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Way back when, when GameInforker was a popular gaming magazine, they used to give out free discs of certain games. One of these game series given out was the "They Hunger" trilogy by Black Widow Games, a small group of international game developers lead by Neil Manke in Canada and his right-hand man Einar Saukas in Brazil. Together, BWG became an upcoming juggernaut in the video game industry for their Half-Life Mods, in an era where Half-Life mods were becoming their own well-known series, like Team Fortress and Counter-Strike. Having been commissioned after the first "They Hunger" and standalone game "U.S.S. Darkstar" to make the official game mod for then-upcoming action-horror movie Underworld. With all this wild success in the business, Black Widow Games was talked of in online game articles, gaming magazines, and even mentioned in books about gaming. Then, shortly after the "They Hunger" trilogy was finished, the folks at Black Widow Games had an amazing, ambitious idea. With Half-Life 2 and Source Engine released, they wanted to make "They Hunger: Lost Souls", an at-the-time modern retelling/sequel/prequel/who the hell knows. The game was 80% finished, when disaster struck. Neil Manke fell deathly ill, causing production to halt. Since Neil was the leader of the international BWG, and most had never met in person, the whole studio later disbanded. It is unknown if Neil is currently alive or dead, but was last said to be living in Kamloops, British Columbia, alive yet sickly. Einar Saukas has been trying over the years to get in contact with Neil, and has in the meantime been taking part in development of minor games. Since Einar doesn't have international calling from Brazil, he doesn't know how to get in contact with his old friend and finish their legacy. I have in the past tried to contact Neil Manke, from a Kamloops Facebpok page of him, calling his house from the Kamloops phonebook and actually being answered, although I got a weird reply. The man there said he was Neil Manke's cousin, and that he didn't know where my Neil was. I was younger and way more autistically trusting at the time, so I believed him. Then I realized he may have been lying, out of shame or embarrassment or wanting to put what he saw as a previous life behind him. Due to Canada's health care system, he probably was well-cared for and recovered well, because according to his Facebook page, he enjoys going to the beach. So, without the apparent Neil trusting me enough to talk, I decided I should call Einar Saukas to get in contact and let him know his old business partner lived. One problem: I don't speak Brazilian, don't have international calling, only being able to call Kamloops due to New Hampshire being semi-close, and don't know how to contact Einar. Plus, Brazil has been in turmoil since a far-right president took charge who may have started a Rainforest Fire to expand his beef company Farms, and who has stated he wished to wipe out the natives. So it's probably hectic, chaotic, etc. So I turn to you, fellow gamers of The Dark Mod Forums. Will you help me in trying to locate, contact, and inform Mr. Einar Saukas of his old business partner's fate, and potentially cause "They Hunger" to rise from its grave like a zombie?

Addressed towards every idtech4 aficionado @ the TDM forums and in particular towards the TDM Engine Development team... Both engines use Stencil Shadows but the devs at Ion Storm IMO came up with the significantly more elegant solution to the "Shadow Polygon Popping" issue that comes with the Stencil Shadow rendering technique... I remember back in the days around Doom3's release (August 2004) how John Carmack mentioned having added "noselfShadow" material flags specifically to combat the problem of "Stencil Shadow Polygon Popping" which would appear on Characters and Monsters when selfshadowing would kick in which resulted in my first mini-mod "UEQ" basically just commenting out all "noselfShadow" flags for all Doom3 Character/Monster material shaders... I have recorded some footage to illustrate why I think Thief3's solution is indeed more elegant in the hope that some of the senior GFX engine programmers like duzenko and the rest of the TDM Engine Development team might point me to a direction of implementing a similar solution within idtech4... The Problem (within idtech4): When a character in idtech4 is rendered without disabled selfshadowing in the material shader, quite some noticeable "Shadow Polygon Popping" can be observed (In this sample scene you can see it happening around Garrett's Hood and Shoulder area). The more elegant Solution (within Thief3): Notice how the character still casts and receives selfshadows without any "Stencil Shadow Polygon Popping" occurring. The shadows rather "slide" across the model surface instead of harshly popping in and out of existance... Now of course idtech4 is highly configurable by default so I started tinkering with the stencil shadow parameters. In particular I would change the value of the CVAR "r_shadowPolygonOffset" from the default value "-1" to "-2000". Now that still doesn't look as "clean" as in the Thief3 sample footage but at least the self shadows stopped harshly popping in and out of existence and instead (similar to the Thief3 footage) now slide smoothly across the model surface. Mission achieved you might think and wonder why I am still flagging this an issue... Well the problem becomes apparent when we start to move around the environment with these new settings ("r_shadowPolygonOffset -2000"): Watch the shadow on the right side of the Windowframe increasing in size/volume as I approach it and decreasing in size/volume as I move away again from it: This now happens with every selfshadow in the world around me (within idtech4 with "r_shadowPolygonOffset -2000"). On the other hand, within the Thief3 engine a similar behavior but much much more subtle in scale/resize of SelfShadows can be seen: When you observe the shadow at the left side of the door... (it actually might be difficult to notice) but you can see that that shadow also changes size/volume depending on my distance to it but like I mentioned the change is way more subtle in scale compared to the idtech4 showcase.

No, the bugtracker is based on Mantis, it doesn't share account info with the forums.

This thread should cover most of where we gathered textures: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/1755-texture-resources/ We also got a substantial number of textures from one of the "Blade of Darkness" developers: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/10003-so-what-are-you-working-on-right-now/page/21/&tab=comments#comment-217681

got a email about this. link https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/firmament?ref=section-homepage-projectcollection-staff-picks-popular

Well, I never supported anything on Kickstarter before.... until now. Hopefully this campaign is successful, it looks great

Death to Spies 3 is now up on Kickstarter! https://www.kickstar...eath-to-spies-3 At the time I posted this, $2,524 out of $85,000 has been donated, and we've got 36 days to go. Head over there and express your support! And remember to spread the word on social media sites, gaming forums or among friends and colleagues. We need this game to come out soon!

So...good mission overall, but I've searched as many places as I can and now I'm left with the dreaded key search, which for me is like the big Monty Python Boot squelching down on the mission. I hate key searches. I have opened every door I can. What's left is unpickable. Tiring of going in circles, I have three places where a key is needed: Armory Locked cupboard Blue door. And sorry for the lack of spoiler tags, but I can't seem to locate the appropriate icon.

Hi all, me again Now that I've learned how to take screenies on DM (thanks to Aluminumhaste) I wanted to post one that I took but I got an error saying that the image ext that I used was not allowed in these forums, It was .jpg so I changed it to .png and I got the same error again. They're on Photobucket.

Hi, knowing that this is a more tech savvy forums I wanted to share a struggle with some documents that maybe someone has any knowledge how to solve. I've been working for the past days looking for ways to edit a large number of pages (1850) into an easily readable text, read for instant printing, all of this being easy to email in portions. The text are photos I made from some text files but the margins are not even all the time. Therefore I need an application that sees the real margins of the text and can crop it automatically to those margins. Tried everything ABBYY Fine Reader 11, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, Adobe Photoshop, Scan Tailor, AVS image converter. None of them seem to have any options to properly bring these files in order. I need to have some margins removed so that only the text remains for printing. But I need to do it fast and automatically. I do not care about this being editable/searcheable text like Optical Character Recognition features. TLDR I need an app like TinyScanner for phones https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appxy.tinyscanner&hl=en . However I did not have time to wait and let it process 1850 pages in one day. Also that app occasionally crashed while processing files. But, the features that it has, it seems I cannot find on PC's which I'm baffled about! If anyone has any clue where to look for, please let me know. Thanks in advance.

I'm wondering if anyone ever checks new posts in the Fan Missions Forums? I've posted 4 questions asking for help for 4 different missions that I can't finish because I"m stuck, and I don't get any help. I posted a question this morning so I don't expect an answer right away for that one. Its frustrating because I would like to finish them. I've read through the posts for each mission and I'm not getting anything from them. If there's someone who could help me I'd really appreciate it. Thanks I guess I'm spoiled from the TTLG forums.

Swing and miss, couch psychologist. I'm actually pretty likeable fellow in RL, and I've been leading a happy, fulfilled life Not sure what makes you think that this community is "tainted" by my presence, when your posts are just pasted words of others. At least I make original content that everyone here can enjoy using. But to honor STiFU's request, I'll leave you with a positive example on how you can do this stuff, and that's how Henke on TTLG's General Gaming posts. He actually gives a damn about actual conversation whenever he posts something about games, e.g. here: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150251

Very nice, it's great to see more effort being put into this longstanding project. What I particularly like about your approach is to keep supernatural references subtle, at least when compared to T3's overblown take on it. I've written a fair share of lines of my own over the years, that I'll include within the spoilers below (you'll have to teach me how to have multiple spoilers within a post without them all getting nested into each other in these new forums). What I personally had in mind, especially when I most recently worked on the alerts and searching barks, was something like a Celtic tribesman - rough, superstitious and not afraid to enter hand-to-hand combat with the intruder. Another archetype of Pagan may be the secret worshippers you'd find in the city living in attics and mostly staying among their own. Some lines may be more suitable for one than the other (or possibly neither), plus I've demarcated some lines for a possible shaman. I imagine we could be choosing, refining and merging the best lines from each script to come to a final product.

The material system supports both video clips and flipping between images in sequence; they just haven't been used much, but see e.g. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/15876-proper-realistic-moving-water/&do=findComment&comment=334818 http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/17269-water-cascading-down-a-window/

Thought this might interest some of you here - there's a PnP RPG on Kickstarter right now called Project Dark that's supposedly able to closely emulate stealth games. Other things of note: - Card-based mechanics in combination with dice - Optimised for 1-2 player-characters Also based on a brief exchange, it seems the developer's a fan of PC stealth games like Thief. Project looks pretty cool overall, and although I haven't played any games that use cards for conflict resolution, the pitch has me intrigued, if only because running a game set in the Thief world sounds awesome. Too bad existing backers won't get a copy of the rules until March Edit - oh yeah, link here:

Aha! Aha! That would be it. I did search the forums for instructions because I was obviously doing something wrong. Aha! This is a great mission, BTW. I've found 4 secrets so far. I'm still stuck on the final mission objective but I suspect that last thing I need will be down in the tombs.

After a long time and a lot of delays, I'm extremely happy and relieved to announce the release date for my first map; Lords & Legacy, on Friday the 30th of August, 2013! Lords & Legacy v.2.1 Resume: Screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/Lj8UJ#0 Notes: Build time: 2013/03/30 - 2013/08/30 To install, simply put the .pk4 file in your fm folder and install from the in-game mission menu. It is a large mission with optional objectives, so make sure to save often. The ropes in the beginning have a 'slick' surface, to simulate being 'slack lines'. They are difficult, but once you get a hang of the slide they can be fun. A couple of the large areas can be a bit rough on performance, and can be improved by adjusting the LOD slider in video options. A few of visportals open only when you get close. This is to keep the frames smooth inside the respective building, due to early inexperienced design. If you find any bugs which affect the gameplay experience, then you're very welcome to post them here, but please use the spoiler tags. Big thanks to 'Obsttorte', 'Springheel', 'Greyman', 'Bikerdude', 'Sotha' and rest of 'The Dark Mod Team'for all the help, guides and tricks. Also thanks to the other TDM users who provided fantastic support and feedback during the build. Thank you for beta-testing: 'Bikerdude', 'TylerVocal', 'Simplen00b', 'nbohr1more', 'Briareos H.' Special thanks to: 'Danus', 'Dsx' & 'Stanleh' for testing, help and support. v.2.0.1 changelog: Bugs: -The "Master Thief" challenge was impossible to do for a while, due to incorrect values. Fixed. -Getting seen by "The Killer" now also fails the "Ghost" challenge. -The 3 cardplaying guards no longer float mid air, as their chairs are now nailed to the floor. -Fixed the sound of the furnace continuing after the flames were extinguished. -Fixed weird glittering on the power cables around the map. -Fixed some moonlight popping in and out. -Fixed openable windows in Commons, clipping into the frame. -Fixed a book dropping through a desk. -Fixed visportals closing too close in Lancel's Tower, slight hit on performance though. -Added more monsterclip to Service Tower and Robert's Tower's entrance. -Improved a few vis_portals with func_portals. -Replaced curbs in Slums and Commons with some more detailed versions and changed textures. And a lot more little unecessary tweaks. Gameplay: -Added new challenge: (Jack White) - Do not knock-out anyone. -Reduced the amount of starting gear, depending on difficulty. -Added cubemaps to most windows on the map. -Redid most func_statics in Commmons Quarter to reduce tris and increase performance. Draw count is still somewhat high. -Removed all transparent windows as they didn't have actual gameplay value, just a performance drain in exchange for glitchy visuals. -Lancel's safe can no longer be picked. Find the key! -Added a couple minor cosmetic details in the sewers. -Moved a coinpurse from a wealthy commoner's sleeping butt to his nightside table. Also adjusted his furniture so thieves can better move around. -Changed sounds for several doors across the map. Once again, a big thanks to 'Bikerdude' for taking the time help out and locate room for improvement! v.2.0 changelog: Bugs: -Fixed various textures and surfaces and a few minor tweaks. -Tweaked some sounds to be in line with TDM 2.0 changes. -Fixed 2 certain AIs being too sensitive rather than drunk. (Thanks to AluminumHaste!) -Tweaked LOD on some objects, to prevent windows "popping" in and out. Gameplay: -Added more monsterclip to the towers, so the AI can now run up and down stairs. Only the stairs in the small tower has issues still. -Added more monsterclip in the city so the guards can follow you up all stairs. -Added a few minor details. -Windows in the city now dims sound, resulting in less aggro from guards and more convincing soundscape. -Reduced 'draw calls' in all the large areas, increasing performance. The map is still heavy at certain areas. Another big thanks to 'Bikerdude' and 'Greyman', for taking time out of their own schedules to help optimize the map's draw count and other significant adjustements! v.1.0.3 changelog: Bugs: -Fixed 4 black chairs in one of the towers -Fixed a floating painting -Fixed several clipping objects v.1.0.2 changelog: Bugs: -Fixed zfighting in the library's bookshelves -Fixed a black window in one of the towers -Fixed several typos in readables Gameplay: v.1.0.1 changelog: Bugs: -Fixed an issue with the main objectives not being in "sync". -Fixed console spam from a script Gameplay: -Adjusted required loot for each difficulty from "3000, 4000 and 5000" to "2500, 3500 and 4500".

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimax8kvr/pimax-the-worlds-first-8k-vr-headset https://www.roadtovr.com/pimax-8k-vr-headset-coming-kickstarter-later-month/ This is the right direction for VR. Especially important is the wide field of view: 200 degrees. However, it doesn't have the widest field of view on the market: StarVR has a 210 degree FOV. The Pimax Kickstarter mentions "Pimax 8K offers 200° Field of Vision (FOV), which is far closer to matching the natural human FOV of 220°." IIRC the natural human FOV actually varies by a few degrees from person to person (scary, huh?). But 220 degrees should probably cover every human alive. Wikipedia says "slightly over 210-degree forward-facing horizontal arc of their visual field" and "binocular vision, which is the basis for stereopsis and is important for depth perception, covers 114 degrees (horizontally) of the visual field in humans; the remaining peripheral 40 degrees on each side have no binocular vision" (194 degrees?). The "8K" or "5K" in the name is a little deceptive. It should be called 4K or 2.5K per eye. 7680x4320 is what is referred to as 8K. Pimax is 7680x2160. However there is a precedent, see the Ultra-Wide 5K (5120x2160) and Ultra-Wide 10K (10240x4320) resolutions which are 21:9 aspect ratio This is 32:9 aspect ratio. Super-Ultra-Wide 8K? It also talks about using a "Brainwarp" algorithm/method to effectively double the 75-90 Hz refresh rate to 150-180 Hz. If this is so easy, why hasn't Oculus, HTC, or Google done it (it would be especially useful on mobile and console platforms to double the framerate from a lower number)? It could be a marketing lie. Here's another thing that is not clear to me: there is an "8K" model and "8K X" listed in the reward tiers. It implies that the "8K X" does 90 Hz while the other one does 75 Hz. I have not watched the video, just read the text.

BTW, there is - in parallel - a recently-revived discussion about this topic, but focused more narrowly on currently-available moorish AI characters: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/15738-when-is-someone-gonna-make-an-egyptian-based-mission/page/3/

There's a new oldschool RPG project on Kickstarter. It's made by a german RPG veteran, Guido Henkel, known for Realms of Arkania and propably not as famous outside of germany. If you've never heard of these old games, Legends of Grimrock is a good reference point. Here are the key features according to the kicksterter page: Single player, first person Party-based play (four player-, plus two non-player characters) Six races and eight classes to choose from Over 34 unique character traits, plus base attributes Party characters interact with each other Turn-based combat Indoor and outdoor environments Complex puzzles and evolving quests Combine items to build weapons and traps Interactive game world Recipe-based crafting and enchanting Involving, adaptive storyline with many key players and twists Factions for intriguing political set-ups Tons of monsters to battle Dialogues—yes, you will be in awe at our cool and intelligent dialogue system Cheese toast I backed it. Is anyone here interested in this kind of game?

Welcome to the community. A start would by looking at the several installation methods at TDM wiki installation page (mac category). An easy start is try to run 2.07 in a WINE environment. (you can 2.05 mac os binary but very experimental and its an old version and not updated) Havent tested 2.07 on wineskin. But wineskin is a just wine container in a mac os app-format. playonmac. is a nice front-end to manage wine containers and to expiriment with them. I succesfully tested also 2.07 on the mac using playonmac (several wine versions) in the beta topic: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19774-beta-testing-207/page-5?do=findComment&comment=431999 http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19774-beta-testing-207/page-6?do=findComment&comment=432170 http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19774-beta-testing-207/page-10?do=findComment&comment=433014 http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19774-beta-testing-207/page-14?do=findComment&comment=433667

Don't get me wrong, i can at least halfway see where you're coming from. I can only say that, from my perspective, i didn't spend remotely enough time here, or am deep enough involved to even know what he was like exactly. Yeah, saw some controversial stuff, but, spending time on internet forums, you sort of get used to it... i don't even want to know how many people who spend a considerable time of their life on internet forums suffer from the things you mentioned. I'd say a whole lot. At least that's my impression, with all kind of wicked posts i've read. As snowy mentioned, that doesn't have a influence on me enjoying his maps, though. AFAIC, he made some of the finest missions for this mod, so...

Stuck early, lol... PS: I wish there was a 'spoiler' tag icon among all the other icons when composing a reply. (If it's there, what does it look like?) I don't post here a lot, and I even more rarely need to use spoiler tags... so when I do need to, I can never remember if the spoiler tag is [ s ] or [ spoiler ] or some other tag. So, I try to go to advanced editing and check there, but that doesn't help much; and/or I have to preview post and make sure my attempt works.

As a kid, when I first played the good old game "Tak and the Power of Juju", I found a shrine with a dog with the head of a chimp in a small area in Chicken Island West, you need to fall down the biggest cliff and jump in the sea cave before the Jellyfish kill you. The word "Eatpoo" was written on it. I later learned Apedog was the mascot of the Eatpoo forums, which the creators of Tak frequented. Isn't it weird I only learned this years later?

How you can help depends a lot on what skills you have. I can Record Video Recording "Let's Play" videos or simple walkthroughs of existing missions and posting them to Youtube is great exposure for the mod (see example .) Be sure to let us know so we can link to them. If you have some editing ability, Video tutorials, where you explain how the mod works, or how to use specific tools, would also be great. Video trailers, showcasing interesting places and features, are also great for publicity. An example is . I can Write Writing reviews for missions are always nice, especially if they include good screenshots. Not only does it give us something to post on other forums, but it makes mappers feel good when their mission gets attention (especially if it's positive). We have a collective thread to post reviews in: http://forums.thedar...s-walkthroughs/ Writing reviews of the mod as a whole, targetted an an audience that doesn't know much about TDM, is also very useful. You could also try offering your services to mappers to create interesting readables, or to proofread for their mission. I can Act and Record Audio We are always on the lookout for good quality audio recordings for vocal sets. If interested, you can pick a few different lines from this script: http://wiki.thedarkm...t:_Average_Jack and send the recordings to Springheel, who then writes a script based on the type of voice you have. I can Translate We could always use translations of our menu/hud into more languages. Also, only a few FMs are aavailable in more than one language, so there is a lot of work there, see the I18N Translator's Guide in the Wiki. I can Model Great! Take a look at the model request thread:http://forums.thedar...-requests-here/ and pick something that interests you. Or just post a, "Hey, anybody want a model?" thread in this forum and I'm sure mappers will get back to you. I can Animate Fantastic. We can always use more good animations. Our current character rigs use a Maya skeleton. PM Springheel for more info. I know C++ Have a look at our coding section in the wiki, pick an issue or feature from the bugtracker of the mod or the leveleditor, download the recent sourcecode release (or better ask for an SVN checkout) and get cracking. Make sure nobody is already working on that specific issue and feel free to ask questions. I can Edit Images We can always use completely new textures and/or improved versions of older textures. How to get started and how to import them into the mod. I can Take Photos Good quality photos of useful textures (medieval-ish building facades, dirt, rocks, wood, etc) are always welcome. The fewer directional shadows and higher resolution, the better. I don't have any skills Even if you can't do any of the above, you can still help out. Talk about TDM in other forums; share your (preferably positive) experiences with other gamers you know. Last, but not least, compliment people when you like their work. Saying "thanks", to a developer or, "I really enjoyed your mission" to a mapper will make their day. -------------------- I'll update this further as more things occur to me.