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[Resolved in TDM 2.0] Untethered Dark Mod


vorob

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We can at least break this into stages on paper...

 

We've got a list of 40 textures and 15 sounds. We could break them into groups of 5 per person, then people could commit to replacing a set of 5 textures or 5 sounds from either scratch or an open source. Then that would give us 11 sets. I think we might hit up volunteers in terms of committing to a set, and crack them out that way. We could also hit up TTLG for help and maybe get a person or 2. Then 11 doesn't sound like too much...

 

Then I think after we get those done, we turn to the bigger tasks like the zombie animation & D3 heads (and any other D3 modified assets) one at a time, when the finish line is more in sight.

 

Then after that do we worry about old maps with extra D3 stuff on a case-by-case basis over time. Note that FMs before I think 1.04 with the ambient fix (like mine) *already* have to be re-released with the extra D3 textures fixed because they currently black out in the ambient light; so half of the FMs with those textures are already broken now. And we're talking about individual textures, so even stupid ad hoc replacements, a single black wall, or just sweeping a single asset in under the rug aren't the end of the world and worth it IMO. But the point is, we cross those bridges when we get there.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Note that FMs before I think 1.04 with the ambient fix (like mine) *already* have to have extra D3 textures fixed because they black out in the ambient light; so half of the FMs with those textures are already broken now.

 

Are they also broken if you switch to the world ambient method that uses the actual light-entity instead of additional material stages that may be missing in the original release of the maps ? Or do these map have no world-ambient light either ?

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I've gone back and played older missions on a regular basis for testing, and I haven't noticed anything "broken" about the textures.

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I can only speak for my map, I had the big light entity named "world ambient" like Fidcal's original tutorial said to make (not sure if it's the same as post that fix though). But the extra D3 texture still blacks out in the ambient light.

 

But actually my general point wasn't that the texture had to literally be replaced to fix that, only that those FMs needed to be re-released with some kind of fix *anyway*, so we're talking about the level of fix.

 

Edit: SH, Hmm maybe I'm confusing versions. The D3 textures in mine definitely were broken for ambient light at one point. Granted I only use 3, the metal warehouse door (which is under mostly direct light so you can't really see the black out), but the elevator inside the warehouse, the base & backing, are both D3 textures that black out in ambient light, which you can see when the main light is out. At least they did in some version. Maybe that was fixed still later and I should check again...

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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We can at least break this into stages on paper...

 

We've got a list of 40 textures and 15 sounds.

 

Please note that this list is highly incomplete. Also, some of them are much more important (the light textures mean a lot of particles and lights are simply black), while some of the assets (like the sounds) are almost never used.

 

I'll update the list as I clean up stuff, already removed a large swath of unused code and unused spawnargs today. But just creating "lights/brightround" etc would go a VERY long way to make maps playable.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Ok, but I still like the idea of packaging it as 5-piece sets.

 

I think people might be inspired to contribute if it were packaged right, just commit to 5 assets, and this is something the community absolutely has to take up, because the team itself can't do it. It's you guys helping us out or bust.

 

Edit: I'm not even thinking of it as entirely for the standalone version itself, but giving people a way to participate in the mod and feel some ownership over it, plus the idea that standalone means we're *really* making this our own and completely divorcing it from D3, which is a hangup some people seem to have with it almost ideologically...

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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It's not entirely free labour. Someone (me) has to be in charge of quality control to make sure replacement assets are 1) good enough quality and 2) similar enough to the original to avoid undesired consequences. For example, if someone remakes lights/biground and they change the size of the gradiant in the image, that's going to affect the appearance of every map.

 

I'm also rather at the mercy of the person submitting the "remake". If someone just renamed the D3 lights/biground image and offered it as a replacement, I'd have no way of knowing. I certainly don't have time to be doing side-by-side comparisons of every asset.

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What Springheel says. Apart from making the list, someone also needs to do the commiting and the testing afterwards.

 

I guess if someone really redos these assets, we will add them, but heh, sofar this important step seems to be missing all the time. In the time we discussed wether it should be done in 5er steps or whatever, someone could have redrawn one texture already. ;)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Cool, tels! Thanks! This helps to perceive the task before us.

 

The list does not seem to be entirely impossible to get done... I expected it to be much longer, so maybe there is indeed hope for untethered TDM.

 

Sure, the zombie model and animation is probably the huge one, but the majority of the stuff are just sounds and textures. Freesound.org could be mined for appropriate sound replacements, and we have people volunteers who have just recently made textures for fun here.

 

Maybe this list will direct people willing to play with sounds and textures towards the stuff we rally need. Maybe demand and supply will meet? Now we just need people having a stab at these issues. I certainly try to have a look at some of these once I get my WIP done.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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The list does not seem to be entirely impossible to get done... I expected it to be much longer, so maybe there is indeed hope for untethered TDM.

 

That list is nowhere near complete, as Tels said. I think it comes from just one map.

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It's not entirely free labour.

 

I understand. I wasn't trying to wave a magic wand over this.

My main point was just that the project could have another role in getting people involved in TDM and addressing the "ideology" thing.

And I still like the 5er idea, but maybe it's more like 50 sets instead of 11.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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That list is nowhere near complete, as Tels said. I think it comes from just one map.

 

Clearly I do not understand.

 

What does it mean it comes from just one map?

 

I assumed there was a simple way to just check which items TDM uses from the D3 assets? What stuff you need from the D3 packages so that you can graciously do everything in the darkmod folder in DR.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Sotha: There are two ways:

 

The hard way is either manually going through every of our 20000 assets (we really do have that many, we have over 2000 entity defs alone!) and definitions, or use the script that used to bundle things for a release. But the script isn't 100% reliable, either.

 

The easy one is to load a map and just record which warnings the console spits out. This is what I have done (and will do for a couple more maps).

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I've just updated the wiki article after trying a couple more missions:

 

* Heart and Alchemist: The good news is that the list doesn't grow that much, because most of the missing assets are used in every mission.

 

The bad news is that Fidcal seems to like to use a lot of D3 assets, and the really bad news is that these maps do not load because the AF files "env_skeleton" is missing. That is a rather important file... :(

 

* Mandrasola doesn't load because the Mage's projectile is inheriting from a D3 projetil and this is missing.

 

* NHAT 2/3 loads, but has black fog (and light textures are missing, too)

 

To me it seems most of the problems can be fixed by adding a few dozend key assets.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Wouldnt it be possible to get this list done and cut a deal with whoever owns these assets?

 

They are outdated and might not worth much to them now anyway, they may even realize that a succesful darkmod is a positive advert on the idtech4.

It's not like they earn much money nowadays by people buying Doom3 so they can play Tdm.

 

If there is a reasonable price you could try 'kickstarting' it.

Edited by _Atti_
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Can you really copyright such generic images as those made for the circular lights?

 

If so, there's virtually no solution for replacing those as any viable replacement would

be similarly generic. I guess you could make the image noisy???

 

The only clean break solution I could imagine would be to replace all the generic light

shapes with projection math in the shader?

 

So you'd have to add a vfp specifically for those types of lights...

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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The lights arn't very hard to do (most of them anyway). I'll do them this weekend.

 

I thought the idea was that the coders write code, not waste time to replace simply light textures. Not that I would complain if it was done, but getting f.i. EAX to work, or compress normals is something only you can do - the light textures can be done by someone else, too.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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my assumption is if the material uses different source images, and source image paths/names, it is good enough. besides, we are, or will be using all the junk for frobbing and ambient in all the shaders, new or old, so they are pretty different already.

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The first material shader in the list, fogs/basicfog only references a single image. The image in question, _fog is generated internally by the engine. The only component of the shader that could be changed is the addition removal of comments and that's just silly. I'm going to retype it and be done with it.

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so how is separating TDM from doom goin?

 

I'm off to buy a big juicy melon. Fleshy hit and squish sound effects will follow shortly.

 

I think Demagogue has a very good point here. Getting a bunch of replacement assets made up or found on the interwebs is one thing - but the opportunity to get some added value by using this process to do some outreach is another. Sticking a thread up appealing for help on this over on the TTLG FM forums (or somewhere even more exciting and dangerous) might bring in some new interest and help generate a sense that folk other than regulars here have something invested in TDM.

 

Scripts and models and materials are something I'm hopeless at, but I'd be very happy to baby-sit the making of sound effects.

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I'm off to buy a big juicy melon. Fleshy hit and squish sound effects will follow shortly.

Now that's what I call dedication! :D

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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