[Resolved in TDM 2.0] Untethered Dark Mod

[nbohr1more]

I'm a little dubious about this.

 

Every Doom 3 GLSL fork is missing the HeatHaze shader. I think this fellow took an existing fork and tweaked it for Intel compatibility

rather than building a new backend from scratch. Meaning: Phoronix is suggesting that this is a hopeful new development while it's

possible (very likely) that this will remain where it is until Raynorpat or someone else finishes those remaining shaders.

Edited April 23, 2012 by nbohr1more

[lowenz]

Well, he got some balls tweaking for an i965!

[nbohr1more]

Thats' "true"

 

[New Horizon]

hells yeah. things to look forward to in the future.

 

We already did that in 1.08, amongst a few other tweaks to squeeze out some more performance.

[ungoliant]

1.08 is in the future. I stand by my previous statement

[Serpentine]

hells yeah.  things to look forward to in the future.

That's already in 1.08 :)As for GLSL, it'll show up later on, there's no point at all supporting it's fit for our use, and even then, there is a lot of work needed to port our shaders over. And Phoronix is still a horrible news site, how amazing :/

[nbohr1more]

GLSL will be nice (when and if it ever happens)...

 

I am (currently) more interested in (when\if) the Ambient light gets broken into it's own vfp...

 

Or what changes are planned for Ambient lighting in general... zoned dynamic ambient integration into the renderer (etc)...

 

Please speculate, rant, etc.

 

Thanks.

 

[New Horizon]

GLSL will be nice (when and if it ever happens)...

 

I am (currently) more interested in (when\if) the Ambient light gets broken into it's own vfp...

 

Or what changes are planned for Ambient lighting in general... zoned dynamic ambient integration into the renderer (etc)...

 

Please speculate, rant, etc.

 

Thanks.

 

 

The ambient light 'has' been broken into its own vfp. Rebb did that ages ago and it gave a nice little performance boost since the old ambient light fix is no longer calculated on all lights anymore.

[nbohr1more]

NICE!!!!!!!

 

( Add SSAO to it??? )

[jay pettitt]

So how goes the untethering?

 

Has anyone smart (ie not me) and with too much time on their hands come up with a list, partial or otherwise, of assets that normal folk could could look at contributing toward?

[Tels]

No, there is nobody working on it at the moment.

[ungoliant]

considering the source, i'm having a difficult time reading the sarcasm level of that post. is that really true?

[Serpentine]

TDM can standalone for the most part already, it doesn't crash or anything spectacular without doom3 (in 1.08-svn so far). It's just a pile of assets that needs to be replaced.

 

Some missions the missing content is pretty obvious or could be game breaking, others seem fine (I have only tried 4~). So at this stage 1.08 will deffo not be stand-alone, but due to be being possible to play, maybe this will get some people interested in helping replace the stuff.

 

I'll update the wiki page and link it here when I update it (perhaps tomoz).

[Melan]

It should not be forgotten that some missions use extra Doom3 assets. For example, the default sound set does not have a proper effect for heavy iron gates, so I ended up with a Doom original; likewise, some of the dirt decals in D3 were too useful to leave out. I know of one particular unreleased mission which uses its detailed iron textures like candy. This will be an extra level of complication - identify which missions have been "contaminated", then come up with replacements which are suitable to preserve authorial intent... or accept that some people will not be able to play them normally.

[Bikerdude]

cant stock D3 assents replace with like for like replacements with the same names..? so when we go untethered anything tdm looks for that was d3 it will be able to find..?

[rich_is_bored]

The console reports missing assets and declarations make it easy enough to fix those issues without having to edit and recompile maps.

[Sotha]

I think it was mentioned by someone, I think Springheel, that if we intend to get this untethered TDM project running, we need to have full list of D3 stuff the core mod uses.

 

The first step is to identify what we need. How do we get a full list of all the stuff TDM loads from the D3 psckages? Once we have a list of every single def, soundfile and alike, we could make into a wanted list. Everyone would be free to recreate assets in the list and once it is done, the list entry would be crossed over.

 

This would make it easy to see how far we are from untetherification and would make it easy and motivating for people outside the team to aid in the project. It probably is not feasable for the Team to do all that work, maybe this kind of clear showcase-window-todo-list would entice a community effort to get the D3 dependency eradicated. That would be one of the best things possible that could happen to TDM...

 

With the regard of individal maps breaking because the mapper has chosen to use stuff from D3 folders.. The mapper or an authorized community member could update the map to be free of d3 assets by simply deleting or substituting sounds or stuff that is d3 dependent. Since maps are text files that could most often be done with find/replace text editor function...

[Tels]

considering the source, i'm having a difficult time reading the sarcasm level of that post. is that really true?

 

I am not sure why you think I am sarcastic. And this post contained nothing of that sort.

 

Apart from the AI work of grayman, and a few things by Springheel and some code fixes by Serpentine and taaki, almost no-one works on the mod, anymore, either. And nobody really finishes the untethered TDM, hell nobody even really finishes the translation project or any of the other things we have on the list.

 

You just have to monitor SVN (almost no checkins, sometimes for days) and the bug tracker to see how little work is being done.

[Tels]

I think it was mentioned by someone, I think Springheel, that if we intend to get this untethered TDM project running, we need to have full list of D3 stuff the core mod uses.

 

The first step is to identify what we need. How do we get a full list of all the stuff TDM loads from the D3 psckages? Once we have a list of every single def, soundfile and alike, we could make into a wanted list. Everyone would be free to recreate assets in the list and once it is done, the list entry would be crossed over.

 

This would make it easy to see how far we are from untetherification and would make it easy and motivating for people outside the team to aid in the project. It probably is not feasable for the Team to do all that work, maybe this kind of clear showcase-window-todo-list would entice a community effort to get the D3 dependency eradicated. That would be one of the best things possible that could happen to TDM...

 

With the regard of individal maps breaking because the mapper has chosen to use stuff from D3 folders.. The mapper or an authorized community member could update the map to be free of d3 assets by simply deleting or substituting sounds or stuff that is d3 dependent. Since maps are text files that could most often be done with find/replace text editor function...

 

This all sounds very easy, but the hard truth is, even if we provide the list, nobody really makes the assets. And I am not even talking about hard stuff like a new zombie animation, I am talking about small things like lights/brightround which is a simple B&W texture you can make in Gimp in 10 minutes.

 

However, I am not sure why people need the list first, as rich noted, the console already spits out the warnings, and we have some partial lists somewhere and nobody used them, anyway.

 

So if people can't find the 5 minutes to ask for assets on the forum, how are they gonna find the 1h to replace some of them?

 

(I guess that was sarcastic? I'd say it's just bitterness)

[Sotha]

This all sounds very easy, but the hard truth is, even if we provide the list, nobody really makes the assets. And I am not even talking about hard stuff like a new zombie animation, I am talking about small things like lights/brightround which is a simple B&W texture you can make in Gimp in 10 minutes.

 

People make maps and spend a lot of time in those. Maybe such people would like to take a break and make a minor contribution. Without a list they are unable to help.

 

 

However, I am not sure why people need the list first, as rich noted, the console already spits out the warnings, and we have some partial lists somewhere and nobody used them, anyway.

 

Yeah, there are a lot of warnings that make no sense. A clear and concise list would tell that "we need this." It would be easy for a person considering to contribute to be sure his/her work is not wasted and the stuff they make is really needed. If you do not know where such a list is, then how can someone outside find it and help you?

 

 

So if people can't find the 5 minutes to ask for assets on the forum, how are they gonna find the 1h to replace some of them?

 

Having a list makes it possible to do it on your own. If I said here, hey, I wanna help, what is an asset that I can make in 10mins that would help untetherificiation, I suppose it would be more useful for me to have a look at a list that is placed in a well visible location?

 

(I guess that was sarcastic? I'd say it's just bitterness)

 

Yeah, the increasing bitterness is a bit sad. You just say that people would not really make the assets and you are reluctant to give 'em a chance. How long would it take to create such a list? How long would it take to place it in a pinned forum thread? How long would it take to start a TDM untetherification contest? Who contributes most stuff, gets a cool hat?

 

Being negative and bitter and condemning the community immediately as non-helpful takes us nowhere. In my opinion people are quite helpful around here... But yeah, forget it, let us not even give them a chance to help with the untethering...

[Tels]

People make maps and spend a lot of time in those. Maybe such people would like to take a break and make a minor contribution. Without a list they are unable to help.

 

This is not correct. Apart from the fact that we already made these lists years ago, people could make their own list (run v1.07 w/o d3 installed and see what it complains about before crashing).

 

However, the list will definitely make it easier. But see below.

 

Yeah, the increasing bitterness is a bit sad. You just say that people would not really make the assets and you are reluctant to give 'em a chance. How long would it take to create such a list? How long would it take to place it in a pinned forum thread? How long would it take to start a TDM untetherification contest? Who contributes most stuff, gets a cool hat?

 

Being negative and bitter and condemning the community immediately as non-helpful takes us nowhere. In my opinion people are quite helpful around here... But yeah, forget it, let us not even give them a chance to help with the untethering...

 

The problem seems to be that somehow it is expected from me or others to do something about this.

 

I have been through this with the translation. At every step somebody expected me to do something, so they can then "later contribute". Except that later step never happened. (except the wonderful translators, which I talked to death so they helped translate strings

 

Me thinks the fundamental problem is that people outside the core team always have the hope that somebody else does the work - and indeed, in the past this often was the case. But the core team is shrinking, and doing less and less work.

 

And for me it is important that the people outside this team stop sitting there and hoping somebody come to save them. They need to realize that they need to do this themselves. And nobody will really help them. (It is not that we don't want to, but there is nobody really here anymore.) So instead of asking the core team to do something for you, do it yourself. Yeha, it might be harder and it might take longer.

 

But the only option is sitting there and hoping and that won't accomplish much

 

Anyway, here is a partial list:

 

http://wiki.thedarkm...=Untethered_TDM

 

I cannot do more for you, because TDM is broken on linux (crashes before it reaches the menu) and I can't fix this (debugger crashes, too) and I can't even really compile TDM on linux anymore. (JUst like you, I am waiting for somebody else to fix this. But it ain't gonna happen.)

 

The crash is because I removed the current FM, so nothing linux specific. Stand by as I produce a list for you...

[Springheel]

others seem fine

 

You can actually run a mission without D3? Which ones?

 

Also, keep in mind that we have plenty of assets bundled with the mod that are actually D3 assets with varying levels of modification. For example, I took a number of D3 heads and used them as a base to create new, more medieval looking heads (tweaked the uv-map, added a shadowmesh, added more hair, etc). Technically they would need to be removed/replaced in order to go standalone. So even maps that might currently work with the bundled assets might not when we take them out.

[Tels]

You can actually run a mission without D3? Which ones?

 

Yeah, thanx to my cleanup effort for the GUI, and Serpentines effort to cleanup the materials, you can load FMs now

 

I did just run "Awaiting the Storm" w/o D3. There were two obvious problems:

 

* the rain and rain splash are black

* taking a screenshot crashed it (not sure if this has anything to do with D3-free or not)

 

There where a bunch of warnings about missing things, I just updated http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Untethered_TDM with a list of them. While doing so, I noticed there are a lot of obviously-never-used-by-us warnings, so I started a new topic about cleaning them up:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13773-removing-d3-specific-cruft/

 

(I already did a lot of this type of cleanup over the last few years, but it seems there is a never-ending stream of "special" solutions in the engine for "problems" that only D3 has (e.g. features that you don't want to re-use in another game are hard-coded into the engine, instead of having them as generic features implemented via def files).

 

Anyway, we are getting there

[Tels]

cant stock D3 assents replace with like for like replacements with the same names..? so when we go untethered anything tdm looks for that was d3 it will be able to find..?

 

In a first step we'd want to have a new file with the same name. Renaming the file and then finding all the places where it was used is a second, optional step. (And in some cases, can't be done, because maps might use the old name and thus break. So we can only rename things if they are only referenced from the core assets),

[Tels]

When running w/o D3, any mission with a Builder Priest in it crashed due to the missing projectile_impfireball. I now modelled a new projectile after it (atdm:projectile_fireball) and so these maps now load. As a bonus, this projectile also raises suspicion for AI just as our firearrow projectile does.

 

Maps with mages probably still crash upon load due to their fireball inheriting from the cacodaemon fireball projectile. That should be fixed to use our fireball (and tweak the damage values). Does anybody take this task?