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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.

I think that the existence of a dedicated bug tracker for this engine proves that I should somehow make it known when it crashes. I just figured that the tracker was an internal thing between developers, and that it was okay to instead report the bugs here, especially since I desperately needed help with it, and since you have two sub-forums mentioning that they're intended for reporting bugs. ...so why, when I report a bug, am I getting shamed for it? Why was the guy in the thread you linked getting shamed for not backing up his project, instead of the main dev acknowledging that there is a very deceptive button in the engine, that can remove fan mission folders when you press it? Blaming the reporter for not backing up his work, is certainly not how I would personally handle reports of entire projects disappearing, but I guess now I'm warned about how he sees these things, to the point where I'm wondering if it's a good idea to report any bugs I find in the future, at all, if I'm just going to be considered a bad person for it. "Hm, to my experience, crashes in free software is a regular thing. Try "Natron" and you will understand what I mean." I don't understand your point. If crashes happen frequently enough, should we treat them like Covid and just "try to live with it"? I'm pretty sure that the bind bug is easy to fix, but it's like you're saying that bugs have a right to exist too. "Lots of longtime DR mappers ask questions in the Newbie thread (myself included). Nothing to be ashamed of and by DR/DM standards you are a newbie (and you have not to be ashamed of that as well! )" So if I've programmed for 30 years, mapped for Dromed for countless years (since roughly the turn of the millenia), mapped for the Dark Mod for 1 year, but joined these forums just a few weeks ago, I'm a newbie. I think that by that definition, the word "newbie" has lost all meaning. Besides, reporting crashes are not the same as just asking questions. Anyone can reply to a question. It takes a developer to fix a crash issue. ...and it's like you don't expect the developers to even fix crashes, and I really hope that you're wrong about that. For example, since I updated to this year's version, Dark Radiant itself, hasn't even crashed once, and it used to crash all the time, and so I take that as evidence that development involves fixing crashes. "If you want to report a bug, then please use the Bug Tracker." Will do. I was just fooled by the subforum descriptions actually telling me to report bugs in them. "You wouldn't believe how many mappers lost WIPs because of defective hardware" Again: I don't see your point here, where you argue for not fixing defective hardware. When I'm told about a bug in my program, I just go "Thank you. I'll fix that.". I don't go "Well, weren't you a sucker for using my program.". That's not how I was brought up at all. "for somebody who expects Armageddon in the near future (and there are really good reasons for that), you have a pronounced need for communication. I think that does not fit, because: Why go on with communication when all hell will break lose the day after tomorrow?" Well, why not? Yes, I am so interested in mapping, that it's actually cutting into my apocalypse survival routines a bit, but that's just human nature, and a month's vacation from prepping, won't make that much of a difference. "I hope that you - despite of your own assessment - will finish your WIP and we all can enjoy a cool new mission in the future with your name in the credits." Well, for me, mapping is about pleasing myself - not others. Play The Beginner's Guide, and you'll see what I mean.

(After reading everything, I wanted to put in my two-cents and see how everyone feels about structuring a procedure for the history and geography.) Outline for SOP'ing Historical and Geographical Records This idea we're discussing is something that has been scratching around my brain like a spider for sometime. I've only been playing for a few months, and recently I've been putting together a mission for submission, but I have been bothered by an undefined vagueness in the history and geography of the DarkMod universe. I looked at the articles that were linked in the previous posts and there is a lot of good food for thought. But the goals commercial games have for a backstory don't really work with TDM. When a commercial company produces a game, they have precise control over the whole storyline and universe. They define and design every nuance to fit. What we have is a herd of cool, creative cats all working on the same canvas, some on the front, some on the sides or back, but very few of them seeing all aspects as one work. Please review and provide your opinion. NOTE: For the proposed SOP, the term "peer review" is defined and used here as a voluntary, consensual disclosure of information to and between other members of TDM Forum. It does not imply any loss of independence, intellectual rights, or creative concerns for submitting party who chooses to submit to a peer review. The submitting party has no obligation to make any changes relating to any form of feedback generated during a peer review. Other than through polite suggestion, parties that perform a peer review have no right to use —or attempt to us— coercion, force, or by any means try cause the submitting party to change their design or any of their ideas. Any suggestion than is rejected by the submitting party is not allowed to be repeatedly suggested, or pushed, by parties involved in the peer review. For approval of any item to become canonical, there must be an agreement by the non-abstaining, majority members of the active forum members. Consensual Continuities vs Strict Canonical Timelines An astronomical calendar, sequencing all the major and minor events in the universe, won't work well for a creative, free-for-all of activity. A calendar-based system will only work well for when people are referencing larger events in the timeline like wars, revolutions, and significant personages —the big milestones. It's better to detail modern events similar to shaggy-dog stories between beers at the local pub: "This happened before Joe's story, but at the same time as Anne's, only it was in Norfolk, not Italy…" Modern history should be mainly anecdotal. This will keep us within a flexible framework of good lore, but also provide enough structure to base strong connections between events. Dark Continents, Empirical Empires, and Mysterious Metropoleis Regarding a map of the world, there has already been some confusion as to locations and coastal outlines. We don't want or need to define all borders, but if a player goes South, they should at least know what will be in that direction and in what order. There needs to be some "loose" geography for better creativity. The technology of the universe has both sail and flying ships. That implies a semi-effective mapping system for the coastlines and near the mountain masses. We also have complex machinery that indicates a standard rule of measurement, meaning that inland surveying is accurate withing areas controlled by ruling governments. Any area inside an empire or along its coasts should be treated with more precision than somewhere out in the boondocks of "Thar' be dragons." Mapping the cities themselves is a really bad idea. This would put a tight stranglehold on a creator's ability to make missions effectively. They would spend so much time revamping and patching their visions and goals in order to match a predefined landscape, that the soul and vibrancy of their creation would be lost. Mapping the general outline of oblasts is fine, but leave the cities to mutate and be fickle within their walls. How to Build Harmonious Chronology Each contributor should make their own timeline of only their missions. All events that affect anything larger than a small, localized area must have a specific date, area of consequence, projected longevity of the effect, and list all affected entities. These timelines will be subject to peer review. Any other historical occurrences that they wish to include must be clearly noted as such and will be subject to peer review. Basic Guidelines The majority of the timeline should be based on a common oral history, and missions should use major historical events as a reference only when it's absolutely necessary for a story. Historical missions will need these references primarily, and they must be given priority for the use of major events in order to avoid possible paradoxes. If a mission event could affect the timeline or conflict with an coinciding event, the story should be submitted for peer review and necessary editing. Because many missions are not outright declared as occurring on a specific date, a standard mission only needs to be viewed as happening sometime in the modern era. We will define the modern era to be approximately a span of 30 to 35 years, plus and minus the character's age. This gives a total range of 60 to 70 years of events that could influence the player. This span of time also allows for a wide range of minor and major technological and civic change without drastically changing the atmosphere between mission storylines. Architectural styles and events inside of this area will have plenty of room for change without causing disruption to the lore. To help with continuity between created works, newspapers and other publications (even diaries) don't need anything beyond the day and month noted unless it's absolutely essential for the story. Creating Cartography by Committee The primary map should be of modern times. The map must include every important geographical feature that they either use regularly or is shared by other creators. Single mission features should be annotated as such, and will be subject to peer review. If a map is for a historical mission, then an appropriate historical map also needs to be made. These need to be separate maps, not annotations on a modern map, and should follow the same guidelines as the primary map. Mapping Guidelines: Human Geography Each map needs to have these unnatural features: controlled borders; areas of influence (nomadic or indigenous people's territories, unincorporated areas, etc.); cities and towns; roads, trade routes, and other paths of travel (to include sea and air routes); main ports; notable inns and villages; mines, prisons, outposts, etc. If it's man-made, mark it. Mapping Guidelines: Mapping Beliefs and Architectural Influences Beliefs are important for lore construction. Everyone needs to know the areas that are influenced by different belief structures. Is an area Builder, Pagan, Agnostic, what? These sectors can overlap. Your main sectors will be up to peer review, but because beliefs are generally unbound, there can always be influence found as a minority in any area. Architecture sometimes changes drastically in a inside a homogenous area. A mapper is always free to use whichever style they want, but there should be some evidence of the architectural source. A Builder outpost doesn't match the confines of a Pagan village unless there was some event that caused its inclusion. If a contrast like the example above exists and it is a major feature outside of the single mission, then the creator needs to mark on a timeline when this occurred and annotate how it happened. (See: How to Build Harmonious Chronology) Mapping Guidelines, Natural Geography Each map needs to have these natural features: a rough coastal outline; major bodies of water (nothing smaller than a Great Lake unless it's utilized); mountains and valleys; rivers, swamps, and bogs; cave systems; forests, etc. Other features may be added upon peer review. Most of the area should be unused, allow plenty of room for growth and imagineering. The degree of mapping will vary depending on how close it is to civilization. Features closer to civilizations that use a metered rule will have more precise measurements predominately along trade routes, around its ports and other shoreside structures, and in the vicinity of any habitation. Denizens outside the city, i.e. Pagans, will have less detailed mapping around there habitual areas. An indigenous village can be defined as being somewhere within a one or two-days travel of the location on the map.

I've decided to check out mapping for The Dark Mod. I did some poking around in Doom 3 back when it came out and I also created 90% of this map in the source engine Hammer editor for l4d2. I've just started on Springheel's videos and thought, while I watch, I should post some questions. Description: The map will be a medium-ish sized house with yard space. Manor mission with no external facading. All sides traversable. Multiple enterable windows and doors. Good amount of foliage and terrain contours. Takes place in the woods. Just a range of yard area around the house. Invisible wall boundary with some trees/foliage beyond. Perhaps fogging to fade/hide world end? Low to very lower ambient light level. Questions: Does this seem feasible from a performance standpoint? How is bumpy terrain created? Manually distorting tesselated planes? Can I group map components under a name and then hide them from 2d viewports? If not, how do mappers deal with the convoluted viewports after the detail builds up. This was a huge annoyance in Hammer.

DarkRadiant 3.3.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Remove menu options which are not applicable to current game Feature: Grey-out menu entries that are not applicable Feature: FX Declaration Parsing Support Feature: FX Chooser Feature: Renderer now takes "translucent" keyword into account Fixed: Lighting Mode Renderer draws hidden lights Fixed: Loading map results in "Real Hard DarkRadiant Failure" exception Fixed: Crash when trying to set default mouse or keyboard bindings Fixed: Unit Tests intermittently get stuck on Github runner Fixed: xmlutil thread safety problems Fixed: Some materials aren't displayed correctly Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.3.0 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. Have fun mapping!

I am in map-learning, map-making trudgery sprinkled with real life (or vice versa). I don't imagine my first pubic map will compare with the great ones that have crossed the TDM threshold, but, it will be infinitely valuable to me to make one and provide one to all of you. I hope to get it into your hands "soon!" Clint

Want to hang out with fellow TDM enthusiasts? Want an answer to a question but don't want to wait for hours on the forum? Need a break from that marathon mapping session? Join our Discord The Dark Mod channel! Discord is a very easy-to-use hangout platform. You can easily chat, swap screenshots, or get feedback on a WIP. With around 35 members in the TDM channel, there are usually a couple active people on any time of the day. Adding screenshots is just drag and drop, and you can link directly to videos or images with automatic previews. It's extremely easy to use and very handy when you need some quick feedback on a project. You can download the free Discord app here: https://discordapp.com/download But you don't have to! You can access Discord directly from your browser by following this link: https://discord.gg/M96zPHD Hope to see you there!

I prefer the forum because it's more permanent. If I get an answer to a mapping question here I can still refer to it in six months or three years when whatever issue I had comes up again. On Discord it vanishes pretty quick.

It's just my opinion but that just doesn't happen in TDM spaces. I used to love the TDM discord - it was kind of quiet but it was mappers talking about mapping and players talking about playing. But the fact it is clearly a unmoderated space with basically no rules where itinerant weirdos can roll in and post transphobic slurs and then respond to mild pushback with a torrent of abuse in messages they then edit and delete, or post reams and reams of text in any channel that are completely off topic that all reads like it's been transcribed from the walls of a padded cell, or where the limited discussion about the game itself seems often to be about how it is bad (with some users posting over and over again about how they don't even play it), or as @Dragofer points out users who just want to relentlessly discourage and criticize anyone who is not a small handful of authors to the point they try and make issue not even with the work itself but the motives of doing the work, just makes the whole thing feel like a chore at this point to me. It also makes it feel kind of like this forum. Which means if you are going to have to be in one in order to feel like you contribute why not just settle in here. So yeah, I left.

Oh yeah, I remember the screenshots you posted for Vertigo; those were really good. Time can certainly get the better of us when it comes to mapping time and relearning DR. Best advice is to just keep Vertigo small, and you can use that experience as a springboard for making the larger Life of the Party FM. Thats how I went from A Good Neighbor to Written in Stone (and both of these still turned out wayyyy larger than their intended scope and co-authored by two other authors)

Sorry for the off topic but nice out of the box thinking thebigh. But IMO doing that light from behind effect, would be best done through the window material using a blend add stage. Or I would use a cheap blend light instead of a real parallel light. (just put the global material keyword 'blendLight' in the light material and do a blend add) Blend lights don't support specular and normal mapping, but for such effect I don't think that matters anyway, but I could be wrong. Plus you can project a texture with blend lights as well and so you could create a blend add (black&white) mask texture that would light the glass parts and not the wood parts of the window, where on real life, light wouldn't never show though.

I think the initial cost for mission setup/learning LEANS towards medium or large missions being released, than many smaller ones (of any quality level). Seems this is a mission drought - probably because some big-masterworks arn't quite finished yet, and nobody made any mini-missions (this YEAR?!)

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.

Yep. Both checked. Tried it on round door with only rotate and only translate as well as both (my goal). In all cases the door was visually there but NON solid and NON frobable. Guess some change in base code over past 4 years. No biggie as I did a work-around. But acouple of hours testing - was it the water against the door? no. Something screwy with the brush door? No, deleted recreated, converted to model, still NG. Created regular sliding and rotating doors in water and out, with round model replacing normal one. Still NG. Was there any test I missed? On with the mapping, tally forth once more into the breaches. Mwah ha ha ha

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

DarkRadiant 3.2.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Show entityDefs related to selected models in Model Chooser Feature: Support for rendering blend lights Feature: Implement sorting of Interaction Stages Feature: Recognise type of "set x on y" spawnargs Feature: OBJ files: loader supports usemtl keywords directly referencing material names (without .mtl file) Fixed: Material editor: additional preview object in textures/glass/ materials Fixed: Every attempt to load a texture will trigger a SIGSEGV signal caught: 11 Improvement: Update to wxWidgets 3.2.0 Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.2.0 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. Have fun mapping!

The Transaction is a small/medium sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter delivers the cryptic book, 'De Vermis Mysteriis' to a bookstore owner named Victor de Grenefeld. It is the fourth mission in the Thomas Porter series, continuing from where The Glenham Tower ended. The mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank BrokenArts, Melan and Ocn for playtesting and Bikerdude, BrokenArts and Ocn for voiceacting. An enormous thanks goes also to the fine people who created TDM and are still working hard, bringing it ever closer to perfection. Thanks also to the community for helping with my mapping efforts. Extra thanks to freesound.org -contributors who make excellent quality sound effects available for free. Trailer (thanks to ocn!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBdEsKoqWl4 Briefing: Ah, the town of Glenham. I never really thought I would be happy to see its shabby wooden miner dwellings, but after the nightmares of the Glenham Tower I'm happy to see any kind of civilization. During my return trip from the tower the ghostly mist veil transformed into an intense thunderstorm and heavy rain. My clothes are soaked and I'm dreadfully tired of the harsh tribulations of the past few days. My task for tonight is simple. All I have to do is to get the strange and incomprehensible book I obtained from the tower, 'De Vermis Mysteriis,' to the bookstore owner Victor de Grenefeld. And more importantly collect the hefty sum the bookstore owner promised to pay me. With that kind of sum I can sit back and relax for a while. I'd better stay in good terms with my customer and not steal from him. I have the hunch that de Grenefeld is a well connected man so staying on his good side might be beneficial for me in the future: maybe they'll need a skilled adventurer like me and I could turn legitimate. I could earn my keep and I wouldn't need to constantly hide from the city watch. At any rate, I've got it all planned out for the remainder of the night. I'll visit the bookstore, drop the book to de Grenefeld and collect my fee. After that I'd better hide in the basement of an abandoned building I've spotted near the town north gate and get some well deserved rest. I don't think the city watch would think a cloaked and armed person like me would be on honorable business in a stormy weather like this so it would be wise to avoid all confrontation with the guards. I do not need any misunderstadings with the city watch right now. The undead horrors in the Tower forced me to expend most of my tools and I desperately need more equipment if I intend to continue my budding adventuring career. I should get some extra gold for new gear and maybe a few holy water potions just in case. There is a Builder church nearby where I might be able to find some. I suspect those fanatics might have gold hidden there as well.. It is time to move in the town and get the things done quickly. Somehow I have a bad feeling about all this. It's probably nothing, probably I am just jumpy because of the horrors in the Tower and sleep deprivation. Tomorrow I'll sleep long, relax and eat well. UPDATED LINK: Use the ingame downloader to get it. Bikerdude was added in the author, I forgot him. No other chages. Could The Powers That Be make sure that this version ends up in the ingame downloader? Thanks! Known bugs: One betatester experienced an error ("ERROR: Failed to spawn player as 'atdm:player_thief'"), which drops the player back to main menu upon map load. If you experience this scenario, please turn EAX off in the options menu. That cleared the problem for the tester. Warning! There is ALWAYS someone who fails to use spoiler tags appropriately. I recommend you read this thread further only after playing the mission! Avoid spoilers.

There are two things I'd like to add here please. First is the return of two features that seem to have been removed from the Surface Inspector in recent DR updates: Could you bring back the Natural button? It was used to reset a surface to its default texture mapping, in case you fit an image then changed it back to a tiling texture and want to revert to the default mapping. Now you seemingly need to select each face and manually clear any offset / rotation then set the size back to 0.25. When selecting multiple faces, most fields (Shift, Rotation, Scale) become grayed out. Old behavior allowed you to input a value which would be overridden on all selected faces. This was very useful as you could scale multiple faces at once regardless of texture. Is there a reason why this is no longer allowed? There's another little change I'd really love: When you right-click the 3D camera view to grab it and go in mouselook, can we have an option to make the WASD keys move the view? Normally those letters do other things which is fine, but while the camera is grabbed it would be great if they were overridden to act as the arrows. We're used to relying on them for walking and it's annoying to put your left hand on the arrows at the bottom-right of the keyboard to move the view.