Search the Community

Mods can this moved again? @Acolytesix- can you make sure you post in the beta thread instead of this one please (this one is public, the beta thread is only for logged-in forum members): https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21822-beta-testing-high-expectations/

sure - I would only ask that you follow the thread to make sure you don't report stuff that has already been mentioned: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21822-beta-testing-high-expectations/

heh i was thinking the same though it might just have been a glitch when writing the names are pretty similar. But for correctness it is called the dark engine and the newer version that allows us to run these beauties on win10/11 is called newdark. newdark is kinda interresting as it just suddenly popped up on a french forum some time ago by an anonymous developer with the alias le corbeau who allegedly got his hands on the original source code and started updating it for modern OS. this was the original thread i believe -> https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140085 bikerdude was on that forum to when the patch hit i noticed hehe.

Okay, I had no idea, I have googled it up now and you are right, to my own surprise. Done, I´ve put some paragraphs which were previously not in spoiler tags into spoilers.

Thebigh is right. The pronunciation tripped me up too, but that is apparently how Leicester is pronounced. Also @TarhielI'm glad you are loving the FM but do you mind putting spoiler tags on your post please

had to build my own replacements as well due to prices being silly atm coupled with the fact that im disabled old and near my retirement days anyway so i probably wont be out there anymore jobbing to get income for the latest and greatest in PC components . You can get pretty far with some second hand materials though and im quite happy with how my current gaming PC has turned out ->. for mainboard i used the old but still gold asrock z97 extreme6, it was one of the first boards to support nvme (albeit with a few pitfalls like disabling one of the x16 pcie slots). It has thunderbolt 2 support (via addin card) and you can even add a wifi/bluetooth adapter via a mini pcie port (laptop models). the cpu is the devils canyon 4970k (refresh of the 4770k with higher clock speed), ram is kingstons 2400 mhz ddr3. For a gfx card i went with a gigabyte 1080 ti OC which was one of the less pricey models (it is white... the cooler felt like a piece of cardboard and it has no backplate) it runs quite fine though except it got pretty hot in demanding games so i outfitted it with the rajintek morpheus 2 core edition cooler and oh boy is that cooler something... downside it fills 4 pcie spaces and weighs a ton upside i can run anything at ultra in 4k at a playable framerate without turning it into a furnace (newer gets above 62 "). DLSS is a nogo though, you can enable it but the performance hit is rather drastic so dont!. AMD's fidelity fx can also be used and it runs a bit better with that but still raytracing was before this card so not recommended to enable. without this gripe it is actually a solid 4K card. the case i used is the lian li lancool 3, this one is a bit odd but also has some interresting stuff. The glass sidepanels are opened by pulling the alu front bars yep dont forget it or else the bottom mesh sidepanels are magnetically locked in place which is cool except when you figure out that 3 of the ssd mounting rackets are located on the right sidepanel so you have to use really thin and flexible wiring because else it would pop the panel open constantly (the magnets cant hold a lot). Also if you plan to use a big hunking PSU like my old corsair 1000W you loose two mounts for older 3.5 " harddrives (yep it is that big) so i went with a smaller 750W corsair cause i still have a few of the 3.5 " drives in use for storage. cpu cooler is the renowned artic freezer II 360 AIO top mounted ( do not mount AIO's on the bottom like some idiots do you break the cooler that way cause the fluid would newer hit the pump, if you have to mount it otherwise use the front intake and the hoses should be at the bottom of the case not the top! sadly many AIO's use pretty short hoses so that is not allways an option in that case go for a good air cooler instead like the noctua NH-D14 or the dark rock from be silent ). This little thingy puts up quite nicely with todays tasks win11 is also in reach since it does support TPM 2 (still have to get the add in card though) the cpu is not supported officially but it runs quite fine with it (yep i tested it, dont like win11's mac alike interface though so for now i stay on win10) need a small tweak to get the installer to accept it (registry key) but other than that no problem.

We will look at some of this stuff, but SPOILER tags, please!!!

This may make sense in that the performance impact of the volumetric effect can scale with how much of the effect is filling the screen. We shipped with a “performance mode” but had to setup the entities by hand to do it (so it’s not perfect). If you change the LOD detail settings to “Low” or “Lowest” this will disable certain lights, particles and such that can be very heavy to render. You can try these settings and see if you notice an improvement. If not sending us some pictures of heavy areas (with spoiler tags please) will be helpful with tuning these “performance modes” in subsequent patches. Thanks for playing!

Interesting, although I'm not sure what to make of that. One of my favorite games (The Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena) was published by Atari, and, they don't even seem to care to keep the activation servers running much. Or remove/change the copy protection, which doesn't work at all on Windows 11. I really hope that Nightdive delivers at the end of May... I'm not one of the shit storm crowd (it's absolutely horrible on the Steam forums...), but, 7 years of development is a long time, and delaying the release obviously has become a bit of a habit, to say the least.

(I apologize for the odd poll question layout. I wasn't able to add five yes-no questions, because polls are limited to three questions.) Hi everyone, I've recently been working on some patches for issues that I've read about from players on the TDM and TTLG forums — and Discord. My goal is to make it as easy as possible for players, especially new players and those who need usability/accessibility options, to find what they need in order to have a better TDM experience. I've already written the GUI and game engine code for these settings, which I've been using in my personal build. The reason for this poll and discussion is to both guide the finalization of my work and collect data to help inform the dev team. Which patches I submit depend on the outcome of this poll, discussion, and what the dev team agrees to accept. Once decided, I can coordinate with the dev team. I've attached screenshots of what the new settings menu would look like if all of the settings are accepted. Below, I have detailed each menu setting, so you can have an easier time understanding each one. Very important to keep in mind: None of these settings change TDM default behavior. They are all opt-in. If you are already happy with the behavior of 2.10, 2.11, etc. and these menu settings are accepted, nothing will change for you. Rename "Always Run" to "Run Mode" with options "None, Always, Toggle" After 2.11 was released, @i30817 requested that "toggle run" be added to the settings menu. Its cvar is already in TDM as "in_toggleRun" (same as Doom 3). I propose renaming the "Always Run" setting to "Run Mode" with options: "None", "Always", and "Toggle". None = in_alwaysRun 0; in_toggleRun 0 Always = in_alwaysRun 1; in_toggleRun 0 Toggle = in_alwaysRun 0; in_toggleRun 1 Show Blackjack Helper @Wellingtoncrab suggested that the new blackjack helper be added to the settings menu. Its cvar was added to 2.11 as "tdm_blackjack_indicate". More info: It's the new blackjack helper added to 2.11. When the game detects that the blackjack can be used for a successful hit or KO, the blackjack will rise slightly. I propose a "Yes/No" setting for this. Slider for "View: Head Bob" @ChronA requested a way to disable head bobbing, because a viewer watching him play was having severe motion sickness. Also, there was a bug in TDM that made setting the head bob in the console not stick after loading a saved game. (Even with 2.11, if a mission overrides the "tdm_player_thief.def" file and sets "pm_bobroll", "pm_bobpitch", "pm_bobup", and other cvars, it will override player preferences.) As far back as 2008, players have had trouble setting head bob. Another one from 2018. At the end of 2022, @Shadowex3 registered just to voice the need for a way to control head bob. I propose that a slider be added to adjust the amount of head bob. This would use a new "pm_headbob_mod" cvar with a value between 0.0 and 1.0 (default 1.0, no change). The "pm_headbob_mod" would be a multiplier for "pm_bobroll", "pm_bobpitch", and "pm_bobup". The advantage to this approach is that missions like Volta 2 and Hazard Pay would not need to adjust their "tdm_player_thief.def" files for head bob to work properly. And, the player can still adjust "pm_bobroll", "pm_bobpitch", and "pm_bobup" as they like. Slider for "View: Mantle Roll" This is similar to head bob for those who are sensitive to motion. Its cvar was added to 2.11 as "pm_mantle_roll_mod". A Thief player on Discord said, "2.11 will have a cvar to tune down the mantling animation at last." I propose that a slider be added for "pm_mantle_roll_mod". Auto-Search Bodies @Zaratul requested the "auto-search bodies" feature from Thief 1 & 2. Its cvar was added to 2.12 dev16783-10307 as "tdm_autosearch_bodies". I did a poll on the a Thief Discord server and roughly 20% of players there use the Thief auto-search bodies feature. I propose a menu setting for this, so that players coming from Thief 1 & 2 can easily find it.

Thanks for clarifying! Oh I forgot I spoke about this once, I do remember I thought about it before but forgot bringing it up. Indeed the base declarations would need to be redone... I presumed this would only be the internal ones thus everything would be backwards compatible. Getting them out of the player's entityDef was my main concern: That feels like a legacy limitation similar to the 60 FPS cap, a case of the way things were done back in the day but no longer need to be done now. The question in my mind is what do weapons do differently from other items that requires them to be declared so differently. On my idea to allow multiple sword types, your comment helped me realize this would already be possible in an easier way: Granted we only want the player to carry one weapon of a given type at a time, this can be done by changing the model / skin / stats of the same sword weapon and blackjack. So if you're holding the sword then frob a builder's hammer, the hand with the sword lowers itself out of view then the sword turns into a hammer then the hand goes back up without the camera noticing a change. There isn't any limitation in the engine to reskinning a weapon in realtime correct? There's only one problem here as far as I'm aware: The md5mesh for the first person view hands also contain the sword as part of the model. The sword part of the mesh would need to be deleted and only the hands kept, then the sword attached as a separate entity using the same lwo model as the longsword you see guards holding or on maps as a decoration.

There's another ability this would make possible which is another reason I wanted the suggestion up, always felt this would be amazing in terms of immersion and interacting with the world: If you look at Moveables/Weapons/atdm:moveable_* you'll see a lot of weapons the AI can wield. Wouldn't it be great if instead of just the longsword the player could use any of them and benefit from their different stats? Imagine picking up the hammer of a builder and using that to whack enemies, or the bent sword used by moors, not to mention the dagger I mean come on you're a thief you should be able to use a knife! We can in fact achieve this without needing a custom set of hands per weapon: We only need the existing hands and animations, the weapon just needs to be attached to the hand bone as a separate entity. Any sword you pick up would use the same hand mesh and animations, all that differs is its weapon model the sounds and functionally stats. For example the dagger would work just like the sword except you shouldn't be able to parry with it, stat wise it would have a faster attack rate for slightly less damage. Only issue I see is long and heavy weapons like the lance would require both hands and different animations; Unless someone feels like animating them those can remain off-limits to the player, we have a convenient excuse in that the player is a thief who isn't trained in using heavy cavalry stuff. For items a similar trick can be used to make them visual: Have a first person hand as its own md5mesh / md5anim and give it a few holding animations for different grips. Items would be attached to the hand bone with an offset: Potions, readable books, keys... all can be rendered in the hand by simply changing the model of the attached entity, if needed just using a different finger animation that matches the size of the object being gripped.

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

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.

Keep in mind also that mission size, and complexity have increased dramatically since the beginning. For a lot of veteran mappers, it can take over a year to get a map made and released. The last dozen missions have for the most part been pretty massive, with new textures, sounds, scripts, models etc. We seem to be long past the point of people loading up the tools, and banging out a mission in a few weeks that's very barebones. We still do see some of those, but I noticed in the beta mapper forums and on Discord, that mappers seem to make these maps, but don't release them, and instead use the knowledge gained to make something even better. Could just be bias on my part scrolling through the forums and discord server though.

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.

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.)

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

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.

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

@datiswous, made that correction fm_test.subs --> fm_conversations.subs @stgatilov, about srt naming and file location, would you be OK with the following edit? New/changed stuff in italics: srt command is followed by paths to a sound sample and its .srt file, typically with matching filenames. An .srt file is usually placed either with its sound file or in a "subtitles" folder. The .srt file format is described e.g. [1]. The file must be in engine-native encoding (internationalization is not supported yet anyway) and have no BOM mark. It contains a sequence of text messages to show during the sound sample, each with start and end timestamps within the sample's timeline. It is recommended to use common software to create .srt files for sound samples, instead of writing them manually. This way is more flexible but more complicated, and it is only necessary for long sounds, for instance sound sample of a briefing video. It's a simple enough standard that it can be shown as an short example, demonstrating that subtitle segments can have time gaps between them. And the example can show correct TDM usage, without requiring a trip off-site and picking through features that TDM doesn't support. Specifically, the example shows how to define two lines by direct entry, rather than using unsupported message location tags (X1, Y1, etc.). And skips other unavailable SRT font markups like italics, mentioned in the wikipedia description. The example would also show the TDM-specific path treatment. The example could be inserted before the sentence "It is recommended to use common software...."

But in general, the big problem with photos is that you either have to have ideal conditions when capturing them, or you have to do tons of editing, like removing shadows, getting them to tile, etc. And you'll still end up with some sensor noise, and they will be in one resolution only. Procedural generators like Substance, or other counterparts, have the advantage of being resolution-independent, and all the components can contribute to generating proper height map, which in turn is used as displacement map for automatically subdivided mesh, which you can bake normals from. All this while being tileable at all times.

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?

Ooookay, yeah that must help with depth processing. to have multiple light capture angles of the same object. I saw one video on SM4 where the guy was just using it like the old Crazybump. The tripod setup looks like it would do a hell of a lot of good. For me I'm starting to branch into making my own tiling textures again. As trimsheets and just full tiled materials are actually becoming much more feasible in modern engines. As a traditional old-gen modeler, its strange to me to see a detail mesh get four different tiling materials to build it's primary details. This certainly is interesting territory we're getting into for games. Glad we got your main issue figured out though and thanks for elaborating on the process!

DarkRadiant 3.8.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Support new frob-related material keywords Improvement: Mission selection list in Game setup is not alphabetically sorted Improvement: Better distinction between inherited and regular spawnargs Improvement: Silence sound shader button Improvement: Add Reload Definitions button to Model Chooser Fixed: Model Selector widgets are cut off and flicker constantly on Linux Fixed: DarkRadiant will not start without Dark Mod plugins Fixed: GenericEntityNode not calculating the direction correctly with "editor_rotatable" Fixed: RenderableArrow not drawing the tip correctly for arbitrary rotations Fixed: Light Inspector crashes on Linux Fixed: Models glitch out when filtering then showing them Fixed: Skin Editor: models not centered well in preview Fixed: "Copy Resource Path" includes top level folders Fixed: Skin Editor: internal test skins are shown if Material Editor was open previously Fixed: Changing Game/Project doesn't update loaded assets correctly Fixed: Model Chooser: initially hidden materials aren't revealed when enabling them Fixed: Choosing AI entity class 'atdm:townsfolk_commoner_update' causes crash Fixed: Sporadic assertion failure on shutdown due to LocalBitmapArtProvider destruction Fixed: Prefab Selector spams infinite error dialogs on Linux Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.8.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep using DarkRadiant to create Fan Missions - they are the main reason for me to keep going. Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Keep on mapping!