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We are proud to announce the release of The Dark Mod 2.09! https://www.thedarkmod.com/posts/the-dark-mod-2-09-has-been-released/ TDM 2.09 marks a new phase of performance improvements aimed lowering CPU overhead in the graphics engine. A whole new graphic backend has been created by Cabalistic which uses modern OpenGL features to eliminate the need for the CPU to constantly issue commands to allow the Graphic Processor to render scenes. This gives TDM some of the performance advantages of rendering using a low level API like Vulkan. Stgatilov has been very busy this release cycle. He has put heroic efforts into improving the way that TDM upgrades and hosting operate in addition to the vast improvements to TDM itself. (He also refactored the entire particle engine and created a link system to connect TDM to Dark Radiant.) A full changelog can be viewed here, but some highlights include: Better performance: A brand new Backend that uses UBO, Persistent Mapping, Bindless textures, and Multi-Draw has been added. “Frontend Acceleration” (Multi-Core job based rendering based on Doom 3 BFG) now works as expected. Normal Map compression now uses RGTC resulting in lower storage, VRAM requirements, and less artifacts ( load times should improve in future TDM versions when pre-compressed RGTC textures are added ) Background texture loading has improved. This should shorten load times and reload. Better visuals: A new Sharpening Filter has been added. It can make 70% Render Scale look almost like native resolution (more performance). ( It also cleans up some blurry textures for all Render Scales. ) Bumpmap lighting is smoother, so that lighting does not instantly flip to off when getting close to edges of occluded objects. Particle physics have been substantially improved for both accuracy and performance. Borderless Fullscreen works properly on Windows. Water and other GUI effects that did not respond to Gamma now brighten properly. AMD and Intel fixes have been added for SSAO rendering Better gameplay: Experimental Gamepad support has been added. Creep works in alway-run mode Better mapping: A new linking system allows The Dark Mod to act as a real-time preview of Dark Radiant The redesigned particles now have improved setup and configuration. Automated fixes have been created for “rotation hacked” models Prefabs have been seen numerous fixes and reorganization to make them easier to use Better Sound: Conversation and other sounds are no longer stopped by saving or going to main menu. EFX reverb has been added to “Mission 1: A New Job” Extinguished gas lamps are no longer noisy when doused New Assets: Dragofer, LDAsh, Kingsal, Bikerdude, Dram have all added substantial asset updates ranging from updated Werebeast animations, animation of the steam engine, fireflies and new furniture. More stable: A huge number of fragile code areas have been overhauled to either fix crashes or prevent likely crashes due to risk of divide by zero, uninitialized values, or dangling pointers (leftover settings) on entities and functions. We recommend that you upgrade using the new “tdm_installer” available here. Please be aware that old saved games will not be compatible with 2.09, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first!

How about some fresnel highlights then? Red-shaded areas show the highlight... Pic below is a velour-style that highlights more as the surface becomes more parallel to the view angle. Here's the effect applied to .rgb Next is an ambient "spotlight / backlight" effect that slightly brightens the area around the player based on surfaces perpendicular to the viewing angle Here it is applied to .rgb It's a subtle effect. It simulates ambient light reflecting off the player back onto surfaces. When combined with velour fresnel, it helps add depth/body to surfaces as you move around them. Some folks may not like the backlight effect. Thief 4 did a similar thing. When you'd crouch to go into stealth mode it lit up a hidden "lantern" light to light up the area around the player to help offset the darkening stealth haze. Some folks hated it and found ways to disable it. So, this might be something to add an option to enable/disable as the user wishes. When combining the effects the ambient lighting has more depth. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Issue with shadows is they tend to flatten out normals. So, adding in highlights and such helps bring some body back to them. I applied the fresnel effects to the "tdm_interaction.fs.glsl" and "ambientinteraction.fs" files. It helps the most in the ambient lighting, b/c that's where it helps things stand out. Gets too washed out in the tdm_interaction lighting. Might want to disable the fresnel effects from tdm_interaction.fs.glsl, though, b/c not very noticeable in lamp/torchlight, and the ambient fresnel already adds some. (I added them to tdm_interaction to see if they'd boost the highlights in lights. They do, but can over-bright the lights.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I messed around with specular in tdm_interaction.fs.glsl to try to make it pop more. I noticed you had a work-around for specular. I re-worked the algorithm to add specular later in the chain, and, while it pops more now, it gets a stark cut-off ... which I'm guessing you noticed and were trying to sort out with work-arounds (?) (gamma room in Training Mission.. floor is shiney & wet now from specular, but shadow is cutting specular off unnaturally) It does it for Blinn and Phong dots either way. Not sure what's going on there or how to fix it. The cut off moves as the camera moves, so it feels like it has somethign to do with view direction. I don't know. I made tdm_interaction specular = 0.1 if there was no specular texture in order to highlight speculars more. Image above has torches to the left and right off-screen.. middle shows a cut-off of specular into the shadows. It's like the light blending is not working for specular. But when the cut-off isn't in the way, the specular looks better now. The wood is unnaturally shiney due to the 0.1 default I put in place. But, the metal rings on the barrels shine and reflect now. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I've attached the two files I messed with, and also a 3rd file I used for #include to chuck glsl cheat-sheet stuff for myself, and a normal map partial derivative equation function to single-source on things I was working on. shaderedits.zip

[Just posted this on Discord, but I think it'd also be good to post here since the FX system seems to be almost unknown.] I've just (again) come across the fx system, which is quite a neat way of coordinating a sequence of particles, sounds, lights etc. to appear without having to script or make a cascade of trigger_relays. All it takes is an fx definition like this: fx fx/sparks { { delay 0 duration 0.5 restart 0 light "lights/sparks_sound", 1, 1, 1, 96 offset 0, 0, 0 } { delay 0 sound "security_camera_spark" duration 2.5 } { delay 0 duration 2.5 restart 0 model "sparks.prt" //fadeout 1.5 //particle "sparks.prt" } } This goes into an .fx file (renamed from .txt) in the fx/ folder. A func_fx entity with an "fx" "fx/sparks" spawnarg can be triggered ingame to play it. Oddly, TDM only has a total of 11 fx (+1 if you also count all FMs), of which half are thunder-related. The system has barely been used for anything else than thunder, even though there are in fact quite a few entities, other than func_fx, that support calling fx: - moveables can have an fx_collide spawnarg - AIs can have fx_on_death and fx_on_ko - func_fracture entities can have fx - security cameras can have fx_damage and fx_destroyed - anims can trigger fx on specific frames with the fx keyword - respawning items can have fxRespawn (might be a Doom3-exclusive thing) - the player's view can have fx applied via script, i.e. an fx with a shaking effect There's seemingly no documentation of fx on the TDM domain and no real support for fx in DR. But documentation can be found in this article on iddevnet, and in a way this post could be considered a nucleus for TDM-specific documentation. Edit: iddevnet.com has gone down, but you can find a backup on the TDM server: http://ftp.thedarkmod.com/backup/iddevnet.zip P.S.: what probably goes well with fx_collide on moveables is the script_collide spawnarg. Could maybe be used to make a fragile object? More examples of fx in the spoiler:

@duzenko, @nbohr1more, thanks for explanation what this weird "map _scratch2" is about! I was under impression that two mirror surfaces cannot work simultaneously at all. So I assume it still does not work completely with the "map" change? What I don't like about the fix is that it gives false impression that many mirrors could works. And to make it work one "merely" needs to choose a random scratch number which does not collide with anything else... which is obviously not maintainable, i.e. also gives false hope in some cases.

If you plan to work on correcting speculars, don't base this on what you see in TDM. Non-pbr materials are lighting dependent, and TDM typically uses very strong lights and too contrasty and saturated diffuse textures. Instead, you might want to prepare a test scene of your own.

Some time ago I started investigation for a better differential update algorithm. The first attempt was known as time-travelling tdmupdate (also "tdmsync"). The second attempt has been much more cumbersome, but I think it has reached some usable state. Here is the new tdm_installer: Windows (32-bit) Linux 64-bit Linux 32-bit Note that it is not a finished application yet: it has some important features missing, probably bugs also. If your TDM installation is important to you, better copy it before running the installer on it. Please read the comments below to know how to workaround some issues. If you select "Get custom version" check, then you will be able to choose which version to install. Notice that it includes the very first dev build of TDM (with manbeast changes and the new experimental rendering backend). Needless to say, development builds of TDM come unsupported: they are very likely to contain bugs. They are not intended for normal playing. We would be happy if you report bugs for recent dev builds of course, but won't mind if you wait until next beta phase. Obviously, old versions of TDM won't get any fixes Some known tdm_installer problems: 1) Installs/updates cannot be canceled/interrupted properly yet. If you click on "START" button, there is no turning back except for killing the process in task manager. 2) It is strongly recommended to always enable "Force scan" check on the first page. It will spend some time, but will save you from error at the end of installation procedure. Normally, you don't need to scan if you did not modify your installation after previous install. But it's better to be safe yet. 3) The installer does not unpack zips yet. So after install you will have to unpack everything from tdm_shared_stuff.zip manually. 4) As of now, the installer downloads data from the main TDM server. It is rather slow, so think twice before running it in empty directory. Instead of clean install, better copy all tdm_****.pk4 files from any existing installation into a new directory and run updater there. Note that you can see how much data is going to be downloaded on the page with "START" button.

Wow, guys, optimization in 2.09 is above and beyond awesome - Painter's Wife, where I had before in the worst parts around 45 FPS, at best 75-85, now thanks to Image Sharpening I can now have 95 where before I had 45 and 120+ where I before had 75-85. And without noticeable drop in image quality. This is unbelievably awesome!

Yes, the latest release should work fine with the 2.09 release. But I'll also update the build with the final 2.09 code base soon, just in case

I like to think of that as a little murder mystery for players to find... not even I know the circumstances. Maybe he just stumbled over a loose plank in an unfortunate way?

Don't know if this is the right place, but I have some problems with both updaters...

In fact you may actually have multiple mirrors per single storage texture, as long as they don't overlap on the view projection This particular bug was caused by both mirrors being "on the floor", one behind the other. I have expressed my opinion that the skybox mirror is redundant.

TDM 2.09 requires OpenGL 3.3. I built TDM for Elbrus, so the architecture by itself should not be a problem. But Elbrus compiler supported SSE intrinsics. I have a plan to clean this mess in 4550. Did not get to it yet. The plan was to ensure that all intrinsics are disabled if __SSE__ and __SSE2__ are not defined. It should be enough to make TDM compile on various architectures, as long as they have good GPU support and normal Linux OS. To be honest, the fact that this vim3 uses Android instead of standard Linux will be the critical problem. If it won't work on X windows, then someone will have to rewrite quite a bunch of OS-specific code to make TDM run.

I don't mind adding another screen layout, if it really helps productivity.

It's a graphics bug with AMD drivers. Disable bindless textures: r_useBindlessTextures 0

I rarely activate that layout... doesn't surprise me that issues are creeping in. If it bothers you, please add it to the bugtracker.

The home page could use an update, it has the 2.08 release news on it.

Yeah, and the problem is that if something "works for you" on one scene, it will most likely stop working in some other. The existing code has one major benefit: it has been here for some time, and authors test their maps against it. I recall @duzenko removed/simplified some parts of shader code when he migrated it from ARB to GLSL, but in the end we returned everything back to how things were in 2.05. And in most cases, this return was done because something was found by mappers to be broken during 2.06 beta. By the way, existing shaders already have something called "rim" and "fresnel", most likely added by previous adventurers. But unfortunately people like to write more than read. Not that I understand myself why it works as it works... I'm afraid I'm too fond of mathemathically correct methods.

TDM 2.09 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=The-Dark-Mod-2.09

Yeah, Eidos Montreal was a train wreck. The Thief Source code was given to them twice in order to try and get the right people to approve officially releasing it to the fans. They lost it both times. Infuriating. They were just the wrong people for the job.

To everyone who likes innovative game concepts: you should definitely check out "BPM: Bullets Per Minute": A Rogue-like Shooter meets Rhythm-Game. xD It's really tough in the beginning, but it's actually quite fun. I recommend just starting on "practice" difficulty or this game will rip you to shreads!

You can restrict the frames of an animation to be used in the respective md5anim file. It can be opened in a text editor like notepad++. Remove the frames you don't want and change the framerate to speed it up or slow it down. Getting it to loop well will require some testing, though. I dunno whether there is a working animation editor in TDM, but DarkRadiant comes with an animation viewer at least. Could be useful to get it to loop.

The announcement about 2.09 release will come soon. I'd like to thank everyone who took part in this beta phase! With so many people taking part in the beta phase, we can make official releases more stable, and ready to be run on diverse machines that players have! Not to mention: with the diverse set of FMs we have In order to switch from beta build to the official 2.09 release, just run tdm_installer with default settings and allow it do what it wants. You can restore config file at the end of update: it is perfectly safe this time. Please check that tdm_installer displays version 1.02 after self-update (in window title). I have tested and verified it myself, but better check it to be safe. Actually, beta209-06 and release209 are exactly the same versions, so this update will be purely cosmetic: no new data will be downloaded, no savegames will be broken between these two versions.

You can access the Apothecary's...

I haven't played Doom Eternal yet, but it's great to hear this tune in full dymnamic range, after all these years! Original Doom 3 track is awfully compressed, it sounds as if it was recorded through a vacuum cleaner hose. There are many sound effects you couldn't hear clearly because of that.

First off, thanks for the compliments. It's nice to hear that the quality of our work is considered up there with the efforts of the other departments - ambients are important to a game, and even more so for this particular genre. As Fingernail mentioned, some of the songs/ambients you listened to were a bit modified - bear in mind for example, that a few were desinged to loop. Also, consider it will be rather unlikely the tunes will blast at you in the game with full volume, which was set up high for technical reasons. I'll speak for myself here; Making ambients for a tribute to the game you love most is damned hard! Not only because I have to try and capture the mood and particular feeling that a whole comunity has related to the game, but also because a nagging voice inside me demands not only to copy, but to create. I like to have feedback on my work just as every other artist. I know it's hard to put a finger on things when it comes to music, but it would be very helpful if you could point out exactly what feels wrong - I can only fix a problem if I know it. Ok, sorry for rambling. Move on!