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My own take on the beta process is that devs on one side commit to adding and improving features, but also to ensuring that the new releases are, as far as reasonably achievable, free of bugs and that the new features aren't broken on release. To balance that we have a general policy to freeze the code when the beta starts, where code changes should primarily be fixes to issues detected in the beta. Exceptions are made on a semi-regular basis for changes that go further if they can be justified. That's mainly the case when there's still enough time left in the beta to get the changes properly tested and reviewed, or the risk of breakage is low i.e. because you're adding, but not changing things. For example, I worked extensively on assets this release cycle and didn't manage to get all the work done before the beta, so I was still busy until about the middle of the beta phase. However, I prioritised my work so that asset changes were ready ahead of the beta, while asset additions (which won't break anything) were made during the beta. I also treaded particularly carefully when adding the new assets to compensate for their shorter beta testing time. I might not have been around as much lately, but I only heard of Daft Mugi's slew of patches when we were discussing whether the next beta build should be the release candidate, which gets released as-is if no significant issues are reported. At that point any changes will either prolong the beta testing phase, or carry the risk of not working as intended. The plan was to reach this point at the end of january (if this was not prominently communicated somewhere it was a mistake). Personally I definitely see the value in trying to accommodate as many of these changes as possible because they make TDM more attractive to Thief players, Daft Mugi is even standing ready to introduce them to the TTLG community, and it looks like they're fairly simple changes. However, prolonging the beta comes with its own drawbacks. One is that players and mappers are delayed in getting access to all the other new features. Another is that the beta phase is a relatively draining part of the release cycle for the devs because new projects are mostly on hold while the focus is on getting to a stable build. One of the ideas behind dev builds was to shorten the beta phase by spreading out the testing. Ultimately, we've designated Stgatilov as the project lead so it's his task to call the shots on how to balance these demands.

I guess I'll chime in here for clarity. When the TDM Dev Build thread is active: This is when big changes and contributions are supposed to be welcome. When we are in "Beta Testing" it is supposed to be a code freeze period where only regression fixes are applied. Sometimes a fix or improvement that shouldn't be in a beta phase gets added anyway if it is seen as exceptionally beneficial, but every time this is done it can potentially extend the beta testing for another 2 weeks or more and during that additional 2 weeks even more fixes and improvements are proposed by eager contributors which can potentially lead to a never ending beta. I am not particularly bothered by a long dev build phase, nor a long beta and am inclined to wait a long time until new official releases are available. Players, on the other hand, generally aren't keen on using Dev Builds so we need to stop at some point and christen something as official if only for the sake of getting more feedback in case regressions slipped through Dev or Beta testing. Let's be clear though, neither TDM 2.10 or 2.11b7 are "unplayable garbage". Enhancements are fantastic but if 2.11 doesn't include every improvement you can conjure it will still be better than 2.10 which is already an excellent TDM version. I am still in favor of most or all of your improvements making it into 2.11 but we have to follow the process and need to have agreement from the team about what happens next. If you disagree with the way that we rollout "dev > beta > release" cycles and want to offer your fixes before they go into TDM official release, I suggest you consider creating a fork project. You can call it "The Darker Mod" , "Better Dark Mod Enhanced", etc, any of the monikers you typically see on enhancement projects on Moddb. If your fork becomes popular then it may be the main one that players use sorta like how Debian Linux is the core project but most people use Ubuntu or Linux Mint. ( If you made such a fork, I would probably ask that you integrate my fresnel shader mod into it. )

Yes, sorry about that. We could be clearer with our communication in this regard. However, please understand, that it is really not that common for external contributors to be working so much on bug fixes and new features, so this is kind of new to us as well. And of course the team has to agree upon all contributions, regardless of external or internal origin. The beta was announced Dec, 2nd, and that was also the moment for 2.11 feature-freeze.

id Studio did a poor job in defining its categorization of variable nomenclature, so in subsequent documentation and discussions there are divergent views (or just slop). In my series, I had to choose something, and went with what I thought would be clearest for the GUI programmer: Properties, which are either Registers (like true variables) Non-registers (like tags) User Variables (also true variables) I see that your view is more along these lines (which perhaps reflects C++ internals?): Flags (like my non-registers) Properties, which are either Built-in (like my registers) Custom (like user Variables) Also, elsewhere, you refer to "registers" as temporaries. I am willing to consider that there could be temporary registers during expression evaluation, but by my interpretation those would be in addition to named property registers. I'm not sure where to go next with this particular aspect, but at least can state it.

Hey Guys, Big fan of TDM, been playing it for a while off and on over the last several years. Never had a technical issue I couldn't overcome until now. I recently rebuilt my rig, re-installed TDM, updated to 2.03, and now I can't load levels. I get through mission briefing/equipment purchase just fine, but as soon as I hit an actual load screen, the game locks up after loading about 1/5 of the bar (see attached images). This happens on every mission I've tried (including the included training mission). There's no error popup, and it doesn't crash, it just hangs forever. I've tried adjusting settings in the game itself (video quality, resolution, vsync, etc) to no avail. I'm stumped. Here's my system specs: - Windows 7 (64 bit) - Intel Core i7, 4.0GHz - 32 GB RAM - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 (updated to latest drivers) Any ideas or assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance guys!

https://youtu.be/fwJwNLRY4kg "I am not enjoying my journeys, its so cold at the moment I imagine the chill could freeze a candle flame into a fire-gem and ole scratch's tears solid to his stoney face. Suffice to say, I'll be happy to get out of these whipping winds. A friend has asked me to keep an eye on his place while he is out of town. That part of Bridgeport is quiet enough, but he has been having a few problems he would like sorted out. I will know more when I get there." Build Time: God knows, too many hours. Thanks:- - As always espect to the Dark Mod team and for all the hard work they put and continue to put into it. - Flanders for his excellent models and textures. - Special thanks to the people that answered my technical questions on the forum. - Beta testers: Oldjim, Lowenz, AluminumHaste, Greyman, nbhormore, McPhisto, Lost_soul, Pranqster and the original testers! Info: An update of the original Christmas Contest mission for TDM 1.08. List of updateds:

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

Thanks, I can also recommend gog galaxy. The idea of the custom tags is really nice, I'll have to try this out too!

YOU TAFFERS! Happy new year! Deadeye is a small/tiny assassination mission recommended for TDM newcomers and veterans alike. Briefing: Download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JWslTAC3Ai9kkl1VCvJb14ZlVxWMmkUj/view?usp=sharing Enjoy! EDIT: I promised to someone to write something about the design of the map. This is in spoiler tags below. Possibly useful to new mappers or players interested in developer commentary.

Keep in mind also that mission size, and complexity have increased dramatically since the beginning. For a lot of veteran mappers, it can take over a year to get a map made and released. The last dozen missions have for the most part been pretty massive, with new textures, sounds, scripts, models etc. We seem to be long past the point of people loading up the tools, and banging out a mission in a few weeks that's very barebones. We still do see some of those, but I noticed in the beta mapper forums and on Discord, that mappers seem to make these maps, but don't release them, and instead use the knowledge gained to make something even better. Could just be bias on my part scrolling through the forums and discord server though.

Things are getting better: the bats now only " freeze" when they hit "me", something you can also see in the latest video, but there they were freezing in other places also. if (owner->AI_MOVE_DONE) { // We've reached the destination, wait a bit switchToState(statePreMovingToNextSpot,owner); //This was: sswitchToState(stateWaiting, owner); gameLocal.Printf( "currently in state: MovingToNextSpot-REACHED\n" ); This way it affects the rats too but i'll try to figure out how to put it in the script where it only optionally affects animal patrol by a spawnarg. (animal_patrol_wait as a boolian probably, and get rid of your original animal_patrol_wait). The "states" where the bat is in most of the time is: // grayman #2356 - if you're far from the goal, run. This keeps rats from slow-hopping great distances. And: // Still moving, maybe turn a bit (These are part of the AnimalPatrolTask::movingToNextSpot) I also changed the code for the turning a bit, to have more turning vertically, and that seems to work for more vertical movement of the bat: // Still moving, maybe turn a bit owner->Event_SaveMove(); float xDelta = gameLocal.random.RandomFloat()*20 - 10; float yDelta = gameLocal.random.RandomFloat()*20 - 10; float zDelta = owner->spawnArgs.GetBool("animal_patrol_fly", "0") ? gameLocal.random.RandomFloat() * 40 - 20 : 1; //Was also 20 - 10 //EDITED gameLocal.Printf( "currently in state: MovingToNextSpot-still moving, maybe turn\n" ); Conclusion: Although getting rid of going to stateWaiting seems to be a little improvement, THAT was not the problem of the freezing: The other AI in the map; the rats, and I tested with some other AI, cause the freezing of the bats. Somehow the bats "freeze" when they hit an other AI, but not when they hit eachother ..

https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/tags <- directx 12 wrapper for dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/tags <- directx to vulkan wrappers D3D 9 to 11 eg. dxvk if you want to try it with horizon zero dawn you need to copy out dxcompiler.dll from Tools\ShaderCompiler\PC\1.0.2595\x64 and bink2w64.dll from Tools\bin and place them next to HorizonZeroDawn.exe. then copy over dxgi.dll from dxvk and d3d12.dll from vkd3d and place them next to it to. now fire up the game and let the shaders recompile -> profit.

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/

TTLG? That's Through the Looking Glass Forums. A looking glass fan community. Has been around for a long, long time. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/

I think the reason the dev forums exist is to provide a place where the implementation of features can be discussed without getting mixed up with other debates when someone believes what the devs are doing is wrong. We often post public discussion threads for features with subjective elements like the frob outline, because community feedback is very important. But there will always be vocal defenders with strong views for or against certain features, or how exactly it should be implemented in their opinion. At some point a decision has to be made and be carried through, which is what the dev forums are for. Almost all of the threads are very technical, basically explaining and discussing recent or potential code changes with other devs. Its hard to say. Its a hobby the devs do in their spare time, so people come and go when they're in the mood and when they have the time. The team page is mostly accurate except for some relatively newer additions like myself.

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.