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True. Regarding this dynamic design, it could be argued that we should ignore the Acquired field (Inventory Pickup Message), since messages there are shown rarely, and not at all if the user turns it off. Instead, place the low subtitle slot just above the breath bar. Then all the subtitles slots would be lower. However, this would increase overlap with the corners, unless some mitigation was done. That could be done engine-side, if the slot-fill priority was changed to, e.g., middle-slot first, low-slot last. So the conflict-prone low-slot becomes rarely used. Other mitigating ideas - - move the Acquired field to the top, right under the Objectives Message field - do away with the Acquired field, and instead deliver its message using the subtitle mechanism (possibly with color markup or a different font than regular subtitles). This would require an engine enhancement, to generate a subtitle given a runtime-assembled string, without any sound file.

The attribution ("BY") part of the CC-licenses requires: 1) You must give appropriate credit, 2) provide a link to the license, 3) and indicate if changes were made. The TDM license provides a link to the CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 license, so part (2) could be said to be fulfilled. For (1) I would expect that each asset author is somehow credited by name and a link if the asset was found online, and for (3) I would expect a comment saying something if a change was made to the asset before it was added to TDM. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there are currently no core assets licensed as anything else than CC-BY-NC-SA. If there are, please tell me how to find them and how I can read their respective licenses. I don't think there is a way to track licenses on a per-asset-basis. I raised that question in this topic. Given the thousands of hours of work put into this game, I wouldn't want to leave it to chance... This licensing stuff may not be the hottest topic, but it may be worth talking about to prevent unpleasant surprises. Agree. And that a mapper working in Dark Radiant can see the license for each asset when they choose which asset to use, as suggested in the "tracking licenses"-thread I mentioned above. Yes, a mapper who wants to create a libre mission will have restrictions on which assets to use. If they don't require their mission to be libre, it will work as usual. If there is a way to add libre assets to the core assets, then it will get easier with time. Under current circumstances, a libre mission will not be nearly as good as any of the few missions I have played so far, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it pointless. I think it would be good enough to qualify the mission+engine as a game and get it into e.g. both the Debian repository and the LibreGameWiki. It's a starting point and hopefully it can attract the attention of more people wanting to work on the game. "def files" are CC-BY-NC-SA according to the TDM license. Does anyone know which license the core scripts are?

@Geep Regarding 0.24 vs 0.25 font scale. I think there was purpose, though I can't say now which exactly. Maybe it was to ensure that all the text fits, maybe it was to make vertical padding symmetric. Anyway, why do you think 0.24 and 0.25 differ? I did not look in the code yet, but I think what engine does is 1) choose most suitable image, 2) render quad texture with it. Indeed, we can avoid some blurring if the pixel size of the quad exactly matches the image size. But I guess the engine counts font size in 640x480 virtual resolution. So even if the font size would be "12", it would later be stretched over whatever width you really have (if your aspect ratio is 16:9 then height would be stretched equally, but otherwise it would be stretched with different factor).

Yeah it would be cool to see some more detailed statistics and it’s a shame they aren’t really captured. Since we are talking about fan mission platforms, where players also make the content for the game, I feel like the best thing we’ve got is you can look at the number of content releases for the games. Keep in mind the graph counts campaigns as single missions - so for example NHAT and TBP both count as 1 mission. A good year for TDM has has approaching maybe 50% - mostly we’re 25-30%. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152494 You could also look at the number of ratings thief missions get on https://www.thiefguild.com/ vs TDM ones, but that is pretty iffy in that you could chalk that up to more awareness of the site in the thief community than TDM Out of curiosity is there a reason a thief player can’t be a new player? I kind of think a player is a player and new players would be ones who are playing the dark mod who weren't? Is there disagreement the base of players most likely to pick up the game are fans of the thief games? They are certainly the most fruitful place to find feedback on the game beyond the sphere of this forum that I have seen. When we were trying to finish up SLL there was a lot of discussion on the forums about how long it had been since there was a release for the game. I am thankful that the stats show at least some stability over the years in terms of releases for TDM, but the trend for all of the games is decline. Not doing anything is a valid response if that’s what the devs want to do - it is not possible to provide evidence that any effort will slow that inertia. As a player and content maker I would just prefer trying to find feedback where it is offered from players who were willing to try the game but ultimately could not engage with it and see if there is anything that can be done within reason to ease them into the game. The game has a lot to offer imo. All those players are potential contributors - contributions in turn attract players - it’d be nice to see the cycle go on as long as it can.

In the first post of the other topic Geep proposed: Then Stgatilov's answer: But I think applying subtitles in different languages shouldn't be too hard I would think, but I don't know how the current translation system works. The engine should apply the correct subtitles based on the applied language setting, this doesn't need a whole new language system I think. Not sure who's going to write those subtitles though. I can only do Dutch and English and nobody needs Dutch I think. I suggest further discussion of this to take place in topic https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21741-subtitles-possibilities-beyond-211/

@stgatilov, thanks for sharing your thoughts about the original ideas behind the 3 levels, which I had not previously seen put so well. I was surprised that you considered that some of an individual AI's barks might go under "effects" instead of "speech". @snatcher likewise thought that, in effect, an AI's barks should be divided, though draws the dividing line elsewhere. I agree with you about the primary existing TDM audience for subtitles: those players appreciating help with spoken English, specially in dialects. I think partially-impaired-hearing individuals will also benefit. But, given subtitles in TDM and our newly prototyped method of indicating speaker sound source, I think we have an opportunity to enlarge the potential TDM community to include deaf players, or those who like to play games with sound off. This does involve sound categorization and visual cues, beyond just toggling story/speech/effects. Such cues could be universal (seen the same by everyone), or controlled by new options, to accommodate personal interest (or lack thereof). Let me be more specific. Consider the 2-level visual cues that snatcher preferred (while leaving open where to draw the line between the 2, or whether 2 is really too few). Examples of universal+fixed, which for barks could be done by me in the .subs file, are: bracketed vs unbracketed white vs yellow font, done by string markup. (This has significant drawback and limitations). Alternatively, there is categorization performed engine-side and passed to the GUI as one or more variables. The results could be universal, or the passed value(s) could be affected by additional optional settings. Displayed results could be, for instance: white vs yellow font, done by text font color choice Stone vs Carleton font wide vs narrow font wide vs narrow background field two different background tints or opacities colored border around backgrounds, with two different colors (Also, without involving new GUI variables, the engine could add brackets to selected strings) Turning to what additional optional settings might look like, at the basic level, you could just have an option that turns visual cues on or off. So, for example, if the visual cue was font choice, turning the visual cue option to off would cause all subtitles to use the same default font. More specificity is, of course, possible. (Maybe too, stgatilov, you could sneak in a related option to suppress "Just you wait!" audio and only play story clips!) If the barks were to be subdivided by the engine into (in this discussion) 2 categories, it could be done by a new per-line option in the .subs file, e.g, -cue 1. Or the categorization could be done entirely automatically on-the-fly by the engine, at the moment it's looking at the AI's current state & most recent state transition, in order to select a sound shader to play. It would probably use the standardized state-transition names as found in the AI .def files, e.g. "snd_foundDeadMale" rather than AI-specific sound shader names. So there would be a list of "snd_..." to determine when g_cue=1 instead of the default g_cue=0.

I think the writing is on the wall. Advanced upscaling will be adopted as widely as possible as the free performance band-aid for the gaming industry. The majority of players will probably run it automatically without even noticing. Recently we've seen rumors of Microsoft working on a Windows upscaler (which may be similar to AMD's RSR in that the game developers don't need to touch it) and Sony may include an NPU in a PlayStation 5 Pro for their own bespoke console-level upscaling solution (not an FSR 3/4, although those can be supported). The irony would be if Nvidia ended up killing the demand for gaming GPUs faster by marketing DLSS so hard, that there's less "need" for new and top-end GPUs. But they won't care because they prefer to chase more lucrative markets like AI, datacenter, automotive. I say "faster" because there is some point in the future when additional hardware can't push the boundaries of graphics, or faster hardware can't be created. We'll see an evolution of Unreal Engine 5's photorealism approach, adoption of 8K resolution, possibly 16K for VR, and a push to the 240-1000 FPS range. Generated frames could be used for a free doubling if not quadrupling of FPS to hit those high numbers, and upscaling tends to work better when your input/target resolution are already very high. For VR specifically, foveated rendering can slash hardware requirements, possibly by 80% or more if the implementation is good enough. On the hardware side, there's still free lunch to be had with a few additional node shrinks. Stacked L2/L3 cache could be extremely beneficial, think the 3D V-Cache version of Infinity Cache (Nvidia has gone with big L2 with Lovelace). We don't see adoption of High Bandwidth Memory in consumer GPUs because it is in such high demand for AI/enterprise products, but there's no technical reason it can't be used. We will see the blossoming of mega APUs this decade.

There's the inner box to constrain the text, and trigger word wrap, and the outer box to show the backing field. These are identical in size and location except the latter is a bit wider, by 20 px. A comment in the .gui code says: // #5914: engine allows overflowing textbox size by one character // maximum character width is 17 at textscale 0.25, so leave horizontal padding 20 on the right So the motivation is to keep the text from never visually exceeding the backing field. However, that extra padding can not be considered when the engine decides the point about which to center text in the inner box Probably a padding of 20 is excessive, even more so now that a width-compressed font is used. That said, there may be something else dominating the anomaly. And the sound location widget is also off-center.

Hello! Tracking down information on software and plug-ins that work with D3 / TDM can be a tough. So I have created a thread here where people can post what software/ plug-ins/ tutorials or other references they've had success or failure with in TDM. 3DS MAX 2013 64bit .ase - Default .ASE model exporter works. However you have to open the .ase file in text edit and manual change the *BITMAP line on each material to read something like: "//base/textures/common/collision" which allows the engine to read the correct material path. md5.mesh / animation - Beserker's md5 exporter/importers for 3dsmax. http://www.katsbits.com/tools, Importing and exporting works. The model must be textured, UV'd, with a skin modifier attached to the bones to export. PM me (Kingsal) for help with this. Imported models using the script will not be weighted appropriately, so this is not recommended if you are simply trying to edit existing tdm content. (Use blender instead) MAYA 2011 32bit md5.mesh - So far I've not had any luck with Maya 2011. I am using Greebo's MayaImportx86 for Maya 2011. I've got the importer working however I get a "Unexpected Internal Failure(kFailure)" and the import fails. This could be due to something finicky in Maya that I am not doing correctly. Will keep trying.. Blender 2.7 about - Blender is commonly used and pretty well supported on the forums/ wiki. Various versions may work as well - https://www.blender.org/download/ md5.mesh / animation Blender MD5 importer/exporter (io_scene_md5.zip): https://sourceforge.net/projects/blenderbitsbobs/files/ Sotha's guide Blender Male/ Female rigs by Arcturus - Here Edit by Dragofer: more links found in this post.

New script for mappers: my flavour of a fog density fading script. To add this to your FM, add the line "thread FogIntensityLoop();" to your map's void main() function (see the example in fogfade.script) and set "fog_fade" "1" on each foglight to enable script control of it. Set "fog_intensity_multiplier" on each info_location entity to change how thick the fog is in that location (practically speaking it's a multiplier for visibility distance). Lastly, "fog_fade_speed" on each foglight determines how quickly it will change its density. The speed scales with the current value of shaderParm3, using shaderParm3 = 1000 as a baseline. So i.e. if shaderParm is currently at 1/10th of 1000, then fade speed will be 1/10th as fast. Differences to Obsttorte's script: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/14394-apples-and-peaches-obsttortes-mapping-and-scripting-thread/&do=findComment&comment=310436 my script uses fog lights you created, rather than creating one for you. Obsttorte's script will delete the foglight if entering a fogfree zone and recreate it later more than one fog light can be controlled (however, no per-fog-light level of control) adding this to the map requires adding a line to your void main() script, rather than adding an info_locations_settings entity with a custom scriptobject spawnarg in my script, mappers set a multiplier of fog visibility distance (shaderParm3), while in Obsttorte's script a "fog_density" spawnarg is used as an alternative to shaderParm3 smaller and less compactly written script fogfade.scriptfogfade.map

Ah yes all of that makes sense, I just forgot that BFG didn't came with dmap and people add to transfer the original tools to the new engine.

Btw. Justin Marshall (aka icecoldduke), ex-id engine programmer, started a wiki for OG idtech4/5 engines, and he included a style guide there. Not sure whether this was used at id, but it might be useful. http://doomarchives.com/home/doom3/styleguide

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. There were definitely a lot of effects in that mission that worked better in my head than I was able to achieve in the engine. But every mission I make is more technically accomplished than the previous, so yay for progress.

Yeah, there's nothing in the syntax that tells you if the gui parameter is set in a gui script or the engine. Sometimes there's a comment in the script that helps out by saying, for instance, "// set by SDK". If you really need to know - say, you're writing a wiki article - then typically you'd do a full-text search for the parameter name within and across files. Namely, the search scope may include: FM-specific .gui files Core .gui (and sometimes .guicode) files Engine .cpp (and sometimes .h) files, of the source code retrieved from, for instance, github I use TextPad to do this. In the case of (2), I have a local copy of the latest official TDM distribution (currently 2.11), where I have replaced every .pk4 with its unzipped equivalent. Because TextPad can't look inside .pk4 files. In the case of "ModNotesText", method (2) found nothing except the line you indicated. Method (3) found this line in a version of the source code: \darkmod_src-trunk\darkmod_src-trunk\game\ModMenu.cpp(81): gui->SetStateString("ModNotesText", info != NULL ? info->GetModNotes() : ""); So, yes, it's set by the engine.

First I need to say sorry for keeping this of topic subject going, I promise this is the last comment from me on this. Now I also got surprised but Frictional Games still does, at lest in HPL1 and HPL2 engines they do, I assume they still do it on their latest engine as well, only them know why.

IMO it's one of these cases again, where you try to solve asset-level problem by making changes on the engine level. What I'm interested the most though: let's say I have custom candle assets / entities in my WIP that work like in Thief 3 (first frob extinguishes candles, second one picks them up). Will these changes break it?

Now that I've finished The Black Parade, I'm definitely open to checking out more NewDark era missions. I want to see what other ideas are possible now that the Dark Engine has been unchained.

The devs didn't title this thread, and @datiswous said they're attempting to mislead people by using Russell's name and a retro style to make it resemble Thief, which is cynical. I grew up on forums like I'm sure anyone who likes a game from '98 did. I actually left the Discord immediately after joining it because it was more off-topic doom-posting than anything relevant to the mod. I thought the forums might be better, but it's mostly just grown men yelling at clouds and telling strangers how mature they are, and a few brave souls actually developing anything. Depressing place, I'll just stick to enjoying new missions every 6 months without an account.

True, but, 1. this thread is called "Western stealth FPS with Stephen Russell", and, 2. nothing you said changes anything for me. The gameplay still doesn't look like something I'd enjoy. And, if you really think this forum is cynical, then you don't visit forums much. Actually, the majority of the users are are pretty mature, unlike in other forums.

Orbweaver said all what I thought, I also hardly always follow programing "rules", mostly because "basic naming conventions in programming" change with times and as the languages evolve and change. So imo no one should get to much hung up on those, specially when some rules aren't even evidence based but some famous coder thought it made the code "cleaner" and people just followed. For example Hungarian notation, so many coders use it but to me it can crash and burn. I played around with Penumbra HPL engine for a time and it is riddled with such notation and not once, I felt it helped me understand better the code, for the contrary.

We didn't make the holidays (such a busy time of year) so here's a New Year's gift, an unusual little mission. Window of Opportunity Recover an item for a regretful trader out in a wilderness setting, and discover more! Available within the in-game mission downloader or: Download: http://www.thedarkmo...ndetails/?id=79 Alternative: https://drive.google...WTMzQXZtMVFBSG8 Some unorthodox gameplay on regular/ghost difficulties. (Arachnophobes might prefer short mode...) Please expect to need your lantern in regular and ghost modes! Short ("easy") mode is a smaller map, so if you are looking for areas others reference below, or 100% of the loot, you'll need to play on another mode. I wanted to create my first mission before I became influenced by too many others' ideas, and limited myself to what has been done before. As such, this mission is not set in a city/town, and has some features that are likely to be provocative. There's a section some really like, which others don't, either way I kept it short to not last too long. That being said, I hope you do find it fun! :-) Special thanks to those who provided valuable testing and feedback: Goldwell, Kyyrma, plotzzz, 161803398874989, PPoe & Bikerdude (who also contributed a sound). (Please remember spoiler tags to not expose things meant to be discovered by playing.) Like so: [spoiler]secrets[/spoiler] If you are having trouble finding the main objective, here's what to pay attention to in the mission for hints: There is a spot it's possible to get stuck on the ground in the corner by the cliff/rockfall where there's a rope laying on the ground, please take care if you poke around there!

There was an idea to add two features to GUI scripts (6164). The first one is runScript command, which allows GUI script to call a function from game script. Interestingly, this feature is already supported in the GUI engine, but the game code only processes this command when the player clicks left mouse button on the GUI (i.e. usually it works in onAction handler, but not in namedEvent or onTime handlers). Obviously, ID initially did not envision runScript as a global feature which works the same way everywhere, their idea was that it is context-sensitive, and whoever calls the GUI code can then pull the commands generated by the call and do whatever he wants with them. I'm not sure I really want to change this architecture... Anyway: what are the possible use cases for runScript command? The second feature is namedEvent command, which simply generates/calls a named event with specified name on the whole UI, which can be then handled by matching onNamedEvent handlers. However, this command can be implemented in several ways: Whenever namedEvent command is executed, the named event is processed immediately. The rest of the script (after namedEvent command) is continued only after generated named event is fully processed. Whenever namedEvent command is executed, named event is put into some kind of queue, then the current script continues to execute. The generated named event is executed at some moment later, but surely on the current frame. The point 2 can be further differentiated on the exact order when generated named events are processed. So the first approach is how functions normally behave in normal imperative languages, with a real call stack. The second approach is delayed execution, like what we currently do with "resetTime X; -> X::onTime 0 {...}" combo (at least everywhere in the main menu GUI). My worry with the first approach is that it is an major change for GUI engine with no past experience, and it will probably not match well with the long-established GUI wierdness (I mean e.g. the wierdness that all expressions in GUI script are executed before the script commands start executing). And it would work different both from the "resetTime + onTime 0" combo. On the other hand, the callGui in game scripts do execute named event immediately. And I must admit nested GUI calls could be used to reduce the issues from the GUI weirdness mentioned above. Also, this command exists in Quake 4, but I'm not sure how exactly it works. And it's probably good idea to make TDM work the same way.

With TDM 2.12, after the credits finished, the "Mission Complete" screen did not display. I found that the screen was black and I could hear my footsteps when I tried to move around. I think the reason for the mission not completing successfully was that the "Do not kill or harm allies" objective was never marked as "1 = STATE_COMPLETE" instead it was left as "0 = STATE_INCOMPLETE". Note, I didn't use noclip throughout the mission. Same as: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/18054-fan-mission-the-accountant-2-new-in-town-by-goldwell-20160509/&do=findComment&comment=458491