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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.

I think it would be smart to go ahead and start a "Newbie thread" that covers all newbie questions in one place, as with the TDS Forum. It doesn't have to be this one, just for future reference. Aaanyway, I was going through the A-Z Tutorial, and right about the time you make the pool of water, I fixed some leaks, thought I got them all. Now it won't Dmap again, but when I hit Pointfile, it says "Could not open pointfile: E:/games/ ... /TutorialMap.lin" I don't know why since it's been working up to now. So if I have a leak I can't find it, but it's troubling just that Pointfile suddenly, inexplicably doesn't open! There isn't any ".lin" file either; not sure what happened to it. Any ideas? Edit: I started a map from scratch and Pointfile didn't show up again. So whatever it is, it isn't something I messed up in that first map, but a general problem I'm having with DR. Edit2: But it does Dmap and Map just fine, so that's ok.

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 kind of miss our old status-bar on the right, where you could casually share what's on your mind or what is happening in your life right now. So, I figured, let's just start a thread for that. Let's get this started...

I am working on improvements I can make to all.lang. The potential scope of work is overwhelmning, so I'm focusing at this time on the Main Menu, particularly Settings. I'd appreciate your review of the workplan, which has 3 main components - 1) commenting-out #str phrases no longer useful 2) adding #str to replace phrases hard-coded in English, in the relevant GUI files. a) in [English] b) in other languages (using AI) 3) For existing Settings #str in the GUI files, that were translated for some languages: do the remaining languages (using AI). I'm excluding this - - strings in *.cpp files - translations into Dutch and Swedish, where almost all strings are untranslated. Each of these is a project in itself, and I'm not up to it currently. Reviewers... My base is the 2.14 all.lang. If you know of 2.15 changes that could affect individual #str, please mention it here Details I have a revised all.lang WIP with the following changes done so far: - Group (1) work in both [English] and all other sections, as summarized and itemized here... - Group (2a), only in [English] so far, as summarized and itemized here... Workplan for Group 3 is WIP.

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

Since we have a Random Video of the Day thread, it seems like this is fair. Show us any article you find interesting, or funny, or surprising, or whatever else is out of the ordinary. I'll begin: http://www.dailytech...rticle33998.htm I never imagined people pissing in an elevator. Of all the strange ideas I've had in my life, that was never one of them. Personally, I suspect the thug. ... and this comment cracked me up. "Why in the world would someone pee in an elevator? Also, when the system catches someone, they don't have to call the police. All they have to do is lock the elevator doors, engage the heaters and shaking motors, and get paid ad money on YouTube for the footage. "

I think we should create a thread where you can put requests and suggestions for Orbweaver. This thread should be NOT a discussion thread. If you want to discuss a proposal, create a specific thread for it. I want it to be only for collecting proposals, so we have an overview of what people might want to have. I guess this might also help Orb to decide what he should focus on once he gets productive. BTW: I really appreciate your effort, because we can really use this. So my personal wishlist proposal is that I would like to see a group handler. Similar like in Blender, where you can select several objects and put it in a group. When you select one or more of these groups, the objects are visible. If the group is not selected, it's invisible. In Blender and other 3D apps this is called layers (forgot the name before so I had to look it up).

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? )

This was also always an issue for me. When I place lights, I like to control and fit the location of the light volume exactly into its environment (for example to keep lights from extending into adjacent areas or to create shadows). That means the center (or origin) of the light volume is at some random location in the room, and almost always the wrong place for the model (which is on the wall or ceiling in most cases). But that's how all the light entities work and I have to use an inconvenient workaround.

Shadowhide has released his TDM FM and it needs a release thread here. I'll quote from his release thread on TTLG. Edit: Shadowhide has released v.1.01 now which is compliant with TDM2.0 & a few other changes (like the music and loading screen). Here's the new download: http://rghost.net/48078929 http://darkfate.org/...ceptive_shadows

That's a cool feature that I will have to have a look into at some point, however - - you would be doing ping-pong workflow between blender and DR, trying to guess in blender where the raised parts of the terrain should be and then finding in DR its cliping into or cover something etc. - texturing on brush would be a nightmare in DR, and this would also have to be done in blender. This would be fine if the terrain brush was the only one in that location, but if it had adjacent terrain that the texture had to align too - more ping-pong. The above only works if your creating the terrain/s right at the start when blocking out your map, but some mappers don't work that way (ie me) I build stuff on the fly and out of order and sometime come back to a map to do a detail pass and change a bunch of stuff.

i mentioned an OS with a full desktop that fits onto a floppy sometime. https://www.howtogeek.com/kolibri-the-smallest-desktop-os-youve-never-heard-of/ the one i thought of was menuetos kolibrios is derived from that one and now has quite the ecosystem with tons of games. it is written in assembler and very very snappy. try it out . there is also a livecd as well as a hybrid uefi image and work on a 64 bit version is ongoing.

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.

Hello, At long last - at long freaking last - I finally got into The Dark Mod. Back when I was a teenager/young adult, about 20 years ago, I wasn't too keen on the idea of The Dark Mod. Since it didn't use the Eidos IP, it felt more like a knockoff than a tribute. Looking back, I noticed that in 2009 I even posted a thread here about how much I loved TDM, but at the time I didn't have a decent computer, and the experience was ruined by bugs. Then, after 2010, when I finally got a good gaming rig, I became completely absorbed in World of Warcraft, LOTRO, and other MMORPGs, so I never really gave new single-player games much attention. I still revisited Thief 1 and Thief 2, replayed fan campaigns, and so on, but I never seriously got into TDM. I also played Thief (2014). At first I liked it, but I eventually ended up disappointed by the lack of variety, the absence of the old lore, the Hammerites and Pagans - you know, all the things that make Thief feel like Thief. Now, with the upcoming reboot on the horizon, I've replayed The Dark Project, The Metal Age, Deadly Shadows, T2X, and even Thief (2014) - yeah, I'm a masochist, I know - and I finally decided to give The Dark Mod the time it deserved. This time I completed Tears of St. Lucia, and then, over the course of just two days, I finished the entire William Steele campaign. I was blown away by how good it was. The detective mission, where you discover the disguise and eventually confront the killer, was fantastic, and the bank mission was absolutely gorgeous. So now I'm looking for more missions. Being almost 40 rather than a teenager, I have a pretty good idea of what I enjoy. Here's what I'm looking for: Cathedrals and churches - these are always my number one choice. I don't enjoy forced ghosting missions. No-kill is perfectly fine, and I don't mind if blackjacking is allowed, but mandatory ghosting isn't my thing. I'm not a huge fan of complicated puzzles that require piecing together clues from lots of different written sources. It wasn't an issue in the William Steele campaign since I played on Normal difficulty, though. I love rooftops, so I'd definitely like more missions featuring them. That said, I think verticality is a bit overrated these days and overused by many modern Thief FM authors. I enjoy believable cities with accessible rooftops, but I'm not a fan of skyscraper-like climbing mazes. In fact, I think the final William Steele missions came close to crossing that line, although I still enjoyed the way the climbing was integrated into reaching the rooftops. I'm not particularly interested in horror or zombie-themed missions. Classic mansion/manor heists are always welcome - I never get tired of those. Regards, Svetlio

If like me you scour the web looking for inspiration for your next TDM mission then look no further.. Now... talking of images have you guys seen the latest from the master that is DrK from his Rocksbourg4 campaign. We need more dirty texture in TDM me thinks...

one warning before you start slipstreaming AHCI drivers. XP should be on the latest servicepack so sp3 for best AHCI support. there are reports that sp2 should also work but there is little reason to not just upgrade it to the latest version. also intels own AHCI drivers for XP have been lobotomized on older sandybridge based chipsets despite the chipset supporting all features. winraid has provided modded drivers that enable full support for these chipsets. there was an unofficial sp4 for xp some years back which included every update after sp3 as well as the posready updates for embedded systems. should still be possible to get it though it only supports english xp out of the box this can be changed with mui packs. as for browsers mypal and supermium are pretty much the only still developed ones that work. though you should limit going online as much as possible as xp has little to no security (ms defender can no longer recieve definition updates due to ms changing cryptographic services which xp does not support) and you will be hard pressed finding other antivirus that work on it (panda is so far the only one i found and it is very unstable).

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.

@datiswous Parallax mapping won't work. You can do something like this:

Yes, instead of starting with the English text in the prompt, it is better to point it to a file instead, when the amount of text is voluminous (as it will be in my upcoming Group 3 work in https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/23204-proposed-i18n-improvements-for-tdm-215/ ). Good to know Google Translate supports URL file access. So does ChatGPT (even the basic version without login).

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?

not to bad slipstreaming drivers on xp, in fact there are several tools that can do it in just one click and more than a few that can do it with a few more but also support servicepacks as well as standard updates. win 7 is even easier as it uses the wim format just like windows 10/11. nlite is usually the goto tool for xp as it supports both drivers and servicepacks/updates. there is a guide here -> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/slipstreaming-windows-xp-to-create-bootable-cd/ if you only need the AHCI driver it is literally one click after pointing it to where it was extracted. you can skip the multiple driver install if it is only the AHCI driver you want. be sure to select the x86 folder if it is 32 bit xp. the txt mode driver is the one you want as without it you cannot boot from the cd in an AHCI system. the rest is pretty easy if you are using nlite (skip the section in the guide about using nero and jump to using nlite for creating the bootable iso). if you cannot manage it i can make the slipstream for you, done it hundreds of times so im pretty well versed in it by now. can even create a wim based boot cd like newer windows installations use, but that takes quite a bit more work. but has the advantage of working better if booting from a usb stick.

To be honest, I am considering hopping away from Bazzite to something not immutable. And the reason for this is: as a developer I really want to install some low-level stuff, which is usually not doable with flatpak/VM/containers (at least not with my Linux skills). For instance, right now I have the following packages layered: opensnitch (custom RPM) to have global control over networking coolercontrol to tie chassis fans to GPU + CPU instead of just CPU qemu / libvirt to run proprietary VPN inside Debian to RDP-connect to my work machine (Bazzite stripped it out recently) I also had hard time to make far2l work properly... it still has its quirks, perhaps because it is inside Distrobox. Most of the programming stuff is running fine inside Distrobox, which is OK to me. Now I decided that I should probably install VTune. Will I be able to find RPM package and layer it? Or maybe it has some messy custom installer which I can't run? I just feel it is not sustainable in the long run. However, even if I hop away, I'll still follow the immutable philosophy as much as I can. Appimage > Flatpak > Distrobox, native packages for the rarest cases of system software I absolutely need. P.S. And I occasionally face some bugs in Bazzite. First I had an issue where I could not type exclamation mark in email body in GMail (in browser). The next image fixed that, but network adapter stopped working inside VM. Currently I'm on "testing" image where both issues are fixed

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?