HMart

There's also the fire arrow that is technically a explosive. But at the end of the day, this is a game and if anyone want guns in it, someone will have to implement them. Someone will have to model, texture, rig, animate, code and play test a gun into the game that feats and like chakkman said, there's always the danger that the existence of guns, will just kill the usefulness of arrows and the Thief like identity of this game. But if someone wants to do a special separate non canon TDM mission, where guns exist or aliens or whatever then by all means go for it, personally I will certainly applaud it and play it.

Perhaps you want some in lore special reason why there's no guns but the truth is more simple, is because the developers of this game, didn't wanted guns as a gameplay tool. This game is a homage to the game Thief (mostly Thief 1, 2 and 3) and in those games there's no guns. But anyone is free to come up with a in lore excuse why there's no guns, perhaps in this world shooting a iron pellet through a tube is impossible, because of some obscure magical reason.

I need to try this my self someday.

Oh I never realized that was possible now, I recall Nvidia not letting AMD users use a Nvidia GPU has a PhysX accelerator!? And btw I don't think the extra PhysX effects are worth it for the extra heat and energy consumption of having two GPU's on a system. And I say this has someone that (unfortunately) bought a Ageia PPU and played the hell out of CellFactor and Warmonger, specially this last one.

Try to disable bloom that will probably make that error go away. If so, It seems Nvidia is now returning nan's (not a number) in their drivers for the bloom shader like AMD did some time ago.

I hope that is not the new TDM version. https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20784-render-bug-large-black-box-occluding-screen/

I most agree this is very confusing. The main light on my example, was not coming from the top but from the side and it looks correct to me, but your OGL example does look incorrect, if the light source is on the top right corner, so call me confused. edit: I made more testing, I was totally wrong and Wellingtoncrab is correct, it IS the D3D system, purple on the top for bumps, is the correct color, cyan in the top should be for holes. So my example is misleading and not correct.

Seems to be OpenGL I tested right now. edit: I was wrong so I deleted my original reply to not induce others in error.

Is that really correct? Unless TDM team changed stuff from Doom 3 times, if you use Doom 3 as example, normal maps that represent outward surfaces, use OpenGL system, those that represent inward surfaces, aka holes, use D3D system. On real DirectX renders, outward surfaces, use the D3D system instead and the OGL one for inward, is inverted. And to reinforce this the original example by idSoftware, looks to use the OpenGL system see here cyan for top, purple for the bottom, in d3d is inverted. Thou like I said maybe the TDM team changed all of this by now... edit: Incorrect info so ignore it any mod is free to delete this if he/she wants.

Ps. sorry for the huge wall of text....

Completely disagree it was a very good idea that unfortunately came too early with idSoftware RAGE 1 because hardware was still and is not truly ready for it. Megatexture is for textures, what UE5 nanite is for geometry, it permits huge amounts of texture data in a level and even totally unique textures per each surface, no repetition unlike older methods. MT isn't simple a giant texture slapped unto a level, it is a type of virtual texturing system, the MT is a huge "texture" but it's data, is not all drawn on a level at the same time, like a normal one is, it is broken into smaller squared peace's and those peace's into even smaller ones for LOD aka mipmapping, then those peace's are streamed in, in real time has the player moves around. Again IMO It is a very cool idea and if the hardware was fast enough, to stream it fast and it was possible to compress the MT data, to very small amounts and still keep good quality, it would be a fantastic system for very unique levels. Rage 1 world may look bad at close distance, but at medium to large distances imo it looks fantastic and totally unique.

Why do you want a square visualization for sounds? If is because you are afraid, that because of the fact the sound shape goes through walls, in a squared like room, that sound may go as well, then don't be, afaik unless there's zero portals in a scene, sound will be blocked by "walls" automatically. It uses the portals to know where it can "flow" into other rooms. So only the size not the shape of the visualization, is what matters, like OrbWeaver said, the shape is only a visualization for the inner and outer radius of a sound. In other words the area or "field of influence" of a sound and that "field" afaik, expands equally in a 3D volume, in a sphere like manner (to be more precise two spheres, a smaller inner one and a larger outer one), so a sphere shape, IMO is the best approximation for it. I also assume, a cube would be misleading because on the current system, if the player parked at the corners of the cube, he/she wouldn't hear the sound, thou I never tested it.

Ok got it, thanks for the reply.

It detected my CPU core count correctly, 12 physical 24 virtual. Btw just curious but what's the reason, for the cpu core data to not be printed at the top? Next to the cpu name and features like AVX and SSE stuff. Not complaining, critiquing or anything, if is like that, it most be because of a good reason. I just found it odd that's all, because I add to travel down a bit on the console before I saw the cpu core count and thought "why? when there's CPU info already at the top?".

There's a cool trick that is making what you have on your "hand", very small, or at lest smaller enough to not get out of the player collision mesh, so it can never reach a wall, the player collider prevents it. And then move the object very near the camera "lens" and it will look big and normal despite the small size, is a nice trick that I learned a few fps games use. But I don't think is the one idTech 4 uses... Unfortunately I don't recall what that trick/hack is anymore, I just remember something about the engine code having what idSoftware called "weapon hack", probably just looking at the engine code and searching for weapon hack, will give some results, thou like I said, right now, I don't recall how it is used.

What do you mean? Btw I don't want to continue with my "complaint" or push the subject further, I've said enough already and is your guys decision. I'm just genuinely curious what do you mean by that.

Not to start a discussion on this but just for correctness, that is not true at all, unless you are using a really low polygon shadow mesh, if you see a pixelated shadow with stencil, then that is a shadow map or a mix of both stencil and shadow maps. Stencil shadows are crisp and well defined, they have no resolution setting or quality setting (besides turning off shadows), because they are literally geometry (triangles) being projected unto surfaces, while shadow maps are pixels (textures) so you can control how sharp they are. TDM has a mix shadow system, where some effects even in stencil shadow mode, will use shadow maps, for example volumetric lights shadows, are shadow maps. Stencil shadows Shadow maps

And btw I'm not against using both shadow systems, I just think that supporting two systems, is more work, but if the TDM engine team is okay with that, then go for it they have my full support, for what is worth. I just personally don't like that shadow maps are being pushed back is all. But you guys do what you want, this should be a mission makers decision, I'm just a "customer" I will have no choice but accept what you guys decide.

And those pics that Daft Mugi posted do show the problem with TDM maps, but I also have to say, that is a problem with TDM shadow maps, not with maps in general, I never seen such ugly issues in Stalker for example or Call of Juarez and many other games. Perhaps those shadow maps issues arise from people not thinking of shadow maps at all, when creating their lights, shadow maps do require a little more tweaking to look good, specially at grazing angles, because they are literally textures, so perhaps moving the lights a little solves those problems or even increasing the shadow map res. Just think about this, if shadow maps where that ugly, the gaming industry would never deprecate stencil shadows and we would still be seeing a ton of games using them, but is totally the contrary, games with stencil shadows, are the minority, even idSoftware removed them, I think since Rage (i'm not totally sure about Rage...) and up (besides obviously Doom 3 BFG). For example: Wolfenstein II Dishonored 2 Evil within 2 (this particular shot is impossible with stencil shadows, because of the blood that is a particle effect with alpha) etc. For obvious reasons TDM fans have a good opinion of stencil shadows and I comprehend that, they do look very good, TDM and Wolfenstein 2009 are the games with the best soft stencil shadows that I haver seen, but maps can also look good, if given the chance and used to their full potencial. another game with good stencil soft shadows Thou tree shadows on this game seem to use something else or literally stencil shadows because sometimes they look like a blob on the floor instead of seeing the individual leaf.

ok fair enough but you have still not seen TDM using shadow maps to the full potencial, so I would wait until then before making a final decision but ok. Also unlike stencil that looks crisp at any quality level shadow maps only look good at res beyond 1024 and up and also dependes on the tech used, some have noisy edges by nature, because of low res penumbra effects. But to me today they look good enough and the fact they may look less than equal to stencil, maybe the particular TDM implementation, with all respect for those that implemented them. I have played a ton of games with shadow maps that look good at lest to me. Stalker for example: Metro 2033 Dead Space Call of Juarez Arkane Prey made on Cryengine and many many more.

I know you didn't asked for non TDM mappers opinion but man this decision makes me really sad, imo after so many years, with both shadow systems and still deciding to hard limit shadow maps, to only stencil can do, is like cutting the wings of a bird. Has a player, I can't wait for the day you guys finally decide to remove stencil shadows from this engine. EDIT: Ups I didn't saw the poll at first so my comment was a tad precipitated sorry about that.

Could it be anything to do with the shape of the geometry? Is a curved staircase looking at the images. Or the thickness? Thou by that image those stairs are anything but thin. Is just that I have seen thin walls leak light, while ticker ones do not and I have seen this, in more than one engine even in lightmapped ones. Also is that brush geometry or a imported triangle mesh? You will correct me if wrong but afaik the engine treats triangle mesh's, a tad differently from brush geometry, like it doesn't automatically inline the triangle mesh geometry, into the overall baked brush geometry (unless your force it), so it leaves a invisible "gap" there where the mesh connects with the brush wall? Could be floating point accuracy problems, like you recently talked about?

Ah yes all of that makes sense, I just forgot that BFG didn't came with dmap and people add to transfer the original tools to the new engine.

Perhaps id didn't cared for that loss on accuracy, at lest for Doom 3, is hard for me to believe they did that for lack of knowledge or something but who knows. Is this code still in BFG?