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I'm thinking of doing a Discord-only beta this time, but also don't want to exclude anyone. What do people think of that?

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.

On Debian (testing) dev17035-10724 runs very "laggy" for some reason (even the menu). Last time I experienced the same "laggyness" was on a non-accelrated VNC connection to another machine.

I totally agree that players usually don't care whether some non-customizable constant like bow shoot time is same as in core or not, as long as the mission plays well. This is a problem only for TDM development. But I don't know a proper way of solving this: mappers usually want to customize something "right now", and waiting for new release is rarely an option. And often customizations are not implemented until someone really wants them (or right away uses them), so that's also the chicken-and-egg problem here.

I can understand your frustrations, however the main reason why we have had to replace the core files is because we don’t have the ability to make tweaks to the core game without doing this. In particular having the bow speed reduced from 6 seconds to 3 feels a lot better ingame. And it’s something that I personally have in all of my missions since I saw it in Kingsal’s mission the first time. If it’s possible for us to tweak that variable without needing to replace the .script file that would be really handy.

Because the default script doesn’t feel as smooth as Kingsal’s tweaked one. I believe the main advantage is as Amadeus mentioned a 3 second bow draw time vs 6 seconds which feels a lot better. I’m not completely married to the idea of this but if you’re able to integrate the ability for us to customize this without replacing the core files that would be appreciated.

Wow! These shots look incredible, you really nailed the architecture! Unfortunately, I don't think I'm gonna have the time to beta test this, but we'll see. I just wanted to tell you that these shots look rad!

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!

There's been talk over the years on how we could improve texture quality, often to no avail as it requires new high-resolution replacements that need to be created and will look different and add a strain on system resources. The sharpness post-process filter was supposed to improve that, but even with it you see ugly blurry pixels on any nearby surface. Yet there is a way, a highly efficient technique used by some engines in the 90's notably the first Unreal engine, and as it did wonders then it can still do so today: Detail textures. Base concept: You have a grayscale pattern for various surfaces, such as metal scratches or the waves of polished wood or the stucco of a rough rock, usually only a few highly generic patterns are needed. Each pattern is overlayed on top of corresponding textures several times, every iteration at a smaller... as with model LOD smaller iterations fade with camera distance as to not waste resources, the closer you get the more detail you see. This does wonders in making any texture look much sharper without changing the resolution of the original image, and because the final mixture is unique you don't perceive any repetitiveness! Here's a good resource from UE5 which seems to support them to this day: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/adding-detail-textures-to-unreal-engine-materials Who else agrees this is something we can use and would greatly improve graphical fidelity? No one's ever going to replace every texture with a higher resolution version in vanilla TDM; Without this technique we'll always be stuck with early 2000's graphics, with it we have a magic way of making it look close to AAA games today! Imagine being able to see all those fine scratches on a guard's helmet as light shines on it, the thousands of little holes on a brick, the waves of wood as you lean into a table... all without even losing much performance nor a considerable increase in the size of game data. It's like the best deal one could hope for! The idTech 4 material system should already have what we need, namely the ability to mix any textures at independent sizes; Unlike the old days when only a diffuse texture was used, the pattern would now need to be applied to both albedo / specular / normal maps, to my knowledge there are shader keywords to combine each. Needless to say it would require editing every single material to specify its detail texture with a base scale and rotation: It would be painful but doable with a text injection script... I made a bash script to add cubemap reflections once, if it were worth it I could try adapting it to inject the base notation for details. A few changes will be needed of course: Details must be controlled by a main menu setting activating this system and specifying the level of detail, materials properties can't be controlled by cvars. Ultimately we may need to overlay them in realtime, rather than permanently modifying every material at load time which may have a bigger performance impact; We want each iteration to fade with distance and only appear a certain length from the camera, the effect will cause per-pixel lighting to have to render more detail per light - surface interaction so we'll need to control the pixel density.

Hello, all. This thread is meant as a follow-up companion piece to my previous thread listing royalty-free music by Kevin MacLeod that could be usable for new missions for The Dark Mod. In this thread, I take a slightly different approach. Instead of focusing on one author and his royalty-free music, I'll be writing an ever-expanding list of songs, compositions tracks and ambients by various musical artists that could come in useful for mission makers working on FMs for TDM. Aside from ambient music for background atmosphere, I'll also be listing some historical music and compositions from the real world's ca 14th-17th century that are in the public domain and could be used as background music in your missions, provided that someone does a royalty-free recording of them (i.e. not released on some payed-for album, but at most a royalty-free album or online collection/archive). Please note that, though I will try to provide you with links to royalty-free versions of historical compositions in particular, I sometimes might not be sure of the status of some of these recreations/recordings and you'll have to snoop around for their royalty-free status on your own. However, if you do confirm that, e.g. some freelance artist recorded a well-known 16th century piece of music, and is giving it away royalty-free, possibly with the only necessity being attribution, then please let me know and I'll include any download links and the details concerning necessary attribution. Thank you ! And now, it's time to begin... ---- Royalty-free ambients As in "free to distribute and use (though possibly with attribution)", not necessarily "free of the TDM universe royalty". Free Music Archive (FMA) From his particular website, I'll only be including tracks that have broad Creative Commons licenses or free licenses, and tracks that are suited to both Non-commercial and Commercial use. In other words, largelly CC BY 4.0 and CC BY 4.0 Deed. It's better to search for ambients and tracks that are more lenient with their licenses. Lee Rosevere - All the Answers - Awkward Silences (B) - Baldachin - Betrayal - Compassion (keys version) - Delayed Reaction - Edge of the Woods (kind of too modern sounding in parts, but maybe you could find a use for it á la some of the old grungy-sounding ambient tunes in Thief) - Expectations - Everywhere (sounds like a calm but moody mansion ambient to me) - Gone - Her Unheard Story - It's A Mystery - Not Alone - Old Regrets - Reflections - Slow Lights - Snakes - Something To Fill The Space - Thoughtful (especially the first half to first two thirds, before the more electronic beat kicks in) - The Long Journey - The Nightmare - The Past - Time to Think - Under Suspicion (maybe the bit between 2:26 and 2:48 would be the best for a tension sting, the rest sounds a bit too modern spy-fi for the TDM setting) - What's in the Barrel ? - You're Enough (A) - Maarten Schellekens - A Bit of Discomfort - Daydream - Deliverance - Free Classical Theme (arguably more like for an SF film with classical music portrayed electronically, but not bad) Salakapakka Sound System - Aiti, joku tuijottaa meita metsasta - Holle - Kadonnut jalkia jattamatta - Privatomrode i Vasteros - Syttymissyy tuntematon 1 - Syttymissyy tuntematon 2 Sawako albums - 098 (ambient for background humming and buzzing, perhaps machinery, electricity, industrial ambience, etc.) - Billy Gomberg Remix - If You're Ther (odd city ambience, between moody music and city background ambience, mild background thumping) - Lisbon ambience (maybe usable as background ambience in some mission set at a more Mediterranean city) - Mizuame (Sawako Sun) (could work as ambience for a larger baths or spa hall, with the sound of water, and human voices occassionally heard in the background) - November 25, 2007 - Snowfall - Spring Thaw - Tim Prebble Remix - UNIVERSFIELD - A Beatiful Sky (this track would actually be good for a church or cathedral interior) - A Calm Soulful Atmosphere For A Documentary Film (calm but somewhat mysterious ambient, reminds me of some of the Dishonored ambients) - A Grim Horror Atmosphere - A Music Box With A Tense Atmosphere - Atmosphere for Documentaries (rather suspensful ambient with an undertone of woodwind instruments) - Background Horror Tension - Beautiful Relaxing Ambient (a calmer ambient that's good for a location with some degree of grandeur or one that provides relief to the player) - Blood-chillingly Creepy Atmospheres - Bloody - Cloaked in Mystery - Corpse Rot - Crime City - Dark Background - Deep Space Exploration (has a nice atmosphere of mystery and exploration) - Drifting in Harmony (calm but suspensful ambient) - Embrace of the Mist - Exoplanet (mysterious ambient, could work for various environments) - Exploring the Cursed Cemetery (short, fifteen second tension sting with piano) - Evening Meditation In The Open Air (could work for a number environments during evening hours) - Fading Memories - Gloomy Atmosphere for Documentaries - Gloomy Reverie - Grim Atmosphere - Horror Atmosphere (Version 2) - Horror Background Atmosphere 6 - Horror Background Atmosphere for Horror and Mystical - Horror Background Atmosphere for Scary Scenes - Horror Background Atmosphere for Suspensful Moments (1) - Horror Background Atmosphere for Suspensful Moments (2) - Horror Dark Atmosphere (Version 1) - Horror Music Box - Intergalactic Ambience (good calm theme of mystery and wonder) - In the Embrace of Darkness - Mars (suspensful ambient for a suspensful location, with a metallic undertone in its melody) - Meditation in Nature (aside from outdoor environments, could work in a number of other environments as well) - Melodies of Fear - Midnight Secrets - Mild Heaven (a calm ambient, maybe could work for night time city streets and city rooftops) - Moment of a Dream (suspensful theme, hopefully not too electronic in undertone) - Mysterious Passerby - Mystery Atmosphere - Mystery Horror - Mystery House - Mystical Dark Atmosphere - Nebula Soundscape (sounds like a good ambient for outdoor or cave environments or maybe even churches and city rooftops) - Ominous Criminal Atmosphere - Sad Emotional Piano for Documentary Films - Scary Dark Cinematic For Suspensful Moments - Scary Horror Atmosphere - Sinister Mystery - Sinister Piano Melodies (short, fifteen second tension sting with piano) - Siren's Call (I feel this one has more limited uses, though maybe it could work for suspense in an industrial environment) - Soothing Serenade (calm, soothing ambient, with a slight hint of mystery, could work for several types of environments) - Soothing Soundscapes (calm, soothing ambient, with a slight hint of mystery, could work for several types of environments) - Spooky Hallway - Suspense Atmosphere Background - Tense Dark Background - Tense Horror Atmosphere - Tense Horror Background Atmosphere - The Box of Nightmares - This Sunset (good for an evening or night time ambient, even includes subtle cricket chirping sounds) - Tropical Escapes (good for an outdoor environment with a waterfall, flowing stream or falling rain) Many of these tracks by UNIVERSFIELD are quite short, about a minute or slightly under a minute, but good as tension-building themes or as suspensful ambients. ---- Historical background music - lute and similar string instruments La Rossignol ("The Nightingale"} - a Renaissance era piece, anonymous composer. This one was written as an instrumental duet for two musicians. So, if you'd use this for a scene of AI characters playing their instruments, you should use two such characters for added believability. Here's what the composition sounds like when played as a duet on: - lute (obviously the most medieval/Renaissance instrumentation) - acoustic guitar (example 1) and acoustic guitar (example 2) - 11-string guitar what it sounds when played as a duet on an 11-string guitar - licensed album version (presumably lute) If you find any royalty-free version in good quality, let me know. Lachrimae ("Tears", sometimes known as "Seven Teares") by John Dowland - another Elizabethan era piece, by a 16th-17th century composer. Various reconstructions: - on lute (example solo performance at the Metropolitan Museum) - on lute, with vocal accompaniment (lutist and female soprano) - on lute, violas, and other (six musician ensemble performance) - on viola da gamba (five musician ensemble performance) Lachrimae Pavan ("Teary Pavane / Pavane of the Tears") by John Dowland - a variation on the previous composition, for the Renaissance pavane style dance. Various reconstructions: - on lute - on acoustic guitar (example 1), (example 2), (example 3) Again, I'd like to find a royalty-free version of these two compositions. Frog Galliard - one more by Dowland, for now. Another composition for a Renaissance dance style, the galliard. Reconstructions: - on lute (solo performance) - on lute, deeper sound (solo performance) - on acoustic guitar (example 1), (example 2), (example 3) Royalty-free version would be appreciated. Greensleeves - by an anonymous 16th century author, quite possibly a folk song of the era. Trust me, you know this one, even if you don't know the name. It's one of the most well-known bits of Renaissance secular and courtly music in the popular imagination. (Trust me, it's been referenced in everything. Even the first Stronghold game from the early 2000s had an in-game character sing a made-up ditty to the tune/melody of this song.) Reconstructions: - on lute (solo performance) - classical guitar (solo performance) - acoustic guitar (solo performance) I bet there's a royalty-free version of this one somewhere. I'll snoop around, and if you find one before I do, let me know. In taberna quando sumus ("When we are at the tavern") - anonymous period song from the 14th century, of Goliard origin. Written and sung entirely in Latin (so if you can explain Latin within the TDM setting or use only an instrumental version, go for it). An unabashed drinking song, you could use this for more rascally Builder priests/monks or for various commoners and lower-ranking noblemen while they're having a good time at the inn. A pretty well-known song even nowadays (though the most famous melody for it might be the more recent arrangement). Reconstructions: - example performance 1 - example performance 2 Again, an entirely royalty-free version of this one could come in handy. Historical background music - by Jon Sayles Jon Sayles is a musician who runs the Free Early and Renaissance Music website. His recordings are in .mp3 format (so you will need a conversion to .ogg) and Sayles has made them all freely available. The instrument he used for his musical reconstructions is the classical guitar. Some examples of Sayles' reconstructions of period music by anonymous or known authors: Saltarello, based on the late-medieval and Renaissance dance tune from Italy Madrigal by Anthony Holborne Al fonsina by Johannes Ghiselin Ich weiss nit by Ludwig Senfl So ys emprentid by John Bedyngham, mid-1400s Riu, riu, chiu, famous 15th century Spanish Christmas carol Fantasia, by Orlando Gibbons, late 16th and early 17th century Die Katzenpfote, German-speaking lands, anonymous author, 15th century A gre d'amors, 14th century, anonymous French author Nightengale (unrelated to La Rossignol), by Thomas Weelkes El Grillo, 15th to early 16th century composition by Josquin des Prez The Witches' Dance, by anonymous, Renaissance English composition Ma fin est mon comencement, by 14th century composer Guillame de Machaut In Nomine, late 15th and early 16th century composition by John Taverner Ricercare ("ricker-caré", nothing to do with rice or care), by Adrian Willaert Fantasia by Thomas Lupo, 16th-17th century English composer The Nite Watch, composed by Anthony Holborne - appropriate for TDM Plenty more where these came from... Historical background music - from the A-M Classical website This website offers plenty of freely available, royalty-free .mp3s of early and classical musical compositions and instrumental songs. The only thing you need to do is provide attribution, as everything on the site is via a Creative Commons license (this is noted on every page). Counting Christmas songs from the Middle Ages and Renaissance alone, I was able to download loads of them already years and years ago. Though they're far from epic recordings, if you're just looking for a competently done free version of these compositions, this is an excellent site. A few examples of medieval music from the A-M Classical site: Angelus ad Virginem (played quietly on organ), Diex soit en cheste maison by Adam de la Halle (organ and other instruments), Greensleeves (this is for a carol version of the lyrics, but the melody is the same as standard Greensleeves) Historical background music - by Vox Vulgaris The Swedish band/ensemble Vox Vulgaris aren't very active nowadays, but they did plenty of early music recording in the early-to-mid 2000s. From what I've read about their song releases, they're okay with others using the songs from their 2003 album and other material they've done. I don't know if their website is still around (there's an archived version) and whether you can still contact the band members, but if you'd like to be extra sure and ask, go ahead. I don't think they've changed their copyleft stance to their own works, but it pays off to be sure. So, here are some of VV's own takes on period music: Cantiga 166 - based on the eponymous song (full title "Cantiga 166 - Como póden per sas culpas (os homés seer contreitos)"), by Spanish composer Alphonso X from the 13th century (yes, king Alphonso X ! They didn't call him Alphonso the Learned for nothing). To provide you with a point of comparison, here, here and here are versions by other artists. (If I remember correctly, this particular VV song was also used by moonbo in his Requiem FM, as part of an inn's muffled background music. I did a real double-take when I played the mission for the first time and recognised it.) Cantiga 213 - based on the eponymous song (full title "Cantiga 213 - Quen sérve Santa María, a Sennor mui verdadeira"), again by Spanish composer, king Alphonso X from the 13th century. To provide you with a point of comparison, here and here are versions by other artists. Saltarello - based on the well-known melody for the Italian late-medieval Renaissance dance, the saltarello (also the saltarello trotto specifically in this case). To provide you a point of comparison, here and here are versions by other artists. La Suite Meurtrière - I can't quite source this one, it might be their own original composition, though "in the style of" some particular period music. Rókatánc (Fox Dance) - this is a really wild bit of period dance and festive music, possibly Hungarian-inspired, given the name. I think this would fit both a tavern environment or some public event for the nobility and patricians, including an armed sparring tournament or similar. Final note from me New suggestions are always welcome as I expand this thread. For any suggestions concerning Kevin MacLeod's royalty-free music, please use the other thread I've already made, purely for listing MacLeod's stuff.

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

Megatextures were a horrible idea for obvious reasons, not sure why ID chose to learn that the hard way. The concept from what I remember is the whole map uses a single gigantic texture... instead of how we independently pick a couple of 1024 px brick materials for a few brushes and surfaces, the whole map acts as one model with one material and a single texture which probably needs to be 1 million x 1 million pixels even for a small level. This is ridiculous from a perspective of system resources with 100's of GB's of storage and huge (v)RAM requirements and hours of loading time, as well as raising the skills required for level editing since you now need mappers to also be texture artists and sculpt / paint their levels instead of just placing stuff. The only thinkable benefit is there's no repetition since every pixel on every part of the world is unique, but who notices any similarity with independent texturing if it's done right anyway? Detail textures have yet another advantage there: Since you scale the pattern independently on top of the original texture, you can make every surface appear as if it has unique pixels like megatextures. Hence why I'd advice having the details be very high-res, 4k or 8k even 16k if we can take it: Yes that's enormous, but remember we'd only have a few patterns probably no more than 15 in total, and can store them as grayscale then use a single image to modify both albedo / specular / normal (heightmap to normalmap): Map the detail in world space rather than the brush or model UV map, and the resulting pattern on every surface in the world will always be unique since the original and detail textures will be out of sync.

Indeed and try to wait until you are sure the model is finished before you go through the trouble of aligning textures. I couldn't tell you how much time I spent realigning textures after adjusting walls, windows, etc., or changing my mind about the materials (especially when bevels are involved).

EDIT - Please note there is a mod somewhere down this thread.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Taffers, It's a shame moveables didn't get a spawnarg for a proper name back in the day. Names could have added personality to the beautifully crafted moveables and exploring the world would have been way more interesting: "ent_name" "Apple" "ent_name" "Bottle of Wine" "ent_name" "Medium Crate" ... Mappers, of course, would have made use of this simple but nifty feature in a myriad of interesting ways Adding a proper name when a new item is first introduced takes not time but we are now talking hundreds of nameless objects... Oh well, as the saying goes: it never is too late! (or is it).

@The Black Arrow That's a good analysis. I don't disagree but we're referring to different time periods with different quality aims: In the early days of 3D and low-res CRT screens when we had 256x256 textures, detail textures were used to make surfaces appear as if they have 1024x1024 textures... today in the age of 1080p monitors such texture can appear blurry from up close, we want to make 1024x1024 textures appear of 4096x4096 quality. Back then the goal was to get at least a little bit of perceived sharpness, today the goal is to see those microscopic details on every surface as if everything is real... while the concept of detail textures is old it scales to cover both aims. As you correctly pointed out, the ideal solution would be upgrading the actual textures themselves. Sadly there are two big problems with this that will likely never be possible to overcome: Someone must create or find identical textures to replace existing ones, which have to retroactively fit every old FM. That would be a huge effort for so many images, and will not look exactly the same way so people would complain how "this wall used to be made of small red bricks which are now larger and yellower which isn't what I intended and no longer line up". An advanced upscaling filter may be able to bump the resolution with good results, this would be a lot less effort and retain the exact appearance of textures. The even greater issue is storage and memory use would go through the roof. Imagine all our textures (from surfaces to entity skins) being 4096x4096 which would be the aim for decent quality today: TDM could take over 100 GB of drive space, you'd need at least 16 GB of RAM to run it, and the loading time of a FM will be 5 minutes. Detail textures are a magic solution for both problems: They're overlayed in realtime on top of the standard textures without changing their base appearance. This means you see pixels several times the scale of the image without requiring any image to actually be at that resolution, no vRAM or loading time increase. And if detail layers are disabled with distance you also don't lose FPS in per-pixels calculations when distant lights update.

@Grey Mauser thanks for taking the time to play! I am glad to hear you are enjoying it. Yeah at some point the glasses effect became much more subtle than it was during development and this should probably get fixed at some point. It seems near impossible for a lot of players to make out.

In considering my possible upcoming TDM projects, such as upgrading some fonts to Latin-1 or "TDM Latin", I reviewed the current status of support for European Latin-based languages. Basically, for FMs, the translation system has fallen into disrepair and disuse (or perhaps kicked into the grave). Neither "converted" (i.e., #str using) FMs nor Language Packs are now being maintained and distributed by thedarkmod.com. As to other sites, for Cyrillic/Russian, DarkFate provides such resources. Are there any such sites in native Western European tongues, say, German, French, Italian, that likewise offer translated TDM FMs? So, turning back to thedarkmod.com, questions - - is Western Language support (outside the main menu system) officially dead? - if so, maybe it's time to stop pretending otherwise. - if not, should the converted #str system be revived, with better infrastructure? - or an alternative translation system be devised... if so, what? I'm just trying to identify work worth doing. (I started to draft a doc with a litany of problems with Western language support, and possible sub-projects to address them, but TL;DR. And really, not pertinent if support is considered dropped.) Thanks for your thoughts.

I'm just here to gush embarrassingly about another Wellington Crab mission. MD2: LHMN is a delicious bit of offbeat strangeness, dreamlike, surreal, but made odd sense to me at the right moments, so that I made it though the entire thing by myself this time, instead of being constantly (though enjoyably) overwhelmed as in Iris. Of course, it's lovingly crafted and peppered with clever little bits of window dressing that might seem distracting and extraneous in a lesser mission. I still have little idea what the overall story was, but I enjoyed every minute of the experience. Wellington Crab, you are a genius and an artist, and I look forward keenly to your next mission.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but just a historical note: the existing i18n.pl conversion script expects only a numeric value after #str_ in its pattern matching regex (and possibly method of hashing). I do think @datiswous's idea to have key/value pairs with values like: "#str_Nobody crosses me! Must get back Frothley's scepter Creep stole off me." is a good way forward. Maybe with this version, DR could actually choose over time to provide some .lang support. And probably the engine would have to create hash tables to avoid slow string matching with these long non-numeric strings. (Oh, one other thing, since we're talking about The Outpost. When I played it earlier the month under 2.12, my screen would periodically go black for a second or two, every minute or two. I wonder if anyone else sees this, or just my odd Intel graphics chip?)

I'm happy to present my first FM, The Spider and the Finch. There may be a spider, but no ghosts or undead. It should run a couple hours. It's now available on the Missions page or the in-game downloader. Many thanks to the beta testers Acolytesix, Cambridge Spy, datiswous, madtaffer, Shadow, and wesp5 for helping me improve and making the mission to the best of my abilities. This would not be have been possible without Fidcal's excellent DarkRadiant tutorial. Thanks also to the many people who answered my questions in the TDM forums. Cheers! 2023-12-13 Mission updated to version 3. Fixed a bug where the optional loot option objective was not actually optional. Updated the animations for Astrid Added a hallway door so the guards are less likely to be aggroed en masse.

Yes. Sure, I will change it, but I do mind. In addition to changing the forum title, I have also had the name of the pk4 changed in the mission downloader and the thiefguild.com site’s named changed. It's not just some "joke". The forum post and thread are intended to be a natural extension of the mission’s story, a concept that is already SUPER derivative of almost any haunted media story or most vaguely creepy things written on the internet in the past 10 or 15 years. Given your familiarity with myhouse.wad, you also can clearly engage with something like that on some conceptual level. Just not here on our forums? We can host several unhinged racist tirades in the off-topic section but can’t handle creepypasta without including an advisory the monsters aren’t actually under the bed? (Are they though?) I am also trying to keep an open mind, but I am not really feeling your implication that using a missing person as a framing of a work of fiction is somehow disrespectful to people who are actually gone. I have no idea as even a mediocre creative person what to say to that or why I need to be responsible for making sure nobody potentially believes some creative work I am involved in, or how that is even achievable in the first place. Anyway, apologies for the bummer. That part wasn’t intentional. I am still here. I will also clarify that while I love the game, I never got the biggest house in animal crossing either. In the end Tom Nook took even my last shiny coin.

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?

edit: TL;DR: I've tweaked the .lwo exporter to preserve autosmooth angle Ahem. When I started writing this post a couple of days ago, it was supposed to be a "please help me, models won't smooth" kind of thing, but as I started taking screenshots and such for a comprehensive view of the problem, the question morphed into a "is there a hack to get .lwo's to export the way .ase's do", then to "how to get the same surface smoothing from Blender as you can get from Lightwave" and eventually to "does anyone around know python and blender enough to fix the export plugin". But then I fixed the addon myself, so it was almost as if there's no point to the thread. However, while googling around for a solution I stumbled upon a whole bunch of incomplete (1,2) or outright wrong (1,2) information, and whenever the question came up the issue was never really resolved completely. That might be because the problem isn't obvious, since a lot of exported models will actually end up correctly smoothed on export, leading one to believe wrong shading in rare cases is due to modeling mistakes / bad shadowmesh / etc. Point is, having the definitive .lwo smoothing post seems useful. Identifying the problem: Here's the mesh. I add an 'edge split' modifier (I use sharp edges while modeling the low poly, so I can uncheck the 'edge angle' option). I can now apply the modifier(s) and export to .ase (triple the mesh either in export options or in modifiers beforehand). The .ase looks alright in-game: Now I'll export it to .lwo using this script. Depending on export options, here are the results: If I also check "remove doubles", I'll lose all of the split (sharp) edges: (recalculating normals on export can be unpredictable as well, so clean up the model beforehand instead) Right about this point I start searching for a solution online, stumble upon this and try the renderbump hack. However, all it seems to do is weld all of the vertices back together at runtime and attempt to smooth the whole surface, similarly to "remove duplicates", but with no upper threshold. (to anyone possibly reading this in the future: don't forget to revert your changes to the materials!) Source of the problem: At this point I still wasn't sure if it's even possible to get .lwo's identical to .ase's, so I installed Lightwave. Naturally, it took some time to eventually stumble upon Surface Editor (F5), and the "smoothing threshold" contained therein. But then I just had to crank it up to 180 and export to "LWO2". That fixes everything in-game: So the issue is trivial, I just have to find a way to somehow pass on a smoothing angle through the exporter. However, the "auto smooth" option on the object data tab doesn't seem to affect anything regardless of angle. Long story short, after some hex-comparison magic, I home in on SMAN block in the exporter script: So what it actually does is set your smoothing angle to either 90°, 86°(??), or 0°, depending on whether you've chosen "idtech compatible", "smoothed", or neither. The solution: Now, I don't know Python and I don't know Blender scripting, so I can't say with full certainty that I didn't break anything. But I did cobble together a version of the script that seems to do the job. Here it is, mirror / do whatever you want with it. If your mesh has autosmooth enabled, and you've checked "idtech" or "smoothed" on export, your chosen autosmooth angle will now transfer to the surface in .lwo: I took the liberty of changing the default export options to what seems to suit TDM the best, you can just open the script in notepad and edit them to your taste. Wrapping up, there are still some mysteries I didn't solve, such as "idtech compatible" models taking up only half the size of models exported otherwise (including from Lightwave itself), there doesn't seem to be any visible difference in-game, at least in TDM. That "1.5 radian" in the code still makes me scratch my head. And I still don't know if the 4-8x size savings over .ase matter for in-game memory at all (but at least I know I won't have to edit the *BITMAPs manually anymore). Even after all this, the .ase still has just slightly better shading, but since the outputs of the exporter and Lightwave itself are now identical, seems safe to say it's as good as it gets.

I tried the script on the core assets, and find an interesting case called textures/darkmod/metal/flat/tiling_1d/gen_smooth_gold01 This material has time-dependent envmap color: { blend add maskalpha cubeMap env/gen1 red sintable[time*0.1] green sintable[time*0.1] blue sintable[time*0.1] texgen reflect } I wonder whether it was intentional or not. Here is how it looks: I suppose it would be worthwhile to manually review the modified materials, because in some cases the color adjustment was actually meaningful...