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Background Eastbound is a FM created for the Christmas Connections contest. Although it was not ready in time to meet the contest deadline, its original inspiration is still present. This FM will be the first in a series following the Thieves' Guild member and protagonist Samuel Wilson in the events following a heist gone wrong. What will now be the second mission in the series was already nearing beta testing when the contest was announced (and it already featured a few "connections" of its own), so this presented an opportunity to fill in the backstory even more. Credits The TDM core team for all the hard work they do creating all the features, assets, scripts, and tools that we can all use in our FMs YOH and others for the custom sounds Everything else within the FM was created by me or modified from either stock or CC0 assets Special thanks to nbohr1more for organizing the contest Special thanks to thebigh and Wellingtoncrab for their valuable feedback during alpha testing All the beta testers, whose efforts led to many fixes, playability improvements, and general polish: Acolytesix, Cambridge Spy, datiswous, nbohr1more, prjames, thebigh, Shadow, Wellingtoncrab, wesp5 Technical stuff This FM requires TDM 2.10 or newer as it makes use of some of the latest features. The mission will look its best if you have shadow maps enabled instead of stencil shadows (Settings / Video / Advanced, Shadows Implementation = Maps). The mission will sound its best if you have EFX enabled (Settings / Audio, OpenAL EFX = On). Screenshots

Thought I'd share what I've been working on lately. While my mapping days are behind me, TDM still is still an inspiration for many of the fantasy illustrations I do in my free time. Here's a few that should look somewhat familiar:

Happy to oblige, here's a little description:

There is this euphoric moment, when you've spent over two hours doing skybox brushwork, expanding it more and more to engulf one building after another, having it fit perfectly against every detail of every trim of their far facades (since they're not yet detail entities), sneaking into a slim crevice of together-blending, neon-blinding caulk, to find a slim 4 unit wide gap which you almost missed, and after looking at this huge puzzle of brushwork, in which you hope not a single brush overlaps another, but all touch edge to edge, and corner to corner, you going into The Dark Mod, and you type "dmap", and it compiles without a single leak on the first try. That's such a huge sigh of relief, and such an assurance of your craftsmanship.

Have you guys ever noticed this English gentleman? https://piped.kavin.rocks/channel/UCSqIEwL7Olwd_krFWhEsTIg He has done plenty of Dark Mod mission playthroughs. I checked several of his walkthroughs the past few weeks and I have the impression he is playing the missions thoroughly and very, very slowly - to clarify: he's playing TLC from my HH series right now and towards the end the session already has 10 (!) videos of 40-60 (!!) minutes each....but then again I recall that before beta I myself estimated a playing time of five to seven hours, so... Anyway, he also played my favorite DM mission The Accountant 2 sometime ago - I will definitely watch all related videos in the next days as I have the feeling that it will be quite interesting because of the level design. So if you're looking for playthroughs where the player really sneaks through the mission and suspects the end (or something even worse) behind every wall, then you've come to the right place.

It's also copyright infringement by anyone who uses that code in their own game. Copyright doesn't magically vanish the moment the first person who leaked the code is caught and punished. Copyright follows the code/image/text/movie wherever it goes, and if you use that content in your own work without permission, you have made a derived work which is copyright infringing. You're saying that most games are based on illegally leaked code? I don't know what you're smoking, but I suggest you cut down on it. Making a work which is "similar" has nothing to do with it. Copyright applies to specific texts: code, images, movies, blog posts etc. It does not apply to generic "ideas", which is why anyone can make a first person shooter, or an anime series about heroes saving the world, or a story about a teenage wizard (as long as he's not called Harry Potter). If the company doesn't exist anymore and the rights to the IP were not sold or passed on to anyone else, then you have an "orphan work" which (depending on legal jurisdiction) may be covered by special rules. But in game development this is a rare situation, because if the studio who made the game is shut down, the rights to the game will pass to the publisher, or whoever else buys the original studio's assets. Companies don't usually disappear into thin air, they get bought out by someone else, or their assets sold off in bankruptcy proceedings. So it would be very unwise to assume that a particular leaked codebase is an orphaned work just because the original company which made the game doesn't exist anymore.

Can't believe nobody mentioned yet that PREY is free on Epic right now. This game is absolutely incredible! Loved every bit of it! You can also grab Jotun on Epic, which is short and nice, but obviously nowhere near the quality of PREY.

If you ever wondered what a .proc file actually contained & why, there's now a wiki page page on it: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=PROC_File_Format It's a treatment of a complicated subject, so I can't guarantee I've got it 100% right. Just more right than anything else I've seen about it.

FYI, I finally got around to updating the VR mod to 2.10. Just follow the installation instructions: https://github.com/fholger/thedarkmodvr/wiki/Installation There are no new VR features. Development is currently on hold because I'm rather busy working on Half-Life 2 VR. I do want to return to TDM VR as soon as I have the time, though

You can make whatever you want. https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?internalName=swing1_2

I remember when the Blender limit was 19 characters. At least the developers of Blender have generously allowed us a whole 63 characters to play with, although why the hell anyone thinks it is acceptable to have hard-coded name length limits in 2022 is anyone's guess. The aforementioned "skin trick" was something I came up with as well: each model had a material name like "sk/my_model" which then used a skin to map the model surfaces onto the real textures. But this is only useful for models which have their own custom texture; it is not so convenient if you want the model to use a regular, arbitrary Dark Mod texture. I'll have to check the state of the import/export scripts. The custom property approach should certainly solve the problem and I'm sure it has been discussed before, but I don't recall if it actually made it into the code. Perhaps if it hasn't already been implemented, the time to do so is now, given that the 63-character limit is clearly causing problems for some people.

New pre6 release is available in the first post. The playerstart visibility is fixed, and I could finally resolve that bug causing the weirdly stretched geometry in the render views.

Another great addition to TDM. The names behind this one kinda gave away it was going to be a treat. As far as level design goes, this one's up there among some of my personal favorites. The snowy city ambience followed up by decaying underground libraries and crumbling halls was right up my alley. The first half is a tried and tested recipe for success - you can almost feel the cold as you explore the rather sizable portion of the city and break into various shops and apartments to take anything you fancy. It looks good, plays good, with plenty of verticality and some new mechanics thrown in. Speaking of which, I think the spectacles in particular really spice up what would have been a great mission even without them. The second half of the map is no less impressive and shows just how good the authors are at crafting interiors. For people like me who adore exploring forgotten places it is a true feast to the eyes. Pretty creepy too. You really nailed the 'ancient, crumbling' look. After knocking out and exterminating the inhabitants, I took my time to explore the whole place and adore the grand libraries.

Not just a cosmetic issue in fact — it would be better gameplay for a guard to stop and enter a "Huh?" state for a couple of seconds, giving the player a cue that he had been spotted and giving time to run away, rather than have the guard act as if nothing was wrong and then suddenly enter a combat state. Perhaps this could be solved fairly straightforwardly by setting different delays for the various levels of state transitions. I.e. transition from 0 (unalerted) to 1 (huh?) could be instant, but the further transition from 1 to 2 or more (actual attack) could be significantly longer.

More here: https://www.mindplaces.com/

Maybe this is just an attempt at trolling, but your mission would include everything I do not like about TDM, so good luck.

Why u no YouTube? Here we go https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSqIEwL7Olwd_krFWhEsTIg/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Boylag/videos

The wheels are grinding again for new Content!

In the basement of my map, ominous dark figures have gathered to conspire. They are called "The Skinless Ones" by those who have encountered them and lived to tell the tale. A year have they waited, for the Skin Dresser to once again return...

I think it comes down to the ability to tame a horse and its subsequent utility to humans. I remember a FM where a pagan had "spidey babies", it would be cool to see a mission where you played from that perspective. Anyways, I just didn't put much thought into what "team" the horses were on in my FM. The stated reason for no killing is to give you a clean getaway, so we'll just pretend that a dead body of any sort leaves clear evidence of misdeeds, whereas stolen goods are harder to investigate

Nevermind I was over thinking it. Just had to use a rope arrow in the proper place lol. Got all secrets and loot, great mission.

I sometimes wonder how much hearing/vision-impairment accessibility considerations factor into some of these choices.... Of course we all understand the main reasons developers (or rather their pay masters) cut corners like this or try to shoehorn in trendy features in their place. (E.g. using detective vision and awareness flags instead of audio cues as the primary way to track enemies' locations and awareness states.) Greed and ignorance are certainly the major driving forces here, not magnanimity and egalitarianism. But if you follow any current discussions about disability friendly game design, you will notice a trend that calls for the homogenizing of UX designs and removing any sensory skill checks imposed upon the player. It's hard not to see the move away from analog material noise and alarm barks in modern stealth games as an extension of this mentality. Personally I am in two minds about this. One the one hand, it is not nice to arbitrarily exclude people from experiences they would otherwise enjoy just because they can't see, or hear, or perform quick/dexterous control inputs, or orient themselves in simulated environments as well as other audience members. Indeed, I myself have advocated for improving accessibility options for players with motion sensitivity in TDM. But on the other hand it is equally unjust to keep people from accessing unique experiences or discovering stories that they would enjoy, just because other people exist who are not so fortunate. Thief and its progeny are fundamentally niche products. The demands they place on the player's skills of sight, hearing, and spatial orientation are the core of what make them appealing. They defy the idealistic motto that games should be for everyone, and that is just one more reason they have been pushed out of the mainstream market.

Yes! Written in Stone is/was one of the missions I am currently playing, and this was the conclusion I came to as well. I think the story (what I have found of it) even supports this course of action. These are clearly not happy people. Killing them is a mercy. However it seems I am just not good enough at combat to kill all the enemies with the resources I had collected to that point, so I ended up putting Written in Stone on the back burner in favor of other FMs. At some point I'll return to it and most likely finish it up using notarget. The world geometry itself is lovely and I want to take my time to admire it without having to worry about enemies. In terms of trying to diagnose what made the balance between exploration, puzzle solving, and enemy presence not work for me in this mission I'd draw a comparison to Iris and Hazard Pay, which presented similar challenges for exploration and puzzles but did not make me want to genocide the entire map. The first useful thing they did was prominently signpost important locations for the player, often with actual sign posts in the game world, and in Iris's case with markers on the map. Secondly they provided lots of safe corridors (that were easy to find) for efficient traversal between key locations. These safe spaces also often included overlooks or vantage points with clear views of the hostile areas so they player can get an understanding of the layout and plan their next moves without time pressure. And lastly in places where the player does not have the benefit of signage, maps, or prior visual scouting, these FMs revert to a much more linear level design. (Like a vine with side branches, instead of a spider's web or tree like labyrinth.) Now that I think of it, a lot of my most favorite TDM FMs follow these rules: Requiem, William Steel In the North and Home Again, Volta 1 and 2... That's not to say I think being lost or needing to make your own safety (Rambo style) have no place in TDM. (Perversely, Down in the Bonehoard has become my favorite T:TDP mission, and it breaks almost all these rules at various points.) But in those cases where being lost or ultra-violent is the intent, I believe the change in playstyle should be supported by tailored story beats and a generous equipment loadout.

My first map (way back as a wad file for original Doom 3) was of my basement. I had a demon popping out of my refrig. So yeah, there's a tradition to map what's close at hand. Vids are great, but it's hard to use them as a reference, to try to remember where you saw a particular problem solved. A general Google vid search (relying on YouTube's automatic speech to text transcripts) I don't find too effective. For written content about DR mapping, some reasonable starting points are the Dark Radiant user manual and Fidcal's A to Z Beginners Guide, https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_-_Z_Beginner_Full_Guide_Start_Here!. I'm doing my 2-cents here and there on the wiki too. The writing continues!

That part in the Sword blew my mind. We did a very small section like that in Snowed Inn and there is something similar in TPW but nothing thats full on a little big world mission afaik. Also agree that we don't have enough trickster-ish levels and exotic locations. There might be a couple levels on the horizon to fix that

Holy cow, everything they said about this mission is true! I've only just managed to get to the other side of the wall and I'm already thinking about starting another playthrough in order to keep exploring more of the starting area! You really have created something amazing here. I'm so glad to hear you are planning to make make more content for TDM. You really have shown you have a profound talent with this mission, and not just because of its size. In terms of interconnectedness, navigable verticality, variety, and verisimilitude I think this might be the absolute best free-roaming level I have ever encountered in any 3D game. Period. (Previously I split that honor between TDM's Sir Talbot's Collateral, and Metroid Prime's Chozo Ruins.) Personally I think there is so much you could do here even if you limited yourself to just reconfiguring areas and objectives within this one map. I believe Goldwell is onto something with the idea in Shadows of Northdale of a reusable hub area that would form a setting for multiple missions; but this is the very first TDM map that I feel one could easily use to do that--without any major alterations or creative compromises. I mean, even as I've been exploring the decrepit tenements, haughty mansions, and brutal fortresses of Red Rook and reading about its sad history, I cannot help but imagine another story: A district in strict lockdown and quarantine against the remnants of a zombie plague. A murderous authority more interested in preserving its own veneer of power than protecting its subjects. An innocent populous walking the knife edge between rebellion and starvation. Then a downtrodden thief comes across a certain piece of incriminating evidence, and they must deliver it into the right hands to end the madness and bring the villains to justice! (Maybe the allusion to recent events in certain corners of the world is a little crude, perhaps even offensive some might protest, but I would play the hell out of that mission. We need power fantasies in these dark times.) Anyway, before I jump back in, I'll leave a bug report for you on the off chance that it may be useful: I too have run into the problem of the level crashing to desktop whenever I try to drop an item from out of my inventory. I have a personal rule that I must drop a health potion any time I reload from a save. (It keeps me from save scumming.) There were no problems the first 2 potions I discarded, but now it has started crashing whenever I try to drop that particular item. I think this was after about 3-4 hours of play time, incase that is significant. Luckily for most players I'm sure this will not be an issue, but for me it is a bummer.

Okay, when I started to play this mission, I had no expectations whatsoever. To say my mind was blown off is understatement of abysmal proportions - this was fucking awesome! Right from the opening intro, the nostalgic and bitter atmosphere permeates through and I did felt like I was playing Disco Elysium all over again for a while - it was bitter and made you think, but you couldn´t stop. It was only after first few hours I had to look and found out this was a winner of a contest - and deservedly so. From the masterful leveldesign - man, where did you learned this??? To map so good? - I have read in your comments this is not your first map, rather your first released one, but you deserve all the praise for it - it easily can rival Goldwells, bikerdudes levels, etc... - I am talking that kind of quality. It´s quite vast, but more importantly full of details, various new objects that can be taken and slowly unfolding story as you progress - which is quite subtle, as you have to "connect the dots" between various readables and what you find or saw. And what an intricately created world! I loved the fact there was a historic explanation of all the various cramped buildings and materials they are made of. When I mention readables - they are tastefully written (hats off to all the people writing and perfecting this) - what I saw here, is Golden Grail of well written readables in Thief/Darkmod missions. There is so many other things I would like to write about, but I have to run to my training, so I have only one plea: please, make more. Make many more and welcome amongst Taffers! PS: And few questions at the end:

dev16487-9919 is public. At the very least, the Linux crash should be fixed there.

I read a post under Tech Support about making an option for "toggle crouch" to happen on "key press" rather than "key release". I've added "toggle crouch", which works like Thief, to my build. That is "toggle crouch" on key press. I've been playing that way since the end of March. It's not as simple as changing it to "toggle crouch" on key press, because ladders and ropes need to be carefully considered. I'd imagine there may be differing opinions about how to handle those scenarios. I made it work as similar to New Dark as I could. I've changed the code in my build to always work that way. In the Tech Support post, there was a request for an option to choose between new and old "toggle crouch" behavior, so I'll have to add that functionality to my patch. How shall I prepare my patch? Some things that I found that I needed to consider: When on a ladder/rope, what happens when "toggle crouch" is pressed? When detaching from a ladder/rope, what happens when "toggle crouch" is held down after a slide? When attaching to a ladder/rope, what happens to the crouch/stand position? When on a ladder/rope, does "toggle crouch" crouch/stand or slide? Here are the decisions that I made, which I hope is a good starting point for us to discuss what we all may want. Do NOT use crouch speed while climbing on a rope/ladder. (This is actually a separate issue / bug that I fixed.) While on a ladder/rope, "toggle crouch" behaves like regular crouch. While sliding, stay crouched until "toggle crouch" key is released. The player will stay crouched once detached from a ladder/rope and will stand (crouch off) on "toggle crouch" key release. When the player is crouched ("toggle crouch"), looking up, and moving up on a rope/ladder, change to standing position (crouch off). This makes it more likely for a player to be in a standing position after mantling from a rope/ladder. Note, on "looking up" is important, otherwise there would be a jarring, unexpected upwards movement on ladder/rope attachment when the player intends to go downwards. When the player is crouched ("toggle crouch"), attaches to a ladder, and is looking down, stay crouched. It may be difficult to imagine how this works. Feeling it while playing makes a big difference. Summary: I've been playing with my custom build since the end of March. Feels great. Feels like Thief/New Dark. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. How shall I prepare my patch? Cheers

HAZARD PAY 1.5 [ TDM 2.10 REQUIRED] AUTHOR'S NOTE ================================ Hello! Its been a while since I’ve released something so I figured I'd join the Connections Competition and make a stand-alone adventure to try out the new 2.10 features. ================================ DESCRIPTION ================================ This is a medium size mission with an emphasis on adventure and stealth combat. !!! WARNING !!! I recommend NORMAL if you're looking to cruise and HARD / EXPERT if you're looking to sweat a little. EXPERT uses a prototype save room mechanic and is very tough. ================================ PLAY IT ================================ Requires TDM 2.10 DOWNLOAD HAZARD 1.5 ================================ PLAYTHROUGH ================================ Courtesy of Filizitas Part 1 Part2 Part3 ================================ CREDITS: VOCALS courtesy of the very talented : Goldwell, Mortem Desino, and Yandros. TESTING by the diligent and awesome : Amadeus, Epifire, Goldwell, Mike_A, and Moonbo ADDITIONAL SCRIPTING provided by the very talented Dragofer ADDITIONAL AUDIO by the masterful Goldwell PLAYTHROUGH by Filizitas

I don't recommend changing the volume of ambient music in a specific mission, because this is something that is supposed to be under the player's control (as chosen by the volume slider in preferences). If you change the volume in the map itself, all it means is that the player will adjust their own volume slider to compensate, so you're just annoying the player without really obtaining any "artistic freedom" for the effort. Ideally all ambients would have a carefully matched volume level, so players would know exactly how loud the music is going to be based on their volume control setting. However we are a long way from that ideal. It is very easy to add a custom ambient and make it far too loud, particularly if it's music you like and/or your own in-game ambient volume is set to a lower level than default.

I can only imagine what playing that mission in VR would feel like.

First FreeTube is a known OpenSource desktop client for YouTube, there isn't a security risk (false positive from your AV). Maybe this and also cloudtube and other like yewtube are also OpenSource and forks from Invidious give alerts from certain companies, because permits to download YT vids. In Piped there isn't such option, it use it's own engine to stream YT vids, without using the googlevideoAPI, like the others, this permits it to control better the content and block ads and trackers from Google, also jump the invideo sponsor blocks and intros. It has a very impresive settings page in this sense. You can create an account (nick, mail) which permits to subscribe your prefered channels and shows new videos of these (Feed). Well, certainly there are a lot of more search engines as only Google, Bing, and Yahoo out there. The AI search engine you mencioned is Andi, privacy oriented and don't show a lot of results, it is different, Andi is an AI who understand the concept of your search and shows the most relevant results respect of your search, you can really chat with it. Something like Alexa, but without trackers, loggings and ads, 100% private. I use Andi for my first searches, before I use the others I use. To add Andi to your search engines in your browser to permit to search with your search or adress bar, use this code to put it as search engine in the list of your browser https://andisearch.com/?query=%s You'll find a very complete list of search engines in a post from oen of the user in the Vivaldi Forum, including the codes to use them in the browser from the adress or search bar https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/46609/guide-vivaldi-search-engines-collection

I'm trying to get TDM build working on my laptop. Just installed VC2022, and now I get the following error: 1>OpenAL32.lib(alc.obj) : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol __imp___std_init_once_begin_initialize referenced in function alcOpenDevice 1>OpenAL32.lib(alc.obj) : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol __imp___std_init_once_complete referenced in function alcOpenDevice Searching has lead me to this issue: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/-imp-std-init-once-complete-unresolved-external-sy/1684365 https://github.com/microsoft/STL/issues/2655 Obviously, developers accidentally broke binary compatibility on minor update of Visual C++ compiler (in version: 17.2 Preview 2). While they are seeking the way to fix it, I'd recommend to not update your Visual Studio in the near future. If you already suffer from this issue, then you can workaround it by adding the following e.g. to the end of Lib.cpp: #if defined(_M_IX86) #pragma comment(linker, "/ALTERNATENAME:__imp____std_init_once_begin_initialize@16=__imp__InitOnceBeginInitialize@16") #pragma comment(linker, "/ALTERNATENAME:__imp____std_init_once_complete@12=__imp__InitOnceComplete@12") #elif defined(_M_X64) #pragma comment(linker, "/ALTERNATENAME:__imp___std_init_once_begin_initialize=__imp_InitOnceBeginInitialize") #pragma comment(linker, "/ALTERNATENAME:__imp___std_init_once_complete=__imp_InitOnceComplete") #endif I'm not yet sure if we should commit this workaround, to be honest In theory, it does not break build, but adds a last resort option: if linker doesn't find symbol {nameonleft}, then it tries to use symbol {nameonright} instead of it.

I managed to find more loot than there was available in the mission! Any idea where the extra 54 gold come from?

Safe combination, outright spoiler. I hope I'm remembering it right, and it's the same on all levels (I played on Expert).

You might find exactly that sort of thing (complete with the badly-voiced melodramatic cutscene) in a modern Doom mod, because hobbyists have mad ambition and no restraint. Your average AAA would be more like: First you cut to a way too long melodramatic cut scene because the main character is also in a soap opera. Then you're dumped into a random arena (that's really just a single room with one staircase and some boxes in it) with 500 10 alien robots are firing machine guns from every direction (because the one guy who somehow made the 500 aliens work in the demo quit after management verbally harassed him), also everything explodes every 5 seconds and everything’s on fire and the MC can fly in midair Matrix style (in certain contextual locations and in the cutscene that plays in the middle of the fight) and runs and bounces round at 200mph 15mph (because someone in the focus group said the fast movement made them feel disoriented and they got lost in the identical linear corridors--and the movement was was obviously the only reason) and has more weaponry 3 (console friendly but also somehow egregiously unbalanced) loot-box unlocked weapons with more ammo than an entire army and sprays the walls with bullets as 94 5 monster trucks one of your co-op player unlocked in a loot-box back flips and explode and if you die you have to start all over again before the first cutscene because you can’t save where you want because reasons the pre-teen-male console demographic aren't used to manual saving. Then you cut to a melodramatic cut scene because the main character is also in a soap opera... and the game ends there because the developers could not meet management's holiday launch deadline. But don't worry they will sell you the real ending (96% of which was already in the game files on release day) as paid DLC 6 months from now.

@Zerg Rushlittle do you know, during beta testing that horse was briefly responsible for the death of every other AI in the map!

Hello, It was pure coincidence I went to check the forum and saw your post had just come in a few minutes before! Sorry I took longer this time.

Oh yes, very different but they did pay a great deal of attention to the originals. I have to give them a lot more credit than just being a fluke. I think the production leads were in the right headspace and they did a good job guiding their team away from the 'on rails' point A to point B mindset . There are interviews where they discuss teaching the level designers to create things that might never be seen by most players. I think the Deus Ex team were a good crew. The interviews with the Thief team were constantly heartbreaking...it was clear they didn't get Thief as a concept and really the proof is in the final product.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/801851353072795719/936987945603309608/startmap.pk4 Here is a link to start map.pk4 from the discord server - which if you are getting into mapping I encourage you to join us over there as well!

The duality of man!

So far fantastic mission, I'm just cleaning up the last little loot and have run into a problem. I very much loved the voiced protagonist here, she's great. Nice change from the perpetual world-weary thief trope.

I would argue that a Thief game built entirely around ray tracing, would perhaps be the perfect example of ray tracing tech used for gameplay as opposed to just for looks. Assuming it's done right, it would mean zero confusion between what looks like a dark area of the map as opposed to what the engine considers a dark area of the map. Despite the Doom 3 unified lighting engine, there's still too many situations where the lighting of a region betrays its actual visibility to the AI, so you'll go there to hide but it actually registers brighter than some benign other area of the room due to.. whatever. A ray traced lighting engine should eliminate that discrepancy completely.

you are there!

Where is the Eastern reading room? The easternmost room I could find is this: But I can't find any

With now full EAX support, and XRAM emulation too! From the log of UT3 (I use it as a benchmark) Init: ALAudio device requested : Init: ALAudio device opened : OpenAL Soft Init: AL_VENDOR : OpenAL Community Init: AL_RENDERER : OpenAL Soft Init: AL_VERSION : 1.1 ALSOFT 1.22.0 Init: AL_EXTENSIONS : EAX EAX2.0 EAX3.0 EAX4.0 EAX5.0 EAX-RAM AL_EXT_ALAW AL_EXT_BFORMAT AL_EXT_DOUBLE AL_EXT_EXPONENT_DISTANCE AL_EXT_FLOAT32 AL_EXT_IMA4 AL_EXT_LINEAR_DISTANCE AL_EXT_MCFORMATS AL_EXT_MULAW AL_EXT_MULAW_BFORMAT AL_EXT_MULAW_MCFORMATS AL_EXT_OFFSET AL_EXT_source_distance_model AL_EXT_SOURCE_RADIUS AL_EXT_STEREO_ANGLES AL_LOKI_quadriphonic AL_SOFT_bformat_ex AL_SOFTX_bformat_hoa AL_SOFT_block_alignment AL_SOFT_callback_buffer AL_SOFTX_convolution_reverb AL_SOFT_deferred_updates AL_SOFT_direct_channels AL_SOFT_direct_channels_remix AL_SOFT_effect_target AL_SOFT_events AL_SOFT_gain_clamp_ex AL_SOFTX_hold_on_disconnect AL_SOFT_loop_points AL_SOFTX_map_buffer AL_SOFT_MSADPCM AL_SOFT_source_latency AL_SOFT_source_length AL_SOFT_source_resampler AL_SOFT_source_spatialize AL_SOFT_UHJ Init: Device supports: EAX4.0 Init: Device supports: EAX-RAM Init: Device supports: ALC_EXT_EFX Init: Found EFX extension with 8 effect slots and 5 potential sends Init: ...'reverb' supported Init: ...'equalizer' supported Init: ...'low pass filter' supported Init: XRAM : YES Init: ALAudioDevice initialized. Init: Client initialized

Understatement of the year. 2.14: 36 fps 2.14 renderview: 5 fps 3.00 flat shaded: 180 fps 3.00 renderview WITH shadow maps: 60 fps That's such a huge increase, like bonkers mad, it's actually useable now

@Wellingtoncrab, just found the Stained Visage. Oh my. I don't know how you do the atmosphere, but it makes me want to weep. I won't ask for advice. Clearly I can go home now, and come back again for a more thorough dig another time. A bit sad it's ended so quickly!

Working on more wiki pages. As I kind of an aside, I got curious about inlining, which I saw occasionally mentioned but not really explained. So I researched it with the results now here: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Inlining