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So where do you disgustingly clever/creative people find all of the great, very Thief-esque ambient tracks I hear in so many of these missions?

I've been having this issue in my own fms, where the first time I enter a new area, the ambient sound will start out loud for a second, and then go down to the intended volume, instead of transitioning properly. This only seems to happen in my own fms, so maybe it's some setting I overlooked. I made a small test map: test_area_sounds.map There are three areas in the test map. The second area has an ambient volume of -17 db, while the others have 0 db. The problem is noticeable to me right when the map loads and the first ambient starts playing, but it's even more noticeable when crossing to the second area, where the sound starts loud, and then goes way down and stays there. After I've entered all areas for the first time, then all is good, the sounds transition fine. As in, the volume goes down and then up to reveal the new ambient sound.

When you press Escape to see the main menu, the sound effects from nearby electrical lights, like buzzing and crackling, will keep on playing. Doesn't seem to happen with gas lamps and torches. I don't know if this has been reported, but it has been around for a long time. (I'm on version 2.12)

Though this is related to PBR as a component in getting it done right (like reflection probes) I thought it's an improvement of its own that's worth discussing. I don't know if this is implemented or estimated in some form, but working with light entities in my own FM's I haven't seen any spawnargs for it so I presume it's not. At the moment lights in TDM act as zero-scale points, light sources have no actual radius. I know what you might be thinking: Of course lights have a radius, it's the box that decides how far a light shines and what it affects! What I'm referring to is not the range but the emission radius, representing the scale of the bulb itself: Think of it as a minimum radius... at the moment lights only have a maximum radius, the minimum is currently a point. In modern engines this affects both specularity and shadow softness as well as how the light is distributed. Like most engines we shouldn't need anything more than a float describing the size of the bulb, a simple sphere ought to be enough... given we already work with radius boxes, we could instead use a separate box which would give us better control with unevenly shaped bulbs. Every default light entity should of course be updated to use this: Torches / candles would set it to the average size of their flame particles, gas / electric lamps should have it represent the scale of the light bulb or the lamp head. If done right this can greatly improve our graphics and add more realism, but as with most things it's not going to be that simple. Also this would create changes to the lightgem in all FM's but very minuscule ones that shouldn't even be detectable. There's 3 different components I presume we have to tackle independently. Soft shadows: Shadowmap softness is probably the easiest, just add the average bulb radius to their value. Specularity: At the moment all lights seem to produce specular orbs of the same fuzziness on shiny surfaces. What we probably want is for lights that keep their min radius 0 to produce a fully sharp orb or dot, softness is added to each light's ball based on this radius. Light projection: The biggest aspect is changing how light is distributed, the projection texture / falloff material would emanate very differently. Everything inside the bulb would shine at the intensity of the center pixel and should start fading from the min radius toward the max, the projection texture would get slightly inflated like a balloon. The best solution (which also accounts for blur) seems like a 2D shader that copies the light texture onto itself at slightly different offsets to make it fuzzy: There's already a blur filter that does just that when you're underwater for example, we could to get away with doing the same thing to light textures using the min radius as the offset parameter. As lights typically don't change scale, this should be possible to do only once at map start rather than every frame including for moving lights like torches, this way we should have no performance loss.

I think we should deprecate parallel lights. The way they are implemented in Doom 3 only works intuitively if it is fully contained in a single visportal area, which is rarely the case. Otherwise, there are huge issue with area-portal graph and shadows. For something global like moonlight, the new parallelSky light should be used. If it is contains the whole level in its light volume, then the behavior should be well-defined as long as portalsky material is used to seal levels from the sky (not caulk or something similar). The light is supposed to come through the portalsky surfaces into all areas in this case. Are there any other usages of parallel lights?

Something I've been wondering for a while, and the wiki couldn't quite answer my question to a satisfying degree; does ambient noise affect sound propagation in anyway? In other words, is there any system in place that simulates background noise masking player generated racket? I'm mainly thinking of things like roaring machinery, a common set piece in induralist settings. Or heavy rain, loud music, waterfalls, any kind of noise generating entity that physically exist in the mission's world, thus audible for AI entities, and could reasonably overshadow/drown out footsteps. Based on personal experience I'm fairly certain background noise is not taken into account, but it doesn't hurt asking. An old, personal pet peeve of mine is when enemies, that the player can't hear moving around due to blaringly loud ambient noises, somehow isn't affected by the same auditory disturbance and immediately goes searching mode over a single, casual footstep. Or when enemies somehow can distinguish between two sets of identical sounding footsteps, although I can accept that a bit more than the first one. The superhuman hearing can be quite ridiculous. Follow-up question; assuming it doesn't already exist, would such a system be a worthwhile addition? Could be a powerful tool for map makers and players, setting up areas where the player perform rushed actions by utilizing the environment. Like turning on a gramophone to be able to run through a fully illuminated wooden corridor, and stuff. One possible argument I can think of is that such an addition could mess with old missions, however I'd contend that any mission, that would get ruined by an extra tool/route, wasn't a particularly well designed mission in the first place. Another issue is that it might be pretty expensive to calculate or properly define the propagation.

Hello, I'm Herwig (30) from Germany. I'm a songwriter and Music producer who offers the Mod Team to write Ambient Music or Original Soundtrack for the Game or for some Missions. If this help is needed please feel free to contact me here!

The latest TDM dev version (dev16650-10157) appears to contain broken definitions for ambient cube lights, breaking lighting on any FM that uses them (I have several in progress). I noticed the path got renamed from "ambientcube" to "ambientCube" (c became a capital C). Even if picking the new path however, DarkRadiant shows a "shader not found" error, whereas in-world the light is no longer visible and functional. Can this be fixed for the next dev snapshot please?

I've got an ambient sound playing on a region in the game. I wanted to achieve that after a trigger this ambient sound gets exchanged to another ambient sound for that same region. Is that possible to achieve? Say you start the mission in a city and get to hear city_ambience1. Then you finish you visit a certain area and that triggers to play city_ambience99 instead of city_ambience1 if you get back out into the city. I tried adding speakers to the area, but they weren't even playing after getting triggered, plus the old ambient sound still plays along.

When volumetric lights were officially supported, I was blasted away on how good the Screenshots looked. So I tried to implement some in the update of my FM. But actually I always ended up with removing them because it looked rather strange with many small dark dots appearing in the areas of the light or when NPCs walk through them. As I read that many FM authors already implemented them into their missions, I wonder what setup did you use? Which colours and density worked for you? My plan was to use a volumetric light for the fireplaces in this mission. But no matter how ai played around with density and colour, I always endet up having those small black and grey tiny dots around. Also the rest of the room looks out of place if the torches on the wall DON'T use VL but the fireplace does. I can't find another way but to listen to your experience with VL. Thank you!

As of the title, If I turn on Ambient Occlusion, shadows are turned into pitch black. Cannot see things, It feels like being a real guard in the game. Any solution? AO is too nice, I want to keep this. (Turning it off is a simple solution for it, though) My gpu is AMD RX6700XT and its driver is almost latest version(adrenalin 22.9.1) Sorry for my poor English.

EDIT: This mod is now part of the TDM Modpack. --------------------------------------------------------------------- OLD EDIT: You can find a demo in this post (v0.7) ---------------------------------------------------------- Welcome. Feel free to participate but I ask you to restrain from discussing whether we should or should not do it. We are going for it in this topic. For the practical or philosophical debate please head to: Should small static oil lamps be extinguishable up close? ---------------------------------------------------------- THE IDEA: To have the ability to extinguish small lights with a swift but quiet blow. THE VISION: When no item is selected in the inventory, and upon pressing the use key, Corvan performs a swift but quiet blow that can extinguish small lights located within the radius of the blow. EDIT - Potential side issues to take into account in the future It shouldn't work under water It shouldn't work when carrying a body It shouldn't work when holding any object ---------------------------------------------------------- OIL LAMPS: When I started playing TDM I was frustrated to find out I could not extinguish small oils lamps located right in front of my face. What the? Candles yes but oil lamps no? It turned oil lamps where created during a time the development of the game had a big momentum and oil lamps where offered to mappers without a second thought. Mappers started using oil lamps - under the assumption that only water arrows can extinguish them - and by the time people started wondering why oil lamps could not be extinguished with the fingertips or with a blow the matter was deemed "too late" for any change. I believe that having the ability to easily extinguish ANY small light can improve the experience in the long run and I am set out to change course in this regard, regardless of how some members of this community feel about it. Wesp5's Unofficial Patch offers a workaround that I am not fan of because the moment you put a light out the oil lamp remains frobable thus making the implementation inconsistent. Besides, oil lamps could perfectly trigger an action (ie: unveil a hidden secret) but since all oil lamps are frobable players don't get the required feedback. THE FLINT: When I started playing TDM I was impressed by AI. I clearly remember the moment I put a candle out but moments later I found it was lit. What the? I put the candle out again and waited in the shadows. A builder comes in, puts a flint out a relights it. I was amazed. I need to get one of those flints, I thought. A few missions later I finally got to have one. The flint was the key: I started toying with the flint and I realized at its core the flint basically is a stim of fire. I changed the stim of fire for a stim of water and voila, I could extinguish lights with the modded flint. The problem now is that the modded flint extinguishes all lights and fires, large and small but hey, things are heading in the right direction. I am not yet ready to publish any files but I already need a lot of help from experienced modders and developers. Here is my main concern at this point: Do you think it would be possible to detect if a stim is colliding with large lights? Or Do you think the impact of a stim can be limited to certain entities? Or Any other ideas to limit the impact of a water stim to small lights only? Cheers!

I just downloaded the latest beta version of the Dark Mod right now and by starting this specific FM: Iris, I get this black screen with the music and ambient sounds in the background, but no picture showing. I was only able to get to the mission briefing page showing the objectives of the mission and then by clicking on "Objectives" It takes me to a black screen. What is causing this issue? My other fan missions work just fine, I tested out other ones, so it's not my game. Could be this is a broken fan mission?

Since I saw many good missions with foggy and dusty areas, I was checking the wiki for advice. However there's scarce information about how to achieve this (if you don't really know what you're looking for at least). So I wanted to kindly ask the people who know the engine far more well than me and the ones who maybe already created a dusty indoor area. My goal is to create a cellar which has torches in it that looks foggy / dusty. I already have that cellar which consists of multiple rooms with their torches and some decal patches on the surfaces. Still it looks very bright and clean. How would I implement a foggy area here (also in terms of performance)? I tried volumetric lights, which results in a really good looking result, however I notice a performance drop (because of the unnessesary shadow calculations I guess) I tried a func emitter, but it seems to be emitting the fog even when the player isn't in that area (again, performance reasons could apply here if I would place multiple emitters there I guess). Also the particles are not bound to that area, so you can see them in the rooms above the cellar sometimes I guess in the end it can be a mix of multiple methods. What's your suggestion? What technologies would you choose?

Dear mappers, please be aware of this decorative light option introduced in upcoming 2.10 It aims to highlight the light volume and produces something like the existing fog particle with the intended effect of better speed and arguably better visuals It looks like this in game The test map we have been testing recently is courtesy of Bikerdude: download To enable this effect you will need to mark your light material with the volumetricLight keyword, like this lights/test_mansion01_window04_vol { description "volumetricLight for mansion01 window04" volumetricLight { map lights/mansion01_window04 colored zeroClamp } } Volumetric lights use projection and falloff textures to generate the volumetric effect. With shadow maps on, they also take shadows in the account. There's also an optional parameter after volumetricLight that toggles max speed vs decent look mode. Credits: @peter_spy for the original test map and direction @Bikerdude for great support during the reintroduction effort this year @stgatilov for taking the implementation on a completely different quality level @all for being cool and awesome

I'm running TDM v 2.10/64 #9588 and I noticed a bug with ambient sounds. If you have two adjoining locations with the same ambient soundtrack but set to different volumes, the volume does not update if you move from one to the other.

After thoroughly trial and error testing the possible cause of low FPS in recordings I can safely warn everyone else that despite having a strong graphics card ambient occlusion absolutely tanks output. This doesn't show while playing the game, just in the finalized video. Not sure whether this is to be filed as a bug or a sad side effect, either way I hope this helps out in the coding process! About a minute in the framerate takes a drastic drip. I am not sure what areas in particular cause this, what angles or why. Equal amounts of drop in framerate are present in low to high. The only differential is turning it off altogether.

These have never worked for me, but I installed TDM 2.0.9 and DR 2.11 and was looking at maps and all the lights work. I've done a lot of experiments with my own materials, and nothing ever worked so far, so I wonder if it's because Quake 4 is the set game? Is this only for TDM or should it work for all supported games? Or maybe it's my materials or my lights?

My fairly recent office laptop doesn't seem to like ambient occlusion, resulting in images like these on both 2.08 and 2.09: A driver update made no difference, nor does trying out various combinations of graphics settings. The CPU is an Intel i5-1035G1 with an onboard Intel UHD G1 (Ice Lake 32 EU), Windows 10. I've attached a condump from a test map in 2.08. ao_208.txt

In TDM 2.08, the option for tdm_ambient_method was removed from the menu and it's set to 0 by default. That means the engine uses ambient lights, not textures to calculate this. You can safely remove the //TDM Ambient Method Related code from your materials, and everything will work the same. This should make your material files smaller and more readable