldn't finish the demo because of the issues above, and I am missing the patience to try again and again and again! I don't understand why so often in modern games the developers take an old working system and then make something worse out of it: Free Saves? No, let's make them location and object dependent. Steel melee weapons that work forever? No, ours are made from aluminum. Cool kick like in Dark Messiah? No, we need to push long and we also use the same button as normal attacks so mistakes are easy. Extinguish all the light sources like in TDM or Thief? No, lots of small lights can't be doused, because that'll be more fun. No...

Screenshots: Mission: Breaking out the Fence Version: 1.00 Released: 17/03/2014 Theme: City Author: kyyrma Testing and additional content: RJFerret, Airship Ballet, Goldwell Breaking out the Fence continues the story from my first FM In a Time of Need. The player once again takes the role of an anonymous Thief who is getting tangled with an organization called the League of Seafaring Merchants. This time you will be sneaking your way into an import shop down at the South Docks and getting your fence Terry out from a pinch you have indirectly got him into. Prior knowledge of the story is not strictly necessary, and the level works just as well as a one shot stand-alone mission. Note that the story briefing is quite long - if you don't appreciate walls of text in your game, all the relevant information is on the last page. However if you want to set the mood and enjoy a good tale of skullduggery then give it a read. The difficulty level is moderate to high, and compared to my last mission it is much larger. The average play time should be around 1 - 2 hours depending on how much you decide to explore the level. You will start the level with only a blackjack, compass, spyglass and a map. You have to find the rest of your equipment while on the job. If you can't find a pair of lockpicks, remember to keep your eyes peeled for keys! The only differences between difficulty settings are the objectives, with higher difficulties requiring either a no-kill or a full ghost playthrough. Injection needles have been made a loot item, so remember to pick them up if you are going for loot completition I've succumbed under peer pressure and decided to have a poll where you can rate the level, but I would really appreciate your comments as well! Please get back to me if you have any questions or critique regarding the mission. Help! I'm stuck! How do I find the key to the closed off area in the sewers? Download links: If the mission is not yet available from the in-game downloader, you can use the following link: Private mirror Installation: Drop breakingout.pk4 in you darkmod/fms/ folder Run TDM and select New Mission. Breaking out the Fence should now appear on the list of downloaded missions. Install and play. Known issues: AI pathfinding can be slightly erratic at times Outdoors can cause performance issues on low-end hardware Sleeping AI can glitch through the bed if KO'd or killed There remain some audio issues such as pop-in and incorrect sound propagation Thanks: My testers RJFerret and Airship Ballet for their invaluable input and help during the creation of the level Goldwell for providing his vocal talent for the characer Terry All the TDM devs for creating such a great game All the people who have answered my newbie questions at the Editor's Guild

JackFarmer, since you are not a native English speaker, my statement was an acknowledgement to your phenomenal map making skills. From what I have seen your maps are super well done - way better than I could ever do! For someone who isn't a native English speaker, you had me fooled, as I would not have know that your weren't by your posts.

idtech 4 "can" do large outdoor maps, lights are the biggest problem for performance as plastering a map with 100's of lightsources will utterly smash performance due to all the calculations it has to do. one of the reasons many engines used pre baked lightsources. carmack usually newer wrote more code in then what the game it was made for needed, relying on engine modders or game studios that wanted to use it to add the missing pieces like say fence textures (for vegetation) and whatever else a modder needed for his or hers idea of a game. this works for DOOM as there is no vegetation on mars but it would look rather out of place on earth. sure you could maps with (faked vegetation) but i dont think it would look good. sadly idtech 4 newer really got that popular and only a few games ever got made based on it. prey. wolfenstein 2009. enemy territory quake wars. quake 4. as for mods the list is somewhat bigger but still a lot lower than most of the other idtech engines. the built in mapping tools were well how shall i put it... not very good. which may have been a reason it was not adopted by many. darkradiant is way better than the built in map editor but a few of the built in tools are still needed i think ?. also the change to C++ may have put off a lot of otherwise gifted engine modders who were used to working in C like previous idtech engines were coded in. C++ is great but there are a lot more pitfalls you need to be vary of compared to C. C = follow these rules. rigid but less error prone. C++ = my rules!. uh why did my PC bsod ?.