Xolvix

Bit late because I've already bought the display, but yeah I'm aware of those OLED monitors as well. Unfortunately I'm not willing to pay for the expense and from what I've seen, almost all display tech have some sort of drawbacks. It's all in comparison to a 2010 TN panel though - everything is better at this point.

So recently my primary monitor died. It was purchased in 2010 and used TN panel tech so it had crap viewing angles among other issues, but I liked it all the same. For a replacement I ended up buying the AOC 24G2SP, mostly due to generally good reviews on various sites as well as the recommendation of its predecessor by @chakkman in this thread. I'll be getting a hold of it soon but I already know about the benefits of IPS compared to TN - looking forward to consistent gamma levels no matter where you are looking! One of the more important aspects however is I'm going from a 60Hz display to a 165Hz display. I'm only superficially aware of the various terms used for monitors these days, but this monitor is advertised as being "adaptive sync". Apparently this means it's not a native G-Sync monitor but what's called a "G-SYNC Compatible" monitor. That and terms like variable refresh rate, it's all confusing to me. I should note I have an NVIDIA card. If nothing else, I just want to know if what I've read is correct - that within the NVIDIA control panel you enable G-SYNC, then global V-Sync ON for all games, and then within the games themselves, make sure the in-game V-sync is off (i.e. let NVIDIA take care of it all). Finally, I want to avoid ghosting as much as possible without inverse ghosting due to overdrive settings that are too high. Some people suggest running games at a lower Hz to ensure the response rate allows for this to happen rather than at the full 165Hz. But others to leave the display always at 165Hz and never tweak it otherwise G-Sync will break. I'm so confused. Sorry for the wall of text. Any advice on any of these topics would be appreciated. Thanks.

I started with OpenShot but kinda abandoned it due to issues like @thebigh mentioned. Seems like every new version has some weird bug that causes problems or is just annoying and you wonder why it's there. Sometimes I tried using nightly builds in the hopes it would fix things but it wasn't sustainable. Nowadays I'm a big fan of Shotcut. It's a more mature project and also has more regular releases. You do need to learn how to use it of course but even a dummy like me was able to edit videos with transitions and other effects.

There's a third type - people who expect this behaviour and yet still don't care. I'm probably in this group because well, it is typical Microsoft behaviour (which is unfortunately quite common among other tech companies these days), but I don't use Edge so I'm mostly unaffected. I should note that while I do primarily use Firefox, I occasionally use Edge to check on a site if I think Firefox is having issues with it or for comparison. But after doing this, I always need to remember to delete the Edge tray icon/desktop search app from loading on startup, which adds an autostart entry every time Edge is launched if not already present. It's insidious and really wants to dominate the entire OS if it can. Which is a shame because I generally like Windows as an OS because the framework is pretty damn solid - it's all this shit Microsoft lays on top that ruins the experience.

Please give us more examples in this thread. You gave one (noclip) and it wasn't even correct! Have a look at the release notes for each release. You'll see a lot of bugs are fixed in addition to new features. Sometimes these features are imperfect, sometimes there are regressions, but fixing bugs is a core part of the game's development. Here you can look at what's currently being worked on for 2.12: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/changelog_page.php?version_id=108

Can you elaborate on the issue 2.11a has with cheat codes? Last time I tried cheats (typical ones like noclip and notarget) they were working fine. Also can you elaborate on the "garbage"? I think some examples would be useful. If you're talking about the many warnings that appear in the console I agree it can look ugly, but most of the time they're benign and a consequence of the maps being old or having errors themselves. There's a careful balance one must take in preserving the playability of old missions and keeping development of future capabilities of the game going. I've encountered missions that break on updates, but for the most part they're pretty rare and the mission creators either update them if they're still active or workarounds are found. Anyway if you have some more examples of what you're talking about it might be useful.

Oh yeah, I should second this as well. A mission is not fun if it's designed to be painfully tedious in terms of dodging the visibility of the AI. I can't remember which mission it was, but the mapper must have been in a bad mood that day since too much of the interior of an important building was lit very brightly with non-dousable light sources, with few if any viable hiding areas to obverse patrol routes. I don't know what the intent was, maybe it was a challenge for elite players or something, but it wasn't fun and I resorted to my power move of the "notarget" command just to make it bearable. Forget even looking for loot in such environments.

A fun mission for me requires a few things: I prefer smaller, more densely-packed environments instead of larger city blocks. That's not to say city missions can't be fun, but they run the risk of being exhausting, confusing labyrinths. From my perspective missions with smaller environments provided an increased chance of me finding all the loot, secrets, readables and other content. I've missed major areas in city levels purely because it's so easy to skip areas without realising it. I'm not a fan of undead and spiders because they can be difficult to kill, or at least, to kill without making a whole lot of noise. I like missions with human enemies because for the most part I can deal with them quietly, and as such it provides an opportunity to clear out areas first and then look carefully for loot and/or secrets. I really enjoy missions that have some sort of mystery, either as a starting goal to resolve, or when a seemingly straight-forward mission is designed to go badly and the mystery presents itself mid-mission. Keeps me engaged. I don't like KO or kill limits. I can tolerate kill limits more but I really hate having to limit the KOs I can make in a mission. I know some missions only have these limits on the higher difficulties, but sometimes those difficulties also have higher loot and even extra objectives that I want, but I have to deal with the KO limits alongside them. The best missions either don't have limits at all, or they are optional objectives that don't cause a mission failure if breached.

Interesting. Well I hope Vivaldi is able to flourish and continue its efforts at being the best browser it can. Unfortunately it's all too common in the tech industry, once you've grown to a certain size, to become the very thing you sought to destroy. But I guess the most important thing is that we continue to have options.

Very true, but if that's the case then Vivaldi is a bit of an oddity. Despite using Chromium the browser isn't actually open source, it's more of a hybrid between open source and proprietary code. Which is fine, except that if you consider ethics important, moving away from a pure FOSS browser (Firefox) to one that's part proprietary (Vivaldi) seems like the wrong direction... unless it's a compromise with features vs licensing, which I kinda understand. In the end though it's still a browser using Chromium as its rendering engine which means that no matter what position they have publically against Google, they're still relying on Google tech for the most important part of the browser. The browser monoculture keeps marching on...

I use Firefox as my primary browser and have never seen this popup, but I'm in Australia so it's possible the ads were only visible in certain locations. Or maybe there's a setting I disabled that normally allows the ad and I got lucky. Whatever the case this is still pretty poor from Mozilla and that bit about the "Not now" option is an example of a dark pattern in UI, where they won't give you a simple "No" option because they want to keep the idea in your mind after the popup has gone. It's infested so many web sites and software (and certain operating systems) and it's a pile of shit. I get that Mozilla need to finance their operations but Firefox is supposed to hold itself to a higher standard than Google or Microsoft or the other scum who try such behaviour. That's why it's irritating when they feel the need to try such things.

4K this, 4K that. Be like me (1080p) and keep your standards low-ish and you can never be disappointed!

Bit worried about Firmament because I'm a big Myst fan, but the Steam reviews are currently "mixed" due to bugs and jank and Cyan don't seem to have worked out how to get into a groove for a while. Even their last game Obduction showed promise but didn't hit the mark compare to older Myst games. I dunno - then again there aren't many devs making these types of games anymore so maybe I should be more forgiving. On the other hand, the state of the modern gaming industry makes it really, really easy to hold onto older hardware and not worry about upgrading until it's absolutely necessary. I play a ton of older games anyway so whatever, if I upgrade at some point the game will hopefully be patched and improved by then anyway.

It occurred to me that if TDM was a commercial triple-A game, there would be a HUD waypoint you could follow that would lead directly to all the evidence needed for the Atkinson objective. It'd be so incredibly easy... but at the same time feel rather hollow. At least here if I couldn't complete the objective, it would motivate me to seek it out on a future replay - something to look forward to doing better next time. But a lot of people don't replay games (if they finish them at all) and publishers hate negative comments people give about missing out on content, but it's how the industry is I guess. Not really sure what the point of this observation is apart from perhaps noting how refreshingly old-school TDM is. It's niche, but it serves a niche that most publishers would never touch.

Nothing for anyone in particular, just some personal tests. Headset mic.

Finished the mission, great work and very interesting to play with a ton of small details that I love seeing. But a few questions:

@Frost_Salamander I can confirm the github version fixed the issue.

OK this is a bit frustrating. I'm on version 2.11 (technically 2.11a) and not only is the inventory image for the "Map of Highborough" item black but the map itself is also black. Have I screwed up something here? EDIT: Did some debugging. I did a condump looking for issues and found this: ----- idImageManager::EndLevelLoad ----- WARNING:Couldn't load image: font [map entity: func_static_29] [model: models/map_specific/symbols/H.ase] [decl: font in <implicit file>] [image: font] WARNING:Couldn't load image: guis/assets/game_maps/map_of_icon [map entity: atdm_map_of_1] [decl: guis/assets/game_maps/map_of_icon in <implicit file>] [image: guis/assets/game_maps/map_of_icon] WARNING:Couldn't load image: guis/assets/game_maps/map_of [map entity: atdm_map_of_1] [decl: atdm:map_of in def/tdm_shopitems.def] [window: Desktop] [window: background_map] [decl: guis/assets/game_maps/map_of in <implicit file>] [image: guis/assets/game_maps/map_of] 0 purged from previous 194 kept from previous 2679 new loaded all images loaded in 6.8 seconds --------------------------------------- I opened the highex.pk4 file for examination. The game is trying to load the map images in guis/assets/game_maps, but it appears the PK4 has the actual location of guis\assets\game_maps\guis\assets\game_maps. There's a second level of directories added for some reason.

Cool, turns out I actually completed "In Plain Sight" in February so hopefully I'll recognize the references. I have a feeling I'll end up lost in this one too but at least there's no obscure secrets to get annoyed about missing it seems. I've wanted that for ages but I'm guessing there's a reason why it's coded to ignore "articles" (a, an and the) when sorting.

Would a modest Aussie accent be out of place?

Thanks. The version in the TDM console is now showing as 2.11 #10264, which I assume is 2.11a? EDIT: Should have read the original post a bit better. Guess the changes are in the pk4 files.

Is this a fix for the bug where some map inventory icons show completely black for some reason?

Sometimes I wonder if I need to buy a bigger monitor and get some glasses to find all these secrets/loot people keep finding and I don't. Or maybe I'm just getting old. Anything other than suggesting I suck. Also props to the AI image generation. Those portraits I was thinking looked really good... almost too good, as if they were taken from somewhere. I read @Wellingtoncrab's post on the subject so I know it's all training data from other artists but it was still effective. I've been a bit mixed on the use of AI assets but honestly in this case, they worked well and blended in with the art style. I think used appropriately they work especially well on artwork such as custom portraits which would be difficult to do well unless you're a skill artist.

Unfortunately I don't think this is a question that can really be answered. As stated before a Thief game in the style of the classic games can't be commercialized anymore, at least one with a typical budget. Maybe an indie could do it but I don't expect Embracer to do so. I'd be happy just to get a decent conclusion to the Jensen Deus Ex trilogy. There's a reason Thief 4 ended up the way it did - it clearly had high production value in terms of graphics so if you're gonna spend money on a game like that it has to be relatively mainstream in order to have a chance to turn a profit. The Dark Mod is made by enthusiasts so this isn't an issue and things can remain as niche as people want. Because of this, there's no way a new official Thief game will satisfy all parties. Dishonored and the newer Deus Ex games are great titles but are also complicated (and hence expensive) to make and simply not enough people buy them to make them commercially viable, or at least for others to make similar types of games often enough that we have many to choose from. But hey, if I could fund my own AAA game and didn't care if it was profitable or not, then I'd be interested in mixing things up a bit. Maybe have it start off in a classic, typical Thief setting but then Garrett or whoever does something which launches them into the future, or maybe an alternate universe or something. Also it would be really cool if it was built with the intention of using ray-tracing as a core technology, so if an area is dark you KNOW it's dark and you'll be well hidden, and the boundaries of light and dark areas are properly defined because we can do that now. Stuff like that.