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I managed to create this during the past 5 days, which is the only thing I find scarier than the fact I managed to make it at all. I'll start with a little background on what I wanted to do and why. I felt that TDM was in need of some kind of playable minigame. Not just because its beautifully flexible scripting and gui system makes it so inviting to code one, but I feel it makes missions more pleasant to go through. A lot of AAA games add complexity in little details to make them enjoyable. During a normal mission in the 3D world, players find brief minigames or side activities to distract themselves and take their mind off the main objectives, after which they resume playing the normal match; This gives the world a nice effect and makes it feel more wholesome overall. I'm presently working on a FM that will feature interactive city hubs, this is one of the things I wanted to have to make each city feel more alive. Onto how it works: This is a pk4 mod you can download and drop in your FM to enable the minigame. The prefab mechanical/game_blocks.pfb contains a functional arcade machine, the entity itself is static/mechanical/atdm:game_blocks. Once you've placed an arcade in the world and compiled your map, simply approach it and frob the screen to bring up the overlay and start playing. It's an item matching game with simple rules: When 3 or more items form a lump their group is cleared and the player gains score, the more score you gain the more items you unlock, however the game gets faster and more difficult. You use the movement keys as follows: Forward to disconnect from the device (un-frob and regain control of the player), backwards to project the active item to the ground when you don't want to wait for it to fall, left and right to move the active item. From here I'll list the important highlights individually: One advantage is that in its current form, the game uses no custom assets (images or sounds): Everything is achieved using the vanilla graphics and audio exclusively. The only three files are a def, a script, and a gui... the prefabs for the default in-world device is also included. Hence why for all the complex functionality it achieves, the pk4 is just a ridiculous 17.0 Kilobytes! The game is highly configurable using spawnargs. From the game rules to the items and background, most aspects can be customized per-entity. This means arcade on the map can have its own rules for items, scoring, leveling, not to mention its unique appearance! See the def and the editor descriptions for info on each spawnarg. The game is meant to interact with the world via targets. You can use multiple trigger_on_* variables to activate objects in various circumstances. This includes starting or ending a game, leveling up, reaching a specific level, or beating the default high score. The later can be used to open a door that's only accessible if you beat the game. I made full use of the gui system. The game is normally played on an overlay, however the entity represents a screen (textures/darkmod/decals/signs/decal_gui plane) which mirrors the same interface. This lets you see your paused game in-world when you disengage the device, even watch the items fall at the edges of the screen if you're facing the right way. There's even a spawnarg to disable the overlay and play only on the world surface, though turning off the overlay isn't recommended as it's much harder to see detail on the surface. Other than the script and entity which you can use with your own geometry, I also created a prefab containing a fully functional arcade game ready to place on the map. I tried making it interactive and operable by adding other in-world entities in the mix: You have a side door which can be lockpicked to give you access to the power button, which lets you turn off the device or reset an active game. When beating the high score, the other utility door will open and give you access to some loot. It also contains details like spinning machine gears, refractive glass screen, even a short-range projector for light emanating from the screen... all are toggled on and off with the device. Despite arcade games being a little questionable for a steampunk world, I stylized it so it looks fitting for the environment. Lastly there's a broken (unplayable) version of the prefab which you can add as an accompanying decoration. I'm eager to hear your thoughts and what you think. If you like this minigame, the best way to support the work I put into it is to include it in your FM and use it, I would enjoy that the most. I'd be happy if it could be included in vanilla TDM in some form... not just because I'd be humbled to have contributed my own creation, but I feel it would benefit the default game to have this accessible to mappers. I'm happy with the base entity and functionality which I think is as good as it gets... beyond that it might need a better model than prefab, perhaps someone could help with creating one? Feel free to look at script too and let me know if you feel it's coded right, if it's something easy I might further improve it. Important: When placing the pk4 in your FM directory, be aware that any existing tdm_custom_scripts.script will either override or be overriden by the game's and break stuff! If you're already using that file, edit the pk4 to delete it from there, then manually add the following line to your existing FM's: #include "script/tdm_game_blocks.script" And here's the pk4 of the initial release as of today, as well as some screenshots of how this all looks so far. Wish TDM had a builtin recorder so I could share a video as well. game_blocks_1.1.pk4

Fixed hide_distance for light entities in svn rev 9492 @stgatilov You might want to review this change

EDIT: Ignore the FPS counter, I'm using 8xAA for the screenshots. For the past year or so I've been working on increasing the quality of the carpet textures. Some of them are really REALLY low res. There's some that are actually 128px X 256px. They look really bad in game, but back then, we took what we could get. So using various tools including AI upscaling and hand crafting parts of the textures in photoshop, I think I'm at a point that I'm getting close to a good workflow. These won't be replacements for the current textures, but will be sat alongside the low res ones. They have been used in almost every mission in different ways, sometimes in non conventional ways, and I don't want to break the aesthetics of the current missions. They will show up as _HD in DarkRadiant's texture browser. Here's what I have so far. (Click on the images to see their fullsize) Here are some side by sides: Here's the images on imgur https://imgur.com/a/2G0f5ZF https://imgur.com/a/2G0f5ZF

@stgatilov Thanks, it turns out that 2 .pk4's were blocking the installer: tdm_textures_window01.pk4 - this .pk4 had a duplicate ending in .pk4.temp, which I already deleted yesterday. Log: tdm_installer_1627146664.log tdm_textures_stone_sculpted01.pk4. Log: tdm_installer_1627146488.log I'm pretty sure I touched neither of them, but in any case, deleting both of them allows the installer to progress.

Perhaps you modified some pk4 manually? Or added some pk4/zip starting with tdm_ ?... Anyway, you can look into installer's logfile, find the error, look which file it was trying to open just before the error. Is it core TDM archive? Most likely it got corrupted. Try to delete it (or at least move away) and rerun installer again. Installer will download the missing file afresh. UPDATE: In any case, attach the logfile.

Only the entities affected I.e. the light will still shine, just its entity (e.g. the lamppost) will be hidden I'm not keen to mess with the lights themselves I think it won't hurt to leave the light interacting with a nearby wall - that's just two triangles to draw

Success, with some further investigation and tweaks. Details follow for those curious. I'll eventually form this into a wiki article about creating an in_game slide. Thanks again, @Dragofer BTW, you should make it easier to find your "A to Z Scripting" if I just type "Scripting" into the wiki search.

Got it. Regardless we should be able to get light models to hide if not the lights themselves.

Also we should probably discuss light clipping and lighting techniques in a different thread as that's own can of worms. @duzenkoSo for the hide_distance stuff it looks like these things would be helpful to add to the list: Func_rotating and other movers? SEED (more so investigate why they aren't working properly) Lights, specifically entities that spawn lights and FX. If we can get a gentle fade out / in on all those things that would be incredible. Basically we'd have an industry standard system. I can see lots of cases where gradually dropping out lights and objects at distance will significantly help performance on larger maps or outdoor areas. Also being able to fade out FX when you get close to them is valuable for stuff like fog. This helps prevent "washing out" the screen when you get close to an emitter.

"You may not include any Thief2X resources in any fan mission package" seems pretty conclusive. They are not granting permission to use their assets even within fan missions in T2, so there is obviously no general permission to include their assets in a completely different game.

We're pretty easy going, so I don't think there will be any problem. Note that the Dark Mod engine has changed quite a bit from the Doom3 engine. Like if you looked at the source code, it's about quadruple the size of the Doom3 sourcecode. So that means some of the questions you ask might have different answers for Dark Mod than there would be for vanilla Doom3. Well, some core engine things like scripting, visportals, rendering errors, and the like I think may be similar enough. But other things like AI or any system unique to TDM will be completely different. So you might have to take that into account. But it still might be better for you to ask your question here than anywhere, I suppose.

I think here we need another distinction according to intent of a speech/medium, etc. Dirty jokes and porn do not have value in terms of discussion, because their intent is to entertain. They never claim to contribute to anything like a public discourse. A call for violence (at least in the context of a public speech) does not intend to entertain, but tries to reach people and get them to act. It is similar for other media. Your example #KillAllWhiteMen can be meant as a provocative way of advertising, but looking at what is happening in South Africa right now (where they literally are killing white farmers), it could also be seen as a literal call for violence. I think this is similar for "hate speech". In a calm situation, it will not do much. Maybe be seen as provocative or as someone simply venting. But in an already tense situation, it will pour oil into the fire and may have negative effects.

Indeed, that would be the scientific way to do it, and very interesting if it ever happened, but I wasn't going to suggest it because there's no way it could ever be done given the ethical concerns you mention. Which does unfortunately lead to one of the fundamental paradoxes with social science research — "We can't test whether X is dangerous because we'd have to expose people to X which might be dangerous, therefore the experiment would be unethical. As a result, we just have to assume X is dangerous without ever knowing the truth!". The problem with this is that there is no way to separate cause and consequence. It might be that speech campaigns by far right organisations cause violence, but it might also be having a large number of far right individuals in a town causes both "hate speech" and violent attacks in parallel without an actual causal link between the speech and the violence (they are both consequences of a common cause). So unlike the interventional study, this "observational study" would not yield valid results. You are right, although this wouldn't be definitive proof (it is technically a post hoc fallacy), it would provide evidence if there was a consistent and widely reproduced temporal link in a large number of settings. If event B happens almost every time A happens, and there is no other obvious reason for the temporal correlation, it does point to a possible causal link between A and B which is worthy of investigation. But you'd need to be careful to distinguish between a causal relationship and just an "informational" one — did the speech cause the violence or was the speech just an indicator of some upcoming violence (perhaps by the same people who published the speech)? Are we looking at cumulonimbus clouds which cause thunderstorms or altocumulus castellanus which merely indicate they are likely? That would be interesting background information, but it's important not to extrapolate from "agreement with statements" to actual violence. There is a huge difference between somebody reporting that they have a different view of someone's rights, and actually committing violence against those rights. I wouldn't consider that a flaw at all. I would much rather see actual evidence-based policy making which changes in response to new evidence, rather than dogmatic faith healing which is assumed to be true no matter what. We should of course point out that even if we did all these experiments and gathered proof that speech could cause violence, this would still only be half of the puzzle — it would also be necessary to prove that laws against speech are effective at reducing violence. Even if you do, after all, prove that X is dangerous, you also need to prove that your laws will actually reduce the incidence of X, rather than increase it (by psychological backlash), drive it underground where it is even more difficult to keep track of, or just be widely ignored. Good catch. I never really thought of it like that, but I guess it is inconsistent not to demand evidence for restrictions on direct calls for violence. I suppose I'm not so bothered about this because specifically calling for violence is easy to identify, not likely to be confused with anything else, does not have any fundamental value in terms of discussion[1], and laws against it cannot so easily be abused to forbid dissent from an ideology in the same way that generic "hate speech" so frequently are. But there are forms of expression which could literally be interpreted as calling for violence (e.g. "#KillAllWhiteMen") which I don't think should be criminal acts, so perhaps it is better to keep an open mind even in this category. [1] Although this is a dangerous argument to make — some people would argue that dirty jokes and porn don't have any value in terms of discussion, but that isn't a good reason to outlaw them.

If that work had been done, and if it did show that certain types of hate speech can cause violence, then we would at least have something to discuss. But that work hasn't been done, and there are too many examples of "hate speech" that have no rational connection to violence whatsoever (even examples posted in this very thread) to make me think that is a likely conclusion. But, even if it were, it still wouldn't immediately follow that hate speech should be banned. We already know that religions can cause violence (at least according to the people committing it in the name of that religion) but because it is only a small percentage of the population committing that violence, we don't ban religions or religious texts. When Democrats demonize Republicans and then someone shoots a bunch of Republicans at a baseball game, we don't ban harsh political criticism. Nathaniel White said Robocop had inspired him to kill one of his victims. We don't ban violent movies. There was plenty of violence at the BLM protests last summer, but no one dreamed of banning the anti-police rhetoric, even after two police officers were murdered in their car. I could go on.

Yes, I think we are in agreement here. I would still say that there is one case, in which the person giving such a speech should be liable: if malicious intent can be proven for the person that gave the speech. However, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to prove malicious intent, if the person is not stupid enough to admit to it himself. But there may be people whose egos are so inflated that they get overconfident and to do so.

I think we're basically in agreement then. Speech that directly and explicitly advocates violence should not be, and generally isn't, protected as free speech. Linking other forms of speech to violence is too unreliable to form the basis of legal action, for the reasons you mentioned. Removing speech after the violence has happened is too late to protect the victim(s), and prosecuting the person who made the speech would be unjust because you would be punishing them for the behaviour of somebody else. Trying to censor speech in advance, on the other hand, involves guesswork and speculation about what might cause violence, which is unprovable and subject to the particular biases and prejudices of the censors. Indeed. This is why correlation fallacies are so dangerous. It's often the case that A happens before B but B could still have happened without A, which is why a mere sequence of events can never prove a causal relationship. Even using the claims of the violent criminals themselves are not reliable, because criminals very often try to blame other people for their actions. I've seen this before with anti-porn campaigners, who sometimes talk to convicted sex offenders who say "the pictures made me do it", then the campaigners accept this as fact and use it as justification for more censorship, without ever considering whether people in jail for sex crimes might have a strong motivation to find somebody else to blame.