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There's a group of players who have meticulously tested and adjusted ghosting rules for The Dark Mod. Please see: Official Ghosting Rules: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148523 Ghost Rules Discussion: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487 Why alienate an established group of dedicated players?

An impossibly huge stone bridge that only makes sense in a Quasi-Medieval/Steampunk fusion world. (stone is a crappy bridge material) - It does exude that 'TDP' classic feel somehow; not a trait most TDM missions have. Poor FPS near many upper bridge sections, and a horrible TDM FREEZE!! bug (never seen in any other mission - including a few others that up crash at random), as well as numerous geometry holes in the map...Did I mention the many Free-Runner traps on roof sections? Quite well-thought out interiors (if kinda HUGE scaled), give this FM one of the old-school'iest play-feels I've done in a while; One to watch for a updated 1.1 version with the bugs fixed... Try it later, is my recommendation.

OK I think I've got to the bottom of this. I've created this forum thread (with bug report): https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22221-bug-drowning-ai-in-shallow-water/ I can apply a workaround, although it won't be perfect and the bug itself needs fixing in the engine. There are a few other things that need fixing so will put an update together soonish.

If any mappers have encountered weirdness with kill objectives not working with drowning AI, I think I've found out why. I don't think it would be a particularly difficult one to fix either. I've raised this bug report: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6323 Some context here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21837-fan-mission-the-lieutenant-2-high-expectations-by-frost_salamander-20230424/&do=findComment&comment=487316 I think this is a bug, but just raising here in case some people think otherwise.

I dom't use it, i found it here with the filter set to OpenSource. the TOS and PP isn't excluding for an OpenSource app, if they use ads mean that they also need to pay an server for this online service. OpenSource is not synonymous with free either, perhaps after the beta phase it is no longer free, so perhaps you can take advantage of the fact that it is still free to create a series of textures that can be used or search another one in Futuretools. AI generated textures and assets, by definition, don't have any copyright, so you can use them as you want. https://www.futuretools.io/?pricing-model=free|open-source&tags-n5zn=gaming

Hello TDM-ers. I am encountering an issue where textures seem to partially disappear. I tried searching the forums, but, I don't know what to search for. The missing textures are a worldspawn brush acting as a roof with {for now} flat iron texture. There are other worldspawn brushes right below to create an attic ceiling with roof framework board texture. These gaps appeared a few edits ago. I can't "undo" to get back before whatever edit did this. The gaps are only visible during play and are not visible during editing. Closing and reopening DR and TDM do not fix anything. Some of the brushes overlap in areas behind the play area but I have never seen an issue doing that. The attached image has the effect I am now seeing. Ideas on where to start debugging this? Very much appreciated. Clint

Slight necro... What would be useful is a global surface parameter that allows frob to stick to non-solid, invisible surfaces. Then it would be possible to define a material like this: textures/common/nodraw_frobable { description "used to make invisible, nonsolid brushes that nevertheless accepts frobs" qer_editorimage textures/common/nodraw_frobable.tga nonsolid noshadows allowfrob //new global surface param } Then it would be child's play to do all sorts of useful things like: * Make barred gates less irritating by painting the bars with it, so that you don't have to aim pixel-perfect at the visible geometry. Facing the gate, even looking between the bars, will do- and being non-solid you could still shoot projectiles through it. * Less messing about with atdm:target_set_frobable brushes which, let's face it, are finicky and often don't work right. If you want to block a frob, just make a func_static out of the new nodraw_frobable material and then just trigger the func_tastic to remove the frob block. * If you need a frobable shape for an object that differs significantly from its visible shape or collision surface, a frob_peer made of this would be perfect. Regular nodraw doesn't work, and the various clips are pretty gunky for this purpose.

Awesome! Post is up! https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22200-beta-testing-the-house-of-delisle/#comment-487365 Thanks!

Complaint From Players The player must pick up candles before extinguishing them, and then the player must remember to drop the candle. The player must drag a body before shouldering it (picking it up), and the player must remember to frob again to stop dragging the body. The player finds this annoying or easy to make mistakes. For players who ghost, some of them have the goal of returning objects back to their original positions. With the current "pick up, use item, and drop" system, the item might not return easily or at all to its original position. For example, a candlestick might bounce off its holder. (See player quotes at the bottom.) Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6316 Problems to Solve How can the "pick up" step be eliminated so that the player can directly use or interact with the item where it is in the game world? How can so much key pressing and mouse clicking be eliminated when the player wants to directly use an item? How can candles be extinguished and lanterns toggled off/on without first picking them up? How can bodies be shouldered without first dragging them? Solution Design Goals Make TDM easier for new players while also improving it for longtime players. Reduce tedious steps for common frob interactions. Make it intuitive so that menu settings are unnecessary. Do not introduce bugs or break the game. Terms frob -- the frob button action happens instantly. hold frob -- the frob button is held for 200ms before the action happens. (This can be changed via cvar: 200ms by default.) Proposed Solution Note: Some issues have been struckthrough to show changes since the patch has been updated. Change how frobbing works for bodies, candles, and lanterns. For bodies: Frob to shoulder (pick up) a body. Second frob to drop shouldered body, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Hold frob (key down) to start drag, continue to hold frob (key down) to drag body, and then release frob (key up) to stop dragging body. Also, a body can be dragged immediately by holding frob and moving the mouse. For candles/lanterns: Frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. Hold frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. For food: Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to eat food. For other items: No change. New cvar "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"200" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or extinguish. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Benefits Bodies: New players will have less to learn to get started moving knocked out guards. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players have played several missions before realizing that they could shoulder a body instead of dragging it long distances. Frob to shoulder body matches Thief, so longtime Thief players will find it familiar. Second frob drops a shouldered body. Players still have the ability to both shoulder and drag bodies. Compatible with the new auto-search bodies feature. Dragging feels more natural -- just grab, hold, and drop with a single button press. There is no longer the need to press the button twice. Also, it's no longer possible to walk away from a body while unintentionally dragging it. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Candles: New players will have less to learn to get started extinguishing candles. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players didn't know they could extinguish candles by picking them up and using them. Instead, they resorted to throwing them to extinguish them or hiding them. Hold frob to extinguish a candle feels like "pinching" it out. Once a candle is picked up, players still have the ability to manipulate and use them the same way they are used to in TDM v2.11 and earlier. For players who ghost and have the goal of putting objects back to their original positions, they'll have an easier time and not have to deal with candles popping off their holders when trying to place them back carefully. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Issues Bodies: Frob does not drop a shouldered body, so that might be unexpected for new players. This is also different than Thief where a second frob will drop a body. "Use Inv. Item" or "Drop Inv. Item" drops the body. This is the same as TDM v2.11 and earlier. This is the price to pay for being able to frob (open/close) doors while shouldering a body. Patch was updated to drop body on second frob, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Candles: Picking up a candle or lantern requires a slight delay, because the player must hold the frob button. The player might unintentionally extinguish a candle while moving it if they hold down frob. The player will need to learn that holding frob will extinguish the candle. The player can change the delay period via the "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar. Also, when the cvar is set to a delay of 0, the behavior matches TDM v2.11 and earlier, meaning the player would have to first "Frob/Interact" to pick up the candle and then press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish it. Some players might unintentionally extinguish a candle when they are trying to move it or pick it up. They need to make sure to hold frob to initiate moving the candle. When a candle is unlit, it will highlight but do nothing on frob. That might confuse players. However, the player will likely learn after extinguishing several candles that an unlit candle still highlights. It makes sense that an already-extinguished candle cannot be extinguished on frob. The official "Training Mission" might need to have its instructions updated to correctly guide the player through candle manipulation training. Updating the training mission to include the hold frob to extinguish would probably be helpful. Similar Solutions In Fallout 4, frob uses an item and long-press frob picks it up. Goldwell's mission, "Accountant 2: New In Town", has candles that extinguish on frob without the need of picking them up first. Snatcher's TDM Modpack includes a "Blow / Ignite" item that allows the player to blow out candles Wesp5's Unofficial Patch provides a way to directly extinguish movable candles by frobbing. Demonstration Videos Note: The last two videos don't quite demonstrate the latest patch anymore. But the gist is the same. This feature proposal is best experienced in game, but some demonstration videos are better than nothing. The following videos show either a clear improvement or that the player is not slowed down with the change in controls. For example, "long-press" sounds long, but it really isn't. Video: Body Shouldering and Dragging The purpose of this video is to show that frob to shoulder a body is fast and long-press frob to drag a body is fast enough and accurate. Video: Long-Press Frob to Pick Up Candle The purpose of this video is to show how the long-press frob to pick up a candle isn't really much slower than regular frob. Video: Frob to Extinguish The purpose of this video -- if a bit contrived -- is to show the efficiency and precision of this proposed feature. The task in the video was for the player to as quickly and accurately as possible extinguish candles and put them back in their original positions. On the left, TDM v2.11 is shown. The player has to highlight each candle, press "Frob/Interact" to pick up, press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish, make sure the candle is back in place, and finally press "Frob/Interact" to drop the candle. The result shows mistakes and candles getting misplaced. On the right, the proposed feature is shown. The player frobs to extinguish the candles. The result shows no mistakes and candles are kept in their original positions. Special Thanks @Wellingtoncrab was instrumental in improving this feature during its early stages. We had many discussions covering varying scenarios, pros, and cons, and how it would affect the gameplay and player experience. Originally, I had a completely different solution that added a special "use modifier" keybinding. He suggested the frob to use and long-press frob to pick up mechanics. I coded it up, gave it a try, and found it to be too good. Without his feedback and patience, this feature wouldn't be as good as it is. Thank you, @Wellingtoncrab! And, of note, @Wellingtoncrab hasn't been able to try it in game yet, because I'm using Linux and can't compile a Windows build for him. So, if this feature isn't good, that's my fault. Code Patch I'll post the code patch in another post below this one so that folks who compile TDM themselves can give this proposal a try in game. And, if you do, I look forward to your feedback! Player Complaints TTLG (2023-01-10) Player 1: TDM Forums (2021-03-13) Player 2: Player 3: TDM Forums (2023-06-17) Player 4: TDM Discord (2021-05-18) Player 5: TDM Discord (2023-02-14) Player 6: Player 7: Player 8:

A "Style Guide" for how I have been doing the bark captioning has been percolating on my desktop for some time. In order to move it along, I have split it into 2 parts, and the first part is now available as a Word doc here: Subtitle Style Guide - Part 1 Part 2, the remainder, with more supplementary material, hopefully will be available around year's end.

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

Wasn't TDM moving away from ARB to GLSL? Actually I think it was but the transition was incomplete so we're still using the former. Wonder what it would be best to do this under today, seems like the later is ideal if it's supported by both post-process as well as material shaders.

I should keep this in mind, though note that a custom shader can only be done into the base game: It requires editing the engine and adding this to the post-process phase. The technique I'm using for testing is a custom variable to test custom shaders, it even relies on a fake material mapped to the screen. At the moment I'm stuck on this project, especially as I have little to no experience with shaders... I only shared it in hopes someone else can make use of it. For proper quality this should be done with a Gaussian Blur or Fast Gaussian filter, which the underwater view should also be switched to at that point. Do we have one compatible with the shaders we're using? Maybe Doom3BFG already did something we can use and we could snatch it from there?

Block out with FREEDOM and EASE using this "as license free as it gets" TDM prototyping material pack (Release) Watch even the most basic blockout come to life in vibrant orange! How it works: Drop the ULTRA SLIM 1.3 mb .pk4 into your project's directory In DR a new folder "protoype" will appear in the "common" textures sub directory in the media browser Don't know where to start? When simply sketching out ideas "Proto" is a perfect for getting down rough shapes and will handle 90% of prototyping needs (and is a lovely shade of orange) Need to prototype some SUPER ADVANCED GAMEPLAY? A spot of tile floor here, a beam for a rope arrow there? No problem! There are (hopefully) patterns for EVERY surface type in the game When it comes to the grid YOU are in CONTROL. You can manipulate the resolution of the grid using the default texture scale you have selected in the Surface Inspector. At a scale of 1.0 the overall pattern will repeat every 256 units with subdivisions at 128, 32, 16 and 8 units. At a scale of .5 the pattern will repeat every 128 units with subdivisions at 64, 16, 8 and 4 units. And so on. OLD FRIENDS return with two CLASSIC prototype textures completely reverse engineered from the ground up! All textures in this pack are released under CC0 license and I waive all rights to copyright that is within my power to do so. This is an initial release so any feedback on improving the tool is appreciated!

And finished. And rated. Great mission. The only "bug" apart from 2 or 3 places I got stuck was some shine through material, at player position 4977.99 -1834.08 -285.75 1.8 133.0 0.0 (dunno if you need all those). Some really minor issue, not sure if it's even worth fixing.

Seems to confirm: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=5718 does it happen in the latest dev build: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20824-public-access-to-development-versions/

Unfortunately many things in this engine are best done on the editor and then called through script, not created directly through script, one of them afaik is triggers. You normally create a trigger by creating a square brush on the editor manually, and give it the trigger_hurt material, so the size and shape comes from that brush, it also creates the physics (a clip model) automatically, then just need to use the script function, entity ent = sys.FindEntity("entity_name"); To get it and use it in the script to do whatever you want. Creating a clip model from script, is probably possible, thou I never did it, so I don't know how... thou I do know how to do it through c++. But I don't think there's any equivalent script functions exposed to the script system, if I'm mistaken please anyone correct me. Perhaps something to recommend in the TDM roadmap?

The diffuse maps works as expected, but the shader just ignores vertexColor (and inverseVertexColor) for the bump maps and they still get applied across the whole model. For example: in this material, the grass bump appears everywhere so my dirt path has a grass bump pattern visible in it, which does not look good. textures/darkmod/map_specific/grass4_dirt_01_blend { qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/nature/grass/grass4_ed surftype15 description "grass" { blend diffusemap map textures/darkmod/nature/grass/grass4 vertexColor } { blend bumpmap map textures/darkmod/nature/grass/grass4_local vertexColor } { blend diffusemap map textures/darkmod/nature/dirt/dry_earth_muddy inverseVertexColor } { blend bumpmap map textures/darkmod/nature/dirt/dry_earth_muddy_local inverseVertexColor } } I've tried other textures with the same result. Note that this shader was made using the built in material editor in DR 3.8.

All of sudden, as I am building my mission, I am getting an error message that boog_gotisch is missing. Neither part of that name exits in my skin.mtr,or map files. In DR if I search for that name I see is listed under textures/darkmod/boog_gotish and it says Defined in _autogenerated_by_darkradiant_.mtr and Description says the material is missing! Well, DUH. I have not seen the name and it does NOT, nor as I know never has existed in my mission or ANY of the files. Is this part of default Dark Mod files? Confused (as usual), BlackMagic

I just read@motorsep Discovered that you are able to create a brush, then select it and right click "create light". Now you have a light that ha the radius of the former brush. Just read it on discord and thought it may be of use for some people in the forums here too.

No problem btw there's no vertex blend texture, the vertex colors are baked in the mesh itself, meaning they should be exported in the .ase file itself. And yes the first "path" in a material is just a material name, it can be any unique identifier, the real textures are defined inside the material itself. materialname { //global space { // diffuse material stage blend diffusemap map path/to/the/real/texture.tga } } or materialname { //global space diffusemap path/to/the/real/texture.tga }

Cool, I think this should help a lot. First off, there is an alpha channel in my vertex-blend texture, so I'll remake that without it. The "blend diffusemap" was from the DrVertexBlend tutorial, but I'll try using "blend add" instead. I had mistakenly thought the first line of the material file was referencing the vertex-blend image, so I should just be giving the material a name there? OK, I'll fix that too. Thanks!

If you already know this ignore it but if you don't, then know that if's in materials stages turn on and off those stages, so you need to make sure you are setting parm11 to a valid value above zero in a script somewhere. But if removing those, didn't solved the problem, then the problem could be the vertex colors itself, are you sure the model has the correct vertex color info on it? Afaik the engine only supports grayscale vertex colors in the RGB format no alpha. Also instead of blend diffusemap keyword try the blend add (gl_src_one gl_dst_one) not sure if this matters but the basic example for vertex colors in this link uses it. I haven't used vertex blending for a very long time so all of this is rusty on my mind unfortunately. Also not sure what you mean with ""lawn_vertex_blend" is the vertex-blended DDS image file exported from Blender and is also referenced in the .ase file." but a material name like yours "textures/darkmod/map_specific/lawn_vertex_blend" shouldn't be a link to a real texture, in reality that is just a virtual path to a fake folder that DarkRadient uses to display in the media section of the editor. You can have a material with just a single word on its name and it will show in the media tab, just not inside a folder but in the global space. it is like this: virtual path/material name { material code } or material name { material code }

Thanks for the input, I have updated the material file based on that. It still isn't working, but it didn't make it worse anyway:)

I think you can leave out the if ( parm11 > 0 ) stuff, because that is for frob highlighting, but is not needed anymore in material files since 2.11 I don't think it will help though. I just wondered if the blend specularmap would work correctly if it's only defined for one of the two textures blended. Btw. I don't know much about it really. Hope somebody else can help you.