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How about using TDM automation framework (and maybe pcem/qemu)? More info see: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19828-automation-features-and-discussion/

Saw this FM in my list and it said my last playthrough was in 2020 so figured I'd try it again to see what was updated. What a good gem this one was! I think it's at the top when it comes to story and world building, one of the FM's where readables do a lot to immerse you and paint what's going on while events are dynamic and actually feel involved: I'd paint this as a textbook example on doing progression and elements of surprise in a FM... just my own feeling, but recent ones have become a bit too linear and predictable even if the graphics are more impressive, I feel kind of nostalgic for missions like this. With that being said, I should end with a hilarious thing that happened at the end and had me laughing out loud.

Updated my previous post with youtube vids. Youtube is a lousy website for this kind of thing, though... If only imgur wasn't being a crap... Anyway, my system is old and slow, yea, but I'm not sure this has to do with that. This seems to never happen to me in other people's missions, and in my missions it's only the first time I enter a location. I've also had @Mat99reporting having this issue with my mission as well, but I don't know what kind of system he has.

New version is up. Here's what's new: A high quality version of the intro video Subtitles made by datiswous Kingsals new footstep sounds (from his excellent Volta missions) are included (with his permission) Background image and ambience (music by Gigagooga) in the main menu The climbable vines were made more noticeable Removed the absence markers from all the loot. Guards wont be seemingly randomly alerted anymore Better textures in a few selected places Some model updates/improvements made by Bikerdude 3 new hidden loot items A lot of unnecessary files where removed from the package A lot of smaller fixes

I feel that tweaking shaders visually does more harm than good in the end. Here is one example of what shader tweaking leads to, and where I'll do yet another visually-breaking change: 6354 Before that is was untweakable specular which also broke visuals: 5044 What a game engine needs is a universal model (preferably well-known) with several tweakable parameters. In fact, the very idea of PBR and why it wins today is that it models real physics, and thus it works more or less the same way in every engine and scenario. It is a well-known standard (with minor variations). We can't have PBR yet (and maybe forever), thus we stick close to Phong reflection model, which has been around for decades and is also quite standard. Artists should make assets that would result in a beautiful picture, not shaders. But they can't do it if we have some weird non-standard lighting model which changes every year. We should never tweak shaders based on how average missions becomes seemingly nicer to us! If someone decides to add normal mapping, it should behave as an approximation for how real high-resolution surface should behave in our model, not as some kind of "beautifier effect". If you want to add some effect which is outside the current model, it should be done in a way that: it does not change how the previous model works (and how current missions look) it can be tweaked by understandable parameters it is applied in all shaders and all lighting the same way I believe we already have fresnel and rim, but it is kinda hardcoded and not present in all shaders. Yet another result of someone tweaking shaders based on how it looks and not on how sound it is mathematically.

Fiver, there are many ways you can contribute. Several ways are described on the forum and wiki. You pointed us to some locations in missions. Please read the forum posts & the wiki, watch some youtube editor tutorials, download and use the mission files & darkradiant to try fix/change the things you mentioned. For starters, And https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=DarkRadiant

Right now I lack the skill, but maybe in the future. There is no rush, merely suggestions. The missions are perfectly fine already, and these are just details. I wasn't aware if updating other creators' missions, even OMs, was frowned upon or appreciated. I'll try and remember that. Thanks for your help!

I was testing some missions with all the ai barks on and the issue I see is that for a lot of the subs I see on screen I can't hear the sound. Maybe I should only hear the sounds in a specific radius? Also, I think ai barks shouldn't show when story subs are on screen? Some subs have sugestive text, like what the tone of the voice is. Is that something that could be added as an option?

Could someone try to do the entity spawning via console? I can't get it working anymore. If I do the command, I get no error, but I don't get the item. For example: spawn atdm:ammo_gasarrow Does nothing Tested in 2 missions

Interesting. I didn't know about Doom 3 co-op (I don't know why). Instead of all being in the same place inside the mission, missions could be designed around locations (in the same map). So you play each your own part, but objectives are shared. So you play different mission objectives around the same global objective. It means also that a player could find a clue when reading a book but another player has to do that objective. So for example: Shared mission objectives: Find the ring of Thruth (Church section) - Player A Find information about hidden loot (Thief hideout) - Player B Search for a clue about the hidden passage in the Church (library section) - Player C So when Player C finds the info in the library section, Player A can find that hidden passage in the church section.

Is "assets" synonymous to "media/gamedata"? And are you referring to the 2.3 GB media/gamedata included in TDM at install? If all 2.3 GB media/gamedata were removed from the "TDB-libre" version, then no license change would be needed. Say then we have a small fan mission that is entirely libre, built entirely from libre assets and created to intentionally avoid using any of the current 2.3 GB media/gamedata. If we wanted to play that mission using only the source code, what media/gamedata components would be missing to do that? * GUI graphics and music? * HUD elements? * Any in-game sounds? * Inventory objects? * ... anything else that can neither be included in the mission's own media/gamedata, nor avoided during mission design? I'm assuming here that a mission actually can include its own media/gamedata (textures, sound, models), but I may be wrong and I'm grateful for any explanation that helps me understand. If you ask me, the TDM-installer works perfectly already today, and the instructions are brief and easy to follow. Installation from the Debian repository would be somewhat easier, but I also see other (perhaps greater) benefits which I mentioned earlier.

As I understand the TDM license there are roughly three types of contributions to the TMD project as a whole: 1) Contributions to the source code of TDM: These are licensed GPL or BSD and can therefore be used already today by commercial projects. 2) Contributions to the 2.3 GB media/gamedata included in TDM at install: These are licensed CC-BY-NC-SA and restricts commercial use. 3) Contributions of fan missions that can be played using TDM and are added by the end-user after the install (either by the ingame downloader, website, or other source): These are not part of the core product and the license says "Any missions [...] are the property of their respective authors, and different licensing may apply.". This means the FM creators can choose any license they want, anything between CC-0/PD and strict copyright. Possibly even put additional restrictions on its use (e.g. say "You may only download and play this on regular TDM"), right? It is up to the end-user to abide by the stipulated license. The included missions "Training Misson", "A New Job", and "Tears of St Lucia" appears to fall into category (2) according to "Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all [...] non-software components that are distributed with The Dark Mod are licensed under [CC-BY-NC-SA]". Does anyone know if their license says anything else?

To cater to both audiences. I mentioned LibreGameWiki as one example. nbohr1more mentioned other uses. Explicitly allowing reuse and spread will help TDM reach a wider audience and would hopefully attract more volunteers. More volunteers which can help improve both TDM versions. There are several benefits for a project of being in the Debian repo. One is that TDM Debian-users can report defects on any package directly to Debian (no need to register on separate forums). Debian may then fix the issue themselves (in their "TDM-libre" package) and will offer the patch upstream to TDM, who can then choose to accept or reject the patch. I envision "TDM-libre" to have the same capability of downloading any mission as regular TDM. The only difference is that "TDM-libre" would come packaged with the regular engine (which is GPL+BSD) and an included mission that has libre media/gamedata. When I play TDM by myself, I want the unlimited-play and can accept commercial restrictions. But if I were to promote it somewhere, or charge for a stream when playing online, or make a video, I would want a version without commercial restrictions (and can temporarily accept limited-play) to make sure I don't violate anyone's copyright. Perhaps. That's what I'm trying to find out.

As much as I'm a big fan of FOSS, it gets messy when it involves assets with a whole mix of licenses. The engine? Sure that'll work, but TDM is useless with just the engine. Even if you have a separate libre version with verified assets, you've now split the project into a full version and a libre-only version and for what? Some entry in a niche wiki and the Debian repo? Once people want actual full missions to play you begin to drift away from the restricted licenses imposed on the libre version and have to code and accommodate for that. If TDM was developed with the day-one intention of only allowed libre licensed assets then there'd be no problem, but it hasn't and what your asking is probably too much work and effort for little benefit.

I agree, which is the reason why I made mission sorting in my patch like this, which is also how missions are sorted elsewhere in the web.

This is actually a rather old request that we encountered often shortly after going standalone in 2013. Hardcore GNU\Linux folks, especially those who use Debian, think that all open projects should use GPL v3 licenses with full "Libre" licensed content ( Creative Commons ). The goal is that open projects should be a shared resource that no single person or group regulates and can be used for ANY purpose without fear of prosecution or litigation. The primary motivation is "extreme paranoia". Any license restriction is seen as a potential trap that could unintentionally jeopardize contributors or users. For example: Imagine that I create a blog where I review darkmod missions and earn advertising revenue by visits. Through a very convoluted legal premise, the owner of non-free assets used in TDM could claim I owe them revenue since their license doesn't allow "any" commercial exploit of their work. Likewise, the owner of an internet cafe where the game is played might owe the asset owner their revenue. The ISP that made the asset available to it's subscribers might owe them too. The overarching theme is that copyright scope is not clearly defined and can be perverted to sabotage open projects. A fully Libre compliant project is immune to these risks. People who want their favorite projects to be easily available in GNU\Debian evangelize this type of license change. The problem is that most TDM contributors would strongly object to allowing their work to be used by 3rd party commercial projects, especially if those 3rd parties simply rebranded darkmod and sold it as a game in an app store. Even if that were a palatable eventuality, it would also make Embracer Group ( current owners of Thief IP ) more inclined to attempt a legal take-down of our project. A Libre version would need to be a fork that is maintained outside our community so that we can still clearly state that we prohibit all commercial usage. Debian and other similar distros need an easy way to allow users to install projects that are strictly non-commercial rather than forcing all open projects to permit 3rd parties to resell their work.

I suggest you use the term "I", to make clear that it is something YOU want, and that you speak for yourself. But, as wesp5 mentioned, I don't really know what this is about, at all. And, I'm also wondering about all the newly registered people lately, who just arrived at this forum, and already want to revolutionize this mod. This is a thing I noticed 2 or 3 years ago, and which hasn't been present in the 15 years I play this mod and frequent these forums now. Really seems like a common thing these days, to not knock on the door, but kick it in, and stomp right in.

When talking about a possible libre version of TDM (https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22346-libre-version-of-tdm/) it seems we believe all media/gamedata included in TDM is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. I am not familiar with how the process of adding new media/gamedata works today; I have seen files uploaded to the bugtracker which developers then commit to SVN, but I don't know if there are other ways. It may be a good idea to implement a process that when new components (media/gamedata included in TDM) are added, the contributor is asked to be explicit about the license (a choice which may defaults to their previous preference, for usability). It won't fix the past, but it may help in the future. This will make it easy for contributors to add future data under a more permissive license if they choose. Libre media can be added and its license can be tracked, rather than assumed to be CC-BY-NC-SA. I suggest looking at how Wikimedia Commons has implemented this: the contributor state the source and license at the time the data is uploaded. This can be done either by providing urls or by saying "It's my work and I choose this licsense". The first step could be to add a way to keep track of each filepath in SVN, author, license, sources. Start by setting the value for each file's license to "(default/legacy CC-BY-NC-SA)". Possible implementations for a user interface for new additions are: * Use our own wiki, which runs Mediawiki (same as Wikimedia Commons). I see several benefits of this, but we also need a way to accept uploads of batches, not just single files. * Look at how other open source projects have solved this. There may be more appropriate solutions available. ... but I'll leave the implementation open. Suggestions are very welcome! If the author of each file already in SVN can be tracked, then it may be possible that the author is willing to give a blanket permission for all their past files in one statement, and all their files in SVN can be updated in one commit. A productive contributor willing to release some of their work under a more permissive license could make a big change. If Dark Radiant would support letting mappers search media/gamedata by license (does it already?), it would make it easier for mappers to create a completely libre mission, which would help facilitate a TDM-libre release. If I understand things correctly. This post does not address all details and it may contain misunderstandings or assumptions, but it's a start. Also relevant: * Is there a compiled and maintained list of recommended or deprecated resources for mappers to use? * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20311-external-art-assets-licensing/

Yeah, with +160 missions and growing, it might be time to consider a search bar

Seeing this made me wish we also had a little search box in the top right corner. That would make finding missions a lot easier.

Yes, the description is somewhat unclear. When it says "The in-game downloader might show something different than the main menu.", I don't perceive that as a problem. Sorting a list by titles (articles last) is one thing; presenting the full title (with article first) is another. And they serve two different purposes: * When presenting the title in a list along with other titles by other authors, I would want to put more emphasis on functionality, usability and the overall presentation of the list as a whole. It is in everybody's interest that the list is functional and neat. * When presenting the title by itself, I would want to put more emphasis on the author's wishes. I think the web page and the list on the wiki should follow CMOS too, for the same reasons. By the way: the web page (https://www.thedarkmod.com/missions/) has a column "Type" which has values "S" or "C" but it does not explain the difference. Does anyone know?

Let's re-do this. Story always has the preference, even if the player is or goes far away from the source. The moment a story line is triggered the whole set is displayed in sequence not matter what (subs keep their slots). If there are no slots available, a bark goes away. If more than three story subtitle require a slot, then we are f***d the oldest story sub goes away. Non-story subs cannot be displayed if the player was far away when they started: we cannot have subs popping in and out of existence in a split sec. However, the moment a sub makes it in because the player was nearby the source, it stays, even if the player goes away. If we miss some non-story subs in the queue because ongoing subs didn't end yet, so be it. Non-story subs must have a way shorter distance than story subs.

Whoopsie @MirceaKitsune First thoughts: The moment a sub makes it in, it stays. We cannot have subs popping in and out of existence in a split sec. If we miss some in the queue, so be it. Non-story subs must have a way shorter distance over story subs. Story must prevail. If there ever is a need for a slot, a non-story sub gives place to story (this is the only exception to point one).

That bug report could be interpreted in two ways: One, the ingame-downloader-sorting needs changing, Two, all other lists needs changed sorting. The current sorting does not even resolve the issue as the sorting is still different from the missions web page.