nbohr1more

I know that you are trying to prevent "Troll votes". I know that The Dark Mod itself makes nearly any map into an enjoyable mission. But surely we are mature enough to admit that someone could possibly produce a less than enjoyable experience and others should be informed of this. If I change the lowest criteria to "ok" then folks will equate it to "poor" anyway. (Though I do admit if non-Thief or non-TDM folk show up, they may vote poor for "too much stealth and not enough AI to kill..." so that might be bad PR... except to TTLG types who revel in knowing that others don't understand...) Finally, some polls still have "poor" as a choice. Imagine comparing an old great to some newer "meh" mission where voters were not really given a choice to say anything negative... OK... The easy way to clear this up... Five Star Rating. I will update the poll...

Sotha had that trick working in 1.02 but I understand that LOD has become a bit more complex now... It would be a good thing to verify

I will be presumptuous (as always) and conjecture an answer: The SEED system is very much like a very large scale particle system. In as much as all the particles are grouped into a small number of draw calls. The only way to improve the performance of particles with the SDK would be to use LOD so that farther particles emitters produce less particles or simpler particles. The dream solution would be to use Instancing. This Demo has various known Instancing methods compared to "one draw per object"... There may be a way to implement at least one of them but I am not sure where Doom 3's native particle management compares to any of them: http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=3D&ID=52

I have placed the announcement at Moddb for the official March 1st contest start date: http://www.moddb.com...st-announcement The article has not yet been authorized by Moddb but should be shortly (2 days at most). Edited per stumpy's reminder...

Yep We a little more Poll flexibility. I think that the Season portion should be weighted mathematically higher in the results against the other categories. That's about as good a way to break-down the voting as I can conjecture 3 vote-able questions. Got everything up till "hunta coo"??? Roots reference? Edit: As you can see, the Seasonal definition is intentionally ambiguous. As long as it makes you feel the Season that the author intends somehow then it gets a positive vote. So complex fictional Seasonal boundaries, etc, can be put into place by the author as long as some Seasonal mood is evoked. How one would do that without making an allusion to a known Seasonal stereotype is beyond me. If we go by advertising standards you have to bonk the customers over the head with at least 3 or more stereotypes in a commercial to remind them of the season

Hah! I like all this upsetting the apple-cart. I recalled Bikerdude's renaming and thought it was sensible but was afraid that it would lower the bar and reduce the competitive spirit. Since I was on the fence on this one, I will go with the prevailing winds. Tolerable to Near Perfect it is. As for a separate "Seasons" category, I'll goof around in the Poll tool to see what's possible. I think that might mean squeezing the remaining criteria into the other two categories? (Just a sec?) Example Poll is up. I think that should be sufficient, no? (Let the grumbles commence )

No exciting rule change from the last contest. I used Glenham Tower's criteria as a template. 1) Gameplay: Enjoyment. Fun duration. Smooth flow, ect. Versus Bugs. Frustration, Boredom, framelag 2) Appearance: Seasonal use, Visual pleasure, lighting, visual style, deduct bad texturing etc. 3) Story & Text: Story. Text. Briefing. Graphic storytelling Ranges from Poor to Near Perfect

I would gladly give 1.04 a test run for the Menu articles and screens but I'm afraid it would probably take me too long to complete given my current cramped schedule. You should post a picture that resembles what you are looking for. It might inspire a mapper to jump in.

Quality vs Quantity: Ah the boiling passions of a Fan Mission addict. Let's say that the more authors we can wrangle early, the more authors will come along for the action. Once, in great numbers they stand, we will be virtually assured that at least one mission will be decent. In fact, the TDM team's work virtually assures that many missions will. (...tumble-weed rolls by at Quake3world, Doom3world, Rage3d, TTLG ... yeah we need a prize )

Have you added new custom textures? You could make a temporary override pk4 like zzz_ocns_custom_textures.pk4 and place the material defs and textures in there. Did you leave a mission installed that has custom textures applied? If so uninstall and retry the dmap.

Like I said, fuggedaboutit... If we get a terrific ocn mission, we all win. And that's the point. Relax. ...and get ready to bring it! (Jesps is one tough competitor!)

LOL Tels This just announced: v1.05 to include massive amounts of procedural weather effects by Tels. To be released June...

Well your honesty is admirable ocn but that does pose a problem for the intention of this contest. Lets put it this way though: 1) We have no way to confirm whether you've scrapped your ongoing work and started anew unless you yourself post a WIP pic. 2) We have no way to confirm whether any other outside mapper has already been working in DR since it's inception 3) We want entrants and missions (this is the primary goal). I won't loose any sleep if entries to this contest contain prior work, will anyone else? If someone shows up with a mission that was clearly years in preparation perhaps we will have a vote to exclude it but I think that the court of public opinion will be enough of a penalty. If some monster mission comes in because a contest prompted the author to release a lonnng awaited WIP mission we still benefit, no? The goal of winning is a carrot to bring in good missions en masse. If someone considering entering the contest feels that is unfair, they can simply rank themselves against the missions they feel are legitimate. Yeah, if a prize becomes available there may be some sore feelings but it's not like we can fly an auditor out to every entrant's home and watch them place their first DR brush.

People are slackers... You'll see entrants coming in a month after the start of the contest

Try this one: http://www.ubuntudoctor.com/content/blog/07/How-to-add-a-Wubi-boot-entry-in-Windows-Vista

AluminumHaste has come through (again) and has posted a thread at Doom3world: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=24219 Maybe some old Doom 3 vets will go crazy and use their secret magicz...

To my recollection, Wubi uses Window's native bootloader and bootstrap's in a Grub boot process...? You may be able to use BCDedit to resolve this. (I think there may be some easier GUI tools for this now...)

So far we have: Jesps, ocn, shadowhide, and Carnage as interested authors... I will keep my eyes on the other communities for other entrants. Moddb announcement shortly.

Thanks Carnage! I will compile a tentative list.

Rage3d has posted a news item! http://www.rage3d.com/index.php?cat=75#newsid33973787 (Vendor involvement still pending.)

Alright. Anyone with a Doom3world.org account wanna copy the rule to a thread there for me? Thanks, nbohr1more

Thinking about entering the "Seasons Contest" Carnage?

Thanks Shadowhide. Perhaps Clearing will post the announcement on Darkfate's front-page too

I was hoping to catch enough mappers here then do the general announcements all at once (ttlg, Moddb, Rage3d, etc...) I have posted at ttlg and will post at my regular haunts. I am kindly requesting that anyone in any game forum that might have mappers to copy the rules and post there (please).

One thing that would be cool to see is a map of just one entity type that has LOD levels and compare: 1) All high detail models (No LOD, No SEED) at a barely playable density (15fps ?) 2) Just LOD 3) Just SEED 4) LOD + SEED Also, to clarify does the "watch_brethren" feature let you specify how close things are combined or does it always combine all in the selected region except for culled items? Is there a way to make the "combine" feature combine smaller numbers of high-poly items that are close to the player then "combine" big swaths of low-poly models in the distance? (Does it do that automatically currently? )