HMart

I add that off, changed* it but still the slider images don't work even after a restart. *I saw another imo strange behavior on this, when I changed that cvar value to 1, restarted the game, went to the console again and inputted, image_preload, just to see the current value, it showed 0, despite being changed before the restart and on the DarkMod.cfg it is 1. The value gets overridden somehow?

Yes I have a AMD GPU, hope you can solve that problem, because I don't think I will change GPU's anytime soon...

My following suggestion would need changes at the engine level and also require the team to reimport and export the models again from a 3D tool or perhaps make a special plugging for DR to mix the models into a single one, so may never happen but I think it should at lest be considered and it is the following: Some games, include the LOD models, in the main model itself, like how the engine currently uses the collision model and the shadow model, the same could be done for the LOD's, this would have the following benefits that I currently see, it would unclutter the model folder, because you would only need to export one model, all necessary info is within the model file itself, two permit DR to continue with the current model chooser and entity chooser, no need to mix the two or change DR model handling in any big way, apart from perhaps creating a special filter, to hide the LOD surfaces/models if necessary, like is done for the shadow model, and the best benefit imo, instead of the mission maker having to bother with setting up LOD's manually that would be automatically setup by the engine at model import time and so prevent the problem that Dragofer talks about, forgetting or even not bothering with setting up LOD's. How to setup the LOD's in the 3d tool? It could be done like the shadow model is done, using a special LOD material, or if possible they could be put in a different layer that you give a "_LOD_X" name and the engine would read that layer has a individual model, this would need the engine to support importing models with more than one layer, that I don't think it does (but I could be wrong) and I'm not even sure if, ASE and MD5 support extra layers, I know LWO does. My two cents on this discussion.

I've seen something similar, in my case all sliders in the menu lack the visual movable slide and the value label, also some missions lack the "start mission" string, I assume all this is because of the changes being done to the menu system by stgatilov and will be solved sooner than later.

oh yes a good internal ssd or even a nvem/M.2 ssd can be fast even with preload on, but I have the game in a external USB 3.0 2.5 HDD, so preload may impact me more I assume.

I bet you guys already know this but if you don't, just for kicks I set image_preload 0 and image_useCompression 0 and the missions I tried load way quicker! Is obvious why but I underestimated how impactful this options were! And I didn't felt any performance loss from it. I hope this is true for all! It seems I will play with those off going forward. Btw I also found that using preload 0 and compression ON, causes the game to start with no textures for a few micro seconds, similar to some UE3 games! TDM is now among the big league engines! ;D kd Is not a big problem and the same happens with compression off but for a lower time, unfortunately, the game has visible pauses, when opening doors and the game as to load and compress the textures on the fly. edit: I didn't played the latest version with stgatilov new RGTC compressor in SIMD, so things could be different on it.

Used Avast before, today, I use windows defender add no need for another anti-virus.

IMO this would be more a "marketing" tool than anything, would be cool to see lets play youtubers play TDM and scare the crap ot them selves because they talked at a inconvenient time.

I see this used more for youtube lets plays' thou.

geegee, IMO (even thou I sometimes fail at that) the best way to not reach this stage, is to ignore threads that touch subjects where you have a strong opinion on, is a sure way for you to find people that totally disagree with you or to read posts from others that you may find very offensive, my advice stick to the threads about the game that are mostly on topic. Personally I've add very few instances were I've add to totally ignore someone in a forum and on this forum even less, imo is the most mature mod community I ever seen.

That is how my own simple LOD system works, it does a origin to origin float distance number and I have yet to see any major problem with it, but I will not claim that I have tested it that much, specially in a complex scene with hundreds of LOD entities. I do make sure to do the check, only when the player is within the same area has the LOD object and the player is moving, no need to do it, if the player is stationary or the distance value didn't changed that much between frames. I also do the check in a larger interval, if the entity itself is totally hidden. Btw would love to do the LOD, based on size of object in pixel/screen space, (size of object on screen) like Unreal Engine does but currently I don't know how to do that, if someone has a hint...

You are certainly right, but I was not saying that assert substitutes code for runtime user error handling, it can be used for such a thing (in debug builds) but I use it mostly to catch my own errors, for frontend user errors I use mostly goto; I know goto is hill advised and disliked by many programmers but I use it and I've yet to see any problem with it, but in no way am I saying is the best way to program. b32 somefunc(void) { if(this check fails) goto Error; .... Error: { print("Error message!") return 0; } } I know is not always the best option but it works and idtech 4 besides exceptions also seems to use goto for error handling, personally, I've yet to find the need to use exceptions.

I'm not a programmer of the caliber of any of you, being coding in c++ on and off for 3 years only but I've heard from expert programmers that I have total confidence (Jonathan Blow and Casey Muratori) that exceptions are bad and they do more harm than they help, John Carmack does seem to use them, as anyone can see by looking at the idtech 4 code but is also apparently used very sparingly, like you advise. But your find reinforces the advice from Jonathan and Casey, don't use them at all, so personally even thou Jonh Carmack may have used them and he is a master programmer, personally I haven't been using exceptions at all, only assert or even just a simple goto (this last one I've read, some high level languages like JAVA, masquerade as exceptions). https://youtu.be/UNXHK8O-B_g?t=5630 http://xahlee.info/comp/why_i_hate_exceptions.html Jonathan Blow about his JAI language

"so I'd imagine support for gamepads might have existed in vanilla idTech 4" No vanilla idtech 4 has no gamepad support, is possible to go around that by using some emulation/translation software, that maps gamepad cmds to keyboard cmds but the code itself has no idea about gamepads. (that can be easelly changed today) idSoftware were not fans of those for FPS's when Doom 3 was made (that I totally agree), they were openly against gamepads (that has of course changed now) the game was also PC exclusive for years, they were a very PC centric company in the past.

Oh ok thanks for the info cabalistic, thanks for trying to solve it at lest. Btw I did all in my power, trying to make AMD aware of this problem, I exposed the problem on twitter to the official driver guy and I sent two bug reports on this problem, using the driver bug report feature, but unless many other AMD users do the same, I don't think they will prioritize this particular bug, if only a few complain.

Did something changed in the latest dev 2.10 dev16330-9508 version about bindless textures? I didn't updated my AMD RX 570X driver and when I enabled bindless textures before they were broken and today just because, I enabled it and textures are fine! Are you guys just silently disabling the feature in AMD GPU's now or is it really working? How can I tell?

Not sure if this is what you wanted or if TDM engine as something better but idtech 4 does have the ability too blend two materials, afaik only two, using Black and white (RGBA) vertex colors painted unto the mesh, was used on Doom 3 for many Mars and hell terrain models. https://modwiki.dhewm3.org/VertexColor_(Material_stage_keyword) https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=DrVertexBlend_(tutorial) https://web.archive.org/web/20080418194854/http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=12067 The ability to use terrain masking, to support more than two materials, like what Quake Wars used for their terrain, would be awesome but alas no source code for us to see how they did it. Apart from the later the only other option more or less possible, that I personally know, is painting all the materials you want, in blender (or other 3D tool) and bake them down into a single texture, than if possible, use the unfinished Mega Texturing system, to display this huge, baked single terrain texture, in small chunks very fast but afaik that code was removed entirely from the TDM engine. Without MT or unless someone implements virtual texturing into TDM, unfortunately, this means that with this technique, only very small terrain peace's are viable, why, because this can create a huge terrain texture that even with compression, could have many GB of size (depending on resolution and compression used), and so be very heavy, specially for older GPU's, with low amounts of VRAM space. Btw perhaps something like this is now possible in TDM? Perhaps using a GLSL shader? Or can it be replicated using the existing material system?

Congrats man that is very cool to get the recognition you deserve, hope is not very hard to bring it to TDM.

I see no fade in/out, in that test map the entities just blink out of existence do I have to turn something on? edit: ho I see it now, is obviously not alpha blending but alpha testing, like used on the Doom 3 monsters and peter_spy example, but works fine. I will need to try harder it seems.

That looks very good, like I said, I did a bad job and that proves it.

You are right, the doom 3 like effect I used was bad for LODing but I concede that I may just have done a bad job, I tried some other alpha textures but it just looked strange and not a smooth transition like I wanted, so I gave up. Others may make it look and work well anyone is free to try.

Is this fade in and out even possible? I know almost nothing about rendering but I tried to do it, in Dhewm3 and no matter what i tried, it just didn't worked, the only alpha fading, I could do was on lights and material colors, alpha was always totally invisible or visible, there was no in-between. The only "fade" I could easily do, was the normal monster burn effect used on Doom 3, but is bad for LODing and like I said uses alpha testing, not alpha fading. Perhaps you need a shader for this that Doom 3 and Dewm3 engine lacks? Btw this seems very strange, when you have the translucent option, but it seems to be a hack and objects with it on, do not interact with light, bad for grass, it stays full bright in shadow, but I could be totally wrong and just not knowing how to do it, very probable, like I said, I'm not a graphics/rendering guy. Also Quake Wars engine seems to do LODing using a technique called alpha dithering, not alpha fading, if you guys extract the quake wars assets, you will see in Textures/common the various dither textures they use for the fading affect, to my ignorant eyes, seems to be used just for a texture animation, where you change a alpha mask texture for one with more and more pixels disabled, and small and small in size, in a grid like pattern.

No problem, glad to help.

I love horror games, some of my favorites are those from Frictional games and Silent Hill so I agree, the fact that someone likes or not horror games, could influence the preference of Doom 3 over the older and new Doom's.