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Losing the option for stencil shadows would be extremely sad. TDM has the best stencil shadows implementation I've ever seen, and they look far better than shadow maps. They also perform wonderfully. Stencil shadows not supporting shadows on translucent surfaces is a bummer, but that's a fine tradeoff. Personally, I'd rather not see alpha-tested shadow occluders, because they look awful and are distracting. Shadow maps in general look bad and pixelated -- quite immersion breaking. Another issue with shadow maps is that they substantially increase the usage of the GPU. For those using laptops or integrated GPUs, it could cause performance or heat issues. For those with decent dedicated GPUs, increased wattage (and therefore heat) can and does turn on its GPU fans. The wattage on my AMD RX 6700 XT can become tripled when using shadow maps. That's undesirable. The advice I give players is: There really isn't a "best" shadows implementation these days. Some devs and players prefer one over the other. Regardless of which is chosen, stencil shadows and maps are used where needed. So, I'd try out both and pick the one you prefer. Here's Fen complaining about shadow maps. Complaint #1 (7:28): Complaint #2 (23:46): In his next video (Written in Stone - 4 - Chocolate Coated Brendel Bar), he turned on stencil shadows, and as far as I know, he never complained again. The following area in Written in Stone shows a good example of alpha-tested shadow occluders. Yes, technically the moving leaves cast shadows, but it looks awful in game, in my opinion. I know others like it. The same scene using stencil shadows looks amazing in game. (The screenshots don't do a good job demonstrating how it looks in game.) The current hybrid system is fantastic. It gives people choice. Those who prefer stencil shadows can use them; those who prefer shadow maps can use them. People become attached to the "art" and "style" of a mission, and changing the shadow implementation changes the art and style. If one must be dropped, I'd say shadow maps should be dropped from the menu settings. Use shadow maps for volumetric lights and stencil shadows everywhere else. And, I agree with nbohr1more that defaulting to rules consistent with stencil shadows is a good idea.

For free ambience tracks it's as Freky said: you look around on the internet for tracks with the appropriate license to be included in your FM. Fortunately, you likely don't even need to bother doing this as a beginner as there's an entire "Music & SFX" section of the forums full of good ambient tracks for you to use if the stock tracks do not meet your fancy. You might also be interested in Orbweaver's "Dark Ambients", which come with a sndshd file already written for you.

And those pics that Daft Mugi posted do show the problem with TDM maps, but I also have to say, that is a problem with TDM shadow maps, not with maps in general, I never seen such ugly issues in Stalker for example or Call of Juarez and many other games. Perhaps those shadow maps issues arise from people not thinking of shadow maps at all, when creating their lights, shadow maps do require a little more tweaking to look good, specially at grazing angles, because they are literally textures, so perhaps moving the lights a little solves those problems or even increasing the shadow map res. Just think about this, if shadow maps where that ugly, the gaming industry would never deprecate stencil shadows and we would still be seeing a ton of games using them, but is totally the contrary, games with stencil shadows, are the minority, even idSoftware removed them, I think since Rage (i'm not totally sure about Rage...) and up (besides obviously Doom 3 BFG). For example: Wolfenstein II Dishonored 2 Evil within 2 (this particular shot is impossible with stencil shadows, because of the blood that is a particle effect with alpha) etc. For obvious reasons TDM fans have a good opinion of stencil shadows and I comprehend that, they do look very good, TDM and Wolfenstein 2009 are the games with the best soft stencil shadows that I haver seen, but maps can also look good, if given the chance and used to their full potencial. another game with good stencil soft shadows Thou tree shadows on this game seem to use something else or literally stencil shadows because sometimes they look like a blob on the floor instead of seeing the individual leaf.

@HMartI am not sure that is correct - you can even see in your screenshot that the green or "y" areas of the normal map are not shadowed correctly in game relative your point light. They are in shadow where they should be lit and the appear illuminated from the bottom when the light source is above. Here is another example: OpenGL: DirectX: Notice in DX how light source hits the tops of the tiles and shadows the bottom - where as this is inverted in openGL which does not look physically correct to me given the light position. It is very confusing given the legacy of the game being OpenGL, but I have learned from (painful) experience that directx formatted normals are what look physically correct in the game, at least in my opinion.

Since due to the nature of this forum, file/image sharing is used quite frequently, I thought to present some alternatives to the widely used Gdrive, which I don't like so much, especially since the last TOS change. File Sharing To share large files there are several options that also do not require registration. The first is File Hosting Online, which supports files up to 25 Gb, encrypted and also includes a Virus Scan that ensures safe use Another good option is Gofile, free to use, privacy focused and unlimited Bandwith. No refistry needed. While the files are accesed or downloaded at least one time a week, they are never deleted, otherwise inactive files are deleted after 10 days. If you prefer to use P2P, that means to share files directly from PC to other, without a hoster in the middle, there are also very good options, which permits to share files and folders without limites of type and size. The most easy to use is O&O File Direct, a small Desktop app (sadly only Windows), very easy to use 1 Open the app and drag the files/folders you like to share in its window 2 Optional adjust the days and amount of permited downloads and if you want a password 3 Share the link which apears in the app Done The only limits are, that the receptor only can download your files, when your PC is online, on the other hand this permits that you can stop the download in any moment, going offline or shutting down the PC. The other limit is, that the files to share can't be in a protected folder. Her are an Example with a list of Search Enines (Html file 423,56 Kb). While I am online, you can download it https://file.direct/f/pmjVFnjfkjFTKTt5 Videos One of the best options is Streamable (need a free account, inactive videos are deleted after 90 days in the free version) Alternatively you can use Streamja, a simple Video sharer with good privacy, free account optional (nick, mail) Images Ok, there are a lot of Image sharer, most used the known Imgur, because of this I add only one which offers some advantages over Imgur. ImgBox (free account) is a reliable platform to share and host images like Imgur, but it make it very easy to upload and post dozend of images simultaneous, selecting all the images you want and drag them on the window, offering coresponding bulk codes from the selected images to post them with one click for forums (BBcode), Html and others, fullsize or thumbnails. More since Imgur used since some time the hated webm formats for gif images, hardly accepted in most forums.

For the FM? For beta 1 it's here: https://drive.proton.me/urls/H1QBB04GA0#oBZTb1CmVFQb I've already done around 100 fixes though, so you might want to wait for beta 2 which should be ready in a couple of days hopefully. All links are in the first post of the beta thread here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22439-the-lieutenant-3-foreign-affairs-beta-testing/

Could somebody update the article about the lightgem? 1. Add a sentence that a red frame around the lightgem indicates that it is at maximum intensity. (see https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6525) 2. Remove the lingering quotation mark after "Stealth & Shadows". Update: Dragofer added a sentence about the red frame in this edit, but the orphan quotation mark is still present.

You can't make trees/grass cast proper shadows with stencil buffers, because they are rendered as bulky quads with alpha-tested texture. Imagine shadows falling on the surface of water, or on the glass. You will never see it with stencil shadows: the shadows are computed only on single solid surface closest to viewer at each pixel.

Not to start a discussion on this but just for correctness, that is not true at all, unless you are using a really low polygon shadow mesh, if you see a pixelated shadow with stencil, then that is a shadow map or a mix of both stencil and shadow maps. Stencil shadows are crisp and well defined, they have no resolution setting or quality setting (besides turning off shadows), because they are literally geometry (triangles) being projected unto surfaces, while shadow maps are pixels (textures) so you can control how sharp they are. TDM has a mix shadow system, where some effects even in stencil shadow mode, will use shadow maps, for example volumetric lights shadows, are shadow maps. Stencil shadows Shadow maps

Flakebridge Monastery In this mission you will visit a Builder outpost to steal some valuable books. It is the first in what I hope will be a series about Selis Woderose. I would like to take the opportunity to thank my beta testers: Aprilsister, Bikerdude, Chiron, lost_soul, and prjames. As well as Fidcal for his starting map, and Melan for his texture pack. Known bugs: A small number may appear at the bottom left corner of your screen when the mission loads. Press sheath weapon to make it disappear. As already mentioned this is the first mission in a series. When you have completed it you may know what you'll be going after in the next mission. You may even know where! Enjoy! And please use spoiler tags where appropriate. A couple of screens: (thanks lowenz) http://2.bp.blogspot...0/shot00001.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot...0/shot00003.jpg

I don't have a 32-bit OS but I am able to launch the 32-bit executable on Linux Mint 21.3. I think the story is similar to what I saw in 2.10. Lots of large maps produce AAS errors on launch but seem mostly functional. King of Diamonds seems to have lots of AI that are circling or having path finding issues. On a positive note, I was able to launch "The Painter's Wife", "Penny Dreadful 3", "Behind Closed Doors", " Shadows of Northdale 1", "Not an Ordinary Guest" basically all the largest maps and no loading errors were seen and all allowed in-game play. Oddly enough both Iris and The Painter's Wife have no AAS errors and no AI path-finding bugs even though they are the largest.

If shadow maps support more detail that stencil shadows can't offer, I'm absolutely in favor of enabling them: It makes sense to use them for obtaining new details and effects that weren't possible previously. Geometry based shadows are technically a legacy thing anyway, I imagine that once every player and their hardware work well with shadow maps then stencil shadows may someday be deprecated.

Have updated the script in Shadows of Northdale. Thank you brother!

*looks at Shadows of Northdale folder* ... Yeah screw it, what's another 5-10 mb among friends? Especially when the assets look so damn cool!

DarkRadiant 3.9.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Add "Show definition" button for the "inherit" spawnarg Improvement: Preserve patch tesselation fixed subdivisions when creating caps Improvement: Add Filters for Location Entities and Player Start Improvement: Support saving entity key/value pairs containing double quotes Improvement: Allow a way to easily see all properties of attached entities Fixed: "Show definition" doesn't work for inherited properties Fixed: Incorrect mouse movement in 3D / 2D views on Plasma Wayland Fixed: Objective Description flumoxed by double-quotes Fixed: Spinboxes in Background Image panel don't work correctly Fixed: Skins defined on modelDefs are ignored Fixed: Crash on activating lighting mode in the Model Chooser Fixed: Can't undo deletion of atdm_conversation_info entity via conversation editor Fixed: 2D views revert to original ortho layout each time running DR. Fixed: WX assertion failure when docking windows on top of the Properties panel on Linux Fixed: Empty rotation when cloning an entity using editor_rotatable and an angle key Fixed: Three-way merge produces duplicate primitives when a func_static is moved Fixed: Renderer crash during three-way map merge Internal: Replace libxml2 with pugixml Internal: Update wxWidgets to 3.2.4 Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.9.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep creating Fan Missions! 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!

I feel I should add - due to my blunder with the volumetric lights shadows I didn't realize I that I was looking at soft shadows for maps instead of stencil when I was comparing them. After some more playing around I definitely see that soft shadows with stencil looks better. So I get what all the fuss is about now.

I'm no graphics nerd, but I can barely tell the difference between the two. What I can tell from messing around a bit: soft shadows of low quality look like garbage with both maps and stencils (EDIT: wrong, I didn't realize I was looking at shadow maps for a volumetric light shadow. Stencil definitely looks better). increasing soft shadow quality decreases performance in both implementations. I think the CPU/GPU of the end user would influence which is gives better performance both maps and stencils can produce a pixelated shadow if you look close enough. (EDIT: wrong. Again, was looking at a volumetric light shadow). I tend to use maps, because for whatever reason I seem to get a few more FPS out of them. As a mapper, I am certainly NOT interested in endlessly tweaking a scene to make the shadows look perfect. I just don't care enough. If they look shockingly bad I will put some effort into it though (which will probably mean just disabling them for the offending entity). It's rare that I feel this is necessary though. So I guess I don't really get the argument that stencils are amazing and maps are crap. I just don't see it or am too dense to notice. (EDIT: indeed I was being dense. I was comparing shadow maps with shadow maps because I was looking at a volumetric light shadow). Also, in my last couple of missions I had graphical bugs that only showed up with stencil shadows enabled. It would be nice to not have to deal with that all the time.

This post differentiates between "gratis" ("at no monetary cost") and "libre" ("with little or no restriction") per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre * A libre version of TDM could: ** Qualify TDM for an article on the LibreGameWiki *** TDM is currently listed as rejected https://libregamewiki.org/Libregamewiki:Rejected_games_list because "Media is non-commercial (under CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0). The engine is free though (modified Doom 3) (2013-10-19)" ** Qualify for software repositories like Debian *** TDM is currently listed as unsuitable https://wiki.debian.org/Games/Unsuitable#The_Dark_Mod because 1) "The gamedata is very large (2.3 GB)", and 2) "The license of the gamedata (otherwise it must go into non-free with the engine into contrib)" and links to https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src/trunk/LICENSE.txt Questions: 1) tdm_installer.linux64 is 4.2 MB (unzipped), which is far from the 2.3 GB which is said to be too large. Yes, the user can use it to download data that is non-libre, but so can any web browser too. If the installer itself is completely libre, does anyone know the reason why it cannot be accepted into the Debian repository? 2) If adding the installer to the repository is not a viable solution, would it be possible to package the engine with a small and beginner friendly mission built only from libre media/gamedata into a "TDM-libre" release, and add user friendly functionality to download the 2.3 GB media/gamedata using "TDM-libre" (similar to mission downloading)? 3) Would such a "TDM-libre" release be acceptable for the Debian repository? 4) Would such a "TDM-libre" release be acceptable for LibreGameWiki? 5) Would the work be worth it? * Pros: Exposure in channels covering libre software (e.g. the LibreGameWiki). Distribution in channels allowing only libre software (e.g. the Debian repository). * Cons: The work required for the modifictions and release of "TDM-libre". Possible maintenance of "TDM-libre". I'm thinking that the wider reach may attract more volunteers to work on TDM, which may eventually make up for this work and hopefully be net positive. 6) Are there any TDM missions that are libre already today? If not, would anyone be willing to work on one to fulfill this? I'll contribute in any way I can. 7) I found the following related topics on the forum: * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/16226-graphical-installers-for-tdm/ (installing only the updater) * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/16640-problems-i-had-with-tdm-installation-on-linux-w-solutions/ (problems with installation on Linux) * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/17743-building-tdm-on-debian-8-steamos-tdm-203/ (Building TDM on Debian 8 / SteamOS) * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/18592-debian-packaging/ (Dark Radiant) ... but if there are other related previous discussions, I'd appreciate any links to them. Any thoughts or comments?

I'm at the beginning of a new area, where bandits fights each other. Near the end, I imagine, but I'm not going to bother finishing it. The thing is tedious. It's very obvious your focus was on telling a story. The issue is that's not my thing, and I also think this is not the right game for it. You're trying to make it do things it was never designed to, so it feels clunky. I think the game shines best in a smaller map with some backstory and little touches in the mission, like notes one character leaves for another. Here, it feels like I'm being pulled along from place to place, having to go back where enemies have artificially respawned, with locked doors everywhere, JUST to further the story, not to give me an interesting challenge. And in terms of story, it's the same thing we see all the time: Pagans are the poor, downtrodden, nice people, and the Builders, are the heartless monsters. Yawn. I don't get how the gargoyle switch works in that guy's office, even after having read your explanation. I don't even understand what the situation is supposed to be. The gargoyle looks like it's locked inside a glass case, and therefore you want to get that glass case open. The note says the gargoyle switch is behind the downstairs desk. Downstairs from this note, there is no desk. And the note calls it the "gargoyle switch", which implies it's a switch for the gargoyle, not that the gargoyle itself is a switch. It's confusing for no good reason. Random notes: Boring name, as others have mentioned. A cursive font in letters is annoying to read. Loud music and sound effects are not fun, it just hurts the player's ears. The map is a screenshot. That ruins immersion. The light issues have been covered. For me, it never felt like I was in shadows, as opposed to other missions. Almost everything looks pretty brightly lit. I saw someone mentioning rope arrows are pointless, and I agree. You asked how that player could have made it past something without using one; well, I haven't used it either. You can just mantle. Of course, that's not an issue in itself. There's not reason to cry "I'm getting review bombed" when people are just giving their opinion.

Interesting idea. Not sure about my upcoming time availability to help. A couple of concerns here - - I assume the popup words uses the "Informative Texts" slot, e.g., where you might see "Acquired 80 in Jewels", so it likely wouldn't interfere with that or with already-higher subtitles. - There are indications that #str is becoming unviable in FMs; see my just-posted: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22434-western-language-support-in-2024/

In post https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/profile/254-orbweaver/&status=3994&type=status @nbohr1more found out what the Fixup Map functionality is for. But what does it actually do? Does it search for def references (to core?) that don't excist anymore and then link them to defs with the same name elswhere? Also I would recommend to change the name into something better understood what it is for. Fixup map could mean anything. And it should be documented in the wiki.

And shelve new initiatives for 12 months. At a glance, the below script-heavy missions are orbiting close to the boundaries: A house of locked secrets Hazard Pay Iris Painter's Wife Shadows of Northdale ACT I Seeking Lady Leicester Written in stone All it takes is a little push. Each new release of TDM comes with new core scripts and sooner or later something needs to happen. Let's hope the next "big one" doesn't get impacted.

It is possible to override "core" files in TDM, without messing with the original files, from the beginning. This is a feature of the Doom 3 engine and obviously transitioned into TDM. In Doom 3 and TDM, you just make a copy of a def, mtr or any other file inside your mod or mission folder, respect the same virtual file path from the originals and the modified files will take precedence over the files inside the .pk4's. This could be used by mission makers to for example override the "noshadows" from some alpha materials, for example to permit trees, grass, banners, etc, in their mission to cast shadow maps, something the core materials can't do because they are limited by the need to support the old stencil shadows. But a brave mission maker, could recommend players to only use shadow maps on their mission and say, if a player wants stencil shadows they will have to accept that trees will cast ugly shadows. (I'm sure there's ways to automatically disable shadows for trees and such, when a user sets stencil shadows on, but it may take a bit of scripting madness...)

I think yes. The root of the issue is always an opaque wall (in terms of areas/visportals) which does not cast shadows (in terms of lighting). Shadowcaulk is both opaque and casts shadows, so there is no contradiction.

Yep... just what I was thinking of, except it's even worse than I remember now that I see it. Biggest limitation with stencil is you can't have alpha texture shadowing, so stuff like plants had to have their shadows turned off. I'd say this is the most important reason why enabling map-only effects was a good decision, followed by other improvements and potential future features like transparent / colorized (stained glass) shadows.