Public access to development versions

[stgatilov]

For the people eager to play with the latest state of development, two things are provided:

1. regular dev builds
2. source code SVN repository

Development builds are created once per a few weeks from the current trunk.

They can be obtained via tdm_installer.
Just run the installer, check "Get Custom Version" on the first page, then select proper version in "dev" folder on the second page.
Name of any dev version looks like devXXXXX-YYYY, where XXXXX and YYYY are SVN revision numbers from which the build was created.
The topmost version in the list is usually the most recent one.

Note: unless otherwise specified, savegames are incompatible between any two versions of TDM!

Programmers can obtain source code from SVN repository.
Trunk can be checked out from here: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src/trunk/
SVN root is: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src

Build instructions are provided inside repository.

Note that while you can build executable from the SVN repository, TDM installation of compatible version is required to run it.
Official TDM releases are compatible with source code archives provided on the website, and also with corresponding release tags in SVN.
A dev build is compatible with SVN trunk of revision YYYY, where YYYY is the second number in its version (as described above).
If you only want to experiment with the latest trunk, using the latest dev build gives you the maximum chance of success.

P.S. Needless to say, all of this comes with no support.
Although we would be glad if you catch and report bugs before the next beta phase starts

 

[stgatilov]

Changelog of 2.15 development:

dev17570-11349
* All GUIs now scale differently with the aspect ratio of the game, thanks to the anchors system portes from dhewm3 (thread).
* Automatically update game FOV when window is resized.
* Guards no longer track player with their head by default, fixed the control flag (thread).
* Added aurora skybox prefab.
* Game console can be opened with Shift + Esc.
* Added embedded icon for TDM on X11.

dev17562-11331
* Fixed AIs making jerky movement on high FPS due to subsystem think optimization (6703).
* Core scripts now longer wait for 16 ms to do continuous processing (4772).
* Fixed some FPS-dependent behavior: random AI head turning, fadeInEnt, player water submersion.
* Now guards turn their head to look at the player (thread).
* Fixed wrong field-of-view of a horse (post).
* Better animation of horse movements (post).
* Improved carleton 24p font (6656).
* Fixed GPU hanging up when parallax map has min = max (6715).
* Doubled the triangle limit for eyeball deform.
* Fixed crash on shutdown if the game failed to start OpenGL.
* Make freezes due to console spam increasingly rare (thread).
* First version of GDB pretty printers for nice debugging on Linux (wiki).

dev17544-11321
* Added banking animations for humanoid AIs (thread).
* waitFrame now waits one frame instead of 16 ms for normal threads.
* Linux builds now uses Wayland if possible, and X11 otherwise.
* Supported copy/pasting text into game console on Linux.
* Both the game and tdm_installer now use HTTPS for important downloads.
* Supported locking memory pages for sound data on Linux.
* Removed SetPhysicalWorkMemory call on Windows.
* Better debug visualization of AI fov with tdm_ai_showfov 2.
* Cvars in darkmod.cfg are now sorted lexicographically.
* Internal: property cleanup in SVN repos.

dev17531-11282
* Updated all third-party dependencies.
* Added script debugger from dhewm3 / Quake 4 (thread).
* Various animation improvements: turning (post, post), sleep on chair (post), run jogging (post).
* Fixed FPS-dependent bug in AI unblocking logic (6701).
* Fixed AVX2 detection on Linux.
* Fixed OpenAL issue on game shutdown, potentially causing a crash.
* Revised CMake build: set PCH in standard way + set static runtime directly. Switched stdlibc++ to to C++11 ABI.
* Fixed C++ deprecation warnings from libcurl, pthreads, ffmpeg.
* Print libcurl error message into game console if download has failed.
* Fixed FPS-dependent issues in various AI debug visualization.

dev17516-11241
* Added settings to hide HUD elements when unused/unchanged (6677, thread).
* Added a way to show and customize frob outline for pickable objects (5428).
* New HUD section in the menu settings, which include these two features.
* Fixed crash when estimating light factor of animated model in 32-bit executable.
* Forbid using inventory items via hotkey before game starts (thread).
* Fixed mission overrides of pm_walkspeed cvar (6697).
* Updated Linux build environment from Ubuntu 16.04 to Ubuntu 20.04, updated C/C++ standards to C++17/C11, rebuilt the game and tdm_installer using it.

[stgatilov]

dev17516-11241 is available.

As usual, it contains some features which were implemented during beta phase.
Also it includes the upgrade of build tools, although there is more to be done here.

[datiswous]

On 3/20/2026 at 7:45 PM, stgatilov said:

* New HUD section in the menu settings, which include these two features.

The new HUD section doesn't show after upgrade.

Edit: The gui file does seem to have the code in it, so I wonder why it doesn't show up.

Edited March 31 by datiswous

[datiswous]

What I noticed is that the Darkmod.cfg file has a capital letter at the start, but if you rename it to darkmod.cfg (without capital D) the file Darkmod.cfg is recreated at start, from the settings from the darkmod.cfg file.

Edited March 30 by datiswous

[stgatilov]

20 hours ago, datiswous said:

The new HUD section doesn't show after upgrade.

Do you use dev17516-11241 release from tdm_installer?

Do you by any chance have installed a certain latest mission which overrides the whole main menu?

[datiswous]

13 hours ago, stgatilov said:

Do you use dev17516-11241 release from tdm_installer?

Yes I do. I upgraded from 2.14 beta 6.

 

13 hours ago, stgatilov said:

Do you by any chance have installed a certain latest mission which overrides the whole main menu?

This is from St Lucia installed, but I tested it with multiple missions, including Away0.

 

[datiswous]

On 3/29/2026 at 12:10 AM, stgatilov said:

Also it includes the upgrade of build tools

Does it also include the script debugger? I personally see no point in not including it.

[datiswous]

On 3/31/2026 at 8:54 PM, stgatilov said:

Do you by any chance have installed a certain latest mission which overrides the whole main menu?

Hey sorry, I had unzipped the strings folder for some reason and it was still there, overriding 2.15 strings. I removed it and the HUD settings menu shows up now.

Edited April 1 by datiswous

[wesp5]

Speaking of strings, while updating the German translation for my patch, I noticed that some text is defined directly in the UI files. I have fixed that for now, but it would be good if that went into the next core update. What I added to strings are:

   "#str_02017"    "Reverb Volume"
    "#str_02018"    "Texture Quality"
    "#str_02019"    "Volumetric Effects"
    "#str_02020"    "Parallax Mapping"
    "#str_02021"    "Toggle Creep"

Also "Load Game" and "Save Game" are hard-coded somewhere outside of the UI files so ATM it will never be translated.

Edited April 1 by wesp5

[nbohr1more]

We are moving away from numeric translation tokens to word based ones like #str_reverbvolume to make it easier for translators and to avoid string collisions for mission translations 

[wesp5]

7 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

We are moving away from numeric translation tokens to word based ones like #str_reverbvolume to make it easier for translators and to avoid string collisions for mission translations 

That is a good idea, but still in 2.14 several strings like the ones I mentioned above are defined in the GUI files themselves. Also it seems "next" is hard-coded in some places as well!

Edited April 2 by wesp5

[datiswous]

10 hours ago, wesp5 said:

I have fixed that for now, but it would be good if that went into the next core update.

You mean that it gets documented somewhere what the strings are?

Or you mean that at some places the text doesn't have a #str for it so they are not translatable?

Edited April 2 by datiswous

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

You mean that it gets documented somewhere what the strings are?

Or you mean that at some places the text doesn't have a #str for it so they are not translatable?

Both is true. In the GUI files luckily it's documented what the strings are, but in some cases there is no #str only direct text.

[stgatilov]

dev17531-11282 is available.

This one accumulates quite of lot of infrastructural changes (along with tdm_installer).

[stgatilov]

dev17562-11331 is available.

[stgatilov]

dev17570-11349 is available.

[thebigh]

During betatesting of the new mission "Skeleton Key" I came across this error that won't let me start the mission: 

ERROR:Error: file maps/g2.script, line 478: Unknown value "fadeOutEnt"

TDM 2.14 release works fine, but the latest 2.15 beta does not. I'm not sure what this error means.

[stgatilov]

8 hours ago, thebigh said:

During betatesting of the new mission "Skeleton Key" I came across this error that won't let me start the mission: 

ERROR:Error: file maps/g2.script, line 478: Unknown value "fadeOutEnt"

TDM 2.14 release works fine, but the latest 2.15 beta does not. I'm not sure what this error means.

I have deleted them in the core script recently.
They were not used in any released mission.

I have suggested a trivial replacement to the author in the beta thread.