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The latest dev build (dev16215-9215) includes many changes in dmap: 5562, 5488, 5486 The main goal of these changes is to make dmap faster. In most cases it meant writing a faster version of some small piece of code. There is one major exception: I had to write a brand new algorithm for optimizing polygon triangulations (~1200 LOC). I used two well-known FMs to track progress. Here is the total time improvement: Painter's Wife (city): 8:10 -> 1:28 No Honor Among Thieves (politics): 4:35 -> 0:30 You should expect less improvement on other maps, since these two are rather outstanding cases. The nhat/politics map was very slow to compile due to a bunch of stalagmites: they generated hundreds of thousands of triangles, which caused slowdowns in several places all over the code. And the painterswife/city is... just too big although I guess it has some local bottlenecks too. Of course, with such massive changes there is always a chance that something breaks. The worst part of it is that dmap was never perfectly reliable to begin with: it just used to fail rarely enough, and hopefully this trend continues. While I did test new dmap on some existing FMs, I didn't have much time to check the outcome. So more widespread testing would be appreciated! In case something does not work, there are cvars which can disable most of the changes and switch back to the old code. There are a lot of them, and all of them start with "dmap_". Toggling them individually is not fun, so I suggest using the new meta-cvar dmap_compatibility. You can set it to the version of TDM that you want to emulate in dmap: dmap_compatibility 207: legacy mode dmap_compatibility 208: enable major changes related to visportals and opacity (shipped in TDM 2.08) dmap_compatibility 210: enable dmap optimizations too (to be shipped in TDM 2.10, also default mode) Note: not everything can be switched back via cvar! Just setting the cvar won't give you exactly the same result as the actual old version does. But I hope the biggest differences should be removed this way. P.S. A general tip: if you could check the latest dev build from time to time (e.g. once a month) with the map you work with, that would help a lot in detecting issues early

Same thing in "Vengeance for a Thief 3" Default: Fresnel Only: SSAO raduis 128 SSAO and Fresnel:

New dev build is available: dev16215-9215 UPDATE: I have just noticed that the code revision of this build is 9224, so I renamed the version to dev16215-9224

For the people eager to play with the latest state of development, two things are provided: regular dev builds source code SVN repository Development builds are created once per a few weeks from the current trunk. They can be obtained via tdm_installer. Just run the installer, check "Get Custom Version" on the first page, then select proper version in "dev" folder on the second page. Name of any dev version looks like devXXXXX-YYYY, where XXXXX and YYYY are SVN revision numbers from which the build was created. The topmost version in the list is usually the most recent one. Note: unless otherwise specified, savegames are incompatible between any two versions of TDM! Programmers can obtain source code from SVN repository. Trunk can be checked out from here: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src/trunk/ SVN root is: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src Build instructions are provided inside repository. Note that while you can build executable from the SVN repository, TDM installation of compatible version is required to run it. Official TDM releases are compatible with source code archives provided on the website, and also with corresponding release tags in SVN. A dev build is compatible with SVN trunk of revision YYYY, where YYYY is the second number in its version (as described above). If you only want to experiment with the latest trunk, using the latest dev build gives you the maximum chance of success. P.S. Needless to say, all of this comes with no support. Although we would be glad if you catch and report bugs before the next beta phase starts

I am happy to announce the release of the first post-release Dark Mod FM: Patently Dangerous by demagogue. http://www2.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?id=6 Briefing: "Nobody said hypocrisy didn't have its uses. The Inventor's Guild, always so secretive about its own inventions, isn't beyond a little espionage when it comes to the inventions of others. They've hired me to steal the design notes from a young man named Soren Rikk, just on the outskirts of the Highlands Ward. He's reputed to have made a huge discovery in a field the Inventors have some interest in. It should be an easy job. Soren isn't known to be a dangerous person." Notes: - Thanks to my beta-testers: Fidcal for early testing, Broken Arts & Leatherman, and everybody else that gave comments (basically most of the Dark Mod team ). Thanks also to alacazam for permission to use his cool ambient. - Notice there is a map in your inventory. The default key-bind "m" will bring it up. - There have been some reports of a little slow-down near the start on some systems, but it should pick up after that. If performance is slow for you, see the Performance Tweaks wiki entry. - Enjoy! Happy Halloween everybody. Screenshots:

That's fair. Personally, I'm young enough that I didn't play the likes of Deus Ex, Thief and System Shock 2 when they were new; like I noted in my summary of Human Revolution, it's pretty much that game alone to thank that I started branching out and got into some of these other ones. HR was a completely new world for me. I'd be hard pressed to choose between the first Deus Ex and HR. Both are excellent. Mankind Divided was a disappointment, the story just didn't go anywhere and it's maybe too similar to HR in terms of everything else. Not to mention the idiotic micro-transactions. Sure, when the budgets are high and there is the never-ending race to top the latest best-seller, it's a tough sell for AAA studios to innovate. There's a reason for that: I don't really play AAA games. All the AAA games I played from the last decade are on the list, at least mentioned, save for Halo 4. As my list shows, I'm a huge fan of certain types of games (atmospheric puzzle, stealth, immersive sim, good stories), and AAA studios rarely deliver on that front. You say that, but the last room in HR took me like three hours. But I get what you mean. Certainly in the world of AAA, it's a bigger issue. I get a lot of thinking from all the puzzle games, lol.

Here is a VERY interesting comparison with my latest "toned down WIP version": William Steele 5 default with no SSAO Now with Just Fresnel: Now with NO fresnel but with SSAO REALLY Wide radius ( 128 ) Now with SSAO and Fresnel: It is interesting that the fresnel almost gives the same look as a wide radius SSAO but has better performance and more clarity. Not lit as nicely though. Here is the build: tdm_base01.pk4 This is probably as toned-down as I would go, so I guess this would be a "fresnel low" setting.

I just finished it, took me a bit over 20 hours. Boy, what a game. Makes me wonder what most game devs are smoking these days to put out all those off the rack everything-is-the-same boring games. SS 2 is a master piece in terms of game design, right up there with Deus Ex. Only makes me wonder now what took me so long to finally play it through.

You might also enjoy Now And Then.

Moar!

It looks great, i mean the screenshots are too small to actually see something. But the idea looks good. Can you make a video at max graphics settings?

New dev build is available: dev16202-9175 Changelog of all versions is in the second post of the thread.