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Cecil of Cynope

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Everything posted by Cecil of Cynope

  1. It's even more counter-productive than that, I've noticed: for instance, the criminalization of WW2 genocide denial by sending deniers to jail is now used as an argument in itself by neo-nazis, they base their rhetoric on the punishment and rabbid prosecution of the slightest word uttered on that subject to convince people that since anyone "questioning the truth" ends up jailed or punished in a way or another, then it's "a proof that it's all false because if the authorities are constantly prosecuting dissent that's because they're frightened that people may learn The Truth". That kind of rhetoric is particularly efficient as there's no effective way to contradict the neonazis on this particular point (the persecution of deniers) without sounding like a liar, since all the cases of punishment for genocide denial have been massively publicized in the hope to make examples... the neonazis are now turning to their advantage this mistake from the well-meaning busy-bodies, that's a perfect intellectual trap. Another proof that using the Law to censor even the wrongest ideas cannot and will never work... the only way of preventing people to believe stupid shit or to deny verified historical facts is to expose them to both discourses with equal time and a rational counter-argumentation, as the nazi intellectual constructions always collapse like a house of cards once exposed to rational examination. These kind of debates just have to be integrated in the school curriculum, and voilà, problem solved. The problem of this reasoning is that, just because mentalities regarding what is acceptable or not in a society change with time, it doesn't mean that it's good in itself... since, by this reasoning, should in the next 25 years a big change of collective mind regarding the value of human sacrifices occur, then the laws should logically change to accommodate this new way of life. That's the reason why the US Constitution was drafted, after deep thinking based on the lessons of History (Cicero's works in Ancient Rome, notably, are directly quoted as inspiration by the Founding Fathers -see "The Federalist Papers", which are the reference justificative texts for each and every article of the Constitution, including the 2nd Amendment, which was created specifically to protect the 1st Amendment, as a way to ensure that the State will always be put under the threat of its citizens to prevent a tyrant to raise to power, that's the reason why the 2nd has been written and placed just after the 1st in the US Constitution as it was deemed of the utmost importance): by creating the Constitution, the Founding Fathers wanted to build something that acts both as a guideline and as an eternal protection of the rights of the citizen whatever may happen in the future. The list of Amendments going from the 1st to the 8th Amendment are precisely called the Bill of Rights. By creating a Constitution, they did more than just say "the laws will be like that and not otherwise": they wanted to enshrine the basic rights guaranteeing the freedom of any individual and to preserve them forever. Now, the task isn't perfect as they are a few Amendments that are lacking, such as for instance an Amendment forcing any US government to neutrality in the same way that the Swiss Constitution does, but still that was a absolute work of art based upon the principle that it's better to say "from now on and for eternity, freedom of speech will be absolute whatever the small negative effects that could occur" than to say "from now on, people will have the right to think and say only what will be considered acceptable at the era they're living in". Because otherwise, should there be a growing importance in tomorrow's society toward the glorification of religious belief, it means that in 10, 25 or 50 years, freedom of blasphemy could be gradually contested and eventually forbidden as society grows more and more religious, ending in a theocratic society just because each generation of children had been gradually indoctrinated to have pro-religious views under the pretext of "respecting religions and religious people", which unfortunately has already begun I think. I don't want to drag the topic on the subject of gun laws so I'll leave it at that, but on the principle, regarding the "reason of the number", it's a erroneous reasoning: if tomorrow more and more countries in the world start moving toward promoting the drowning of the first-born of any family to appease Gaïa's wrath, it doesn't mean that they are right to do so just because they all agree to do the same... About violent speech becoming violent actions, well, I'd say not necessarily, but on a more technical side, it's actually very useful to have people being able to freely voice their dreams of violence and of insurrection: I prefer to hear my neighbor yelling that he's going to kill the whole neighborhood one day and thus to know that he's planning that, which allows me to react accordingly, instead of never hear him saying a single word about his plans and get a nasty surprise.
  2. Not really sure about the amount of marxism in the Iranian islamic revolution doctrine, as it was a religious-based revolution against the Shah's authoritarianism. That said, by considering it as pseudomarxism as you said, it makes sense. Probably it was just a propaganda spin from the Ayatollahs who wanted to gain the image of "Nice Revolutionaries for the Greater Good" associated with marxism, it could have been an efficient way for them to hide the core of their objective behind their revolution: destroying freedom in Iran, banning alcohol, free speech, etc. But the fact that neo-fascists in Italy are pro-Iran, that made me laugh: anti-freedom cultists are really the same everywhere, under the ideological paint-job you always find the same obsessions and objectives, lol. Regarding that Tarrio you mentioned in your post replying to Nbohr1more's revelations, keep in mind that the various crimes you're referring to are crimes he committed between 2004 and 2014, so that's not really relevant to his property destruction in 2021 (burning the stolen banner, a so-called "hate crime" it seems now if the banner happen to contain some specific words ). In a nutshell, it looks like the typical case of a low-level delinquent that got pardoned for being an informant on victimless crimes (gambling, growing weed, distributing steroids) and that, since he doesn't really know what to do with his life now, has now found a new calling as a political troll... the fact that he's been stealing things more than 15 years ago and dealing in stolen stuff almost 10 years ago are now irrelevant, as he paid for it by doing his time and becoming an informant, so JP Morgan's closing of his bank account is not "the legitimate punishment of a hard core criminal" but instead indeed a politically motivated move (possessing high-capacity EVULZ magazines for assault-military-grade-firearms-of-war-that-kill-and-that's-so-horrible may be a crime now, but that's from a law made on ideological basis to legally turn yesterday's citizens into instant criminals, not a legislation based on technical grounds -I mean this word in the sense of "engineering" and "shooting & reloading techniques"). Notice how he denied working undercover and informing the government, very probably for fear of getting a contract on his head by people he helped the government to throw in jail, and how the journalists of Reuters visibly went digging specifically into all the court transcripts and went to meet a former prosecutor in order to expose to everyone that this Tarrio did indeed worked undercover, with a complete disregard about the risks this create for his life should the people he denounced decide to kill him as a reprisal. I'm ready to bet that should he chose to be a political troll from the other side, the side of the Greater Good, the journalists would instead have taken great care not to expose this and even wouldn't have chose to dig in his past... I'd also tend to think that the journalists are very aware of the risks that exposing his undercover work involve about his safety and that they secretly hope that one of the gang members he informed the US gov about would kill him, but that's just me being unbearably critical of the Holy Journalists The problem is that the words you're using are way too violent for today's society standards, where the average citizen can barely bear to be yelled at, claims to suffer from PTSD for a couple of insults read on the Internet, and collapses psychologically at the mere thought of having to fight, even if it's fighting to defend the Enlightenment Era's heritage that, actually, the average citizens today wouldn't know what it's about, as he/she is primarily obsessed with consuming always more and more to fill the void in their lives, buying the last smartphone each year even if it would bankrupt them, posing in "selfies" to get approval and to do like everyone, etc. Don't expect these kind of people to defend values such as the right to free speech and the right to criticize religion, they simply do not understand, in the technical "my brain cannot fathom" meaning of the term, the importance of these concepts. All that matters for them is the brand new smartphone, their followers' reaction to their selfies on Twitter or Facebook, getting drunk at the end of the week, and basically what could be called living the life of a drone as long as they can. When you have a majority of people like that in a society, such as the end of the Ancient Roman society where the majority of citizens were only concerned about 1) having bread and 2) watching sports, that society is unsalvageable. There is nothing you can do about it, the scale of the problem is way too big for a single individual to solve it, even if it was a dictator with full powers. As a result, getting agitated and angry about the rape and sexual torture based on religious hatred in cities like Telford and Rotterham, as revolting as these acts are (and as revolting as the lack of action of the authorities by "fear to offend" is), is useless as it can't and will not solve the problem, as the problem cannot be solved anyway. I've discovered recently that a cartel leader in Mexico has dismembered alive a six-years-old girl just because he could, and several months ago I've learn that a 13 years-old girl with Down syndrome had been decapitated along with her drug-stashing grandmother by cartel members that believed that they had ratted on them: same thing, that's atrocious, but there's nothing you can do about that. Also, as a general rule, insulting or threatening religious drones is counter-productive: christians, muslims and judaists are the first to divide Mankind between the Good Believers of their respective herds and the Evulz Unbeliever that they'd eagerly kill any time they can, but if you insult them or express the same level of hostility toward them that they express themselves toward the "unbelievers", they'll always play the victims and pretend to be the nice ones oppressed and threatened by "Dem Evulz Atheists". So, don't offer them the occasion to pose as victims, instead when you want to criticize them, focus on the basis of their beliefs: that for instance there are not the single historical proof of the existence of their "prophets" (jesus, muhamad etc) except a couple of books that are just hearsay without any chronological datation, compared to, say, Ancient Egypt whom we can trace a precise chronology regarding the existence of every celebrity of this era (Ramses II, Hatshepsut, Cleopatra etc) dating several thousand years before the mythical figures from the so-called "holy books" of religions. When you start aiming for the foundations of their cults, the whole house of cards collapses and that hurts much more their cults than insulting them or hating them, because they can't pose as victims. You can also quote François Cavanna, who said: "A religion is a cult that succeeded." But anyway, there is also one very important thing to keep in mind: when you are blowing off steam using "hateful words that is soooo bad", not only that's counter-productive as I stated above, but that's also putting everyone at risk here. Because due to the way that society has shifted today, some people focused on maintaining an ambiance of censorship in society are very eager to jump on the first occasion to obtain the banning of WrongThink to keep making examples, and be certain that there are a lot of journalists that will provide a fair and balanced narrative of the facts: "... in other news, after a long legal struggle, anti-racist NGOs were finally successful in their efforts to obtain the deplatforming of a free game forum called "The Dark Mo Forums", short for "Dark MotherFucker", a racist-themed dog-whistle term. On this forum, users could gather to discuss their work on "The Dark Mod", an illegal modification of the controversial and gory game "Doom 3", created to allow users to build "fan-made" missions based on the male power fantasy of being a thief and assassin, such as the infamous "The Painter's Wife" a sexist story where the player has to transport a female non-player character by bearing her on the white male hero's shoulder without her consent, in order to "save" her. But, under the disguise of being a video game-related forum, this online place was also a known haven of hate speech for international sexist supporters of the gamergate movement, where they gather clandestinely to share their hate and radicalize themselves. One of them, posting under the handle "Kurchok", notably repeatedly called for the killing of muslims as depicted on the screencaps below, using inflammatory islamophobic rhetoric. During a raid on this user's house, who confessed to have been tempted to vote for Trump and publicly complained about Joe Biden's election, the FBI found a kitchen knife, the presence of this assault weapon confirming that he had plans to commit a terrorist attack somewhere in the USA. Nbohr1more, the ring leader of this international extreme far-right nazifascist cell, claimed to the rigth-wing conspiracy theory channel "Fox News" that his house had been pelted with what he described using the vague and inaccurate catch-all term "molotov cocktails". These unfounded accusations refer to a incident he claims to have occurred during the fiery but mostly peaceful protests in front of his house following the trending hashtag #BashTheFashDarkMod on Twitter. The local firepersons declined to comment on the accidental fire. UK-based user "OrbWeaver", who used a picture of spider as an avatar, showing a total lack of sensitivity toward arachnophobic visitors that could be triggered by this sight, was finally fired from his job today following a grass-roots campaign of activism aimed at warning his boss via repeated phone calls to his office about his online activities on this hate-speech forum. He is currently detained in Anti-Terrorist Detention Facility 05 as a safety measure while UK authorities are investigating his Internet history with the help of his Internet Service Provider. His exaggerated claims to have been the target of a so-called "online harassment campaign" have been dismissed by the International Court of Human Rights. While this successful deplatforming can be seen as a victory for the struggle against online radicalization, this case in another example of the pervasive hate speech found on so many free "game forums" on the Internet, which is a real threat, for our democracy. Now, on to the weather..."
  3. Thanks for pointing me out toward this topic, I had already found the limited weapons slot explanation from the archived iddevnet threads but I didn't found this particular topic on The Dark Mod forums, there seems to be lots of info in this one, I'm gonna read it attentively
  4. The translation of the poem is top notch: it's longer than the original poem, that I discovered thanks to you Zerg Rush, but it perfectly conveys its meaning, a truly work of art
  5. Yeah, sunni islam is presently following a seemingly leaderless-model regarding organization -although Daech was based on a strict pyramidal hierarchy, notably in the way it organized its administrative functions in the regions conquered- that said I'm not sure if it has always been the case, historically... I doubt that european influences had an impact on shia islam, as, chronologically, it existed in Iran long before the system of pan-arabian and marxist political parties, so it was probably more influenced with the Persian administrative system, which was quite extensive if I remember correctly, but I'm not a specialist of Ancient Persia either.
  6. However, as islam was imported to Iran, which was old-day Persia and had polytheistic religions (Zarathoustra 'n stuff) before being converted by force to the islamic monotheism, this doesn't change Kurshok's statement of islam being a "brown people religion" -also, not trying to piss you off or anything by contradicting you, so don't take it personally, it's only about spreading the most accurate information as possible, but as I stated, the differences between Iran's islam, Shia islam, and Al Quaeda/Daech (I really dislike that the acronym I.S.I.S has become the default name used in English, because that creates a confusion with the goddess Isis of Ancient Egypt ), Sunni islam, are so few and minor that there is actually no difference between the two: when I mentioned jokingly a difference between the color of god's eye, I was referring to the fact that Sunnis and Shiis are really disagreeing about Muhammad's eye color, seriously. Just like Catholics and Protestants, ready to kill themselves and their respective children over trivial matters... ah, monotheistic religion, such a wonderful force driving mankind to new heights It's also important to note that, regarding the Hezbollah seeming not being terrorism-prone, well, they do actually target civilians when they attack Israel... attacking an enemy first with everything you have is fine by me, but starting your attack by sending rockets aimed specifically toward schools and apartments, that's the line separating terrorism from regular honest war... they could have chosen any kind of method, such as only sending rockets on military targets such as training facilities on the outskirt of cities, but they never did and always aimed cities and schools, etc, so they can't pretend to not be terrorists and to be just honest adversaries, I think. Not to mention that when Israel fights back immediately after the first attack targeted at its civilians, the Hezbollah plays the victim and accuses the Israeli army of terrorism, while before any reprisal bombing Israel has the kindness of sending leaflets first warning local civilians to flee before the bombardment begins, which is being way too nice in my opinion: once the enemy shows a lack of ethics in his first actions, then he should have a taste of his own medicine.
  7. It's weird that you told your parents who you were going to vote for, it's usually a bad idea to reveal that to people... mine still don't know exactly what I think regarding politics, and have always been completely in the dark about who (man or woman) do I date or even if I already dated someone. 'Tis truly a source of endless fun to keep them guessing since the last 30 decades Maybe you are too young to have known the Bush era or the Reagan era, but the journalists, everywhere in the world, have always had that peculiar brand of integrity and objectivity that makes them report rabidly on every tiniest little thing a right-wing US president (local president included) said to then paint him as an Evulz Fachis' ThAt Is A ThrEaT To oUR DeMoCraCy while remaining complacently silent on any controversial thing uttered or done by a left-winged president, including (and specifically) jaw-dropping corruption scandals that would mandate an impeachment... it's been like that since as early as 1870: I've read a long time ago a quote from a french intellectual of the 19th century that remarked, in substance, that journalists always behave as if the only acceptable result of an election is to have a left-winged president. As years went by I've seen that it's been like that worldwide, in each country and after each election, it's just the usual life in countries in which journalists are under ideological control, there's nothing that can be done against that as any "solution" like a "cancel culture"-like purge would set a dangerous precedent regarding control of information. All you can do is to help people become aware of that by tranquilly noting these facts out loud, but actually, given how much people hate the journalists according to some recent polls, it seems that people are not blind to their partisanship -sorry, I meant Glorious Objectivity In Reporting The Absolute Correct Truth to Defend Our Democracy. About children in camps at the US borden, it's been like that since the days of Our Holy Lord Obama The Saint, it's a side effect of the poorly thought and planned process of citizenship and immigration in most of the so-called "West", there's unfortunately nothing you could do about that except hoping that some day, some politicians would start pulling their brains from their asses and have ideas (that's unlikely, as they're pretty content with being shit-for-brain narcissists only out to get elected for the financial benefits of the title and the power of abuse that comes with it), or that the potential immigrants would start getting informed about that before putting their children at such a risk. Which, with how much information has become easily accessible nowadays, is something that they should be able to do, but again: brain, shit, etc. The average human is rarely Leonardo Da Vinci these days, it's way too hard to think before acting, it strains the brain it seems. About Iran and Israel and the USA, keep in mind that, as the saying goes (I think it's De Gaulle that said that, in a rare moment of not-being-a-shithead): "nations doesn't have friends, only interests". Which, in the case of the relationship between Israel and the USA, means that they help each other if they can, but don't count on that to survive and plan accordingly, and actually are ready to stab a "long-time ally" in the back if they can: you probably ignore that, but in the 1980's, Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad (= "The Institute") planned to kill a US president for a perceived "betrayal" regarding the peace talks about the eternal conflict between Palestine and Israel. Not something that they like to brag about as the assassination was eventually aborted, but a former Mossad agent revealed everything during the 1990's or early 2000s, he wrote a book about his experience in that intel service and denounced the paranoids leanings of its directors, which he published after having found refuge in Canada. I can search for his name if you're interested, I don't remember it for the moment... Daniel something ? Anyway, about Israel and Iran, don't worry: people from the Mossad are particularly aware of what would happen to them should Iranian authorities develop a nuclear bomb, they have plans about what to do if that happens and plans about how to prevent that to happen because they know that they can only count on themselves to protect their lives, so they'll act anytime before it's too late. They even started forming alliance with Saudi Arabia, a known antisemitic state, to act against Iran as Saudi Arabia has conflicting interests and a religious hostility with Iran (Sunnis and Chiites, just the same that Protestants and Catholics in the Renaissance: ready to kill each other over disagreement regarding God's eye color or shit like that). But since what would happen between Israel and Iran won't change your life anyway (it will never have an impact on you, it's a conflict located on the other side of the planet), don't bother yourself with that + Akshually, the mess already existed prior to any invasion, even before the 1970's Soviet Invasion (and Akshually 2: under Soviet rule, women wore skirts and had a lot of rights in Afghanistan, pictures of that era are very revealing, it was quite like Turkey in the 1990's): Afghanistan has never got past the tribalism period unlike most of the "Western" countries thanks to the Roman Empire, its history is all about one ethnic trying to genocide the other "bekoz reeezons like they're not like us n' shit", and even today that country remains unsalvageable because it's a particularly violent one... not violent as in "constant war", violent as in "killing your neighbor's son because by saluting you with the left hand which is a sign of impurity he brought dishonor on your family and shame can only be avenged in blood to save the face". No, seriously: the average joe finds that behavior absolutely justifiable and normal (as in "social norms", the set of rules everybody abide to in a society), in Afghanistan. There was a very interesting article on this subject on the blog of Michael Yon, a former soldier-turned-journalist from UK that nowadays lost ifself by supporting WW2 Japan's negation of war crimes in Nanking and Korea, which is a shame. To solve that problem and help that country to evolve toward more civilized ways, it would take a massive education campaign for at least 3 generations as well a a firm rule of law (in a country where corruption is such a way of life today that you can get away with pretty much everything should you have the money, or should you be part of the good clan/tribe, so good courage in trying to change the mentalities), which means a massive investment of money for a country that has nothing to offer in exchange (no oil, no diamonds, barely a couple of mines here and there, but nothing of interest, truly), so, if you're reading this, Kurshok: as you see, there's no need to bother, just let them stew in their puddle and ignore them... not to mention that if the West Savior came with all these weird ideas like "not-killing-your-daughter-for-not-covering-her-face-before-leaving-the-house", the locals wouldn't accept such an incomprehensible sign of weakness from the West's social norms and would reject this change of their Holy Sacred Traditions anyway, so it would doubly be a waste of effort. While I can understand the urge to want to help people who are suffering, I think it's more important to focus on one crucial point: ask yourself, "would the Afghans spend shittons of money to help me and would they feel concerned about my suffering if the roles were reversed ? " Given that for most of them you must be considered as an enemy for not believing in their one-and-only god and for just not having the same ethics, I think you can easily guess the answer...
  8. Oh... yeah, now that you mention it I remember reading something about NPC models, so it may actually be just me mixing that up and ending up believing that this was a strict engine limit The big problem is that I lack some basic knowledge in several areas regarding how a game engine work, as I'm just at beginner-level I don't have a reference of knowledge with which to compare any information to know if it's exact / its source is credible or not, and I can also jump to erroneous conclusions. Kinda like how people lacking a precise knowledge base about firearms end up misunderstanding what a telescopic bolt is for instance (not to mention that some of the technical terms in this area are either archaist references or even plain misnomers to begin with -a "telescopic bolt" is absolutely not related to anything "telescopic", it just a bolt carrier extended forward by design to cover the chamber and the barrel, as a technical solution to save space inside the receiver/the frame) or how a silencer works and how much does it silence a weapon (in movies: quiet as a snap of the finger, in reality: not much, even by piling up various technical solutions and tinkering with the ammunition or creating specific ammo with very particular ballistics, which opens a whole new list of constraints), and end up believing politicians affirming that a heat shield is "A Shoulder Thing That Goes Up" that must be banned " 'cuz it like makes the guns totally more dangerous or sumfin' " whereas it's just both a safety measure for the user and a protection for the barrel (true story... "it's a shoulder thing that goes up" was a reply from a law-making politician to a question from a host on a US radio station, a Libertarian host if I remember correctly, asking if said politician knew what she was talking about regarding the heat shields she was creating a law for and wanted so eagerly to ban). Anyway, enough gun autismo for today So, with that in mind, I think you have a good understanding on how messy things can become to someone who's lacking a knowledge base in a specific topic And thanks a lot for giving me a point of comparison with Thief 1's polygon limit, that helps a lot Thanks for pointing me out to this specific FAQ, I missed that one, lots of interesting info on that page It's odd that you perceived this topic's title as attention-seeking, it was intended to be just a funny title as I thought this could be a topic regrouping all the informations regarding the engine's limitations to help people make a decision regarding the use of TDM's engine for their own project, which... fell very flat, as it turns out I was completely wrong to begin with I didn't know that you did have working AI before Grayman worked on that, I assumed he did most of the work on the AI as I kept seeing comments written by him next to several lines of code in a lot of files, as well as "Copyright - Grayman - 2005" appearing at the top. About identifying all the features of the AI, well almost all of the lines of code regarding the AI are commented, with phrases explaining precisely what the AI related to such type of character (guard, rival thief, low-level bandit, elite guard, "civilian", etc.), so I expected to be able to do that pretty easily By the way, are you the STiFU who worked with BOMBER GAMES on the remake of a specific beat'em all from the 1990's initially made by a brand with a hedgehog for mascot ? Yeah, I do plan on creating something with TDM, I actually made a topic about that which gives a little bit more details about what I have in mind, my replies in it are a bit long but provide more context about my project. Regarding specifically what I wanted to know by creating this topic here, along with what I said in my reply to Datiswous above, my main aim was to collect as much information as possible concerning TDM's possible limitations, as I'm very concerned by the possibility of discovering an unexpected limitation mid-development. This would end up causing a waste of development time that can be catastrophic, depending on how far in the project's development that limitation is discovered... that's what almost killed VTMB, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, the game from 2004 that was almost cancelled, and ended up being shipped unfinished with game-breaking bugs that had eventually been all solved by WESP5's Unofficial Patch, who almost deserves a statues to his eternal glory for that. When such kind of unforeseen problem occurs mid-development, the "least shitty" solution is usually to switch to a new engine, but usually that's such a waste of development time and causes such a loss of money that you can just scrap everything you've done and definitively abandon the project forever... as I don't want to end up indebted or with half of my savings burnt for an aborted game, I take extra precaution during what can still be called "pre-production" for the moment: I carefully think about every thing that could went wrong and plan ahead, hence this topic I'm glad to learn that there is no limit regarding the total number of polygons that can be displayed in-game, thanks a lot for your answers STiFU, here are a few precisions regarding the points evoked, I put your reply in bold and italics, with mine just below: 1: Not really sure about the maximum number of weapons, but I do wonder why you even have that question. Do you intend to create a mod of TDM with tons of weapons? Well it's not exactly adding tons of weapons, it's actually about managing to implement elements of my game system, I mean going from paper to line of code: as several weapons will gain some specific new effects as the player character progresses in the character sheet, I was expecting to have to create a lot of versions of the same weapon for each and every weapon. Keeping in mind that VTMB had a hard-coded limitation about the number of templates of objects (they're all definitively set, one cannot add more than all the existing templates or objects, which complicated the life of a lot of modders as one had to erase an existing object and use its template to "create" a false new one, WESP 5 could tell you more about that as I'm not completely familiar with modding VTMB), I was again concerned about the fact that if a similar limitation existed in TDM's engine, I'd very probably have to scrap this part of my game system, which by ricochet would throw shit at my balancing system regarding weapons. 3: You'd have to setup a custom readable GUI for that. Ok... so this means that's something that will have to be added by programming, I guess. 4 and 5: I can't check myself right now, as I am at work, but you can always try to find cvars in the console via autocomplete or even the listcvars command. Mmm... so... if I understand correctly, this means that, during the game, by typing a console command that would display a list of all the actions currently done by the engine in real time, and then by using the various guns at that moment, the various lines of code involved would appear and I'd see if there is one whose name reveals that it's related to the movement of a weapon's 3D model and the idle position of that model, amirite ? That was a wise choice, the ability to bash doors is something that is more necessary for a RPG than for a stealth-oriented game. It could still be justified in TDM as a mean to provide an alternate solution for the player at the cost of not achieving "Ghosting", but since there is no incentive to ghosting in your game system as it's just a personal challenge for the player, and that TDM was a spiritual successor to Thief, it was indeed not useful to add this functionality.
  9. I've been exploring and reading everything I could find on this forum as well as the various wikis such as Dhewm3 wiki and IdDevNet archives, which unfortunately both often contain only some half-finished tutorials, and I've been finding conflicting statements here and there regarding some limitations of the IdTech 4 Engine, so eventually I've decided to create a topic on this subject, which will also regroup various questions I have while I'm at it. I would have preferred to finish exploring the forum before asking, but, well, 79 pages with something like 20 results per page with an average of 3 pages per topic to explore and sometimes much more (like the Newbie's Question topic and its 419 pages )... I'm not done yet and I won't be done since at least a couple of months, so I'd rather ask anyway. --- On a site note, that's a confirmation that a forum is less efficient in spreading information than an encyclopedia: adding a specific section on The Dark Mod Wiki containing and regrouping all the invaluable tidbits of information spread here and there in the forum would help a lot of people, as well as being quite an incitement for people discovering TDM-the-game and tempted with building a FM, as the mere fact of knowing for instance how detailed the AI system is could be that little spark that get them motivated, instead of going blind for lack on information on how TDM's gameplay works, what the TDM Engine can do, etc. and eventually giving up. One topic about creating destructible lamps, for instance, contains a lot of valuable information that would warn a beginner that, yes, TDM can have destructible lamps. It may seem obvious, but not anyone is competent in programming, and one of the things I was wondering was exactly "Can TDM's engine allow destructible objects ? Is it only technically possible ?"... that's the typical problem when someone has a limited understanding on a subject due to not enough accessible information (adding a few quick definitions could help as well: I only learnt what a "Cvar" is via an encyclopedia for another game on which I stumbled by accident just because "TDM" was confused with "Team DeathMatch" by the search engine. ) Also, and I find this quite important, this would be a great way to honor Grayman's work by drawing any passerby's attention on how much TDM owes him: some information on how the AI works (finding a sword on the ground alerts it, etc) can be found by accident, confirmed by Grayman here and there in a few scattered topics, but it would be way better to have all of this regrouped in a specific section on The Dark Mod Wiki that will also indicate that he is the one who created all of that. I volunteer to do so, if TDM team members' agree. --- Anyway, here are the questions, firstly about the engine's limitations: 1) regarding the maximum of weapons that can be declared in the engine's files: I think to have understood that the IdTech4 engine/TDM engine has a limitation regarding the max number of weapons that can be declared, not more than 16 weapons if I understood correctly, but does this mean that "there can be no more than 16 weapons existing" or does this mean that there cannot be more than 16 weapons' "templates" that can be created as basis for inheritances ? 2) What is the maximum of npcs that can be active on the same map ? Are they affected by VisPortals ? I do know that TDM's engine is limited to a maximum of around 1500-1600 polygons if I remember correctly, but since the models present in a map are at the same time the characters and the scenery (buildings, etc) and that I don't have a reference regarding the average number of polygons both assets need, estimating the max number of active npcs is difficult. 3) Is it possible to display images as readables in a map ? I mean in "fixed" readables. - And the "while-I'm-at-it" questions: 4) Is there a line controlling the lateral movement of a weapon's 3D model when it shoots ? In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, there is one line in each .LTX file (the type of files where all the lines of code for each weapon are located) called "cam_max_angle" which controls that, as well as "cam_max_angle_horz" which provides a hard limit on the degree of maximum horizontal movement -it "locks" the horizontal movement of a weapon's model, preventing to go past the number of degrees indicated. 5) Is there a line controlling the weapon's position on-screen ? For the moment, I've repeatedly found nothing in the .dec and .script files of TDM's weapons, while in Doom 3's .dec & .script files I find no line of code whose wording could indicates that and a lot of lines lack commentaries, no information about that in the Dark Radiant Wiki or in the Dhewm3 Wiki or the IdDevNet archive either... I'm wondering if it could be actually something located elsewhere in the PAK files, maybe in some .dec files regarding models ??? 6) About creating destructible doors: should I want to create that, based on what I've read regarding destructible lamps, all I'd need to do would be to create an entity "door", give it some health points, and have various 3D models of the same door representing its successives states of destruction, is that right ? Can this entity have armor points too ?
  10. In passing, since questions regarding the license of TDM's code and assets come back from time to time, wouldn't it be a good idea to pin this topic ? With a title that explicit, that would guarantee that anyone having the same question would find it very easily. Perhaps adding an entry on The Dark Mod wiki, on the main page, specifically addressing this question, would be efficient too.
  11. Well, since the source code for Doom 3, on which TDM is based, was eventually released under an open-source license, my understanding is that it covers every line of code and every file such as DEF files, so that's not an issue... if my understanding is correct, of course. But since Stgatilov said that "format cannot be intellectual properly, only its software tools and documentation can be", I think that it's correct, if format means "how you write your code and with which words you write it". Words cannot be patented or copyrighted, that's how IP law works everywhere in the world, even if some people try from time to time. This was different for the software technique called "Carmack's Reverse" that was initially patented by Creative Labs as it was the work from both one of Creative Lab's engineers and John Carmack: when he later decided to release Doom3's source code, John Carmack rewrote several lines of code to achieve the very same result, just in case Creative Labs decided to claim a patent infrigement, but I think that's because the... well, let's say "the precise assembly of specific line of codes" could be claimed as patent infringement. Pretty much as if John Carmack and Creative Labs had built a house with walls inclined in a very unique way never-seen-before to support a roof like-any-other-roof-everywhere-on- every-house, and that, later, John Carmack decided, just in case, to rearrange the way in which the house's walls were inclined to support the same banal roof because he wanted to give the house to anyone without risking to be sued by Creative Lab: with that change in how the walls are assembled, the work done previously by Creative Lab doesn't exist anymore and Creative Labs cannot claim anything. In this analogy, Creative Labs cannot and could not patent the bricks (the words) or the mortar (the lines of code) of the walls, only the way the walls were built inclined as it was a unique work done by them. I'm not a specialist in Intellectual Property though, so I may be wrong. Anyway, as long as the 3D models, animations, sounds and textures from the original Doom 3 and from The Dark Mod are not used, because they are under a Non-Commercial license, forbidding their use for a commercial project, everything's fine: so yes, you just have to omit all graphics/animation/audio assets and that's good enough
  12. I've just found this topic by accident by looking for information on how the lines of code regarding weapons function in TDM* and I figured I could give some advices regarding world-building and writing if you're interested, MirceaKitsune *for the moment after exploring the Dhewm3 wiki I'm getting a vague understanding about how it all works, the .def and .script files etc, but I don't find where these files are located in the TDM pak files and the function of a lot of lines remain mysterious for lack of commentaries, I found no information about that in the Dark Radiant wiki... is there a tutorial somewhere listing the functions of all the lines of code in the .def and .script weapon files ? One important thing to do if you want to make your universe and story timeless is to put it openly in an alternate universe, by using the usual "Year X after the Big World-Changing Catastrophe" chronological dating trick: it will allow you to include anything you want in the universe of your game, including anything concerning technology, objects, etc without risking it to become irrelevant or dated as real years pass in real life. This way, your universe is like in a self-contained box isolated from the real life and the "real future" anyone will experience in the following years from today. It's a basic story/world-building trick, but it's a must. Of course, to justify that technology in your fictitious universe has reached such a high point after a huge cataclysm that sent the world back to a Middle-Age level of technology, your plot/story inside your universe will take place several hundred years after that cataclysm. So, it's "Xth Century after the Big World-Changing Catastrophe", to be precise In passing, if you like 1970's aesthetic and music, I suggest you listen to this, from Shawn Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=appJZrqNYPg Most of his music have that 1970's thriller movie vibe with repetitive piano and violin, cool bass lines, wah-wah effects, the whole stuff. Depending on if you want your universe to have a realistic tone or a more "fantasy" one, you should change the name if you go for a realistic tone: in real life, intelligence services use bland names, often in the form of an acronym or an initialism. For instance, the CIA's department in charge of assassinations and any clandestine action requiring the use of violence is the S.A.D, for Special Activities Division. In france, the name of the section of the DGSE (= french CIA) in charge of that kind of work is the D.O., for Division of Operations, after having been called "S.A." for Service Action until the 1990s and since the 1970s if I remember correctly. Same thing for the name of the specific military units employed for these tasks, in france it is called "(the) alpha cell", which was an open secret for anyone that is a bit learned about any things military but was suddenly discovered by the general public after a shitty president, françois hollande, told of their existence to two journalists just to look "badass" and impress people, and then all the journalist were visibly shocked to learn that a government has to settle things in a permanent way sometimes, like these former nazi supplying terrorists with weapons as arms dealers in the 1950s as a way of getting a revenge against the french government for contributing to hitler's defeat during WW2... they had it comin'. Anyway, about Umbra the fictitious secret government agency in your universe, if you aim for a realistic tone, I suggest to create instead an intelligence agency that is absolutely not secret and on the contrary openly known by the population, with a bland acronym for name, let's say ORIA for "Office for Research and Intelligence Analysis", whether your fictitious society is a republic such as pretty much every country now or instead a dictatorship: as paradoxical as it may seem, even in a dictatorship everyone know the name of the secret police because it is a necessity to keep the population afraid -the citizens need a name to be afraid of, and to be threatened with by the government. Think about the KGB for instance, or, in Romania, the Securitate under Ceaucescu: even if it was a secret police, everyone knew its name and its existence, and even in the 1950's in Soviet Russia everyone knew that the Lubyanka is the name of the building where the KGB operated and where people were sent to disappear if they didn't obey or were "suspicious". Also, whether it's the intelligence service of a republic or of a dictatorship, the thing that is truly secret is always its inner departments/offices/sections, and a lot of time it's often just an open secret as I mentioned. Inside your fictitious intelligence service, there should not be "a special unit specialised in espionage and assassinations": in real life, every intel service is separated in specialized departments having each one its specific task and isolated from every other one (a basic way to avoid getting your whole organization going to shit if it was infiltrated by a rival intelligence service). Which means that: - the unit dedicated to killing people and blowing up stuff will only know and be told "go there and kill this one" or "go there and make a sound-and-light show of this hidden weapons depot there", but never more than that, again as a security measure (OpSec, operational security) in case there is someone of them taken prisoner or decides to betray. - that unit will often have no official existence (like the "alpha cell/alpha commando" I mentioned: you can be sure this name won't appear on the paycheck of its members, they'll just get called as any other agent by your intelligence service's accountants and nowhere in its Organizational Chart will this kind of unit will be named as such, it's usually an oral name, never written down anywhere), and will only be a part of a department such as "The Special Division Tasked With Planning Actions", without any contact with the other departments (again, security: the whole "oh noes, the enemy has stolen the List of all them agentz and made it public this is such an original plot for every so-called spy movie since the last 25 years !!!" doesn't happen in real life). - that department which controls this unit is just one among other departments in your intelligence service, where there are a department tasked with spying (recruiting agents, managing a network of spies which means paying them, keeping notes of the information they provide, making sure they really work for you and that they don't tell you bullshit, etc) and only with spying, another department tasked with building spy gadgets and only that task (GPS beacons disguised as a shoe sole that will be placed in the shoe of such person by a unit from another department that is specialized in clandestine operations that do not involve killing and blowing stuff up), etc. That separation in several services to maintain security is also the reason why every country has 2 intelligence services (15 or more if you're the USA, but that's not the subject ) : - one "internal intelligence service" in charge of everything that happens inside the country, is usually "civilian", has only police powers and spends its time investigating stuff and gathering information on various groups threatening the society from within and what are their projects/actions, which includes spying on and trying to infiltrate organized crime (think: FBI) - and one "external intelligence service" in charge of every threat happening outside the country (think: CIA), usually half-"civilian" half-"military", that spends its time spying outside the country, getting caught spying, killing innocent people who have discovered that agency's involvement in human experimentation for stupid mind-control projects that couldn't work anyway, testing toxic substances on the population of a remote french village or on the population of the USA because it's not like if they have a Constitution to respect or anything, and has a couple of units specialized in killing and blowing stuff up. But not more than a couple of these units: one important thing to know is that an intel service, unless it also serve as a secret police (in such case it will also be tasked with punishing the average citizen for not being doing docile or just being suspect of wrongthink) or has way too much budget and starts believing in "mind-control" and tries testing stupid ideas to achieve this, is primarily tasked with spying, just that. That is, gathering information, whether it is by planting spies somewhere (the glamorous movie-like aspect) or by just paying people to know stuff (the real, mundane day-to-day inglorious that's-not-gonna-make-a-good-action-movie functioning of an intelligence service everywhere, even in a dictatorship). An intelligence service is an institution just like the State' postal service, the State's department of transportation and motor vehicles in charge of delivering driving licenses, the State's military or the State's police: an institution rarely rebels against its own government, just because, well, it's the government and its politicians that pay its member's wages... if you want a true story, after the spying powers of the internal french intelligence service (the DGSI, formerly called the DST) were expended to allow them to more easily struggle against terrorists, they suddenly had their funding seriously diminished. Why ? Well, with these new spying powers they had got, they kept bumping on cases of governmental corruption during their investigations on terrorism funding, as a side discovery while following such or such lead... so the politicians neutralized them as much as they could, re-organized some services to prevent them looking into incriminating stuff, halved their budget, etc, and then some massive terrorist attacks occurred a couple of years later. The agents of that intelligence service were seriously pissed, some were so disgusted that they revealed that information to anyone that could relay it, and no TV or paper journalist ever talked about it. That's all: no rebellion, no "let's bring that government down", nothing. Because the head of the intelligence service is a civil servant / functionary whom wage is payed by the State, and because everyone at each echelon of the hierarchy is more concerned about having a good career than by doing anything, society be damned. And even if they were so pissed that they wanted to put the whole government down, they can't: they have families to feed, rents to pay, etc, so they have nothing to gain and much to lose should they put the political system down -who knows what would replace it ?. In a dictatorship, an intelligence service will be even less inclined to act against the government because 1) the agents often share the same ideology (a KGB agent is as much communist as the Dear Leader), 2) given how hated they are by the population that the agents or their predecessors have been bullying since all these decades, they just don't think it's a good idea to suddenly support The People to try to pass as the heroes. It's only in very specific cases such as for instance in Romania where at some point the Securitate ended up that fed up with Ceaucescu, and, very very certainly, knew that so much citizen were fed up with him too, that a whole intelligence service and not a few angry agents can decide to rebel against a government that pay their wages and provide them with a career and some nice social advantages: the Securitate finally decided to revolt because every element among a long list showed that it was the most rational choice. That's why no intelligence service ever rebels against its government or betray its politicians, so, for the plot of your story that will serve to introduce people to your universe, and again if you want it to have a realistic tone instead of a fantasy tone: only the player character decides that enough is enough and starts going rogue, supported on the margin by a few colleagues that would (or just could) provide only the bare minimum to help. Some money but not much, a former safe house that is unoccupied at the moment, some ammo miraculously lost from the armory, etc, but not more, no support apart these crumbles that they painfully managed to make at the player character's disposal. As for the player character's motivation, the massive reason why that agent finally decided to rebel, see what follows just below One suggestion regarding your story, relying on the groups you have detailed (specifically, the Gak or Draconi): during the first mission of your game, the Umbra intel service (I'm keeping this name for clarity's sake -oh, unintended pun, eheh) sends the player character in a building/research center/whatever belonging to that weird organization called Transgenic Security to find information on what they're doing, because Umbra has gathered a lot of information that makes its director think, once combined, that some very shady stuff is happening. At that point of your story, no one knows the Gak or Draconi, neither the characters nor the player. The player character discovers suspicious stuff, notably documents (emails, etc) revealing that the government is involved in schemes (corruption) with Transgenic Security. Nothing more: no discovery of the Gak or Draconi, nothing. On mission 2, the player character is send on another mission, not related to Transgenic Security, let's say in another country or in the desert, sneaking (or breaking, depending on how the player wants to play) into the base of terrorists to find information. There, the player character ends up discovering (or facing, if the players preferred to go all guns blazing) the Gak or the Draconi. Powerful beings genetically engineered, which is a Great Taboo in your fictitious society, just as today (judeo-christian beliefs firmly rooted in the society, genetic modification Is Teh Evilz, etc). The player character succeeds in accomplishing the mission, that was unrelated to the Gak or the Draconi's presence, keep that in mind, and passes on the unbelievable information regarding the presence of these weird and superhuman creatures, not knowing what they are, if they come from somewhere in the galaxy or if they are engineered through human researches. Mission 3 begins with the player character sent on another unrelated mission, tasked with accomplishing an objective unrelated to Transgenic Security and the Gak or the Draconi. The player character doesn't face or see them this time amongst the local NPCs, but suddenly discovers that Transgenic Security is responsible for the Gak or the Draconi's creation, is shocked, and even more shocked to learn that the government not only knows but has authorized research on genetic engineering in spite of the Great Taboo that this is, in exchange of a lot of money from Transgenic Security and the funding of the next political campaign and the recruitment of the president's cousin on their board of administration. At the end of the mission, the player character is forced to escape as Gak or Draconi troops converge in the location of the mission and have come to kill him/her, and understands that the government knows that he/she knows. Enough is enough: the Great Taboo is broken, genetic research is Teh Great Evilz, the government is corrupted AND they want the player character dead, so with all of this, the character is so pushed over the edge that the only solution is to go rogue and live in clandestinity with the help of the few colleagues that know the truth and have warned the player character about the arrival of the Gak or the Draconi. From now on, the player character has only one objective: to bring the government down, a long-term objective that will very slowly be on the verge of getting done through a lot of fan-made missions If the tone you want to obtain leans toward realistic rather than fantasy, the police force should always side with Umbra but always side against the player character of course, and always attack Draconi / Gak because their existence is so unfathomable due to the Great Taboo that is genetic research that, well, the average police officer seeing Draconi / Gak would believe they are monsters and, as such, threats. Regarding the formulation, one little detail: the police cannot be "hired as guard" by government agencies, since the police itself is a government agency, so any gov agency just receive protection from the police as the government orders the police to protect such or such gov agency when the need arise. The idea of creating an army of superhuman soldiers make the tone of your story and universe lean more toward the "fantasy" than toward the "realistic" side, that's a choice as valid as the other (even if a bit stereotypical), I'm just pointing the effect that this idea has on the general tone To make the government's corruption problem much more important and "motivating" for the player character to choose to rebel, because embezzlement of taxpayers' money would not be scandalous enough for an intelligence agency (they actually are guilty of that themselves, in some countries), the fact that Transgenic Security isn't seen well by the government should be changed and the government should see them as "just another company" officially while being secretly corrupted by them, again this suggestion is only valid if you choose to go for a realistic tone instead of a fantasy one Instead of taking over Transgenic Security's labs to use them, the Draconi should have raided these labs to get some equipment, captures a few high-level scientists and keep them hostages while having blown up the labs to lead everyone to believe these scientists are dead, blown to pieces by the explosion, and established a clandestine base in, say, an isolated hospital, still in working condition and operating patients daily, to justify the fact that they can still pay the electricity bills as they need a power source for their equipment. They would have dig the equivalent of an underground bunker under the hospital, using the old service tunnels as a base from which to dig, a bunker where they hide all the equipment needed to make more of them by cloning, hoping to grow in enough numbers to one day get their revenge against the government, and in the meantime they can employ the player character for missions whom aim is to obtain new scientists via kidnapping, steal more efficient cloning equipment, steal valuable stuff that would be resold to get more money to clone more Draconi or start buying weapons, etc. I hope this helps
  13. Oh, so you too have a marked difference, with a right eye almost blind while the left one is "better" I have the same problem than you, but as I suck with math & applied maths specifically about optometry I thought that a 3 dioptry difference wasn't that big, as in my mind it was a difference between for instance having a 10/10 on the left eye and a 7/10 on the right eye. In English eye measures are counted on a /20 base IIRC, but I don't know it works. Anyway, I'll send you a private message with information that may be useful to you regarding eye surgery
  14. It's always a matter of how much your difference between left and right eye is If someone has a marked difference in dioptry between each eye, such as, say, a 50% difference, it can ruin some optical effects, for instance there are 3D rendering systems that don't work with me, and also some optical illusions, so it seems that as long as someone as only a slight difference, autostereoscopy works, but past a certain point it doesn't.
  15. People with various vision-related disabilities too can be unable to see information integrated into autostereograms, for instance a difference in eye perception between left eye and right eye, and having implants could also prevent to do so, at least it does in my case, so to use such images in TDM to hide some information in a mission it would be best to make sure that this isn't THE critical information needed to solve an enigma, but rather something like a little clue among other clues, or something like an easter egg: it shouldn't be vital information gameplay-wise
  16. I present you my sincere condolences for your father's passing, and I wish you all a lot of courage through this very sad moments. If it can help, I suggest you the reading of the book "The Light Beyond" by Dr Raymond Moody, the researcher that coined the term "Near-Death Experience" by studying thousands of testimonies on this subject: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Beyond-Raymond-Moody/dp/0553278134 The people I advice to read this book usually say they found it very helpful, I hope it will help you and your family like it did help me.
  17. Having not known Grayman, all I can say is that I hope he spent his lasts moments surrounded by his loved ones. This is a sad news indeed. Maybe adding something special about him in the next update of TDM could be a good thing: in the credits, a text detailing how much TDM owes him as a developer, what he achieved, who he was, something like that... or maybe also adding something about him in the credits of his series of missions for TDM. May he rest in peace, and may his family and loved ones have the strength to bear his absence.
  18. Thanks for the wishes of luck, and thank for the information about Tesseract, I'll check that out of curiosity, as well as Red Eclipse
  19. Thanks for the wishes of luck, and also for the information regarding the average programmer's wage in England, always interesting to know I'm surprised that it would only took 6 months for a decent game, I actually planned for something around 5 years of development, since a FPS-RPG would be much more complicated. Then again, since almost everything gameplay-wise and universe/story-wise is already done, maybe I was pessimistic... what still bugs me is how much time and money would be needed for contracting work on the assets such as 3D models, objects of any size (weapons, furniture, vehicles, buildings, NPCs), textures and of course the animations, that's something I'm still wondering and trying to calculate. I know I'm gonna have to cut corners here and there anyway, this project is gonna be a permanent exercise in finding a balance between various constraints... it's a good thing that open-world games turned out to be a mistake gameplay-wise, as I won't need as much development time since I'm building a semi-open world game And now the ultimate quest begins: to convince everyone that open-world games were a false good idea and that semi-open world games are so much better, they shall all know this Truth, verily ! Thanks for the wishes of luck too, I must add that the fact that your engine is an excellent base to begin with is something that kept pulling me toward it 6 months ago when I was wondering which engine I should choose and weighting each engine's advantages and inconvenients: considering that as you said all the main systems needed for an immersive sim/FPS-RPG game are already in place and all that would take is a few tweaks here and there, I've always been tempted to choose yours over Unreal and Unity, and the last update in February 2021 that enables it to use multi-core/multi-threading was the last push that incitated me to use TheDarkMod as a base. About asking questions to people here about TDM, I did plan to ask a few things from time to time indeed, as it will avoid me to waste time discovering by myself how to do such-and-such thing, I do not think it will create problems as I'll offer a lot of stuff to your engine in exchange: for instance, I do plan to have an animation for the "mantle" action in my game, and since it's a very basic stuff that I can release without endangering the business plan for my game, that's among the first things that will be put at your disposal as soon as I'll have contracted someone somewhere to create that animation, I'll just give it to you way before the hypothetical release of the game It won't be a one-on-one basis such as "one question asked - one gift in exchange" of course, I'll never have the money to do that without endangering the game's development, but I think it gives a kind of proof of my honesty on this subject. I see all of this as a kind of "distant partnership", so to speak: I save a lot of time by relying on TheDarkMod's engine, and I give back by making everything I'll create in my game regarding gameplay available to you to be integrated in your engine, everyone wins I do hope that I'll succeed in this project, not just to finally earn a living decently but also because I'd love to see my work bringing something to TDM's engine to the point of making it containing anything needed to create any kind of independent FPS game, along with stuff sophisticated enough such as that procedural NPC faces generator I'd like to add if I can manage to make it / have it build, that would allow it to become a GPL rival to existing engines, as I said as a mean to stick the finger to what the video game industry has become, not to mention that with the compatibility of this engine with Linux: finally Linux users will have something with which to build better games. The reason why I'm still using Windows on a dual-boot is because even if time has passed since the 2000's, there's still a lack of great games for Linux... let's hope I'll manage to solve that, eheh. I also have plans to make a RTS game using everything I've created during these 15 years working on my fictional universe with these two hypothetical video game projects in mind -everything is already built on paper: groups, vehicles and their respective designs, weapons, gameplay, story, "philosophical dialogues" for lack of a better term... you name it- that would follow the same principles and aim the same goal, but that's still day-dreaming for the moment
  20. Hi everyone, and thanks a lot for the quick answers, I really appreciate it, even if I don't quote you personally I'm thankful for every answer Oh and while I'm at it, thanks for the forum administrator among you that added a Dark Theme to this forum: I cannot stand bright light due to my handicap, usually my own web browser settings (black background + green fonts color) work but sometime it makes some pages unusable if contains white images used as icons for example, so I had to wear sunglasses for a few hours to browse the forum more or less comfortably before noticing that I could turn a Dark Theme on which makes reading much less painful for the eyes, thank your for adding that option Thanks for the information, HMart, I'll check that LDAsh, Demagogue and Stgatilov, thanks for your replies, about your interrogations regarding how would I manage to sell a game developed under a GPL licence, well I'll have to remain mysterious for now, but that's something I have thoroughly thought about I'll never use Steam to sell the game though, I was absolutely against Steam from the very beginning of its appearance and it's only because I'm forced to install it and to play games that I use it, so for me it has always been out of question to become dependent to Steam's system... not to mention that they've started to behave as political censors according to what I've heard not too long ago, so I'm not going to risk investing 5 years of work and expenses just to end up censored for being "problematic" or other vague and non-defined concepts at the whim of anyone from Steam. Anyway, thank you Nbohr1more and the other TDM developpers Now all I need to do is to contact someone where I live who's specialized in the legal and fiscal aspects of commerce to see if my idea is viable, but the way I thought it out, it should be. Actually the only thing that would make it non-viable is whether it would be Governmentally Approved by the State or not to create something and sell it without having to create a company and be registered as a seller/artist/editor first, that whole usual administrative bullshyte here requiring people to find by themselves which pigeonhole they can belong to and face the fiscal consequences if they make the sightliest mistake... Yeah, that's what I had planned from the beginning actually: to not use your assets since they belong to you all, and also because, as a matter of fact, well, my game's universe being contemporary, I don't need any of TDM's sounds, 3D models, musics, textures, objects etc For example, most of the locations of the game's story and universe are "modern day-ish" for lack of a better word: glass buildings, appartments, houses, warehouses, etc... about the music and sounds, that's something I've planned to create on my own anyway, I just need to "get back at it again" and find a GPL music editor or maybe, if I finally, definitively, decide to go for a 1970's style music, I'll simply contract Shawn Lee, his work on Bully/Canis Canem Edit's music is exceptionnal. So in a nutshell, I won't need to use any of TDM's assets, and for the couple of things "close from TDM's assets" such as old manors & antique objects and the related textures that will be needed since I've planned to have "old areas" in the ficticious city I've created as the main location of the game's story, I'll contract people to make that. Thanks a lot for the clarification OrbWeaver, I tended to confuse Dark Radiant and The Dark Mod source code until then And about your suggestion, you guessed exactly what I had in mind for the development of my game Well, the problem with Unity or Unreal is that they remain proprietary engines somehow, at least that's how I understand it, and I think this may cause problems notably with the After-Sales Service Support... since to modify Unity or Unreal one needs to pay a licence as far as I know, it means I'll be the only one, with the dedicated programmer I will hire or form a partnership with, to solve bugs: however, what if some bugs appearing after the game release are way beyond that programmer's capabilities ? My reasoning is that one of the interests of using a GPL engine such as Id Tech 4, and specifically this one as it's a quite well-known one, is that since anyone can work on it at anytime after the release, even the most complicated bugs to resolve could be solved by people much more competent than my programmer or than me -all I've did until now about coding is trying to write code in Turbo Pascal 7 when I was 12: most of the time it didn't work, and when it did, it actually worked not the way I wanted but I didn't dare to object. It may anger the Machine Spirit, you never know, so let Its Sacred Will decide of what It will do. Godot, that's an engine I've never heard about... thank you for the information, I'll do some searches on that, however since Datiswous said that their 3D engine may be less sophisticated than id Tech 4, I may not use Godot, but I'll see... for the moment I still tend to think that TDM is the best solution, notably since my game will include stealth gameplay mechanics and Thief-based stealth gameplay is the only viable stealth gameplay method ever made. One thing I wonder, though, is if Id Tech 4's damage system would work to translate my PnP RPG gameplay system... I will make tests in the coming weeks with Dark Radiant to see what I can do with projectile-based weapons, and study more how the .PAK files about weapons work: in TDM there's only a bow and it seems to be treated as a projectile-based weapon, I'm going to try to see how the whole thing works regarding accuracy, "magazine capacity", etc, by hoping there are comments left beside the code lines. If anyone has information on this subject, how the bow works technically in its .PAK file, I'm all ears Thanks for the suggestion, I've started reading about dhewm3 since yesterday, but apart a cleaner code, what more does it have than TDM ? No offense taken I'm not surprised that from time to time people pop up here, ask a few enthusiastic questions about a project they're starting and eventually never come back because the task is more difficult than they initially thought, personally I'm fully awayre that creating a FPS-RPG almost "by myself" is the kind of accomplishment that would be called miraculous, but I'm confident I can make it if I find a competent programmer, as I've been creating homebrew RPG systems since a long time and almost made it professionally if the team didn't blew up because of unresolved differences of vision and pent-up animosity between a few people that grew until it was too late, so after modding a few games to test my ideas I think that's doable. That failed project I just mentioned is actually the reason why I'm more inclined to not form a team of developers and instead to contract people anywhere I could find them: by "contracted", I mean paying people here or there to realize a single work, be it an animation, a 3D model, etc, the same way, say, a shop owner would contract a painter to create a painting for the shop's storefront. When you contract people that are outsiders to your project instead of having to juggle with the egos of a dedicated team, you limit the risk of failure I do have another potential project on the side, that said, totally unrelated to video games and that is so daring that I'd be the first surprised if I manage to set it in motion, so if suddently I disappear from The Dark Mod Forums after 6 months of activity, don't be surprised, even if I'll do my best to run both projects at the same time, given that this second one is pretty long-winded and can remain casually "tried on the side" while I work on that main video game project. Anyway, about the recurrent questions that are asked once or twice a year in similar topics such as "Why aren't you on Steam? When is the campaign coming? Can I use your stuff for my commercial project? Why aren't you doing a remake of Thief Gold?", maybe creating a FAQ and making it a sticky topic would work, personally I haven't found something like that in the various sections of the forum, maybe I've missed it that said.
  21. Hello everyone, Firstly, and at the risk of seeming dishonnest for starting this with compliments considering what I'm gonna ask in this topic, I'd like to congratulate every one involved in creating "The Painter's Wife": all of you did an incredible work, at Thief 2 "Life of the Party"'s level of quality and even better yet in that there are a few occurences where the ambiance varies, with different "tones" evoking different feelings in one same big mission -that specter was chilling, especially its disturbing "voice(s)", congrats to everyone involved in its creation ! I haven't had the possibility to try other missions yet, since according to what I've read a SSD must always have ~20% of its capacity left free for and my SSD is at 40Go left before going full, but of the couple of "one-shot missions" I've tried for the moment, The Painter's Wife stands out, with Sir Taffsalot's Sword being a great hommage to the member of your forum that made this sad decision. Now, the heart of the matter. I'm 39, handicapped and almost unemployable due to both my handicap and my professional life at this point, too weird for the local anal-retentive standards on a job resume. That's why I decided to create a video game. No less... but since I'm very roughly "the Richard Halliwell / Sheldon Pacotti-kind of guy", having been creating homemade tabletop wargame & RPG rules as well as fictional universes since the last 20 years, and being aware of what can and cannot be done after modding various games until now, I know I can make it. I have my back against the wall anyway, so it's almost not like if I have a choice After months of hard thinking and spent reading all the documentation I could find about the Id Tech 4 engine, I think that using Dark Radiant as an engine is the way to go for me: I'm in favor of free software in the GNU sense of the word, I want my game to also be a modding platform where everything needed to create a FPS-RPG is already built-up by making all my RPG game design systems usable freely by anyone by releasing all of that intellectual property, fictional universe of the game included, under a Creative Commons license, as a way of sticking the finger to what the video game industry has become -DLCs and all these scams like disc-locked content that'd be made illegal in 5 seconds if it concerned any other industries, I scream your name with reeee-ing rage. So here's the question I'd like to ask to the ones here that have built Dark Radiant / The Dark Mod: would you allow me to use it as a base on which to build my game ? (bolding and italics just to make the question stand out from that wall of text) Knowing that of course, my game will be sold: the price I'll be asking is for the whole universe and game systems I've created, I'm not aiming to "make money on your efforts" of course. If my understanding is correct, Dark Radiant is a fork of the Id Tech 4 and includes enhancements not present in the original basic Id Tech 4, so using TDM / Dark Radiant as a base will allow me to save a precious time during the development instead of re-beginning a new engine from scratch, that's why I'm asking. In exchange, everything I plan to add to "my fork" of the Dark Radiant Engine will be freely available for everyone and thus re-usable for The Dark Mod, which means including not just my game design sub-systems for gunfights, for stealth, for dialogue simulation etc but also everything that I plan to implement, such as for instance procedurally generated faces for npcs like Far Cry 2 did, as well as all the 3D models I'd have commissioned during development, etc. But only, of course, after the release of the game. I may also contract various people here for work I can't afford to take the time to learn on my own, by the way: programming, 3D models, and animations, mostly. Who is interested ? Hoping this topic will receive quick replies 'cause the clock is kinda ticking for me these days professionally-wise, I wish to anyone having read until this point to have a nice day, and if you've spotted grammatical mistakes in what I wrote, please let me know, English is not my maternal language so even if I write fluently I'm not beyond progressing yet -actually as long as I won't pass as a native I won't be satisfied
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