HMart

I comprehend but you do lose volumetric effects with stencil but only the really recent missions have volumetric lights. Btw In reality there's a big difference between what shadow maps are capable off and stencil maps are capable off, unfortunately because of backwards compatibility with old missions and the fact that for a long time, only stencil was available, TDM team add to limit shadow mapping capabilities mostly to what stencil can do.

MSAA is heavy specially at 16x because is more or less a type of super sampling (rendering the scene at higher rez than displayed), but unlike the later is way faster, but like SSAA, MSAA still increases pixel count. Yes i'm not surprised AA was the main culprit good it was not something else. Btw Stencil shadows are mostly CPU based, shadow maps are GPU based and because you were already GPU bound, changing to to maps wouldn't make any diference, perhaps even make it worse, because maps are normally slower than stencil, thou today because of some exclusive effects to maps, I would recommend them to everyone.

Then the problem is also the material, yes. I would assign a opaque dark material, to the inside faces of the light housing, minus the glass front, so they don't blend with the background.

Was this model made in DR? The uvmap is all over the place, meaning it falls outside the 0 1 area. But that is not the problem, the problem is that It add a missing face in the back of the lamp thing, so you could see to the outside thought it. I put a face there that should solve the problem. mod_playerlamp_model.lwo

Link the model here and I will solve that, is easy (famous last words.... ). To me no need to link the material or textures just the raw model. Btw is the model lwo? I can only open .lwo models in Modo my tool of choice.

That is slightly less than 4k but imo is still a really a high rez, specially for this engine, that is ~7.3 million pixels that the engine has to calculate/shade, per pixel 60 times or more, every second! also why MSAA (multisampling anti-alising) can be very expensive on this engine, it increases pixel count. So like nbohr1more said, if you have it on, lower it or better disable MSAA, at that rez IMO you don't need it anyway and it has no effect on geometry faces/surfaces, only on geometry edges and if you really want AA, also like nbohr1more said, force a post process one (FXAA or better if possible TAA) using the Nvidia driver. You can also try to lower the rendering scale and increase the sharpening filter to counter balance the loss of definition in the video options menu. About the CPU the fact you have low CPU utilization and high GPU utilization, shows you are getting GPU bound in this case, so increasing thread count in the game console, I don't think will help but try it. Btw sorry if you already know this but if you don't, at lest may explain to you why this "old" game, is so heavy even for your modern very expensive GPU, this game uses a modified Doom 3 engine, with better support for multicore CPU's and other modern stuff making it way faster than original Doom 3 engine, but is still using the old forward render and unlike more modern renders like deferred render or forward+, that can render hundreds of (non shadow casting) dynamic lights, before getting slow, a old forward render like of Doom3/TDM, can get really slow with a relatively low number of dynamic lights in a scene, worse if they all cast shadows, and on this game all lights are fully dynamic and in many missions most of them cast shadows, real time shadows, there's no light baking of any kind.

If dmap doesn't show a leak and there's a leak into the void (a gap in the world into the void or a model origin in the void) that is really strange, too see if is a leak and dmap somehow fails to show it, try to start your map with "devmap mapname.map" instead of using "map mapname.map" devmap afaik ignores leaks, if the map/mission opens then is a leak. But the fact that you are having AAS out of date warnings after dmap, sounds like you are opening a old version of the map not the one you dmap a new, perhaps you have DR badly setup and it is saving the fresh maps and files into a different folder than you think?

Personally I really don't know if that is available or not but that does sound too a specific guard behavior, so perhaps is not defined? If is possible to have that? Yes, if is not available already, unfortunately there's no other way but code it into the guard AI, in c++ or script yourself, if you know how to code.... Btw the civilian AI does have "fear" and runs away from danger, is that AI type really entirely separate from the guard AI, or the guard behavior is just "dormant" on the civilian AI and vice versa? If all AI's are done through the same AI system then perhaps is just a matter of turning some stuff on or off. If they are totally separate AI's, they are still so similar in parts that perhaps so you could adapt/transfer the civilian fear behavior into the guard AI for specific types of danger. But all of this requires coding. Sorry for not being more helpful than this, I really don't know much about TDM or even Doom 3 AI stuff.

Yeh that is also how Doom 3 weapons were done, but perhaps this can be worked around? Next to weaponDepthHack there's also a modelDepthhack bool I assume for every other model, perhaps that just needs to be put in the model def file or enabled by a spawn argument? I really don't know, or if that spawnarg even exists, if not then is something to put in the roadmap.

Is the lamp a weapon? Unless TDM weapon system is different from Doom 3, weapon models should have the "depth hack" thing enabled, that "hack" (that is how idSoftware calls it ) makes sure the weapon never intersects with geometry. in the code: bool weaponDepthHack; // squash depth range so view weapons don't poke into walls Don't know if there's a way to enable that without messing with c++, stgatilov or others may know.

Perhaps but the game, has gameplay features that can muffle your footsteps sounds, carpet and other ground textures, the vine arrows also, so by making them more silent/quiet, imo you may end removing the incentive, for mission makers and players to make use of those. To me, If a player thinks the footsteps are to loud then maybe the mission maker, didn't put enough ways for the player to walk more silently in the level and so he always hears loud footsteps and thinks that is bad/broken. Btw what about incentivizing mission makers to do certain things, by the older more experienced mission makers, agreeing on a small list of "best practices for mission makers" for performance, looks and gameplay and pin that at the top of the forum? Then any new developer may learn something from that and avoid some rookie mistakes, like for example, not putting enough ways in a level for a player to walk more quietly. Just my two cents.

This most be a TDM only thing, because I tried it right now and I can use volume keyword, in a sound shader, in Dewm 3 engine, to both increase and decrease sound volume. Or unless is particular to the player footsteps, I didn't tested those, will see and update this comment. Worked with the player footsteps sounds as well but I remember messing around with the c++ code to make those work. I used Blendo Games starter pack and the player system that comes with it, has the footstep system disabled, this because the starter pack has no real player model, just a floating camera. Ps- btw I add to call reloadDecls in the console NOT reloadSounds for the volume keyword to work.

demagogue to me its doesn't matter that its "somewhat right" what it wrote there, is mostly BS, is not true. Not such game mode on this game... nor this game community is called "Dark Mod", that is the name of the game. I bet the AI said that, because many indeed refere to this community online has "The Dark Mod" community but the AI totally failed to get the real meaning/context of those words. Again there's no such game mode, nor players make levels using ingame tools and resources. That is obviously marketing from some online MMORPG game or such. Again to me it doesn't matter that the intention is almost there, you and me know that because we know the game and its community, but if we were new players, the truth is, that description would give us a totally wrong idea about this game. Because players don't assume the role of builders, builders are a ingame enemy faction, players don't build anything, they play the missions and the roles of thief's or assassins', mission makers (no matter if they are themselves players) are the ones that build missions, the only thing right in that quote is " trying to avoid detection by patrolling guards". What that original quote show to me, is that the AI can write coherent frases but still be totally wrong, is just a clever mashup of cool marketing words, from other games i bet, being reused in a new context, mixed with a few correct bits/words from Dark Mod.

Soma uses Newton Dynamics (Newton 2.x or 3.x? )I know that physics engine, is very accurate, is also why it is slower than Havok and PhysX for games, unlike the others it takes very few shortcuts in its physics calculations (there the name), that made it's joints and friction handling very stable and perfect for the type of player world interaction that Frictional Games wanted for Penumbra, the fact the physics engine was so stable and rather unknown, is IMO one of the main reasons their first game was so unique and successful. Btw Newton Dynamics started as a physics engine for robotics and stuff in academia, so it needed to be accurate, the main developer of the engine, is now making a modern version more focused at games, Newton 4.x and it is way faster than the former versions, but I assume that with that speed comes less calculation stability but I don't really know.

John Carmack the main idTech 4 developer once said, "best way to mesure performance is not FPS numbers but frame timing" and I agree, we tend to mesure game performance by counting higher and higher fps's but you can have a very responsive and playable game at 30fps, if the frame timing is constant and a very lagging game if not, even if the fps numbers are 60 or higher. And today in the age of Nvidia DLSS 3 AI frame generation, FPS numbers, are imo becoming irrelevant, hardware unboxed found that with DLSS 3 you can have a game, for example show 120fps but feel almost exactly like a 60fps game (because is the speed the game is really running at, DLSS 3 is just inserting fake frames between each real one and artificially upping the frame rate).