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I've been involved in the TDM community now since before we had a game, since way back when we were arguing over lock picking methods lol Finally, I'm finished with Briarwood Manor - my first Fan Mission for The Dark Mod. I've been hatching this for a year so I'm wrapped it's finally done. Briarwood Manor Crowind - made the Briefing for the mission: This is the HD version. Briarwood Manor is a old manor house built and added on to over the years which gives it it's design. The family part is the original home, and two other parts were added on later. Inspiration came from an image in the TDM Editors Inspiration thread. Available through in-game downloader. - available also in the link below. Update Version 1.93 - Fixed a few issues that surfaced, and added a sign to the Armory because people were missing it and thinking the mission was very thin on resources. Remaining Issue: - DO NOT BE SEEN BY THE STEWARD AT ALL! Update Version 1.91 - Removed an erroneous LARGE file that had accidently been in the mission blow the mission size up dramatically other assorted bugs fixed that were pointed out by the Community. Thank you Also replaced the missing script file that controlled the Drop Key which I accidently deleted. LOL Update Version 1.9 - Fixed a bug caused by roof projecting into the sleeping maids room upstairs. Update Version 1.81 - Fixed a bug caused by a faulty newspaper readable that I couldn't fix, so I converted it to a static model that is no longer frobbable. Update Version 1.8 - Fixed a problem with a patch that somehow got misaligned in the previous version of the level creating a ceiling shadow. Update Version 1.7 - Fixed some brush splitting, and a problem with the stairs. Also fixed a readable problem, and a few other minor problems. Added little more detail around the woodshed. Update Version 1.6 - Fixed problem with Crowleys Diary, and a screwed up shadow in the old well. Update: Version 1.5 - Resolved the problems with the Steward and the Dropkey. They should never be a problem again. Unless you decide to hit him, then you are going to break him from his route lol. Fix an sound issue, and fixed a problem where the player could get into places he shouldn't until the right time. lol Improved the performance for the garden area. It should be playable for low end PC's now. If you get stutter issues, drop your video settings, especially the LOD setting. With LOD set to Very Low, Fog will be gone, and detail will be dropped a lot at a distance. The higher you raise your LOD the more you get. ie at LOW LOD Fog comes back. Experiment so you get a setting your PC is happy with. You can use the console command com_showfps 1 to see what FPS you are getting. 30 and above are acceptable. Enjoy. Update: Version 1.4 - Resolved (partially the drop key issue - save before you go into Stewards room, fixed many other minor problems picked up by Abusimplea. Added a new room, made the map a bit more open, solved some of the difficulty issues people had. The map should now be ghostable. I hope. Should be added to the in game downloader within a day or so depending. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I_-ZJDGUtK7P4-b5zsGsEcYAH0vYdgnw/view?usp=sharing If you download from this link, top right arrow pointing down, is how you download it. Click it. A few things to note: 1+ Hour of gameplay - Easy Difficulty is intended for new players. Hard/Expert for most of the TDM Community. This is a challenging map for new players. Use your tools Features a custom intro (above) and a few custom sounds, and some voice acting. Warning: This mission is not for low end PC's. The house is fine, but the garden will make lower end PC's grind. The map has been made sensitive to LOD settings. So if it's grinding you're PC drop you're LOD settings for it, then you can return them to normal once you've finished. On my Medium PC gtx 760 with Normal LOD I get 30 to 60 fps in the garden. I upgraded to GTX 1070 and get pretty good 60 fps in the garden. Briefing Video made by Crowind and I can't thank him enough. He did an amazing job of this. I was so lucky to have him do this. Cast: Voice Actors (Intro) : 1St Merchant: Crowind, 2nd Merchant: Mykel19XX Corbin: Goldwell Voice Actors (Mission): Corbin played by Goldwell, Morgan Crowley played by V-Man, Giles MacCadie (Steward) played by myself Thank you to my Beta Testers: Cambridge Spy, OldJim, V-Man, Jaxa, duzenko and Bikerdude. Cambridge Spy and OldJim did most of the hard grind in finding problems, so thank you both so much. If you are stuck or need help, fastest way to reach me is message me on my youtube channel (link bottom of this post). Use the resources you were given and you should have no problems. Otherwise post spoiler free in this thread. TIP: Don't be seen by the Steward, or he might glitch out. Credits: Crowind put my briefing text into a more thiefy style for Goldwell to voice. He also helped with refining the trailer for the mission. Bikerdude (did the coal door for me and let me use his moonbeam method) and sorted the performance side of things out and thereby taught me how to do performance., grayman for providing a script to handle the drop key (Abuseinplea for fixing it from bouncing) and grayman for solving some conversation problems. EHR+ or showing me how to do the double secret door and Fidcal for his Fidcal's A-Z tutorial for Dark Radiant. Without this starting point I would not have started. Changes 1.2 to 1.93 - Added a second way to get into the building - Dining Room and Parlour doors now pickable, to make it bit less linear - Electric Light in Lobby dropped it's luminosity from 240 to 220 Little bit darker. - Door on the landing (catwalk) is now unlocked - Spider no longer walks down to the ladder, or clips into the floor. - Opened up the level more so you can choose more how you want to tackle it; except for family rooms (top of stairs) - Fixed a graphical bug with the back stairs caused by TDM upgrading to 2.06 - Added some plants around bottom of garden wall alongside cart. I don't like seeing planes meeting. lol - Made some changes to the fog in the garden. - Fixed a problem with the newspaper that was allowing the no frobbing bug to occur. Enjoy Neon PS: Why does TAB key no longer tab? It drops to the bottom of the page. I have to say I hate this editor.

Paying the Bills: 0 - Moving Day You've just heard a sweet tip. Get to work before the window of opportunity closes. Download Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hMqw99FgTk5jkezPnI1aaU2xX_gJ8fwo?usp=sharing Credits Assets: Amadeus - the Golden Lute STRUNK - new kitchen assets as well as fireflies & bats Alpha Testers: Amadeus, Baby Genius, Bienie, dragofer, Epifire, Jack Farmer, joebarnin, kingsal, NeonsStyle, Rotary Racer, The Dark One Beta Testers: Cambridge Spy, Shadow, Abusimplea, JackFarmer, thebigh, wesp5, Amadeus, kingsal, s.urfer, joebarnin, grayman, nbohr1more, prjames, AluminumHaste, Dragofer, datiswous, stgatilov, duzenko, Goldwell, Wellingtoncrab, If I forgot anyone PLEASE LET ME KNOW Notes - TDM 2.10 Beta 5 or later is REQUIRED to play this mission. - This is my first FM and took me roughly 4 years and 1000+ hours. I had originally planned a city map for my first FM, I even had an over-arching story set across 4 missions, but I decided to whip up a prequel to use as my "training-wheels protocol" for DarkRadiant before I move on to my magnum opus, hence why this one is #0. Subsequent entries will be on a micro scale compared to this map. - This FM implements the func_peek mechanic, allowing players to peek through any door that has a keyhole on it by leaning forward. PLEASE NOTE: This function has been known to cause crashes for a small number of players in the past, likely due to using the 32-bit version of TDM. At no point in this mission is it required to use the func_peek mechanic; it is purely optional, so feel free not to use it. - There are spiders - Suggestive themes/references - DISCLAIMER: This is a BIG mission by TDM standards, and has a lot of wide outdoor areas; performance may vary greatly. - Lots of plans for future updates, many ideas still left on paper. Download Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hMqw99FgTk5jkezPnI1aaU2xX_gJ8fwo?usp=sharing (drop the folder into darkmod/fms) Many thanks, have fun!

As someone who tends to alert guards often and occasionally stir trouble when going through a FM, I noticed some major issues when it comes to AI realism and awareness during combat or when guards face difficult situations. Everything's fine when AI go about their usual patrols... once trouble takes place however, the illusion falls apart as guards act like they're less self aware than a toddler. Indeed AI realism can't be improved past a certain point as there's a limit to the effort the team can put into something so complex... yet I do believe a few improvements can make AI behavior much more realistic and exciting. After analyzing this issue for a long time, I decided to put it all it into a few main points... I apologize for their length as I wanted to go in a bit of detail on each one, hope folks have the time and patience to read them. Biggest issue is AI are unaware of where attacks are coming from. I recently made another thread on how I climbed on a table and blackjacked two guards to death as they sat there doing nothing, something that also happens when shooting them with arrows as guards only explore the nearby area. The issue seems to be that AI don't account for the direction a hit comes from, they only know something hit them but act as if it must be some mystical force of nature: If you're sitting in a parking lot and an asshole neighbor throws a tomato at you from his balcony, you aren't going to cluelessly investigate the road in front of you when the projectile clearly came from behind and hit you in the back of the head, instead you'll storm into the building and start looking for which of the neighbors facing that side of the road may be the culprit. Despite voice barks existing for this exact scenario, we never see AI running to get help from other AI. NPC's will do one of two things: If armed and with enough health they will attack or search for you nearby, if hurt or unarmed flee to a random location. I've never seen an AI consciously run up to another AI asking for help and bringing them to where they spotted me, even when fleeing the AI seems to go to a random location. They don't share knowledge with each other generally speaking: The only awareness AI spread to other AI is alert level, meaning NPC A becomes alert if it sees or hears that NPC B is alert too... beyond that there's no coherence or actual cooperation, the voices may indicate some form of searching together but friendly NPC's are never seen actually engaging. Another big issue is voices being played (or not played) in disconnect with what's actually going on. There are AI voices for most important circumstances but they're very rarely activated: It's a miracle to hear a guard say "someone's been hurt" or "there's a body here" when noticing someone who's unconscious or dead. What seems to happen is if AI was already alerted by another peculiarity such as a noise, they're no longer surprised by anything else and won't play the voices designated for that scenario, so they'll only mention a body if that's the first thing to alert them in any way. Furthermore AI don't actively talk with each other while searching together, everyone acts as if they're on their own and not a team. What happens after a conflict is over. For this discussion I won't focus on better permanent alerts, that has greater difficulty implications and I think I made a separate thread on it a while back. The problem I noticed is once the immediate alert has gone down, AI return to full normality and act abnormally calm: The idle voices change from saying things like "it's a quiet night" to "we've got an intruder" but that's about it. In any realistic scenario even a trained guard would be shocked after being in a fight or finding a body. Below I'll list the immediate improvements I see to those problems, which without having an understanding the code myself am presuming can be changed without too much effort: When an enemy hits the AI with any weapon, the AI should be alert to the estimate location of the shooter. If you're standing atop a tower and fire an arrow at a guard, the guard shouldn't draw his sword and look around their nearby vicinity like a fool, but instead run up to the tower where you're standing granted they can pathfind their way to that location. If the player is far away the destination should be fuzzy and a random location nearby, thus the guard won't run to your exact location but will still climb the stairs and enter a room near it. AI need to learn how to ask for help instead of fleeing to random places when not attacking. If an ally who isn't already alert can be found nearby, the scared AI should explicitly run to their location tell them where you are then have the ally either run to your location (if armed) or go to another ally to get them to your location (if unarmed). Even if an AI is already alert, finding a body or dropped weapon or broken arrow should result in the AI speaking the voice line for that circumstance, only being engaged in combat should suppress it. I'd go further and support repeating those voice lines: A guard yelling "we have a dead body" several times during the first seconds of discovery would make them appear more shocked. Similarly talking to a nearby guard shouldn't be done just once when the two first meet: When multiple AI are searching for you, they should constantly alternate between single voice lines (eg: "I bet you're right over there in those shadows") and looking at another guard to talk to colleagues (eg: "I know I saw him here keep searching"), this would be a huge improvement since guards currently act like they're completely unaware of each other during a coordinated search. Making guards permanently affected after an incident is a trickier one but a few tweaks could improve it. The most immediate solution would be changing the idle animations: Instead of stretching or blowing their noses or eating candy, AI should be seen randomly cowering or face-palming or even playing the scout animation to look around carefully. One suggestion I'd absolutely throw here: If the AI found a dead body from an ally, have them cry occasionally... I think that would be an interesting and unexpected detail, that will also get players to think and feel more about the consequences of their actions and how they affect the world. There are other ones I could get into, but some would be more difficult and likely not worth trying to solve. Most notable and worthy of at least a mention is how AI walk over the bodies of fallen friends as if they're doormats: Obviously there's no way to have them drag bodies to the side, but maybe an avoidance mechanism so they don't look like jackasses trying to profane their dead friends by literally stepping all over them could be a fix for that as well! Let me know what you think of those points and if there are other AI issues you've noticed yourself or better solutions you can think of: I'm not sure if I got everything here but I definitely believe the problems exist and we could make the world more natural and immersive with some simple fixes.

@snatcher I understand that when you feel your work doesn't live up to your goals that you don't want it out in the wild advertising your own perceived shortcomings but that leads to a troubling dilemma of authors who are never satisfied with their work offering fleeting access to their in-progress designs then rescinding them or allowing them to be lost. When I was a member of Doom3world forums, I would often see members do interesting experiments and sometimes that work would languish until someone new would examine it and pickup the torch. This seemed like a perfectly viable system until Doom3world was killed by spambots and countless projects and conceptual works were lost. I guess what I am trying to say is that mods don't need to be perfect to be valuable. If they contain some grain of a useable feature they might be adapted by mission authors in custom scenarios. They might offer instructive details that others trying to achieve the same results can examine. It would be great if known compelling works were kept somewhere safe other than via forum attachments and temporary file sharing sites. I suppose we used to collect such things in our internal SVN for safe keeping but even that isn't always viable. If folks would rather not post beta or incomplete mods to TDM's Moddb page, perhaps they would consider creating their own Moddb page or allow them to be added to my page for safe keeping. Please don't look at this as some sort of pressure campaign or anything. I fully understand anyone not willing to put their name next to something they aren't fully happy with. As a general proviso, ( if possible \ permitted ) I just want to prevent the loss of some valuable investigations and formative works. The end of Doom3world was a digital apocalypse similar to the death of photobucket. It is one of my greatest fears that TDM will become a digital memory with only the skeletons of old forum threads at the wayback archive site.

Demonstration Video I wondered if I could implement an improved lean for The Dark Mod. How was the result? Please see for yourself by checking out the video. The video shows: Leans from multiple games that show less view angle and more slide. Comparison between Thief and this lean proposal. Comparison between TDM 2.11 and this lean proposal. Aiming and shooting arrows while standing and crouching. Tap lean ability. Motivation There is something about the original Thief game's lean that feels really good. It feels close to actually peeking around a corner while not jarring the view. In an interview with former Looking Glass Studios developers, the interviewer asks them how they got leaning to feel so good while other FPS games have not. In a tweet by NamelessVoice, the author of the widely used Thief FM script library called NVScript, he said: New Lean Proposal Provide a lean that is more similar to Thief-style lean. Less view angle, more slide. Feels more natural, less awkward. Easier to aim and shoot arrows. Unlean more quickly. Feels like snapping your head back after suddenly seeing a guard. Improved lean during crouch. Compared to TDM 2.11, this lean can be used to see more around corners while crouched. Tap lean ability. Compared to TDM 2.11, this lean allows pressing the lean keybinding in rapid succession. Other: Fixed "lean getting stuck sometimes" bug in TDM 2.11. Fixed "lean getting stuck after saved game load" bug in TDM 2.11. Technical Details Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6320 Cvars At the moment, the new lean is toggled on via the tdm_lean2_mode cvar. Other cvars include: pm_lean2_time_to_lean (default "400") pm_lean2_time_to_unlean (default "300") pm_lean2_slide (default "200") pm_lean2_angle (default "8") pm_lean2_angle_mod (default "0.5") However, I didn't know how to proceed with this section. Does the new lean replace the old lean? Does the new lean become the default while keeping the old lean available? Code TDM 2.11 uses a sine easing function. Instead, this new lean uses a cubic bézier easing function. For a 2.11-Like Lean For a lean that is similar to 2.11, its cvars can be set to the following: pm_lean2_slide "100" pm_lean2_angle "18" pm_lean2_angle_mod "0.8" The following video shows a comparison between 2.11 and this new lean proposal with those cvar settings.

Want to hang out with fellow TDM enthusiasts? Want an answer to a question but don't want to wait for hours on the forum? Need a break from that marathon mapping session? Join our Discord The Dark Mod channel! Discord is a very easy-to-use hangout platform. You can easily chat, swap screenshots, or get feedback on a WIP. With around 35 members in the TDM channel, there are usually a couple active people on any time of the day. Adding screenshots is just drag and drop, and you can link directly to videos or images with automatic previews. It's extremely easy to use and very handy when you need some quick feedback on a project. You can download the free Discord app here: https://discordapp.com/download But you don't have to! You can access Discord directly from your browser by following this link: https://discord.gg/M96zPHD Hope to see you there!

It's good to know that somebody is taking care of this in the long run, thanks :)!

The coin is a little joke in the mission end stats. It exists solely to mock you, similar to the newspaper stating it's missing. There is no actual coin in the mission. Because it's missing, just like the newspaper says. You can clearly see how TDM players do not believe much in thieving-free missions. There has to be loot, right? Rather than pack their belongings and leave, they chase after a coin that does not exist, only because the stat screen tells them there is a coin even though there is none. TDM is a game about stealing, after all. There's no room left for locking your apartment, stacking your furniture onto a cart, and leaving. But perhaps sometimes that's all you can do. Maybe that is what you should do. Ignore the coin. Ignore the ugly stain on the wall, it's no good. Don't even look at it. Pack your belongings and forget. Ignorance is bliss.

Having completed all missions (except the very recent ones) I find TDM not challenging at this stage. If I want get any enjoyment on a second play-through of a mission I set my own rules and I roll-play it. Here is where optional skills / add-ons / challenges / fundamental changes come into play. I wish missions wouldn't resort so often to no BJ or no kills and allow me chose who I want to be in any difficulty. I wish TDM had real challenges built-in. @STiFU is up to something, and I am looking forward to his updates on the progress. What I really want to say is that mods - as long as they serve a purpose and work - will find their audience, regardless of whether you use them or not.

Have you tried loading a quicksave in 2.11? What version of tdm do you use currently? Have you tried disabling all scripts to see if it's script related? I mean I just share some ideas, I'm sure you know much more of tdm.

Hey I just wanted to create a Thread where everybody can post his improvement wishes. I Personally love this mod. There are so many features in it, and because it is a mod created by a community, why not write what could be improved. My wishes are: Some special weapons. I loved T2X and the variety of weapons. Some really hard to find special weapons, like the confusion arrow or a special bomb would be cool. But they have to be very special, for example as a result of a side quest - or maybe a usable torch for easier killing the undead More enemies, I think there will be an improvement, we just got spiders and zombies, but a higher variety is always good. More (custom) conversation. Thats one of the main parts I'm missing - so much flair and atmosphere is getting lost without them. Also some comments from he main charakter would be nice. For example when a guard gets knocked out "hah, now who's the taffer" ... better AI when the hear a voice. They start looking for you, but most of the time I just sneak into another room or a higher area and just have to wait, they should at least get someone with a torch or call other guards for help These are only small parts of the game which could be improved and are only my points of view, maybe it's either not possible to create or it fits not in the design of TDM.

That's a valid point well worth considering. The goal must be that a "TDM-libre" version is a net positive for the TDM project. The included libre mission must live up to sufficient standards. A bold statement would be that its very existance would be a net positive: I have played very many games in the Debian repo, and TDM compares favorably to them. If a new user becomes the least curious about the game after playing the libre version, they will soon find images and videos of the non-free content online and many will want to move on to take part of that content as well. If some current contributors of TDM would agree to release select screenshots from their missions under libre licenses, then maybe 10-20 screenshots can be included in "TDM-libre" as further teasers. I'm thinking "TDM-libre" is more than just facilitating distribution of "TDM-libre". It is just as much about enabling exposure for "TDM-nonlibre". A favorable outcome would be to recruit new participants to the project, expanding both the libre and non-libre parts of TDM. One appealing aspect of the Debian repository is that it is a curated collection of software (currently some 60 000 packages) that is hosted by the Debian project. I perceive an inclusion there (right or wrong) as a stamp of approval. An AppImage is something TDM would host ourselves and any prospective user would have to find us by themselves first, right? In that case the current installer works just fine. But I know little about this. Maybe you can elaborate?

Yeah no lol. It's all getting sucked in by the AI industry. How much does 24 GB of HBM cost anyway? It could be $600 or something. Which doesn't sound like much when you consider the MSRP of an RTX 4090 but they are making a killing with those marginz. Well, I've just managed to upgrade to an i3-10105 system, possibility of future GPU upgrade (need to look for low profile), for $75. And I'm sticking in 64 GB of RAM that I happened to have lying around. This is likely to be my new TDM system if everything works properly. And I bought not one but two of these things with the other destined for media duty. I stuck the 8 GB from one in the other one. I guess I could end up putting an 11th gen Rocket Lake chip in it, but I'm in no particular hurry to do that. INB4 I'm an unironic buyer of the RTX 3050 6 GB.

And what kind of computer is inside them, anyway? Is it some 8-bit thing, or something more advanced like an ARM architecture? The place I visited recently had an elevator with five full color LCD screens; one on every floor, and one in the elevator itself. I don't imagine an 8-bit computer driving them all at the same time... Note that it is presumably the computer's job to determine if the elevator is overloaded with too much weight, whether the doors are fully closed or not, etc.

Obviously the change will only work in last night's dev snapshot and onward. But missions can already start implementing this: It's just that older TDM versions won't see the debrief screen and only future players or dev users will enjoy them.

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.

Is it already possible to pass information from the briefing to the mission? I don't think I ever saw this implemented apart from the starter-location selection. TDM is currelently in early dev, maybe a bit soon to start implementing in missions? I think it's better to wait for beta, so no changes will be done to the system.

Reproduced with 3.9.0 on Ubuntu. This is the backtrace: ASSERT INFO: ../src/unix/threadpsx.cpp(1678): assert "This() == this" failed in TestDestroy(): wxThread::TestDestroy() can only be called in the context of the same thread BACKTRACE: [1] wxThread::TestDestroy() [2] wxutil::ThreadedResourceTreePopulator::ThrowIfCancellationRequested() [3] decl::DeclarationManager::renameDeclaration(decl::Type, std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&, std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&) [4] skins::Doom3SkinCache::renameSkin(std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&, std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&) [5] wxEvtHandler::ProcessEventIfMatchesId(wxEventTableEntryBase const&, wxEvtHandler*, wxEvent&) [6] wxEvtHandler::SearchDynamicEventTable(wxEvent&) [7] wxEvtHandler::TryHereOnly(wxEvent&) [8] wxEvtHandler::ProcessEventLocally(wxEvent&) [9] wxEvtHandler::ProcessEvent(wxEvent&) [10] wxEvtHandler::SafelyProcessEvent(wxEvent&) [11] wxTextEntryBase::SendTextUpdatedEvent(wxWindow*) [12..34] <internal GTK stuff> [35] wxGUIEventLoop::DoRun() [36] wxEventLoopBase::Run() [37] wxDialog::ShowModal() [38] wxutil::DialogBase::ShowModal() [39] cmd::CommandSystem::executeCommand(std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&, std::vector<cmd::Argument, std::allocator<cmd::Argument> > const&) [40] cmd::CommandSystem::execute(std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&) [41] wxEvtHandler::ProcessEventIfMatchesId(wxEventTableEntryBase const&, wxEvtHandler*, wxEvent&) [...] <Other GTK/wxWidgets stuff>

Hope I'm not being too off-topic for this thread, but I was playing a lovely new FM and something I saw reminded me of another reason why I hate MSAA apart from bad performance: It doesn't even always do the job right, including (but not limited to) to fixing pixel-sharp patterns on textures. Zoomed in for a close look and to catch a good example, see at full res. Seems to be the bumpmap in this case. Possibly caused by the texture being so high-res it surpasses the screen resolution so there's no blurring any more? I set MSAA to 4x and it didn't affect it. Which makes sense since I'm sure it only handles geometry and has no concept of textures. It would further be great if we had an alternative form of AA, which weren't just cheaper than MSAA but also handled sharp pixels on textures including alpha edges alongside geometry edges: Right now I think we have no fix to that grain.

Noticed all of these only because I played TDM by doing the opposite of stealth to practice swordfights. None of these bugs appeared as long as I played the game stealthily. Should also note that I used Snatcher's Core Essentials @snatcher on and off, but your mod does not alter the AI anyway, correct? Bugs happened both ways. 1) AI freezes in combat - https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6371 It happens a lot with auto-parry disabled. It never happened with auto-parry enabled. It never happened with some guards, while it happened many times with specific guards. They unfreeze when player dies, or when AI is forced to re-equip the melee when player returned from a spot that usually causes them to throw rocks. Also experienced behavior of them only slowly walking towards me at the pace of "hunched sneakily searching mode", attacking once finally in proximity. 2) AI may collectively lose the ability to hear any of the players noise caused by footsteps / landing. Still unsure of what causes this, but Lockner Manor has a good layout to get to the result. Just follow the right-most path and repeat the process of winning sword-fights with City Watch, and then jump around the next guard to see if they can hear you. If they can not hear you, likely nobody can. If they still can, just combat them too and you will likely have deaf AI by the time you have dealt with the 3 Watch Guards outside. In my experience, when they hear the death scream well enough to run to its location or start searching - the deafening did not work. 3) Helmeted AI does not react to (nor hear) players overhead sword strikes made directly on helmet, stealthily from behind. Not sure if the same issue as deaf AI bug, but happened at least once while it was active. (Lockner Manor) 4) (Moor?) AI may lose the ability to hear AND see player after nearby swordfights and after two slashes to bloody their face. (I may have also Moss Arrowed them to face). Any sword strikes I make simply go through their model with no audio of impact. Collision still gets player detected. (A Good Neighbor) 5) Crash to desktop when archer puts bow away to take out melee (while I may have collided with them on staircase). (Lockner Manor) 6) Crash to desktop when I shot a shortsword-wielding charging Noble. Sound of a deflected arrow played (same that you hear when shooting a stone wall), when I expected a flesh-hitting sound. (A Good Neighbor) 7?) Sometimes AI says "Ow that hurt" merely because I block their strikes. - Is this an intended feature? Do they take actual damage too? Anyway, I didn't find mentions about many of these issues. Reporting aside, if you want me to experiment with something or find ways to replicate - I don't mind updating this thread, as I plan to mess around with sword-fights anyway. Just posted this initial version should anyone want to chime in with similar experiences, and I wanted to know if some of these bugs could be mission-, or mod-specific. Maybe caused by much or unfortunately timed quicksaving / loading?

The new behavior is available in the latest dev17026-10712. If you set cvar s_overrideParmsMode to 1, then you get the new behavior. The old behavior is under value 0, which is default yet. Also there is "debug mode" if you set value to 2. In this case the new behavior is used, but console warnings are posted when a sound being started shows difference in behavior (i.e. the engine computes both behaviors and complains if they are different). Right now you'll see regular warnings about various AI sounds: they have wrong effective volume in TDM 2.12 and before due to this issue. As for modifying the missions, I think the main blocker is the new DarkRadiant behavior. @greebo @OrbWeaver, could you please comment why DR automatically sets s_minDistance and s_maxDistance spawnargs since recently?

A visually breaking change is planned for 2.13 (6354). Environment mapping is used when material contains a stage like this: { blend add cubeMap env/gen3 texgen reflect } Historically, there are two separate shaders for this case: one if the material has bumpmapping, and one if it does not. Note that if the material has diffuse or specular stage, then bumpmap is added implicitly. The shader with bumpmap was apparently "tweaked" by someone in TDM and got several major differences: it has fresnel term output color is tonemapped to [0..1] range using X / (1 + X) the color multiplier is hardcoded to (0.4, 0.4, 0.4) I'd like to delete all of these differences and restore the same behavior as in non-bumpmapped case. It is also the same behavior which is used in both cases in Doom 3 BFG (and supposedly in Doom 3 too). Speaking of points 1 and 2, nobody will notice the difference except in rare corner cases. The point 3 however is serious. It is also the main reason behind the change. Right now nobody can tweak the intensity of environment mapping: if you try to set red/green/blue/rgb, these settings are simply ignored. Now the problem is that the intensity of most environment mapping materials will change. In core files I see text like this (stainglass_saint_01) : { blend add maskalpha cubeMap env/gen3 // tone down the reflection a bit //I see no evidence that these values do anything red Parm0 * 0.2 green Parm1 * 0.2 blue Parm2 * 0.2 texgen reflect } Since the default parameter was 0.4, after the change this material will get 2x less intensity. The situation is even worse if rgb multiplier is not specified, since then it will change from 0.4 to 1.0, i.e. envmapping will become 2.5 times brighter. I can probably collect the list of all materials using environment mapping, but I'm not sure I'll be able to check them all one by one. Perhaps I can delete existing rgb settings, blindly set "rgb 0.4" and hope for the best.

Ah, pity I wasn't reading the forums back in February. I'm fond of that game, along with Bugbear's other early title, Rally Trophy. I was never too good at FlatOut, but it was always a hoot to play.