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The diffuse maps blend as expected, but the bump maps just appear over the entire model regardless of the vertex colour. This looks terrible, especially when blending between dissimilar surfaces (for example grass and a cobblestone path). You end up with cobblestone bump over the entire grass area as well as the path.

I recently saw discussion about PBR materials being added to Doom3BFG with folks also talking about it on Discord. One of the things I always wanted from PBR is proper reflections, especially in a way that works on all FM's new and old without requiring changes (eg: new light entities). Lack of proper reflections is one of the biggest limitations we still have, leaving us with mere boring specular reflections lacking any detail. While currently we can't have things like metallicity or per-pixel roughness, not even the ability to use the skybox or player camera feed as a reflection map, we do have a generic cubemap used only on windows and a few special textures. So the thought itched me: What if we could make every material with a specular map also blend a cubemap reflection? I've done Linux batch scripts for complex tasks before, so after lots of searching (and dealing with DOS era line terminations getting in the way) I managed to create a bash script that will do just that! This 50 line script will detect all materials with a specular map, inject a customized cubemap reflection, then repack everything. It scans every material in TDM thus it changes all map textures models and entities alike, everything gets modified to benefit from this. Modifications are NOT made to the official pk4 files, instead a single pk4 named Z-tdm_materials_cubemap.pk4 is generated to override the old defs, you can revert at any time simply by removing this one file. The cubemaps are subtly blended in without using extra vertex / fragment shaders which should have minimal performance impact, they also respect the bump map of the material and are deformed by it... each cubemap is masked by the specular map which gives it a close feel to PBR, materials without a specularity texture are considered rough and remain unchanged. Simply download the script and use it in your TDM folder, you'll need either Linux or a bash environment on Windows (untested): material_cubemaps.sh #!/bin/bash # Add cubemap reflections to all TheDarkMod materials containing specular maps # Use sub(/\r$/,"") to fix DOS line termination, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45772525/why-does-my-tool-output-overwrite-itself-and-how-do-i-fix-it # Unpack all materials mkdir "temp" for f in *.pk4; do unzip -o $f "materials/*" -d "temp" done mv "temp/materials" "temp/mtr" mkdir "temp/materials" cd "temp/mtr" # Inject cubemap code into all materials with specular maps, the reflection is masked by specular intensity # First ensure the file contains at least one definition that need to be modified to avoid needless repacking for f in *.mtr; do awk '{ sub(/\r$/,"") if($1 == "specularmap" && $2 != "_black" && $2 != "") exit !f }' "$f" if [ $? == 1 ]; then awk '{ sub(/\r$/,"") print $0 if($1 == "specularmap" && $2 != "_black" && $2 != "") { print "" print " // Cubemap reflection for specularity" print " {" print " maskcolor" print " map makealpha(" $2 ")" print " }" print " {" print " blend gl_dst_alpha, gl_one" print " maskalpha" print " cubeMap env/gen3" print " texgen reflect" print " }" } }' "$f" > "../materials/$f" fi done # Pack modified materials cd ".." zip -r "../Z-tdm_materials_cubemap.pk4" "materials" rm -r "../temp" At the moment I haven't done a full comparison and only tried it out on a map I'm working on: It's possible I might do my next TDM stream with this on which will allow others to see it better. From what I'm noticing it's pretty much perfect: Very subtle and doesn't disrupt visually, it does improve realism in a lot of cases as you move around and see the shine... given the texture is almost always masked and distorted by bump you don't feel the reflection is ugly and fake but it feels natural. Currently this is here as a mod for players that wish to use it... not gonna lie part of me is tempted to suggest it be considered for 2.11, it's definitely an improvement to having no reflections at all until a better method is found. Please try it out and share your own thoughts and images, below are a few screenshots I took during my first test to confirm it works as expected.

In TDM 2.08, the option for tdm_ambient_method was removed from the menu and it's set to 0 by default. That means the engine uses ambient lights, not textures to calculate this. You can safely remove the //TDM Ambient Method Related code from your materials, and everything will work the same. This should make your material files smaller and more readable

Obviously, the main way to contribute to TDM is to contribute work and expertise. FMs, tech improvements, every little helps... I've been thinking about whether, besides general TDM trailers, previews, FM briefings, wallpapers, promo images, and so on and so forth, we could drum up a little amount of extra publicity for TDM via more physically tangible, but financially permissible promotional materials. As I note in the title of this thread, how about using a few select paper models, each with a The Dark Mod theme (and the associated stylistics), as something of a fan keepsake new or old fans of our freeware game could build and keep ? I'm under no illussions it would be amazing or anything. However, as a bit of a feelie, done in free time as simple promotion by some members of what is essentially a hobbyist freeware dev team, I think it would be an aptly humble, but still original bit of extra promotion. Everyone expects wallpapers, screenshots, promo videos, and so on, but some papercraft promo could help add a little bit of different flair to that more conventional promotion we already have covered. You might think "Okay, a few people will build those paper models, but how effective could this promo be, anyway ?". Well, as much as I don't have any illussions... Imagine if someone puts a building from Bridgeport paper model on their desk, next to their computer, at their own apartment/house or at their dorm room, and someone eventually asks: "Nice ! Is that a real building ? What's that from ?". The owner, who also plays TDM in their free time and is already a fan, can say: "Well, it's from this and that stealth game with this and that style setting. Want to see it ?" Then he can show the curious guy or gal this site, a trailer or two, start up the game and show some gameplay from a mission or two, the training mission... Who knows, maybe he'll get that other person interested, maybe even hooked. And it all starts with a simple paper model of some building from the TDM world. Now, playing the game in front of them could achieve a similar result. Having a TDM wallpaper as the background on the screen, or being caught watching a trailer video or Let's Play video of TDM could achieve similar results too. In the end, though, those things are wholly digital. They're not as immediate and tangible in the same manner as a paper model can be. Yes, at the end of the day, it's just card paper with textured surfaces printed on one side, skillfully cut out, assembled and glued together. But it's still a physical object, giving you more of a 3D feel than just a 2D screen (and not necessitating any VR equipment for greater immersion, beyond the limitations of that on-screen imagery). Now, concerning what the paper models would encompass, how they'd be constructed and look, I think we have to be realistic about it: Most people can bother with a paper model of a simple enough building or object, but they won't be assembling detailed paper models of, e.g. a City Watch guard. Ergo, the TDM promotional paper models we could have should focus on two areas: 1.) architecture from the setting, primarily that of The City and other urban environments (clocktower, medieval townhouses, some castle or manor house, etc., you name it); 2.) gadgets and items carried by the player character thieves in the game (a paper model of a mine or even a flashbomb, a paper model of a potion bottle or of the small hooded lantern, etc.). The surface and details should be based on textures we assign to their models directly in the game. This is obvious in the case of the gadgets and items. In the case of buildings, they could either recreate an iconic building from some FM's scenery, or they could just as easily depict a generic building, but with the same combination of building textures as you see on buildings in TDM missions. The same stone textures on the outer walls, the typical late-medieval/early modern style windows, with their metal grills and glass panes, etc. Having the paper models designed and textured in such a way that they'd reflect TDM's predominantly night time setting (including dimly lit windows on buildings) would be a pretty cool move, IMHO. It would also be accurate to the atmosphere of the game. Distribution method... Could be available for download among the promo materials section on the site, either in .pdf format or some image format (.jpg or .png). Should I take a stab at designing some basic model concepts in my free time, if I'm ever bored ? Just as a test whether we could create TDM paper models in the first place. I think there is some merit to using paper models as an inexpensive and entirely ancilliary, but still useful promotional item. Especially for a freeware labour of love like this one, tirelessly being worked on for over 16 years. Sixteen years of this much patient fan devotion is nothing to sneeze at.

I may be a bit dumb. I found a few good CC0 models I'd like to convert to TDM. I should be able to make a low-poly version and bake materials, so everything else would be easy, right? Yeah, wrong. It's probably just some stupid mistake related to the way file paths are written in the material or model files, but I'm unable to find what it is. Thanks for any help. I managed to export the object as .ase and make it show up in DarkRadiant. I managed to assign it a built-in tiling texture. It works in game. However I'm completely stuck at creating and assigning a new material. I think I was already there once, I managed somehow to assign it a material that loaded the _ed texture in DarkRadiant, but it rendered as fully black in game. However, I was using the 2.08 beta and it may have just been a bug (switched back to 2.07 for the purpose of testing models). And because I'm possibly a moron, I broke it even more when trying to fix it and did not save the original state. Now I get the blue & black no material. DarkRadiant log says that it cannot find the material I guess: "[shaders] ShaderLibrary: definition not found: textures/darkmod/furniture/gothcab" This is what my models and textures directory structure looks like: The testmission/models/darkmod/furniture/ directory only contains the file GothicCabinet_01.ase. The testmission/textures/darkmod/furniture directory contains the material files and the textures: gothcab.mtr, gothcab.dds, gothcab_local.dds, gothcab_s.dds and gothcab_ed.jpg The *MATERIAL_LIST section of the GothicCabinet_01.ase file looks like this: *MATERIAL_LIST { *MATERIAL_COUNT 1 *MATERIAL 0 { *MATERIAL_NAME "textures\darkmod\furniture\gothcab" *MATERIAL_CLASS "Standard" *MATERIAL_AMBIENT 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 *MATERIAL_DIFFUSE 0.8000 0.8000 0.8000 1.0000 *MATERIAL_SPECULAR 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 *MATERIAL_SHINE 1.8090 *MATERIAL_SHINESTRENGTH 1.0000 *MATERIAL_TRANSPARENCY 0.0000 *MATERIAL_WIRESIZE 1.0000 *MATERIAL_SHADING Blinn *MATERIAL_XP_FALLOFF 0.0000 *MATERIAL_SELFILLUM 0.0000 *MATERIAL_FALLOFF In *MATERIAL_XP_TYPE Filter *MAP_DIFFUSE { *MAP_NAME "GothicCabinet_01" *MAP_CLASS "Bitmap" *MAP_SUBNO 1 *MAP_AMOUNT 1.0000 *BITMAP "textures\darkmod\furniture\gothcab" *MAP_TYPE Screen *UVW_U_OFFSET 0.0000 *UVW_V_OFFSET 0.0000 *UVW_U_TILING 1.0000 *UVW_V_TILING 1.0000 *UVW_ANGLE 0.0000 *UVW_BLUR 1.0000 *UVW_BLUR_OFFSET 0.0000 *UVW_NOISE_AMT 1.0000 *UVW_NOISE_SIZE 1.0000 *UVW_NOISE_LEVEL 1 *UVW_NOISE_PHASE 0.0000 *BITMAP_FILTER Pyramidal } } } And lastly the gothcab.mtr file contains the following: goth_cab { // Use one of the predefined surface types like stone, glass, wood stone // or use this: // surfaceType 15 // and make the first word in the description below your texture type, // like so: // description "foliage" (This is a grass texture) surftype15 description "Gothic cabinet texture" qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/furniture/gothcab_ed bumpmap textures/darkmod/furniture/gothcab_local diffusemap textures/darkmod/furniture/gothcab specularmap textures/darkmod/furniture/gothcab_s // This is the code required for frob highlighting this texture { if ( parm11 > 0 ) blend gl_dst_color, gl_one map _white.tga rgb 0.40 * parm11 } { if ( parm11 > 0 ) blend add map textures/darkmod/furniture/gothcab rgb 0.15 * parm11 } // The following two blocks are required for the ambient shading: // TDM Ambient Method Related { if (global5 == 1) blend add map textures/darkmod/furniture/gothcab scale 1, 1 red global2 green global3 blue global4 } }

This tutorial will cover the basics of preparing good textures for your custom materials. Youll get to know how individual textures work in TDM, and how to make them react to light in consistent, controllable way. Ill be using simple opaque materials for most examples. Once you develop decent basic workflow, it's easier to work with transparencies, glow, cubemaps, and other more complex materials. Part 0: Basic premise TDM engine (idTech 4) uses non-PBR workflow. This means that there isn't one correct way of making textures for your materials, they won't be physically correct. In pre-PBR games you have to make materials in relation to your lighting model, and TDM/idTech 4 is no exception here. That said, I think you can have relative flexibility here. As long as you don't use extreme values for your lights, you should be able to use the same materials in daytime and nighttime scenarios. Since the whole thing is a bit relative, it might be a bit overwhelming to figure out a starting point for your workflow. I found its useful to keep in mind a few ground rules (and this will be more important during in-engine tests): 1. You need an "average" light value for to establish a frame of reference. 2. Materials have to look correct with default game brightness and gamma settings. Brightness is 1, Gamma is 1.2. 3. Materials have to look correct without any post processing enabled, and they have to look good with default post processing on too. Burned highlights are acceptable for post processing, if the material looks as intended. Keep last two points in mind as you create textures and test them in the engine. First point requires some experiments to see how TDM surfaces, light gem, and AI react to lights. What I found out, is that you can easily use grey (RGB 128, 128, 128) light as a kind of "photo studio light" to ensure that your textures behave correctly in the engine and have proper colors. One thing you might want to keep in mind as well is falloff textures. My favorite multi-purpose light texture is falloff_exp2, as it seems close to inverse square method of calculating light falloff in other engines. I use it for most light sources, and it seems very good for tests. General workflow suggestion I prefer using Gimp and having each texture saved as .xcf file. I don't have to merge any layers, as Gimp uses "copy visible" option while exporting the result to .tga. Gimp will also remember the path and the filename after exporting, so, if I change something and want to export the updated texture, all I need is to use the Export shortcut (Ctrl+E), and update the textures in the engine with reloadimages command. You'll want to have these files open and available for edition and export simultaneously. That's because all images influence each other, and contribute to the overall look of a surface: Diffuse affects brightness, contrast, saturation, but also specularity and bloom highlights in post processing. Specular map affects contrast and can emphasize darker areas of the image, even if you don't see a light reflected. It also affects the look and strength of a normalmap. Normal map affects how specularity works on a surface, it also influences darker areas of the diffuse. Test environment map 1. In DarkRadiant, create an empty cubic room that youll texture with your material. Dimensions depend mostly on assumed texture scale. Typically, I use 2048 textures that will be scaled down 8 times (x 0.125), so one tile will occupy in-game space of 256 by 256 units. Since I want to check whether my material tiles properly, I often use a 512 x 512 x 512 cube. 2. Place a light in the middle of the room. If your room is a 512 cube, make the radius 512 as well. This way your light will hit the wall in the middle of its falloff. If you want to use more realistic falloff, use light texture falloff_exp2. Set color to RGB 128, 128, 128. 3. You dont want the light to decay into complete darkness, thats why you need an ambient_world light. Place another light in the same room, make the radius long enough so it encompasses the whole room. Make it an ambient light (properties -> Classname -> Lights -> atdm:ambient_world; light properties -> light texture -> ambientlightnfo). Set the color to something like RGB 8, 8, 8. 4. Apply your material on room walls, place PlayerStart inside, and save your map. Run TDM, compile and run your map. Now you have set up environment for testing materials. A test map with example wall material applied. Next part will cover diffuse textures, why its important to manage their color range, and how to do it in consistent manner.

Not so long ago I found what could make a pretty good profile picture and decided to try it out on these new forums. But I couldn't find a button anywhere that would let me change it. I asked on Discord and it seems Spooks also couldn't find anything anywhere. So I logged into an old alternative account and, lo and behold, that account has a button. This is on the first screen I get when I: 1) click on my account name in the top-right of the browser -> 2) click on 'profile'. Compared to my actual account: Are you also missing this button on your account? It'd be very much appreciated if that functionality could be restored to any of the affected accounts.

As per Duzenko's request here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19650-glsl-custom-shaders-a-mapper-wanted/page-2?do=findComment&comment=427749 Currently we can't use bloom with lights as efficiently as in other engines. Blend add mode, along with emissive texture does not allow the light to be bigger than actual bounds of a model, even with high bloom intensity settings. Example: Now in other non-PBR engines like UDK, you have Emissive slot in your material definition, and you can use that texture with multiply operation to achieve this effect: In TDM, you have to fake this effect with transparent particle, which takes more time to make, adds resources and needs more processing power. It would be great to have this effect only through post processing, as in image above.

Hi, I need to know what the code is to use Spoiler Tags. I am using my tablet and I don't have the options to use anything, like spoiler tags, quote tags, text changes etc. Thanks

I'm currently making a custom button, in the style of the one we see in "the other game", but I've hit a snag. I want to provide the option of using a skin to give the button a label (e.g. floor number for a lift). The metal housing and the button are in one texture, with one material, so it seemed logical to create a plane over the button with the material textures/common/nodraw. I've already made a few skin files so I know how they work. My intention was to allow the nodraw material to be replaced, but when I try that I can't see the replacement. In DR the plane is solid white, and in game it's invisible. I could only get the skin to work when the default material was a conventional one (e.g. a brick wall), which defeats the purpose - I'd like the button to be blank by default, and I don't want the user replacing the entire button texture because it's 1024 x 512. Can a plane be genuinely unrendered unless a skin changes its material?

Hi guys, through the "cheats" topic I got the idea, that it would be quite useful, if there were tags for missions (the post was about removing the killing restriction in some missions to suit the prefered play style). I don't know how easy or difficult this is, but with them, it would be quite convenient to pick missions with playstyles, environment, etc one does want to use. This could also be expanded to other mission properties. I remember a discussion about climbable drains, handles on doors, that cannot be picked and other things the map author chooses for himself. That way these things would be clearer and as I said before, it is easier to choose missions with playstyles that suit oneself. What do think?

Hi! While working on my map, I made a secret compartment to wall made of textures/darkmod/plaster/framed_03 I noticed that this texture, when on a door, will not frob-highlight at all. It is probably missing the material information. There may be other materials in tdm_plaster.mtr, which are missing frob highlighting. Is it by design or accident?