Fan Mission: Noble Affairs by Goldwell 2022/02/22 [TDM 2.10 Required]

[Guest]

One of my favorite missions!

Spoiler

Are the creatures in the factory from the Screamers?

 

Edited July 31, 2024 by kovda

[chakkman]

I rather thought they were Amnesia: The Dark Descent inspired. But, IDK.

[Goldwell]

On 8/1/2024 at 7:19 AM, kovda said:

One of my favorite missions!

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Are the creatures in the factory from the Screamers?

 

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!

 

On 8/1/2024 at 9:33 AM, chakkman said:

I rather thought they were Amnesia: The Dark Descent inspired. But, IDK.

Bingo

[Alberto Salvia Novella]

While we wait for the next Amnesia we play Goldwell

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

This has to be the most nostalgia I've ever experienced in TDM.
Started out with Thief Deadly Shadows before playing anything else, and seeing that black market shop, the overall look and feel in line with TDS, and the obvious nods to the Dishonored games. I think this just might be a masterpiece!

Edited July 19, 2025 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[datiswous]

I just started playing this and I have to say, it's really pretty. I'm a bit blown away. Although, maybe I haven't played enough of your missions.

I encountered one odd graphical glitch. Not sure if it's to do with tdm in general, or just this scene.

There is a flickering light here which makes the wall texture zoom-in and zoom-out with every flicker, while the poster stays the same. This looks odd.

[datiswous]

@Goldwell Here are subtitles for story dialog and briefing. I haven't fully tested them, because I'm still playing the mission, but I see them showing up.

nobleaffairs_subs.pk4

Edited September 23, 2025 by datiswous

[Alberto Salvia Novella]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

I just started playing this and I have to say, it's really pretty. I'm a bit blown away. Although, maybe I haven't played enough of your missions.

I encountered one odd graphical glitch. Not sure if it's to do with tdm in general, or just this scene.

There is a flickering light here which makes the wall texture zoom-in and zoom-out with every flicker, while the poster stays the same. This looks odd.

Please share the save game, in front of the glitchy part, and I will test if it happens to me.

[datiswous]

11 hours ago, Alberto Salvia Novella said:

Please share the save game, in front of the glitchy part, and I will test if it happens to me.

In the screenshot that I posted top left you see location data. When you open the console and type:

setviewpos -1287.78 -204.42 -130.75

You should teleport to that location.

[datiswous]

When I disable the bumpmap (normal map) stage from material textures/xorak/brownbk12b the glitch is gone. So I think it has something to do with the normal map. None of the textures on nearby objects create this effect.

Maybe a better normalmap is needed. Or maybe it's incorrectly aligned with the defusemap (makes most sense to me).

It's seen on the walls close to the light. Farder away walls (with same texture) I don't notice it.

It's mostly visable when the light goes off in the light-flicker, so maybe a workaround could be to make the flicker so, that there is no off in it (maybe difficult, because it's based on sound).

Edited September 23, 2025 by datiswous

[Alberto Salvia Novella]

 

[datiswous]

Yes that's what I thought. So I think it's aligned incorrectly to the defusemap.

[HMart]

On that video afaik that is how normal mapping works!? 

Afaik you should only see the normal map effect, when a, per pixel, dynamic light casts on it, without that there's no way to calculate the bumps, so you only have a flat surface.  And because this light seems to flicker fast, you see a flat surface for a moment than a normal mapped one and that, on, off effect, gives the illusion the surface is moving.

This could be somewhat mitigated with a second "static" light also striking the surface or better a ambient light that has a baked global direction encoded in it.  And thinking about it, doesn't TDM already modified the ambient lighting to have direction already? I seem to recall talks of if before.

I just know original Doom 3 engine ambient lights, lack direction totally, so surfaces look flat with ambient light only.   

Btw Source engine tried to solve this by encoding directional information on the light-mapping data itself and on shadow they use the specular map as a fallback to show the normal info, is why on shadow, Half Life 2 surfaces look very shinny, like they are very wet. 

But idTech 4 and in extension TDM engine, does a more "realistic" type of surface lighting, meaning it doesn't have baked light ability whatsoever, it is totally dynamic relying on the real time lighting, to do the shading/lighting calculations each frame and so, every surface needs a light to cast on it, to know the final normal map direction data, meaning how to show the normal bump "shadow". 

Edited September 23, 2025 by HMart

[datiswous]

5 hours ago, HMart said:

Afaik you should only see the normal map effect, when a, per pixel, dynamic light casts on it, without that there's no way to calculate the bumps, so you only have a flat surface.  And because this light seems to flicker fast, you see a flat surface for a moment than a normal mapped one and that, on, off effect, gives the illusion the surface is moving.

Yeah ok, but there are other textures nearby that don't have that effect. I don't think these textures have no normal map applied.

I did some testing in an image editor and it seems to me the defuse and normal map images are not aligned, but maybe they're not supposed to be aligned?

I don't remember seeing this before elsewhere, but I could be wrong. It just looks very wrong.

Edited September 23, 2025 by datiswous

[Alberto Salvia Novella]

My first guess was this was done purposefully, to save computation.

Probably in most situations you won't notice. Only in this case because the light flickers.