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Yeah, that makes sense now. Group your decal patches into a single FS or use SEED to selectively group 'em depending on distance... if you want to go for hardcore optimizing... Though I think more distance parameter tweaks or occlusion parameter tweaks will be needed for SEED show reasonable gains for that effort... Now this has me wondering "If seed_combine could group differently depending on which visportal view or view-direction you are seeing, then we'd probably be as low to the metal for view optimization as you could practically get with this approach..?"

I know that v1.05 is right around the corner but, again, if you don't want to wait till then to play those missions I have posted versions that play in 1.04. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/12428-crash-with-the-thieves/page__view__findpost__p__250582

One thing I've been wondering about is whether grouping func_statics is how you "batch" texture calls. Those Quake 4 mappers like Method and Lunaran keep mentioning batching in their optimization discussions and I can't for the life of me understand how you can tell Doom 3 to "process these textures together, then process this other set next" other than to group FS...? Quote from Lunaran stating that batching textures gained enough performance to run as if the polys were cut to a 3rd of the amount:

No crash in 3D mode for me... P4 3.0GHz HD4650 1GB AGP 2GB PC3200 (DDR400) XP SP3 Did you make sure to disable "Threaded Optimizations" in your nVidia drivers Fieldmedic?

From the pathfinding wiki but the warnings are in language that indicates that these are not fully confirmed issues...

Mortem Desino's upcoming mission is using portions of the community map: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/10003-so-what-are-you-working-on-right-now/page__view__findpost__p__229285

I recall that Sotha found that if monsterclip intersects with any visportal anywhere in your map the AI will not pathfind correctly. Other than that... make sure some world-spawn is where the AI need to traverse the visportal? (Caulk wells, etc?)

THANKS! Thanks for the update Demagogue. Please don't hasten the muse if she isn't ready to dance. I just like keeping tabs on where my favorite authors stand. Sotha is perfect because he posts progress percentages I'll bump this thread in a couple of months if I succumb to this compulsion again

Melan and Biker's RTTC v2 currently holds my top spot for released missions... Demagogue's "Patently Dangerous" is a very close second. (My top list is very internally contentious with my mood changing daily... I will probably say RailGun's "Trapped!" is my fave tomorrow...) All the best missions have so many great qualities it's difficult to play favorites... Do you love chocolate mousse more or gourmet carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting more?

Hey Demagogue! I recall a couple of months ago you mentioned that you have a mobile computer capable of a little DR editing. Have you had a chance to build anything substantial? Have you been too busy? Are you afraid you won't live-up to your first blockbuster mission? Some of us are filled with idle imagination and wish to fill it with hopes of a new Demagogue mission, should we continue this line of futile speculation or move-on to speculate about a new RailGun mission (etc)? Nag, nag, nag, nag, etc...

Prerequisite viewing: also... DARKMOD!!! (Also, can you post in the forums or does your mobile browser suck like mine does and only work for status updates...?)

I'd say if there is one characteristic that would make a less advanced engine more immersive than a newer engine is animation. Unfortunately, the TDM team appears to be severely short-handed on animators. This is the same thing that Solarspace (from Arx - End of the Sun) has complained about... the lack of a large pool of Doom 3 animation experts. Doom 3 has a decent animation framework as evidenced by the motion-captured player animations when in 3rd person mode. But it is a daunting to learn compared to other engines from what I've heard and animation is another aspect where Doom 3 is more CPU heavy compared to current engines with GPU skinning (etc). Still, I think the sheer library size of Thief's animation collections rather than their actual quality is what lends Thief such an emotional connection. When the TDM animation library has been built-up further, I think it will easily be seen as more convincing than Thief's both visually and emotionally. Just look at a puppet show as precedent. If the puppeteer is really good, no matter how primitive the marionette people will connect with the performance and characters. ~~~~~~~ With regard to a "sketch post-process shader", this is probably feasible to some degree but no matter how abstracted if the underlying poly-count is relatively low the lack of natural silhouette curves will spoil the aesthetic. I have the same issue with game "Dragon's Lair 3D" it is a 3D toon-shader game that tries to capture the look of the LaserDisk arcade original but was made at least a generation too soon (XBOX, GC, PS2) so the underlying models are too low-poly and the effect is spoiled. I suppose, however, if combined with LOD you could do something like: 1) Up close, really detailed artistic sketch look 2) Far away, scribbles and blur representing a typical vague rough sketch made by an artist. (Ultra low-poly LOD models). For my own curiosity, I'd like to see a game that looks like a real-time impressionist painting but I think the hardware is still too weak to do that in real-time. I don't think that TDM really suffers from the typical visual asymmetry of many modern games where elements have either too much realism or not enough and there is a poorly managed variety of visual consistency. TDM really just needs more of what it already has. The need to stylize TDM to keep it timeless looking has already been mitigated by good art direction. We just need more mappers that know how to show-off what can be done with what TDM has in it's arsenal. Those old Dromed masters need to visit...

I'd say that this is a surprisingly entertaining nugget in spite of it's short development time. The fact that Sotha has deemed it worthy of read-ables (etc) is a testament to how well it turned out

Without knowing which Ambient setting pusianka has set right now, it's hard to say if he's complaining about the "intended look" or the known problem with the material. Gold can keep posting in-jokes as long as he makes more FM's... Pretentious post forgiven

Yeah... The interaction.vfp that Sikkpin uses in his POM example is wildly divergent from TDM's. The order in which the ambient term is calculated is opposite and many of the variables have different names and or are additive of combined stages at different phases than TDM's. The POM portion itself is isolated and commented so if the input can be determined than you could still likely paste it in with only a few changes but the other stuff would need to be deciphered to determined what is the the input and output of that segment... A bigger problem, however, is that I believe POM hooks into the normal map interaction and thus would only be visible for real lights... the the surface becomes 2D when an ambient light is applied to it ...or (possibly worse) the parallax direction is frozen at the time the normal shading is baked to the ambient... Right now the only practical way I could imagine having this in a map is to make the map without the use of ambient light which most folks would complain about for the same reasons they complained about the lighting in Vanilla Doom 3... (Plus performance would take a double-whammy for lots of "real" lights and POM).

There is already a mod team that has integrated POM into Sikkpin's "Test-5" shaders (essentially the pre-release candidate for Sikkmod 1.0). Since Sikkpin's HDR shader is derivative of JC Denton's and TRSGM's (and other D3W) shader experts' code, it should be possible to cross-compare the interaction shader for that mod with TDM's pretty easily and insert the POM effect at the correct stage as they have done. (It may even be pretty easy without that reference... haven't had time to fiddle with it...) Doom 3's flexible PK4 override system means that FM authors do not need to limit themselves if they are enterprising enough to put in the effort. The big problem here is that we get two performance modes: 1) Super low-ender ugly 2) Pretty... but you'd better have Oblivion class hardware (or better) for even the most modest FM's Then the TDM team would need to bake height-maps into the Normal Map alpha channel and that would be yet another expansive asset update project (like the ill-fated "baked AO" concept). Or mission sizes would balloon with custom texture packs for POM or Parallax (etc). Edit: I suppose another alternative would be to chop-off the low-enders and have modes: 1) Current TDM high-end mode 2) Ultra-extreme "Johannes" mode

Can you tie the lightgem modifier ( inv_lgmodifier ) to an info_location separator? Another option might be to invoke one of these Cvars: Useful while mapping/testing/designing tdm_ai_sight_scale This is the distance that is multiplied by the lightquotient from the LAS and visual acuity of the AI scaled from 0 to 1, that indicates how far away the AI can be and see a location (default 1000.0) tdm_ai_sight_thresh This is the minimum light per AI frame generated visual stimilus amount required for an AI to see the player or entity directly while searching (default 1.0) tdm_ai_sightmin The distance which an AI has a 100% chance of seeing you with a fullbright light gem. Effects visibility in a complicated way (default 11.0) tdm_ai_sightmax The distance (in meters) above which an AI will not see you even with a fullbright lightgem. Effects visibility in a complicated way (default 60.0) tdm_ai_sight_mag Modifies the amount of visual alertthat gets added on when the sight probability check succeeds and the AI do see you (default 1.0) tdm_ai_sight_prob Chance of AI seeing you. set to 0 to make AI blind (default 0.7 at time of this writing) http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Cvars ...or possibly even directly change clampVal (the actual lightgem value)? http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Visual_scan

I think the primary rationale for a performance-hit limit for additional graphic options is that TDM is targeted to have approximately the performance hit of it's rival TDS. If we compare TDM to Oblivion then Oblivion is more taxing so adding in comparable effects would then be valid but then we risk TDS mission authors or mission authors on the fence going to (or staying with) TDS rather than have an even more narrow hardware install base. Then we have the issue of nVidia and ATI Drivers, the Doom 3 installation itself, and all the meat-and-potatoes stuff that a ton of users either get wrong or have problems with. If you add new effects there are bound to be more of these reports...

I think that only Creative Labs devices are registered for Surround Sound due to an agreement with Creative that was forced because they held a patent for the Doom 3 shadow technique that John Carmack discovered... Though, I would be suspect that a pair of "head-phones" would have the ability to provide better spacial definition. If the headphone's drivers don't register the device an actual 5.1 audio device then Doom 3 will have nowhere to send channels 3, 4 and 5. I suspect that the idea is that these headphones "decode" extra spacial resolution from a stereo signal thus producing the "sensation of 5.1 sound". If you don't "hear 5.1" then... (fine print) "Your susceptibility to placebo effect may vary... "

(Disable UAC) 1) Update your motherboard chipset drivers 2) Uninstall your video drivers completely and use a driver cleaner utility to remove any remnants 3) Install the last known working WHQL drivers for your OS Once those steps are done, please post a screen of your Device Manager showing that your hardware is now recognized. Other than the above, also check that Doom 3 is white-listed in your Security Software...

Your resolution does not match your Aspect Ratio: Change: seta r_aspectRatio "2" to seta r_aspectRatio "0"

Sorry, typo... DoomConfig.cfg

Please post your DommConfig.cfg If it is indeed a new version downloaded via tdm_updater it may also resolve whether the default compression setting is somehow off... Also, I would recommend removing: C:\Games\Doom 3\darkmod\stalban.pk4 While it is unlikely to be a problem, I believe that is an older version and may create pathing override conflicts...

What version of TDM are you using? I know that Beleagured Fence has a known problem with v1.04 but I I have never seen this error reported... I would make sure to delete any DoomConfig.cfg and Autoexec.cfg in the darkmod base directory then re-run tdm_updater (Then post the same conDump for your next attempt if it fails again...)

So you didn't upgrade your drivers? Did you enable "Threaded Optimizations" (if so, please disable). Also, remove the modded pk4 from your Doom3\base directory: Loaded pk4 C:\Games\Doom 3\base\zpak003.pk4