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The Black Arrow

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  1. The Black Arrow

    Happy birthday to me!

    Yes, today's my birthday and as much as I want to play The Dark Mod, I won't until it's late Autumn, where it should be a bit chilly in my place and there's some wind too.

    For now, it's time to enjoy my birthday, if any of you want to play a great fan mission in my honour...Well that's asking too much, just play the mission because it's fun, not because of me, enjoy it yourself! 💪

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. Skaruts

      Skaruts

      Happy birthday :)

       

       

    3. datiswous

      datiswous

      Quote

      if any of you want to play a great fan mission in my honour...

      Tempting...

       

      Happy birthday!

    4. The Black Arrow

      The Black Arrow

      Thanks everyone, had a great roasted beef dinner with cheesecake for my birthday party

  2. The Black Arrow

    Hey @nbohr1morehow come the zombies in The Dark Mod don't have a "resurrection" mechanic to it, similar to how Thief has it?

    They're quite a weak creature as of right now, it's merely a walking corpse that slashes you, making attacking them to kill them an actual strategy.

    Would be better if they had some cool mechanism to it that truly makes them a danger, such as the resurrection idea itself.

    1. Show previous comments  5 more
    2. grodenglaive

      grodenglaive

      great discussion. Wow, the whole time I have been playing TDM I just assumed they were immune to sword attacks - I never even tried🧟‍♂️

    3. chakkman

      chakkman

      @The Black Arrow Same with Penny Dreadful 1. 

      Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed those missions, but, you're right that they just don't give you enough means to deal with the enemies. I simply ended up "ghosting" these missions, which obviously is the intended way to play them - strictly one way, no other way.

      That said, both are really cool missions.

    4. The Black Arrow

      The Black Arrow

      @grodenglaiveHaha! Really? Well, now you know it and your mileage will change, for better or worse 😀

      I've realized it so myself because I wanted to "kill" a zombie and see how it goes, basically they're just health sponges, of course, but they have nothing else special, so whenever I play a fan mission with zombies I make plans to kill some or even most.

      @chakkmanThe Holy Builder's Balls of Brass, good ol' Penny Dreadful, made by Melan, one of the best missions by one of the best authors, I should replay that series some day.

  3. The Black Arrow
    Wasn't "Megatextures" the reason Doom 2016 (IdTech 6) takes years to load though, even on a high-class SSD? I've then heard that Megatextures were scrapped out in Doom Eternal (IdTech 7), which apparently could add to the fact it loads incredibly fast.
  4. The Black Arrow
    I always say that...The only thing that beats a fail is a try. I'm actually interested in these Detail Textures now that you further talked about its history and how today we'd use it on 1080p for 512 and 1024 textures. If anything, it would be a fun experiment just to see how it would look and how it would go. Also, yeah, I wouldn't want the game to be bigger than 100GB and have extreme loading times, all in the name of modern textures at 4k, I have a very hefty computer but that doesn't mean poor ol' but venerable IdTech 4 wants to handle it.
  5. The Black Arrow
    Alright, so, I'm a Texture Artist myself for more than 20 years, which means I know what I'm talking about, but my word isn't law at all, remember that. I've worked (mostly as mods, I am a professional but I much prefer being a freelance) with old DX8 games up to DX12. When it comes to Detail Textures, for my workflow, I never ever use it except rarely when it's actually good (which, I emphasize on "rarely"). This is one reason I thought mentioning that I worked with DX8 was logical. One of the few times it's good is when you make a game that can't have textures higher than what would be average today, such as, World Textures at 1024x1024. Making detail textures for ANY (World, Model) textures that are lower than 128x128 is generally appealable. Another is when the game has no other, much better options for texturing, such as Normal Maps and Parallax Mapping. Personally, I think having Detail Textures for The Dark Mod is arguably pointless. I know TDM never had a model and texture update since 2010 or so, but most textures do seem to at least be 1024x1024, if there's any world texture that's lower than 256x256, I might understand the need of Detail Textures. Now, if this was a game meant to be made in 2024 with 2020+ standards, I would say that we should not care about the "strain" high resolution textures add, however, I do have a better proposition: Mipmaps. There are many games, mostly old than new ones, that use mipmaps not just for its general purpose but also to act as a "downscaler". With that in mind, you boys can add a "Texture Resolution" option that goes from Low to High, or even Lowest to Highest. As an example, we can add a 2048x2048 (or even 4096x4096) world texture that, if set to Lowest, it would use the smallest Mipmap the texture was made with, which depends on how the artist did it, could be a multiplication of 1x1 or 4x4. One problem with this is that, while it will help in the game with people who have less VRAM than usual these days, it won't help with the size. 4096x4096 is 4096x4096, that's about 32mb compressed with DXT1 (which is not something TDM can use, DXT is for DirectX, sadly I do not know how OpenGL compresses its textures). I would much rather prefer the option to have better, baked Normal Maps as well as Parallax Mapping for the World Textures. I'm still okay with Detail Textures, I doubt this will add anything negative to the game or engine, very sure the code will also be simple enough it will probably only add 0.001ms for the loading times, or even none at all. But I would also like it as an option, just like how Half-Life has it, so I'm glad you mentioned that. But yet again, I much prefer better Normal Maps and Parallax Mapping than any Detail Textures. On another note...Wasn't Doom 3, also, one of the first games that started using Baked Normal Maps?
  6. The Black Arrow

    I wanna play Doom 3, but fhDoom has much better features than dhewm3, yet fhDoom is old, outdated and probably not supported. Damn!
    Makes me think that TDM engine for Doom 3 itself would actually be perfect.

    1. Show previous comments  3 more
    2. datiswous

      datiswous

      So it's like going back.. But still, could be interesting.

      Would be interesting to make an immersive sim kind of level with Doom 3 assets using the TDM engine.

    3. The Black Arrow

      The Black Arrow

      I didn't think about that, but...That's actually a great idea, datiswous!

      Hopefully someone reads this status and gets inspired to make a "Doom 3 for TDM" fan mission, heh.

      I would think of it as either during the invasion or after the invasion, just a few hours in, where you play as one of those scientists or office workers, you got no weapons and you'll have to avoid the possessed Humans (zombies) and Security Guards, maybe even some Demons. You'd mostly go through offices, warehouses and some industrial complexes.

      I can easily see the Security Guards being implemented as redone Haunts that use Security Batons instead of rusty swords.

    4. datiswous

      datiswous

      I think it's actually something that regularly comes up. I've seen a similar topic at least once before.

  7. The Black Arrow

    Hope everyone has the blessing of undying motivation for "The Dark Mod 15th Anniversary Contest". Can't wait to see the many magnificent missions you all may have planned. Good luck, with an Ace!

  8. The Black Arrow
    So, I love both Thief 1 and Horror, but I can't pick both, so I picked Horror instead. Just saying in hopes that somebody reads this and makes a "Thief 1 Inspired Horror"
  9. The Black Arrow
    Alright, I've tried this about two days ago and I had quite the fun in it. I think saying anything will be a spoiler, so my whole review will be a spoiler itself, here you go: Overall, it's a great short fan mission, it captures the Lovecraftian atmosphere very well, I always loved Lovecraft horror and I hope to see more from you!
  10. The Black Arrow

    Any of you heard Age of Wonders 4's OST?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0TcoMGq4iA

    I love how after all these years, Michiel van den Bos still conserves his "Melodic" spirit.

  11. The Black Arrow
    I can't wait to try this, Lovecraft's works are one of my top favourites all time, so glad to know there's more than one author who is inspired by it. I never got the chance to read "The Terrible Old Man", but I did read "The Picture in the House". I have this good memory of playing Neverwinter Nights, somebody made a fantastic module about the work I just mentioned, "The Picture in the House", it's actually what inspired me to read it. Let's see how influential this mission will be!
  12. The Black Arrow
    Is that so? Well then, it takes more than one shot to kill a Bull Moose! I do have ideas on what the recipe could have actually been, if you and anybody else wants to know, here it is in spoiler: I always loved when missions have a climax and then you finally read it, you finally know it. You know what they say; curiosity killed the cat...And satisfaction brought it back. I will never NOT play a mission's sidequest. Also I'm glad to know you're very eager for TDM mission making, wonder what you have on the works, no doubt it will be as great as this one and that is much to say knowing that, again, it's your first mission!
  13. The Black Arrow
    I'm rather surprised, for a "first mission", this was so visually appealing that it reminded me one of many Chocobo's classics. I hope your interest in TDM is still big, because I'd love to see more missions from you! By the way, what was Bert's secret?
  14. The Black Arrow

    I was playing Skyrim, got bored fast. Got back to The Dark Mod just for one mission, played "Somewhere above the City" which is not really a great mission but still good, as in above-average.

    My biggest regret is living in this country, where there's a heat wave, I am sweating at 20c and I really wish for temperatures below 5c.

    1. Show previous comments  9 more
    2. datiswous

      datiswous

      People tend to be LOUD when they're unhappy. When they're happy you don't see anything except for the sales numbers.

    3. chakkman

      chakkman

      Quote

      People tend to be LOUD when they're unhappy. When they're happy you don't see anything except for the sales numbers.

      Interestingly, the Bethesda games sell well, and still earn a lot of shit storm.

      But then, that isn't exactly rare these days either, with all the envy.

      I also have a lot to criticize with them, but, I wouldn't smash them for it. They're just AAA games for nowadays audience. That audience likes repetitive and boring graphics demos.

    4. datiswous

      datiswous

      Isn't just number of sails? I mean if 10 milion peeps buy the game and 1000 people complain, this looks like a lot, but not in comparison.

      If 30 people on the forum don't agree something will not get implemented.

  15. The Black Arrow
    I would use this massive list for any fan missions, it includes campaigns too: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148090 There are a lot of Fan Missions for the picking, I myself go for the lesser known ones and the short variety, because sometimes they hide a gem or two. Just like jaxa, I'm a bit outdated after the temporal retirement, but I do remember some amazing campaigns like "The Black Frog". If you intend to play The Black Frog, you should play the first two of the L'Arsene series missions, it's how I did it myself. Also, yes, L'Arsene are a fantastic series. The first mission of L'Arsene is a "rough draft", author was a bit new to Thief level making, but still great either way, after the 3rd you will see how his skill increased by a massive amount.
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