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A Critical Look at MCP - Raz Blog i'm dropping one post related to AI here..

Changelog of 2.14 development: dev17330-10984 * Tonemapping is now applied to game frame only, HUD and menu are not affected. Includes major & breaking changes in X-ray implementation (6606). * Now engine defines macros TDM_VERSION/TDM_REVISION/TDM_VERSION_FULL in game scripts and GUI. * Added all missing mipmaps in DDS textures (post). * Fixed crash from having many localization packs (6611). * Fixed comments parsing and automatic collision model for OBJ models (6610). * Ported some fixes from dhewm3 repo: save/load, snprintf, bad memset, some RenderSystem shutdown fixes. * Fixed number = 1 in inventory GUI on non-stackable items (thread). * More fixes in fonts (post). * Added cvar r_ssao_insubview which enables SSAO inside subviews. * Split oversized tdm_modelsXX.pk4 packages into more pieces. dev17332-10999 * Fixed Linux crash when material with custom shader is loaded during gameplay (6510). * Completely disabled old light estimate system (6546). * Now it is possible to use larger mesh models... at least static ones. * Ported some more fixes from dhewm3 repo: mostly warnings and uninitialized memory use.

TDM was never meant to be fully realistic, it would become impossibly difficult were that the case. None the less I still find myself wishing more could be done to make AI feel less like AI, especially when handling hostile encounters (usually the player). While like most aspects this could never be truly perfect, one area feels like it could be noticeably improved: Giving AI some form of long term memory, rather than just one alert level which goes back to zero after a short time. Here is the reason why I'm saying this: Walk inside your average heavily guarded mansion and step into the bright lights, making all the guards clearly see you and chase after you to attack. Once you've had enough fun repeating the process, hide somewhere and give everyone enough time to cool down. At the end of it all, hide somewhere in the shadows where you can barely be seen and let a guard walk past you: The guard will just say "is there something over there", at best waiting a few seconds and saying "probably just the shadows" before walking away... the same man that may have chased after you for 30 minutes and should by any logic know an intruder is still in the house, I mean come on Now I'm aware we have a basic persistence system: If I remember correctly an AI that's encountered the player and was alerted enough to draw their sword will have its acuity permanently increased by a slight amount. This however makes no noticeable difference as the AI behaves mostly the same. They'll keep telling fellow AI an intruder is in the area, this definitely helps but it's only a dialogue change not accompanied by noticeable modifications in behavior as you'd expect. Obviously massive modifications might be hard to do now without upsetting existing players since it would make everything harder. As such any such attempt would likely be an experiment and, if successful, a new menu option for the difficulty settings. Still I felt like suggesting my imagined solution just in case there's a point in considering tackling this. My idea: Replace the one-time bump in acuity with a paranoia level independent from the alert level... think of the existing alert system as short-term alert and the new one as long-term alert. The standard alert level of guards is slowly added to their paranoia level, thus the more time a guard spends being alert and the higher that alert is the more fear increases. Paranoia level may be allowed to decrease over time but at a far slower rate than the alert level: If an alert guard will typically take 3 minutes to fully calm down after losing track of the player, the paranoia level should take at least 30 if not 60 (real life) minutes to fully go down to minimum... even then it shouldn't drop below a certain degree after that point was reached, for instance just 50% of the maximum paranoia. This long-term fear level would have several effects on an AI as they patrol on their normal route... the ones I've thought about are: Increased acuity as they'll be more alert. This system would replace the existing simple bump we have in that regard, with a more fluid effect and also stronger effect. Increased playing of voices and idle animations: Due to being afraid the guard may talk to themselves or others a lot more frequently and babble excessively. Walking could be replaced by running for a while, even on path nodes that don't have the run flag. The AI would still patrol that same route just at a faster pace. As a map feature set by FM's: Some path nodes can be filtered by fear level, may already be possible with the simple system but I never tried it. An AI paranoid the player is still around but having resumed their normal patrol route may choose to patrol a more sensitive area it normally wasn't going to, which would be a fair way of punishing the player for being seen by having that AI start guarding a sensitive location from then on. If the paranoia level is allowed to slowly decrease, the guard may decide to go back on this decision... the player could then do something else for 15 minutes around the map till the guard abandons the paranoid patrol route. Here's an idea I like: AI randomly getting scared for no reason, thinking they see the player in every shadow even when there's nothing there. A scared guard normally walking on their patrol route would randomly become alert for no reason, typically when walking through a dark area, causing them to draw their sword or randomly run around for a second. The problem here is this effect would be random: Imagine you're hiding accordingly but a guard randomly freaks out and bumps into you, most players would find this unfair.

I think it's good to make sure it's only happening in 2.13 and not also in 2.12. If it also happens in 2.12 it's probably just an (lod related) mission bug that the missionmaker (bikerdude) has to fix. I already send your post info to him (he's not on the forums)

That is very surprising, idDebris imo was a very useful entity, not only for projectiles, thou this "flinder" class apart from the physics seems to be the same thing, thou I was unfamiliar with that word. Also probably idDebrie add code that couldn't be transferred to standalone TDM or something. I would love to give better help because I do think more destructibility for TDM objects would be cool, but unfortunately I did that stuff so long ago that I totally forgot how I disabled the physics. I went to look at the Doom 3 idDebris c++ code and saw nothing directly that says "disable physics" but I did saw something in Entity.cpp, a function called RunPhysics() that is also called by idDebrie class, and on there, I saw a particular entity flag, one called "fl.solidForTeam", that sounds like it controls physics for entities in the same "team" and that is probably what I used. So I imagine that there's a way to negate this flag through scripting? try writing a entity spawnarg "solidForTeam 0" on the flinder objects in the editor.

I did a bit of digging through the forum settings and I could not find any configuration for this. Looking at the underlying code, the comment count per page is hardcoded to 3. I could update the code, but I'm reluctant to do so as this would need to be re-applied after each update. That being said, it looks like we should start to brace for status updates being removed as Invision Forums v5 no longer supports status updates (we're still on v4.x): https://invisioncommunity.com/deprecation-tracker/status-updates-r19/ https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/480551-status-updates-have-been-removed-in-v5/

Thanks! I thought they were pretty fun. I haven't looked at those powder kegs in a long time, but it might be worth re making them someday. I remember them being fun to light with the flint and then tossing them on bad guys heads. @chumbucket91The powderkegs in volta 2 also use the flinder system but I think its a very different set up from the crates in volta 3. Might be useful in your search though.

Inn Business It's business, at an inn, over three nights. Development screenshots: Download: https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing Update 1.48 uploaded March 8th, 2014, one change: patches key rarely not being frobable in one of its possible spots Big thanks to my beta testers: Airship Ballet, Kyyrma and AluminumHaste! Development supporters of note: Sotha, Springheel and Obsttorte. Also thanks Sotha, for urinating in my mission. ;-) And thanks Kyyrma for the title screen! My appreciation to all forum/wiki contributors, without whom, this wouldn't exist. Thanks to positive commenters on my previous mission too, extra motivation helps! :-) Note this uses campaign features, what you use the first night, impacts subsequent nights. And to quote a tester, "...the level is maybe best experienced in more than one sitting". If you do pause between nights, please be sure to save, you can't begin partway through effectively. (If you accidentally start a night you already completed, just fail the kill objective to switch to another night.) If your frame rates are too low facing the cemetery, please reduce your "Object Details LOD" setting. It was designed with "AI Vision" set to "Forgiving", to be able to sneak through with minimal reactions, if you want more/less, adjust your settings accordingly. There are several random, conditional aspects, and ways of going about things, so others might have slightly different experiences. Post here if you discover hidden objectives for extra points! My condolences to loot completionists, I made a bit on the third night hard, you've got your challenge cut out for you! Speaking of which, there's a TDM bug that mission complete totals too high, here are the real amounts per night: 2026/970/202. Oh, there is something that in the U.S. would be rated PG, in case you play with kids in earshot. I hope you enjoy playing it, feel free to let me know you did, and I'm glad to respond to inquiries (like how stuff was done, nothing was scripted). (Note which night you are referring to if it's something specific.) (Please remember spoiler tags to not expose things meant to be discovered by playing.) Like so: [spoiler]secrets[/spoiler] Developed for TDM 2.01. PS: Thiefette, good news, no spiders! Springheel, if you find an optional objective you can skip...you might find it immersion breaking. Others, no undead! There are a couple other interactive critters though. :-) Edit note: Some posts below were from users of an unreleased version of TDM 2.02 which broke several things, they do not reflect regular game-play.

And some info can be found on this forum topics and wiki. Wiki article: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Parallax_mapping Topic: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22574-experimental-support-of-parallax-mapping-in-213/

Happy 15th Anniversary to The Dark Mod! As of October 17th. 2024, 15 years have passed since the TDM 1.0 release! In that time, we evolved to most or all of the features that players were asking for since the concept of TDM was first mooted in the TTLG forums in late 2004. Campaign Support, Soft Shadows, EFX Reverb, Multi-Core Rendering, Uncapped FPS, Ambient Occlusion, Subtitles, are among the roster of perennial requested things that have been brought to life by the development team in addition to the core Thief 1 \ 2 game-play items like the Lightgem, Rope Arrows, Swim-able water, lock-picking and ( of course ) advanced AI enemies. To commemorate this occasion, please join us in celebrating the Release of 5 missions for our 15th Anniversary Contest! . The Imperial Sword Bikerdude was encouraged to reclaim an abandoned version of his older mission and rework it into a new one. Now the formerly lost work is a glorious new experience with scripted dialog, special events, and a decayed imperial cityscape! . The Wizard’s Treasure Thebigh has made yet another bite-sized mission with a focus on quality game-play and challenge. The mission is extra impressive for the scope and visuals achieved since his decision to join the contest was fairly late compared to other entrants. . You Only Fly Thrice DeTeEff has continued his progression of high quality and complex releases. Another relative late comer to the contest, this mission is a tour-de-force of excellent game-play ideas and is quite handsome with excellent volumetric lighting and modular asset usage. . Volta 3: Gemcutter Kingsal has decided to release his long awaited Volta Series sequel to be included in the contest. DO NOT MISS THIS MISSION! . Pinnacle: A Test of Talents UncertainTitle and TwilitWitch decided to risk their first mission release to be included in the contest roster. The use of both modular assets and many custom models give this mission a familiar yet refreshing visual appeal. . Please join the celebration and vote in the forum threads for each respective mission based on their contest criteria ( Game-play, Story, Visuals ). . . The Dark Mod 2.13 “Developer Build” The Dark Mod 2.13 is still a few months away from release but we wanted to highlight the fact that a few more of the long requested changes have been added in the upcoming release! . Parallax Occlusion Mapping! In the above video, you can see a that TDM has finally incorporated the long requested effect. This wont be applied to all textures since there may be some problems with visual anomalies and performance but we are already preparing for a future where lots of textures use this new and more three dimensional surface effect. Better AI sight! While the AI have always been good at seeing the player due to the lightgem ( sometimes “too good” so we had to nerf their sight ), AI have had various challenges seeing things like bodies, missing objects, opened doors, weapons, blood, etc. This is because it is not practical to give all entities \ objects their own lightgem. Instead we have used very simple math to represent lights which don’t match shadow and light textures. In 2.13 a new sampling approach aims to improve this so that AI can better see ( or not see ) items and bodies in a way that better matches the actual lighting in the mission. Mission Search! There is now a search window where you can specify the mission author or title to help you find your preferred mission rather than scrolling through over 170 missions. You can also change how mission titles are rendered with either the original title or the title with prefix words like “A, The” moved to the end. Improved Training Mission! The Training Mission has been upgraded to include a Vine Arrow tutorial, a Slow Match tutorial, EFX Reverb, Volumetric Lights, and some performance optimizations! Translation Packs! Between TDM 1.06 and 2.0 Tels and the translating community started translating many missions but these translations required that the original mission be altered in a way that made it harder for the mission authors to revise. The meant that translation packs were in limbo being hosted by 3rd party sites \ forums along with their orphaned old missions. The translators over at the Darkfate forums came up with an solution by including not only the translation strings in the translation pack but also the altered map files, GUI defs, etc that had translation work done to them. This would leave the original mission untouched but allow translation packs to override some parts. We have gone through the old archive of these translations and have reworked them to work with the latest version of TDM (and the associated missions). Most of the translations are Russian ( due to the continued work of the Darkfate people ) but many of the early TDM missions also have German, Italian, French, etc translations too. Subtitles! Datiswous has been creating story subtitles for many of the existing missions in the TDM mission database. Most authors have incorporated these into their official releases, otherwise players can still add them to the FM folder. . Hidden Hands: Blood and Metal Campaign Just before the 15th anniversary entries were starting to arrive, JackFarmer released an enormous 5 mission campaign that continues his well regarded “Hidden Hands” series!

@JackFarmer Here some more screenshots of things I encountered that could be improved: See this post for the previous ones. I also noticed a lot of console errors including a bunch about incorrect efx range.

Thank you. If you want, you can also share your post in this music resource thread I started a while back. I think it would fit nicely.

Hidden Hands: The Lost Citadel ============================================================== Title: Hidden Hands: The Lost Citadel Filename : hhtlc.pk4 Authors: Jack Farmer with Amadeus & Joebarnin Date of release: 18.09.2020 Latest version: 5 (released June 2021) EFX: Yes ============================================================== Hidden Hands series: I - Initiation II - Vitalic Fever III - The Lost Citadel ============================================================== Available via the Dark Mod Mission Downloader (Version 4) ============================================================== Jack Farmer: Mapping & drafts Amadeus: Editing and revising of all texts for readables, narration and dialogues, testing of gameplay and gameplay mechanics, all alpha testing & performance optimization joebarnin: Beta testing lead, debugging and debugging reports Beta testers: Krilmar Joebarnin Cambridge Spy manzanita-crow Shadow Voice actors: New Horizon: The educated Builder & Brother Gilbert (Briefing video) Goldchocobo: The naive Builder, guard (A union of its own) Jedi_Wannabe: Two guards (Of monsters and master guards) AndrosTheOxen: Jonus, guard (A union of its own) Boy Lag: Guard (Evolution of the peasants) Malasdair: Narrator (Briefing video & in game comments) Special thanks to: - Springheel, Sotha, and Fidcal for the tutorials - VanishedOne, HMart, Destined, Grayman, Joebarnin, Dragofer, demagogue, AluminumHaste, STRUNK, Geep and ERH+ for patiently answering my questions and solving in-game issues - All voice actors & beta testers for their great support - All others not mentioned here who answered my questions in the Newbie thread or via PM Pilfered items: - Setup for the main menu animation originally developed by Goldwell for "Snowed Inn" - Portal sky with trees originally developed and arranged by Dragofer for "Down By The Riverside" - Selected cliff sections originally developed and arranged by Dragofer for "A Perilous Refuge" - The scary, red-eyed Builder ghosts that have been originally developed by Bienie for "Longhorn Lodge" - Floating boat set-up originally developed by Bikerdude for one of his missions Contributors from the Inventor's Guild: - STRUNK created a prefab (S.T.A.R.S) used for various puzzles and mechanical items, he also helped with models - Dragofer supplied the experimental func_mover entity (modified by STRUNK to fit the mission purposes) - Joebarnin provided the script alteration for the mechanical locks - Grayman adjusted the switch/door mechanics for all sliding doors and fixed several AI problems Additional ambient sounds by gigagooga All other new ambient tracks and sound effects produced and mixed by Jack Farmer Explosion sound taken from freesound.org produced by tommccann Drowning man sound taken from freesound.org produced by muses202 Engine room machine sound taken from freesound.org produced by Astounded Electric zap taken from freesound.org produced by Joel_Audio Briefing video by SirSmokeALot "Walk On Roses" (title screen reprise) RC Deickler - Drums & loops R. Recum - Keyboards gigagooga - Additional ambient outtakes This mission is dedicated to all past & present Dark Mod and Dark Radiant contributors - thank you for all of your hard work over the years. ============================================================= Listen to another crazy inventor and learn more about his sick brain! Marvel at the latest inventions from the Inventors Guild! Sneak through long forgotten ruins and face (yes. I know, once again) the unspeakable evil! Show the undead that the living are not to be trifled with! Solve puzzles the complexity of which would even melt the brains of Nobel Prize winners!

I might still have to add one for radio_static.ogg (the numbers). Edit: Are these the correct numbers? Edit 2: I think after finishing, this isn't important info for the mission, right? I'm still playing the mission, so I will post them after. Nice!

============================================================== Title: Hidden Hands: The Anomaly Filename : hhta.pk4 Author: Jack Farmer Date of release: 01.05.2021 (version: 1) - 08.05.2021 (version 2) 16.03.2022 (version 3) EFX: Yes Version 2 available via the DM mission downloader (see subsequent post below for changes) Mission does not run under 2.08 due to missing new core assets - please update to 2.09 ============================================================== Hidden Hands series: I - Initiation II - Vitalic Fever III - The Lost Citadel IV - The Anomaly ============================================================== Jack Farmer: mapping & drafts Amadeus: revision/editing of all texts for readables, narration and dialogues, design consultation ("The walls are ugly!"...and your were right! ) Joebarnin: consultation for a custom script enabling a crucial in-game event Dragofer: consultation for custom scripts and S/R events, extraction & prefab packaging of Sotha's robots, bug fixes Destined: consultation for custom scripts and...fixing JacK's wrong custom scripts! Very special thanks go out to Geep for updating the Wiki helping me to solve several GUI problems within -literally - seconds! Beta testers: Joebarnin (lead) ate0ate Zerg Rush wesp5 datiswous Voice actors (in order of appearance): Malasdair The Thief AndrosTheOxen Jonus New Horizon Desmond Pilfered items: - portal sky with trees originally developed and arranged by Dragofer for "Down By The Riverside" - fireflies originally developed by Bikerdude for "Alberic's Curse" - floating boat set up (this time used for a different..."object") originally developed by Bikerdude for one of his missions - robots originally developed by Sotha for "Ulysses: Genesis" - new electric door move sound based on one of Sotha's robot sounds - selected cave architecture originally developed by Johannes Burock taken from the abandoned WIP thread - waterdrops sound taken from freesound.org produced by nicstage - custom machine sound taken from freesound.org produced by deleted-user4401185 - forest at night taken from freesound.org produced by felix-blume - machine3 sound taken from freesound.org produced by lupalenzuela - tape-deck-startup taken from freesound.org produced by soundjoao - electric-zap-electricity taken from freesound.org produced by wakerone - static_stylophone_a taken from freesound.org produced by inspectorj - steady-machine-with-hum taken from freesound.org produced by craigsmith - radio_noise taken from freesound.org produced by inspectorj - chain-rustling taken from freesound.org produced by nathanmanaker - wind_turbin taken from freesound.org produced by dommygee - selected guitar_feedback taken from freesound.org originally produced by oymaldonado - stream-water-c taken from freesound.org produced by inspectorj - mic-feedback-fx-short-mid-2 taken from freesound.org produced by chimerical - megaphone-feedback taken from freesound.org produced by deleted-user-2104797 All other new fx sound created by Jack Farmer using a Korg M1 synth, kitchen equipment and his weird voice All new ambient tracks produced and mixed by Jack Farmer sometimes with additional ambient sound samples originally produced by gigagooga Briefing video by SirSmokeALot --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello taffers, the people over at TTLG forums have started a speedbuild game jam. 1st Thief Speedbuild Jam It's not a contest, and you have a tentative submission date of Dec 1, to get a mission built for T1-3 or TDM. Looks fun, and I'm going to participate too.

OBJECT NAMES MOD v1.6 This mod adds names to 99+% of all object players can "grab" in a mission, including custom items created by mappers. Naming is done on the fly as soon as a mission starts and it can take up to 20 seconds to complete in very large missions. The whole process is transparent to players and it shouldn't have any impact in performance. Review this whole topic for more details. Mind you! The mod on its own does nothing for players. The original idea was to simply add names to core objects to allow for future initiatives where item names might come in handy. Since there was little interest, this mod shall remain here in case anyone finds it useful for a project. You can nevertheless use this mod along with Core Essentials (which is included in the TDM Modpack). If you have both mods, the name of the item will be displayed onscreen when you grab it. This simply is one use-case and it doesn't reflect what the original intention was: to name core items to allow for other initiatives in the long run. No names no game, right? You can find the download at the bottom of this post (you must be logged to download it). Cheers! ---------- ORIGINAL POST ---------- Taffers, It's a shame moveables didn't get a spawnarg for a proper name back in the day. Names could have added personality to the beautifully crafted moveables and exploring the world would have been way more interesting: "ent_name" "Apple" "ent_name" "Bottle of Wine" "ent_name" "Medium Crate" ... Mappers, of course, would have made use of this simple but nifty feature in a myriad of interesting ways Adding a proper name when a new item is first introduced takes not time but we are now talking hundreds of nameless objects... Oh well, as the saying goes: it never is too late! (or is it). z_object_names_mod_v1.6.pk4

Look right above your post.

Oohhhh, the day has come! This old lurker releases another creation of his deranged mind...! What has he in store? Does it involve sunlight and pollen and hayfever? Will it involve strange towers and priests with bad breath? Naah, just some mediocre airship type of mission, aimed at the Anniversary mapping contest! I have a lengthy/humourly rant/lore for some of the building process for anyone interrested, in spoiler tags. According to DarkRadiant I have worked 570 hours on this, and that doesn't take into account all hours of coding and scripting. This feels like an insanely huge amount of mapping time for this small mission but I try not to judge myself. DarkRadiant says 570 so...I say thanks to all calm hours at the night shift at work where I could sit and script and write readables. And I also humbly bow myself to the scripting genuses that are on the forums. A special thanks to my girlfriend who (almost) always lets me talk about my projects. She has also written some of the readables and voiced some recordings in the mission. Thanks to Dragofer, Mirceakitsune and Melchior for much needed scripting help. Thanks to YouTube channels BGM President and Sound Effects where I've borrowed some music and sound effects. Thanks to my betatesters; nbohr1more, Bergante, datiswous, Wesp5, nightmare, Jaxa and Cambridge Spy. And a big thank you to the mod in general for still being alive and supportive! ########################################## MISSION RELATED STUFF ########################################## On an airship, heading for Flowerdale a lot of strange things can happen. As some people guzzle down liquor in the bar, some others skulk around in the shadows. Certain people cannot be trusted and there are even those that kill for a living. Somebody may or may not work for foreign powers. But everyone yearns for those shiny pennies. There are some strange things in the cargo, huge coffers that can hold bodies, alive and dead. This story may unfold in several different ways; Three characters can be chosen; Zacharias the thief, Oliver Mortimer, the assassin or Rupert Peabody, youngling of the Wizlas woodfolk. DOWNLOAD LINK https://drive.google.com/file/d/10w_SJSBAxxVFYTwPjJhIo48fEzvuTo1M/view?usp=sharing

Moved to this thread. There are lots of complaints about UE5 performance. Oblivion Remastered may be a worse example than usual (there is another title that did a UE5 on top of other engine approach, but I forgot what it is), but it's only the latest. Budget PC gamers have benefited from industry hardware/software stagnation (PS4 era games became trivial to run). We are still a far cry from the fast-paced 90s when your shiny new 3D accelerator could be completely obsolete within a year or two, but things are picking up a little. What we're learning is that we tend to need moar than 8 GB of VRAM, with 16 GB presumably having no issues given that current-gen consoles are locked in at 16 GB GDDR6 max. We can blame lazy developers for this if we are being uncharitable. Aside from that, you can't count on being able to do 4K or ray tracing (on low-end like 7600 XT 16 GB), but if you have little interest in newer games, that's probably fine. AMD is bringing some heat with several 16 GB options, but hasn't bothered with a 192-bit die, and won't be able to do some of the exotic memory configurations Nvidia can using 3 GB GDDR7 modules (GDDR6 is limited to 2 GB). Intel's 10-12 GB Battlemage cards are a no-show. AMD's 9060 XT 16 GB could be impacted by tariffs. We'll be lucky to see it under $350. I think next-gen could be more interesting with hopefully better market conditions, Nvidia using a new node (Blackwell 4nm = Lovelace 4nm), and all competitors using GDDR7, allowing 12 GB on 128-bit, 18 GB on 192-bit, etc. APUs are becoming a good option, giving you "unlimited VRAM" and decent performance. AMD only has Phoenix APUs on the desktop socket but might launch Strix Point by the end of the year. These should be generally sufficient for 1080p. Mobile-on-desktop soldered products are looking good and coming out long before the desktop APUs. AMD's Strix Halo is theoretically interesting, but in practice it's expensive and positioned more for AI than gaming. It just doesn't matter to the budget-conscious right now. If you don't care about the latest games, you're good to go. I've hardly played anything other than Thief and TDM lately. I do want to push TDM to higher resolutions though, and perhaps see ray tracing land in the engine in the future.

More insight on what I meant earlier with definitions being hard to attribute: Suppose you have a definition of the form... atdm:something { "a" "1" "b" "2" "c" "3" } I decide to reimplement it. I open a text editor to do so. Given its simplicity, I end up writing the exact same thing by hand since that's what makes the entity work. I can't prove or disprove that I didn't copy it since no one knows what I did on my machine. Even if I did, the result is the same anyway... would it even make a difference if I retyped it from memory? What I could do is change a few of the parameters so it's more original; Say a = 3, b = 2, c = 1. Or I remove c. Or I add d = 4. Or write them in reverse as c, b, a. What counts as good enough? There's no clear line that I can think of! Not unless it's a long definition with a lot of parameters, so it has a clear structure attributed to someone writing it... in which case one could just shuffle them, change a few values, add or remove some parameters, use original code comments and it can't be traced back via any specific elements. Other assets can be attributed as they have much more complexity and chances at being different. Like if I draw over an existing texture to change a few pixels, you can tell it's the same texture and I used large parts of it without making them myself. Of course if my texture was just a single color (1x1) I could post a copy and believably claim I made it myself and just happened to get the same one color, as it would be silly for anyone to copyright any value within the range 255x255x255 that's already been used by someone somewhere countless times.

"AI Speech Synthesis for FMs" by u/that1sluttycelebrity

idTech4 engine has used on Doom 3 already had a destructible entity system for the destructible barrels, was that removed? In Doom3 you can create debris entities and they become physics entities, never heard of this "flinder" stuff so I assume is a new TDM entity type. Don't know if this is useful for TDM, if not ignore, but who knows could give some hints. This was how I created a simple destructible wood barrel in Doom 3 engine. First I defined the broken debris peace's: (yes they are individual entities and models) entityDef debris_woodbarrel_1 { "spawnclass" "idDebris" "mins" "-3 -3 -3" "maxs" "3 3 3" "model" "models/maps/temple/mapobj/pipo broken/pipo_debri_1.lwo" //"skin" "skins/exp_barrel_red" "health" "0" // amount of damage projectile can take if damaged (0 means it can't be destroyed) "velocity" "1 1 450" // how fast the projectile leaves the gun (or distance if fuse is 0) "random_velocity" "1" "angular_velocity" "105 215 10" // how the projectile is rotating when it leaves the gun "thrust" "0" // the rate of acceleration (always in the direction of the projectiles model) "thrust_start" "0" // when to start accelerating "thrust_end" "0" // when to stop accelerating "linear_friction" "1.0" // "air" friction "angular_friction" "0.1" "contact_friction" "0.9" "bounce" "0.1" // how much speed a projectile retains when it bounces off of objects (coefficient of restitution). 0 means no bounce. "mass" "50" "gravity" "1066" // how much gravity affects the trajectory. gravity direction is same as the entity that fired it. "fuse" "10" // how long before the projectile is removed or self-detonates. Use 0 for beam weapons (velocity == distance). "detonate_on_fuse" "1" // whether projectile should detonate when it's fuse runs out "detonate_on_death" "0" // whether projectile should detonate when it's "killed" (health runs out) "detonate_on_world" "0" // whether projectile should detonate when it hits an obstacle "detonate_on_actor" "0" // whether projectile should detonate when it hits a character in the game "smoke_fly" "debristrail.prt" // particle effect while in the air "snd_bounce" "tray_impact" // parametric particles -- temp "model_detonate" "" "smoke_detonate" "" // particle effect when detonates "smoke_fuse" "" "smoke_bounce" "" } entityDef debris_woodbarrel_2 { ... } etc, then I define the main entity: entityDef moveable_woodbarrel { "editor_color" "0 .5 .8" "editor_mins" "-16 -16 0" "editor_maxs" "16 16 48" "editor_rotatable" "1" "editor_usage" "Moveable woodbarrel. Works just like a func_moveable. However the barrel" "editor_usage1" "has special handling to make it appear more round. This version also explodes when damaged enough." "editor_usage2" "Only add model, model_detonate or model_burn or health to override defaults" "editor_var burn" "number of seconds to burn before exploding." "editor_model model_damage" "model to leave as damaged base" "editor_model model_detonate" "ips model to switch to for explosion." "editor_model model_burn" "ips model to show when on fire." "editor_var def_debris" "add as many as you like, debris1, debris2, etc.. " "editor_var health" "how much health the barrel has, default is 5. If burn is set to 1, the health is effectively doubled so you have to kill it twice to get the explosion" "editor_var respawn" "if non zero the number of seconds to respawn after killed" "editor_var respawn_range" "no player in distance range to actually respawn - default 256" "editor_var respawn_again" "try again in seconds if player in range - default 10" "editor_var triggerTargets" "if set to 1 will trigger targets after being killed" "editor_mat mtr_lightExplode" "light shader to use for explosion" "editor_mat mtr_lightBurn" "light shader to use for burning" "spawnclass" "idExplodingBarrel" "density" "0.02" "friction" "0.2" "bouncyness" "0.4" "def_splash_damage" "damage_moverCrush" "ignore_player" "1" "model" "models/maps/temple/mapobj/pipo.lwo" "def_debris" "debris_woodbarrel_1" "def_debris1" "debris_woodbarrel_2" "def_debris2" "debris_woodbarrel_3" "def_debris3" "debris_woodbarrel_4" "def_debris4" "debris_woodbarrel_5" "def_debris5" "debris_woodbarrel_6" "def_debris6" "debris_woodbarrel_7" "def_debris7" "debris_woodbarrel_8" "def_debris8" "debris_woodbarrel_9" "health" "35" "snd_explode" "wood_barrel_breaking" "snd_bounce" "woodimpact" } This was the effect: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lsXwNssxp-QO3MZKOmUiBd1DWhd0V7HY/view?usp=sharing Hope this helps.

At long last there is also an accompanying Wiki article here: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Turret, complementing the info that was found in spawnarg tooltips and entity and prefab descriptions.