Doom3 GPL Source Release has landed

[Tels]

Believe me, a lot of people want to see that, including me However, we really have very little manpower so the things we can actually acomplish are a lot less than what we want

[lost_soul]

Well, there is that GLSL patch someone posted above that would make shadows more efficient. Everyone has GLSL support now, unless you're playing on a Geforce 4 (2002 era, not modern Geforce-4 named cards). In my experience, the two performance stealing factors are AI and shadows. Turn these off (killmonsters, r_shadows 0) and the game flies on old hardware. Maybe the OSS community will tackle the shadows and the TDM team can tackle the AI?

 

Even moving AI to another thread on a dual-core would probably be a huge improvement. I wonder how many people are still using single-core systems? The Steam survey would probably tell.

Edited November 27, 2011 by lost_soul

[MoroseTroll]

I'd like to see a large page support. This will get rid TDM of TLB thrashes and make it run more smoothly.

[i30817]

Remove the requirement of having the linux version in the ~/.doom3 folder.

Edited November 28, 2011 by i30817

[nbohr1more]

Well, there is that GLSL patch someone posted above that would make shadows more efficient. Everyone has GLSL support now, unless you're playing on a Geforce 4 (2002 era, not modern Geforce-4 named cards). In my experience, the two performance stealing factors are AI and shadows. Turn these off (killmonsters, r_shadows 0) and the game flies on old hardware. Maybe the OSS community will tackle the shadows and the TDM team can tackle the AI?

 

Even moving AI to another thread on a dual-core would probably be a huge improvement. I wonder how many people are still using single-core systems? The Steam survey would probably tell.

 

Let me clarify now before any more confusion sets in. The patch is not GLSL, (AFAIK that work has yet to be done) it simply uses a different graphic extension. If you properly inserted the patch excerpt, I imagine that you must also add the new GL extensions to glext.h (at least) for the patch to work...

 

I am becoming increasingly despondent because Doom3world has moved all source coding discussions to the internal forums. It's a wise move for membership growth but it's a big let-down for me and my crappy yahoo mail account

[New Horizon]

I am becoming increasingly despondent because Doom3world has moved all source coding discussions to the internal forums. It's a wise move for membership growth but it's a big let-down for me and my crappy yahoo mail account

 

Just means you have to log in to view them, which isn't a huge deal since signing up is free.

[jaxa]

Seems register and login links are broken for http://www.doom3world.org/index.php

[nbohr1more]

They have a lot of security measures in place to stop spammers but their automation often has false positives. They won't allow web-mail users to sign-up. I will have to spend some time on the phone with my ISP to get my direct e-mail address and setup that security nightmare known as a "SMTP mail client" (brrr)... just to see if I can sign-up.

 

It really grates me to see some of the most foolish comments and questions being posted to coding whizzes like Sikkpin and Goliath_vt when I can't offer my own slightly less stupid questions or comments

[Tels]

Remove the requirement of having the linux version in the ~/.doom3 folder.

 

I think that would be one of the earliest changes - reorganize the file/folder structure and get rid of the workaround we have due to the D3 mod-design (which is, incidentily, great if you want to write a mod for D3 - we were lucky that it was designed that way, or TDM and the FMS could not really have worked the way they do now with the ingame downloader and all that).

 

Instead of having ~/doom3/darkmod (or C:\Doom3\darkmod on Windows) and then the FMs under fms/ and another copy of each FM and then an additional copy of the DLL/.so for each FM under the doom3 / darkmod folder we should have something like:

 

* /home/someone/somwhere/darkmod (or D:\Whatever\darkmod) which is not hardcoded and can be relocated by just copying it somewhere else

* all our PK4s in that directory

* under that one "fms" folder

* and then inside that one folder for each FM, which contains screenshots/, savegames/ etc. (and no extra DLL copy)

 

E.g. only one directory with one directory tree beneth it and thats it.

 

No longer copying around the FM (you can hopefully even switch FMs w/o having to restart TDM, but that will need a lot more work, tho), no longer nec. to extract (and copy!) the game dll into each FM directory. And no longer potential clashes between D3 mods and TDM FMs. That will save a lot of space and streamline the entire process.

 

As long as we still need some d3 assets, there would be a config setting that tells TDM where these are located so they can be loaded, too. That way they can be located anywhere. And hopefully that setting will hopefully get obsolete over time.

 

Exciting times, indeed!

[Sotha]

Instead of having ~/doom3/darkmod (or C:\Doom3\darkmod on Windows) and then the FMs under fms/ and another copy of each FM and then an additional copy of the DLL/.so for each FM under the doom3 / darkmod folder we should have something like:

 

Hm... Will the steam compatibility be gone if TDM is no longer a clear separate D3 mod, but a game of its own, but still requiring D3 assets?

 

When the engine gets changed, will TDM become a separate game, into which you will input the path to original D3 content?

 

When thinking these things, one should avoid breaking the original doom 3 installation. And some people might still play original D3 so there should not be TDM engine patches applied directly on D3 to make the installation into something else.

[nbohr1more]

When The Dark Mod is merged with the Doom 3 source it will become it's own executable (like "darkmod.exe" ) so there should be no fear that the actual Doom3.exe will be meddled with.

[OrbWeaver]

They won't allow web-mail users to sign-up.

 

WTF? Isn't most of the world using web-mail these days? I can't remember the last time I had an ISP-provided email account.

[New Horizon]

I signed up with a webmail account, of course that was a few years ago, but still...they must surely be doing that in error.

 

Edit:

 

I just signed up for a secondary account there with my gmail address, no issues. Might just be yahoo is marked as a spam address for some reason.

[Melan]

I don't think that would be something we'll tackle ourselves, but if the different D3 source projects are successful in doing so it may be something we could look into integrating. It's not an easy task though, so I wouldn't expect anything for quite some time.

This is a significant factor. A lot of work will happen in the broader Doom3 community, so it doesn't fall on the shoulders of the TDM team. That leaves specific issues - such as light gem-related performance optimalisation - more potential attention.

[Wunderbar_007]

I'm sorry if this has been asked before but will we eventually be able to play TDM without having to install Doom 3? Just curious

[Melan]

In short: it is possible, but don't expect it any time soon.

[Wunderbar_007]

In short: it is possible, but don't expect it any time soon.

 

Roger that

 

Thank you!

[MoroseTroll]

Tels: What about a hard link to the DLL/SO instead of a copy? Of course, it's a half measures, but, still, this won't consume HDD space.

[Tels]

MoroseTroll: Hard links are linux/mac only, right?

 

Anyway, when we compile our own "thedarkmod.exe", it can load the DLL fromwehere we want and we can redesign it any way we like. There really is no need why each FM should bring support for their own copy of the DLL - it leads only to problems like "the old was lying around and interfered" and "duplicated space", but really doesn't solve any problem we have.

[i30817]

MoroseTroll: Hard links are linux/mac only, right?

Not anymore. Windows vista introduced them (BSD always had them i think).

 

thought you were talking about symlinks doh.

Edited December 1, 2011 by i30817

[MoroseTroll]

Tels, i30817: Hard links were introduced in Windows since Windows XP. I wonder how many TDM gamers have Windows 2K...

Edited December 1, 2011 by MoroseTroll

[SeriousToni]

I'm sorry if this has been asked before but will we eventually be able to play TDM without having to install Doom 3? Just curious

 

I recently tested the new AI features and I must say it's amazing! They became more lifelike and intelligent after all. So that the open source code now provides many new possibilities to work on (for the AI e.g.) I don't understand why it's so important for everyone to be able to play The Dark Mod without having Doom3 installed (?)

Edited December 1, 2011 by SeriousToni

[grayman]

I recently tested the new AI features and I must say it's amazing! They became more lifelike and intelligent after all.

 

We awaken.

 

We rise.

 

We rule.

 

[SeriousToni]

And YOU Sir, did a great job...

 

[RPGista]

Deifinetly, I'm feeling some good vibes from the revamped AI, more testing is needed, but I was surprised by some sharper responses already! I really want to test the new general alarm capabilities, as I feel this is one of the areas which could have added a lot more challenge for sure.