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We are proud to announce the release of: The Dark Mod 2.12 ! The 2.12 development cycle introduced many large code overhaul projects. Most of these were to lay the groundwork for future fixes and optimizations. The final release is yet another leap in performance over the already impressive 2.10 and 2.11 releases. A full changelog can be viewed here, but some highlights include: The Dark Mod 2.12 is a major step forward for mission designers! The culling system has been extensively overhauled to ensure that your CPU and GPU are not wasting resources rendering unseen geometry, lights, and shadows. Some of our best map optimization experts have achieved similar performance gains to what this new culling system does but it is a rare skill and we have even managed to improve performance on missions that were generally regarded as “well optimized”. Mission authors both new and old can follow standard mapping practices with no need to dive deep into sophisticated optimization techniques even for some pretty challenging scenarios such as wide open areas and long views. Players will immediately notice many missions that have made their system struggle with FPS now may be running much more smoothly! Smoother controls for players! Also during the 2.12 development cycle, work has been done to make controls more seamless and accessible. Frob can now use hold or click actions to use items. Once you get used to the mechanic, it will be hard to go back to using a separate “use key”. Mantling is now smoother, faster, and less prone to cause the player to clip through geometry. Leaning is now more subtle and less prone to cause motion sickness. To reduce the tedium of shuffling knocked out AI around to search for loot, you can now configure TDM to automatically loot any frobbed AI. A special thanks must go out to community member Geep! Over the course of 2.12 development, Geep has created subtitles for nearly all AI barks along with developing testing tools and procedures for this gargantuan task! You can see these changes in action by changing the Subtitles setting to “On” ( rather than “Story” ) on the Audio settings page. Geep also provided substantial feedback for our GUI and subtitle design process and edited font data to improve text quality overall. Datiswous has complimented the massive work by Geep to create AI bark subtitles by creating mission story subtitles for a large number of missions. Thank you! Turrets are now natively supported in The Dark Mod and can be paired with Security Cameras! Finally, the nasty 2.11 bug that caused AI to allow arrows to pass through them at certain angles was fixed by Joebarnin! Your assassin style play-throughs should be far less frustrating. See also, our 2.12 Feature discussions: To UPDATE, simply run the tdm_installer.exe file in your darkmod folder. Note that tdm_update.exe is no longer supported, but you can download the new installer from the Downloads page if you don’t have it yet. Please be aware that old saved games will not be compatible with 2.12, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first! Also, some missions created prior to 2.12 may need to be updated so they will be playable in 2.12. Use the in-game mission downloader to check for updates.35 points
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"...to a robber whose soul is in his profession, there is a lure about a very old and feeble man who pays for his few necessities with Spanish gold." Good day, TDM community! I'm proud to release my first FM: "The Terrible Old Man", an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's short story of the same name. This is a short, 30-45 minute mission in which you are the getaway driver in a team of three small-time thieves. You and your associates were fortunate enough to overhear rumors of a famously wealthy and frail old man, but things change when your cohorts do not return from what is supposed to be their easiest and most lucrative job. Now it's up to you to brave the old man's house and find your associates. Download: The in-game mission downloader TDM Website's Mission Page Dropbox Special Thanks: The kind beta testers: Cambridge Spy, stgatilov, xlm, wesp5, nbohr1more, and Dragofer. peter_spy and Dragofer for answering my endless barrage of editor questions while learning DR. The TDM Discord for their warm welcome. Ending stinger courtesy of Zapsplat. Content Warnings: Enjoy!22 points
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Hello taffers, The campaign "Hidden Hands: Blood & Metal" consisting of five missions is now basically ready for beta testing (the briefing videos are missing and there are still some "real" speakers missing, at the moment there are tentative robot voices in these places, hope to replace them in the next two or three weeks). Unfortunately, the project has become somewhat more extensive than originally planned. It took me about two hours to test each mission. So you should allow at least12 hours for all five missions on the first run. Beta testing shall start at the beginning/middle of next week. The difficulty level is somewhere between "The Anomaly" and "The Lost Citadel". Some things are easier, others are not, but proper exploration and usage of the available resources/objects should always pave the way to success. Sign in here, if you are taff enough! Jack Testing thread:10 points
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"...to a robber whose soul is in his profession, there is a lure about a very old and feeble man who pays for his few necessities with Spanish gold." Good day, TDM community! I'm Ansome, a long-time forums lurker, and I'm here to recruit beta testers for my first FM: "The Terrible Old Man", based on H.P. Lovecraft's short story of the same name. This is a short (30-45 minute), story-driven FM with plenty of readables and a gloomy atmosphere. Do keep in mind that this is a more linear FM than you may be used to as it was deemed necessary for the purposes of the story's pacing. Regardless, the player does still have a degree of freedom in tackling challenges in the latter half of the FM. If this sounds interesting to you, please head over to the beta testing thread I will be posting shortly. Thank you!10 points
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The Numbers don't lie. It has been 15 years since the release of TDM 1.0 in 2009. I think we should consider a contest to celebrate this. Further, the contest goal should be with the intention of motivating the completion of a campaign that can be deemed official. Here are some possible ways forward: Proposal 1: Middle mission(s) Authors are asked to create a mission that expands the story between "A New Job" and "Tears of St Lucia". This can involve escaping the heavily guarded city perimeter, stowing away on a ship or caravan, attempting to recruit a partner for St Lucia and failing, getting caught by Builders before arriving and having to escape their compound, getting lost in haunted woods on the way there, etc. Any interesting way that the connection between the two official missions can be expanded. Points are awarded for making explicit references to Corbin, St Lucia, and any story elements in the two official missions. If the resultant mission is of high enough quality, it can possibly be made into an official mission. If we get a number of excellent submissions and they do not cause logical inconsistencies, we might even be able to add two or more to the official list. Proposal 2: Intellectual Property distinct approximation of TDS missions Over the years, many have asked that we recreate Thief 1 \ 2 in this engine. Obviously we cannot do this due to copyright law but we could create similar missions and stories that approximate the Thief 1 or 2 designs. That said, I think that most of our audience has played these missions to death so it may be underwhelming to see them arrive in approximate form anyway. What might be better would be to develop a similar story to TDS and make missions that resemble what T1 \ T2 players were dreaming would arrive when TDS was announced and the first screen-shots were shown in gaming magazines. So take any TDS mission you like, examine the story arc and wildly re-interpret something similar but on a much grander scale. Since it's possible that two or more contestants will choose the same mission to re-interpret, we have a slot system were authors need to claim their preferred mission and if it is taken then they must select another one or lose some story points. The slots represent a sketch of what the mission author might try to do rather than a blueprint. If authors can come up with a mission that has almost no resemblance to any TDS mission but would make for a compelling story development in a similar story arc then that can be claimed as an alternative to a slot. Proposal 3: Same as proposal 2 but we stick with Thief 1 rather than TDS. Wildly re-interpret T1 based on what you may have dreamed of when reading the gaming magazines or playing the demo. Slots system to prevent duplicate submissions. Maybe with either proposals 3 and 4, we still require the use of Corbin as the protagonist and a connective enough story that they could also be adapted as middle missions for the official campaign if the team agrees on it. Proposal 4: Another "Connections" Contest. We just allow authors to connect any two missions with each other or expand the story of an existing series or single mission. So those are my thoughts. I'll leave it to players and mission authors to suggest other proposals and if we have some sort of consensus about the most popular proposals then we will make a poll. Realistically between now and October we may not be able to hold a contest with any strict guidelines ( and tricky issues with maintaining a distance to Thief IP ) so proposal 4 may still be the easiest option.9 points
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beta212-07 is available. This one is considered release candidate, meaning that most likely it will be turned into official release soon. For this reason, here are the deprecated 32-bit binaries. It would be great if someone briefly checks the 32-bit Linux executable (cannot do it myself).7 points
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@snatcher I understand that when you feel your work doesn't live up to your goals that you don't want it out in the wild advertising your own perceived shortcomings but that leads to a troubling dilemma of authors who are never satisfied with their work offering fleeting access to their in-progress designs then rescinding them or allowing them to be lost. When I was a member of Doom3world forums, I would often see members do interesting experiments and sometimes that work would languish until someone new would examine it and pickup the torch. This seemed like a perfectly viable system until Doom3world was killed by spambots and countless projects and conceptual works were lost. I guess what I am trying to say is that mods don't need to be perfect to be valuable. If they contain some grain of a useable feature they might be adapted by mission authors in custom scenarios. They might offer instructive details that others trying to achieve the same results can examine. It would be great if known compelling works were kept somewhere safe other than via forum attachments and temporary file sharing sites. I suppose we used to collect such things in our internal SVN for safe keeping but even that isn't always viable. If folks would rather not post beta or incomplete mods to TDM's Moddb page, perhaps they would consider creating their own Moddb page or allow them to be added to my page for safe keeping. Please don't look at this as some sort of pressure campaign or anything. I fully understand anyone not willing to put their name next to something they aren't fully happy with. As a general proviso, ( if possible \ permitted ) I just want to prevent the loss of some valuable investigations and formative works. The end of Doom3world was a digital apocalypse similar to the death of photobucket. It is one of my greatest fears that TDM will become a digital memory with only the skeletons of old forum threads at the wayback archive site.6 points
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For easier inspection of various culling algorithms, I created a new debug cvar. It fixes the camera position that renderer frontend uses for culling, but allows player to fly around and see the same objects from different view point. Don't expect perfectly valid/sane picture, but I think it reliably shows which objects are sent to OpenGL for rendering. Here is the demonstration (bottom-left is clipped away in this video, but I hope it is clear anyway): It will be available in the next dev build. Maybe someone will find it useful for analyzing overdraw? P.S. Aside from that, "r_showtris 2" + "r_useScissor 0" should be useful for overdraw analysis too. It is questionable though whether you should disable r_useScissor in this case...6 points
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TDM Modpack v4.0 This new version of the Modpack is intended to be a long-term release. The Modpack is mature and stable enough to stay for some time how it is today, right where I want it to be: the foundation on which you build your favorite set of Mods for The Dark Mod. Good care was put to make sure the mods included in the Modpack stay true to TDM and neither the missions nor the gameplay are altered in any relevant way. Yes, we have more tools and skills at our disposal but it is up to you, the player, to make use of them or not. Play The Dark Mod your way. Compatible with 2.12 ONLY If you have previous versions of the Modpack I suggest you start fresh: disable and delete old mods. Use the mods included in version 4.0 from now on. TDM 2.12 introduces a great new feature and we can now have different mods from different sources running in parallel. Thanks @MirceaKitsune for pushing! Thanks @Dragofer for opening this door! What's more for 2.12 internal resources for mods have doubled and we can now load more mods than ever before and we are grateful for this! Thank you, @stgatilov! What's new in version 4.0? Starting with this release I am getting rid of the individual versioning and all mods are now at the same version (4.0 in this case). "TDM Modpack" is now the name of the project and the previous main "pack" has been split into two standalone mods: "Core Essentials" and the "Skill Upgrade". (The Skills are further split into their own packages and if you don't want a particular skill just look for the relevant pk4 and remove it). SHOULDERING BOOST - Decommissioned In TDM 2.12 we can now mantle while carrying bodies and the "Shouldering Boost" mod is no longer relevant and it has been decommissioned. In this new release of TDM we can also mantle while carrying objects therefore double thanks to @Daft Mugi for these quality of life improvements. Truly appreciated, thanks! SIMPLE SUBTITLES - New! Work on the subtitles is in progress and for the next version of TDM it is expected that players will be able to customize how subs are displayed on screen but until then, this new standalone mod offers an alternative for players looking for a rather simplistic presentation. Enable "Simple Subtitles", go to the audio settings and set the scope you prefer: Story [default]: Story only On: Story and general speech (Give it a try!) Off: Disable subtitles You can find more details of the mod in the opening post or in the readme included in the download. We must thank @Geep, @datiswous and @stgatilov (among other contributors) for the good work on the subtitles so far! Well done, guys! SMART OBJECTS - Present and Future Sometimes it is difficult to tell if an object is being held or not and the "Smart Objects" mod (now part of "Core Essentials") gets a little update and whenever you manipulate an object three dots [...] are displayed on screen: These three dots are a placeholder for real names, something I plan on addressing as a separate mod in the coming weeks... Here is the relevant topic: Nameless objects... a missed opportunity Stay tuned. INVENTORY MENU - Reworked The TDM user interface suffers from gigantism in some areas and the inventory menu has been re-worked and it is now delivered in a more compact format: The menu is 15% smaller and while the text has the same size as before item names are sometimes cut and I added a tip at the bottom to make sure the full name is always available. The updated menu is part of the "Core Essentials" mod. MINOR TWEAKS In each release of the Modpack I always tweak something and in for 4.0 I changed many things internally. You shouldn't notice any of the changes but it is worth giving the improved Whistle Skill a try... Here is the full changelog: • v4.0 New release - Major reorganization and global revision: Compatible with TDM 2.12. - All mods now share the same version (4.0 in this case). - Previous "Modpack" split into "Core Essentials" and the "Skill Upgrade". - Skill mods presented in their own, standalone pk4. - CORE ESSENTIALS: New, re-worked inventory menu. - CORE ESSENTIALS: New high mantle sound for our protagonist. - CORE ESSENTIALS - LOOT ANIMATIONS: Added scroll animation for paintings. - CORE ESSENTIALS - SMART OBJECTS: Display onscreen a subtle signal (...) when holding an item. - CORE ESSENTIALS - SHOULDERING BOOST: Mod decommissioned (alternative included in TDM 2.12) - SKILL UPGRADE - MANIPULATION: Improved script, smaller footprint. - SKILL UPGRADE - DISTRACTION: New approach (again). - HUNTER BOW: Increased radius of gas arrow effect. - BASIC SUBTITLES: Initial release. That's pretty much it for now. Thanks site admins, developers, mappers, modders and members of the community but more importantly, thank you taffer, for playing and supporting The Dark Mod. The download can be found in the opening post. Cheers!6 points
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Moddb article is up: https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/news/the-dark-mod-212-is-here5 points
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5 points
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You'll be surprised to hear but I don't quite get it either. Based on my understanding, there are a few confounding factors that make this a challenge. 1. We did a lot of work to ensure that the "included missions" were made part of the install so first time players would have a curated experience. Moving the missions back to the mission database might require undoing that work. 2. It is entirely possible to add the missions to the mission database while also being included in the installer but doing this will invite a few problems: 2a. What if the user updates the mission and then finds that their TDM install is somehow borked. They might run the installer to repair it and this will revert the mission version. If they fail to update their mission after this revert they might have incompatible save games that cause crashes and confusion 2b. What if a user starts downloading a mission update and at the same time starts a TDM upgrade ? 2c. Users opening bug tickets for a base TDM version due to problems seen in the included mission that are no longer present in the updated one, thus making it more tedious to narrow down duplicate bug submissions. 2d. Players seeing the missions on the TDM missions download page and downloading the package to install in the FMS directory then seeing duplicates in the mission list because the downloads page renames the packages with hashed filenames. All the above challenges revolve around potential user error and even though it should be obvious not to do these things, we have to compare the above to the vast swaths of folks who are begging to include TDM into Steam because unpacking a zip file and running an installer executable within a folder is "too difficult and confusing". One thing that we have the ability to do is change the file in the 2.12 installer repo so that if users run the updater it will apply the new mission. This change would not be visible to users so they would not get any alert about it. We would just have to announce it and hope that players watch for TDM announcements. I am doubtful anyone would want to work on it but I suppose that there could be some way to pass some sort of signal to the mission downloader when included missions have been changed on the installer side so they get a different update indicator. Still would be kludgy because you'd either be telling the player to exit TDM and run the installer or making TDM invoke the installer internally. So that is my take on "why" based on my own knowledge. Of course, part of my inability to "understand it" is due to my incredulity that we need to cater to players who are so below the bar in computer literacy that they would inflict these problems on themselves in the first place. None of this is an official stance just my own take on why the proposal to "let two updater processes control the same files in the same folder" has been rejected ( other than that such designs usually horrify programmers on a primordial gut level and if you mention that any program that does this you will see any programmer in vicinity instinctively reach for headache or stomach medicine ).5 points
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5 points
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Hello! I am going through the (painful) process of detaching some custom stuff I've made over the years from the base mod so I am not replacing so many tdm_ core files in my FMs. I'll be posting updates in here as I know a few people have used custom volta stuff in their missions. @Goldwell @Amadeus @Wellingtoncrab If you are using CUSTOM VOLTA arrows please replace this file: tdm_weapon_arrow.script - Ive updated this script with core mod changes - The only thing that's being replaced is: ARROW_ZOOMDELAY 3 // Shortened time from 6 to 3 seconds If you want to use the default 6 second zoom delay, just delete this file and remove it from your custom_scripts.script. If anyone knows a way I can change ARROW_ZOOMDELAY without overriding the entire file, please let me know asap. Thanks everyone5 points
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Epic Games Store time, because it's Deus Ex: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/deus-ex-mankind-divided-4c6370 https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-bridge4 points
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Yes, I think I agree. Fifteen years ago TDM was brand new. Nobody had a firm idea of its future direction. People just made the levels they wanted and had a blast. I think we should do that again. Hence, I humbly submit Proposal 5 Proposal 5) No expectations, restrictions, set theme, or requirements. Anything goes! Make a mission, any mission you want! Be as creative as you like, or stick to tried-and-true formulas if you prefer. Make a huge sprawling masterpiece if you're up for it, or a little bite-sized gem if that's more your style. Just put something out there.4 points
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I love the idea of a 15th Anniversay contest, but I think there should be fewer restrictions on what type of mission can be made so that more mappers would be encouraged to join. Fewer restrictions on what kind of mission can be made for the contest would hopefully open up more room for creativity, and maybe we'll even get some weird, unconventional missions that break the status quo. I, for one, don't really have a desire to do the "connections" theme again. It was fun doing it last time, but if I were to participate in a new contest I'd like to do something different. And holding a contest for the third "Official" campaign mission is an interesting idea, but if a contest like that is to be done, I think that should be its own dedicated contest not tied to an anniversary contest.4 points
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Congrats to all the busy Dark Mod developers! TDM 2.12 is here!4 points
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I have just released a new utility, "refont", as an open-source, partial-successor of the traditional "q3font", used to tweak the spacing and placement of TDM's bitmap font characters. For the whole story, see the new wiki page Refont.4 points
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Some parts are managed by tdm_installer, some parts are managed by in-game downloader. You mix the two, and you get endless stream of issues and confusion. As simple as that.4 points
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Test the performance of the trainging mission on low end hardware, I guess. We are the potato force.4 points
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NHAT v4.3 is available in the mission database! Changes include: Story subtitles courtesy of Datiswous Volumetric Lighting effects Improved water shaders Some new performance optimizations and LOD detail settings Lots of bug fixes for both new and old visual glitches such as z-fighting and model\prefab missing surfaces More work done to prevent players from climbing out of the map into the void4 points
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This is being investigated. 2.12 has the needed save state features so the cause is still unclear. If the problem cannot be solved in a reasonable time-frame, we may need to revert to 2.11 turret features and suggest completing any needed additions via local changes to your mission (... pretty unlikely, as we are highly motivated to retain the 2.12 turret improvements). However this gets resolved, it is the last blocker issue for 2.12 to leave beta phase.4 points
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Made it to 74+ I see I'm the only one to have ticked the 71-80 box, can't believe I'm the oldest thief left in the game, their must others lurking in the shadows.4 points
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4 points
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3 points
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I thought it would be convenient to collect in one place a list of all mods\addons\improvements created by the community for TDM. After surfing the entire forum I collected the following list of mods, and I present to you their list below. I will be glad if you correct me and provide any other links to mods that I may have missed. Graphic mods Fresnel Mod (MoDB link) Flame Glare Mod (MoDB link) ModPacks Unofficial Patch (MoDB link) TDM Modpack (MoDB link) (with the possibility of separate installation) Gameplay mods Augmentation Mod Wearable disguises Player Lamp (beta) Adjust player speed with mouse wheel Stealth Statistics Tool & Loot Stealth Stat (MoDB link) Textures TDM Texture Mod Small UI tweaks Reflections to all materials containing specular maps Sounds New Footstep sounds Collection of adjusted sounds by Anton Thiefier Sounds Blackjack Draw/Sheath SFX (MoDB link)3 points
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I haven't played the mission yet, so, I can't comment on it. Regarding the criticism: I think it should also be allowed to note some things you saw as points of criticism. Actually, IMO, negative criticism is better than positive, because it points out what you maybe didn't think through thoroughly, or you simply didn't see when you created the mission on your own. I'm aware that there is a lot of work involved, and people do it in their spare time for their own or other people's pleasure. But, that really shouldn't be a reason to praise everything to the skies. Actually, I've seen my fair share of average missions which have been totally overrated. Again, that shouldn't knock anynone's work, and, I have no idea how this mission is. Just wanted to point out that noting negative things shouldn't be taken as discouraging, but rather the opposite. I've seen some mission authors for Dark Mod going from average to absolutely fantastic missions, because they learned what it takes to make good missions. It's an art, and obviously takes time to perfect.3 points
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The Dark Mod v1.0 was released on October 17th 2009 https://www.thedarkmod.com/posts/october-17th-2009/ Knowing that many current mappers are participating in the TDS 20th Anniversary Contest, I intend to bring the final proposal to Moddb to see if we can get either some old dormant authors or new authors to join in. If we even get one mission to celebrate the 15th anniversary with that would be enough to count this as a success.3 points
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Find attached to this post v0.5 of the Player Lamp, updated to 2.12 standards. The Lamp can run in parallel with other mods Updated tdm_player_thief.def from 2.12 Download the pk4 and place it in your TDM folder. Launch a mission and cycle through the weapons. Nothing else and nothing more. Enjoy! z_handheld_lamp_v0.5.pk43 points
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Yep. I'd gladly include an automap in my missions.... if someone else were to draw them all for me.3 points
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dev16996-10665 is available! This includes everything that we could not help but commit to trunk during beta, and some of the stuff which we wanted to commit back then but did not3 points
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I've been gone for a while, but now I'm back, have a new desktop and I want to get back to making missions and playing missions. And doing other contributions. Waiting for my reset password for the wiki, but I'll take a look at it soon. Hello, all.3 points
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Changelog of 2.13 development: dev17008-10685 * Enabled shadow features specific to maps implementation (poll). * Auto-detect number of parallel threads to use in jobs system (6503). * Improved parallel images loading, parallelized sounds loading, optimized EAS (6503). * Major improvements in mission loading progress bar (6503). * Core missions are now stored uncompressed in assets SVN (6498). * Deleted a lot of old rendering code under useNewRenderPasses + some cleanup (6271). dev16996-10665 * Environment mapping supports texcoord transforms on bumpmap (6500). * Fully disabled shadows on translucent objects (6490). * Fixed dmap making almost axis-aligned visportals buggy (6480). * com_maxFps no longer quantizes by milliseconds on Windows 8+. * Now Uncapped FPS and Vsync are ON by default. * Supported Vsync control on Linux. * Added set of prototype materials (thread). * Fixes to Stone font to remove stray pixels (post). * Loot candlestick no longer toggle the candle when taken. * Optimized volumetric lights and shadows in the new Training Mission (4352). * Fixed frob_light_holder_toggle_light on entities with both skin_lit and skin_unlit. * Now combination lock supports non-door entities by activating them. * Added low-poly version of hedge model (6481). * Added tiling version of distant_cityscape_01 texture (6487). * Added missing editor image for geometric02_red_end_HD (6492). * Added building_facades/city_district decal material. * Fixed rendering with "r_useScissor 0" (6349). * Added r_lockView debug rendering cvar (thread). * Fixed regression in polygon trace model (5887). * Added a set of lampion light entityDefs.3 points
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Not so much that they chose not to use it, but that's it's extra work on top of what's likely to be a monumental amount of work already.3 points
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Looks like it's too late so we will be reverting to the 2.11 training mission. If you want an early peek at what might end-up in 2.13 you can test this one: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F-LlcNx2OVtYggQXQQ7umA0K_AQrpllY/view?usp=sharing3 points
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Here is another update to the English Stone font's DAT file used for subtitles and some readables: fontImage_24.dat This supercedes the Jan 30th update. As agreed, now all character spacings - as given by xSkip - are preserved (from this file in TDM 2.11). Exception: the Jan 30th repair of garbage metadata for "<" and ">" remains, including xSkip repair. ASCII Characters (lower 128). The earlier Jan 30th post summaries those ASCII characters that needed metadata changes to avoid adjoining stray marks. (The detail report below updates newer reversions and minor revisions.) ANSI Characters (upper 128). An analysis was also made of the status of the Stone 28 pt font's characters in the upper codepoint range of 128-255. This could be of interest if the subtitle system was some day expanded to include European languages, and continues to use the historic codepage method. The analysis also prompted some additional DAT tweaks now. Broadly, implementation of the upper-range characters (standard or TDM-specific, as defined in the TDM wiki's I18N - Character mapping I18N) is incomplete for Stone 24 pt. The status is: 43% (55 chars) Good as is. 9% (12 chars) Good enough after DAT tweak included in this update. 6% (7 chars) Missing and shown as hollow box. 30% (38 chars) Missing accent/diacritic. 7% (9 chars) Otherwise weird. But often suggestive of glyph work started but not completed. In addition, 7 chars within categories (3-5) were "improved", but are still not good. To really solve categories (3-5) requires DSS bitmap surgery (and corresponding DAT adjustments), which is beyond the scope of planned work. DAT tweaks of ANSI characters (like with ASCII) were careful to avoid changes to xSkip. Tweaks can be further grouped by problem solved.... In category (2): - (4 chars) Char is clipped, with stray mark from adjoining character on other side. - (7 chars) Stray mark, without char clipping. As improvements in categories (3-5): - (3 chars) Stray mark, without char clipping - (4 chars) Out of valid range on top edge A categorized itemization about treatment of specific problems and characters, with further details, is here: Information about methods, including new tools, to conduct this analysis and tweaking will be forthcoming, mostly after the 2.12 release.3 points
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I have updated the thread with poll options. Please vote I even though I have given-up on the connections part of this, it might be nice if authors used Corbin as the protagonist to at least pay homage to the included missions.2 points
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Weird, maybe a bad file on the server. Try this instead. https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/downloads/the-dark-mod-212-full2 points
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For proposal #1, I imagine making a mission fitting seamlessly between the two stock missions in TDM would be a tricky endeavor, truth be told. The first mission is a small tavern robbery and the second is a modestly sized church break-in with a very reasonable jump in difficulty—fitting a mission snugly in between these two in terms of difficulty and scale is a high bar to reach. A contest to make a sequel to "Tears of St. Lucia" sounds more reasonable and would probably flow better for someone playing all three for the first time. I'd probably avoid doing something TDS related when a similar contest that allows Dark Mod entries is already ongoing, but proposal #3 sounds fun if we're given enough freedom to wildly reinterpret a Thief 1 mission. I'm somewhat mixed on the slot system as it really comes down to whether or not you want a full campaign with no repeats out of this contest. I personally wouldn't mind playing 2-3 different interpretations of something like the Bonehoard, it's bound to be interesting seeing what elements of a mission FM authors focus on.2 points
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2 points
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Losing the option for stencil shadows would be extremely sad. TDM has the best stencil shadows implementation I've ever seen, and they look far better than shadow maps. They also perform wonderfully. Stencil shadows not supporting shadows on translucent surfaces is a bummer, but that's a fine tradeoff. Personally, I'd rather not see alpha-tested shadow occluders, because they look awful and are distracting. Shadow maps in general look bad and pixelated -- quite immersion breaking. Another issue with shadow maps is that they substantially increase the usage of the GPU. For those using laptops or integrated GPUs, it could cause performance or heat issues. For those with decent dedicated GPUs, increased wattage (and therefore heat) can and does turn on its GPU fans. The wattage on my AMD RX 6700 XT can become tripled when using shadow maps. That's undesirable. The advice I give players is: There really isn't a "best" shadows implementation these days. Some devs and players prefer one over the other. Regardless of which is chosen, stencil shadows and maps are used where needed. So, I'd try out both and pick the one you prefer. Here's Fen complaining about shadow maps. Complaint #1 (7:28): Complaint #2 (23:46): In his next video (Written in Stone - 4 - Chocolate Coated Brendel Bar), he turned on stencil shadows, and as far as I know, he never complained again. The following area in Written in Stone shows a good example of alpha-tested shadow occluders. Yes, technically the moving leaves cast shadows, but it looks awful in game, in my opinion. I know others like it. The same scene using stencil shadows looks amazing in game. (The screenshots don't do a good job demonstrating how it looks in game.) The current hybrid system is fantastic. It gives people choice. Those who prefer stencil shadows can use them; those who prefer shadow maps can use them. People become attached to the "art" and "style" of a mission, and changing the shadow implementation changes the art and style. If one must be dropped, I'd say shadow maps should be dropped from the menu settings. Use shadow maps for volumetric lights and stencil shadows everywhere else. And, I agree with nbohr1more that defaulting to rules consistent with stencil shadows is a good idea.2 points
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Okay, so I managed to beat all four of the previously-released Hidden Hands missions in preparation for this upcoming campaign, so now I'm ready to tackle this bitch once the thread's up.2 points
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TDM Latch Pack (Beta) By Frost_Salamander and wellingtoncrab with special thanks to Dragofer Tired of picking another lock or hunting for that missing key? Imagine The City is itself an elaborate lock, and you are the key. Embrace progression through careful exploration and navigation of the environment. Embrace the latch pill: Included is a new entity type and scripting for a door mounted toggle lock, or "latch", as well as new CC0 assets and prefabs. https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity/test-latch/wiki Example Video Asset Pictures All models and textures in this pack are released under CC0 license and may be used freely without need of attribution. We waive copyright to the extent that possible, but aren’t lawyers. Latch Lock Features Supports single and double doors across all cardinal directions, as well as trap doors Uses the location system to handle context sensitive frob highlighting of the latch and the doors Automatically determines the correct latch state on map start based on the targeted door's "locked" spawnarg Options for rotate, translate, or both with unique sound slots for each Supports any model or func_static To get started head over and grab the latest release (available with or without demo content) and read the getting started guide. This is a beta release - so your feedback is appreciated!2 points
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I have just released a new utility, "refont", as an open-source, partial-successor of the traditional "q3font". For the whole story, see the new wiki page Refont.2 points
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The Thief2 FM "Mission X" was structured like that. But from the perspective of someone making or using a multiplayer system, it should be as general as possible so mappers can make whatever set-up they want for their FM, like that, or leave it open to the players to play it however they want. I think one way for the system to work most basically is have a coop mode (shared objectives, loot, scripts, etc.) and a "thieves vs. guards" mode (separate objectives, tracking loot count & capture count; it should probably be set up like the old Thievery mod) and those are pre-made so a mapper can just turn one on and tweak some things. Those are the two most popular MP cases for this game. But then if they want to, mappers could micromanage the parameters if they want to make their own mode, and the system should facilitate that. That was my thinking. But I think coop is the big one for us, since all of the FMs will already be set up for that, and that's the way I imagine it'd be most used. So that should come first.2 points
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Don't ask me why but artifacts are more evident when using my spin off the gui file. I noticed C, E, T, W, Y improved in your latest fontimage_24.dat and I wondered if you overlooked G.2 points
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Update: @JackFarmer The root cause of the turret crash has been found. It seems that it was given the same physics code as the security camera but does not have handling for cases where no clip model exists. Removing the physics code fixes the issue. That said, I guess we may look into adding it back so that the turret follows the same destruction features as the camera?2 points
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in case you wonder my beard was white when i hit 25 only started getting some grey streaks in my hair in the last two years hehe. and for those younger here enjoy your youth while you have it at around 40 the problems start (just look at those receeding hairlines atrocious!!!), well if the hair was my only problem i could live with it hehe i also got gall stones kidney stones and a nasty fall which broke my back in two places at around that time. So enjoy it while you can or stay away from ladders2 points
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Bumping this thread. I was trying to parse the code for LibreCoop recently, the multiplayer coop mod for Doom3, or Dhewm3 more exactly. The main alternative is OpenCoop, but I think LibreCoop is more developed. Anyway, it got me thinking how much work would have to go into a coop mod for TDM. It's still my biggest wish item. The idea I got was one has to basically walk system by system through the code and think about the client and server side of packet swapping. TDM has a lot more and more complicated systems than Doom3, but once you start getting a feel for it, I think the basic system doesn't change that much. In a way it reminded me a bit of a pared down save/load system, what you need to update a game state, except you're streaming it in in real game-time, and you using tricks to fill in gaps to ease the load. The other thing I noticed is that maps themselves need their scripts tweaked and anything else happening in the world. But I wonder if there's a way to procedurally do that when a map is loading, so one could just use the FM files as released. It looks like it'd take more than a year or two if one were working steadily through it, although I think one would get efficient at it over time. Like I was noticing, there's a consistent logic to it. But most of all I think it'd be worth it. I really like Thief coop, and I think it'd be great for TDM. I'm just FYI'ing about it now because I was browsing through the other coop mods. Not even soliciting opinions or anything. Just thinking aloud (avisible?) about it.2 points