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At long last I am ready to call it good enough. The objectives complete and I'm worn out. So I need a couple volunteers who wanna try it out and give some feedback. Would be great to have each difficulty finished at least once by at least one person. Then tell me what you think. Did you get stuck? Did you find everything? Overall impressions, etc... I'm not planning on changing anything really, but will do a few small tweaks depending on feedback. I'd like to be done with the test round by Fri the Lucky 13th. How's that for a finish date? It's right under 10 MB and I can email it.

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.

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?

I'm aware of that research but I just think this is going to take a long time. I think we will be really lucky if we get variable focus by the time second generation headsets come around ~2024. My stance on things is that we'll be fortunate if the high end enthusiast market sustains itself until that time--I think variable focus will breach a certain threshold of comfort and immersion that will make the technology desireable as a pure substitute for monitors in traditional gamepad/M&K gaming (still with snap rotation) and some desktop applications. I'm also really hoping that anti-simsickness tech like this pans out https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/11/inventor-may-have-cured-motion-sickness-without-drugs-and-could-mean-lot-us-military/152960/ . I love VR and I use a Valve Index every day. I am not dismissing the technology overall--just trying to be realistic. New technologies like this almost always start in the high end and gradually expand to wider markets as both the hardware and software experience improves and is shaped by the experience of early adopters. The real question is whether or not short term profit obsessed corporations like FB, Google, MS, and Sony will have the patience for that. MS is already pivoting to enterprise and there is no sign of VR for their next console. Google Daydream is practically dead and they seem to have largely lost interest in the tech--I suspect they're going to focus on AR (and they should). Sony's public comments and leaked patents seem to suggest that they might try to stick it out--but again they are smart enough to not release a pure VR platform. A leaked email from a few years ago reveals that Zuckerberg expected he would have tens of millions of users right now--in retrospect that is laughable. What I see FB doing is waiting 2 to 3 years after an absurdly overhyped first generation of hardware and then getting impatient and launching mainstream consumer focused and aggressively subsidized products when the technology is too early for that. Hence the leaks late last year about the whole "race to the bottom" thing and the Rift 2 being cancelled, I think not coincidentally timed with the departure of the Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe. I still don't understand why standalone must be the goal for VR. It's solving problems that don't exist. Aside from enterprise/business applications and frequent travelers, how many consumers are actually going to regularly use VR outside of a dedicated playspace in their home? It's enough of a pain in the ass to just carry a cellphone around with you, let alone take it out of your pocket, occupy your attention with it, and fumble around with a crappy touchscreen UI whenever you get pinged. But carrying around a full VR headset? That people running around in large open fields or warehouses with VR headsets on will be anything but a very niche or occassional OOHE application sounds nuts to me. On the other hand, you throw on e.g. a PSVR2 with inside-out tracking, it wakes up your console from sleep within moments, and the 802.11ay wireless (which will have negligible latency) gives you all of the power of a PS5 ... that you would've bought anyway even if you weren't interested in VR. And that PSVR2 would not have the costs of shoehorning decent processing into such a small device--it would likely cost less than or equal to the cost of the standalone device with much better specs. As for advances in processing giving standalone the edge, while I am skeptical of Carmack's understanding of people, their tolerances and what they desire, I do trust his outlook on technology and he stated in this very interview that he thinks fundamental limits to the performance of silicon will bottleneck us well before mobile chipsets get anywhere near today's desktop performance. And again, we're already struggling with VR here. Eyetracking and foveated rendering will help but we're still looking at a dramatic increase in pixel density, FOV, and physics processing loads. On the other hand, I think AR makes complete sense even in a limited rendition if they can get the form factor small enough. Just being able to do basic things like go to the grocery store and nearly effortlessly and seamlessly identify and check off items would be transformational (vs the absurdity of trying to do this via a clunky smartphone app and UI). Nevermind all of the obvious media, entertainment, and communication based applications of AR. It fits the business model of the aforementioned corporations to an absolutely frightening extent--AR will be something you wear nearly every waking hour and they will have moment to moment access to everything you're doing. There are still a lot of technical challenges here, such as occlusion, but this is the holy grail for them (short of some BCI-based interface). It will be interesting if they can resist the urge to make everyone look like a branded tool or borg--I think this will be a major selling point for the early versions.

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'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.)

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.)

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.

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!

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

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?