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Beta Testing 2.09


stgatilov

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2 hours ago, Araneidae said:

Man, I so do not miss CRTs!  The flicker (even 100Hz monitors are not great at times) and small screens and bulk ... and sheer weight if it's a reasonably large screen.  No, don't mourn the old CRT.

You are right but so is he, CRT's have big cons but they also had huge benefits that we lost going TFT, LCD's and now LED's. 

This explains better than me:  

 

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beta209-06 is available.
Don't forget to check "Custom Version" on the first page of installer.

This beta is "release candidate", meaning that unless something very bad happens, it will become final 2.09 release.
It has only a few minor changes compared to the previous version.

However, there are several important differences between this beta and the previous ones:

  1. The archive with 32-bit executables can be  (downloaded from here | not any longer) . It should be unpacked into the installation directory, and includes both Windows and Linux 32-bit builds. It is important that at least someone tests these versions. If you decide to do that --- please write about your experience.
  2. In order to test mirrors system with tdm_installer, I have established a second mirror on CDN. Now it used with 80% probability. This should be enough to check if there are any emergent problems with mirrors in tdm_installer. But I must say that I'm not confident in this second mirror, so if you see any errors on the installation screen (during Download, Verify or Repack), please post a screenshot and log.

Unfortunately, I could not use the mirrors which were used for TDM delivery previously (long story). The new mirror is rather weird: it is very fast but not 100% reliable. It least I had some problems with it a few years ago which I could not resolve. Now I have changed its configuration and hope that these problems won't return. But I'm not sure.

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Wonderful, installer self-updating, exit answer format and lockpicking sound issues are fixed now :)! Please can you merge the lines I posted before into the final 2.09 so it is explained why resolution changes are not working in fullscreen mode:

"#str_02298"    "Screen size, aspect ratio or fullscreen changes require a restart."
"#str_02299"    "Fullscreen size is locked to desktop, use render scale to adjust."

Edited by wesp5
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I just wanted to mention that I see a weird tendency to restrict and take the control away from the user in respect to some things. First it was with menu GUI editing, then with multisampling for screenshots, now screen resolution.

I don't like that.

Edited by peter_spy
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5 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

I just wanted to mention that I see a weird tendency to restrict and take the control away from the user in respect to some things. First it was with menu GUI editing, then with multisampling for screenshots, now screen resolution.

I don't like that.

Those are three very different things. The first one is a classic maintainability vs flexibility dilemma. The second one is simply a bug (that admittedly devs don't care too much about, but nbohr1more still appears to have fixed it). And the third one - well, actually I still don't know why we did that. I opposed the change :D

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2 hours ago, cabalistic said:

Those are three very different things.

From a technical perspective, sure. But from an end user perspective, it's the same: fewer features, less control or customization.

Edited by peter_spy
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My point is, please don't mix a number of unrelated issues together to create a confirmation bias that TDM is somehow moving in a direction to restrict player or mapper choice. That's not the case. :)

But the reality is also that any point of available customization creates an exponential growth of possibilities for things to get broken when changes are made. Unfortunately, our capacity to maintain and support every corner case is limited. When stuff breaks, it is in most cases not intentional and we do our best to fix it. But with limited developer capacity (2.09 had like 3 (?) active developers), some things will invariably take longer or fall of the bandwagon when they are not judged critical. And in cases where a break is intentional, we do usually reach out to mappers or the community as a whole to discuss the issue and collect feedback.

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But in these particular cases we're not talking about new features or extending some functionalities. Those things were there from the start, basically. And they vary from fairly useful to fundamental. That's why a repeated attitude of "can't be done" / "let's throw it away" is worrying to me.

Maybe the problem also stems from the fact that only Grayman is both mapper and developer, and knowing user and mapper practices / workflows is invaluable for making development-related decisions.

Edited by peter_spy
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46 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

And they vary from fairly useful to fundamental. That's why a repeated attitude of "can't be done" / "let's throw it away" is worrying to me.

Nope, there is no attitude of "can't be done, lets throw it away". The team is doing its best to make TDM a stable experience for everyone. Some of that yes includes changing the way stuff works and in very rare cases removing features. The best approach is to say "Hey guys, I really get a lot of use of (so and so feature) what's the reason for removing it" State your case and the team will do its best to help. 

Your last comment is bogus. Stgatilov, Cabalistic, Orbweaver and Greebo are doing a fantastic job of supporting mappers. Yes Grayman is awesome, but the current team is staying the course and trying to support mappers as much as possible.

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Volta Missions:  Volta and the Stone, Volta II: Cauldron of the Gods
Standalones: Snowed Inn, Hazard Pay (2.10 BETA)

 

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57 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

That's why a repeated attitude of "can't be done" / "let's throw it away" is worrying to me.

I still don't get where you get that from? Like I said, one of the instances (the jitter screenshot feature) is a bug that broke unintentionally. And yes, we do disagree about its relevance or importance, and as a consequence it may have stayed open longer than you wanted, but nbohr did fix it.

The main menu changes originated from a dilemma that the devs were blocked from doing improvements to the menus because some missions could have overwritten some parts of it and thus break in the process. And unless you want us to stop doing any improvements to the mod, these kinds of issues need to be addressed. stgatilov did a full due diligence on this, investigated which missions would potentially be affected, developed a couple of potential proposals to move forward and, to my knowledge, did reach out to a few mappers to figure out what kind of control over the menu they really need to find a compromise that offers decent customizability without being a maintenance nightmare.

And finally, the handling of full screen resolutions. Like I said, I was and am not in favour of this particular change, so on that one we agree. I just don't see a pattern here.

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1 hour ago, peter_spy said:

But in these particular cases we're not talking about new features or extending some functionalities. Those things were there from the start, basically. And they vary from fairly useful to fundamental. That's why a repeated attitude of "can't be done" / "let's throw it away" is worrying to me.

I guess I'm the main source of this attitude.

Yes, that's mainly because of maintenance burden. TDM has reached the state where compatibility is much more important than development. We cannot say "we have upgraded this feature, but as the result these FMs no longer work, and we decided that breakage is well worth it", that would be betrayal of TDM mappers. But since we want to do some development in future too, we have to constantly think about how to avoid getting locked by backward compatibility.

And that's the main reason why I was so pissed off by GUI customizations. Yes, I agree that my initial reaction was too aggressive. There was a set of conventions for mappers, established by the original developers of the menu GUI, which were there in order to provide backwards compatibility without compatibility lock-in. But due to lack of some customization features, the protocol was broken by mappers. I have already spent at least a month working on the new system (because GUI scripts are damn painful), and I will spend even more on it. Then even more on fixing the missions which break the convention (in case authors won't do it). And I know I can't drop this work because otherwise GUI will become more and more locked due to compatibility.

Now consider jittered screenshots. Is it an important feature?... well, it is not. I would say TDM can safely live without it: only a few people use/know about it, and most likely rarely use it. And it has absolutely no effect on gameplay. However, we have to fix it because "it was there from the very beginning". My immediate worry in such situation is that trying to fix this unnecessary feature would break something necessary. For instance, there was considerable risk that the fix would break portal sky in some situations (although @nbohr1more's fix is very isolated, and I guess it won't break anything). Doesn't it sound counterproductive trying to fix unimportant feature risking to break something important? Keep in mind that leaving it in the code means that it will most likely be broken again in the future (especially given the pace of graphical changes), and the same dilemma will return again. So the best decision would be to remove the whole feature of jittered screenshots, which I honestly wrote about.

Of course, it is the responsibility of TDM team members to fix the existing features, even if they don't want to or don't agree with their existence. But wouldn't everyone be more happy if the time wasted on fixing these minor things would better be spent on something more useful and important?

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32 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

Now consider jittered screenshots. Is it an important feature?... well, it is not.

It's useful for both taking current resolution screenshots to provide better anti aliasing, for both geometry and specular + normal aliasing (currently there's no AA for both geometry and specular aliasing). And unfortunately it's a must-have for high res-screenshots (e.g. "screenshot 7680, 4320, 24" command). Taking screenshots this way, without any samples, has a bug of your native resolution screenshot being included in the lower-left corner – something I reported quite some time ago: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4934. So it's not that simple. If fixing the latter is safer, then that would be the way to go.

Although bear in mind that people are also using ModWiki for console commands, and these are Doom3 native. So some console feedback for using these commands with a number of samples would be needed.

Edited by peter_spy
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I can understand that multiple options makes it harder to find issues, I had the same problem with my Unofficial Patch for Bloodlines. Still I think in the case of a major change like the resolution we should at least inform the player that this is not a bug! Hence my suggestion to update the video info strings, which would be enough for me to know what happens...

 

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I loaded into a few missions with a 32bit .exe I compiled from 2.09b5 with no problems, but I didn't spend much time in them. The main objective was to see if Painter's Wife will load on 32bit with 2.09, which it still doesn't. But it's always been that way.

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1 hour ago, Gerald_hughes81 said:

Please could you advise, i'm having issues installing beta release beta209-06 i get the attached error, i hope someone can help me get it installed.

chunkerror.png

Apparently, the cloud mirror is still unreliable.
I'm afraid I'll have to bring it down 😪

UPDATE: Disabled my mirror. Try again: it should work now.

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7 hours ago, Gerald_hughes81 said:

Just used a vpn and it has worked, very weird, many thanks for your help much appreciated guys

This is very strange.
Did you take screenshot of the new failed attempts?

Perhaps it is some problem on your side after all...

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On 2/4/2021 at 12:23 PM, Anderson said:

Yes, have mercy on your eyes. They don't grow back.


As HMart's video explains, you are probably confusing CRT monitors with CRT TV's. They are not the same. Playing console on a CRT TV was indeed a pain. A CRT PC monitor is another this all together. Put a standard flat 17'' CRT Monitor side with a 17'' LCD and the CRT will probably win terms of refresh ratio, resolution (multiple resolutions vs 1 native resolution) and colors. 

 

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5 hours ago, Hugo Lobo said:


As HMart's video explains, you are probably confusing CRT monitors with CRT TV's. They are not the same. Playing console on a CRT TV was indeed a pain. A CRT PC monitor is another this all together. Put a standard flat 17'' CRT Monitor side with a 17'' LCD and the CRT will probably win terms of refresh ratio, resolution (multiple resolutions vs 1 native resolution) and colors. 

 

To conclude what I meant by my statement: I don't think the refresh rate of a CRT monitor can be compared to the refresh rate of an LCD - not when it matters to eye strain and the damage to your eyes. 75 Hz is still worse on a CRT versus 60 Hz on an LCD monitor for your eyes.

After I noticed how visible screen flickering is on video recordings, I did all that's possible to switch to LCD and I never looked back.

Ofc, I am biased since I worked with a lot of older folk. It may be hard to estimate how much vision is lost due to human aging and how much due to staring at screens for hours. But still, I think there's a reason why LCD was always strongly suggested to switch to instead of old CRT's.

There's also the contrast thing on LCD. LCD's are usually brighter. Develops of  various apps have fortunately started to mitigate this with "dark modes" and night modes/adding red to the color palette. I don't know how effective these are. But it's always better to have this automated rather than manually switch the background in Microsoft Word 2003.

It may as well all just be evil capitalism prodding us to buy the next high-tech thingy. I don't know. Maybe most of us have convinced ourselves that LCD is better. At least they consume less electricity. I still regret throwing away/giving away some old devices that could have easily still be used if I get my hands on the necessary adapter for modern motherboards. Despite the fact that we live in a disposable world of throw-away things, we need to put the things that we have to good use.

Maybe those who still have CRT's around might want all related features in TDM. Maybe they don't care. IMHO, there's just not that many users left. It is so easy to break a CRT screen when moving out. I had about 7 times that I moved out and a couple more around various offices. LCD's life span is so much better.

Edited by Anderson
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"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 see nothing in the installer newer than beta209-04, and nothing named "Release Candidate". Is beta 06 not available yet?

I'll try editing the ini file for the installer to add the beta 6 link... Looks pretty straight forward.

That did the trick. I added the necessary lines for beta 05 and beta 06. All updated.

Edited by PranQster
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System: Mageia Linux Cauldron, aka Mageia 8

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