The Black Arrow

Thanks, I only needed to change the 1st paragraph though, but it does give more charm to it. The Almighty Lord Builder bless thee

Since The Dark Mod takes a lot of lore from Thief (don't forget they're similar, not identical) I decided to take a tiny bit of liberty and add "extra lore". Luckily, most of it is vague so it shouldn't break the TDM lore & spirit at all, unless you're a crazy conspiracy theorist I suppose. I'll stamp them with a number, then put them in quotes in how it would be most optimal format, liberty can be taken of course as it's just a suggestion. I will also add a small description as to what it is meant to be, so if there are various pamphlets on various locations it would have a better, more fitting location. 1. "Bury not your head When dirt is poured on you Bury not your heart When the chance give dim For the Master Builder He does watch thee And give thee Ordeals of His Tasks" - When all else fails, don't stop and keep on going, for this is a blessing and task given by the Builder who also took the same tasks. 2. "When born are we Do we not cry for knowledge and power? Do we not thorough nothing? Yet do we not want all? But this is not the path For us to take The Children of the Builder We will prevail not by vice But by true humility" - Don't be spoiled and be humble for this is the Builder's true path. 3. "Worry not upon the dirt For the stone is which carve Duly not upon the grass For the roads are what pave Tear not upon the rock For ore is what it will forge" - Modernization is important. While nature is not what the Builder seeks, it is nature that the Builder's Disciples improve, so very subtly thanking nature (dirt, grass, rock) they "modernize" it by replacing it with man-made materials (stone, roads, ore). (Extra note: by "dirt" it should be referred to the dirtwall, that's why I mention stones) 4. "...And come have they, the Plenty Thieves of Stone Sin committed by theft They were through by ours May be they rest." - Thieves get no compassion for stealing from the Builder, but only the Builder himself gives compassion. ("to through" is an actual old term, it means exactly the same as "to stab") 5. "When you got Shears You will cut When you got Thongs You will Forge But when you got a Hammer... You will Build!" - From Apprentice to Master, you become more and more with the Builder, making creations worthy of his image. 6. "You will keep Yourself even if you are Fire! You will keep Them even if you are Sin! You will keep Him Even if you are Death!" - You are the Disciple of the Builder and you keep him like a Fire does to keep warm. Even if you're not part of the faction, you are anyway. And be the Builder as he is, even Death cannot kill him. 7. (Inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" quote) "It is not the pagan who yields; not the lazy who begs or the savage who wrecks Ours is the belonging, who face our trials by Fire & Forge who strive for our deeds by Will & Work The Almighty Lord Builder May he take Pity Yon them, not us Brothers In the end We will Triumph For the Master Builder!" - (Inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" quote) This seems to be a bit too long, you could separate in two from "The Almighty Lord Builder". The idea is that even if a Builder has committed a failure despite his best, he is still the one who faced it and took it with pride instead of absolute shame, somebody who never took the true danger are the ones who deserve the timid cold shame. Hopefully some, if not all, of these are worth it somewhere here and there. And most hopefully they don't "break the lore/spirit"

I'm not somebody who gets surprised easily, but that there is amazing. I have already seen quite the work made on old DirectX games where PBR was not possible, but this one is the top of the year. The colours match everything so well, be it saturation or contrast. The brown wood goes well with the gray that goes well with the white off the lamp. The artistic floor is to die for....Positively speaking, although that sounds too far nihilistic. If only The Dark Mod engine was able to do POMs then the walls would look even better. But that is artistically speaking, realistically the walls being being POM'd would be unreal. I had some basic but meaningful studies in the art of language, I even know some modern Middle English, I could give it a try. Would you prefer a PM or just post it here?

Thanks, I was about to request though, the crosshair itself indeed. Is it possible to have the "frob helper" dot appear permanently, no matter what (except maybe when aiming the bow, we got the immersive "aim helper" option for that)?

I was about to say that this is cool, but Springheel is right, not the "immersive" part but the others he mentioned which are NOT comfortable; rotating your head will stop the camera, looking up and down is not a perfect 360 anymore and so on. I do like "body awareness", any game that has it is good, but I want it to be "subtle", not "strict" like in Thief 3. Take Dying Light as an example, in that game, you can turn around as fast as you want, just fine, it gives a "Classic games" feeling that I love. If TDM gets Thief 3 style Body Awareness, I'll be fine, despite the developers not liking it but if it's the "subtle" approach, even better. I'd rather so the legs are visible simply to be visible, a nice visual addition, not a complex system of animations. Problem is...There's no "moving" animation for the playermodel thief, he just walks a lot like the character in STALKER, with stiff arms and all, which is why I dislike the player shadows. If the playermodel finally gets some better "immersive" animations, I'd use the self shadows then and hope there will be plans to be able to see your own legs.

That's actually amazing, gives me more chances to easily work around with, still sad there's no PBR for it though, but I might be able to code a material shader based on Phong (Beckman for example) for once. For the lights, I'd rather do both, in another game I found an issue in a map because of the new shader, I only needed a tiny change in it that didn't change anything except for that one specific part. With OpenGL3.0+ it would be possible, by use of "Tessellation" I'm sure, no need to remake a model so it's higher poly. NOTE: The video provided is an example, a bad one though, because that whole engine seems to have been made to over-emphasize on tessellation, stairs don't need tessellation to not look like a "slide". And of course, some cards don't support it, we have old timers here after all.

I know pretty much nothing about OpenGL but you mentioned "speculars" and 2k textures, do the speculars have at least Phong Shading support? And with 2k, is that the actual limit or just the "convenient limit"? I might get bored of the world and interested in a specific game to play with the textures.

Would it actually be possible to improve textures, models and shaders? It seems OpenGL2.0 is rather too old for this, OpenGL3.0+ is almost a DirectX10 equivalent, I'm expecting a "maybe" here.

Triple Buffering works for Adaptive VSync too, it's not some fancy thing like Fast Sync after all, it's just VSync but automatically disabled when your frames reach lower than 59 frame, although it takes a small millisecond or two to disabale. S-Sync sounds interesting, but it looks like Nvidia's Fast Sync with another name (the second link mentions it acts almost the same as). It beats G-Sync though, at least AMD don't add their value price upon monitors just because they support FreeSync.

Summary: Bikerdude has been banned. Thanks, I'm so retarded that I don't even know what obvious statements are. And obviously, that is not a summary. Heh, that's actually a very good one even if it was intentionally made to be poetic. Look who's talking, the one and only person here who's too keen on closing a thread just because of one guy, accusing me of "special snowflake" when the only special snowflake here is you, with your obvious passive-aggressiveness. And no, I'm not "disrespecting by digging", I'm simply asking, the question of "why it is that hard for you to understand" should be on you instead. But fine, I surrender. I don't want to get banned or have my reputation further ravaged just because I daringly asked for information, I got better things to do than deal with overly-sensitive hypocrites. Close this thread indeed, let it be a testament that dealing with you people is far from worth it and it's best to just shut up and carry on. <--- There's yon good ol' conspiracy theory.

Oh yes, sorry, I should have explained better. By what I mean is that the dreaded "60 to 30 FPS" (I have 60hz, numbers will vary for other refresh rates), the occasional stutters and the mouse input lag happens way more often than usual. Using traditional VSync, be it from the game or the control panel has the same effect and gives the cons of using VSync. Using Adaptive VSync is more like a gamble, it may work or it may not work, if it works it may work wrongly (like traditional VSync) or rightfully. If I enable Adaptive VSync in my Control Panel, enable Triple Buffering and switch Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames to 1, it will work and mostly better than other VSync, I will still have mouse input lag (and it's as good/bad as traditional VSync) but when I reach lower than 60 FPS, VSync is disabled and I don't have that feeling that it runs at 30 FPS, but I do get screen tearing. Occasional stutters also happen, but not as often as with traditional VSync, on this one I am very sure it's just a placebo effect though, but it's possible that the fact Adaptive VSync is automatically disabled when lower than your refresh rate is what causes that stutter. As a side note worth mentioning, there's also Fast Sync, but I highly discourage it for The Dark Mod unless you play heavily optimized maps, where FPS is never lower than your double (If you have 60, you need 120 FPS, even if it's not counted). It's pretty much VSync without any feeling that VSync is used, but if your FPS gets lower than 120 (or higher, again his is dependent on refresh rate), even 119 will cause extreme stuttering and mouse input lag.

From my experience and some, now rather antique articles about Adaptive VSync and the AMD equivalent... Adaptive VSync is only good and some rumour works only when Triple Buffering is also enabled. My personal experience has always been that in-game VSync is terrible, and any adaptive VSync is bad, only through Control Panel is it actually good and with Triple Buffering enabled. Also, it seems that "Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames" does make a huge difference in mouse responsiveness, I tried this comparing 1 to 4, using a very cheap gaming mouse. I haven't tried anything in here, but I'm going to give it a try, with OpenGL's and Nvidia's Adaptive VSync.

So it is just as I thought, the whole 2.0-to-3.3 was for a practical reason, it being "Compatibility". I'm very sure there may be some performance boost, it uses new tech after all, but it also depends on how you implement it. I suppose this isn't basing the whole engine on OpenGL3.3, right? Just "updating" it? So there will surely be no performance boost, it's just like making a game on DX11 and then giving the option to use DX12, it's mostly a software upgrade. Still, better than 2.0, old tech regarding computers is never any good.

People blaming me for being lazy and not "bothering to read" some pages full of subjective drama, and I say this as a fact, that most of it is based by opinions anyway, caused by you all. I am only asking for a simple short objective SUMMARY, yet you people just want to passive-aggressively complain some more and blame me for nothing, then make extreme suggestions like closing this thread just because it is, what, being "necro'd" when it's not? Two/Three weeks old doesn't make it "dead". I understand you're all "hurt", but why not tell me why instead of just passive-aggressively blaming for bringing those emotions back? I'm sorry, I just did what STiFU didn't wanted to happen, but I am absolutely not at a fault here, it is your fault you want to take extreme measures and continue the drama by just continuing it. Like I said, what's wrong with wanting to be informed even if just by a simple quote? Is it that hard to simply say "BikerDude was banned due to plagiarism, he's been doing it for so long as well"? And besides, is that what actually happened? Nobody tells me, you all just go enact an opera.

What's wrong with asking for objective information that can "warm" something up?

Too bad it's post-process through an external injector, won't be as good or accurate as actual in-game implementation of HBAO/HDAO. If they make it like RE2Remake, then yes, if not, not really worth it as overwhelming graphics will just make you spend more than 2 hours changing settings for nothing. Kinda hard to differ between Maps & Stencils unless you do it through console or change in options instantly, for example.

I'd disagree but I'd rather be prudent. If they get HBAO, it should be passable, if they get their own AO or a recent modern AO technique, it would be way better. SSAO can stay forgotten though. AO is the ugliest effect I have ever seen in any game, it's only barely good when it's HBAO, somewhat. HDAO could be better, haven't tried much but I prefer it over SSAO in Max Payne III, it's AMD-made after all, nobody likes AMD sadly.

This new 2.07 update is amazing. It not only gives Soft Shadows (which were in 2.06 anyway) but also improves performance which used to be terrible in 2.06 (or so I heard, didn't even try it) and not just that, but also gives you the option to switch between CPU-bound shadows (Stencil) or GPU-bound shadows (Maps). Kudos to the Shader Artist, they're my favourite developers and I'm a Texture Artist with Shader skills myself anyway. My RTX 2070 can finally kick The Dark Mod's cute little butt instead of being pussywhipped by my puny (overwhelming actually, for OpenGL2.0 that is) Intel i7 2600k. Can't wait to see what major changes will there be with 2.08 out, where it will use OpenGL 3.3 instead of OpenGL 2.0, a big improvement already by just one number upgrade. I'm curious though, why OpenGL3.3 and not directly to OpenGL4.6? Major compatibility issues?

I still don't exactly get what happened. Did BikerDude plagiarize something, and Judith who is pretty much the "prosecutor" here showed proofs, which BD rejected as "false evidence" despite being true, and the 'drama' was going too extreme that Springheel had to use an extreme measure (ban)? ...And this was going on for more than three years, where BikerDude was doing unauthorized map updates? EDIT: Actually, it looks like BikerDude asked to be banned, multiple times even. Kinda makes me be uninterested in this dilemma.

Raytracing is not even "realistic".

And this was between the New Year. What a shitty New Year it is. Sir Taffsalot fan missions were one of my favourite, they weren't detailed or visually pleasing, but the gameplay was spot-on, it reminded me of both old Thief games better than all others. I just hope he's happy in Hell/Heaven/Purgatory, stealing from Satan/God/Whoever-the-hell-it-is like a Ghost.

According to Goldwell himself, that's an issue with EAX. Author's gotta fix the "sound shader" for it.