Notes and things.

[Knockout Thief]

Does the Dark Mod launcher have anywhere to write notes or rate missions in its launcher like every other Thief based launcher has? It is like the most basic feature that is super useful and just wondering if I missed it here?

[Obsttorte]

A rating system has been discussed. The issue is it takes someone to implement it, besides all the other code related work to be done. But if you are a coder you are welcome to contribute.

[Knockout Thief]

C# and Dark Basic

[freyk]

We don't have a rating system, but other sites do.
like: thiefguild.com

We don't have any official launchers.
But i created some launchers, earlier.

Also a launcher for Windows, written in C#.
You are welcome to pick it up and add those features to it.
Get the binary and code from: https://github.com/freyk22

More info see:

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by freyk

[Obsttorte]

2 hours ago, Knockout Thief said:

C# and Dark Basic

Well, the game is written in C/C++, so you can probably read the code. I just saw you are refering to the launcher, but the discussion I've mentioned was about the game. I am not sure how many players actually use the launcher.

Either way, you are welcome to play with the code and provide whatever you may come up with.

[freyk]

Do we have a launcher??

Or do you mean the TDM game Executable.
If mean the executable (-> the game itself), then take a look at the source code and Coding Articles at the wiki.
Create some code, scripts and gui menus for the mission rating and note taking.
But where to store the ratings?
The personal ratings on the local system and our rates on a server.

Edited October 26, 2022 by freyk

[Obsttorte]

@freykDidn't you wrote you have created some. No I am confused.

[SeriousToni]

9 minutes ago, Obsttorte said:

@freykDidn't you wrote you have created some. No I am confused.

**Former content deleted by me**

Ah darn, I was just writing bullsh*t - I guess I was also confused haha

Edited October 26, 2022 by SeriousToni

[Obsttorte]

nananana nananana

nananana nananana

[freyk]

To me, there are differences between an executable and a application launcher.

For example: application launcher can be an executable, that can start another executable.

Thief.exe is a executable and darkloader is a "application"-launcher, that can start thief-executable file and run a fm mission, automatically.

And i think, that knockout thief wants to create a launcher like darkloader, but now for TDM (that includes a rating-system and note taker).

Edited October 26, 2022 by freyk

[SeriousToni]

I guess only Knockout Thief can clear things up now.

[Knockout Thief]

Yeah I'm just talking about a launcher that you can write notes in and score things for your own personal use and search for certain levels like a lot of the thief fm launchers. 

[Xolvix]

I guess the issue is that The Dark Mod is just the one executable. It doesn't have a launcher since the means of browsing, downloading and launching missions is all integrated into the same program used to actually play the game. Which I kinda prefer due to its simplicity, but I suppose it does limit the number of extra features you can shove into the GUI.

Technically I guess there's nothing stopping anyone from making a separate launcher. The code for reading the mission server, acquiring missions, unpacking and reading mission metadata is all there anyway. One could build a GUI application that would then allow the extra features you wanted, plus the information density would be much greater compared to the in-game browser. Even launching missions would be easy since you'd just have to change the currentfm.txt file and then launch TDM as normal.

So yeah. Someone could write that I guess, as a side project...

[SeriousToni]

There's a wiki at https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Fan_Missions_for_The_Dark_Mod where you can browse all missions and you probably could create a word file with the ones you already played and rate it for your personal use. Which would be the easiest solution currently.

[freyk]

Yes, you should difintelly expend the code i have written.
It has also a mission tab in it, but not filled with missions. And use the advices above.
code: project on github
binary to my launcher: Binary (direct download from github)

Tips for the launcher:
search for the download locations for the missions, inside the sourcecode of tdm mission loader,
add a sqllite db and use the ratings from thiefguild (Or something else)

Edited October 27, 2022 by freyk

[Obsttorte]

3 hours ago, Knockout Thief said:

Yeah I'm just talking about a launcher that you can write notes in and score things for your own personal use and search for certain levels like a lot of the thief fm launchers. 

Well isn't the main executable basically not our "launcher" then? It serves the same purpose, download and select the mission you are going to play. I honestly don't think we need an additional program for that. What is true and what has been discussed before as said is that additional features, like the possibility to rate missions, could be added. The thing is that this is a surprisingly complex task, and the few programmers we have concentrate their time on the tasks they consider most important. This isn't very high on that list.

However, as you are a coder and it appears you consider it to be of priority ...

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, Obsttorte said:

I honestly don't think we need an additional program for that. What is true and what has been discussed before as said is that additional features, like the possibility to rate missions, could be added. The thing is that this is a surprisingly complex task, and the few programmers we have concentrate their time on the tasks they consider most important.

I agree that we don't need another launcher, but that the mission handling could be improved. I am still annoyed by the bad overlay of the "There are no new missions to download" text over the missions still showing that you just downloaded! This hasn't been fixed for years because indeed this part of the GUI seems to be rather complex...

Edited October 27, 2022 by wesp5

[Baal]

Doom 3's GUI system is pretty basic and not suited for more complex things. It's also a pain to work with.

Maybe the mission managment should just not be implemented with it; but with something else (GTK, Qt etc.). Like a launcher, but integrated into the game.

[Obsttorte]

The gui isn't the main issue. The issue is more that each part of the gui was implemented seperately, although there is lot of things that are done commonly. This makes it difficult to make information accessible in one gui that is already available in another one.

Example:

In the past, when I worked on the scalability of the in game gui (icon and text size et al.), there was also the idea that upon selecting a mission in the mission screen, if no background image was given the mission screenshots could be used there, which are available in the downloader. I eventually gave up on trying to get the mission selection screen to access the information available for the downloader, as it would have meant an enourmous amount of copy and pasting code.

My assumption is that the code needs to be rewritten in a form, that one piece of code handles the complete menu system. This would make additions much easier. Until that happens, every change includes a comparable high amount of work and is rather limited in what is possible.

[Xolvix]

27 minutes ago, Baal said:

Doom 3's GUI system is pretty basic and not suited for more complex things. It's also a pain to work with.

Maybe the mission managment should just not be implemented with it; but with something else (GTK, Qt etc.). Like a launcher, but integrated into the game.

I agree that the mission browser and management functions in TDM are limited due to the nature of the in-game UI. You could implement a launcher component that is part of the main code rather than a third-party tool, and that might be useful because you can then transfer all the mission selection stuff to the "launcher" which by using the desktop windowing system, will have much greater opportunity for flexibility. Unfortunately it won't integrate as nicely into the TDM GUI itself though.

On the other hand... you could just redesign the entire TDM GUI. Smaller fonts, push menu elements out to the edges of the screen a bit more to allow for a greater density of info in the middle of the screen for the mission browser. That kinda sounds like a major task though.

[Xolvix]

1 minute ago, Obsttorte said:

My assumption is that the code needs to be rewritten in a form, that one piece of code handles the complete menu system. This would make additions much easier. Until that happens, every change includes a comparable high amount of work and is rather limited in what is possible.

Just make sure it's rewritten using Rust, that's what all the cool kids are using these days apparently.

[Baal]

I was going to write something else, but it's all coming down to: "Who is going to do it?"

I have an excuse. I need to finish a mission. 

[Obsttorte]

That's the point. It would be nice to have, but it includes an enormous amount of work. So whoever is going to do that needs the respective motivation. And I, for one, don't give a noodle about scoring et al., so I am not motivated. (that's my "excuse" )

We definetely need more coders. So kids, learn do program.

[Knockout Thief]

Can FMs be installed and run from command line in the dark mod? If so then an external launcher wouldn't be so hard to make, but I really haven't looked in to how the missions are installed and launched so just curious, it may be near impossible for all I know.

[nbohr1more]

1 hour ago, Knockout Thief said:

Can FMs be installed and run from command line in the dark mod? If so then an external launcher wouldn't be so hard to make, but I really haven't looked in to how the missions are installed and launched so just curious, it may be near impossible for all I know.

Commandline launch:

TheDarkModx64.exe +set fs_currentfm alberic3

Replace alberic3 with the ID of any mission.

Works in Linux via thedarkmod.x64