stgatilov

Mathematically it is possible to extract heightmap from normalmap by solving partial differential equation. If heightmap is f(x, y), then normal vector is proportional to N = (-df/dx, -dy/dx, 1). Hence we can find df/dx = -Nx / Nz, df/dy = -Ny / Nz. So normalmap gives us partial derivatives of heightmap in pretty straightforward way, but their precision is around 0.4% at best. If normalmap was generated properly from a real heightmap, then this problem is called "reconstructing potential function for conservative vector fields". But since our values are rather imprecise, we need some stable solution, not just some trivial prefix sums. I'm not sure how stable the possible solution could be, and how good will be the quality of the output. Even if they would be OK, this approach can only be usable as offline tool to be run explicitly.

Since parallax mapping has sort-of gone public, maybe we should create a public thread about it? I can extract this discussion into a new thread as a start.

The alsoft.ini is visible, and people sometimes tweak it to troubleshoot sound issues. The DLL however is not visible, since OpenAL is embedded into TDM executable. There was an idea to add in-game OpenAL settings and possibly allow choosing HRTF preset. But I'm afraid nobody is good enough listener to check the presets and say "hey, this 3-rd preset sound so much more understandable for me, we really should provide selection to everyone!" I feel it is not the right idea to switch to dedicated mode. I'm pretty sure there would be many quality-of-life issue in this mode, like background sounds from OS and other applications not cutting through. Are you sure there is real issue with Windows mixer on all machines? I understand that it is possible to enable some automatic crap in OS that would modify all the sounds, I think I had this on some machines myself. But ultimately it is the user's will to enable some crappy "3D processing" in Windows and we shouldn't go against it.

Yes, now "s_minDistance 0" should work as people normally expect. But this will become official only in 2.13. And there will be a big sweep over all the missions to restore original behavior when 2.13 beta starts.

Of course it is not retroactive. Parallax mapping requires heightmap and height scale, which does not exist for old materials. Also, any kind of parallax mapping introduces visual artefacts and might require tuning for specific use case, so we can't just force it onto everything.

I believe I removed it because: It showed only the version, not the SVN revision. It did not help but only added confusion. It had some "check for updates" logic which could ping the server, but we always forgot to update the server side of this feature. This was the main thing I wanted to remove. I guess I removed the whole GUI element because I thought having this info in console is enough.

dev17152-10890 is available!

I'd recommend to record which dev build you were playing somewhere, maybe rename savegames directory so that it includes the version. Or simply get a fresh TDM directory for new version until you finish the mission. I don't think there were savegame format changes.

New dev build is available: dev17121-10869 Be sure to check the new search functionality in mission select / download menus by @Daft Mugi !

Just like for tdm_installer, the mirror for mission download is selected randomly. There are also weights intended to distribute traffic across mirrors. While you might be interested in using the fastest mirror only, controlled random distribution is used because some mirror owners were worried about too much traffic.

interactionMultiLight were experimental shaders which are not used in game. Just ignore that warnings/errors.

The way main menu is customized was changed greatly somewhere about 2.08, which affects both single missions and campaigns. If you look into mainmenu_custom_defs.gui, you'll see that the current suggested approach for main menu in campaigns is using #if MM_CURRENTMISSION == 2. So you can set defines for separate single missions first, then put them all in a single file and wrap in #if-s. The sample uses the old approach unfortunately.

If you want to find out what is the problem on your machine on specific mission, you can record performance trace: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Tracy:_timeline_profiler Tracy Viewer allows to save the trace, so you can send it to me. At the very least, we can learn whether it is CPU or GPU limited. And yes, there are certain settings in TDM which stress GPU a lot. Like high antialiasing or high quality soft shadows --- tooltips in the recent version note about it.

dev17104-10844 is available.

This was suggested many times. I believe there is technical problem in implement lightgem the way you suggest on GPU. Maybe I can try to make a prototype with new CPU implementation and see how it goes. However, most of the people believe it would be confusing for the player, and that's a typical case where realism should be sacrificed.

Actually, it only matters on your local machine today. And if you share your pk4 with someone directly. When you release a mission, you send archive to e.g. @nbohr1more, he unpacks all contents and commits them into mission SVN. Then TDM server automatically packs it into pk4 and this pk4 goes into mirrors.

Interestingly, I noticed that particle collisions don't work properly even on the demo map sometimes. I have just found that "texture" layout is broken in Release builds of TDM (but works fine in Debug builds which I usually use). Most likely this is caused by MSVC optimizater bug. Due to the bug, UV bounds of the emitter are computed incorrectly, so vast regions of the emitter surface have no collisions whatsoever. This is easy to detect if you compare with "correct" version: generated incorrect TGA files have randomly different size (i.e. they are randomly cropped). I have no idea when this bug started happening in TDM. I feel lazy to bisect in tdm_installer... The workaround will be in the next dev build of course (let's hope it will work properly).

No way to set GUI text from its spawnargs?

I think there is difference between player overlays and GUI entities. The script event that you cite only works for player overlays. And your readable is GUI entity.

dev17095-10833 is available. Yes, but it won't start on 2.12 then, so this will be applied in missions database only when 2.13 is close.

Thief taught me archaic English words and not getting lost inside huge buildings P.S. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory coop missions is the best two-player coop experience I've ever had. As for single player... let's say neither of us two finished it.

Yes, that's because of persistent info improvements: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6509#c16675 I'll add it to known issues, but it will only be fixed during 2.13 beta.

Maybe you can share a map or a piece of it for inspection?

dev17056-10800 is available.

I remember someone ran TDM inside Parallels VM on M1. In theory, Wine should work today. Just want to hear confirmation