Leaderboard

These area's are not fully finished with optimization, but they are running quite fine with just basic visportaling for now. I've also adjusted the architecture to help with optimization. That way the the engine is not drawing anything past certain heavy areas with high density.

tHe bLAck MaGE If my recollection is correct, Grayman posted a few shots of this WIP (from the outside) back in 2017 or 2018. I've added one larger and two smaller new areas and decorated the remaining rooms similar to Grayman's style (that is, I tried to do so). Here a few shots from the rooms/areas in question: It took me ca. four weeks to finish all of this. Since most of the other essential tasks (efx, ambient sound) had already been set up by Grayman, I can already start with gameplay/puzzles, readables and dialogues. His text briefing will be translated (without changes!) into a briefing video with voice actors. Based on this introduction, I have created a number of (mostly manic) additional characters, all of which will appear in dialogues or via phonograms in the game. This mission will not be a sad bow to Grayman. On the contrary, building on his story abstract, the entire mission shall become a humorous experience, not too difficult to play, as everyone should have the opportunity to complete one of his last creations. I can only hope Grayman would have liked it.

It's been quite a while since I last posted. My work-flow is a bit sporadic. Map for 2 months straight Burn out Take a break for 6 months to a year Repeat Anyways, here is an updated video on some of my progress. I'm roughly 35% finished. I plan on pacing myself somewhat better this time around (I keep saying that and I keep on lying..). Short updated progress video below: The Unwelcome Guest - Work in Progress Vid Older video: The Unwelcome Guest - 2020

Thanks guys I am glad you like them! The plan is to do a campaign of about 6 or 7 missions. I have 1 more “big spawler” in the works, but generally Im trying to keep them a little smaller but more polished. My only real goal is to just not make the same mission twice, so probably wont do any more giant cave systems 3 and 4 are pretty close to being done and Ilm going to release them together, hopefully end of this year beginning of next year depending on my work schedule.

I think I can show off a little bit. One of the hallways in the mansion I'm working on. The panel textures at the bottom of the walls need to be aligned and there's still another door to go in, but this has been looking awful in DarkRadiant for so long that I'm feeling pretty pleased at how it's turning out. This level is (tentatively) called "A House Call", and is about breaking into the mansion of a famous but corrupt physician in search of the recipe to an antidote he's hoarding and selling for exorbitant prices.

More bragging! This is the entry hall to the mansion. I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out so far. Even on my potato computer and with multiple light sources the frame rate is still acceptable. Now I've just got to build the second storey and then I can populate the level with people, and get the objectives done. With luck I might have something beta testable in a month or so. Maybe I'll get that 2021 release done after all!

Hello all! It has been too long since a contest has been organized so this is an overdue proclamation. Part 1: The theme of this contest is "connections". This means that the mission must in someway relate to the story or characters of another existing TDM mission. For example, you could create a mission that creates a side story that connects a Thomas Porter series mission to a mission in the Penny Dreadful series. You could also create a mission that tells the story of what happened to a side character in a Thomas Porter mission before the events of a subsequent Thomas Porter mission. If you are the author of a mission series, you are free to create another entry in your existing series but are encouraged to somehow connect that new mission to a different author's series. If you are not the author of the series, it will be up to you to decide how strongly you describe or imply that your mission is connected to the series. Feel free to make branch stories of the main TDM campaign missions or be more adventurous and branch out from a unique gem like Blackgrove Manor. If you do intend to strongly associate your connected mission to a mission not created by the TDM team or Crucible Team, it may be best to reach out to the original author of the mission for approval or guidance. You are only free to create "official sequel" missions for a series if you either created that series or have approval from it's author. For example, should you decide to create a new Chronicles of Skullduggery mission and call it "COS 4: Sneaky Snacks" chances are that Bienie would not approve of this unofficial sequel and we could not host it or allow it to compete. It is safer if instead you create a mission that tells your own story but incorporates location names, characters, and story elements from an existing mission. Further, when incorporating these elements they should remain largely untouched. You can have your character discuss where Thomas Porter was going (etc) but you should not change Mr Porter's sexual orientation or conjure some story about his desire to quit his adventures to become a hot-air balloon operator. ( Unless the author Sotha approves of your fanciful divergent version of Mr Porter ) More "safe" ways to "connect" your mission to an existing mission: A story book (readable) that tells a fable version of what happened in a different mission. A character who hates the protagonist of a different mission for some reason. A character who has visited a town from another mission. The "connection" attribute will add to the "story score" and will be voted on. ( Ranging from 1 added perfect vote to 5 added perfect votes biasing the average. ) Part 2: 2.10 OPTIONAL Dev Build Bonuses To help promote the 2.10 beta process and encourage more testing, additional points will be added for using features from the latest TDM versions. This will be a risk \ reward scenario since cutting edge features may need to be changed or even removed by the final 2.10 release. We will work hard to ensure that features that are critical to the design of these missions are maintained and improved but we may not be able to guarantee 2.10 beta features will be considered stable for production. Mission authors are free to release a two versions of their mission ( 2.10 and 2.09, or 2.10 and 2.07 etc ) if they want to allow players who don't want to use TDM 2.10 beta ( Dev builds ) to play their mission. This isn't just a 2.10 initiative, you can see below that we are also awarding authors who use features from 2.07 to 2.09 as well. The newer the feature, the greater the reward. The reward for using a new 2.10 graphic or game-play feature will be 6 perfect votes added to your voting average. The reward for using a new 2.10 asset ( texture, model, sound, etc) will be 2 perfect votes added to your voting average. The reward for using a new 2.09 feature will be 5 perfect votes added to your voting average The reward for using a new 2.09 asset will be 2 perfect vote added to your voting average The reward for using a new 2.08 feature will be 4 perfect votes added to your voting average The reward for using a new 2.08 asset will be 2 perfect vote added to your voting average The reward for using a new 2.07 feature or asset will be 2 perfect votes added to your voting average These points will be averaged into either the graphics or game-play section of voting depending on what you add. I will attempt to identify what features are being used but will kindly ask that authors declare which features are being used in their submission thread. Standard Contest Scoring: Total Points = (gameplay * 3) + (Appearance * 2) + (Story \ Theme * 1) Max Possible = Total Votes * 5 (Outstanding) Category Score (%) = Category Points /Max Possible * 100 Total Score (%) = Total Points /Total Max Possible * 100 The vote count was equal in all categories for everyone so: TotalMaxPointsPoss (TMP) = AllCategoryVotecount(ACV) * 30 Full Weighted Score (FWS) = (Gamescore*3 + Visualscore*2 + Storyscore) / TMP Pre-existing maps: The contest will be for newly created missions. Authors can use modular assets and prefabs and limited pre-made map sections. If you wish to use an existing WIP mission, you will need to declare this in your release thread and other participants will need to agree that your mission should be allowed to compete. Otherwise, if multiple authors with WIP missions decide to join we can create a separate scoring for those missions. The submission deadline will be Christmas Day ( but we can extend the deadline if all participants agree to the request. )

This is one of two stand-alone WIPs Grayman could not complete anymore. He asked his son to donate both WIPs to our Abandoned WIPs thread. Bikerdude is working on the other one called "Seeking Lady Leicester".

Removed the feature in svn revs 9587 and 16353.

Just to emphasise the new prefabs by Wellingtoncrab: This pack has of course been added to the core assets for 2.10 and will be available with the next dev build. Note that players on pre-2.10 builds won't have these assets, so it might be a good idea to keep the above pack in your FM archive. Otherwise you can make your FM 2.10-dependent by adding this line to your darkmod.txt: Required TDM Version: 2.10 P.S.: now wardrobe1 is next

The classic Jagged Alliance is free on Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/283270/Jagged_Alliance_1_Gold_Edition/

DarkRadiant 2.13.0 is ready for download. A lot of fixes and improvements made it into this release. Several point files can be selected for display now. DarkRadiant is now capable of comparing maps, both in differential A vs. B comparisons as well as three-way merge scenarios (when both maps share the same ancestor). Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/2.13.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks go out to all who helped testing this release! Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. Changes since 2.12.0 Feature: Ability to choose from several different pointfiles Feature: Aspect ratio preserving Fit Texture option Feature: ModelSelector: add ability to rescan folders without having to reload all models Feature: Add "Show Material Definition" to ShaderSelector tree views Feature: Paste material-header to surface from clipboard with hotkey. Feature: A way to display editor_usage in the Entity Inspector window Feature: Selection by coords Feature: Three-Way and Differential Map Merge Feature: Map Comparison/Diffing Feature: Git Version Control Integration Plugin Improvement: Show axis when 'R'otating entities Improvement: Improve workflow for adjusting light brightnesses Improvement: Map Loading Performance Improvements Improvement: Refresh entity inspector when reloading defs Improvement: Increase maximum zoom level of 2D views Improvement: "Choose entity..." button for all def_ spawnargs Improvement: CTRL + MMB in orthoview: place camera at height of most recent selection Improvement: Added Documentation for Layer Script Interface Improvement: "Shift textures randomly" shifts all selected faces by the same amount Fixed: Problems with particle preview obstructing the view Fixed: Cannot view or copy from built-in Filters Fixed: Auto-save is slow when animation or particle viewer is playing Fixed: Non uniform light volume scaling not working Fixed: BC5 normal maps cannot be loaded Fixed: Copying a particle in the Particle Editor creates an ___editor list entry which can lead to crashes Fixed: Create Entity window no longer remembers the previous item Fixed: Model exporter: no model is exported if folder path doesn't exist yet Fixed: Non power of 2 textures show up black in Fixed: 'Change game/project' fails to save if a decent-sized .map was loaded Fixed: Reload Defs is messing up the entityDefs Fixed: Crash when using Reloading Defs after placing an Entity Fixed: Entity & Speaker windows don't remember their size Fixed: Restore non-uniform scaling for texture browser. Fixed: Some ASE models do not load Fixed: Prefabs importing miles away Fixed: Path entites rotate 15 degrees, each time when dragged. Fixed: Crash when activating GameConnection Feature "update entities on every change" Fixed: Model previewer not displaying ASE or LWO models Fixed: Crash when selecting an MD5 model in "Create Model..." menu Fixed: Crash when activating the Material Editor in Doom3 game config The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Have fun mapping!

Yes, tracking all the things you work on into online forms is a tedious task that nobody likes, if not outright hates, myself included. Feels like needless bureaucracy invented by control freaks, and as such it feels like my natural enemy... but the only thing more tedious is to skim through dozens or hundreds of git commit messages to gather everything that's been changed in between releases, that's why I do it. And it's admittedly a nice feeling when you get to scratch something off a list when you're done.

I've disabled the ranks feature for the moment being. If more people disapprove I'll consider re-enabling it again, I don't have a strong opinion on that one.

Just want to mention some "old", but nice, stuff on internet archive. Are there any other things on this site, that you want us to see? Play old games in your browser: ms dos https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games Amiga https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_amiga?tab=collection Arcade: https://archive.org/details/internetarcade Nice stuff, like documents and files (especially the objects that are marked with a green floppy disk-icon ) https://archive.org/search.php?query=thief https://archive.org/search.php?query=doom 3

My three cents: 1. Volta 2 is a masterpiece for me. 2. I love the complexity, the atmosphere is fantastic and thus the mission deserves the attribute "TLE" (=Thief-Like-Experience) 3. I hope that your next missions will be similar in size, complexity and atmosphere!

Speaking of the sound of opening a door, what annoys me much more is that the exact same sound is used for opening wooden chests! These should be different sounds.

I'm not sure if that's a best example, but I was trying to stress the physics system a bit. I'm using moveable ball models, all having that 16-polygon CM above. Just for fun I gave them friction 0 and bouncyness 1, to make physics work harder than usual. And I was able to get to 150 balls without going below 60fps: Given that this is a synthetic test, and in typical situations you won't need more than, let's say, 10 objects interacting with each other simultaneously, it seems to me that those limits could be raised like ten times, and it shouldn't hurt the performance.

I generally prefer small to medium missions anyway. Give me an hour-long mansion heist any day of the week. They're the missions I like to play, so they're the ones I'll make

I'm not frustrated, I am not emotionally attached to the feature in any way. It was an idea that was suggested to check out, and I did. Learned some things in the process, it's all good But I'm strongly opposed to leaving a broken feature in the game. We already have enough obscure features that are prone to break because they are not commonly used. If the feature isn't suitable for widespread adoption, then it's better to remove it and keep the code base clean and maintainable. How much time I did or didn't spend on the feature doesn't matter - that'd be a sunken cost fallacy.

Keep at it, don't bite off more than you can chew though!!!! 90% of all mission authors give up after a short time because the project seems insurmountable. It's why the A-Z guide focuses on such a small little mission, it's complete-able in a reasonable amount of time.

The old SEED code was very vulgar with directories and extensions. It was basically looking in dozens of places and checking dozens of extensions. I have removed all that garbage, now seed maps are loaded from "textures/seed/{map}.png". So you need to: Convert your texture to PNG Put it to textures/seed instead of textures/darkmod/seed Reference it as "map" "lines" without any additional directories listed

Just a quick comparison screenshot. Currently working on the clock tower. Note: Fps should be 144 +- once I visportal properly. I'm running this on an Alienware i9 32gb w/2080, so mileage may vary..

dev16350-9577 is now available.

Thank you for the kind words! Both Act 3 and Act 4 are quite far along in development and under the current schedule will be released very close together. As for when they drop well it's hard to say as everytime I give out ETA dates I always tend to miss them!

Having a larger community comes with downsides of course. There is no guarantee that TDM would end up with a high rating on Steam, given the quality of feedback and comments that you often see on there. i downloded this game it only has 3 misions wtf lol u guys are stoopid!!!!! DoEsN'T WoRK On WInDOW XP The player is far too weak and the weapons don't do any damage. I can't even win a 1-v-1 with a single enemy. Uninstalling this junk. no proper campaign all the missions are completely different you people need to improve your quality control The graphics look the same as the original Thief game. when are the graphics going to be improved? [someone actually posted that on our forum] You should have warned me this mission was crap so I wouldn't waste my time playing it [someone posted that too]

I don't know about approval, but it would definitely give me a good chuckle! Exciting that there is a new contest out, haven't had one of these in a long time! I like the theme of connecting storylines too. We'll see if I have time to participate, been rather quiet from me lately unfortunately, but I am well on my way creating a prequel to the CoS trilogy. If all goes smoothly with that perhaps I will have time to flesh out an unreleased 3-mini mission campaign I've put on the shelf for this contest, but I would definitely have to put my nose to the proverbial grindstone to make the deadline.

Project Exhibited (a little TDM clone) A thrilling first-person action-stealth game. Play as Dana, the inventor thief, and use your gadgets to fulfill your task; retrieving a special artifact from a private art collection in a mysterious palazzo. Guardians (!!good AI!!) can be knocked out using an electric glove, although here they wake up after a short time. -Very nice mission, good Graphics, but only this one, good for ~30min immersive gameplay. May serve as inspiration for TDM missions. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1181640/Project_Exhibited/ Min OS: Windows 7 Processor: Intel Core i5 Memory: 2 GB de RAM Gráficos: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 DirectX: Version 11 HD: 6 GB free

Play the classic Quake right now in your Browser https://quake1.ru

Yes! Plugging the leaks fixed the issues on all maps! I knew I was missing something simple. I just wasn't sure how to approach the problem since the issues seemed extremely random to me. Thank you!

Titan Quest is now free on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/475150/Titan_Quest_Anniversary_Edition/?curator_clanid=33006853

I most certainly will not be giving up on Venice. I've put too much time in it to give up.

Ah yes, well I had to cancel my Indian like bots subscription because of this feature.

Currently the components that make up a LOD-enabled model are usually stored in various different places. Taking the aphrodite statue as an example: - The most detailed model stage is found in darkmod/decorative/statues. - All the other stages are found in darkmod/misc/lod, probably so that the decorative statues folder is less cluttered. - The LOD entity that makes use of all these stages is in a different menu altogether, Create Entity > LOD/decorative/statues. I've seen that a lot of the times, even though a LOD entity is available for a particular model, mappers just use the most detailed stage in a simple func_static, missing out completely on the LOD optimisation. I suppose this is because mappers mainly use the Model Chooser instead of the Entity Chooser for decorating the map and don't realise how the LOD system works/forget to check every time whether a LOD entity exists for any of the models they create. Some possible ways to address this: - Let the Model Chooser check whether there's a LOD entity that makes use of a model the mapper is about to create. If yes, it could create that entity instead of a func_static. - Wellingtoncrab suggested an overhaul by combining the Entity Chooser and Model Chooser into an integrated asset chooser which could show flags for certain models, i.e. LOD. This would also make it easier at a glance to see what's available.

I will be referencing this a lot, thanks for the info! I didn't even think about checking for brush textures! The No-Draw Carpet brush was exactly what I needed ^ ^ After sleeving all the stairs in brushes for around 45 min, this idea dawned on me...and then I saw your response. I should have double checked all the responses Dx Thank you all very much for the feedback, this was all exactly what I needed and more ^ ^

From my perspective it should only remove savegames - at the moment I can't think of any more files with significant weight that can be safely removed. Maybe previous devs had a reason to delete more files, but tbh it doesn't really seem thought through. The purpose of this button seems to be to reset the FM folder to the state as if a player had just downloaded the .pk4, ignoring the possibility that it could be a WIP FM. Tbh if it only removes savegames the feature could just as well be removed, since I don't think their file size matters anymore - the GUI would be a little bit cleaner. I don't think we've had problems with bloated savegames for a long time.

Yeah, when I'm wearing sneakers tile floors are actually the quietest. Then carpeted floors, and wood is the loudest. I'm not sure why Garrett and Corbin and all the other master thieves insist on wearing tapdancing shoes wherever they go.

If it were just personal visual preferences, sure. But if it being on actually impedes mappers due to stuff being visible that shouldn't be, then making it optional does not in any way solve that problem. Therefore I consider the feature broken.

My personal experience matches what @AluminumHaste said. Eight years ago I tried to make my first mission a large one, got frustrated and gave up. Three years ago I tried again, but this time started small. I finished it, and have done a couple more since, with another in the works.

It's one of those things that appears to be simple to do, but really isn't. At the end of the day, there are really only two ways to do it: Mark the highlight mesh in the stencil buffer, then draw an extruded version of the mesh, skipping any pixels marked in the stencil and thus producing the outline. Works with depth out of the box, but will typically produce a hard border, not a soft glow. However, creating the extruded mesh is not a trivial thing for any non-convex mesh. Might be that Unity has tools for this, but we don't, and spending the time to implement something like this for an effect that's already controversial, anyway, seems like a huge waste of effort. There are some techniques with geometry shaders that can be used here, but you still need to preprocess the mesh data for them to work. Do an image-based effect. Draw the object to a separate color buffer, then blur it to create a soft screen-space silhouette. Can then be applied to the original buffer, again using a stencil mask to cut away the insides of the object. This is what TDM currently does, it looks pretty decent and is relatively easy to do. However, it has no concept of depth, at all. I've tried some hackery on top to get it to respect depth, which is what r_frobIgnoreDepth 0 does, but it's not pretty. Might be able to do better, but that would eat more development time with uncertain outcome. In the end, the current implementation is what you can do in TDM with moderate effort. Anything better requires significantly more effort, and given the lukewarm reaction to the feature, I really don't think it's worth that development time.

OpenLara, OpenSource TombRaider, to play right now in your browser http://xproger.info/projects/OpenLara/

r_frobIgnoreDepth 0 isn't a good idea for a default setting. As stated before, it's a rather expensive hack, and it can produce visual artifacts (of the kind where the outline is partially leaking into depth-occluded territory) that are not fixable. If the outline is so controversial, better to remove it entirely than enable it with that hack.

I have been bothered by the overly clear water effect in many TDM missions including this one. I have attached two modified material files: tdm_water.mtr tdm_sfx.mtr A water with a blend filter stage and the particle vfx material set to "sort last" so that lamp glares will render over the top of it. Add these to a materials sub-folder in your volta fm folder to try them out.

A great time to switch to Linux. Just play games that work with Linux or Valve/Steam's Proton. Which should be many more of them in the near future if Valve is serious about the Steam Deck.

Note that: We don't know yet if it is "better" in terms of quality. Everyone is encouraged to test Any OpenGL driver developer has tons of features to implement, myriads of formats and corner cases. Given that usually game developers precompress their textures, driver developers have little incentive to write optimized code for every format. I thought about doing the same for usual textures (i.e. write DXT1 compressor). It won't be hard to write a fast compressor, but I think quality difference will be really visible. RGTC has very good quality by itself: it has only 2:1 compression ratio. DXT1 has 6:1 compression ratio --- that's a lot more information lost!

Uploaded new version of tdm_installer. As the result of my vacation experience, the new installer should be more stable on a bad network. Previously, installer always downloaded a file within pk4 archive completely in one request. The new build can split this file into smaller chunks and download it chunk-by-chunk. This should help if network gives timeouts constantly. For a few users who used to get error "Repeated timeout on URL xxx", the new version should work fine.

Devin

The latest hotfix has now been committed to the mission database. It should show as a new mission update.

Ha, this sounds like my workflow! But looking good though! Keep up the great work

Release Candidate 1 of Away 0: Stolen Heart is available for testing here. Now with a new loading screen...