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After going through massloads of linker problems, I finally got VC++ to compile a DarkRadiant build which is working in Vista. My suspicion is that MinGW might be too outdated in the meantime to produce a working build for both WinXP and Vista. I have both environments set up here, maybe I can look into upgrading MinGW to gcc4 or newer windows libraries, but my hopes are low that this will work. The MinGW compiler is so old and a new stable version doesn't seem to be released soon (announced for over 1 to 2 years now?). I'll try to mock up a VC++ release build so that Subjective Effect can test it on his machine. I probably can't keep this Vista environment alive for long, as it's running an angua's old 80 GB HDD - she will swap the drive soon to get back her regular setup.

Yeah. That was exactly why I got pissed off about these postings. It's not as if everybody just sits here and waits for some Vista user to complain and immediatly rush to the rescue. It's an open project and anybody can do what he likes (sort of), but there is no obligation that we have to support soemthing that some users might deem absolutely necessary. I would also like to get some models and sound effects for my maps, but I can't expect all the others stop working on their stuff just to accommodate me, so I have to either do it myself, or if I can't ask poeple if they can do it and wait until I find somebody who can do it. Really! No matter how much some think that Vista will fly, which it may not, because MS has problems selling it, except to the stupid people who think they are cewl if they put up with everything that MS throws at them. If it works, it's fine, and if not, well that's a problem that early adopters always have.

@Subjective Effect: I already promised to look into that sometime in the near future. Apart from that I can't help you right now, sorry. No point to weigh in more on your arguments when we already agreed to add Vista support, things won't happen earlier because of that. Setting up a build environment in Vista is not as trivial as some people may think. It was hard enough in Windows XP, so let's hope there won't be any problems. Regarding the codebase, it's very unlikely that there is anything which will get harder to fix over time. (And to get this off my chest too: The way you write your posts, you appear almost offended that I don't rush off immediately, buy a new hard disk, install that damn Vista and debug it so that you can use it on your favourite OS. I'm already working my ass off for TDM and DarkRadiant, and it's not like I get paid for anything here, you know.)

Welcome xonce! If you have any problems or questions, don't hesitate to ask, and please ignore anything that comes over as grumpy - we are just like that

I was going to grab the latest DR just now and found a couple of problems: -Newest version is Nov10, is that right? I thought there was one in early Dec but I could be looking at the wrong file, because I'm looking right at the FTP, not sourceforge (see next) -I can't get the file from the link on sourceforge at all, because of a possible file problem and apparent bug in the script (I guess?) - each time I click the link, it simply adds "/files" to the URL and reloads the page. I noticed this when my address bar read: http://darkradiant.sourceforge.net/snapsho..._latest_SVN.zip Edit: okay the board is shortcutting my link. Well anyway, it is:".../snapshot.php/files/files/files/..."

That is correct, because the initialisation sequence uses the presence of a module in _initialisedModules to determine whether it is already initialised. If the module is not placed into the list before its dependencies are processed, an infinite loop can occur if there is a circular dependency. I don't see how multiple passes would improve anything, constructing an order from a series of dependencies is a well-defined operation that should be doable in one pass (with recursion). I think the problems here are related to circular dependencies, rather than a bug in our initialisation algorithm. That would be a much better solution IMO. Unfortunately as we all know the GtkRadiant coders couldn't design their way out of a paper bag, so there probably are a whole load of major WTFs to do with module construction. Really, how could they possibly have thought circular dependencies made any sense? "You can't do X until you've done Y, and you can't do Y until you've done X". Huh?

That might be a good next step, since the idle callback improves the initial display of the PropertyEditor but still produces a delay if you try to click on anything else during the few seconds it is populating the list. Some kind of cache ought to help this, although care would be needed to ensure it was updated if the class tree changed for any reason. It was out of action for a while due to the performance problems, so I guess I must have just abandoned it. I have already added an Apply button to the existing EClassPropertyEditor, so there is nothing to choose between them at this point.

I think you are overestimating the amount of skill that is out there. I would glady make textures if I had the time (hell I even applied at one point), but unfortunately I am just not that good at making textures. OK, but not that good. The problem is that once you learn a couple of simple techniques in modelling, texturing or whatever, you are immediately seized by the notion that you absolutely rock at modelling or texturing, just because you can produce stuff that you wouldn't have thought possible before you started (I've been there myself). Unfortunately, this applies to everybody else as well, which means that your own work is in fact pretty average. The result of this is that there is a big discrepancy between the number of "modellers" and "texture artists" who drop into the forums, and the number of actual talented individuals who can make a real contribution.

This has probably already been discussed on the internal forums, but what the heck... I think it would be great if, when entering a poison-gas area, you would get a breath-meter like when you're underwater instead of just automatically taking damage. I figure a master thief should be capable of holding his breath whether he's swimming or not. It's not like there aren't other ways to automatically hurt the player, and this would provide mappers a way to hurry players through areas without being forced to damage them (thus avoiding the "here's a convenient health potion, you'll need it" syndrome).

Very interesting that you mention those two missions as examples of giant missions, because in fact they are no larger than the rest. So I think it must be that they didn't have good maps, and were disorienting, and that made them seem larger. In any case, DR/D3 can produce quite huge sized missions if desired, so no problems there

See whether switching AI shadomesh to shadow2 (noselfshadows) removes shadow problems on AI. (This might be worth doing later but it requires altering the model itself)

Hm, so it's quite obvious that Vista has problems with GTK and/or DarkRadiant. Unless a developer is willing to install Vista on his/her machine, we can't do much about it, I'm afraid. It can be anything.

Yeah, it does. Though it at least suggests that they may be aware of DX2's problems... That has a resemblance to this:

Didn't you determine that using a static shared_ptr in the Global accessors caused problems though? Or do you mean you intend to optimise the calling code to cache its own reference?

Quoth the Upright Citizens Brigade "Everyone here needs to coooooooooooooooooooooool out." Reasonable people can and will disagree. In particular, we spend alot of time arguing about things that really come down to opinion, and alot of people on these forums don't know how to write with tact. I don't know if they do it out of ignorance, or because it amuses them, but there is no reason to take it personally whatever the cause. Ultimately there are an infinite number of games we could make and everyone here, if given their druthers would likely make a different one.

I tried to install Mediawiki on my office box under Windows because I want to use it as a documentation system. I ran into some problems and I haven't found any help googling. I installed apache 2.2.x and it appears to work. I also have MySQL running as my database which also works. Now I tried to install PHP5 and there is some problem with it. At first I installed it but wheneever I tried to start php-win.exe it crashed with a memory error. Now I noticed that this may be due to some plugins that I installed, but which are not available. So PHP tries to initialize these plugins, and instead of giving a proper error message it just crashes. So I disabled all plugins except the the ones that I thought I will need: [PHP_MYSQL] extension=php_mysql.dll [PHP_PDF] extension=php_pdf.dll [PHP_WIN32STD] extension=php_win32std.dll Not sure if the PDF will work, or wether I need some additional stuff installed, but this shouldn't cause a problem. So when I run php-win.exe it doesn't crash anymore. However when I load the installation page from mediawiki and try to click on index.php, it should start PHP, but then the crash happens again. And since it doesn't give any usefull information, I'm not sure what the problem is. Apparently there is some configuration problem. Maybe somebody who has experience with this app knows what to look for.

Good question, there are a few options I guess: 1. Increase modularisation of the codebase to reduce command line sizes. This would be a labour-intensive solution which would probably only delay the problem, rather than eliminating it. 2. Use an alternative command-line, maybe the Bash version included with MSYS would allow Scons to run with larger command-lines? 3. Abandon the MinGW/Scons build system on Windows and go with MSVC++ only (but I think you said there were still outstanding problems with using MSVC++ with DarkRadiant, unless they have been fixed).

As a player, I find the idea of random loot of limited usefulness. As sparhawk has said, lack of repeatability can cause problems and frustration. Examples include: ghosting, where one player may find success and another not, for mechanical reasons only, not skill; obtaining advice from other players; playing in a collaborative mode, where two or more people are comparing notes; speed runs, where you need to develop an optimum route. I also agree that mission design is what causes good replayability. That said, I agree that a random number generator, rand(), is a good thing to have. But I would make it something that has to be implemented in a script rather than having "random loot" a standard feature of the tools. I would not make it so easy. Designers should know that if they use this feature certain game play elements as described above will be destroyed. This thread has gotten way off topic. The original post, about graded awareness and alert status, was very good. I'd definitely like to see some adoption of that.

From our multipage discussion in January: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3244&st=0 Virtually everyone thought the hieght difference between the thief and guards was too high. In fact the only people arguing the heights were ok were you and Oddity.

The typewriter one struck me as out of place as well, even though typeface would be fine in the setting. I don't know what it is exactly. I have no major problems with the other ones, though personally I care more about whether it's readable than whether it looks realistic. How many different handwriting fonts would that give us, and how many do we really need?

@AstralninjA: I finished the SVN commit article now, this should get you started once you intend to replace a normalmap in the repository. http://www.thirdfilms.com/darkwiki/index.p..._changes_to_SVN Generally spoken, please don't hesitate to ask for help in case you get stuck with SVN or anything else. It's of course good to work out things on one's own, but don't silently chew on problems for days.

Yeah, I got those both. But thanks anyway... I was actually referring to oDDity's post. It's always easy to "laugh" about stuff that doesn't touch you. I can deal with any other animal, no problems at all. And it's even just the spiders with the big bodies and thick legs. The ones with real thin legs are no problem for me either. I can even touch them...

Well, unless you changed something Spar, I don't think I can adjust the values without affecting the players eye height. Aside from that, you told me NOT to change the values, becuase you were going to find a way to 'scale' the light gem while the player crouches. The lightgem is tied to the player view height, and I already made the adjustments to put the tip of the gem in the players head months ago, but the problem happens when the player crouches. Upon crouching, the eye height drops to the player models chest. Here is where you discussed scaling the model. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=2890&hl=

I haven't noticed any glaring problems with existing fonts. (Well, except that the font used in the console is of an inappropriate style, but that's not an in-game font as such so I don't think it matters. The console font is clear and easy to read, and that's all it needs to be.) Any in particular you'd like to point out? @licence: Yeah, that looks like a pretty reasonable licence, I think we can use any fonts which are under that licence. Just chuck the licence text file into the same folder as the font. One catch to note: "Modified Version" includes any version of the font created "by changing formats", so the TDM version of such a font would be a "Modified Version". That means that the name of the converted font would have to be changed from the original name. Easy to do, just don't forget.

OK, I'll keep on looking but it's tough. I went through several hundred. Each one quick assessment, check the docs, 90% have copyright restrictions. Narrowed down to 20 odd. Some wouldn't convert. Most have kerning (x offset) problems. So we finish up with possibly two or three. I'm surprised medusa not popular. Did anybody notice that in Thief's Den? I mean when actually playing and you read two messages written in medusa, did anyone at that moment think, this is blurry or kerning is bad or whatever? We haven't got one perfect font yet - and just over 50 weeks to go. We may have to compromise a little. So in particular I'm looking out for... Gothic/Italic/Medieval to see if any better. Rough old typeset such as used for billboard or old newspaper Child's scrawl. I do hope we are going to have some children in TDM else it just won't be as rich a world. But if a message from a child is needed, even if no child appears in-game, then there is no substitute. General handwriting - some rough, some neat. We need to keep in mind two criteria: The core resource at launch - and fonts that real mappers will use in real mappers in the oncoming years. So a child's scrawl might not make it into the core resource but it would be nice to have a substantial collection of less general fonts for future use and let the mappers choose. My own views on the above fonts: Child architect : I'd have no problem if I came across that in a T2 mission. Gothics : both no use - only included in case someone said 'I can fix that!' Heidleberg : I like it but shame about the f offset. Maybe I'll try converting again. Mac Humaine : Ditto - f offset the other way. Maybe I can breed it with Heidleberg Medusa : fine Lipstick : fine - also as chalk is a great idea. Playdough : fine - rare use though so probably not for core resource. Rapscallion : fine I came across some wonderful fonts in the search but it breaks your heart when you see the copyright restrictions! I have a folder full of ones in zips with NO docs at all. I have others that state 'free for anyone to use so long as you distribute in this zip unaltered'