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I mean moving models around inside the models folder. If I try to restructure my models folder via internal folders, but have already placed models, it causes the placed models to break. Thankfully it looks like I was careful enough to save models into the map folder and not somewhere else.

I mean that moving them from one internal models file to another causes it to break. Example, building with models before creating a folder inside the models folder, and then moving models in there, causes all placed versions of those models to become blue/black squares.

What do you mean by moving them around? You move them from the models folder into another folder? Models must be placed in the models folder. Otherwise, DM/DR cannot find them anymore causing the problems you mentioned in your post.

I have been building my map using some models I've created. I noticed that moving the models around in the folders caused the models in-game to break. Are there any precautions I must take for when I want to upload the map for beta-testing/finalizing the upload?

Something I was thinking of: Even if some assets are non-commercial, are all assets at least accounted for to make sure they're credited accordingly and can be distributed? I ask following an issue in another great project I work with called Red Eclipse: They don't have NC assets but did have a few texture packages they had to remove because they later found out their clauses were incompatible with the project. If this hasn't happened in well over a decade it's very unlikely anyone would complain today and request removal for any reason, but if any resource had its license misunderstood that could destroy existing FM's unless perfect replacements were found. Obviously I presume the team never included any asset randomly found on the internet without verifying their explicit requirements in detail, but it doesn't hurt to check. I think the best that can be done otherwise would be to have a list of which assets are libre or have the NC clause: That way a map can choose to use those models and textures that are free if the author wants their FM to be fully libre, albeit this would handicap an author in what packages they can use. If core assets like character models or textures are also NC, the idea is likely pointless as you can't make a FM without those, at best you can skip a few texture packages... not sure about other things like core scripts or defs, since they're technically code I presume those are GPL?

TDM Latch Pack (Beta) By Frost_Salamander and wellingtoncrab with special thanks to Dragofer Tired of picking another lock or hunting for that missing key? Imagine The City is itself an elaborate lock, and you are the key. Embrace progression through careful exploration and navigation of the environment. Embrace the latch pill: Included is a new entity type and scripting for a door mounted toggle lock, or "latch", as well as new CC0 assets and prefabs. https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity/test-latch/wiki Example Video Asset Pictures All models and textures in this pack are released under CC0 license and may be used freely without need of attribution. We waive copyright to the extent that possible, but aren’t lawyers. Latch Lock Features Supports single and double doors across all cardinal directions, as well as trap doors Uses the location system to handle context sensitive frob highlighting of the latch and the doors Automatically determines the correct latch state on map start based on the targeted door's "locked" spawnarg Options for rotate, translate, or both with unique sound slots for each Supports any model or func_static To get started head over and grab the latest release (available with or without demo content) and read the getting started guide. This is a beta release - so your feedback is appreciated!

I was able to reproduce this in 2.12 beta as well as 2.11. Start mission setviewpos -5727 974 292 24 -57 0 Wait for new objective setviewpos 3795 5676 -3164 18 160 0 Wait for objective complete Shoulder body setviewpos -1643 3574 -1903 4 180 0 Drop body on elevator platform Press elevator button Setting "logFile 2", I was able to capture some console messages before the crash. "MISSION COMPLETED" displays twice instead of once. I haven't had a chance to look further into this. WARNING:idClipModel::Handle: clip model 0 on 'bellero' (dc8) is not a collision or trace model WARNING:idClipModel::Handle: clip model 0 on 'bellero' (dc8) is not a collision or trace model WARNING:idClipModel::Handle: clip model 0 on 'bellero' (dc8) is not a collision or trace model MISSION COMPLETED MISSION COMPLETED ----- idRenderModelManagerLocal::EndLevelLoad ----- 0 models purged from previous level, 1031 models kept. --------------------------------------------------- Regenerated world, staticAllocCount = 0. Getting threadname failed, reason: No such file or directory (2) --------- Game Map Shutdown ---------- ModelGenerator memory: 133 LOD entries with 0 users using 2128 bytes. WARNING:idClipModel::FreeTraceModel: tried to free uncached trace model (index=0) --------- Game Map Shutdown done ----- Shutting down sound hardware idRenderSystem::Shutdown() ...shutting down QGL I18NLocal: Shutdown. ------------ Game Shutdown ----------- ModelGenerator memory: No LOD entries. Shutdown event system --------------------------------------

It turns out we have many people who enjoy discussing code My complaint about that code is that all floating point numbers are snapped to integers with same tolerance. The .proc file contains a lot of different data: models, shadow models, BSP tree, visportals. They contain in different combinations: positions, texcoords, normals, distances. Snapping or comparing all of these quantities with same tolerance is a really bad idea. Some data is more sensitive to changes than other. They even have different measurement units, i.e. you position is measures in something like meter-units, while texcoords are usually measured in something like tex-units, and they are as incomparable as meters and seconds. Some data should not be snapped at all because that could break its internal invariants. If you snap coordinates of normal vector, it is no longer normalized, and the receiver has all the fun of dealing with extremely rare cases which normally should not happen. As for Hungarian notation... I do some mesh processing with halfedge data structures. When you have 10 local variables being halfedge handles, 5 local variables being face handles, and 5 local variables being vertex handles, it becomes much easier to understand what's going on if they start with "he" / "f" / "v" respectively. But this is very situational of course. Just starting pointers with 'p' and array-like stuff with 'a' is usually unnecessary, unless you have 3-4 levels (triple pointer or triple arrays), although in that case the code is smelly regardless or how you name variables

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

Here's my first FM. A small and easy mission, inspired by Thief's Den and The Bakery Job, where you must find and steal a cook's recipe book in order to save a friend from going out of business. Download: Mediafire (sk_cooks.pk4) TDM Website's Mission Page The in-game mission downloader Thanks to: The people who helped me get this far, both in the forums and on Discord. The beta testers: MirceaKitsune, Mat99, Baal, wesp5, Cambridge Spy, jaxa, grodenglaive, Acolytesix ( Per the author in the beta testing thread. ) Skaruts has given permission to the TDM Team to add Subtitles or Localization Strings to this mission. (No EFX Reverb.) If anyone from the Community or TDM team wishes to create these we will gladly test them and update the mission database.

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

How about using TDM automation framework (and maybe pcem/qemu)? More info see: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19828-automation-features-and-discussion/

I think you mean Reshade. I used it a couple of times, it has a few interesting tricks up its sleeve Also, maybe this will help to illustrate the problem better: As you can see with image 2 & 4, the geometric complexity, whether with actual polygons or faked via smooth edges on normalmap, does matter. And I bet when most users think 'fresnel', they mean the last example. Most TDM geometry is brushes and models textured with simple tiling materials. They won't look like the last example, until they have enough polygons.

I feel that tweaking shaders visually does more harm than good in the end. Here is one example of what shader tweaking leads to, and where I'll do yet another visually-breaking change: 6354 Before that is was untweakable specular which also broke visuals: 5044 What a game engine needs is a universal model (preferably well-known) with several tweakable parameters. In fact, the very idea of PBR and why it wins today is that it models real physics, and thus it works more or less the same way in every engine and scenario. It is a well-known standard (with minor variations). We can't have PBR yet (and maybe forever), thus we stick close to Phong reflection model, which has been around for decades and is also quite standard. Artists should make assets that would result in a beautiful picture, not shaders. But they can't do it if we have some weird non-standard lighting model which changes every year. We should never tweak shaders based on how average missions becomes seemingly nicer to us! If someone decides to add normal mapping, it should behave as an approximation for how real high-resolution surface should behave in our model, not as some kind of "beautifier effect". If you want to add some effect which is outside the current model, it should be done in a way that: it does not change how the previous model works (and how current missions look) it can be tweaked by understandable parameters it is applied in all shaders and all lighting the same way I believe we already have fresnel and rim, but it is kinda hardcoded and not present in all shaders. Yet another result of someone tweaking shaders based on how it looks and not on how sound it is mathematically.

Btw. you know that fresnel on brushes and simple models that use tiled materials looks differently than e.g. models with higher geo density, or smooth edges faked on normalmaps? Might be hard to adjust it for all cases. Unless you meant the PBR-compatible calculations, I guess...

Yes, all images, models and sounds would be gone. Even if you made a barebones replacement that only provides a very limited selection of assets you would need to create thousands of files just to achieve basic game functionality (movement sounds, guard clothes and speech, menus, tools and weapons etc.). It's probably orders of magnitude more work than when TDM got rid of all Doom3 assets for going standalone in v2.0. Technically it's probably possible for an FM to contain a full game's worth of assets, except for the code itself. IIRC some Doom3 mods had custom .dll's to extend the base code, though.

Is "assets" synonymous to "media/gamedata"? And are you referring to the 2.3 GB media/gamedata included in TDM at install? If all 2.3 GB media/gamedata were removed from the "TDB-libre" version, then no license change would be needed. Say then we have a small fan mission that is entirely libre, built entirely from libre assets and created to intentionally avoid using any of the current 2.3 GB media/gamedata. If we wanted to play that mission using only the source code, what media/gamedata components would be missing to do that? * GUI graphics and music? * HUD elements? * Any in-game sounds? * Inventory objects? * ... anything else that can neither be included in the mission's own media/gamedata, nor avoided during mission design? I'm assuming here that a mission actually can include its own media/gamedata (textures, sound, models), but I may be wrong and I'm grateful for any explanation that helps me understand. If you ask me, the TDM-installer works perfectly already today, and the instructions are brief and easy to follow. Installation from the Debian repository would be somewhat easier, but I also see other (perhaps greater) benefits which I mentioned earlier.

To cater to both audiences. I mentioned LibreGameWiki as one example. nbohr1more mentioned other uses. Explicitly allowing reuse and spread will help TDM reach a wider audience and would hopefully attract more volunteers. More volunteers which can help improve both TDM versions. There are several benefits for a project of being in the Debian repo. One is that TDM Debian-users can report defects on any package directly to Debian (no need to register on separate forums). Debian may then fix the issue themselves (in their "TDM-libre" package) and will offer the patch upstream to TDM, who can then choose to accept or reject the patch. I envision "TDM-libre" to have the same capability of downloading any mission as regular TDM. The only difference is that "TDM-libre" would come packaged with the regular engine (which is GPL+BSD) and an included mission that has libre media/gamedata. When I play TDM by myself, I want the unlimited-play and can accept commercial restrictions. But if I were to promote it somewhere, or charge for a stream when playing online, or make a video, I would want a version without commercial restrictions (and can temporarily accept limited-play) to make sure I don't violate anyone's copyright. Perhaps. That's what I'm trying to find out.

I suggest you use the term "I", to make clear that it is something YOU want, and that you speak for yourself. But, as wesp5 mentioned, I don't really know what this is about, at all. And, I'm also wondering about all the newly registered people lately, who just arrived at this forum, and already want to revolutionize this mod. This is a thing I noticed 2 or 3 years ago, and which hasn't been present in the 15 years I play this mod and frequent these forums now. Really seems like a common thing these days, to not knock on the door, but kick it in, and stomp right in.

When talking about a possible libre version of TDM (https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22346-libre-version-of-tdm/) it seems we believe all media/gamedata included in TDM is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. I am not familiar with how the process of adding new media/gamedata works today; I have seen files uploaded to the bugtracker which developers then commit to SVN, but I don't know if there are other ways. It may be a good idea to implement a process that when new components (media/gamedata included in TDM) are added, the contributor is asked to be explicit about the license (a choice which may defaults to their previous preference, for usability). It won't fix the past, but it may help in the future. This will make it easy for contributors to add future data under a more permissive license if they choose. Libre media can be added and its license can be tracked, rather than assumed to be CC-BY-NC-SA. I suggest looking at how Wikimedia Commons has implemented this: the contributor state the source and license at the time the data is uploaded. This can be done either by providing urls or by saying "It's my work and I choose this licsense". The first step could be to add a way to keep track of each filepath in SVN, author, license, sources. Start by setting the value for each file's license to "(default/legacy CC-BY-NC-SA)". Possible implementations for a user interface for new additions are: * Use our own wiki, which runs Mediawiki (same as Wikimedia Commons). I see several benefits of this, but we also need a way to accept uploads of batches, not just single files. * Look at how other open source projects have solved this. There may be more appropriate solutions available. ... but I'll leave the implementation open. Suggestions are very welcome! If the author of each file already in SVN can be tracked, then it may be possible that the author is willing to give a blanket permission for all their past files in one statement, and all their files in SVN can be updated in one commit. A productive contributor willing to release some of their work under a more permissive license could make a big change. If Dark Radiant would support letting mappers search media/gamedata by license (does it already?), it would make it easier for mappers to create a completely libre mission, which would help facilitate a TDM-libre release. If I understand things correctly. This post does not address all details and it may contain misunderstandings or assumptions, but it's a start. Also relevant: * Is there a compiled and maintained list of recommended or deprecated resources for mappers to use? * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20311-external-art-assets-licensing/

I'll put it at the top of my queue of missions to play, even if just to see the size of it. Is it explicitly said to be Libre with all its components? Mission story, models, textures, readables, and sound? If it is not, then I don't see that it would work to just change the assets it uses. If there is no mission that is explicitly said to be libre today, I see two options: * Ask if any author(s) would be willing to re-license one of their missions including its assets. * Try enlisting people interested in helping creating a libre mission from scratch. (Assuming it is even possible to play a mission which uses absolutely none of the 2.3 GB media/gamedata.) (Is it?)

TDM should contain 2 storages, one that is gpl (the engine) and one with another or more than one license (content), maybe that's already the case? Via the installer you should be able to only install the gpl content? I don't know if that's possible. Everything pure code is gpl, or not? I mean everything outside of media files (images, video's, sound files, etc.). (edit: maybe also models?)

Is there non-libre media/gamedata that every mission will absolutely require? Even a mission created completely from scratch and only using its own stand-alone models, textures, music, and sound? E.g. is the Lantern image on the HUD libre? Yes, I understand that it may not be doable to replace (or re-license) all current gratis but non-libre media/gamedata used by current missions, but that may not be necessary. Hence my question (2) about a "TDM-libre" version consisting of only the game engine, all non-libre media/gamedata removed, but include a basic mission using (stand-alone) media/gamedata that is libre. This will honor the will of contributors not wanting their work in commercial projects, and still make a limited version of TDM qualify as libre software for the benefits I describe. Does anyone know why? A browser like Chromium or Firefox qualifies as libre but can be used to view and download non-libre content. This is what I'm going for in question (1). If there are libre TDM missions available, then the TDM installer would be similar to Steam in that regard.

TDM has tons of textures from "free" texture resources that do not allow redistribution and cannot be incorporated into a commercial project. Someone would need to create a huge replacement pack of textures that do not break the look of existing missions and do not infringe on the copyrighted textures. Also, many artists who contributed to this project do not want 3rd party entities to use their work in commercial projects. They intended the models, textures, sounds, animations to be exclusively used for Darkmod content. You would either have to replace ALL assets or contact every contributor and ask them to re-license their assets. Many contributors are no longer active with the project and haven't visited the forums in years so it would be no easy feat. I cannot speak to Debian policy but I think that they treat installers that add non-free content the same as non-free content itself. One could argue that Steam is such an installer but I guess Debian would counter that there are a few fully Libre games on Steam. I think Debian, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint need to consider a repo that allows for games (etc) that include non-libre content but intentionally offer this content for free to the community with no stipulations other than "don't try to sell it as a product".