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New to The Dark Mod. Some issues. Awesome mod!


Wenex

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Hello!

 

I'm pretty new to The Dark Mod. Been playing Thief 2 FMs like 3-4 years ago and after I tried TDM few days ago I fell in love with the series again :D

 

So far I finished Requiem, entire Talbot series, William Steele 1 and few others. I quite enjoyed the new game mechanics. Especially the movement. It feels like you can climb on anything you want! Which in some FMs comes in handy. While so far it's been great experience I have encountered some issues/annoyances. I would appreciate any help or answers on those things.

 

1. First and the biggest so far. I seem to stutter/drop fps in the locations with a lot of lightning. I can feel though that it isn't an ordinary frame drop, but something to do with the game engine or lighting settings. Like it's incompatible or something. It's kind of odd for a such old engine to run that bad on the nowadays gaming machines.

 

A very first example when I encountered the stutter was when you enter the "Stealth and Shadows" doors in tutorial mission. After you enter, you end up in a small open space with two lanterns and another doors leading to a guy who sits on chair and you are supposed to sneak past. In this area I dropped from 60 to 40 frames and sttutering was noticeable. Second example, at the end of Requiem where you solve the last puzzle. This room made my game stutter as well. I was wondering if this is some known issue with fix, or if I am forced to deal with it.

 

I have already take any advices from the "performance" wiki. I added all the commands to darkmod config that were listed there. And I lowered all graphic settings I possibly could. The stutter still existed.

 

2. Combat is one of my least favourite parts of Thief. Even if it was "improved" in the TDM, I stil l dislike it. The normal combat difficulty feels like a most difficult one... I'm quiet scared to think how Master works. Why does normal isn't normal? Enemies are health sponges and I usually die in 3 hits. The parrying mechanics seems to be broken at times. What I really appreciate about Thief is lore and stealing. Not the combat. So I wanted to ask if there's anyway to make combat even more easier with some commands?

 

3. Guards. Why does guards stay alerted (with sword) until the end of the map, if they once see you? It makes it impossible to stun them with Blackjack if you alert them once. Meaning that unless you reload save, you can never deal with them in a sneaking way. I literally had one situation when I alerted guards early on the mission, only to encounter them second time after coming back to finish the mission. They still had their swords pulled out and it was 2 real time hours later <_<

 

4. Picking up stuff from stunned/dead bodies. It's a pretty annoying one. If the body lies on a back, then you need to guess if they have anything there. Which means, you need to pick the body up and release it, so it will fell on belly. And the chances of it seems to be random. One time it will fell on back and one time on belly. It's time consuming process, which I am personally not a really big fan off. I would much prefer to these stuff be picked, when you pick up the body by interacting with it. I believe it worked that way in Thief 2. Didn't it?

 

5. Health potions heal only 25% of health? It's not a big issue, but it seems like potions are scarce in every mission when you take into consideration the amount of time you fall and take damage from enemies. If you are lucky to get alive from fight (on normal difficulty), you need at least 3 to get back up to 100%. Still not a big one, only my observation.

 

I think that's all that really boggled my mind through my experience with Dark Mod. I really loved the FMs I have played and I'm looking forward to play more. Especially William Steele! Really great first mission. I loved the detailed maps of the mansion and crypt. :wub:

 

And mainly I have enjoyed The Dark Mod. It's really cool that communities are connecting together to bring old games to life. Shame I wasn't there in 98... well I was only 1 year old back then :laugh: So glad The Dark Mod is a thing and that people are playing it right now. I hope it continues into eternity!

 

Cheers

~Lukas

Edited by Wenex
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Please also post your Darkmod.cfg

 

In addition, please confirm whether you are forcing any quality settings on in your Driver.

 

 

My config: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B154Q76oKaCJNkJLbUhYSXdBTVk/view?usp=sharing

I'm not forcing any quality through Nvidia settings.

 

What about my other 4 points though? Any help on that?

Edited by Wenex
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For picking up stuff from bodies, pretty sure if you un-shoulder a body with the use key (U) it will always flip the body.

 

Thought it was random if it flips or not. Thanks!

 

Still it seems to be really hard to pick up stuff from bodies, even if you can see them. Sometimes it will highlight body instead of the thing you want to pickup. I believe in Thief 2, if you would pickup body, the loot and arrows were picked automatically. Not the case in TDM.

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2. Combat is one of my least favourite parts of Thief. Even if it was "improved" in the TDM, I stil l dislike it. The normal combat difficulty feels like a most difficult one... I'm quiet scared to think how Master works. Why does normal isn't normal? Enemies are health sponges and I usually die in 3 hits. The parrying mechanics seems to be broken at times. What I really appreciate about Thief is lore and stealing. Not the combat. So I wanted to ask if there's anyway to make combat even more easier with some commands?

 

 

3. Guards. Why does guards stay alerted (with sword) until the end of the map, if they once see you? It makes it impossible to stun them with Blackjack if you alert them once. Meaning that unless you reload save, you can never deal with them in a sneaking way. I literally had one situation when I alerted guards early on the mission, only to encounter them second time after coming back to finish the mission. They still had their swords pulled out and it was 2 real time hours later <_<

2. Combat is supposed to be difficult. There's definitely a learning curve. Remember that armour protects against damage(try to hit where they aren't wearing anything), and you can't parry until they actually start swinging.

 

3. They stay alerted because it's not very believable for them to forget they saw an intruder. You can still knock out guards that don't have helmets even if they have their sword out, you just have to do it from behind.

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A very first example when I encountered the stutter was when you enter the "Climb and Movement" doors in tutorial mission. After you enter, you end up in a small open space with two lanterns and another doors leading to a guy who sits on chair and you are supposed to sneak past. In this area I dropped from 60 to 40 frames and sttutering was noticeable. Second example, at the end of Requiem where you solve the last puzzle. This room made my game stutter as well. I was wondering if this is some known issue with fix, or if I am forced to deal with it.

  • i5 4460 3,2 GHz 4 cores
  • GeForce GTX 960 Windforce 4 GB
  • 8 GB of ram
  • Windows 10 64 bit

The team and mapper constantly push what the engine can do, and after looking at your system specs it sounds like what your see is what happens to most players. The drawcall count in the location has gotten high enough to cause an fps drop. various things can cause that from too many lights hitting the same surface to too many particles in a scene at the same time or sub-par visportaling.

 

You havent mention what your in-game settings were set too, having hi AA will impact FPS. I would also suggest that you make sure in the nvidia control panel>3D settings>program settings>The Darkmod>power managment mode - that you could try setting that to 'prefer maximum performance'

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The team and mapper constantly push what the engine can do, and after looking at your system specs it sounds like what your see is what happens to most players. The drawcall count in the location has gotten high enough to cause an fps drop. various things can cause that from too many lights hitting the same surface to too many particles in a scene at the same time or sub-par visportaling.

 

So I understand that this is something that Dark Mod creators are working to optimize? Or is it a FM creators fault that such fps drops happens?

 

 

You havent mention what your in-game settings were set too, having hi AA will impact FPS. I would also suggest that you make sure in the nvidia control panel>3D settings>program settings>The Darkmod>power managment mode - that you could try setting that to 'prefer maximum performance'

 

I mentioned in OP that I have tried with the lowest possible in-game settings and the game dropped the same frames in same places. From 60 to 40. I always have set "prefer maxiumum performance" for all of my games. The Nvidia settings have nothing to do with it. At this point, I'm sure it's an engine fault. There's no way such setup could have issue with running this mod. Especially in the tutorial area with those two lanterns.

Edited by Wenex
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So I understand that this is something that Dark Mod creators are working to optimize? Or is it a FM creators fault that such fps drops happens?

Partly the limitation of the IDtech4 engine because we are doing stuff with it was never originally designed to do and partly mappers not know how to optimise their maps - which is why i do so much of that for a lot of the maps that have been released.

 

Got a screenshot of the exact location the FPS drop poccurse so I can see if the DC in that scene and viewpoint is high..

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Got a screenshot of the exact location the FPS drop poccurse so I can see if the DC in that scene and viewpoint is high..

 

So that's pretty weird. I remember this location to drop frames when I first started the game and went there - only when I was looking on the lanterns like on the screenshot. Otherwise it was 60 fps. I even remember going there once again with different in-game settings and it was still dropping from 60 fps to 40 fps, overall stuttering.

 

This time though I visited it and none frames dropped based on Fraps. I didn't changed any settings. Could it be potentially the map loading fault then? Well at the very least I hope it won't affect me anymore.

 

This is the screenshot of it. It's the the Stealth and Shadows "hallway" just before the book and the guy:

 

48JSVGU.jpg

Edited by Wenex
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Ok something is very wrong with your setup, as the DC in the location is extremely low (450) and there are only two lights in that location. Your FPS should never never drop in that location from any direction

 

It has been reported by some users (me included) that fraps causes FPS drop. And its not required as TDM has a built in FPS counter, just bring down the console by holding down the (ctrl-alt-`) keys and then type ' com_showfps 1'

 

If you like I can remote onto your PC and have a look at your setup for you, drop me a PM if required.

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For combat, I'm ok turning on auto-parry, which picks the right direction once you push parry, especially on my laptop since the mousepad isn't great for quick reaction movements, nor my brain for that matter. The straight-ahead thrust is the attack that most successfully hits on average I think.

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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Based on your specs I would hazard that the most likely culprit is EAX.

 

seta s_useEAXReverb "1"

 

Goldwell's EAX hack might help with that if you haven't already installed it.

 

Still, I would suggest disabling EAX as a trouble-shooting step. If you do have Goldwell's EAX fix

and don't wanna live without it, you can try forcing 22khz and you shouldn't hear much quality loss:

seta s_force22kHz "1"

Beyond the above, I will suggest the following:

 

seta image_anisotropy "8"

 

lower AF to 8x

 

seta tdm_lg_split "1"

 

(This should probably be default for everyone now.)

 

Finally, see if setting:

 

seta tdm_lg_interleave "2"

 

offers any improvement after the above changes.

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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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Also another FPS fix is to try restarting the game. While I've been playing I've had 40-50 fps that dips, I'll restart the game and that exact same area is sitting on the 60 fps cap with no drop.

 

I don't know why it does that but I do know restarting the game helps.

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Ok something is very wrong with your setup, as the DC in the location is extremely low (450) and there are only two lights in that location. Your FPS should never never drop in that location from any direction

 

Yet it dropped when I very first visited it. What do you mean it's my setup? That i5 and GTX 960 can't run two lights? lol. It's obviously a game fault. Engine or maybe loading.

Maybe I was unclear about the issue. I can run the game smooth 60 fps in all missions. The only time it dropped was the tutorial (screenshot), the Requiem room with last puzzle and in some other FM with a lot of lights and open area.

 

I don't have any static fps issues with the game right now.

 

Goldwell: Yeah, that's what I thought. Like it might be game startup or map loading issue. Some memory leak or some kind.

Edited by Wenex
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Based on your specs I would hazard that the most likely culprit is EAX.

 

seta s_useEAXReverb "1"

 

Goldwell's EAX hack might help with that if you haven't already installed it.

 

Still, I would suggest disabling EAX as a trouble-shooting step. If you do have Goldwell's EAX fix

and don't wanna live without it, you can try forcing 22khz and you shouldn't hear much quality loss:

seta s_force22kHz "1"

Beyond the above, I will suggest the following:

 

seta image_anisotropy "8"

 

lower AF to 8x

 

seta tdm_lg_split "1"

 

(This should probably be default for everyone now.)

 

Finally, see if setting:

 

seta tdm_lg_interleave "2"

 

offers any improvement after the above changes.

 

Thanks for info, but all the stutters I experienced before were prior I installed and used Eax fix. I installed it just a day ago and played William Steele 1 with it so far - no issues.

Edited by Wenex
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I've also had issues where the game will run poorly and restarting seems to fix it. However it's so random and rare that I never remember to try and figure out why it's happening.

Only other thing I could suggest is to play TDM with Vertical Sync off.

 

EDIT: Also, for Combat, Autoparry is a life saver.

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I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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EDIT: Also, for Combat, Autoparry is a life saver.

 

I've been playing for three years now and never knew about that haha, learn something new everyday! :)

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