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Here's another question (the last for this mission, I'm sure)! I'm using info_location for the ambient sounds, which works quite nicely, but I don't really want the sound to loop endlessly. I tried adding s_looping 0 to one of the info_locations, but the sound still loops there. I also tried that on the global atdm:location_settings, but it still loops. Is it bugged or is it just me?

OK I think I've got to the bottom of this. I've created this forum thread (with bug report): https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22221-bug-drowning-ai-in-shallow-water/ I can apply a workaround, although it won't be perfect and the bug itself needs fixing in the engine. There are a few other things that need fixing so will put an update together soonish.

If any mappers have encountered weirdness with kill objectives not working with drowning AI, I think I've found out why. I don't think it would be a particularly difficult one to fix either. I've raised this bug report: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6323 Some context here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21837-fan-mission-the-lieutenant-2-high-expectations-by-frost_salamander-20230424/&do=findComment&comment=487316 I think this is a bug, but just raising here in case some people think otherwise.

I dom't use it, i found it here with the filter set to OpenSource. the TOS and PP isn't excluding for an OpenSource app, if they use ads mean that they also need to pay an server for this online service. OpenSource is not synonymous with free either, perhaps after the beta phase it is no longer free, so perhaps you can take advantage of the fact that it is still free to create a series of textures that can be used or search another one in Futuretools. AI generated textures and assets, by definition, don't have any copyright, so you can use them as you want. https://www.futuretools.io/?pricing-model=free|open-source&tags-n5zn=gaming

Not a fan of elevation... just makes direction harder to understand at a glance. I was thinking of just showing direction, not distance, on my proposed disk. If you passed X and Y coordinates unnormalized, I might have to take square roots in gui-script, which could be hard. I am unclear if we can meaningfully show distance at a glance as well on the disk. But open to experimenting with that as well.... In which case, the location dot would not be constrained to the perimeter, but could move towards the disk center point representing the player location. The radial distance (talking here about the disk viewed untilted) to the dot could be passed as a scaled vector, where x and y are each in the range 0 to 1. How best to scale that distance on the engine side? Could be logarithmic instead of linear. A radius of 1 would be the most far distance that sound could travel. A radius 0.1 or 0.2 would be right next to the player. Don't want to make it too close to the player dot, because it loses granularity of the perceived directional cue. Also, maybe (0,0) would indicate a special-case ambient/global sound, or player voice? Alternatively for representing a sound "next to player", the engine could pass a very low value (e.g., 0.01 radius), but the gui script would apply a minimum threshold like 0.1 or 0.2

i wanna blast metal musics after listening to some scarlatti's works LOL, particularly k.141, k.175,k.517 I remember i had small talk with my economic subject teacher(i described him as both charming and stern guy in his early 40s) outside school hours when i was in high school , i asked him "what sort of musics did you listen back in your college days?" then he replied "ooh i primarily listened to pop musics , disco , rythm and blues and some classic rock music & metal, i also remember breakdance music was all the rage and got an airplay everywhere". "woah, what metal and rock bands were you listening to?" he answered "well, that's a lot to mention, i listened to a lot of it from '88 to '93 , first you should know that every genre has its subgenres. For instance , metal has dozens of subgenres. I love listening to thrash , speed metal , hair metal and power metal. I suggest you to try to listen to bands like kreator, testament, helloween, megadeth , death and obituary. You want a heavy metal? black sabbath might suits you. I still keep my cassette tapes somewhere in my houses. I began listening to more alternative bands from 1994 onwards" Guess what? i instantly hooked to these bands. The first time I heard obituary - the end complete, it was brutal. The funny things is i never got such exquisite and deep discussion with my music teacher, but i got much classical knowledge from him though lotta stuffs going over my head. oh i forgot, here are some ambient musics :

Hello TDM-ers. I am encountering an issue where textures seem to partially disappear. I tried searching the forums, but, I don't know what to search for. The missing textures are a worldspawn brush acting as a roof with {for now} flat iron texture. There are other worldspawn brushes right below to create an attic ceiling with roof framework board texture. These gaps appeared a few edits ago. I can't "undo" to get back before whatever edit did this. The gaps are only visible during play and are not visible during editing. Closing and reopening DR and TDM do not fix anything. Some of the brushes overlap in areas behind the play area but I have never seen an issue doing that. The attached image has the effect I am now seeing. Ideas on where to start debugging this? Very much appreciated. Clint

Awesome! Post is up! https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22200-beta-testing-the-house-of-delisle/#comment-487365 Thanks!

Complaint From Players The player must pick up candles before extinguishing them, and then the player must remember to drop the candle. The player must drag a body before shouldering it (picking it up), and the player must remember to frob again to stop dragging the body. The player finds this annoying or easy to make mistakes. For players who ghost, some of them have the goal of returning objects back to their original positions. With the current "pick up, use item, and drop" system, the item might not return easily or at all to its original position. For example, a candlestick might bounce off its holder. (See player quotes at the bottom.) Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6316 Problems to Solve How can the "pick up" step be eliminated so that the player can directly use or interact with the item where it is in the game world? How can so much key pressing and mouse clicking be eliminated when the player wants to directly use an item? How can candles be extinguished and lanterns toggled off/on without first picking them up? How can bodies be shouldered without first dragging them? Solution Design Goals Make TDM easier for new players while also improving it for longtime players. Reduce tedious steps for common frob interactions. Make it intuitive so that menu settings are unnecessary. Do not introduce bugs or break the game. Terms frob -- the frob button action happens instantly. hold frob -- the frob button is held for 200ms before the action happens. (This can be changed via cvar: 200ms by default.) Proposed Solution Note: Some issues have been struckthrough to show changes since the patch has been updated. Change how frobbing works for bodies, candles, and lanterns. For bodies: Frob to shoulder (pick up) a body. Second frob to drop shouldered body, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Hold frob (key down) to start drag, continue to hold frob (key down) to drag body, and then release frob (key up) to stop dragging body. Also, a body can be dragged immediately by holding frob and moving the mouse. For candles/lanterns: Frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. Hold frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. For food: Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to eat food. For other items: No change. New cvar "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"200" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or extinguish. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Benefits Bodies: New players will have less to learn to get started moving knocked out guards. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players have played several missions before realizing that they could shoulder a body instead of dragging it long distances. Frob to shoulder body matches Thief, so longtime Thief players will find it familiar. Second frob drops a shouldered body. Players still have the ability to both shoulder and drag bodies. Compatible with the new auto-search bodies feature. Dragging feels more natural -- just grab, hold, and drop with a single button press. There is no longer the need to press the button twice. Also, it's no longer possible to walk away from a body while unintentionally dragging it. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Candles: New players will have less to learn to get started extinguishing candles. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players didn't know they could extinguish candles by picking them up and using them. Instead, they resorted to throwing them to extinguish them or hiding them. Hold frob to extinguish a candle feels like "pinching" it out. Once a candle is picked up, players still have the ability to manipulate and use them the same way they are used to in TDM v2.11 and earlier. For players who ghost and have the goal of putting objects back to their original positions, they'll have an easier time and not have to deal with candles popping off their holders when trying to place them back carefully. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Issues Bodies: Frob does not drop a shouldered body, so that might be unexpected for new players. This is also different than Thief where a second frob will drop a body. "Use Inv. Item" or "Drop Inv. Item" drops the body. This is the same as TDM v2.11 and earlier. This is the price to pay for being able to frob (open/close) doors while shouldering a body. Patch was updated to drop body on second frob, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Candles: Picking up a candle or lantern requires a slight delay, because the player must hold the frob button. The player might unintentionally extinguish a candle while moving it if they hold down frob. The player will need to learn that holding frob will extinguish the candle. The player can change the delay period via the "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar. Also, when the cvar is set to a delay of 0, the behavior matches TDM v2.11 and earlier, meaning the player would have to first "Frob/Interact" to pick up the candle and then press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish it. Some players might unintentionally extinguish a candle when they are trying to move it or pick it up. They need to make sure to hold frob to initiate moving the candle. When a candle is unlit, it will highlight but do nothing on frob. That might confuse players. However, the player will likely learn after extinguishing several candles that an unlit candle still highlights. It makes sense that an already-extinguished candle cannot be extinguished on frob. The official "Training Mission" might need to have its instructions updated to correctly guide the player through candle manipulation training. Updating the training mission to include the hold frob to extinguish would probably be helpful. Similar Solutions In Fallout 4, frob uses an item and long-press frob picks it up. Goldwell's mission, "Accountant 2: New In Town", has candles that extinguish on frob without the need of picking them up first. Snatcher's TDM Modpack includes a "Blow / Ignite" item that allows the player to blow out candles Wesp5's Unofficial Patch provides a way to directly extinguish movable candles by frobbing. Demonstration Videos Note: The last two videos don't quite demonstrate the latest patch anymore. But the gist is the same. This feature proposal is best experienced in game, but some demonstration videos are better than nothing. The following videos show either a clear improvement or that the player is not slowed down with the change in controls. For example, "long-press" sounds long, but it really isn't. Video: Body Shouldering and Dragging The purpose of this video is to show that frob to shoulder a body is fast and long-press frob to drag a body is fast enough and accurate. Video: Long-Press Frob to Pick Up Candle The purpose of this video is to show how the long-press frob to pick up a candle isn't really much slower than regular frob. Video: Frob to Extinguish The purpose of this video -- if a bit contrived -- is to show the efficiency and precision of this proposed feature. The task in the video was for the player to as quickly and accurately as possible extinguish candles and put them back in their original positions. On the left, TDM v2.11 is shown. The player has to highlight each candle, press "Frob/Interact" to pick up, press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish, make sure the candle is back in place, and finally press "Frob/Interact" to drop the candle. The result shows mistakes and candles getting misplaced. On the right, the proposed feature is shown. The player frobs to extinguish the candles. The result shows no mistakes and candles are kept in their original positions. Special Thanks @Wellingtoncrab was instrumental in improving this feature during its early stages. We had many discussions covering varying scenarios, pros, and cons, and how it would affect the gameplay and player experience. Originally, I had a completely different solution that added a special "use modifier" keybinding. He suggested the frob to use and long-press frob to pick up mechanics. I coded it up, gave it a try, and found it to be too good. Without his feedback and patience, this feature wouldn't be as good as it is. Thank you, @Wellingtoncrab! And, of note, @Wellingtoncrab hasn't been able to try it in game yet, because I'm using Linux and can't compile a Windows build for him. So, if this feature isn't good, that's my fault. Code Patch I'll post the code patch in another post below this one so that folks who compile TDM themselves can give this proposal a try in game. And, if you do, I look forward to your feedback! Player Complaints TTLG (2023-01-10) Player 1: TDM Forums (2021-03-13) Player 2: Player 3: TDM Forums (2023-06-17) Player 4: TDM Discord (2021-05-18) Player 5: TDM Discord (2023-02-14) Player 6: Player 7: Player 8:

The *DOOM3* shaders are ARB2 ('cause of old GeForce support) carmack plan + arb2 - OpenGL / OpenGL: Advanced Coding - Khronos Forums

Seems to confirm: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=5718 does it happen in the latest dev build: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20824-public-access-to-development-versions/

I just read@motorsep Discovered that you are able to create a brush, then select it and right click "create light". Now you have a light that ha the radius of the former brush. Just read it on discord and thought it may be of use for some people in the forums here too.

I just found this thread on ttlg listing Immersive Sims: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151176

Recently revisiting the forums after a longer period of time I wanted to check the unread content. I don't know if I am doing this wrong since.. ever... but on mobile (visiting the unread content page on my smartphone) you have to click on that tiny speech bubble to go to the most recent post in a thread. If you don't click correctly you'll hit the headline and end up at post 1 in the beginning of the thread. It's terrible on mobile, since not only the speech bubble is really small and was to miss. But also the thread headline is just millimeters away from it so you go right to the first post that was ever made instead of the most recent ones. Am I doing it wrong? I just want to go through u read content a d the to the newest post from that topic.

A@datiswous Ah yeah, well sorry, I was quiet busy and only visiting discord. First time here on the forums since months now I think.. Thank you for the subtitles. I encourage everyone who is interested in using them to download it from here as I'm not sure when I'll be able to implement them myself into the mission. Again, thank you for your work.

Of course, it is one of the reasons for the decline of online forums, since the advent of mobile phones. Forums on a mobile are a pain in the ass, but on the other hand, for certain things there are no real alternatives to forums, social networks cannot be with their sequential threads, where it is almost impossible to retrieve answers to a question that is asked. has done days ago. For devs for internal communication, the only thing offered is a collaborative app, such as System D (not to be confused with systemd). FOSS, free and anonymous registration, access further members only by invitation, full encrypted and private. https://www.system-d.org

Ignoring is somewhat inadequate as you still see other members engaging in a discussion with the problematic user, and as Wellingtoncrab says such discussions displace all other content within that channel. Moderation is also imperfect as being unpleasant to engage with is not in itself banworthy, so there is nothing more to do if such people return to their old behaviour after a moderator had a talk with them, except live with it or move away. I'd be more willing to deal with it if it felt like there were more on-topic discussion, i.e. thoughts about recently played fan missions or mappers showcasing their progress, rather than a stream of consciousness about a meta topic that may or not have to do with TDM. I guess the forums already serve the desired purpose, or they just compartmentalise discussions better.

@snatcher did you play the FM? @computertech82 Your review is almost identical to that of the other review bomber, neonstyle, who didn't play the FM for even 5 seconds but who noclipped to an area where he airdropped before the same door which confounds you. How did you get to that door if you didn't use a rope arrow in the vents? If you were a bit observant and were actually trying to play the FM you might've noticed that the building with that confounding door has two floors, the second of which is ringed by a wooden balustrade where a well placed rope arrow (!!) allows the nimble or even not so very nimble player an entrance to a hall where there's a shooting gallery of open windows to use the water arrows (the player should have 20 or more of them by now) to extinguish the confounding torches. There's also a keyed (!!! how awful !!!) door up there where the thoughtful player might expect a key might be snagged from off the ass of one of the guards sitting up ahead playing poker. That allows the easiest entrance. But oh what the hell. Once targeted by bombers ever targeted and there's nothing to do about it. In a post above I appended an edit to a response to vozka that, since it was an edit, probably went unnoticed so I'll repeat it here since it's really my last word for the time being, given my circumstances of having to learn how to edit all over again (yes, I found myself in a situation where I lost the ability to do even basics like change the ambient light setting! and a lot of the necessary fixes are difficult). @vozka I can now give a more coherent reply and I'm recovering nicely. I agree with every point of the critique and I'm in a quandary about how I should go about applying fixes. I think your preamble to the actual critique shows an exact understanding of what I was attempting to do in the FM. You understand that it is story driven. You understood the main elements of the story, that basically a farm boy of pagan background entrusts himself with a mission. His village needs help. Because he's earned a certain bad reputation and fits the bills requirement for having daring and a certain amount of cunning, so the mission is a natural fit; also amongst other things he wants to earn himself a good name. He has friends to help him along the way, and makes friends of friends along the road of the pagans. The FM uses devices to distinguish the pagans from the enemy they face and divides the space into distinct enemy and pagan areas, and areas in between. The pagans are opposed by corrupt nobles and their army of fundamentalist Builders, as corrupt as the nobles they serve. It's very black and white. Then there's the city guard who, being ousted from real power by the Builders are resentful and won't help the Builders and will ignore the player unless attacked or the player is caught trespassing in their inner court. That's about it. The critique mentions some gameplay elements that detract from the story and I agree about those. It also mentions gameworld failings that interfere with enjoyment, with gameflow and immersion. It seems to me that to fix these flaws will require a total rewrite of the FM, rebuilding the entire thing. For example, I understand the problems mentioned w.r.t. the lighting and know how to fix them, or at least bandage them over so technically there's no apparent problem. But I have a notion that the not so apparent problem here is in what's being lit. That there should be a rearrangement of things so light can be more focused and contrasted with the dark. I'm only starting to think through ways that I might do this. Needless to say anything like this would take time, probably a year, and I'm not sure whether I'm up to it. I've been playing a new mission by Kingsal and know I haven't anything near that level of skill. IMO the FM is unplayable right now. Actually I had asked that it be removed from the TDM database. I don't like the idea of leaving a blot. Thank you again.

Just a heads up for people taking screenshots to show off. You can do things like increase ambient light for a bit instead of cranking gamma afterwards. Try in the console bind f11 "r_minambient 0.1; wait; screenshot; r_minambient 0" This will cause the ambient light level to increase by a lot, which should cause less image artifacts as opposed to cranking the gamma

Whatever you're doing keep it up, man what a performance increase. 2.11a: Latest SVN version: +100 FPS in this scene is an insane increase. EDIT: just noticed that I had min ambient turned down and increased FOV by 5 degrees in the second shot. So there's even MORE for the SVN version to render and it's still 100+ fps over.

Yeah, being able to differentiate between footsteps can be justified. Actually, now that I think about, I'm pretty sure some of Thief's alert lines even lampshaded this; pretty sure it had lines like "Is that you, Sir?" I don't think it would be a more obscure mechanic than eyepatch/hooded guards having reduced vision. Or that drunk people are less observant. Imo loud background noise muffling noises would be a very natural and perspicuous, unless you are already heavily geared towards arbitrary/abstract game rules. But you did gave me an ideas there, kudos. After thinking about it a bit more, you wouldn't have to do actually have to do any more super serious calculations, just need to be able to apply a sound loss multiplier to player generated noises within a certain area. Since ambient sounds are set up by the map's designer in static locations, so there wouldn't be any need to calculate the loudness dynamically. Locations already have 'sound_loss_mult' attribute, so you could actually use that simulate muffling, right? The issue, if I understand it correctly, is that if the zone is bigger than the s_maxdistance of your noise generator, then the player's noise will get unjustly muffled even when far away from source of the noise. Or if it's smaller, than crossing a portal will remove the cloaking. Also not sure if 'sound_loss_mult' can be adjusted on the fly. If not, then it can't be used for dynamic distractions (like turning on/off a generator), only static noises. Could be optimal for heavy rain on the streets, maybe? Hmm yeah, this could be another approach. If you can change an AI's sensory stats on the fly then you could probably script dynamic muffling. Add some location based culling to it, so the distance is only calculated while the NPC is in relevant zones, lowering the impact of the calculations?! I do kinda want to do some cooking now and see if I can come up with something fun. Hmm, actually, just had another thought. I remember seeing a recent thread about how Noisemaker arrows are kind of redundant, since broadhead arrows or throwable items can also be used to lure guards over to specific spots. So maybe this could be a smallish buff to Noisemakers: temporarily lowering the aural alertness of guards in its vicinity a tinsy bit?

I don't recall a system for noise masking. It sounds like it'd be a good idea, but when you get into the details you realize it'd be complicated to implement. It's not only noise that that goes into it, I think. E.g., a high register can cut through even a loud but low register rumble. And it's not like the .wav file even has data on the register of what it's playing. So either you have to add meta-data (which is insane), or you have to have a system to literally check pitch on the .wav data and paramaterize it in time to know when it's going to cut through what other parameters from other sounds. For that matter, it doesn't even have the data on the loudness either, so you'd have to get that off the file too and time the peaks with the "simultaneous" moment at arbitrary places in every other sound file correctly. And then position is going to matter independently for each AI. So it's not like you can have one computation that works the same for all AI. You'd have to compute the masking level for each one, and then you get into the expense you're mentioning. I know there was a long discussion about it in the internal forums, and probably on the public subforums too, but it's been so long ago now I can't even remember the gist of them. Anyway the main issue is I don't know if you'll find a champion that wants to work on it. But if you're really curious to see how it might work, you could always try your hand at coding & implementing it. Nothing beats a good demo to test an idea in action. And there's no better way to learn how to code than a little project like that. I always encourage people to try to implement an idea they have, whether or not it may be a good idea, just because it shows the power of an open source game. We fans can try anything we want and see if it works!

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.

Well, here's some teasers for a haunted house mission I'm hoping to get done by Halloween. For the second screenshot I increased the gamma just so you can see what's going on- I'm really trying to avoid that milky grey look you get with high gamma and ambient. This is also a self-imposed challenge: the whole mission fits inside a 1024x1280x1024 box, including the skybox and playertools. Lights and speakers can have radii that protrude outside but all the geometry has to fit inside the box. It's amazing how much you can squeeze into such a tiny area. Showing any more screenshots would unfortunately spoiler the mission.

The lit-up light gem isn't caused by the nightvision light directly (I put ai_see 0 on it) but by its interaction with the dynamic ambient lighting. The dynamic ambient lighting adds a bit of extra ambient to a room depending on the brightness of the light sources that are in it, so that a flickering fireplace will also cause subtle variations in the brightness of shadowed corners, not just the areas that are directly illuminated. If you set ambient_light_falloff to something other than zero, the strength of this dynamic effect also depends on your proximity to the light sources. The wiki says this looks better than the default, and I agree. I've really been working hard on lighting in my latest level. Specifically I want deep shadows punctuated by smallish light sources and generally low ambient to avoid that milky, washed-out look you get with high ambient. In the darkest areas I want to use the nightvision to stop the player getting lost in pitch blackness. Obviously if I have a faint light strapped to my head, an ambient_light_falloff that brightens the ambient for nearby lights is going to defeat the purpose. What I really need is a spawnarg that tells the nightvision light not to contribute anything to the dynamic ambient. Is there anything like that? I also think ambient_light_falloff is a bit bugged. There's supposed to be a cap, by default rgb(0.1, 0.1, 0.1), on the absolute brightest the dynamic ambient can get. However, I'm routinely exceeding that for my setup.