nbohr1more

Lets put it this way: I was a pretty good artist in High School to the point that I was bored with drawing pictures as I could implement almost anything I imagined. My kid sister drew a scribble on a page that reminded me of some visual concept. I transformed the scribble into a decent new drawing and was invigorated. The contest theme merely needs to be the scribble that the mapper uses to forge ahead. It can even be a terrible idea because that will inspire mappers to find ways to bend the rules creatively. Both the Seasons idea and the Secret idea are so generic that almost anything could pop-up. At least if we forced mappers to use v1.03 features, or include a triangle building, or have a circular foot patrol, or include a balance beam spanning two buildings, etc... That would constrain the nature of the contest. But those types of specifics seem to be too niche to gain democratic approval. We have a vote winner, unless more folk would come out of the woodwork to say otherwise?

Alright. Jesps is on-board with this contest already. Who will join him?

Well that's two nays. The contest start has not been defined yet so if you need me to delay it, say the word. That would give Lupine more time to seek vendors to sponsor. The theme is primarily an outgrowth for the desire for "Daytime missions" and "Snow" mission (two of the most popular). I agree that a season, of itself, isn't enormously compelling but neither is a theme-less "Christmas Contest" where entrants must enter by said day. I still feel whatever mappers come up with will be varied and excellent.

I have discussed the some general guidelines for this contest and was advised to open a thread to hear some opinions. Here are my preliminary thoughts regarding this contest: Contest length: 3 months All entries must have easily identified "seasonal" characteristics. All "Summer" entries should be daylight maps unless the author can furbish enough proof that their night mission is happening in the Summer (desert locale, skimpy attire on AI?, etc). Some arbitrary size limit? I thought about having a clause for Campaigns: "If authors collaboration with other authors to produce a multi-mission campaign, the best mission from the campaign will be evaluated against the best single maps." (The best compromise to produce "No extra advantages but no penalty for this approach") Lupine from Rage3d has expressed positive interest in being involved but has, understandably, offered his concern that it may take more than a week from his initial notification (last week) to involve any vendors that could offer some prize. This is not an essential feature to the contest but is more of an attempt to entice the Doom 3, Dromed, and "the mapping community in general" to try out this mission creation platform. Please post any thoughts, preferences, things that would make or break this contest for you? (You may also let me know, early, if you already intend to participate.)

The Nvidia "Threaded Optimizations" is not a video setting per se, but instead a way to tell your graphic driver to try and use more than one CPU core. We have seen many stability issues with this feature.

Oh, I don't know... It looks like Tels is doing everything and the kitchen sink for the mapper. From boiling down spawnargs to pre-packaged entities to creating an image map utility. Pretty soon he'll have a microphone input where you'll say "Make a bunch of shrubs next to the big gray house" and SEED will just say "Acknowledged" and create them (while blinking it's cold red LED at you HAL 9000 style). I think he'll probably even cook-up stuff to make Baddcog's job easier at some point? ( Maybe the idea of a 'Model Generator" is intimidating to a modeler? )

Alchemist is known to be a little problematic... Did you download it directly or via the in-game downloader tool? If you did not use the downloader tool, please remove Alchemist save games, PK4 directory from the FMS directory, and the corresponding Alchemist sub-directory in your Doom 3 install directory. If you did install the latest version via the downloader then please post your save file. With regard to your video card, here are some recommended changes: Open Nvidia Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Bottom half of list locate "Threaded Optimization" <-- Set to NO / Off Also set "Multi-display/Mixed GPU acceleration" to "Single display performance mode" Finally, if the above items do not help, to perform a "condump" open your Doom 3 console via CRTL-ALT-Tilde "~" or for some regions CTRL-ALT-Carrot "^" then type "condump troubleshoot.txt". Once you reproduce the behavior and close out of The Dark Mod there will be a file with the name "troubleshoot.txt" in your Alchemist sub-directory in the Doom 3 install directory.

Please post: Your path to the Doom3 install directory. The arguments in your TDM Steam shortcut. A console dump "condump <filename>" Security software vendor? Finally, while I cannot quite fathom how this would affect things in this manner, please verify whether you have an nVidia GPU and have the "Threaded Optimizations" to false (which is the correct value for TDM and other Doom 3 mods)... Thanks, nbohr1more

Yeah, those polys might not be too bad if the tiles are set to noshadows. If so, you are probably looking at more of a GPU limited scenario for lower-end players in that scene. The crevices between the tiles are fairly well occluded by angle and distance so Hierarchical-Z will likely cull a lot of those triangles... Up-close, in your latest shot the need to fake a little AO is more apparent verses the lighting in your level but a couple of grimes would be nice in either case. I'm just surprised to see that kind of detail when normally we only see something like that with Parallax mapping, POM, or Tessellation demos. It just shows that we are getting to the point where hardware needs less tricks to pull-off the appearance of decent polygonal density.

As it appears that the survey is not accumulating any more votes, I will declare "Seasons" the winning theme. I am working on the final details for this contest and will post them as soon as possible in a new thread...

Since ASE models have their vertex normals visible in the text file would it help debug this issue by comparing the native ASE vertex normal values to wherever you are acquiring them for your construction calls... or are the data formats way too different (too much stuff happens in-between)?

One thing I noticed before when a bunch of AI were buzzing about next to each other is that they didn't always seem to animate properly in close quarters. I have not seen this currently but I wonder if any of your movement changes should be accompanied by custom animations at some later juncture?

According to Google, recent 4chan activity? (A recommendation from someone looking for a stealth game...) 4chan.chan4chan.com/v/res/85434354

I wonder if this is a byproduct of the reported corrupted file in the upload. I haven't have time to verify and re-upload the repaired file (if necessary). Some downloader tool is just retrying over and over again? Edit: I also understand that moddb has been under DDOS attacks lately. I wonder if The Dark Mod is being used to kill Moddb resources because of it's size...

stgatilov... You... are... the... king! Viva la v1.04!

My paltry testings: I tried twice to incite a massive search in Lockdown 1 because I recalled that I had seen some "wacky stuff" occasionally in the beta version (in the beginning courtyard). I still have the beta installed alongside the released version and I was not able to start the antics in either. I also checked the behavior of waking the first AI in St Alban's and he did not fall through the floor as I have seen him do before.

What happens if you manually place a stock ivy plant in the scene? (Did Johannes play with the material definitions or textures to get that look? ) I like the FPS boost

I've installed it. God knows if I'll have the time to properly test it...

What happens if you perform "reloadDecls" while SEED is active? Did you try that after seeing the above behavior?

When I first saw the screen, I thought "Did Johnannes modify his interaction.vfp to include Parallax mapping?" There is still something illusory looking about those floor tiles but I suppose that is just the new Interaction shader and the Normal maps playing with my eyes a bit. Are those really all polygonal stone tiles? Wow! It may not be as pretty but you might be able to squeeze nearly the same look by making custom gray-scale heightmaps for the edges of each tile then use addnormals to blend the slopes. Then you could just have flat tiles rather than whatever shape you are using... (yeah, a heap-ton of work... ) I wonder if Tels will add floor tiles as SEED candidates ? Can you do a show "r_showTris" on that scene?

Doom3world member "Simulation" helped Hexen EOC compile their OSX version. If this conversion process isn't yet "well in hand" someone with Doom3world access might want to ping him for advice? Tracker: http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2518

Yeah, I re-checked the cvar lists but it looks like Id never provided Display Selection as a native feature. Good luck!

A prize isn't some evil corrupting influence per se. My only reason for bringing the concept of a prize to the table is to get mappers outside the community hooked on DarkRadiant and The Dark Mod. I'm a pusher. Yes, there is no real way to enforce the "This map must be constructed only during the contest time-frame" and bringing in other mappers virtually ensures that, say, a veteran Doom 3 mapper will convert one of his "Hell" style maps to TDM format or a mapper for another engine will export his stuff to Blender and convert to ASE models (etc). I won't be complaining about the quantity of new missions that result from this incentive And Sotha could've kept his new mission secret and waited till a contest arrived so his posts in this thread shows a truck-load of integrity from him. I kinda would like the former contest winners in the pool so that the new guys get a chance to "topple the King". That is excitement!

Cool stuff Tels. I can't believe how many features you are adding in such a short time-frame. I see that you've eliminated the restore crashes, but have some "side-effects"... Care to share a screen or two of those quirks for posterity?