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I've seen fun workarounds like that in other game modding as well. Years ago, maybe even a decade, some fella who was making a mod for Mount & Blade over at the Taleworlds forums revealed that he put invisible human NPCs on the backs of regular horse NPCs, then put the horse NPCs inside a horse corral he built for one of his mod's locations/scenes and then did some minor scripting, so the horses with invisible riders would wander around the corral. The end result was that it looked they're doing this of their own will, rather than an NPC rider being scripted to ride around the corral slowly. Necessity is the mother of invention. I don't know about the newest Mount & Blade game, but the first generation ones (2008-2022) apparently had some sort of hardcoded issue back in the earlier years, where if you left a horse NPC without a rider in its saddle, the horses would just stand around and wait and you couldn't get them to move around. Placing an invisible rider in their saddles suddenly made it viable again, at least for background scenes, of riderless horses wandering around, for added atmosphere. First generation M&B presumed you'd mostly be seeing horses in movement with riders, and the only horses-wandering-loosely animations and scripting were done for situations when the rider was knocked off their horse or dismounted in the middle of a battle. Hence the really odd workarounds. So, an invisible NPC trick might not be out of the question in TDM, even though you could probably still bump into it, despite its invisibility.

Here's my first FM. A small and easy mission, inspired by Thief's Den and The Bakery Job, where you must find and steal a cook's recipe book in order to save a friend from going out of business. Download: Mediafire (sk_cooks.pk4) TDM Website's Mission Page The in-game mission downloader Thanks to: The people who helped me get this far, both in the forums and on Discord. The beta testers: MirceaKitsune, Mat99, Baal, wesp5, Cambridge Spy, jaxa, grodenglaive, Acolytesix ( Per the author in the beta testing thread. ) Skaruts has given permission to the TDM Team to add Subtitles or Localization Strings to this mission. (No EFX Reverb.) If anyone from the Community or TDM team wishes to create these we will gladly test them and update the mission database.

Ever since I worked on "Chalice of Kings" with Bikerdude, I have wanted to get flame particles with new particle glares into the core mod. My reasoning was that the candles have glares and the un-glared torches look mismatched. This proposal was met with mixed reactions, so (knowing the history of TDM feature proposals...) I have created a technical demo. You may download it here: zzz_flameglare.pk4.txt (fixed) Just rename without the .txt extension at the end and place it in your Darkmod directory. Here are some screens. Using particles for this is probably the wrong way to go now that Duzenko has an emissive light feature in his branch: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19659-feature-request-emissive-materialsvolumetric-lights/

And those pics that Daft Mugi posted do show the problem with TDM maps, but I also have to say, that is a problem with TDM shadow maps, not with maps in general, I never seen such ugly issues in Stalker for example or Call of Juarez and many other games. Perhaps those shadow maps issues arise from people not thinking of shadow maps at all, when creating their lights, shadow maps do require a little more tweaking to look good, specially at grazing angles, because they are literally textures, so perhaps moving the lights a little solves those problems or even increasing the shadow map res. Just think about this, if shadow maps where that ugly, the gaming industry would never deprecate stencil shadows and we would still be seeing a ton of games using them, but is totally the contrary, games with stencil shadows, are the minority, even idSoftware removed them, I think since Rage (i'm not totally sure about Rage...) and up (besides obviously Doom 3 BFG). For example: Wolfenstein II Dishonored 2 Evil within 2 (this particular shot is impossible with stencil shadows, because of the blood that is a particle effect with alpha) etc. For obvious reasons TDM fans have a good opinion of stencil shadows and I comprehend that, they do look very good, TDM and Wolfenstein 2009 are the games with the best soft stencil shadows that I haver seen, but maps can also look good, if given the chance and used to their full potencial. another game with good stencil soft shadows Thou tree shadows on this game seem to use something else or literally stencil shadows because sometimes they look like a blob on the floor instead of seeing the individual leaf.

Is there a way to reduce the sound of the thunder? (s_volume on the entity does not work) put the "ai_see - 0" property on the lightening?

this sounds like something that'll need a custom def. I know you can bind lights to the player and a few other things; I feel like this should work too, but experimentation will be needed. If I have time today or tomorrow I might look into it

Jack's video seems to be gone, so I recorded a few of my own. (Hopefully you can see them, if imgur doesn't play tricks on me.) This is what I had initially, before changing fidelay to 0.1 (default fidelay is 0.001). There are no fade-ins. Ambient starts playing abruptly. This is what I have now with fidelay 0.1, which makes it bearable, but doesn't fix it. There's a short burst of sound, then silence, then fades in. I'd like to stress that this only happens the first time I enter a location. After that all transitions work as they should. I also have issues with some ambient sounds, which I suppose could also be described as popping. Rright after the guard snores, there's a small "pfft" sound, and the ambient seems to get slightly louder. (I hope "pfft" sound is really in the video, and not just on my own speakers.)

happy b-day ill hit 57 this summer and not feeling a day older than 97 damn...

The fisheries have had a bad year. Unemployed roam the streets and crowd the pubs. The merchants sleep with one eye open and keep a tight grip on their property amid the unrest. A thief, even a skilled thief like myself, has a hard time finding good, worthwhile work. I began looking for more... unusual tasks. I set my eyes on Thornton Hall, remote and cut off from the outside world. These outlying manors are difficult to find, let alone reach, but they're bound to hold precious trinkets and family heirlooms untouched by anyone. Not few are said to be haunted by one dreadful apparition or another. But it's common for the lords themselves to spread these rumours, to keep unwanted visitors away. This mission is in two parts. Once youre done with the first, on to the next. Download Dropbox- river3In-game downloaderClick continue at the bottom of the login screen if you use the Dropbox link but don't have a login, then place the mission archive in the fms folder of your Dark Mod installation. Changelog, v3, December 14th, 2016: Changelog, v2.5, November 23rd, 2016: Changelog, v2, October 27th, 2016: Notes In response to a question about the relation of this mission to One Step Too Far: This mission started its life as a standalone mission for a Halloween contest, so it takes place in a different setting and begins with its own story. There is, however, a strong link thatll become apparent during the mission. From a mapping perspective it contains areas and ideas that I had originally intended for Of Brambles and Thorns, which is the bonafide sequel, but realised that they wouldn't have space there anymore. So this could be described as being neither sequel nor prequel, but certainly a part of the series that began with One Step Too Far. Solutions Part 1 Part 2 Credits - Inspiration, Story: The Terrible Old Man by H.P. Lovecraft, a short story which leaves much to the imagination. - Inspiration, Setting: Right Up There in the Mountains by Troutpack, a fan mission for Thief 2 which left its mark. - Betatesters Round 1: Abusimplea, ankai, Ryan101, Oldjim, bikerdude - Betatesters Round 2: nbohr1more, bikerdude, crowbars82, jaxa, dunedain19 - Custom voice work: AndrosTheOxen, bikerdude, Goldwell - Custom models: Atheran, epifire, Dragofer - Custom paintings: Airship Ballet - Custom AI path setup: Sotha - Custom ambient tracks: gigagooga, spady, bottle_rocket_fx, dobroide, Dragofer, augustsandberg, bosk1, 01sound - Custom sound effects: kyyrma, cgeffex, speedenza, cabro, joelaudio, robinhood76, klankbeeld, benjaminharveydesign, vate - Bikerdude for not allowing me to stray from the highest standards and perfing troublesome spots - John Atkinson Grimshaw, Ivan Aivazovsyk and William Bradford for paintings used in the briefings and loading screens

So I'm like - He-he the doc is an idiot, he couldn't remember which book is supposed to open the compartment so he made sure all of them open it, and then I find the desk key and find the manual... Guess I'm an idiot! Also, the torn pages - nice touch, gets you thinking. And then I find the clue how to open it and... I struggle bad. Because, like others. I thought "Color of books, no that's not it, color of bookshelves, also not it" (really hard to see colors on the left side, I got it right but they blend in too much, for me at least) and then I read HERE that it's a different order(!) I read the recipe, and I am just going to ask - Six ounces of Snooze berries?! Excuse me?! Also, whoever made that ambient track that included fire starter sounds - damn you. DAMN YOU! XD (How do you get into a dilapidated room? I couldn't find a switch anywhere)

This is surely because of volumetric shadows. I get 200 FPS without them and 100-120 FPS with them (that's not fullscreen). Point lights in this room also have volumetrics enabled, not just the projected lights --- I believe they should not. But even if it gets fixed, performance will still be lower when volumetric shadows are involved. Since @Fiver has extremely low-end machine, it would probably make sense to tweak r_volumetric* cvars. Maybe "r_volumetricLowres 2", maybe "r_shadowMapSize 512". Maybe simply disable them.

When talking about a possible libre version of TDM (https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22346-libre-version-of-tdm/) it seems we believe all media/gamedata included in TDM is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. I am not familiar with how the process of adding new media/gamedata works today; I have seen files uploaded to the bugtracker which developers then commit to SVN, but I don't know if there are other ways. It may be a good idea to implement a process that when new components (media/gamedata included in TDM) are added, the contributor is asked to be explicit about the license (a choice which may defaults to their previous preference, for usability). It won't fix the past, but it may help in the future. This will make it easy for contributors to add future data under a more permissive license if they choose. Libre media can be added and its license can be tracked, rather than assumed to be CC-BY-NC-SA. I suggest looking at how Wikimedia Commons has implemented this: the contributor state the source and license at the time the data is uploaded. This can be done either by providing urls or by saying "It's my work and I choose this licsense". The first step could be to add a way to keep track of each filepath in SVN, author, license, sources. Start by setting the value for each file's license to "(default/legacy CC-BY-NC-SA)". Possible implementations for a user interface for new additions are: * Use our own wiki, which runs Mediawiki (same as Wikimedia Commons). I see several benefits of this, but we also need a way to accept uploads of batches, not just single files. * Look at how other open source projects have solved this. There may be more appropriate solutions available. ... but I'll leave the implementation open. Suggestions are very welcome! If the author of each file already in SVN can be tracked, then it may be possible that the author is willing to give a blanket permission for all their past files in one statement, and all their files in SVN can be updated in one commit. A productive contributor willing to release some of their work under a more permissive license could make a big change. If Dark Radiant would support letting mappers search media/gamedata by license (does it already?), it would make it easier for mappers to create a completely libre mission, which would help facilitate a TDM-libre release. If I understand things correctly. This post does not address all details and it may contain misunderstandings or assumptions, but it's a start. Also relevant: * Is there a compiled and maintained list of recommended or deprecated resources for mappers to use? * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20311-external-art-assets-licensing/

Ah, pity I wasn't reading the forums back in February. I'm fond of that game, along with Bugbear's other early title, Rally Trophy. I was never too good at FlatOut, but it was always a hoot to play.

I intend to update the FM if any bugs/errors are found or updates to TDM necessitate it, but you're correct that I'm not updating it for content going forwards. The ambient tracks I used in this FM were a little bit busier than I normally would use, mostly because I knew this was going to be a very short FM going in and I had to deliver an atmosphere somewhat quickly. Rest assured that my next FM is going to be a bit less busy and more varied in terms of ambience. Don't worry, I don't view this as a major failing or anything. I don't really find Lovecraft's works "scary" in a traditional sense, if I wanted this to be overtly scary I likely would have gone way over the top and diverted too heavily from the source material. I've always enjoyed Lovecraft's works for their ominous tone, ambience, and mystery, which it seems from your feedback I more or less achieved. I'm glad you enjoyed my FM, Arrow, and thanks for the feedback!

It took awhile to get used to the size of this mission. The long loading times didn't help, but after passing a certain point, I get it now. However, I will say this - the AI is crazy on this map. I started, right? And the first thing I see - all guards going ape because some thug cut loose. I sat in the dark corner, for like ten minutes, waiting for them to calm down, because I figured I should look around for loot (I only found some of it much later when I was returning here after finishing the mission) The same thing happened later, when I needed to pass an abandoned mansion. I waited for the epic battle, instead it was a massacre, but like an idiot I saved AFTER I left the tunnel, not before. So I couldn't reload and see if next time the battle will go differently. (Am I crazy or do leather thugs spawn after a moment?) I had to use up all gas arrows to pass that part because they kept trimming the bushes. The evidence part got me confused because I dropped a piece of evidence, but it didn't count, so I dropped everything that said evidence. Only then it counted, but later, as I was still hunting for loot, I finally remembered that I had a vent key and came looking and found yet another piece of evidence?! Finding Smythe was funny, because he kept saying "Show yourself" and the moment I did... I gathered skulls before I was prompted to, but Edgar... I don't get it. edit: Those glasses, tho. Holy crap, I did not expect to see "actual glass" in this game. The hidden room took me ages to find, despite TWO blatant hints. But I was sleep-deprived at the time. There was one snag, and one confusion that I had. The snag was that, when I finally reached the alchemist, the note told me to use the vent, right? But... I couldn't open the second vent in his lab. I don't know which key I was missing for that. So I figured - I could just go back the same way... and game CTD. I walked there again - CTD. I noclipped through that locked vent, killed the spiders, and tried to open the doors to my left (got spooked by friendly guards) - CTD. Only when I walked right and up the stairs did I finally progressed. Not sure what that was about. The confusion, however, came from Builders. I knocked out most of them in the Builder's outpost, but when I dealt with the Mr. Nom-nom-zom, they vanished. I guess they needed that many people to dig him out of the spider outhouse? (Never found the second news flash either) I still somehow missed 3.5k, and noticed that lights kept poking through walls (there is a piece of light pointed at doors leading into the inner garden of Builder's outpost that nearly got me killed a few times) Overall, however, this was an impressive piece of work.

V2.12beta crashed at the mission "the shadows at northdale" ---snip--- 354 msec to load m1 Interaction table generated: size = 0/512 Initial counts: 4418 entities 406 lightDefs 3765 entityDefs Restarting ambient sound snd_thieves_highway'(phantoms) with volume -8 Changed location from 'loc_apartment_streets' to 'loc_thieves_guild'. The ambient 'snd_thieves_guild' (music_thieves_guild) for location 'loc_thieves_guild' is now playing. Changed location from 'loc_thieves_guild' to 'loc_apartment_streets'. The ambient 'snd_thieves_highway' (phantoms) for location 'loc_apartment_streets' is now playing. Changed location from 'loc_apartment_streets' to 'loc_thieves_guild'. The ambient 'snd_thieves_guild' (music_thieves_guild) for location 'loc_thieves_guild' is now playing. WARNING:Cannot find sound snd_lockpick_lock_picked on door atdm_door_96x48_2hinge_29 DEBUG: entity atdm_loot_painting_medium_5 was frobbed and frob_loot runs DEBUG: entity atdm_loot_painting_small_7 was frobbed and frob_loot runs Trying to load image models/darkmod/props/textures/painting03_l_d from frontend, deferring... Trying to load image models/darkmod/props/textures/painting03_l_d from frontend, deferring... signal caught: Segmentation fault si_code 1 Trying to exit gracefully.. terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::shared_ptr<ErrorReportedException>' double fault Aborted, bailing out shutdown terminal support About to exit with code 6 ---snap---

This is probably the most practical way of indicating breakable electric lights and can be done with existing models if the effect consists of something like sparks + flickering.

And making it possible for the new electric lights to be broken adds a psychological problem: how will players know that they are breakable if in 99% missions they are not? Recall lootable paintings and frob-extinguishable unmoveable candles.

They don't work with stencil shadows. If a player has stencil shadows enabled, the volumetric lights have forced shadow maps enabled, while other lights have still stencil shadows. So it will just work. I think it will have a performance hit (also because the mentioned forced shadow maps I assume), but the mission overal is not very demanding? Afaik volumetric lights is enabled with a spawnarg. So via a trigger/script this setting can be changed? Not sure.

It's okay! I'm down with any option hence why I asked. But I agree: Most players would likely not approve of such a change being done retroactively and affecting all old FM's, so it would likely be best as a derivative entity for mappers to use in the future based on new or existing lamps that can provide one. In any case it would likely require engine changes, not something you can currently do with a script: Lights already use their own hardcoded script classname which can't be overridden. Even if it weren't for that I don't think there's a way to intercept broadhead arrow collisions and check what kind of surface they hit, even with the Stim / Response system. There should probably be two new spawnargs: A breakable boolean enabling the feature on an entity, and a skin_broken to specify the skin used when a light was smashed.

Yeah, I guess I didn't consider making a new entity for future mappers to implement in their future maps when I responded to you (sorry!), but that is not a bad idea. The changes should be done in a way where it wouldn't affect older FMs, and it would be a fair chunk of work. I actually have a few breakable lights in my WIP, although they are kinda glitchy and far from perfect.

Yeah, that is a true aspect. Which is why I think there could be one of two approaches if this happened: Either make breakable lights a new entity for some lamps that want to feature them, so just as you have "atdm_lamp_1" and "atdm_lamp_1_unlit" you'd have an "atdm_lamp_1_breakable"... or if we implemented it for all lamps retroactively, it should come at the cost of AI becoming suspicious whenever they see a broken lamp just like when they notice a rope arrow, in which case the player choosing to go down this route comes at the cost of attracting attention and possibly ruining their stealth score.

This kind of mechanic would break a ton of existing FMs. Some (I dare say even most) mappers often choose electric lamps so that they can't be extinguished or turned off, forcing the player to time their movements through the light. There are of course switchable electric lights, but that is up to the author on how they want to implement those. It would definitely be fun to see an FM implement this Splinter Cell-style mechanic, where the mapper has designed their map to function in such a way, but to add this as a core feature would break the gameplay of countless maps

GAMEPLAY * Frob controls have been reworked completely. Previously players were annoyed by having to do three presses to extinguish a light. Also, some player didn't even know that bodies could be shouldered and were limited with dragging bodies. Now simply clicking the frob button performs the action player needs most of the time, and pressing-and-holding the same button performs alternative actions like dragging bodies and extinguishing candles (thread). * Several aspects of mantling has been improved: overhead mantling has become faster, mantling over low obstacles is allowed while carrying an item or a body. Also it is possible to switch weapon while being on rope/ladder or mantling. Pressing crouch button on rope/ladder now starts slide-down immediately. * Some aspects of gameplay can be further simplified. Auto-search bodies is for players who don't want to waste time searching for keys and purses on guard bodies. Lockpicking "Auto" difficulty now indeed trivializes lockpicking (thread). * Leaning animation has been improved with lower head tilt (thread). * Player footstep sounds have been rebalanced. Metal and water sounds were especially painful previously. * Further improvements of subtitles: revised location and font to avoid overlapping with other GUI elements, added directional cue, better slot allocation. Each subtitle is now displayed for at least one second even if the sound is very short. * More settings to reduce camera bobbing/rolling/shaking, which is good for players who feel motion sickness from default camera animations. * Now several script addons can coexist and work independently (thread). ENGINE * Optimized generation of light-entity interactions in rendering frontend. Also greatly optimized shadow processing, especially for moving lights. Unfortunately, many existing missions are not compatible with these changes, so you might see light leaking through walls (mainly with stencil shadows). Please report all such cases, we'll apply workaround on case by case basis (thread). * The "old" and "new" rendering backends are finally merged into one. It is as nice to program as the new backend, and as old-fashioned and reliable as the old backend. Single-pass shadow maps enabled by default and now respect noselfshadow. * Materials with polygonoffset now interact with lights. So static decals can have bumpmap and specular lighting. Note however: dynamic decals still don't interact with lights. * Revised parallelSky lights and marked shadowing parallel lights as deprecated (thread). * PNG image format now behaves equally to other supported formats. In particular, it is not required to explicitly specify its extension, and it can be referenced directly in GUI code. * Added functions min/max to material expressions, which can be useful for clamping. * Fixed minor culling bugs on animated entities and enabled entity scissors by default. * Reduced color banding for fog with some dithering at tonemapping stage. * Finally our C++ code can compress and decompress all texture formats we use, meaning that we no longer depend on occasionally buggy/slow vendor implementations. BUGS * Now both OGG and WAV sounds work the same way and stop playing while in main menu. * Fixed "gui::startSelect" as a feature that allows to choose player starting location in GUI briefing. * Fixed warnings in newspaper_bridgeport0X core readable GUI. ASSETS * Added automatic turrets, to be combined with security cameras (Thread). * Added more covered furniture models (6289). * Added wall models from Seeking Lady Leicester (6293). * New and fixed versions of atdm:lamp_electric_square_3_lit_unattached (6315). * Fixed UV map on Stove models (6312). * Fixed some issues with moor AI (6345).