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The noPortafog light doesn’t inherently force portals open. Instead is just disables the fog optimization which prematurely closes portals at the fog opaque radius. I suppose a more clever thing to do would be culling any non-lit and non-emissive objects past the fog radius but that’s a pretty tough thing to do especially since shadows can sometimes get made by offscreen objects (etc). Before something like that we would probably want something like Quake’s func_occluder as a generic line-of-sight culling feature.

While this must be the absolute laggiest and lowest FPS mission in the repo, it still plays well and is fun. My recommendation is to blackjack everyone and close all windows to at least get tolerable framerates indoors. The flicker of distant geometry over the fog sortof kills the outdoor athmosphere a bit but that might solve itself in future TDM versions.

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.

Right now, our fog uses light to define its area in the map, we also have "fog end" parameter (shaderparm3), so we can extend the fog range beyond the light area. This very useful, if yo want to use subtle fog to show depth in your map or simulate a little haze in the air, that is always present to some extent in the real world. There are a few problems here though. You need a gradient image to simulate fog, and by limits of 8 bits per channel in images, we can only have 256 steps in any gradient, which causes banding. To simulate haze, you need to use high values for shaderparm, and that increases banding even more. It's less obvious when you have many objects in your scene, but you can easily see this with caulk: My question is: can we have additional "fog start" parameter, so the fog would start further away from the player? Is it possible to decrease banding this way, by having shorter distance between fog start and fog end?

Is there a spawnarg or other simple way to have a fog light be turned off when the mission starts? I just want the fog to turn on when the player enters a particular area. I have a call_on_entry to trigger it, but it needs to be off to start with or I get the opposite result.

Looking at the code, the originals were "pm_mantle_pull 750" and "pm_mantle_pullFast 450". The new "pm_mantle_pull" value is "400". A "pm_mantle_pullFast" value of "450" would be slower than regular pull, not faster. With both being set to "400", they are at least similar. Other than that, it's subjective and the feedback from playtesters was positive. Also, referenced internally here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22256-movementcontrols-settings-in-main-menu/&do=findComment&comment=489158

That sort of tone doesn't fly in our forums.

There's a group of players who have meticulously tested and adjusted ghosting rules for The Dark Mod. Please see: Official Ghosting Rules: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148523 Ghost Rules Discussion: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487 Why alienate an established group of dedicated players?

I would use this massive list for any fan missions, it includes campaigns too: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148090 There are a lot of Fan Missions for the picking, I myself go for the lesser known ones and the short variety, because sometimes they hide a gem or two. Just like jaxa, I'm a bit outdated after the temporal retirement, but I do remember some amazing campaigns like "The Black Frog". If you intend to play The Black Frog, you should play the first two of the L'Arsene series missions, it's how I did it myself. Also, yes, L'Arsene are a fantastic series. The first mission of L'Arsene is a "rough draft", author was a bit new to Thief level making, but still great either way, after the 3rd you will see how his skill increased by a massive amount.

OK, not seeing too many opportunities to improve things yet. The mission is made of mostly model prefabs so there isn't really any excess triangulation due to brush carving. Most of the portals seem to be doing their job but since it's all model geometry all the open doors and windows pose a challenge to help much. Maybe forcing some func_portal closures at the fogged distance might improve things. Speaking of fog, I am seeing a lot of "double-fogged" surfaces. I believe this is happening due to duplicate geometry or transparent geometry. ( See the bright band in center of the screenshot ) : If you can isolate this extra geometry and make it into entities then you can set those entities with a "noFog" flag to prevent them from fogging. This presumes the geometry is transparent though.

Unfortunately, TDM forum deletes the separator between the numbers. So I have to guess where one number ends and the next starts Also, user can rename screenshot manually, or push it through something that would rename it automatically. Thenwe won't see coordinates on screenshot address on forums.

tdm_show_viewpos cvar and screenshot_viewpos command: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22310-212-viewpos-on-player-hud-and-screenshots/

Ambient atmospheres are in my opinion one of the best parts of the Dark Mod experience, not just for getting a mission to have the right feel but also for inspiration and to have them playing in the background when creating maps. The more the merrier, so here's a thread to collect all the links to ambient music and environmental sounds that could have a spot in TDM's setting. Ambients from the TDM forums Gast's Eerie Lullabies Magnanimous Merry's Miscellanea Orbweaver's Dark Ambients Spadey's Ambients Radioteque's Ambients Kyyrma's Composing Ambient Tracks for Dummies - Kyyrma shows how ambient soundtracks can be made from a set of sounds. Also contains some of his finished ambients. Request for more interior sounds - this thread is a very productive community session where members came up with a large and good selection of new ambients. Uncle Peti's Sound Den Dragofer's Ambients - post #6 in this thread SeriousToni's Ambients - posts #8, 12, 15 and 19 in this thread Ambients from the TTLG forums Custom resources list Gigagooga's Ambients 1 - possibly the largest pack of ambient musics and nature sounds, all of them high quality. Gigagooga's Ambients 2 - this pack puts more weight on shorter swells/hits/pads to be layered on top of a subtle ambient. Gigagooga's Ambients 3 Yandros' ambient loop Sephy's Ambients - a large collection of ambient pieces, including many shorter ones which will be valuable for anyone wanting to try a layered ambience approach like in the Thief OMs and Full Moon Fever. Internet databases www.freesound.org - some of the better composers in my opinion are ERH and BrandonNyte. www.purple-planet.com - a large selection of all kinds of ambient and musical soundtracks to be used freely. www.darkwinter.com - an internet label that publishes a lot of dark ambient music under a Creative Commons license. www.endlessascent.com - sister website of Darkwinter for non-dark ambients. Youtube Asatru Dark - also has very nice reference images for outdoor stone memorials, statue arrangements etc. #4 Void by Raffaele du Marteau & #6 Dreaming of Nowhere by Raffaele du Marteau - possibly the most forlorn pieces I've found on the internet. Alacazam - a prolific Creative Commons ambients composer . Cryo Chamber - for-profit label for dark ambient music with a large selection on offer. Going by their Youtube comments they're fine with people using their soundtracks for games etc., although you'd probably need to buy the soundtracks first. Dark Ambient Mixed Session - as much ambient as something to have in the background while mapping.

Relax @Näkki, it's great to hear you enjoyed the game. My personal expectations were just a bit different when I read the Steam page, although the various trailers should have been a warning that stealth maybe wasn't the biggest priority of the devs. From the Steam page: "Weird west legends meet eldritch horror in BLOOD WEST, an immersive stealth FPS." Also "Blood West is a stealth FPS inspired by the genre classics such as the Thief series (whose fans will be happy to hear the voice of Stephen Russell, the actor voicing the master-thief Garrett, returning here as the protagonist), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, or - from the contemporary catalog - Hunt: Showdown. The gameplay rewards the careful approach: scouting the area, stalking your enemies, and striking from the shadows. Can you figure out a way to clear a fort full of ghouls and monsters without raising an alarm?" From my personal experience I think the game is predominantly Hunt: Showdown, a bit of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and a very small portion Thief. Stealth is very unforgiving and makes it almost impossible early game when there are various enemies around, but hey maybe I just suck at it. I don't see Deus Ex in it, unless the skill leveling is the Deus Ex part for you and then I have to disagree with you, as that seems like the trait system in Hunt: Showdown. Edit: What I also understood from the Steam forums is that the original VA was dropped close before the release of the full version and replaced by Russell with no real explanation from the devs why this was done.

DarkRadiant 3.8.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Support new frob-related material keywords Improvement: Mission selection list in Game setup is not alphabetically sorted Improvement: Better distinction between inherited and regular spawnargs Improvement: Silence sound shader button Improvement: Add Reload Definitions button to Model Chooser Fixed: Model Selector widgets are cut off and flicker constantly on Linux Fixed: DarkRadiant will not start without Dark Mod plugins Fixed: GenericEntityNode not calculating the direction correctly with "editor_rotatable" Fixed: RenderableArrow not drawing the tip correctly for arbitrary rotations Fixed: Light Inspector crashes on Linux Fixed: Models glitch out when filtering then showing them Fixed: Skin Editor: models not centered well in preview Fixed: "Copy Resource Path" includes top level folders Fixed: Skin Editor: internal test skins are shown if Material Editor was open previously Fixed: Changing Game/Project doesn't update loaded assets correctly Fixed: Model Chooser: initially hidden materials aren't revealed when enabling them Fixed: Choosing AI entity class 'atdm:townsfolk_commoner_update' causes crash Fixed: Sporadic assertion failure on shutdown due to LocalBitmapArtProvider destruction Fixed: Prefab Selector spams infinite error dialogs on Linux Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.8.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep using DarkRadiant to create Fan Missions - they are the main reason for me to keep going. Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Keep on mapping!

Finally got around to playing this, and I'm happy to see new fan missions on the download list. Exploring the map was very enjoyable, and I liked the verticality... also the opportunity to "cheat" and get around with rope arrows made me glad I invested in them at mission start. The sense of scale in the map, particularly crawling around scaffolding under the bridge, was cool and I enjoyed the view of the city in the fog. That said, I mirror some of the comments here that even with a pretty beefy graphics card I had the whole game freeze for almost half a minute whenever I faced out into the skybox view while standing on top of the ground floor outhouse (just in front of the sitting guard outside, by the door). I never had any of the bridge problems others have reported, so I guess that might be a sporadic issue. At any rate, a fun map. Very enjoyable!

This is the first mission I've tried that really slams my i5-6600T potato system down to single digit FPS (720p), probably due to the fog or large outdoor areas at the beginning. I'll try it on my real computer later.

So, if I understand you, no Thief Gold FM does sound and text notifications of completed objectives? The missions in The Black Parade surely did. I'm completely confused now. I was sure that original Thief Gold had those objective complete notifications (at least the sound). Reading this thread suggests otherwise though: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132977

Doom 3's fog design is pretty strange. It re-uses the light architecture to define the volume but it treats the player as the "light_center". The projection image is then projected outward from the player's eyes. From that description ( via the GPL source ), one would expect the "lightFalloffImage" would have an effect on the outward density from the player? From old doom3world.org discussions I recall that it was claimed that the falloff image instead defines the vertical density of the fog in relation to the real light_center. Thus, one could potentially make the transitions smoother by making sure the falloff image was darker near the boundary areas via estimating the radius distance to the real light_center. Not very practical. Looking over the code, I do not even see where lightFalloffImage is handled by fog. It seems to only get the projection image and "fog enter image" that is auto-generated in image programs so I think lightFalloffImage is ignored by fog? https://github.com/TTimo/doom3.gpl/blob/aaa855815ab484d5bd095f347163194ac569abcc/neo/renderer/draw_common.cpp RB_FogPass // find the current color and density of the fog lightShader = backEnd.vLight->lightShader; regs = backEnd.vLight->shaderRegisters; // assume fog shaders have only a single stage stage = lightShader->GetStage(0); ( nbohr1more: doesn't the lightFalloffImage count as a stage? if so, what happens to materials which include it? ) // texture 0 is the falloff image GL_SelectTexture( 0 ); globalImages->fogImage->Bind(); ( nbohr1more: why are they calling a projection image a falloff image ? ) // texture 1 is the entering plane fade correction GL_SelectTexture( 1 ); globalImages->fogEnterImage->Bind(); ( nbohr1more: this image is auto generated, is it somehow altered by lightFalloffImage ? Not that I can tell ) qglDisableClientState( GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY ); qglEnable( GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S ); qglEnable( GL_TEXTURE_GEN_T ); // T will get a texgen for the fade plane, which is always the "top" plane on unrotated lights ( nbohr1more: this seems to track with the Doom3world description of "vertical density" but is it really controllable ? ) fogPlanes[2][0] = 0.001f * backEnd.vLight->fogPlane[0]; fogPlanes[2][1] = 0.001f * backEnd.vLight->fogPlane[1]; fogPlanes[2][2] = 0.001f * backEnd.vLight->fogPlane[2]; fogPlanes[2][3] = 0.001f * backEnd.vLight->fogPlane[3]; // S is based on the view origin float s = backEnd.viewDef->renderView.vieworg * fogPlanes[2].Normal() + fogPlanes[2][3]; fogPlanes[3][0] = 0; fogPlanes[3][1] = 0; fogPlanes[3][2] = 0; fogPlanes[3][3] = FOG_ENTER + s; qglTexCoord2f( FOG_ENTER + s, FOG_ENTER );

Greetings everyone! I recently got into TDM and am already having a lot of fun playing through and ghosting missions. However, coming from Thief, I am mostly relying on the rules and my experience with that game, while there are clearly differences in how TDM works. Right now, there is talk in the ghosting discussion thread on TTLG to amend the ruleset and include clarifications pertaining to TDM. So I wanted to drop by and ask: is there an active TDM ghosting community already and have any rules for this playstyle been developed? I would also like to ask someone to take a look at the draft of this addendum to see whether everything looks correct: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487&page=16&p=2473352&viewfull=1#post2473352 Thanks!

A Problem Arises I've paused subtitling of the Lady02 vocal set, because of a problem with the voice clips described here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21741-subtitles-possibilities-beyond-211/&do=findComment&comment=490151 While a way forward is being determined, I'll work on a different vocal set. Maybe manbeast, for which Kingsal just provided me the voice script.

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

Since it already has been mentioned in the forums, I'd like to announce a small project of mine. A few weeks ago I was playing Legend of Grimrock and it struck me that their level design is extremely simple and modular, and yet, the player can spend quite a lot of time in the game. And it looks pretty, too! So I wondered if it wouldn't be possible to create a modern "Dungeon Crawler" (solve puzzles, fight monsters, collect loot, progress your character, upgrade your equipment) type of game inside the TDM engine. The engine already supports a lot of things one needs for this, and the overal structure and assets work, too. And with prefabs, one might get the level layout done quickly. However, building a few test prefabs in DR is easy, but creating a full mission out of them is quite painful. Not only needs it a lot of planning, but you can also spend a lot of time "upgrading" things later on. For instance if you later want to add a grime decal to the walls, you have to revisit the entire map. Even worse is if you find out later that your block size must be bigger or smaller. So the idea was born to create a sort of framework that can assemble missions from prefabs. Preferable while getting the description of the mission from a text file. So far, this has been a lot easier than I thought. Here is what I got working so far: Overview: You can describe your mission in a (Unicode) text file. This contains overall options, different locations (each location can have its own ambient light, music,name, fog), and the connections between the locations. Each location can have multiple "floor levels", these are stacked on top of each other. The config file also specifies which symbol means "use this prefab". It is also possible to specify links (per location), which means you can say "this lever with the symbol A opens the door with the symbol D". The framework reads the prefabs, and then positiones them in the map. It also glues all the locations together, adds location_info entities, a player start, an exit, and an objective to reach the exit. The resulting map is then enhanced with script objects (all nec. assets are bundled together), and automatically dmapped via TDM. Everything then is packaged together into a working .PK4 file. My demo map takes about 20 seconds, where 15 are dmap. In addition to the "basic" stuff I also managed to get a few things working, like a pressure plate, portcullies, and also made some puzzles. Oh, and per location fog (fading from location to location). Different difficulty levels are also supported, one can specify "this prefab appears only on easy" etc. You can find more info and screenshots and demo here: http://bloodgate.com/swift/ There is also a developer diary where I will be posting interesting entries from time to time. Here is an DR shot of a sample level, consisting of small modular prefabs and one large (the large hall on the lower left): The next steps will be to add more randomness (either static at map generation, or at runtime, so the map is slightly different each time you replay it). Also, while it is already possible to "overlay" prefabs (e.g. "for this location, look first here before falling back to the default"), it is not yet possible to "reskin" prefabs. This would be something which is impossible in DR (you cannot really reskin worldspawn brushes, unless you live with the fact that it is all manual For now I'm quite excited!

Black Parade is released ! https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152429

Yes, you can use func_portals to control when to open/close portals through triggers/scripts, but this "fog occlusion" thing takes precedence over that, meaning that the portal shuts close as the fog gets to dense, ie you reach the number in the spawnarg shaderParm3 on the foglight.