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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.

There is no SS3, how can they do a remake? And thank god they got rid of unity, that engine is total trash garbage on anything over 60 fps. Just spend 5 minutes on steam forums for Unity project games, and there's just thousands of people complaining about poor performance, stuttering etc.

Another C++ program now functional, "soundDurationsCSV.exe", that fetches sound file names from a directory and gets their durations in seconds, to millisecond resolution. The result is output to a .csv file, for import into Excel. Durations will be used to calculate WPM and CPS reading rates for subtitles. Details: This Windows-specific console program relies on separately-installed ffprobe (bundled with ffmpeg) to get each duration. The program builds a batch file that calls ffprobe repeatedly, for each sound file. Then quietly executes the batch file, and finally reformats the results into a .csv The program needs further polishing, but good enough for the moment to start working on Lord subtitles next.

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.)

I just built a tiny command-line program, "buildSubtitleShaders.exe", to expedite creation of the specialized sound shaders needed by my testSubtitles.... You point the program at a directory of .oggs, and its spits out the completed .sndshd file. Basically, it does what datiswous (and similarly, me) did in Excel earlier, as shown above. I've used it to now generate The Lord sound shaders. Details - This was a rather trivial VS 2020/C++ 17 console program. The only minor complexity was in programmatically truncating the directory path down to what TDM wants, namely, a path starting with "sound/..." There's some sanity-checking to make sure the path provided (either implicitly or explicitly) is of TDM-compliant-form. This runs under Win11; because of file path issues, it might need to be tweaked to work right under Linux. To use with stock tdm-distributed sounds, you would point it at an unzipped .pk4 directory of interest, and generate the needed file. At run (i.e., testing) time, because of the truncated directory path, it works fine against the usual zipped .pk4, like every other sound shader. At some point I'll probably post source to github. Going on now to try to build a similar program to gather sound file durations, for import into Excel as a csv file. Will be trickier.

Thank you for a great puzzle fm! I'm having real trouble with the TDM v 2.10-64bit on Linux Mint 21.1 Link to the guide supplied by V-Man339 https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/15844-fan-mission-the-gatehouse-by-bikerdude-goldchocobo-updated-02112014/page/7/#comment-429405

Regarding Excel, I likewise used its integer incrementing feature. My spreadsheet was more complicated - ultimately multiple worksheets. That's because I was using it to include the draft subtitles, from which were auto-calculated character and word counts, as well as CPS and WPM, which were then color-coded against specific thresholds Those latter calculation required the sound file durations. I originally used Windows Powershell to gather those, but Windows only exposes duration to the nearest second, which proved inadequate. I then installed the Windows version of ffmpeg. That includes ffprobe, which reports duration in seconds to 2 digits after the decimal point. Regrettably, the output format from ffprobe is a problem, and Powershell was a big fight for several reasons (among them I'm a Powershell novice). The results were usable but barely. So I'm not going to write up my method as the hodge-podge it currently is. Maybe one or more specialized C++ or C# formatting programs would be the way to go next for me. Sadly, the extraction and import of first-draft subtitles from the existing wiki AI vocal scripts will probably continue to be a manual process. Because the .ogg file names have changed from when the old vocal scripts were written, so auto-matching can't easily be done. (This is a problem FM subtitle authors don't have.)

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.

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

@datiswous, made that correction fm_test.subs --> fm_conversations.subs @stgatilov, about srt naming and file location, would you be OK with the following edit? New/changed stuff in italics: srt command is followed by paths to a sound sample and its .srt file, typically with matching filenames. An .srt file is usually placed either with its sound file or in a "subtitles" folder. The .srt file format is described e.g. [1]. The file must be in engine-native encoding (internationalization is not supported yet anyway) and have no BOM mark. It contains a sequence of text messages to show during the sound sample, each with start and end timestamps within the sample's timeline. It is recommended to use common software to create .srt files for sound samples, instead of writing them manually. This way is more flexible but more complicated, and it is only necessary for long sounds, for instance sound sample of a briefing video. It's a simple enough standard that it can be shown as an short example, demonstrating that subtitle segments can have time gaps between them. And the example can show correct TDM usage, without requiring a trip off-site and picking through features that TDM doesn't support. Specifically, the example shows how to define two lines by direct entry, rather than using unsupported message location tags (X1, Y1, etc.). And skips other unavailable SRT font markups like italics, mentioned in the wikipedia description. The example would also show the TDM-specific path treatment. The example could be inserted before the sentence "It is recommended to use common software...."

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?

Btw, obj import is not possible yet? Because it is now supported by tdm. Edit: I think it's possible to add support.

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!

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/

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).

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.

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.

Looking at the source code and the core pk4 asset files, I don't see any changes that would make a difference. Does this happen with a single FM? Does the FM pk4 file include an "autoexec.cfg" file? From the source code, here's the load order of config files. exec default.cfg exec Darkmod.cfg exec DarkmodKeyboard.cfg exec DarkmodPadbinds.cfg ==> exec autoexec.cfg <load language> <exec command-line arguments> <init input> <init sound> <init OpenGL> <init ui> <load DLL> <init session> ==> exec autocommands.cfg Details about the addition of "autocommands.cfg" are at https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=3199 I thought "autocommands.cfg" was the right way to do it, because that is what I've read on the forums. It seems that "autocommands.cfg" was originally designed for one use case: running "dmap". However, maybe over time "autocommands.cfg" became the de facto config file for user commands and "autoexec.cfg" became the config file for FM authors to use. I don't know. Does anyone know for a fact whether or not this is the case?

Hey wow, this is so gnarly! I spent the last little chunk of my life learning a bunch of commandline stuff like awk, sed, grep and a lot of versions and other utilities, things like ImageMagick. I thought I was the only one actually taking that seriously for making utilities like this. The last year of my life has involved obsessively hoarding and learning all the CLI stuff I can find, to automate as much as possible, combined with a little Python for Blender and MAXscript for 3DS. I'm currently working on something that will convert lights in MAP files to DAE Collada files, for import into Blender and 3DSMAX. After that, a solution to read from MTRs and setup basic (or potentially not so basic) materials to automatically take care of monkeywork between Radiant and that software, by using MaterialIDs coordinating with headers and propagating its only little contextual base of assets for itself. It's convoluted, but should get the job done. It wouldn't be so far off what you've done here. but I hope to expand it along the way and make it easy for people to finally render their maps in Eevee, etc. and beyond.

So I think we can count 12 or 14 missions depending on our opinion of La Banque Bienveillante and Sneak and Destroy. If these two reissues are counted as new missions (as JarlFrank did here: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152035), then we have 14 missions. If not, then 12. Personally, I don't consider them new missions, so 12 in my opinion. Have no problem with other opinion. In any case, last year was productive!

My dream is for forums.thedarkmod.com to link to thedarkmod.com

Purah also worked on Dishonored: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136214 One of my neurons knew it started with a 'P'

OBJ does not have anything like LOD info in the format. It only allows aplitting geometry into groups/objects of different names. Putting all the LOD settings into OBJ is barely possible. Maybe it is possible to use defaults in such case, but wouldn't it be better to implement some Blender export or DarkRadiant import for such case (i.e. that would create entityDef automatically) ?