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@Dragofer, I'm wondering what template tags to give to this page, besides the usual "Editing". I'm tempted to add "Physics", but are force fields really considered part of the physics engine?

Probably the .script file that's needed, but unfortunately can't be included with a prefab. Maybe there's a comment somewhere in the prefab (or in the wiki or forums) that says what script it needs and where to find it. (The similar combination setup I used earlier doesn't involve "slot", so clearly uses a different script that I what I have.)

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!

I'm trying to fix the warnings on my end, but remodelling the models is out of my league, so you're going to have to fix the stairs model on your end: "WARNING:ConvertLWOToModelSurfaces: model 'models/darkmod/architecture/stairs/set01_stairs.lwo' has 17/8108 nontriangular polygons. Make sure you triplet it down" Edit Also there's this model, which is probably a modelling issue as well: "WARNING:ConvertLWOToModelSurfaces: model 'models/darkmod/misc/clipmodels/pickaxe_cm.lwo' has bad or missing uv data" I still have hopes for script-hotfixing the following warnings: "WARNING:Couldn't load image: tdm_tongue [map entity: atdm_ai_townsfolk_female_1] [decl: atdm:ai_head_female02_base_brunette in def/tdm_ai_heads_springheel.def] [decl: female_head02 in def/tdm_ai_heads_springheel.def] [model: models/md5/chars/heads/npcs/female_head02.md5mesh] [decl: tdm_tongue in <implicit file>] [image: tdm_tongue]” (Edit: I hotfixed this issue and attached the hotfix in the tech support forums. The "tdm_tongue" shader should simply be renamed to "tdm_character_tongue".) “WARNING:Couldn't load image: models/darkmod/wood/boards/wood_brown_dull01 [map entity: func_static_53] [decl: old_plaster in skins/tdm_models_architecture_modules.skin] [decl: models/darkmod/wood/boards/wood_brown_dull01 in <implicit file>] [image: models/darkmod/wood/boards/wood_brown_dull01]" (Edit: I hotfixed this issue as well - see the tech support forums - but I think you should still go over this file, because there are a lot of other suspect textures in there as well.)

I agree. I'm copying this idea over to the https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21741-subtitles-possibilities-beyond-211/ thread. Related: I'll probably do some more experiments with the current TDM font & size, to understand max char count versus field width.

First FreeTube is a known OpenSource desktop client for YouTube, there isn't a security risk (false positive from your AV). Maybe this and also cloudtube and other like yewtube are also OpenSource and forks from Invidious give alerts from certain companies, because permits to download YT vids. In Piped there isn't such option, it use it's own engine to stream YT vids, without using the googlevideoAPI, like the others, this permits it to control better the content and block ads and trackers from Google, also jump the invideo sponsor blocks and intros. It has a very impresive settings page in this sense. You can create an account (nick, mail) which permits to subscribe your prefered channels and shows new videos of these (Feed). Well, certainly there are a lot of more search engines as only Google, Bing, and Yahoo out there. The AI search engine you mencioned is Andi, privacy oriented and don't show a lot of results, it is different, Andi is an AI who understand the concept of your search and shows the most relevant results respect of your search, you can really chat with it. Something like Alexa, but without trackers, loggings and ads, 100% private. I use Andi for my first searches, before I use the others I use. To add Andi to your search engines in your browser to permit to search with your search or adress bar, use this code to put it as search engine in the list of your browser https://andisearch.com/?query=%s You'll find a very complete list of search engines in a post from oen of the user in the Vivaldi Forum, including the codes to use them in the browser from the adress or search bar https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/46609/guide-vivaldi-search-engines-collection

They used to do this in the past. Look at System Shock 1 tooltips for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LDiTZ89j-Q&t=33m23s ("Doubleclick to open door") Anyway, my points: Use inv. item should not be in that category and not named that way, it is used in other ways as well. It's also called the USE key everywhere else. The gameplay guide could be added to the menu, but maybe with (more) pictures or even gif animations (don't know if that works) added as examples. The gameplay guide could be added as a permanent book in your inventory for all missions. The tutorial mission is nice, but not something you would revert to inside a mission, because then you have to first quit the mission, load the tutorial mission, look for the thing you forgot, quit the training mission and then load the mission you were playing again. You can also look for info in the wiki, but then you also have to quit the game first. So it should be something in-game. I was also thinking that it would maybe make more sense if the USE and FROB keys do separative things and sometimes only activate when you point at it. What I actually mean is that if you point at a candle and pressing the USE key you should logically put it out, instead of first having to pick it up. If you would not point at the candle the USE key would activate the selected inventory item. The same for bodies. Picking up is then still done with the FROB key. Or the other way around. What is also a bit illogical I think is that you can take out oil-lamps with the FROB key, but candles you do that with the USE key. I can totally see there is a technological reason for this and is difficult to change.

Some years ago i succesfully downloaded the wiki with wget, for TDM dvd. I dont know if this method wikl work now. https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19998-tdm-collection-dvd/#comment-437887

My first map (way back as a wad file for original Doom 3) was of my basement. I had a demon popping out of my refrig. So yeah, there's a tradition to map what's close at hand. Vids are great, but it's hard to use them as a reference, to try to remember where you saw a particular problem solved. A general Google vid search (relying on YouTube's automatic speech to text transcripts) I don't find too effective. For written content about DR mapping, some reasonable starting points are the Dark Radiant user manual and Fidcal's A to Z Beginners Guide, https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_-_Z_Beginner_Full_Guide_Start_Here!. I'm doing my 2-cents here and there on the wiki too. The writing continues!

I guess the best image-to-normal conversions I've seen here in the forums are via njob. I am curious about this AI thing though: https://github.com/HugoTini/DeepBump has to be installed into Blender as a plugin?

The build succeeds now with the latest. Yea! However, evidently the directory structure is not quite right for debug to work. I followed what the compile guide said (I think), with these 2 directories: ...Games/tdm11dev/darkmod_src/trunk/TheDarkMod.sln (etc.) [using TortoiseSVN] ...Games/tdm11dev/darkmod/TheDarkModx64.exe (& all the .pk4s, etc) [using tdm_installer] It appears that the build process puts the results in ...Games/tdm11dev/darkmod_src/darkmod/ I tried changing adding a "." to the project output location to move the directory up one, i.e., DarkModTools property sheet, for the debug x64 configuration: Configuration Properties; General; Output Directory [changed from] $(SolutionDir)..\darkmod\ [to] $(SolutionDir)...\darkmod\ But that seemed to generate build errors subsequently, so reverted. I can probably munge this up so it works, but thought I'd ask your suggestions first.

No, not really, have only seen him on the forums many years ago. He deserves a lot of credit for providing the SVN infrastructure in the beginnings of the project, it's been only later when we transferred this to a hosted server. Memory is blurry, but I think my time working on TDM and his don't overlap that much - I had been getting more active, and he pulled back a bit. He bootstrapped quite a few important systems, IIRC he's been working on light gem and the first Stim/Response and Inventory implementations. From what I recall, he gave the project an organisational backbone in the technical department which is crucial to keep things together. Folks like Spring and NH who have joined long before me could give more insights, I guess. (Looking at my join date makes me feel old either way. From TDM's current view point, the year 2006 seems like right at the beginning, but actually the mod had already been existing for two years by that time I joined. With the first release in 2009, 2006 is rather in the middle. Heck, I haven't touched the mod code for at least 10 years - and I can still remember a few things, which is a testament of how much it occupied my thoughts back then).

There are other complications though. How much fall damage should player take, if they decide to jump off a rope with the body? Should the player let go of the body or not? Also, right now it's much harder to jump off the rope with the body than without it. Why? And last but not least, how would you teach players these things, possibly without much hand-holding and text prompts explaining the rules? I guess I'm with @STiFUon this one, if you restrict dropping the body, you'll save yourself (and mappers) a lot of headaches. But even that doesn't solve all the problems, I know I'm in the minority in these forums, but as a player, I really appreciate the beauty and efficiency in simplicity of the design. Not overthinking everything and adding more and more rules for the sake of realism (or anything else).

Your post helped me understand the darkmod/maps use case (evidently called the "non-project" method), which my tiny, tidy brain [] couldn't quite grasp before. That will help inform my rewrite of the beginning part of A to Z Beginners Guide Page 1 that probably led you astray. Given the confusing shortcomings of non-project for non-trivial FMs, I'm going to steer the reader towards the "project" method (i.e., darkmod/fms/<FM>/maps) instead... what Destined may have intended with his "File Structure" section.

It's hard to imagine a more newb question than this, but I don't believe I can't make any progress mapping anything beyond a few rooms if I don't understand this (and reading the wiki doesn't make it clear to me): what's the correct folder structure for a darkmod mission I'm making, and for possible custom assets? I mean, looking at Youtube tutorials, I see almost everyone has the .map inside the main darkmod/maps/whatever.map, and that's what I use, because it works when dmapping, although I think NeonsStyle has the one he shows in his tutorial inside the fms folder, eg.: darkmod/fms/mymission/mymap.map. But if I do that, I can't even dmap. Now, reading the A-Z guide, if I understand it correctly, you use the fms folder to store your custom assets not present in the main darkmod root folder? Is that what the Game/Project Setup is for? That doesn't seem to work for me, though (see below.) In practice, I don't care much about that because I can test the mission just fine and I'm probably going to use default assets anyway, but I model from time to time so I tried using custom models (just a simple cube with a custom texture as a test) and I can't make it work. The cube appears in DR, even in the same scale and dimensions (which susprised me), but it's just nodraw (not "black" as I read in some tutorials.) This is what I did: I found a Blender plug-in to convert models into .ase and I can get that to work, but then the cube shows with no material or texture (inside the game, it simply isn't rendered.) I know I need to change the bitmap line, but I have no idea what to write in there because, quite honestly, I don't understand the folder system or where I need to put things in the first place. I thought I could put my custom .ase file inside the fms/mymission/models folder but then the .ase doesn't load in the Models Viewer in the DR, so I had to save it, like my .map, inside the main TDM folder (e.g., darkmod/models/custom.ase). Then it does show but, well, no texture... (see attachment) By the way, that's in a new, clean TDM and DR install. So, where do I need to put the .dds, .tga, and .ase files then? And how should I change the *bitmap line? I have tried looking inside various pk4 files for TDM models and their .ase files but that didn't help much. (Being a custom model and material, I assume I would also need to write a .def for the cubes properties? But for now, I'd like to at least be able to see the textured cube in the editor.) Here's how the .ase bitmap part looks like when exported and stored inside darkmod/models: Obviously, that won't work at all (in fact, I don't know why that's so long or why it points to the Desktop, that's where I saved the .blend file, not the .dds.) But, anyway, what should I write in there? The tutorials in the wiki seem a bit old and makes references to D3 and a folder structure and textures from that game, so I'm confused. Thank you. I know there are many questions here, but I have read and watched almost every tutorial, and I still don't get it.

This is basically "do include my work ASAP because I worked so hard, or else *sulk*". This is similar case: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21679-beta-testing-211/page/10/#comment-482352 This is neither a commercial product, nor a phishing email. That sense of rush and pressure is artificial. These releases typically do take long, and even then, there are often many things broken by mistake or omission. Often there aren't enough people to test stuff, or they're not competent enough, etc, etc. There's little point in hurry.