nbohr1more

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?

One of the ex-moderators at Rage3D often told off-color or politically incorrect jokes. Eventually he lost his moderator status for crossing the line. Many of his admirers followed suit as an act of rebellion against the dismissal and some of that nonsense still lingers... The mainstream Rage3D user is more interested in over-clocking voltages for ATI hardware and complaining about games that aren't properly profiled for Crossfire with ultra-mega dual-GPU video cards (so Quad Crossfire). In short, it's a hardware buff site and one that might even offer a hardware prize for this contest if stars are aligned...

Here's an example of Sotha's vaulted ceiling: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/11198-sothas-mapping-thread/page__view__findpost__p__222893 As you can see, the proportions of the supports are a little thinner compared to the scene. It has a high-fidelity ornate look but also seems to contrast against the detail level elsewhere in the mission. I'm sure there are more extreme examples but the concept is, for many if not most mappers, the architectural detail level varies wildly from item to item and location to location. So you will have scenes where a beautiful staircase is next to a blocking wall fixture (etc). Your screens seem to show that every element is given about the same amount of detail. This lends a certain appealing aesthetic consistency. It looks like you've down-sampled the whole map from one that was consistently high-poly across the board to a lower resolution version. It might be stifling for some mappers but I kinda think it would be cool to somehow gauge the performance of various detail levels and have a contest where all the architecture in a map has to have this many triangles per doom unit (etc). It's pretty cool that this ability to spread out the detail-level evenly is a natural part of your artistic style.

There is a good chance that Rage3D will be cross-promoting this contest. (Discussions are ongoing.) We might even get a hardware vendor involved...

The first time I ever noticed an interactive music score was in the SNES RPG ActRaiser. The last time I heard someone discussing the topic was Factor 5 (creator of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron games) they still have their interactive score technology "MusyX" available for license: http://www.factor5.de/licensing.shtml I have not, outside of Studio musician experimental stuff (like high-end "Band-in-a-Box" software), heard of procedural music creation in a game until now. It will be interesting to see how things have progressed...

You do beautiful work Johannes! I do have an observation though (not a criticism). I see that you seem to use chunkier architecture for your construction technique. It's as if you are doing Voxel art like a Minecraft map (with smaller blocks) then refining the polygonal detail a little more after you've done. The technique seems to be a good way to evenly distribute poly counts to architectural elements. Similar to Serpentine's patch tessellation guidelines. Was this an intentional methodology or just something that is a natural byproduct of your art-style?

I thought about some sort of co-branding thing for this contest. My first thought was to somehow get Apple on-board was as a contest sponsor because the Apple compile is an upcoming feature. I was dreaming of that "iCade" arcade style iPad dock at Think Geek and dreaming of winning one (along with an iPad). After coming down to earth, perhaps Rage3D or NVnews would co-sponsor? I know that motherboard manufacturers used to sponsor mapping contests (I have seen Doom 3 maps with a big garish VIA logo in them ). Maybe Rock Paper Shotgun would be game since they seem to mention TDM more often than other publications? Any other lower-profile (more realistic) sites or PC hardware vendors to seek out for co-branding the contest?

He'll be up against all the Darkfate, TTLG, Moddb, Rage3d, Beyond3d, and Quake3world mappers I can find... will that even things out? (Yeah, it's a little unfair to have a head start though...)

LOL I think half the votes for Dark Secret might've been to get you to release earlier and the Snow votes might've been for Grayman's pending missions. I can't objectively answer your concern Sotha. If this contest encourages you to "give it all you've got" I would be salivating over that result alone. (I might need to make a contest rules poll to sort this one out )

That is a nice perk but potential Moddb entrants may not be as impressed... I had a day-dream that we could setup a Paypal collection kinda like a big high-stakes poker match between mappers.

No need to be self conscious Mr Lemon. Your ideas are fine. I took the list that Sotha compiled for the sake of expediency. It just seemed that there would be endless what-ifs rather than any action on the concept unless somebody set things to vote so I grabbed the quickest, easiest, selection. Some sort of rounded-down approach was the best choice for a community driven contest initiative. If a TDM team member wants to concoct a very specific and quirky contest idea then they have the authority to do so. If we grant the same concept to the community then we end up with 10,000 highly unique contest ideas with threads by each proponent offering their argument as to why a contest should be tailored to their preferences. In short, anarchy (which is what the original thread was verging towards). I think the best way to get folks on-board with your contest concept is to offer a reward. "If you go with my contest concept, I will make this texture for your next map or model, or you can be an alpha-tester, etc." If it could be arranged, it would be cool if the contest winner for this contest could get some reward like: 1) Early preview of "Blackheart Manor" or "The Dead Gathers" 2) One (reasonable) feature request added to the mod code 3) Read-only access to the "Internal Forums" for 2 weeks 4) Custom AI scripting assistance for the winner's next mission Some kind of desirable offer that only the TDM team could provide.

If the specific v1.03 contest is not the winner I still hope that one or more of the new AI types will make it into the missions. For the purpose of promoting construction techniques, only the Mechanical Nirvana theme is narrow enough to prompt mappers to try new approaches. All the other themes are pretty loose but Fidcal or another team member might offer a tweak to narrow down the scope of what's allowed should one of those themes win. I will say that it has to be encouraging that this community of (mostly) mappers thus far is more interested in a Story driven theme than one that would challenge their mapping skills. That kinda says that there is more concern out there for the player experience than showing-off building techniques. I still think that a contest that paints you into a corner and makes you innovate your way out is the best thing (good medicine). But, OTOH, that type of attitude may sharpen the skill-set of the mapping community but may also produce missions that are akin to Piano recitals rather than heart-felt improv jamming. I can't say that any of those contestants look disappointing. Blah, blah, blah, rant, rave, lunacy, gibberish... Oh... BTW... Moar votes please!

Sometimes you need to create an autoexec.cfg to get cvar changes to stick. Once they are applied in your DoomConfig.cfg you can remove the autoexec.cfg if you want (if not your cvar settings will always return to how they are in the autoexec.cfg).

Yep. Time to trim things down to the final six. No great outcry for Mr Lemon's ideas has shown up. I enjoy his creative approach so I will be adding his ideas to the voting list if I am granted permission to organize another contest

I can't see the pics but did you use any custom textures or materials (which would need the new Ambient definition changes applied)? What about the Interaction method? Standard or Enhanced?

I'll take a new Thug AI or that gorgeous WIP mission over a website update any day. That said, if I you want to grant me sandbox privilege to edit the site (if possible), I can try to figure out the formatting syntax and at least try to keep parity with Moddb updates. (You may need to replace me soonish though, new rules at work and the upcoming release of "nbohr1more Jr 2nd edition" are closing in on my remaining scraps of free-time...? :( )

Please post your DoomConfig.cfg with a txt extension: "DoomConfig.cfg.txt"

Thanks for these updates!

Yes

Does this mean we also get a DLL with the fixed "distance check", audio, and other most recent SVN committed repairs? If so, count me in! I will somehow make time to test (I hope)...

The full file package is still at Moddb

(Sorry for the OT) This might be premature but... Since the new RTTC now appears to have a performance hit again, is there any chance that you guys would make the first "performance breakthrough" version of the otherwise original RTTC available for the low-enders? I know it's not as glitzy as the as the major overhaul you guys have done but some of the kids would still be interested in seeing what the original would be like if it were playable for them. (Not sure if the new map is now more GPU limited verses the CPU limited original... looking forward to finding out ).

@Mr Lemon: Please post your alternative. This is not set in stone yet and all I did was grab Sotha's approximation of the previous thread. If you have a compelling idea and folks want it added we will have another run-off vote for the omitted stuff.

Well... as a last resort some Doom 3 studders have been fixed by the notorious com_fixedTic 1 "uncapping" cvar. Try at your own risk...

Try running in Windowed mode and changing the CPU affinity in task manager (or disable cores?) Also try running it in low priority. I've seen some more modern titles require these types of adjustments... (I am presuming that you have disabled Threaded Optimizations.)