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My old friend Andreas urgently needs my help. He asked if I could meet him at the Lion's Head Inn, our favourite retreat in a quaint part of the city called Mirkway Quarter. He’s got a small apartment nearby where he makes a modest living off paintings he sells to pompous nobles and the odd merchant. Not long ago, his wife Lily was hired as a servant at the manor of the local alderman, one Lord Marlow. Now she hasn't been home for days. Andreas went to the manor looking for her, but the guards shoved him into the gutter and warned him not to return. Andreas is certain that something bad has happened, and I don’t think he’s wrong. Gallery Authors’ Notes It all started many years ago when Shadowhide laid the foundation for a sprawling and convoluted city and worked with MoroseTroll and Clearing to create a macabre storyline to befit this medieval metropolis. At some point, however, the beast grew too large to handle, so he handed the keys to the City to Bikerdude and Melan. Together, the two worked tirelessly, passing the map back and forth, each playing to their respective strengths. Notably, Melan reworked the story concept, toning down many of its darker, R-rated elements. Eventually Melan, too, moved on in 2017, but by then large swathes of the community had become involved in this map’s development. Mapping work was contributed by Baal, Grayman, Fidcal, Ubermann, Skacky, and Flanders, while Destined, nbohr1more, and Obsttorte wrote story texts. Several scripts were provided by Grayman, Baal and Obsttorte, such as an elevator with scissor gates, a TDM first. Even after all this input, the daunting task still remained to transform what had grown into the largest TDM map ever made into a playable mission. Bikerdude hammered away at this for some more years still, on and off between other projects, until in early 2020 when he deemed it ready for public viewing. It was then that Dragofer and Amadeus joined in. In the months that followed, the trio reworked, finished, and polished the mission in nearly every aspect, fully writing out and editing the story as well as adding countless scripted effects and (with help from Bienie) many new readables. The good working atmosphere and pooled creativity brought forth several new secrets, of which the largest likely hasn’t been done before in TDM (hint: check the libraries). In the very end, the name “Fractured Glass Company” was drawn up to refer to everybody who was involved in creating this very special mission. Without the hard work of all these people, most of all Bikerdude and Shadowhide, this mission would likely never have seen the light of day, let alone become what you see here before you. The mission is, as Bikerdude puts it, a homage to Thief 1 & 2, and it’s our hope that you catch these vibes as you explore and enjoy this mission. Credits - Mapping: Shadowhide, Bikerdude, Amadeus, Baal, Dragofer, Fidcal, Flanders, Melan, Skacky, UberMann - Original Story Concept: Clearing, MoroseTroll, Shadowhide - Story & Readables: Amadeus, Bienie, Bikerdude, Dragofer, Destined, Melan, nbohr1more, Obsttorte, Shadowhide - Editor: Amadeus - Scripting: Dragofer, Baal, Grayman, Obsttorte - Voice Acting: AndrosTheOxen (Andreas), Joe Noelker (Player) - Video Editing: Bikerdude (briefing), Goldwell (briefing intro) - Custom Models: Bikerdude, Dragofer, Dram, Epifire, Grayman, Obsttorte - Custom Textures: Airship Ballet, Dmv88, Hugo Lobo - Custom Sounds: GigaGooga, Sephy, Shadow Sneaker, alanmcki, andre_onate, Deathscyp, dl-sounds.com, Dmv88, dwoboyle, eugensid90, gzmo, lucasduff, mistersherlock, qubodup, randommynd, richerlandtv, sfx4animation, Speedenza - Betatesting: Amadeus, Biene, Bluerat, CambridgeSpy, Dragofer, JoeBarnin, Kingsal, Krilmar, ManzanitaCrow, Noodles, S1lverwolf, s.urfer Download Note: this mission requires TDM 2.08, which is now available for download. Please be aware that old saved games will no longer work after you upgrade to 2.08's release build. Note: it’s highly recommended to run this mission using the 64-bit client (TheDarkModx64.exe), since there've been frequent reports the mission won't load on the 32-bit client (TheDarkMod.exe). The mission is available from the ingame downloader. In addition to that, here are some additional mirrors, as well as the official screenshots for anybody uploading this mission to a FM database: Mission: Google Drive / OneDrive Mission (slimmed down version for 32-bit clients): Google Drive / OneDrive Official Screenshots: Google Drive / OneDrive

TDM 2.08 Released! We are proud to announce the release of The Dark Mod 2.08! Long in development, many fixes related to Multi-Core, Uncapped FPS, and the 64-bit migration are now available. TDM 2.08 goes further with the process to modernize coding standards in TDM, replacing legacy OpenGL functions and ARB Assembly shaders with modern techniques. Mappers will be pleased to see many new quality assets as well as enhancements to rain, fog, skylight, AIs and visportal diagnostics. For the eye-candy crowd, new Bloom, 64-bit color mode, and SSAO options have been added! For Linux users, the project can now be compiled via CMake. A full changelog can be viewed here, but some highlights include: Better Visuals: Cabalistic has finally added the much requested SSAO feature to TDM. Using a method called Scalable Ambient Obscurance, now areas with flat ambient lighting come alive with new detail! He’s also implemented a new Bloom method, and brightness and gamma will no longer interfere with desktop brightness. Better AI: Grayman has refined the AI yet again, for instance ensuring that sitting and lying aren't thwarted by obstacles. Better Gameplay: The player’s ability to move and interact with the environment has been improved thanks to fixes to mantling as well as climbing ropes and ladders. Ragdolls are easier to handle and shouldering them is accompanied by an animation. Better Mapping: The mapper’s toolkit has seen several enhancements. A new X-ray surface and new spectrum spawnargs modify how objects are perceived. Rain is much less taxing and uses static collision detection to limit its fall. New visportal diagnostics make it easier than ever to track down notorious internal leaks. Better Performance: The dev team has as always been hard at work making improvements to performance and laying the groundwork for even more improvements in the future. Multi-Core’s stability has been enhanced and is no longer listed as an “Experimental” setting. New Assets: Many quality textures and models were added by both Team members and community contributors. Especially of note is the inclusion of Kingsal’s manbeasts and Springheel’s new zombies, and expect to catch glimpses of the werebeast. If you are a mission author, please take a look here. New Sounds: The player’s movement is now accompanied by new sounds when mantling, swimming and sliding down ropes and ladders. To update, simply run the tdm_update.exe file in your darkmod folder. Please be aware that old saved games will not be compatible with 2.08, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first!

Mission Name: A Night Of Loot: One Man's Treasure Author: OGDA Build time: 1 month Version: 1.00 Released: 13.06.2020 Type: Shop/House Size: Small Completion time: 30 to 45 minutes Difficulty settings: Higher difficulties require you to find more loot. Story: The thief discovers a tiny antique shop in the city. Download: FM: https://das-kartell.org/files/tdm/anol.pk4 Installation / Storage location should be: [dark mod folder]\fms\anol\anol.pk4 Promotional Screenshots: https://das-kartell.org/files/tdm/anol1.jpg https://das-kartell.org/files/tdm/anol2.jpg https://das-kartell.org/files/tdm/anol3.jpg Trivia: This is my first FM. I've been toying with dark radiant for some time before, but wanted to get something out, so I kept it small. CREDITS go to: Sotha for his Bakery Job Tutorials and Inspiration Acolytesix, Bienie, Cambridge Spy, joebarnin, manzanita-crow and nbohr1more for beta testing and help with improvements Link to the original beta test thread: Warning, heavy spoilers!

Hey everyone, the last couple of weeks I've been working on an overhaul to TDM's renderer that slightly improves CPU utilization in the game and should thus improve performance in CPU-bottlenecked scenes. This is the next step in our ongoing backend modernization and targeted for 2.09. However, since the changes are quite involved, I'd love to get a headstart on testing, so that we can catch any major problems or regressions early The 2.08 beta test has absolute priority. But if you happen to be curious and have a bit of extra time to spare, I'd appreciate any feedback you can provide. Current test build: https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/q614b4ojrmat3umc/artifacts/TheDarkMod.7z You'll need a 2.08 beta installation. Make a copy of your TheDarkModx64.exe and glprogs folder (if present) so that you can go back to 2.08, then extract the files from the archive to your installation. Instructions for testing: There are two parts to this. First is a new render backend which significantly reduces CPU draw call overhead by better ordering of draw calls and using modern OpenGL features (if available). You can enable it with cvar r_useNewBackend. Most important thing to test here is that there are no visual artifacts or regressions from the new renderer. So ideally go through some scenes and switch between old and new backend and let me know if you notice any differences For good measure, you can also try to toggle the cvars r_useMultiDrawIndirect and r_useBindlessTextures, which toggle two particular modern OpenGL features that the new backend can use. Ideally, toggling these should not result in any visual changes, either. The second part is further parallelization of a particularly compute-heavy step in the renderer. @duzenko spent some time to port BFG threading code to TDM, and this initial work is already in 2.08. However, it wasn't quite stable, so enabling it in 2.08 causes crashes eventually. I spent some more time stabilizing this portion, and combined with the new backend, it should yield some FPS increases in CPU-heavy scenes. To enable this feature, enable the cvar r_useParallelAddModels (caution: disable this when going back to 2.08, or you'll have crashes!). Here, I'm mostly looking for confirmation that it runs without crashes. You can also tweak the level of parallelization with the cvar jobs_numThreads. It defaults to 2, if you have 6 or more cores, I'd advise to increase it to 4. Further increments don't seem to yield much improvement. Thanks for your time! Oh, and just to give an idea of why I did this: This is performance with 2.08: And this is with r_useNewBackend and r_useParallelAddModels enabled:

You can never know what treasures you might find in the depths of SVN: (Such as a wrecked ship hull by Dram. Clearly it was never intended for the player to walk inside it, so there's still a lot of work left to make this playable.)

Hey everybody, As some of you have seen, I started streaming myself making a level for The Dark Mod, with the intent of showcasing the process of making a level. About a year after starting, I'm releasing the first playable version of the map, and would like people to play and give feedback. It's still very early on and very rough; mostly I'm concerned about the layout of the map at this point and the "funness" of it. If you're interested and okay with filling out a survey I can review the results of onstream, let me know! I'll post a thread for the map in the Beta Testing forum in the morning.

beta208-07 has been released. The list of changes is provided in its usual place. Remember that you must download tdm_mirrors.txt again from the link in the original post before running tdm_update. Please pay attention to AI behavior, in particular sitting and sleeping.

I edited some more text to avoid formatting issues. I hope I got them all now! Maybe someone from the team could take a look if it's worth to put into the core game? training_mission.rar

Aside from fixing the actual problem, I think we should change something in the event system in general. Here is my proposal: Post a warning if 2K and 5K events are created (either in total or per frame). Mappers should know about the problem far earlier than it starts crashing. When soft limits named above are exceeded, print some information about a few events in the queue. It should make it easier to diagnose the problem without serious code diving.

Not nitpicking at all. Correctly adjusting volume levels is important but often neglected, even in commercial games (in Dungeons and Dragons Online there are certain quests with background music which is deafening and renders the game sounds inaudible, making me wonder if the developers ever actually test their own game). It's very easy to introduce a cool new sound or piece of music but make it too loud, because subjectively "loud sounds better" to most listeners. Waveform normalisation doesn't solve this problem, because many sounds need to play at different volumes, and peak amplitude doesn't entirely determine subjective loudness in any case. If background music plays at the same RMS power as guard shouts, then the music will sound too loud and the player will struggle to hear the guard shouts at all. I don't think new cvars are needed, just some sensible tweaks to the volume offsets in the sound data files. If particular sounds are too loud, this can be tweaked by adding small volume reductions (e.g. steps of -2 dB) in the sound shader until the subjective volume levels seem more similar. One thing I learned in music production is how much you can progressively lower the volume of a sound while it still remains completely audible (because human hearing is non-linear), but it fits so much better in the mix once it's reduced to a similar level as surrounding sounds.

Hello fellow taffers! My mission is now ready to be beta tested and will be available in the beta testing forum. No formal sign up necessary, just say hi here or in the beta tester's forum. Come one and all! It's not required to have played the first two missions in the series, but it would probably be helpful from a narrative perspective. 2.08 beta is not required but if some people would like to test on that version, that would be great.

I could easily add at least the default keys to be displayed in the Unofficial Patch if this will not go into the core game. Only one text file needs to be edited! P.S.: So here is my first version of the training_mission string file with included default keys mentioned and connected formation and other text issues fixed. IcyMoon, please extract the attached archive into your The Dark Mod/fms folder and report back if I missed some formation issues! training_mission.rar

Though I'm not available to debug elevator problems, I can make a suggestion that has nothing to do with moving AI or trying new elevators or moving buttons, etc. Back when St. Lucia was getting a facelift, the guards refused to use the small elevator in the mission. Nothing I did involving the elevator or guards would solve the problem. Then I noticed that pathfinding, which likes to calculate distances and reachability between the centers of AAS clusters, was setting the center of a cluster at the bottom floor of the elevator high up on a worldbrush piece of door trim. Way up off the floor, and denying reachability to that cluster when evaluating a path with an elevator in it. We changed that worldbrush to a func_static, and the cluster center shifted down onto the floor and the guards started using the elevator. So here's my suggestion ... 1. Look at the rooms around each stop of the elevator. Filter out all entities, and allow monsterclip to be displayed. 2. Now examine all horizontal worldbrush surfaces (except the actual floor) and see if you spot any that don't have m/c sitting on them, extending up to the ceiling above. It's surfaces like these that dmap considers reachable by AI, and it will assign AAS areas to them. Cover these surfaces with m/c. (Or if the brush is a piece of trim, convert it to a func_static.) 3. Now make sure that ALL m/c in the room extends up to the ceiling. Otherwise, dmap will consider the tops of those short m/c brushes as walkable surfaces, which you don't want. 4. Dmap and see if the guards start using the elevator. If not, I have no further suggestions. Good luck.

Just did a refresh of https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Text_Decals_for_Signs_etc. Mainly a new middle section with an example of how font resizing and wordwrap works, with comparison photos in DR and in-game. And some muddle cleanup in the first section. I left the last "customization" section as is.

Committed all the changes to trunk: 8761-8764: new diagnostics for event overflow error. 8765-8766: new cvars: crash on error (allows saving crashdump), promote warnings to errors. 8767: fixed the main problem with flying AIs which caused event spam in Hidden Hands.

[Forgive me if this is the wrong place for this discussion.] I've been beta testing two new FMs: JackFarmer's Hidden Hands: The Last Citadel, and The Painter's Wife. They are both large missions. In each mission, testers have run into a problem related to event limits. (Note: all of my testing is has been done on the most recent 2.08 beta). 1) In HH:TLC, at some point in the mission TDM crashes. There is no "The DarkMod.exe has stopped working" dialog - the process just disappears. One other beta tester reported a CTD as well. In addition, JackFarmer indicated that he had seen this error occasionally during his testing. I set logging levels and found this in qconsole.txt: "Recursive fatal error!". I tried to debug this issue further by building a debug version of the executable and setting break points in Visual Studio. Eventually I was able to get the error message to log: idEvent::Alloc : No more free events (I posted the details in this topic: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20404-beta-testing-hidden-hands-the-lost-citadel/&do=findComment&comment=447958). From what I can tell, reading the code, this happens because we have exceeded MAX_EVENTS, which is currently 10240: #define MAX_EVENTS (10<<10) 2) In TPW, I got this error: [In case the graphic isn't readable, the dialog says this "Game Error. Event Overflow. Possible infinite loop in script."] The FM developers have also seen this issue during development and testing of the mission. The C++ code indicates that this error occurs because the number of events exceed MAX_EVENTSPERFRAME, which is also 10240. It certainly could be that there are bugs in these missions, that they are either inefficient or have a loop somewhere that is causing these problems. But I'd like to entertain the possibility that these large missions are simply pushing the boundaries of the event limits. I'm wondering if the event limit should be increased (that is, increase the value of constants MAX_EVENTS and MAX_EVENTSPERFRAME). I understand that there may be consequences of doing this - at a minimum, presumably, the DM exe might consume more memory. I just did a test: I had a save file from HH:TLC that always crashed on 2.08 - after loading the save, if I just waited for a couple of minutes, the CTD happens every time. I downloaded the source code matching the current 2.08 beta 5 (SVN 8735). I built the release version and tried again - again, the same CTD happened within a few minutes. I then modified the code to double MAX_EVENTS and MAX_EVENTSPERFRAME, to 20480. Those are the only two changes I made. I rebuilt the Release version of the executable, ran it, and loaded that same save. This time, TDM did not crash. I acknowledge that this is a rather brute force fix. I'm not suggesting that 20480 is the best size to use. But, to me, it looks like there are a couple of large missions that are pushing up against the event limit. Perhaps it is time to consider bumping up this limit, as part of 2.08? I'll sit back now and let the real TDM developers tell me why I'm wrong

EDIT: same post of jaxa, LOL!

PST...

Let me be the first to congratulate on this tremendous personal and community achievement

Nope, it's been off for the whole beta test phase. It must be something on my side then, maybe some leftover file I tested for cabalistic... Let me delete my glprogs folder and run the updater again, see what happens. Yeah, what do you know, the problem's no longer present. I completely forgot I had to put up custom shaders when we were testing the parallax corrected cubemaps/ssao. Phew.

TDM 2.08 comes with a wealth of new monster characters that’ll be sure to enrich future missions: Manbeast by Kingsal Werebeast by Diego, Springheel, Obsttorte & Destined Clothed and running zombies by Springheel Flame bearing skeletons by Springheel There are some things to be aware of if you are a mission author interested in working with the werebeast or manbeast: The werebeast is only partially completed in terms of animations and vocals for now, so it’s recommended not to use it the same way you would a regular AI. Some important issues were found in the last minutes of this dev cycle, in particular concerning the manbeast (i.e. LOD and material definitions). The fixes came too late to make it into this release, so please download this patch and place it in your mission’s folder if you intend to make a mission with manbeasts. If the patch was successful you’ll see a new top-level folder named after your FM in ‘Create Entity’ listing all the changed entities. There’s no need to extract the .pk4. If you see someone working with the manbeast characters, please point them to this patch to make sure they’re using it.

Scratch that last post claim of 1 week. Time flies faster than I realize. Also, I have a few more ideas which I feel need to be incorporated into version 5. I also need to experiment with the elevator call positions a bit more. AI are sometimes hesitant to step onto the platform after having called the elevator to their floor. Since I will be re-doing the cave at the beginning of the map, it would be a good time to re-do the cliff walls as well. The player will require more hiding places in the outdoor area, due to changes with the way things are illuminated. Some creative landscaping is due to accommodate this.

I like the idea, but I'm afraid it is not possible to get the key from settings into the map right now. There is method idCommon::KeysFromBinding right now. I think it is possible to add a bit of code which would allow referencing the in a map. And I think there is already some way for a mapper to show text on screen.

I suspect that if you're customising key bindings you already don't care about the tutorial telling which key to press. Given that the tutorial claims to be a Tutorial, you have to assume that the user wants to have their hand held to begin with. I sympathise with IcyMoon, the tutorial should be for her, not for us experienced users.

FYI, everyone, I'm likely about 1 week (yeah, right) away from Siege Shop v. 5.0 (Beta). This will be the biggest re-design since v. 3, and the final version of the mission (sans bug fixes for future TDM releases). I just need to make a new cave area for the player to pass through, finalize some lights, adjust some AI paths, and finish modifying/decorating about 3 or 4 rooms. I also have some fancy furniture which needs to be replaced with some rougher furniture. Readables will then be given a once-over and it will be ready to release for Beta testing.

Hurray, I somehow managed to do it ! For anybody else in need for help, these are the console commands I used: remove DeskKey01 spawn atdm:prop_key_fancy01 name DeskKey01

Disclaimer: This mission is not set in Canada. William Steele 1: In the North (by grayman) is the first part of the long-running William Steele series, which stars the titular character. Steele, unlike most other Dark Mod protagonists, isn’t a thief by profession, but a guard in the service of a nobleman after he left his home after a fight with his father. Realizing that he’s forgotten the reason they fought in the first place, he decides to head back home, but his employer has an issue: He’s earned the ire of another noble named Harcourt, who’s put out a bounty on him. Steele decides that, before he heads back home, he needs to repay his boss by stealing the gold bar serving as the bounty and disarming the threat. I’ll say right now that In the North is an excellent mission with a well-designed mansion with multiple little touches that make the whole mission a solid experience. The mansion feels like an actual mansion, carefully split up yet still allowing you to easily get from one end to the other. Unlike Sir Taffsalot’s Sword (which was made much later), the mission gives you more paths to explore, ranging from parkour to secret passageways. The difficulty is fair. Guards are plentiful, but can usually be avoided with some waiting. The only real chokepoint to me was the courtyard early on, since I had guards coming in and out of it almost constantly. The loot goal isn’t hard to hit either. One of the things that sets this mission (and other grayman missions) apart is the storytelling. This mission was one of the first I think to feature the NPCs doing idle events, like examining pictures or sitting down for a break. There are other little touches, like the visiting noblewoman with the mute bodyguards that give the mission a little bit of flair. There’s also a “shift change” at a certain time that moves the guards around, making some places easier to get to but others harder to access. The story is also stronger than some other missions; beyond the little touches involving moment-to-moment life in the manor, there are also quite a few readables and optional objectives. While you can argue that there are perhaps a few too many readables in your inventory by the end of the mission, they’re all useful, either giving worldbuilding about the history of the manor and it’s attached chapel and catacombs, or giving hints about loot and characters. The optional objectives have results ranging from loot to warm fuzzies to an ending cutscene. It allows you to “choose” how Steele reacts to what’s going on around him in a way that most Dark Mod missions don’t allow, even if it is a little limited. The only real gripe I have is that the voice of an important NPC is a little quiet, although you get an objective to do what he said after his request, so it’s a very minor complaint. The mission can also be considered a little on the easy side: you have plenty of equipment and if you blackjack a bit, you’ll have a pretty easy time. But then you miss out on all those little quirks of the NPCs! I didn’t have any problems personally on my first, blackjack-heavy run, but players interested in immersion might want to restrain themselves. All in all, an excellent, must-play mission. Highly Recommended.

BTW, for anyone wondering about how tall the elevator is, here's a DR shot of the elevator-only test map. You can see the silhouette of the guard on the upper level.

SOLVED! @Springheel, thanks for the tip. As you said, the AI's damage was causing the elevator reversal. But the source of that pain turned out to lay elsewhere than worldspawn collision. Because this is a tall express elevator, I had doubled its speed from the default 30 to 60. Evidently the abrupt stop when going upward (but not downward... odd) inflicts the pain. If I reduce it to 55, the AI handles it fine, and everything works. It is possible that this max speed of 55 is the same for all AI. It is also possible that it varies, e.g., based on mass. I'll leave that for someone else. IRL an express elevator has a gradual acceleration/deceleration cycle. Too much to ask for here, methinks.

For those of you hating on Epic, this game is now finally on Steam. Do yourselves a favor and just try this masterpiece of an indie game!

I'm trying to fix an elevator which mysteriously broke after adjusting (seemingly) nothing about it. That's what I'm working on now. I have a suspicion it has something to do with aas32_flood, but I've tried everything I can think of with no good results. The bottom floor elevator position is broken on the west elevator in Siege Shop. AI approaching the elevator do not use the call button and perform all of their upstairs animations in front of the elevator. I only noticed after having moved a light from the top of the elevator shaft. I had previously re-textured the elevator, but until two nights ago, AI didn't seem to care and continued to use it. Believing the elevator itself to be the problem, reconstruction of the elevator was begun. The AI refused to get on the elevator at the first floor. I checked and corrected origins, comparing everything with a freshly imported prefab elevator. I even tried replacing the entire west elevator with a new prefab. New visportals didn't help and don't seem to make any difference anyway. Replaced the call buttons. Duplicated, rotated, and positioned parts from the working east elevator. Attempted to re-do aas32_flood. Only on floors with no AI start. only on both upper floors. only on the middle/top/bottom floor. only on all floors. sitting on the floor vs. sunk halfway into the floor. far away from other brushwork on all sides. near the elevator and far away from it. Moved an AI to a different floor. They can use the elevator between the top two floors properly. Triple checked entity origins, dimensions and positions when comparing to the 3-floor prefab elevator. I just thought of a possibility. I did add a new area which connects the first two floors on the east side of the building. Would that cause the AI to not use the west elevator between floors 1 and 2? Anyway, time to move on to other work. Siege Shop is getting its final makeover. That's what I am really working on. New player start area, before the cave, along the road leading to the siege shop. There will be a new cave. ...likely with climbing options to the upper area in addition to the rope arrow option. will replace the "tube" cave with something more natural looking, sans the texture seam down the side. Gonna have to put something scary or weird in the cave. Changed textures yet again throughout the map. Greatly enhanced weather effects in outdoor areas Greatly toned-down textures and decorations on the middle floor. Greatly reduced need for water torches on the lower two floors Changed many light sources/colors/radii throughout the map. Moved the lights from the tops of the elevator shafts to the actual elevator platforms (maybe.. I have to keep it sneak-able) This is not what broke the elevator. More junk and stuff, just about everywhere. The bottoms of the elevator shafts are begging to be partially filled with trash, bottles, etc. Came up with some better shelving ideas than wood shelves sticking out of concrete walls. Some re-design to the workshop cavern with alternate/new routes for certain AI to take. I (finally) noticed issues with RIT paths where AI would sometimes leave a room and then decide to immediately re-enter it. Will re-do many RIT networks to fix this behavior. Rocks, trees, grass, etc., are being added to outdoor areas. Updated the balloon. I'm going to open the front gates, but not for the player to venture through. A glimpse of the outdoor weather would be good here, so I'll put a cart delivering goods outside the gate. Personal quarters are getting re-done on the upper floor, regardless of rank. With the new start area come more guards. They need somewhere to sleep. The aforementioned elevator was just added to the list.

Then I'd suspect you're testing the wrong scene, or your other settings are too light. Setting FBO resolution to 2 (which means 4x the pixels!) takes twice as much GPU time for my RTX 2080 Ti at the Briarwood Manor opening, for example. It's already impressive that it doesn't take 4x as much time, but it *is* by far the most expensive graphical option there is.

Some people will try to set every graphical setting to its maximum if they have a decent system, but for something so ridiculously expensive like supersampling, that might be deceptive. I'd argue that it's an advanced setting for people who know what they're doing.

beta208-08 has been released. The list of changes is provided in its usual place. Remember that you must download tdm_mirrors.txt again from the link in the original post before running tdm_update. Hopefully, this would be the last one.

I'm trying to reproduce using this data in Hidden Lands, did not succeed from the first try, but succeeded on the second. The culprit is idAI::_reEvaluateArea on two elementals: elemental_l1 and elemental_l2. They spam all the 10K events except for 60 normal events. These events are sorted by their time, which increases from 10313870 (current time) to 10431966 (two minutes in the future). All for same area 307. Investigating further.

GOG, the superior store, has Total Annihilation. Go grab it.

2 Hours in and I have to say this is a Most Excellent mission. Lots of nooks and crannies to explore. And so beautiful to look at.

Congratulations! What a surprise. I am looking forward to see what has become of this. Thanks to everyone involved in getting this done.

Not a joke - just outdated. Nobody still drives around and buys CDs. It is all online now. But a SkidRow subscription still is the most reliable source for games without DRM (GOG comes next).

As per the title, I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with using thedarkmod.com to store images used for forum threads, or if there's even a dedicated area for that purpose? In this case I'm thinking of having about 9 images in a FM release thread, which exceed the total limit of 1 mbyte several times over. This would hopefully have much more longevity than external image services like Imgur or ImageShack, which have a tendency of going link-dead i.e. if the account on those services goes inactive. Edit: found that I can simply copy the image url from screenshots in the official TDM mission list into a forum post. So that'd handily solve my particular usage case (release threads showing official promo shots), though there are probably other applications where having reliable on-site image storage would be good to have.

I'll be looking at your and my own notes, guys, and I'll try to work on this in the foreseeable months, when I'll have time. June and July is still busy for me in terms of my professional work, but after mid-July, I think I'll have more free time. Wish me luck.

https://wiki.frictionalgames.com/hpl2/third_party_tools/3d/blender This should help you get set with using blender for the penumbra HPL1 engine. And heres my build https://sourceforge.net/projects/cbadvanced/files/penumbra overture/redist.7z/download just unzip it to the penumbra overture game root overwriting the existing binaries. If you have problems starting the game you might need the msvc2015 runtimes. EDIT: the sources will be uploaded later when im done cleaning them up.

Yep, that's the ridiculous irony. If your zombie game doesn't include any black people, it's "whitewashing". If it does include them, but some of them are enemies or get shot, that's just plain "racism". I suppose at this point the only acceptable racial composition is to make every protagonist an immortal black person who never gets injured while shooting a load of all-white zombies, but I doubt even this will manage to avoid treading on some woke landmine. Maybe allowing white gamers to play a black protagonist is "cultural appropriation" or "blacking up", so we need to make sure the game is only purchased by people of color while all the white gamers are on their knees at the back of the gaming store whipping themselves with chains?

I'd like to agree with you, but sadly the events of the past few weeks have shown that censorship is still as rampant as ever, it's just that it comes from different people and relates to different things. Sure, the days of the evangelical Christian Right shutting down games for offending Jebus are long gone. But just try making a couple of those dangerous zombies black or female and watch the controversy roll in, possibly even resulting in your game being memory-holed by publishers and replaced with craven, grovelling apologies.

One of my AI bashed his head last night on the elevator which was never broken. It was one of those cases which I need to address where an AI leaves a path network and then chooses to immediately re-enter it. This AI, the cook, came down the elevator and stepped off, turned around, and stepped on the elevator again. Then he activated the switch for the upper floor before he had even walked all the way onto the elevator. (Maybe...I might be mistaken...) This caused him to bash himself upon the upper frame of the entrance to the elevator. I guess he learned his lesson, because he turned around again and stepped off the elevator and continued on his normal path on the lower floor. I guess he gave up on the second floor with a raging headache.

Oh, hey I missed this post. OK I'll set one up with bobbing only.There is a value for the timing, not on the top of my head right now. I'll check in a bit.

That's definitely made a difference: our NPC is on the prowl at last!

Wow, they really aren't prepared for success. Wonder how that servers are expected to survive Cyberpunk 2077... But at least that shop works well, when they are not overrun - the epic store never performs even remotely acceptable regardless of traffic. Update: The run is over, servers work fine now.

I have implemented some code to simplify diagnostics of events overflow without a pocket coder When number of alive events exceeds 2K (controlled by g_eventAliveSoftLimit), a warning is posted to console every 5 seconds. Along with this warning, 10 currently alive events (controlled by g_eventNumberPrintedOnLimit) are printed to console. Half of them are chosen randomly, the other half are the very last in the queue. When something bubbles the event queue, all of the printed events will most likely be related to the problem. For instance, here is what I see for Hidden Hands: WARNING:Soft limit of alive events exceeded (2048)! Some events printed below: Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l2 at T=10351854 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10353214 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l2 at T=10354606 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10359374 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10363582 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l2 at T=10368174 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l2 at T=10368190 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10368190 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10368206 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l2 at T=10368206 Total: 2048/10240 events alive WARNING:Soft limit of alive events exceeded (2662)! Some events printed below: Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l2 at T=10353470 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10354414 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10363566 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l2 at T=10363630 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10367598 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10373182 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10373198 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l2 at T=10373198 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l2 at T=10373214 Event idAI::_reEvaluateArea on elemental_l1 at T=10373214 Total: 2662/10240 events alive ... Aside from that, the new command listEvents prints all the currently alive events to console. When number of events processed in single frame exceeds 5K (controller by g_eventPerFrameSoftLimit), warning is posted to console. In fact, two warnings are posted: the first when it hits the limit, and the second when processing ends (if it ends properly, of course). First 10 events (controlled by g_eventNumberPrintedOnLimit) after exceeding the limit are printed to console between the two warnings. Here is how it looks in Painter's Wife: WARNING:Soft limit of 5120 events per frame exceeded! Some events printed below: Event idThread::<immediateremove> on multistateposition::onMultiStateMoverArrive at T=20318312 Event idThread::<execute> on tdm_elevator::storeTrigger at T=20318312 Event idThread::<execute> on multistateposition::onMultiStateMoverLeave at T=20318312 Event CMultiStateMover::propagateSound on marlow_elevator at T=20318312 Event CFrobDoor::propagateSound on scissorgate_1 at T=20318312 Event idThread::<immediateremove> on multistateposition::onMultiStateMoverLeave at T=20318312 Event idThread::<immediateremove> on tdm_elevator::storeTrigger at T=20318312 Event idThread::<execute> on multistateposition::onMultiStateMoverArrive at T=20318312 Event CFrobDoor::propagateSound on scissorgate_1 at T=20318312 Event idThread::<immediateremove> on multistateposition::onMultiStateMoverArrive at T=20318312 This spam gets posted every frame when the limit is exceeded, without any speed limit. I think if someone manages to consistently process 5K+ events per frame, the game will slow down dramatically, and playing it won't be nice anyway. Interestingly, there are several moments when I see 1100 or 2700 events processed in one frame during game start. These events are usually something like calling postspawn function for most of the entities. If we see a problem with it in the future, I suggest increasing the limit x10 times during the very first frame after game start of game load. UPDATE: Created issue 5270 for improving events overflow diagnostics --- that's worth being tracked.

.pfbx is a new file format for prefabs that was introduced and made the default in DR 2.8, which preserves grouping information. You need DR 2.8 to open it. I believe you need to manually type in .lwo or .ase at the end of the file path when exporting a model. Can't say why your "Use entity origin..." option is greyed out. As Geep already suggested, the material used by the model (...sq_shield) is missing frob highlight stages. Those are the 2 blocks referencing parm 11 - you can copy-paste them from any other material and update that 1 line with "map [file path]" so that it matches the diffusemap of your current material.