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Also, I've built another console app, "datBounds", to visualize the bounding box around each bitmap character. Starting from your choice of .dat, .fnt, or .ref file, it generates a set of .tga files, e.g., stone_0_24_bounds.tga & stone_1_24_bounds.tga. You can optionally include a 2-hex-digit label on each bounding box. More about that in May. I'm using the results of this to understand the current complex codepoint mapping of the Stone 24pt glyphs, and develop the workplan and grid layouts for upcoming work.

Do we have one of these? I know we kind of have one for upcoming TDM projects, but not a general game thread. I'll start. Elden Ring:

I usually share other people's photos of historical and industrial architecture in this thread, but I've decided to finally share some of my own photos that I've accumulated over the years. Over the years, especially the last twenty or so years, I've wandered many of the old town quarters in cities and towns all around my country, taking snapshots. Wereas many of the main streets and major landmarks have long since had nice and beautiful restoration work done, many of the more obscure side streets, back alleys and occassional overlooked corners had interesting sights to behold. I've particularly been fond of old townhouses that show elements from different eras of history, as well as all the wear accumulated over the years and decades. As much as I like that many of these eventually also receive decent restoration work and look nice again, the sight of a well-worn, dilapidated or even ruined house or ocassional public building can prove really stimulating for the imagination. They've got a lot of proverbial "texture" (not just in the surface sense) and "character" that can hike one's imagination, especially with regards to lived-in environments with long histories.

The real St. Alban was a pagan who became a celebrated religious personality, this All Saints Day 2010 The Dark Mod places its own spin on this mythical figure. Screenshots: Intro: "'Business' has been slow lately, even more so after most of my gear got snatched during a Watch raid... I've since been forced to hit the streets and pick pockets for a living. But my luck was about to change, last night I was approached by a red hooded figure with a proposition... As we sat down in a dark corner of a nearby inn, he told to me that the Builders of St. Alban's Cathedral in the Old Quarter had recently unearthed a discovery that might lead to the final resting place of some saint." " But before I do anything, I need to get my tools and stash from the evidence room at the local watch station." "with the hawks, doves will congregate they will drop honey from the cliffs wine will surge over the earth the sheep will wander harmlessly with the wolf then the wicked will rise, but to retribution" - 'scripture of St Alban' There is a new version out now, see the following thread St Albans Cathedral version 1.6 Build Time: about 2-3 months. Thanks:- Huge respect to the Dark Mod team for such a great mod and for all the hard work they put into it and continue to put into it. Special thanks to Fidcal, Serpentine and others for their help on the forums and to Testing:Ugoliant, Baddcog, Grayman, Lost soul, Bjorn and Baal (for doing all the Vp work in the town. Readables: Ungoliant and Mortemdesino for all awesome work on the readables. Resource: Fids, Grayman, Ungoliant - guis, models & images. Misc: Loren Schmidt - the author of the map I based the cathedral on. Info: # Like Thief2, some things are climable, pipes, wall vines etc.. You can also drop some of the keys, some door that are frobbabe mean there is another way inside - explore u taffer! # Due to TDM being a lot more of a resource hog than T2 I have been forced to limit the number of Ai in the mission, but they have better placement than my last mission. # On all difficulty levels the player starts with vertualy no tools/weapons, there are weapons to be found - read, read, read! # For the love of all that is holy, read the briefing otherwise you will problems completing the mission. Known issues:- # This mission will have less than optimal fps at a few points on the map, mid range DX9 card(X1900/GF7800) or higher required. # On low end PCs I recommend, V-sync is off, AA is off, Aniso is 4x or lower and that any and all background apps are closed.

I am curious as to which distributions and tool version are known to work when compiling either the 2.10 source archive or svn trunk. Cmake errors out with both Archlinux and Mint 21 for me. For good measure I will include some information I gathered about these errors, but I just want to be able to successfully build tdm on something. (My end goal is to compile in either pulseaudio or pipewire support for openal if that's possible; even though this thread got my audio working (arch audio subsystem is pipewire{,-alsa,-audio,-pulse} & jack2 ) ) I've also tried compiling against the latest svn trunk, that fails too, although the point in which it fails is slightly different. What do the developers use to build the linux release? System information for the failed builds against the 2.10 archive: System #1: cmake 3.22.1 | gcc 11.3.0 | kernel 5.15.0-56-generic | distro Linux Mint 21 System #2: cmake 3.25.1 | gcc 12.2.0 | kernel 5.15.83-1-lts | distro Arch Linux src archive used: sha256sum thedarkmod.2.10.src.7z 73aa974635293e6ca07396be19901355f8224637bdf3ce73404b8eef74148a1c thedarkmod.2.10.src.7z Build command from root of extracted src: [ -d build ] && rm -rf build mkdir build && cd build && cmake --debug-output --loglevel=DEBUG -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" .. &> cmake.$distro.log && \ make -d --debug=a -j &> make.$distro.log ; cd .. make.mint.log.gz make.arch.log.gz cmake.mint.log.gz cmake.arch.log.gz

This last month, I've been exploring TDM's font situation, and improving the documentation as I go. In the wiki, "Font Conversion & Repair" was rewritten, with parts broken out and expanded as: Font Files Font Metrics & DAT File Format Font Bitmaps in DDS Files ExportFontToDoom3 Q3Font Refont As announced earlier, that last item is a new C++ console utility for revising font metrics in DAT files; essentially another alternative to Q3Font and Font Patcher. It now has additional functionality that provides font-coverage analysis. A summary of current results across all TDM fonts is reported in the forum thread "Analysis of 2.12 TDM Fonts". Also, refont allows its human-readable outputs to be decorated with an annotation for each character (out of 256 codepoints). Associated with that, I've just created and released 4 annotation files: 1 Cyrillic version for TDM's russian map 3 variants for TDM's custom english/european char map. One of the variants was derived from another new mapping file that is now available from existing wiki article "I18N - Charset". Within that file is a list, in a standard format, of the 256 TDM bitmap codepoints mapped to the corresponding Unicode U+NNNN value and name. This may be useful in defining TDM's mapping to TTF font editing programs. For all these wiki pages mentioned, I imagine there will be additional cross-links and tweaks. But pretty much done.

So this online store I bought a pair of headphones from decided to gift me 12$ today. Since the voucher would expire in in two weeks unless used and I had nothing else to get, I decided to spend it on a 17$ gamepad so I'd have one of these as well. I understand they should work fine under Linux these days, plus it supports both dinput and xinput so I'm not concerned. I never played any FPS or most games using something other than the keyboard and mouse, this feels like an interesting opportunity to try it out. TDM is one of the games I might enjoy playing with such a thing, especially since it doesn't require super-fast reactions till I get used to it like a deathmatch shooter. So until the device arrives tomorrow, I figured I'd ask how well I can expect TDM to run on such a thing! Especially now that we have a new rendering and input management system for the upcoming TDM 2.10. There's a few things I wanted to know. One is if both looking around as well as movement using the finger pads is supported. I remember some games allowed walking more slowly if you only pushed the pad slightly; Does this mean it's possible to sneak by only moving the pad a bit, in a way that affects how much guards hear you? Otherwise I was curious if force feedback (vibration) is implemented and used. For TDM this mainly makes sense when you take damage, are in radius of a sound that has the shake effect, and other potential situations I might be missing now. Is gamepad vibration a feature in the engine at least?

Introduction A project is underway, led by Geep, to eventually provide English language subtitles (or if you prefer, "closed captions") for all the non-story phrases (e.g., barks) of the stock AI characters. The non-story phrases are identified by the "verbosity speech" subtitle tag. The hope is that these subtitles would be distributed as part of the future TDM 2.12 core and so available to all FMs, both old and new. Since there are 5-10K such phrases in total, this project will take a while. Let me know if you'd like to help. This forum thread can be used for project coordination, and to provide info about - What subtitle sets (e.g., for particular AI) are underway and completed Emerging tools or methods for bulk testing Style guidance for TDM subtitle authors. To support this project, a style guide will be developed as experience accumulates. While motivated by providing some consistency to English speech-tagged subtitles, it may be of some interest to FMers creating story-tagged subtitles, and those subtitling in other TDM-supported languages. Potential improvements to TDM's subtitling system - particularly those that would involve engine/GUI changes - can be discussed in this companion thread: Subtitles - Possibilities Beyond 2.11 Current Status - Subtitles for Barks All TDM vocal sets planned for TDM 2.12 have been delivered. New: Fixup Needed to Run These Under 2.12 Beta 3 The Thug - Update May 6, 2023 released as testSubtitlesThug2 FM. This takes advantage of new 2.12dev features and changes to style guidelines. The Lord - Update May 4, 2023 released as testSubtitlesLord2 FM The Wench - Two postponed April versions - Nov 25, 2023 released as testSubtitlesWenchOriginal and testSubtitlesWenchPatched FMs. Two versions because of Bugtracker 6284. IMPORTANT: See final version at end of this list, released Jan. 14, 2024. The Young Builder (Builder 4) - Update May 30, 2023 released (again) as testSubtitlesYoungBuilder FM. (Corrects error in briefing syntax of original May 17 release.) Average Jack - June 8, 2023 released as testSubtitlesJack FM. The Pro - June 23, 2023 released as testSubtitlesPro FM. The Maiden - July 8, 2023 released as testSubtitlesMaiden FM The Grumbler - July 24, 2023 released as testSubtitlesGrumbler FM The Mature Builder (Builder 3) - August 15, 2023, released as testSubtitlesMatureBuilder FM The Lady (aka Noblewoman) - Sept 9, 2023, released as testSubtitlesLady FM The Moor - Sept 14, 2023, released as testSubtitlesMoor FM The Commander - Sept 30, 2023, released as testSubtitlesCommander FM The Simpleton - Oct. 21, 2023, released as testSubtitlesSimpleton FM Builder 1 & 2 (shared vocal set) - Nov. 8, 2023, released as testSubtitlesBuilder1and2 FM The Critic - Nov. 25, 2023, released as testSubtitlesCritic_FM Manbeast - Dec. 10, 2023, released as testSubtitlesManbeast FM NEW! Lady02 - Dec 21, 2023, released as testSubtitlesLady02 FM. Assisted by datiswous. NEW! The Drunk - Jan 6, 2024, released as testSubtitlesDrunk FM. Assisted by MirceaKitsune. NEW! The Cynic - Jan. 13, 2024, released as testSubtitlesCynic FM. Incorporates early demo subtitles by Dragofer. NEW! The Wench, Final Revision - Jan. 14, 2024, released as testSubtitlesWenchFinal FM . Assisted by Dragofer. See also original May version (released in November) in the list above. All TDM vocal sets planned for TDM 2.12 have been delivered. Thanks, @nbohr1more, for integrating these into the release. All AI vocal sets, including additional ones for future consideration - perhaps as "verbosity effects" - are listed here. Current Status - Utilities buildSubtitleShader.exe - Latest release of April 10, 2023. This program fabricates a TDM sound shader file specifically for the testSubtitles... series of FMs used here. It does so by wrapping each sound file name in a directory into a sound shader with uniform incremental naming. While limited to a single directory, the latest release simplifies merging runs from multiple directories. @datiswous reports that this Windows console program also works under Linux/wine, where it is used with similar "testSubtitle..."-derived FMs for verbosity "story" subtitling. checkDurationsInSRT - May 6, 2023 Update (bug fix) This Win/console program scans a directory for .srt files, examines the subtitles, and warns about those phrases/messages that are potentially too short or too long in time, or that seem to require too high a reading rate, expressed in characters per second. It also looks for within-file subtitle messages that overlap in time. soundDurationsCSV.exe - March 7, 2023 Release This Windows console program scans a directory of sound files, reporting their names and (using pre-installed ffprobe) durations with millisecond resolution. The resulting .csv file can then be imported into a custom Excel spreadsheet for subtitle editing. For more, see also Feb 20th comments . findTooLongSubtitles.exe - Minor update, June 23, 2023 Release This Win/console program scans a directory for .subs and .srt files, checks the length in characters of each subtitle line, and reports those that exceed a specified maximum. analyzeFieldWidth of April 27, 2023 (release not scheduled; too idiosyncratic). Used to determine, for 12pt Carleton font, and a representative sampling of bark subtitles, how many characters might reasonably fit within a given gui field width. Later, parts of this code were used to build calcStringWidth.exe discussed next. calcStringWidth.exe - Oct. 11, 2023 Release. Calculates the display width of an input string, for 4 candidate subtitle fonts Carleton and Stone, uncompressed or 16:9 compressed. statsForSubtitles - June 25, 2023 Release. Starting with The Pro vocal set, this Windows console program automates the gathering and reporting of the basic statistics included with the announcement of every vocal set release in this forum thread. Current Status - Spreadsheets and Related Explanatory Documents, including Workflow and Templates Work by Geep on each vocal set starts with instantiation of a pre-configured Excel spreadsheet. This is used for subtitle editing and to do automatic calculations to help manage constraints and decision making. The announcement of each AI subtitle release here includes a link to the corresponding spreadsheet. At first, the spreadsheet's columns, formats, calculations, and highlighting (and its distillation into template form) would change quite a bit between each AI. As of June, 2023 and AverageJack, it has largely stabilized, and is now documented: June 10 Documents Explaining Workflow and Excel Spreadsheet/Template (for AverageJack) The v5 template was used for vocal sets from June's Average Jack to November's The Critic. Further clarifications are now available: Dec 7 Update of the "Explained" Doc for Spreadsheet Template v5 Subsequent vocal sets, through to 2024's The Cynic, use template v6: NEW! Jan. 10, 2024 "Explained" Doc for Spreadsheet Template v6 Current Status - Style Guide for Barks As of Sept 2, Subtitle Style Guide - Part 1 is now available. NEW! As of Jan 16, 2024: Subtitle Style Guide - Part 2 with more discussion and references. Current Status - Third-Party Tools For editing of "story" SRT files, datsiwous found "kdenlive" particularly helpful [to do: link to how-to below]. Geep has been working with the simpler, audio-only "Cadet" for barks.

Inn Business It's business, at an inn, over three nights. Development screenshots: Download: https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing Update 1.48 uploaded March 8th, 2014, one change: patches key rarely not being frobable in one of its possible spots Big thanks to my beta testers: Airship Ballet, Kyyrma and AluminumHaste! Development supporters of note: Sotha, Springheel and Obsttorte. Also thanks Sotha, for urinating in my mission. ;-) And thanks Kyyrma for the title screen! My appreciation to all forum/wiki contributors, without whom, this wouldn't exist. Thanks to positive commenters on my previous mission too, extra motivation helps! :-) Note this uses campaign features, what you use the first night, impacts subsequent nights. And to quote a tester, "...the level is maybe best experienced in more than one sitting". If you do pause between nights, please be sure to save, you can't begin partway through effectively. (If you accidentally start a night you already completed, just fail the kill objective to switch to another night.) If your frame rates are too low facing the cemetery, please reduce your "Object Details LOD" setting. It was designed with "AI Vision" set to "Forgiving", to be able to sneak through with minimal reactions, if you want more/less, adjust your settings accordingly. There are several random, conditional aspects, and ways of going about things, so others might have slightly different experiences. Post here if you discover hidden objectives for extra points! My condolences to loot completionists, I made a bit on the third night hard, you've got your challenge cut out for you! Speaking of which, there's a TDM bug that mission complete totals too high, here are the real amounts per night: 2026/970/202. Oh, there is something that in the U.S. would be rated PG, in case you play with kids in earshot. I hope you enjoy playing it, feel free to let me know you did, and I'm glad to respond to inquiries (like how stuff was done, nothing was scripted). (Note which night you are referring to if it's something specific.) (Please remember spoiler tags to not expose things meant to be discovered by playing.) Like so: [spoiler]secrets[/spoiler] Developed for TDM 2.01. PS: Thiefette, good news, no spiders! Springheel, if you find an optional objective you can skip...you might find it immersion breaking. Others, no undead! There are a couple other interactive critters though. :-) Edit note: Some posts below were from users of an unreleased version of TDM 2.02 which broke several things, they do not reflect regular game-play.

@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.

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/

To the "Path Nodes" wiki article, I've added a few sentences about path_follow_actor. It mentions that it currently doesn't support the actor being the player, and has pointers to the new bug report and the workaround given in this thread. The entry for path_follow_actor in the Entity Database now reads "... actor (= other AI, not player)...

There are 10 released FMs that use custom arrow scripts for a variety of reasons. With this current dev build, if you try to use the bow, it just doesn't work. It's broken

Good question. Maybe because I don't feel myself too guilty breaking these missions? Maybe because I know that fixing them will be a long story. And I feel confident that we (or more likely I ) will be able to fix all of them by 2.13. You might have noticed that I have also enabled two behavior changes in the latest build (1 2). In these cases it is not even mappers' fault that behavior change is needed. I have a script which can update all missions at once so that they work properly both in 2.12 and dev builds. But somehow I feel I should wait for at least some feedback on the new behavior before doing a massive change to dozens of missions.

So because of bugtracker 5600, does that mean that 10 FMs (Written in Stone, Northdale 1 and 2, Volta 2, Hazard Pay, etc.) do not work in this new dev build, and yet, the dev build was released anyway? That's not cool.... The bow is kind of an important gameplay element, especially for Hazard Pay. Why even release this build if it breaks 10 existing FMs?

Im experiencing a crash on loading quick saves in my work in progress FM. What are steps for diagnosing this and figuring out what is causing that crash? Thanks very much Kingsal

I've seen fun workarounds like that in other game modding as well. Years ago, maybe even a decade, some fella who was making a mod for Mount & Blade over at the Taleworlds forums revealed that he put invisible human NPCs on the backs of regular horse NPCs, then put the horse NPCs inside a horse corral he built for one of his mod's locations/scenes and then did some minor scripting, so the horses with invisible riders would wander around the corral. The end result was that it looked they're doing this of their own will, rather than an NPC rider being scripted to ride around the corral slowly. Necessity is the mother of invention. I don't know about the newest Mount & Blade game, but the first generation ones (2008-2022) apparently had some sort of hardcoded issue back in the earlier years, where if you left a horse NPC without a rider in its saddle, the horses would just stand around and wait and you couldn't get them to move around. Placing an invisible rider in their saddles suddenly made it viable again, at least for background scenes, of riderless horses wandering around, for added atmosphere. First generation M&B presumed you'd mostly be seeing horses in movement with riders, and the only horses-wandering-loosely animations and scripting were done for situations when the rider was knocked off their horse or dismounted in the middle of a battle. Hence the really odd workarounds. So, an invisible NPC trick might not be out of the question in TDM, even though you could probably still bump into it, despite its invisibility.

As my custom assets work has increasingly shifted from models towards scripting, I'll open a new thread here to contain any scripts that I write which can be reused in other missions, starting with the A ) Presence Lamp This is a Lost City-style lamp that brightens and dims depending on the presence of the player or an AI. It fades between 2 colours and can trigger its targets whenever it switches fully on or off, so it should also be viable in various other situations. The standard setup consists of the following: - a trigger_multiple brush. The spawnarg "anyTouch" controls whether AIs, too, are able to activate it - a presence lamp, highly recommended with a colorme skin - one presence light, or any other light with appropriate spawnargs The targeting chain is trigger brush -> lamp -> light When the player or an AI stands in the trigger_multiple brush, the lamp switches on and starts a short timer. Subsequent triggers reset the timer. If the timer runs out because no one's standing in the trigger brush anymore, the lamp switches itself off. Notes - Multiple trigger brushes can target the same lamp, and one trigger brush can target multiple lamps. However, each presence lamp can only target one light, so if you want i.e. a bouncelight you'll need to hide an additional silent presence lamp somewhere and target it from the same trigger brush. - The lamp and the light use their own colour spawnargs respectively, since setting 0 0 0 on a lamp would make it appear pitch black. - Technically the trigger brush can be exchanged for anything else that triggers the lamp every 0.5s (this number can be changed via "update_interval" on the lamp), i.e. a trigger_timer. - This was originally named the proximity lamp and was one of many scripting jobs for The Painter's Wife. I've renamed it to "presence lamp" because the mapper may place the trigger brush(es) wherever he wishes: proximity to the lamp is not a factor. Credits go to Bikerdude for putting together the crystal lamp models. Download Presence Lamps - Google Drive Place or extract the .pk4 into your FM archive, then look up the presence lamp prefabs. If you already are using other custom scripts, remember to add the presence lamp's .script to your tdm_custom_scripts file. B ) Teledoor This is a Skyrim-style door which opens just a bit into a black_matt "void" before teleporting the player to a different area of the map, which may represent the other side of the door. This is used for connecting physically separated map areas with each other, such as when there's an exterior/interior split of a building or ship to allow for more mapping freedom. [Full Thread] C ) Mass Teleport This is a teleportation setup designed to seamlessly teleport the player and any moveables between two identical-looking areas. This allows the mapper to link 2 physically distant areas with each other while maintaining the illusion that they're connected. The teleportation zones should be free of AIs as they can't be teleported like this. [Post] D ) Automaton Station A station for Sotha's automatons (includes the automatons) which can be switched on and off by patrolling automatons. (Part of core assets as of 2.10) [Post] E ) Camgoyle A sentient turret originally made for the FM Written in Stone. It's based on the new security camera entity and augmented with scripting to allow it to fire magical projectiles at the enemies it detects. People are more than welcome to use it and to convert it into something else, such as a mechanical turret. [Post] [Download] F ) Audiograph The audiograph is an Inventor's Guild device for playing back recordings stored on spindles, which are small metal cylinders the player can pick up and store in his inventory. [Post] G ) Turret A new companion to security cameras familiar to Thief players. It will become active as soon as an enemy is detected by a targeted security camera, firing projectiles to fend off the intruders. Similar to the security camera and the camgoyle sentry, turrets are highly customisable in their behaviour and appearance. [Thread] G ) Fog Fade Dynamically change fog density depending on what location the player is in. [Thread]

Ok, but you could also load all maps in your campaign, but in a different order. Or you could make a copy of the map and change some things. So it doesn't have to be an entirally different mission (which indeed might be too much work). So for example the first mission has an objective to place the plans to build a bridge over the river in a specific place. Then the next mission has that bridge (map1), or does not have that bridge (map2). Mapper only has to make a copy of the map and remove the bridge (and maybe a small amount of other things). I just think that having only one specific order is pretty restrictive. But if it's a lot of work to implement it might not be worth it.

There are a few ways to state the version number: Inside darkmod.txt, included in the .pk4. The version number in here is what should be shown ingame in the mission downloader. Mappers can write whatever they want inside the readme.txt included in the .pk4. This is the same as writing a version number into the release thread. There is also the internal version number, which always has to be a whole number. It's entered directly in the admin interface, and only team members can see it. The existence of the last, internal-only number has led to some confusion among mappers. I think I used to put whole version numbers into my darkmod.txt (i.e. v2 or v3), but declare a decimal update (i.e. v1.1 or v1.2) on the forum thread and in the readme.txt. It's also possible to have different version numbers in the darkmod.txt and readme.txt. This is something that should be caught during beta testing.

Changelog of 2.12 development: release212 (rev 16989-10651) * Training Mission reverted to 2.11 state, except for text changes about new controls. beta212-07 (rev 16982-10651) * Fixed save/load of turrets. * Fixed some more cases of camera clipping during force-crouched mantle (6425). * Fixed crash if player wins twice in quick succession (6489). * Added angRotate script event. * Fixed church_altar prefab (6285). beta212-06 (rev 16970-10644) * Fixed light leaks workaround dropped after save + load (post). * Force doors which connect visportal to cast shadows regardless of light flow (post). * Improved candle vs junk detection for new frob controls (6316). * Fixed player getting stuck at start of "One Step Too Far" (post). * Fixed warning on spawning atdm:env_ragdoll_tdm_spider. * Fixed wrong skin in mechanical/switches/switch_rotate_lever prefab (6479). * Fixed double slash in lady02 subtitle decls (post). * Fixed rotated versions of safe03_wall prefab (6268). * Tweaked fogging of health potion. * Fixed overbright skins for nature bushes (6478). * Fixed Grandfather_clock_victorian_01 model (6383). * Removed pause from looping sound machinery/machines/m3_loop (6384). * Fixed broken func_portals in Training Mission (4352). * Minor improvements in Saint Lucia mission. * Doubled game scripts memory limit (post). * Improved normal map of long banners (6355). beta212-05 (rev 16950-10635) * Fixed player seeing through ceiling when mantling into crouched state (6425). * Improved how frobbing works on junk items (6316). * Toggled states of player movement are saved and restored properly (6458). * Fixed back image loading optimization. * Added canCloseDoors spawnarg on AI, which allows to block closing only (6460). * Rats and spiders are non-shoulderable by default (6456). * Increased wait in screenshot_viewpos macro command (6331). * Added forest models from The Valley abandoned mission. * Fixed frobstage on sign models (6457). * Added vine arrows to training mission (4352). * Improved Merry Chest prefabs (6459). * Fixed normal map of dirt_packed_muddy (4668). * Fixed nails in door_boarded_up01 model. * Fixed attachments of atdm:fireplace_place_base (6474). * Fixed editor image of blocks_large_sandstone, rough_grey_dirty_sepia_grey_trim (6281, 6464). * Added editor image for grey_dirty_trim material. * Adjusted tooltip for auto-search bodies. beta212-04 (rev 16932-10626) * Added massive package of subtitles for AI sounds (6240, thread). * Fixes in envshot command (5796). * Added nature/dirt/ash_and_coals texture (6441). beta212-03 (rev 16902-10623) * Improved subtitles layout and location ring picture (p1 p2). * Fixed broken remote render with soft stencil shadows. * Added color buffer clears to fix remote render breaking skybox (6424). * Fixed warning generated by remote render (6424). * Fixed min_lod_bias being ignored if no other LOD settings is specified (6359). * Now changing LOD settings effects objects with min_lod_bias immediately (6359). * Fixed text & background alignment in mission lists (6337). * Fixed gaps in chandelier models (6433). * Added missing editor texture for carpet/runners/ornate_red_black03_end (6435). * Further expansion of listRenderLightDefs and listLightEntityDefs commands. beta212-02 (rev 16889-10613) * Fixed underwater rendering due to missing doublevision shader (post). * Exclude more lights from the new light portal flow optimizations (5172, 6321). * black_matt is now fully black, no tiny green bias (post). * Fixed lockpick interruption when mouse cursor switches between door and handle. * Extended listRenderLightDefs and listLightEntityDefs commands. * Fixed church_altar.pfb (6285). * Added window01_curtains01.lwo in separate parts (6356). * tdm_open_doors now opens locked doors too. * Fixed rare case of getting NaN in spline mover. * Added r_skipEntities cvar, similar to "filter entities" in DR. * Added editor spawnargs for volumetric light properties (6322). * Fixed radius override and added position override for script-based stims. * Fixed warnings with wrong virtual function overrides. beta212-01 (rev 16879-10584) * Fixed player falling through elevator when shouldering a body (6259). * Rebalanced volume of all player footsteps (6348). * Fixed weird animation when mixing drawn bow and main menu (2758). * Fixed all kind of issues with bc_teatray material. * Added alternative frob controls mode tdm_holdfrob_drag_all_entities for dragging on hold. * Fixed non-actor entities always getting full splash damage. * Hide console before screenshot with screenshot_viewport command (6331). * Added tdm_subtitles_ring cvar to disable subtitles location ring. * Added mission.cfg as a temporary way for mission to override non-archived cvars (5453). * Cvars "pm_lean_*" are no longer archived (6320). * Removed some cvar overrides from atdm:player_base. * CFrobLock now supports script events: Lock, Unlock, ToggleLock, IsLocked, IsPickable (6329). * Simplified flee script event, supported fleeing from non-actor entity and fleeFromPoint. * Fixed crash on some non-standard cases of flinderize. * Can set spawnarg "douse 0" on damageDef to not extinguish lights from splash damage. * Added setFrobMaster script event. * Added script-based stim type, which triggers only when stimEmit script event is called. * Added on/off script events to func_emitter entity. * Added setSmoke script event to change particle decl for a func_smoke. * Added hasInvItem script event to check if player has some item. * Added launchGuided script event to start guided projectiles. * Added getInterceptTime script event for shooting projectile and running target. * Added "bounce_sound_min|max_velocity" spawnargs to control projectile bounce sounds. * Added "postbounce_*" spawnargs to change projectile properties after bounce. * Fixes to moor guard ragdoll (6345). * Fixed wench AI sounds (6284). * Added new experimental entityDef for an automatic turret. * Official missions no longer pretend to be part of 3-mission campaign (6338). * Removed AI PAIN messages console spam. * Removed excessive "s_volume 0" from base loot entityDefs (6346). * Replaced symbol on the proguard's belt. * Default value of com_maxfps increased from 144 to 300. * Improved idEntityPtr, fixed some warnings. dev16854-10518 * High mantle animation has become much faster (6343). * Crouching while on ladder/rope now causes player to slide instantly. * Added "forceShadowBehindOpaque" hack to workaround shadow leaks in old missions (5172). * Fixed and revised underwater "double vision" effect (6300). * Add scratch images have alpha = 1, which fixes some mirror materials (6300). * Added warning if material output color depends on input alpha, fixed it in core assets (6340). * Support several independent user addon scripts (6336). * Fixed missing headbob and footsteps at very high FPS (4696). * Fixed player hanging mid-air in a jump at very high FPS (6333). * Don't crash if player's head does not exist (6326). * Added "fade in fast" options for frobhelper (6342). * Removed "show tooltips" option, now it is always on (6344). * Added default spawnarg values to "text" debug entityDef (6325). * Fixed some uninitialized values, float overflows and NaNs across the code. * Reorganized covered furniture models from Seeking Lady Leicester (6289). dev16842-10488 * Major changes in frob/use controls: holding frob does different thing now (6316, thread). * Fixed some electric lights not spawning. * It is no longer necessary to specify extension to reference PNG image. * Added cvar tdm_show_viewpos and command screenshot_viewpos (6331). * Fixed hanging when light is moved through a plane with many visportals (3815, thread). * Fixed multipage readables stuck on empty page, improved page flipping (6313). * Fixed WAV sounds playing in main menu, all sounds are streaming now (6330). * Fixed light leaks along scissor rectangle boundary with soft stencil shadows (thread). * Better subtitles location visualization (6264). * Changed position of subtitle blocks and subtitle font (6264). * Internal refactoring of idImage class (6300). * Fixed rare bug in renderworld raycasting... might happen with particle collisions. * Fixed warnings in newspaper_bridgeport0X core readable GUI (6245). * Added vec4 GUI keyword (6164). * Renamed pm_lean_toggle cvar to tdm_toggle_lean. * Improved "head bob" and "mantle roll" settings in main menu. * Updated FFmpeg to 4.4.4 (6314). Known issues: * Various problems after image refactoring: underwater, mirrors, etc. dev16829-10455 * Allowed to mantle while carrying/manipulating an object (5892, thread). * Allowed to change weapon while mantling or on rope/ladder (6319). * Several leaning improvements (6320, thread). * Parallel shadow-casting lights are deprecated, use parallelSky instead (6306). * Added many menu settings for autoloot body, blackjack helper, and other (6311). * Deleted option for autolooting bodies with one item per frob, added menu setting (6257). * Added cvar to modify all head bobbing settings (6310). * Fixed some corner cases with multiloot (6270). * Fixed frob helper's "always visible" mode (6318). * New&fixed versions of atdm:lamp_electric_square_3_lit_unattached (6315). * Fixed UV map on Stove models (6312). * Reworked r_showPrimitives + deleted code for rendering from CPU buffers. * Shortened name of end-mission autosaves (6294). * Consistent names of various arrows. Known issues: * Some electric lights don't spawn. dev16818-10434 * Fixed projectiles flying through player and enemies sometimes (6292). * Lights with noshadows spawnarg pass through walls again (5172). * Disabled portal flow culling optimization for parallel lights (5172, 6306). * Faster light-entity interactions matching if light is noshadows due to spawnarg (6296). * Compression of images to DXT1/3/5 is done in software (6300). * Cleaned up rounding math routines (6300). * r_showportals 2 is easier to understand now * Changed rules for getting start areas of parallelSky light (6306). dev16814-10408 * Optimized portal flow culling for shadowing lights (5172). * Extended dmap diagnostics to info_portalSettings, improved editor descriptions (6224). * Added test commands: tdm_open_doors and tdm_close_doors. * Minor adjustments to ear-cutting algorithm in dmap. * Minor refactoring in image compression code (6300). dev16809-10394 * r_shadowMapSinglePass is enabled by default now. * Fixed lack of shadows in volumetric lights under r_shadowMapSinglePass (6271). * Fixed interaction rendering on materials with polygonOffset (5868). * Optimized code for finding light-entity interactions on large maps (6296). * Optimized moving shadowing lights: don't create interactions in unreachable areas (5172). * More refactoring in backend: tonemap shader (6271). * Added more covered furniture models (6289). * Added wall models from Seeking Lady Leicester (6293). Known issues: * Some noshadows lights no longer pass through walls. dev16801-10370 * Supported -durationExtend for inline subtitles (6262). * Added blue noise dithering to tonemap shader, which fixed color banding of fog (6271). * Optimized away unnecessary render copy under "useNewRenderPasses 1" (6271). * Refactored blend and fog lights into new backend architecture. For troubleshooting, reduce cvar useNewRenderPasses to 1 or 0 (6271). * Added 30 case to max FPS selection in settings menu. dev16792-10357 * Fixed particles bound to animated joints (6099). * idVec3 is no longer initialized to zero by default (6280). * Integrated Address Sanitizer tool and fixed a few found bugs (6280). dev16789-10349 * Deleted old backend completely + some cleaning (6271). * Fixed map icon wrong name (thread). * Now light entities support noPortalFog spawnarg (6282). * Support fonts aspect ratio correction (6283). * Fixed playerstart customization (thread). * Refactored "render pass" part into new backend architecture. For troubleshooting, try cvar "useNewRenderPasses 0". Also "textures/particles/blacksmokepuff" now works (6271) * Now arithmetic expressions in materials support min/max functions (6271). * Minor initialization cleanup (6280). dev16785-10319 * "r_shadowMapSinglePass 1" now respects noselfshadows flag (6271). * Continued refactoring in shadow maps and render-pass shaders (6271). dev16783-10307 * Backported new rendering backend to uniforms, should work like the old one now (6271). * "Auto" lockpicking difficulty now unlocks pin from after one cycle (6256). * Added "auto-search bodies" feature under tdm_autosearch_bodies cvar (6257). * Added r_shadowMapAlphaTested cvar for single-pass shadow maps (6271). dev16781-10289 * Added first version of direction and volume cues to subtitles (6264). * Allow subtitles to extend duration of sound sample (6262). * Improved slot allocation algorithm for subtitles, a subtitle no longer changes slot (6264). * Fixed bug that stereo sample plays for 2x duration due to length confusion. * Upgraded libpng and rebuilt third-party packages. * Internal fixes of depth bounds test asserts. dev16778-10275 * Allow limited mantling with a shouldered body (5892). * Fixed toggle creep and improved settings layout in the menu (6242). * Fixed bounding boxes of animated entities and particles, enabled r_useEntityScissors by default (6099). * Trigger call_on_exit before call_on_entry when switching locations. * Don't expand bounds of surfaces with turbulent deform (5990). * Removed "gui" spawnarg on GUI message to avoid first frame (6117). Known issues: * Particles bounds to animated joints broken. Changelog of earlier versions can be found here. Source: 2.12 beta testing thread

Oh, some implementations might work a little differently from what I remember the term megatexture referring to. From what I used to know, it meant turning the entire level into a single model or set that uses a single enormous texture. While the concept may have its upsides, there are two major issues that negate any benefit in my view: The first is system resources, you don't benefit from any reuse as every pixel is unique, the only way to do it at scale is with a gigantic image thus a huge performance drop in pretty much every department. The second issue is that level design becomes far harder and more specialized... while here in TDM we only need to draw a bunch of brushes and place some modules to make a level, an engine based on megatextures would require level designers to sculpt and paint the entire world in software like Blender which is far more difficult and we likely wouldn't have even half of the FM creators we do today, even for those that know how to do it imagine the task of manually painting every brick on every home and so on.

The Megatextures concept predates idSoftware. It even predates hardware accelerated 3D in consumer graphics. The problem it solves is managing image diversity. It is well suited to photogrammetry where almost nothing is repeated \ tiled. It is not well suited to human texture artists because even the most perfectionist ones are going to use some sort of template that they repeat and thus it is a waste to store the resultant work as unique pixels rather than tiles.

NOTE (3 March 2024): This mission has problems running on DarkMod 2.11. Be sure you are running the DarkMod 2.12 or later. A rare artifact, the Builder's Chalice, is available for the taking. Looks pretty straightforward, but looks can be deceiving... Yes, another mission for 2022. I think this makes eight this year already; we had eight for all of 2021! Great work, everyone! This is a smallish mission. It does not have any spiders or undead. It is a puzzle-heavy mission, with a built-in hints system in case you get stuck. This mission contains a couple of small homages to Grayman. This mission requires TDM 2.10. It uses some 2.10 features (subtitles, secrets, volumetric lights). Note that the volumetric lights are used in a specific way, such that your "Shadows Implementation" can be either Maps or Stencils, the volumetric lights will work either way. Version 2 of the mission is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pbz6spmqpo4vrg4/byanyothernameV2.pk4?dl=1 This fixes the "Open Doors on Unlock" problem. Have fun! Special thanks to JackFarmer, who created some wonderful and appropriate ambient sounds. He also did some Alpha testing to catch some early mistakes. Also thanks to the Beta testers, who struggled with some frustratingly-hard (or impossible) early variations: Cambridge Spy, Acolytesix, wesp5, datiswous, Bienie, Shadow Thanks to Chloe for some great voice work. I made plentiful use of sounds from freesound.org: https://freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/75194/ https://freesound.org/people/craigsmith/sounds/482781/ https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/403005/ https://freesound.org/people/rhodesmas/sounds/322930/ https://freesound.org/people/fisch12345/sounds/325112/ https://freesound.org/people/BockelSound/sounds/489507/ https://freesound.org/people/ultradust/sounds/167747/ https://freesound.org/people/Crinkem/sounds/496328/ https://freesound.org/people/LucasDuff/sounds/467697/ https://freesound.org/people/RuidosoSoundFX/sounds/507161/ As always I've used some of Springheel's modules and Orbweaver's ambient sounds. And finally, huge thanks to the developers of The Dark Mod, especially 2.10, another milestone in this fantastic game. A few more screenshots

to remember @STiFU 's progessive music thread. here´s something i love most out off so called german Prog-Rock a french group of the 70´s called " Atoll " their first two albums are incredible : the first shown is their second from 1975 : l´araignée-mal the second is their first from 1974 : Musiciens-magiciens