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Above 3 items are released now, on the "Barks" thread: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21740-english-subtitles-for-ai-barks/&do=findComment&comment=483331

At some point I thought I might kill someone, but writing down my steps let me narrow down the problems. Here's what I did, please correct me if I should do something in more efficient way: 3dsmax to TDM mesh export workflow 1. Make your mesh, UVs, textures, etc. 2. Use Collapse all option, then Convert to Editable Mesh (important!). 3. In 3dsmax, you need to export the mesh from a completely clean scene to get a clean model definition in ASE file. You need to have only one material library slot with your diffuse texture, which you will apply to the mesh. You can save your scene with your models and use New/Reset options to clear everything in the scene and material library, and then import the model from the saved scene. Remember – no scene materials. Use lower caps for everything, and no spaces. I'm assuming you have your own mod (FM) path set up correctly, so export the mesh to fms/yourfmname/models/yourfmname/meshname.ASE. This way you'll have it in the model browser in folder with the name of your fm. 4. My textures have the same name as my mesh, but I guess this isn't necessary? Put mesh textures in the proper folder, i.e. fms/yourfmname/textures/yourfmname/models 5. Create a material definition file in your materials folder. It doesn't have to be the mesh name, and it can contain multiple definitions. Start your material with: textures/yourfmname/models/yourmeshname Then add diffuse, specular and normal definitions with proper names of your textures (without extensions). 6. Edit the ASE file in the notepad. Look for *MATERIAL_NAME in MATERIAL 0. Insert the material path between the quotes, so it reads: *MATERIAL_NAME "textures/yourfmname/models/yourmeshname" 7. Go to the *MAP_DIFFUSE section. Paste the material path in the BITMAP section, but make it start with //base/ E.g. //base/textures/yourfmname/models/yourmeshname Now your ASE model will be visible both in model browser and ingame. Also, this is why people have material and mesh editors as part of the GUI, I spent almost two bloody evenings figuring this out on my own.

Instead of that, you could, in that time period, start learning your own missions and in doing so become more active on the forums, learning from others. It's also great to understand how things work in the engine, when you play. It might spoil some immersion though.. Or learn to build games with other engines, like Godot for example.

There is no SS3, how can they do a remake? And thank god they got rid of unity, that engine is total trash garbage on anything over 60 fps. Just spend 5 minutes on steam forums for Unity project games, and there's just thousands of people complaining about poor performance, stuttering etc.

I made a breakthrough. I wanted to have some variations of a chain that's fallen down onto a flat surface, but no matter what variables I tried it was very hard to stop the links flying apart due to the physics system being unable to do the calculations. It turned out to be because my links were very low poly, whereas the ones in the Youtube example videos were very high poly. In Blender each link is its own object, and the mesh is one of the things that it contains (it also contains materials, properties, modifiers etc). When an object is duplicated (Shift-D), its mesh is identical, but it's a new thing, so modifying one will have no effect on any others. That's like in DarkRadiant when some brushes are converted to a func_static, which is then duplicated. Although it looks the same to us, each mesh is unique in memory/the file system. In many ways that's safe because one object can be tweaked to suit a specific need, but it also makes it a chore to edit them all. In DarkRadiant we can have multiple entities using the same model, which is better for memory, editing and possibly performance. Blender also allows objects to use the exact same mesh: duplicate using Alt-D instead of Shift-D or select an existing object and choose another mesh (https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/editors/properties_editor.html#main-view) With all links using the same mesh, it's much simpler to use high poly links when running the physics calculations, and then replace them with a low poly links before exporting. Screenshot of the collapsed models: The two long ones were the best I could manage before learning how to share one mesh among all links. The three compact ones were only possible using the new method. These all have simplified collision models. For each of these collapsed chains, there's a variant where one of the links at the end is broken, and the skins file has been updated to include them all. Updated download link: http://www.mediafire.com/file/jlkp94ok3ac3rr8/Chain3_RS.zip I'm getting concerned about the folder structure. There are now 26 files in the 'dungeon' directory. Also, something I worked on today: This was also only possible by being able to make switch all links from high poly to low poly.

Made 2.09b the default version. I hope at least a few people have installed and played it I'll finish the release process tomorrow (tags, source, pdb, etc.)

@Dragofer, I'm wondering what template tags to give to this page, besides the usual "Editing". I'm tempted to add "Physics", but are force fields really considered part of the physics engine?

Probably the .script file that's needed, but unfortunately can't be included with a prefab. Maybe there's a comment somewhere in the prefab (or in the wiki or forums) that says what script it needs and where to find it. (The similar combination setup I used earlier doesn't involve "slot", so clearly uses a different script that I what I have.)

Since it already has been mentioned in the forums, I'd like to announce a small project of mine. A few weeks ago I was playing Legend of Grimrock and it struck me that their level design is extremely simple and modular, and yet, the player can spend quite a lot of time in the game. And it looks pretty, too! So I wondered if it wouldn't be possible to create a modern "Dungeon Crawler" (solve puzzles, fight monsters, collect loot, progress your character, upgrade your equipment) type of game inside the TDM engine. The engine already supports a lot of things one needs for this, and the overal structure and assets work, too. And with prefabs, one might get the level layout done quickly. However, building a few test prefabs in DR is easy, but creating a full mission out of them is quite painful. Not only needs it a lot of planning, but you can also spend a lot of time "upgrading" things later on. For instance if you later want to add a grime decal to the walls, you have to revisit the entire map. Even worse is if you find out later that your block size must be bigger or smaller. So the idea was born to create a sort of framework that can assemble missions from prefabs. Preferable while getting the description of the mission from a text file. So far, this has been a lot easier than I thought. Here is what I got working so far: Overview: You can describe your mission in a (Unicode) text file. This contains overall options, different locations (each location can have its own ambient light, music,name, fog), and the connections between the locations. Each location can have multiple "floor levels", these are stacked on top of each other. The config file also specifies which symbol means "use this prefab". It is also possible to specify links (per location), which means you can say "this lever with the symbol A opens the door with the symbol D". The framework reads the prefabs, and then positiones them in the map. It also glues all the locations together, adds location_info entities, a player start, an exit, and an objective to reach the exit. The resulting map is then enhanced with script objects (all nec. assets are bundled together), and automatically dmapped via TDM. Everything then is packaged together into a working .PK4 file. My demo map takes about 20 seconds, where 15 are dmap. In addition to the "basic" stuff I also managed to get a few things working, like a pressure plate, portcullies, and also made some puzzles. Oh, and per location fog (fading from location to location). Different difficulty levels are also supported, one can specify "this prefab appears only on easy" etc. You can find more info and screenshots and demo here: http://bloodgate.com/swift/ There is also a developer diary where I will be posting interesting entries from time to time. Here is an DR shot of a sample level, consisting of small modular prefabs and one large (the large hall on the lower left): The next steps will be to add more randomness (either static at map generation, or at runtime, so the map is slightly different each time you replay it). Also, while it is already possible to "overlay" prefabs (e.g. "for this location, look first here before falling back to the default"), it is not yet possible to "reskin" prefabs. This would be something which is impossible in DR (you cannot really reskin worldspawn brushes, unless you live with the fact that it is all manual For now I'm quite excited!

Nice work! I've gone ahead and setup the files in the structure TDM needs for game assets, dubbing the model "statue_eve". I've attached the file as a .pk4, which is a renamed .zip. You can simply place the .pk4 into your TDM install, then to look at it ingame start TDM, open the console with ctrl + alt + tilde (button left of 1) and enter: map test It looks like there are still some issues: ideally, each .ase model would contain both the visual mesh and a lower poly shadowmesh. The visual mesh should have a material called tdm_statue_eve while the shadowmesh should have a material called textures/common/shadow. it'd be good if the shadowmesh became less detailed with distance, too. No need for a 2k shadowmesh at a long distance, imo. an extra very low detail mesh would be great, wouldnt need to cast shadows anymore, or just a very crude shadowmesh. the main model is in models/darkmod/decorative/statues, the LOD stages are in models/darkmod/misc/lod/... for the texture files: the texture doesn't show up properly yet, so it'd be good if you could check that you've exported the files as described below: statue_eve_d.dds: the diffusemap (corresponds to your colourmaps, I believe), exported as DDS with DXT1 compression. Found in the dds/... folder. statue_eve_n.tga: the normalmap, exported as TGA without RLE compression. Found in the models/darkmod/props/textures folder statue_eve_s.dds: the specularmap, I believe with DXT1 compression. Found in the dds/... folder. statue_eve_ed.jpg: the editor image, should be a low-res version of the diffusemap i.e. 512x512. Found in the models/darkmod/props/textures folder. This wiki page may be interesting for further reference if needed.

Thank you for a great puzzle fm! I'm having real trouble with the TDM v 2.10-64bit on Linux Mint 21.1 Link to the guide supplied by V-Man339 https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/15844-fan-mission-the-gatehouse-by-bikerdude-goldchocobo-updated-02112014/page/7/#comment-429405

The steps for non MD5 models are relatively simple: create a model and make sure it is all in a single layer (when exporting) be mindful of the scale diference between the 3d tool and the game, one way to see the scale needed, is to create a cube in DR export has obj and import in blender. make sure the model is made of triangles no quads (you can work in quads then triangulate at export) uvmap the model and make sure the uv's fall within the 0/1 window and don't overlap create a diffuse texture (colors only no shading) create a normal map create a specular map (you can put color on it) create or edit a .mtr material file and define your model material there. make sure the material name, for the model surfaces, in blender, is the name of the material you have created inside the .mtr file if you want to create, a shadow mesh or a collision mesh make sure the surfaces/models lay in the same layer as the main model (they overlap it) apply to each model the invisible "texture/common/collision" or "texture/common/shadow" material names depending on the model function you want (for collision models if making a physics enabled model a 'movable' in idtech 4 parlance, make sure the collision proxy has no more than 16 faces) export as a single .ASE or .LWO hope I didn't forget anything.

I agree. I'm copying this idea over to the https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21741-subtitles-possibilities-beyond-211/ thread. Related: I'll probably do some more experiments with the current TDM font & size, to understand max char count versus field width.

I'm trying to fix the warnings on my end, but remodelling the models is out of my league, so you're going to have to fix the stairs model on your end: "WARNING:ConvertLWOToModelSurfaces: model 'models/darkmod/architecture/stairs/set01_stairs.lwo' has 17/8108 nontriangular polygons. Make sure you triplet it down" Edit Also there's this model, which is probably a modelling issue as well: "WARNING:ConvertLWOToModelSurfaces: model 'models/darkmod/misc/clipmodels/pickaxe_cm.lwo' has bad or missing uv data" I still have hopes for script-hotfixing the following warnings: "WARNING:Couldn't load image: tdm_tongue [map entity: atdm_ai_townsfolk_female_1] [decl: atdm:ai_head_female02_base_brunette in def/tdm_ai_heads_springheel.def] [decl: female_head02 in def/tdm_ai_heads_springheel.def] [model: models/md5/chars/heads/npcs/female_head02.md5mesh] [decl: tdm_tongue in <implicit file>] [image: tdm_tongue]” (Edit: I hotfixed this issue and attached the hotfix in the tech support forums. The "tdm_tongue" shader should simply be renamed to "tdm_character_tongue".) “WARNING:Couldn't load image: models/darkmod/wood/boards/wood_brown_dull01 [map entity: func_static_53] [decl: old_plaster in skins/tdm_models_architecture_modules.skin] [decl: models/darkmod/wood/boards/wood_brown_dull01 in <implicit file>] [image: models/darkmod/wood/boards/wood_brown_dull01]" (Edit: I hotfixed this issue as well - see the tech support forums - but I think you should still go over this file, because there are a lot of other suspect textures in there as well.)

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.

Some years ago i succesfully downloaded the wiki with wget, for TDM dvd. I dont know if this method wikl work now. https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19998-tdm-collection-dvd/#comment-437887

I guess the best image-to-normal conversions I've seen here in the forums are via njob. I am curious about this AI thing though: https://github.com/HugoTini/DeepBump has to be installed into Blender as a plugin?