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Finally done with my vertical contest entry... Swing You'll get your sea legs ... or die trying ... Thanks to my beta testers: SiyahParsomen Diego Baddcog ---------------------- README: SWING a Dark Mod mission, by Komag for the Vertical Contest held summer 2010 find me on TheDarkMod.com forums, or via ShadowDarkKeep.com This mission is a "platformer" with slight puzzle elements (figuring out where to go next and how to get there). Be prepared to do a lot of falling, dying, and quickloading! Quicksave anytime you are sure-footed, about take a risk Getting off the swing for any reason is not recommended! And try not to get sick ;-) Have FUN!!! Komag - Ben Ramsey -------------------------- BRIEFING: The King's steward has seen you in action aboard His Majesty's Ship Vertigo, and he is pleased with your potential. You are hereby granted an opportunity to prove your quality by successfully navigating the King's Royal Navy training swing. You need only retrieve the high crown (a replica of course) from the top of the swing, and return it to the docking area. As a bonus, see how many of the ten hidden bottles you can find - the more you come back with the more impressed your superiors will be, and that can only be a good thing as you know." ------------------------ Known Issues: - It's possible to stop the motion of some of the moving things, and even the entire swing itself, if you mess with things enough ENJOY!!! http://www.shadowdarkkeep.com/missions/Swing_v1.2.pk4

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).

My issue was that when starting the computer, the first log in screen would be a 60hz, and on OLED that causes horrendous flicker due to PWM voltage control. Input latency also gets high on lower refresh rates (>60 ms on some monitors), so moving the mouse around on the log in screen felt awful. Even my non gamer wife immediately noticed how not nice the log in screen was compared to the Windows 11 log in. Once I logged in, and the monitor switched modes to 240 or 360 or 540 hz, I could log out and it would be at the high refresh. So I did some research first and all the guides for kubuntu/ubuntu basically said the same thing, modify SDDM and apply plasma settings to the SDDM. This did NOT work for refresh rate on first boot. So I did more research and edited some files, still didn't work. So I asked the question on the forums. 90% was Apply Plasma Settings... in the SDDM section, and the other 10% were, you don't need that, that's not important, you're dumb for asking this question.

got an old phillips 52 " tv that works pretty well with linux as well (60 hz 1080p only) allmost 2 decades old now . has all the connections a tv enthusiast could drool over like s-video composite scart hdmi and vga . i dont use it anymore though as my LG 58 " 4k tv works fine with solus (may be because it can only handle 4k in 60hz ?). as for aholes on forums, i had my fair share just like trolls they seem to pop up from time to time and i found the most effective way of handling them is just to ignore them (dont feed trolls!). otherwise ping the site admin if they are doing they're job a warning about decorum can usually put them right but otherwise a ban might be needed. permanent if nessesary.

I continue the work on the animations with the new Blender rig. Walkcycle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nozToZMIFR8&feature=youtu.be It's only 2 frames shorter than current animations, so it's rather similar to walk1.md5anim now.

Welcome! I hope you'll like it, or at least find it better than Windows. I have never received that answer myself, but I have seen it in various forums, not necessary associated with Linux. It is such a dumb and unproductive respone. Either it can be done or it can't. The purpose is not a factor. One silver lining though: it teaches us what kind of answers we don't want to provide ourselves when someone asks us a question.

I'm on Linux now (Kubuntu 26.04 / kernel 7+) Still haven't changed my opinion on the help forums, there is STILL a lot of assholes gatekeeping / new user bashing. My favourite is "Linux is super power user friendly and you can do pretty much anything that you want!" Cool, how can I do this? "Why do you need that? You don't need that! Just leave it the way it is!"

@Arcturus Thank you for posting your work progress here and on YouTube. I find your channel exciting and calming at the same time. Good work!

depends. im one of the older users and was around when the spectrum zx80 was old stuff yeah i had one it was literally my first gamer. i have 1000's of games spanning from so long back that i cannot even remember all of them anymore so from time to time i dust them off and start playing them again. even with the sizes these oldies had its about 8 tb worth of gaming and some of these oldies dont play well with xp at all and require win9x or older. some need emulators because they are not msdos or windows games at all (ton of old games from my commodore and amiga some atari as well). i did get a good deal of the oldies to work on modern windows via wrappers and patch hooks but its cumbersome.

The nights are getting colder and you need to pay your rent on time before you get tossed out into the winter air. Luckily, your neighbor told you about a mysterious merchant from faraway shores who has come to the small hamlet of Wilford's Hollow, and he's staying at the inn next door. What's more, he's brought something with him... Gameplay Notes: 1) This is a fairly small map, but I did intend for this map to be a bit harder than normal Dark Mod missions, even on the lowest difficulty setting. But there will certainly be plenty of rewards for the careful thief... 2) This map implements the func_peek mechanic by allowing players to peek through any door that has a keyhole by leaning forward. PLEASE NOTE: This function has been known to cause crashes for players using the 32-bit version of the Dark Mod 2.07 (should be fine for those running the 64-bit version). While this function has worked painlessly for some, please be aware that crashing may occur. At no point in this mission is it required to use the func_peek mechanic, it is purely optional, so feel free to not use it. Download: This FM is available via the in-game downloader FM: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eGMhIkoMFqlkk_ehN430cP63RQr5quEh/view?usp=sharing Promotional Screenshots: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bwuy0QPhaGpV32CgEdXhBIA5KgvcRueN?usp=sharing Credits: A HUGE thanks goes out to JackFarmer, Dragofer, and Bikerdude for scripting, EFX, custom ambient tracks, assets, answering a billion of my questions and doing so, so, so much more to make this mission something special. Thank you! Another GIANT thank you to my beta testers: Jedi_Wannabe, Bienie, Filizitas, joebarnin, bikerdude, Cambridge Spy, STRUNK, Lonewanderer, Rezar. Thank you all very much for your wonderful work and eye for detail! And another thank you goes out to Goldwell, Kingsal, and Grayman for scripting help and patient guidance. Assets are from: Springheel's Superb Modules Refl3ks' Rad Artwork Kingsal's Killer Assets Dragofer's Delightful Assets Epifire's Expert Models dmw's Dazzling Textures Spooks' Spectacular Painting for the Loading Screen R Soul's Fantabulous Assets JackFarmer's Miraculous Machines and Sounds Bikerdude's Bountiful Assets Hugo Lobo's Luxurious Textures ***PLAYER BEWARE*** SPOILERS lie in the depths below. I strongly suggest playing it first so you don't spoil the fun for yourself *** Version 2 Changelog: - Fixed several broken visportals - Fixed reflections in flooded basement, improved performance - New particles, models, and textures - Fixed broken AI pathing - Fixed fireplace glitch in the Inn - Fixed several texture issues - Added new secret objective - Lighting and fog changes - Implemented fade lights - Implemented Kingsal's inventory icons - Replaced slow match with flint - Increased bow draw speed using modified settings from Kingsal

If you have a copy of Windows XP that the game works on, then you can try install XP on a virtual machine (using VM Ware or VirtualBox or some other hypervisor) running on some Linux distro. But perhaps turn off network on the VM for security reasons. Windows 7 should work too. Later versions of Windows may be trickier because of licencing/activation issues after Microsoft implemented tighter DRM measures for later versions. But perhaps not impossible. But yes, I agree with you. A working emulator would be nice. WINE works well for some programs. ReactOS did not work for my use case the last times I tried, but could be worth a try. At least in a VM.

Preface HUD-elements are often a technical necessity, to convey important information to the player that would otherwise not be available to them. A problem with such HUD-elements is that they don't belong to the virtual world. They make it painfully clear to the player that they are just playing a game, thereby reducing immersion. There are many genres, where you need to have such information available at all times, think fast-paced first person shooters, Mobas, or strategy games. However, especially for genres featuring free exploration, that information is simply not needed at all times. Some games (e.g. Dead Space or Metro series) have gone to extreme lengths to completely eliminate HUD elements by integrating all relevant information in the virtual world. While this is of course the most immersive approach, it is also the hardest to implement. A much easier solution is to rely on a dynamic HUD, where certain HUD elements are displayed depending on context. In recent years, I have become hyper focused on immersion. I can't stand a cluttered HUD ("sensory overload") or a map full of quest pointers ("feels like work"). I want to immerse myself in the world, not tick of pointers on a map. About a year ago, having played a ton of WoW in my youth, I played the alliance fraction on WoW Classic for the first time. Via interface addons, I had my UI completely disappear during exploration, but when I entered combat or clicked on an enemy, the UI would become visible. The minimap would generally only become visible during mouse-over. The same goes for non-combat-relevant action-bars. I paired that with a text-to-voice addon for the quest texts and some nice dynamic camera addons that would zoom in on characters when talking to them. Of course I also did not use any quest-GPS addons, so that I actually had to pay attention and search the world for the quests. It was super immersive and a glorious experience reminiscent of the 2004 release. So naturally, having played a lot of TDM recently, I am thinking about how we could improve our dynamic HUD in TDM for immersion-seekers. Current State of Dynamic HUD in TDM The HUD of TDM already has quite some dynamic elements Healthbar only shows if we are not at 100% health Breathbar only shows if we are not at 100% breath Weapon only shows if a weapon is selected and ammo text only shows if ammo is relevant to that weapon Inventory-Icon and -text only shows if an item is selected Pickup- and object-update texts are only displayed momentarily Ideas for More Dynamic HUD Elements in TDM So basically, with every HUD element, we should ask ourselves the following questions: Added information: Does this HUD element actually convey any information? Relevant when: In what situation is that information relevant? Let's start! (Please note that all proposals below shall be made optional under some "tdm_dynamic_hud"-cvar or something like that, so I am not planning to take anything away from anyone) I will update this list of ideas as we go. Weapon HUD Blackjack and Sword Added information: None. The player can see the 3d model of both weapons, so the HUD does not add any information. Relevant when: Never Proposal: Remove completely --> Very easy (already tested) Bow and arrows Added information: Arrow type and amount. Sadly, the 3d model does not show the type of arrow unless the bow is drawn. So, the icon and weapon text add information. Also, there is the ammo display. Relevant when: Player is equipping the bow Proposal: Investigate if we can alter the non-drawn bow model such that it already shows the arrow type. If that works nicely, remove arrowtype and arrow icon from HUD and potentially move the ammo display around and make it bigger. I would need support from a 3d modeler here! Proposal: Consider showing the arrow amount only briefly when the weapon is selected (and/or when the player presses "R"?) (and/or ammo amount changes) and then fade it out again. Healthbar Added information: Health Relevant when: Player is losing health. Player is likely going to loose health, e.g., when in combat or when breath bar is close to zero. Player is preparing to enter combat. Player has very low health Proposal: Briefly show after losing health; Show when equipping a weapon (possibly limit to sword?); show when breath is close to running out; show when health is below some threshold (like 20%) Breathbar: Already very dynamic. No action needed! Inventory HUD (Not the inventory grid) Compass Added information: direction Relevant when: When player equips it. Must not fade-out unless a different item is selected. Other items: Added information: Selected item Relevant when: Only during selection (or when player forgot which item is selected) or when the item can be used with the world Note: I had added the tdm_frob_item_selects_item to prevent items being selected when picking them up, thereby eliminating the respective HUD annoyance. However, I found that frequently, I wanted to use the picked up item right away (a readable, a key, etc.), so this approach is not working well. Proposal: Briefly show after selecting an item, then fade-out. Show item when it can be used on a world entity. For picking up items, consider selecting, but not showing them, so player can use them right away without HUD pop-in. When HUD is not shown, pressing next or prev item should not go to next / prev item, but just show the HUD element. Are there maybe other types of inventory items that need special treatment? Shouldering HUD Added information: Shouldering state Relevant when: Always when shouldering a body Proposal: It would be awesome if we could actually have the 3d model shouldered in view. Then we could get rid of the HUD, but of course, this would be very hard to achieve. Lightgem Added information: To some degree, visibility of player Relevant when: sneaking about or running to hide (so basically always) Discussion: It is actually debatable, how much information is really added, because the player can already tell how well illuminated they are just by looking at the environment. I would say minimalists simply disable the lightgem and all others keep it on all the time. Crouch-intent indicator Added information: Crouch-intent, i.e., while it is impossible to change crouched-state, the crouch-state that will be assumed once crouched-state is unlocked again. Current crouch state can be seen by looking at the 3d world. No indicator needed for that. Relevant when: Only while crouched-state is locked / cannot be changed. Proposal: Only show when crouched-state and crouch-intent differ? Any other UI elements I forgot? Another aspect of dynamic HUDs is HOW visibility is controlled. HUD elements might pop-in instantly or gradually fade in and out, like our FrobHelper. I would say, having HUD elements fade in and out looks generally more appealing, but I would need some advice on how to best control transparency. Should transparency be handled by the GUI scripting or dictated by the engine like in the case of the FrobHelper? What makes most sense here?

Greetings everyone! I recently got into TDM and am already having a lot of fun playing through and ghosting missions. However, coming from Thief, I am mostly relying on the rules and my experience with that game, while there are clearly differences in how TDM works. Right now, there is talk in the ghosting discussion thread on TTLG to amend the ruleset and include clarifications pertaining to TDM. So I wanted to drop by and ask: is there an active TDM ghosting community already and have any rules for this playstyle been developed? I would also like to ask someone to take a look at the draft of this addendum to see whether everything looks correct: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487&page=16&p=2473352&viewfull=1#post2473352 Thanks!

There are actually numerous emulators allready but they come with a downside as well. an example dosbox while capable uses a lot of cpu cycles so some games actually run worse than on dos. windows own vdm also had numerous shortcommings in that regard like not being able to out of the box emulate soundcards from that era. vdmsound took care of most of that but there where other problems as well like not being able to play in fullscreen mode. so in most cases it is better to just run the OS things were built for in a virtual machine as that way you dont have to jump through hoops to get your games running. downside is you need a harddrive large enough to hold all the images of those operating systems. linux has multiple emulators but many are not just plug and go and require a pretty deep understanding of how things work, but in that case it can pretty much run anything out there.

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...

@XolvixFollowing on from the conversation in the share your status thread... Its recommended to fun most missions with LOD set to normal, and afaik most are built with said setting on normal. IN my current WIP for example, I have deliberately set two LOD levels normal and better. Normal for regular players and better higher end players Regarding the issue with the Training mission, which light/s were you observing with an issue..? as I was the last person to work on that.

So in one of my maps I am "trying" play around with dynamic ambient light levels. The wiki article is missing some info and has some typo's but I cant get iot work like I have done in the past - https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Dynamic_ambient_light#Dynamic_Ambient_Light_Spawnargs

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? )

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...

Darkmod underutilizes, in my opinion, capabilities for procedural animation. We already do some, like the random head and torso turns that are added on top of existing animations. There's also possibility for separate animation for top and bottom of the character as well as head. There's a missing opportunity for varied facial expressions. I talked about animation blending in this thread. Here's something that for example Thief: Deadly Shadows did. It's swaying side to side while turning. I used Gemini to add code to the tdm_ai_base.script. I don't know if this is the most efficient way of doing it, probably not. Here are the parts added: Gemini came up with the term "banking" which is used in car racing. I don't know if that's what it's called in animation or games. There's a lot of variables that can be tweaked. You can rotate this way any bone you wish. I use 'Origin', 'Spine_Dummy' and 'Neck' bones: You can tweak amount of rotation for each bone. setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle, 1, jointRotation * 1); setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle1, 1, jointRotation * 0.6); setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle2, 1, jointRotation * -1.5); There's also global intensity: (targetBanking = deltaYaw * 1.4;) and attenuation: m_bankingCurrentValue = (m_bankingCurrentValue * 0.95) + (targetBanking * 0.05); modifiers. Gemini also proposed to add an LOD system, which I thought was a great idea. So currently at a distance of 1500 from player the swaying will be disabled. Here are examples, each with slightly different values: And here's comically exaggerated one:

(For some reason I couldn't find any topic like this) I fired up Dark Mod with mild enthusiasm; it's a mod, afterall. But after having played through Tears of st Lucia, it left me almost shaking afterwards. This is Thief, pure and simple. Thief with Crysis-like graphics. It's an amazing piece of work you have done! It's what T3 should've been right from the start. Dark Mod feels just like Thief. This is Thief!

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 don't know how it works for Radeon but for NVidia there is a setting in the control panel called Power management mode, it's is also possible to change it for any game individually. Also Windows has its own power management settings. Here is the thread on Dolphin forum about it(but it's pretty old and some things most probably changed): https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-laptop-performance-guide

@datiswous, yeah, my explanation was possibly gobbledygook to non-devs. I cross-posted here, cuz I just wanted to give a heads-up to anyone interested, to look at the screen shots and see the noticeable but minor visual impact of the proposed change. I admit there's not enough eye-candy involved for this thread.