Beta testing 2.12

[Baal]

I like the new frob system. It does work on rats, too. Imagine the thief slinging a dead rat over his shoulder...

I haven't tested this extensively and I don't remember which fm it was. Someone should look into it.

[stgatilov]

beta212-02 is available.

There is yet another major change in the light portal flow implementation, and there can be more issues now.
Or less --- never sure

[nbohr1more]

I did a little testing of SVN 10610 and 10611 and haven't seen any light \ shadow problems thus far. I mostly play in shadow-map mode but I think the problems mostly impact stencil? ( haven't seen any issues in stencil mode either ).

I think the reverted Doom 3 style frustum may have cured the light leaks above some shielded electric street lamps too. It also may have improved the appearance to lighting in the mission "Behind Closed Doors" ( noticed more shading variation on the walls of the large stairway at the start of the mission ). Could be placebo, gotta compare screenshots.

[stgatilov]

1 hour ago, nbohr1more said:

I did a little testing of SVN 10610 and 10611 and haven't seen any light \ shadow problems thus far. I mostly play in shadow-map mode but I think the problems mostly impact stencil? ( haven't seen any issues in stencil mode either ).

Stencil shadows are more susceptible because only backfaces cast shadows.

Quote

I think the reverted Doom 3 style frustum may have cured the light leaks above some shielded electric street lamps too. It also may have improved the appearance to lighting in the mission "Behind Closed Doors" ( noticed more shading variation on the walls of the large stairway at the start of the mission ). Could be placebo, gotta compare screenshots.

I'll bet on placebo

[Baal]

I did play a little with the last two betas (stencil shadows) and did not notice any lighting/shadow issues. I did not look that closely, though.

[kin]

Haven't tried 2.12 yet but I want to ask,any work done on ambient occlusion? I have found it to improve the looks of many missions but it didn't work well always. For example when changing your view some of the fixed shadows in the corners vanish.

edit: Ok I tried the 2.12 latest version and I liked the leaning more than the previous versions also deactivating the mantle roll feels like an improvement for me. Movement is closer to the first  two originals of the series.

Also is there a way to keep settings unchanged when installing a new version? Everything resets even if i tick the box to keep the original file up on installation.

Edited January 5 by kin

[Wellingtoncrab]

I like the new mantle speed a lot.

Though I find with the faster speed the default mantle roll of 1.0 looks rather exaggerated and can be a little jarring, so I have been dialing it back. This is pretty subjective, but I have been dialing it back to around 60-50% and find that feels like a good balance to me.

Might be worth looking at adjusting the default value now that the fundamentals are different, but maybe somebody else has an opinion.

[stgatilov]

beta212-03 is available.

[chakkman]

17 hours ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

I like the new mantle speed a lot.

Though I find with the faster speed the default mantle roll of 1.0 looks rather exaggerated and can be a little jarring, so I have been dialing it back.

Would be great if this could be fine tuned a bit. I also think it's exaggerated. Again, I like TDM for its rather realistic movement.

[Wellingtoncrab]

2 hours ago, chakkman said:

Would be great if this could be fine tuned a bit. I also think it's exaggerated. Again, I like TDM for its rather realistic movement.

I am not really invested in realism being the criteria for a how a game should play, but it sounds like the devs modeled it using actual parkour videos - which would be people mantling in real life. Even if it was desirable I am not sure “realism” is an achievable result. The capabilities of people in reality is pretty diverse after all.

I think what you are describing as "realistic" is just what feels subjectively natural or correct to you, which you can and should advocate for that.

I am speaking specifically about the “mantle roll” - the tilting camera animation which plays at the last stage of the mantle. What I found is that the new mantle kind of clicks and feels subjectively “right” to me with the revised speed is a setting of .5 instead of 1. 

But that’s just me, so curious if you or others have any opinion on this menu setting.

[chakkman]

47 minutes ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

I think what you are describing as "realistic" is just what feels subjectively natural or correct to you, which you can and should advocate for that.

No. There are limits to what a human is capable of, and, when a game like TDM, which is supposed to be a "immersive sim" feels too arcade-ish, then it's something I don't consider desirable, especially when the other movement (walking/running speed, swimming, diving, leaning etc.) or the use of weapons seems pretty realistic.

Edited January 8 by chakkman

[snatcher]

Realism is for simulators and even then, there must be compromises. Reasonable is the right word for TDM.

Regarding player movement it really depends on the character and how you want players to feel in his shoes. Is this a vulnerable veteran thief or a sneaky young cat? In this regard the increased mantle speed and the (single) grunt sound convey opposite connotations, imho.

Edited January 8 by snatcher

[Wellingtoncrab]

 

6 minutes ago, chakkman said:

No. There are limits to what a human is capable of

As I mentioned in my post, if the this is even an issue the devs modeled it off of actual human capabilities. ie watching actual people perform the task. Whose capabilities are you measuring that feeling against? Your own? That of a season thief? It really doesn’t matter, they are your perceptions of the game. That should be valid enough without worrying if your subjective feelings about how the game should feel meet “reality”.

The game is inherently not realistic, nor are any of the games in the pantheon of immersive sims.

That is another topic entirely though.

Do you have an opinion on the default mantle roll setting?

[chakkman]

I don't think you really get my point. Of course, a game can't and shouldn't be realistic in all regards (unless you actually simulate something), but, if something feels too arcade, then it breaks immersion. And, yes, of course that's subjective, but, the new mantling simply seems too fast to me. Just like the old Quake and Doom games seem too fast to me, in terms of movement speed. Nobody runs that fast, not even Usain Bolt.

And, by the way, if these movements are modelled on some real life videos, I suggest that it is also taken into account that the thief is neither a parcour artist, nor a strongman competitor. So, he shouldn't be as fast or as strong as these people.

 

Edited January 8 by chakkman

[Wellingtoncrab]

1 minute ago, chakkman said:

I don't think you really get my point.

Do you get mine:

With the new mantle do you have an opinion on what the default mantle roll value should be?

You can say you don’t have one.

[chakkman]

I'm not sure why you're so aggressive towards me.

[Wellingtoncrab]

Just now, chakkman said:

I'm not sure why you're so aggressive towards me.

How do you mean? That’s certainly not intentional and I am sorry if I come across that way.

My only point to you was that you don’t even have to apply the threshold of “realism” to have a valid opinion about how the game feels. 

[wesp5]

13 minutes ago, chakkman said:

And, by the way, if these movements are modelled on some real life videos, I suggest that it is also taken into account that the thief is neither a parcour artist, nor a strongman competitor. So, he shouldn't be as fast or as strong as these people.

Most of all it should be considered that our character is wearing leather armor, also a sword, a bow and other stuff...

Edited January 8 by wesp5

[chakkman]

12 minutes ago, Wellingtoncrab said:

Do you get mine:

With the new mantle do you have an opinion on what the default mantle roll value should be?

You can say you don’t have one.

Ok, I get it. You were talking about the mantle roll, and not the mantling speed.

Regarding the mantle roll, yes, I don't really have an opinion on that. My issues are rather that the mantling seems too fast. I don't care which additional animation of the head is involved. IMO, the whole movement is simply too fast.

Edited January 8 by chakkman

[Daft Mugi]

 

[Baal]

This is something I'm working on currently. I'm having isues with stencil shadows (beta212-03, maps work correctly in this case).

The left edge does not cast a shadow, while the right does.

 

Edit: The problem went away after further work on the map. But I guess I need to look closely for issues like this. They are easy to miss.

Edited January 12 by Baal

[Geep]

I believe the subtitle Stone font is currently scaled to 11.52 pts, instead of 12 pts. I have asked before whether that is the intended scaling, or inadvertent, but heard nothing.

In tdm_subtitles_common.gui, there is:

#define SUBTITLES_TEXT_SCALE 0.24

In TDM 2.11, it was:

#define SUBTITLES_TEXT_SCALE 0.25

Where a scale of 1.0 represents 48 pts.

[wesp5]

Speaking of fonts, the one used for the UI inventory selection in the lower right corner of the screen has a superfluos pixel in the left lower corner of the "W". Can this be removed?

[Geep]

Likewise in subtitles; the "T" has a similar artifact. The implementation of the Stone font has known glitches, including poor spacing of "J". Probably made worse by the fact that no 12pt Stone is currently available, only 24pt and 48pt. So what you see is scaled down from 24pt.

The images for the text characters are in a grid within a single .tga file (for a given base font size). Stray pixels come from adjoining letters in the grid.

IMHO, it is possible to overcome such shortcomings, but not quick and easy. A good project for 2024 and TDM 2.13

[wesp5]

23 hours ago, Geep said:

The images for the text characters are in a grid within a single .tga file (for a given base font size). Stray pixels come from adjoining letters in the grid.

Would it be possible to remove the extra pixels in the fonts if somebody could point out to me where these are? When looking at dds from the fonts01 archive I only see white on transparent in Paint.NET and I can't make out anything...

Edited January 14 by wesp5