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The future of DM


swillz_

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Obviously 2.08 was just released which means that DM is actively worked on and not going anywhere just yet.

Are there any new features planned? What are the creators plans for the future of DM?

Also considering the "rise" WASM with DOOM3 DEMO being ported to WASM, as well as tons of other older games making their way into the browser, are there any plans for DM to go that route?

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Greetings.

AFAIK, all current WIP issues can be found here: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/roadmap_page.php?version_id=88

Any contribution to them will be welcome.

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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I'm actually amazed how much work there is still done, and how many improvements this mod sees. It looks like there will be a significant performance update some time as well, and maybe even a VR version. That's quite incredible, considering that it's a spare time software, and considering how old it is now. Really, I wished there were other projects on this level of professionality, and commitment.

Now someone create a Dark Mod for Deus Ex please. 😄

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Just wanted to congratulate the ones involved in this new update. Looks awesome! In a game with so much dark areas, some form of occlusion lighting was a much needed feature to make geometry in the dark more readable and attractive.

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9 hours ago, swillz_ said:

Also considering the "rise" WASM with DOOM3 DEMO being ported to WASM, as well as tons of other older games making their way into the browser, are there any plans for DM to go that route?

Definitely not. It would be a massive time waste for a big step into the past.

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1 hour ago, stgatilov said:

Definitely not. It would be a massive time waste for a big step into the past.

I guess it has to do with GL version?

*cries in pre-2010 IntelHD integrated graphics*

Edited by swillz_
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48 minutes ago, swillz_ said:

I guess it has to do with GL version?

I'm not sure what you are talking about.

Rendering in browser lags behind desktop rendering in terms of features by several years. Until WebGL 2.0 came out, I estimated the difference to be about 10 years.
Moreover, even if someone managed to build working TDM for browser, working with it would be a major pain for programmers (less/worse tools, more problems, everything is slow, etc).

Just forget about browser, it is completely pointless.

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Also from me a big thank you to all who have contributed to this new version of TDM. Thank you for making TDM even better with these fixes and features! I really enjoy it still after all these (over 10?) years and that's really something that doesn't happen that often. Good work! :)

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"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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Some features I think it'd be cool to see are collective stealth score stats on the score screen and a fully animated werebeast.

I'd like to see an ambitious campaign that presents something like a canon story for the mod, like introducing the major areas and factions and backstory. 

My pipedreams are multiplayer and maybe a physics rehaul.

I'd also love to see a cyberpunk fork, but you can't really call that a feature.

I think every single thing I mentioned, sans the werebeast, is more appropriate for people outside the core team to work on. So my expectations aren't that high. But it'd be great to see them if they come. 

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I love what's already been made in terms of features, e.g. in terms of materials and graphics overall we're somewhere at UE3 era right now, which is great.

What I'd like to see is the content catching up to the tech. Current assets are old and have been exhausted in so many missions already. Still, regular content contributors are rare phenomenon.

And I'd love to see a complete overhaul of the menu system look and structure. It's super old in terms of both art and layout, and the latter is very unintuitive for newcomers. Something modern and simpler in structure would be great, possibly using scrolling or larger section of the screen to include more options. I've seen how artists do interface mockups where I work, but I don't have extensive knowledge on the topic, unfortunately.

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22 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

And I'd love to see a complete overhaul of the menu system look and structure. It's super old in terms of both art and layout, and the latter is very unintuitive for newcomers. Something modern and simpler in structure would be great, possibly using scrolling or larger section of the screen to include more options. I've seen how artists do interface mockups where I work, but I don't have extensive knowledge on the topic, unfortunately.

I already created some mockups, but that's years ago already and I don't have had the knowledge of actually coding / implementing them.
Entwurf15.png

 

 

Edited by SeriousToni
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"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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Nice work, but it tries to fit in the current art style, which has fairly busy background and low contrast that impacts readablility. I was thinking about lifting something from e.g. nuThief, or perhaps Dishonored 2 (minus flashy transitions, I guess). Simplicity, readability, and as few clicks as possible needed to get to any option should be the driving factors, IMO.

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27 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

Nice work, but it tries to fit in the current art style, which has fairly busy background and low contrast that impacts readablility. I was thinking about lifting something from e.g. nuThief, or perhaps Dishonored 2 (minus flashy transitions, I guess). Simplicity, readability, and as few clicks as possible needed to get to any option should be the driving factors, IMO.

Yes as I said, this is very oooold now :D I know what you mean - however I wouldn't throw the current art style over board completely for the sake of simplicity. People who got used to it, would be not happy. Few clicks possible, I'm totally with you. 

5 minutes ago, freyk said:

How about creating those menu's in TDM internal gui editor?
(open this with command "editguis")

Is there any documentation about what you mean? I never heard of this feature :o
EDIT: I tried this ingame. The game will freeze, a GUI Editor opens with nothing to see and my mouse cursor disappears :(

Edited by SeriousToni
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"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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Start TDM in windowed mode  and then run command editguis.
Documentation about gui scripting can be found at modwiki - dhewm3.org  and iddevnet.com
I created some guis for the cyperpunk mission, but i remember ending up using notepad, guitest-command and guirefresh-command.

Edited by freyk

Info: My portfolio and darkmod graphical installer
Amnesty for Bikerdude!

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That tool looks pretty useful, but first you need a robust design doc. First I'd start with better option layout / mapping, even without any changes to the art style, as there's a lot of to be done there.

And as much as I like the woodcut / chalcography aesthetics, I think for a stealth game, which is often played in the evening and has mostly permanent nighttime setting, light fonts on dark background would be more fitting.

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I recommend to just to try/test it out.
Because it is tedious and difficult enough. (But it cool to see your own designs in TDM)
Try to create a simple menu, then create a more advanced menu with the tdm scripts.
Tip: get a topic going in subforum art assets and hit me up.

Edited by freyk

Info: My portfolio and darkmod graphical installer
Amnesty for Bikerdude!

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Phew that's a lot of coding stuff I really don't have a clue about (seems like you build the elements in notepad completely). I can try, so thank you for the tutorials, but I can't promise anything really :(

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"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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Actual coding is the next phase, having a design mock with user flows is what goes first. In the design stage you just need some preliminary tech assessment, namely the list of things this framework cannot do. I have a few screenshots from both TDM and other games to compare / show what needs redesign, but I agree it's something for a separate topic. Plus I don't have any user flows ready yet.

Edited by peter_spy
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Before you do that might I again mention a GUI issue here that annoys me since several TDM versions and wasn't fixed yet:

Clearing the downloaded missions list is broken, like if you download a new mission it will still be shown in the original list after you downloaded it and if you download all new missions, you get an ugly overlay of all those mission names still visible over "No new mission packages available for download".

While it's great to see TDM use better and faster shaders, it seems to me nobody really cares about the GUI in comparison.

Edited by wesp5
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I guess it hasn't been resolved because it's a rare issue that only affects users who literally downloaded all the missions? (If I understand your problem correctly). And any mission should stay in the original missions list after downloading, so you can download it again, if you delete it manually from your hard drive. So that's not a bug, it's a feature :D

But otherwise, yeah, GUI is a tricky thing and there's currently no expert on that here, so it's more of the "if ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of approach. I'd love to prepare a proof of concept to propel some change in this aspect, but I'm not promising anything, as my time is quite limited these days.

Edited by peter_spy
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2 hours ago, peter_spy said:

I guess it hasn't been resolved because it's a rare issue that only affects users who literally downloaded all the missions? (If I understand your problem correctly).

No, it also happens with single missions. I just downloaded The Painter's Wife and ended up with it two times in the downloadable list after it had already been downloaded. I guess everything is okay after you go to the main menu and come back, at least everything is as it should be after you restart the game. I bet it would be fixed if this reset script is run directly after downloading...

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16 hours ago, demagogue said:

Some features I think it'd be cool to see are collective stealth score stats on the score screen and a fully animated werebeast.

I'd like to see an ambitious campaign that presents something like a canon story for the mod, like introducing the major areas and factions and backstory. 

My pipedreams are multiplayer and maybe a physics rehaul.

I'd also love to see a cyberpunk fork, but you can't really call that a feature.

I think every single thing I mentioned, sans the werebeast, is more appropriate for people outside the core team to work on. So my expectations aren't that high. But it'd be great to see them if they come. 

Since the topic is the future if TDM and possible features, I have always argued investing on more creation tools would pay off. The editor is a great tool but it's very dry; sort of what a studio would use, because they don't want to spend too much on tools and the level designers are getting paid so the tool doesn't have to be perfect anyway. I get that it's because TDM came from Thief FM community and they want a similar editor. But the more accessible and fun to use the editor is the more people will be making missions, the more missions the better etc.

Maybe there's a simple compromise somewhere, because making an editor with that level of accessibility is pretty hard. Like the ability to import maps made in other editors so people from other mod communities have an easier time getting into TDM while at the same time taking leverage from other editors with unique features. Maybe import from Unreal editor or even unity. From Unity it might be easier to write an exporter! You know what, I'll look into that.

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