The End Is Nigh

[ungoliant]

Why not go for broke?

 

In the LGS vision we trust.

[RPGista]

TDM: 0

 

The contest is due in a week, we'll have at least 4 missions then; plus Bikerdude is working on a quick build as we speak; I know of at least Sotha and Grayman are working on ambitious projects right now. If you count the Biker and our own, its more than one mission per month this year, so it's looking good!

[Komag]

Siyah, how do you know about 10 T2 missions in 2012? I'm trying to find them, can't! None on CheapMissions, none on SouthQuarter, etc. I see some announcements on the forums, like Black Frog - is that how you know about them, and there are 9 others (or does Black Frog count as 5?!)

[Baddcog]

Yeah, I would love to have a working, well-supported cyberpunk/tech conspiracy branch,

 

I'd rather have an oriental ninja branch personally. For gameplay only a little bit of wall running would be needed.

 

Unfortunately it would require a ton of artwork/voices.

[demagogue]

Yeah that was the second thing on my list. New objects and textures, tweak the weapons a little, a few new tools. We'd have to think about melee moves or tools (a little karate and strangle wires). But IMO it'd be awesome. The thing is, Japanese games that actually have ninjas completely screw up the potential and fly off into neverland every. freaking. time. A full on hardcore ninja stealth game that's true to life would rock.

 

Unfortunately it would require a ton of artwork/voices.

[SiyahParsomen]

does Black Frog count as 5?

 

yes, taffersparadise is up to date.

[Macsen]

Macsen! You still putting out at banquets?

Always! What was that all about anyway?

 

TDM is an entirely different beast. Constantly evolving. What you're seeing now isn't necessarily what you'll be seeing two years from now.

 

To constantly evolve mods need new people coming to work on them all the time. My worry is that as we move further away from the time Thief and Doom 3 were released, you're going to see less people showing an interest in working on the mod, either as FM makers or as part of the core team.

 

Why not go for broke?

 

I think sticking to a medieval/victorian setting makes sense even if they were not trying to ape Thief. It's a game about sneaking around in shadows, it wouldn't make as much sense in a modern setting where theft is more about smash and grab with a gun or computer hacking.

 

It's up to the FM makers to do what they like with the assets created by the mod makers. They can stick to the medieval/victorian setting or do their own thing.

[PranQster]

I'm working on a rather large mission as well. I've got much of the brush work and several objectives done, but still have a few blocks of city to build. Then it still needs AI, readables, loot, grunge/decorations and a mission briefing. If I truly work hard at it, I can have it ready for testing in a couple months. I may need to recruit somebody to help me with the city, since I don't have experience with that, but I'll try to get it sorted on my own during the next month.

[MoroseTroll]

I know, you, guys, had already discussed the BitTorrent as a method of distribution of TDM, but please let me remind you: forbidden fruit is sweet . If somebody would compile TDM itself plus all its FMs just in one archive and put it at most famous warez (that's right, not at legal ones) BitTorrent trackers, then who knows... maybe soon TDM would become more popular. Forbidden fruit is sweet .

[Xarg]

I can't see anything wrong with doing such a thing, since the mod is free. It would probably be a moral objection, encouraging people to "acquire" D3 since the mod is not yet free of its shackles. It's probably up there already, tbh..

[ungoliant]

encouraging people to "acquire" D3

 

I doubt that could be proven. Its not even true to begin with. Including the proper D3 patch in the torrent might be a good move as well, if this ever happens.

[Thiefnsince98]

My forum id pretty much tells you how long ive been a thief player and ive follwed this mod since I found out about it, in 2007, im just a player, and have not attempted to make a mission. I guess you could call me part of the silent majority. I will tell you that the more negativity you post the more people tend to jump ship. I think the dark mod is great, and I will be patient, just like a good thief should be. You would be surprised just how many thief fans are silently waiting for more fan missions for either this mod or t2 and tg. I guess ill take a stab at a Dark Mod mission, so I can at least say I didnt just sit on the sidelines the whole time.

Edited April 16, 2012 by Thiefnsince98

[ungoliant]

Check out the A-Z beginners tutorial on the wiki. There are various tutorial videos scattered around by Komag, Bikerdude, myself, and possibly others as well. Do we have a sticky thread or wiki article for tutorial video links yet?

Edited April 10, 2012 by ungoliant

[grayman]

Welcome, Thiefnsince98.

[lost_soul]

@Thiefnsince98: Probably should encode that e-mail address so it isn't harvested by spambots. Use something like myemail(at@@@)domain.com, though it may already be too late...

[Tels]

So here is something that somebody could do to avoid TDM losing it's only linux developer:

 

Fix the damn build system!

 

Ever since the latest changes to the build system (the source code of D3 and TDM got merged, and precompiled headers where tried to be used), on Linux every single line change in any file, no matter where or how small, cause the entire source code to be recompiled. For me this means my PC uses both CPU cores at 100% for about 16 minutes and thrashes the hard disk.

 

This makes developing under Linux completely impossible - for every damn fix, for every damn new function, you have to endure 16 minutes of not being able to even use your browser. And then you find out whatever you changed doesn't work under Windows, or wasn't the right way or whatever, so you start anew.

 

That has become so fucking aggrevating that I promised myself to throw in the towel every other day for the last fucking months... I even mucked around a few hours to try to fix that probem myself (and I have no idea about Scons at all). What a grand waste of time.

 

So can please somebody FIX that damn build system? I don't care if it uses ant, scons, blue fairy dust, make, male uncorns, automake, automakefuckingitwork, whatever, just fix it!

[demagogue]

@Thiefnsince98, welcome to the Dark side.

Definitely go through the tutorial that ungoliant posted.

It covers all the first things you need to know. It's a great way to learn.

[Melan]

Welcome, Thiefnsince98!

 

As others have recommended, check out the A-Z tutorial. After you familiarise yourself with the basics, you may also find it useful to check out this thread where I go through building a small mission with easy building techniques and discuss how the editing process can be simplified with a handful of relatively easy tricks.

[lost_soul]

@Tels, now here I may be able to help. I can't code or anything, but I have a 1100t machine (six-core) with 16 GB of memory and Debian Squeeze. I would be willing to do TDM/Doom 3 compiles on here if you just send me a 7z. It compiled Doom 3 in like 45 seconds the other day... lol

 

Maybe I could give you FTP access and the ability to initiate builds on four of the cores, all stored in a 4 GB RAM drive to make it go even faster and not disterb me while I'm using the system.

 

Only problem is, my Internet connection is shit. (3Mbps) So, I'm guessing that would counteract the short build times...

Edited April 10, 2012 by lost_soul

[Tels]

lost_soul: I already speculate that we need a fully automated "build system", which just syncs SVN every minute, and if there was a change, builds linux, mac and windows and publishes the results in a webfront end (and with downloadable .exe/.dll etc).

 

It should be hosted somewhere "real", tho, not on a private machine, tho as this would mean your machine needs to be available at my timezone etc. Plus, somebody needs to setup that service first (I have no idea if turn-key systems for this already exist).

 

But I guess unless I personally set this up, it won't happen *sigh*

[nbohr1more]

Sorry to postulate more work for you Tels but I had a similar thought about map compiling.

 

It takes far more resources to compile a map than to play it. Melan is currently hampered from doing campaign work

because the maps won't compile on his system and he must pass his work to Bikerdude to dmap.

 

If there were a Dmap server this would solve this dilemma and would open the way for even more intensive compile

types and optimizations.

 

Since a "hosted dmap server" is something that would benefit all Id Tech 4 projects, I'll float this concept over

at the iodoom3 IRC room and see if there are any takers

[Melan]

nbohr1more: As of yesterday, not anymore! I got my PC back and I am ready to roll!

[ungoliant]

Don't go too crazy needing super-computers to compile maps. The end users still need play these things without malloc errors

[nbohr1more]

nbohr1more: As of yesterday, not anymore! I got my PC back and I am ready to roll!

 

Congrats on the restored power!

 

Don't go too crazy needing super-computers to compile maps. The end users still need play these things without malloc errors

 

Melan mega-mapping not withstanding, there are tons of potential benefits for a dedicated map compiler server.

 

Recursive (multi-pass) Dmap brush evaluations.

 

New path-finding pre-computation and caching methods.

 

Automated visportal placement?

 

New geometry paging systems (geometry shading, virtualized geometry?).

 

Light baking (hopefully volumetric) or light procedural placement methods?

 

Texture Atlas pre-compiling?

Edited April 10, 2012 by nbohr1more

[Springheel]

So here is something that somebody could do to avoid TDM losing it's only linux developer:

Fix the damn build system!

 

I have no idea how specialized the skillset needs to be to do that, but I'd recommend posting it in a fresh thread somewhere in order to get the best chance of someone who actually knows how to do that seeing it.