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I didn't saw the video so I'm not sure, but normal mesh's in pretty much all engines I've used, are those imported from 3D tools like Blender, while the own engine geometry was called "primitives" or as you know them here brush's. Afaik the diference between a mesh and a brush, is that the former comes already pre "baked"/compiled, meaning they come already made up of triangles, while a brush is just a bunch of mathematical planes that are then baked into real triangles at level compile time (dmap in TDM). Hope this makes things more clear.

Sorry I don't have much time to see the full video but what I saw in the first few minutes where he built a room, is nothing special, I've done the exact same workflow for example in Max Payne 2 editor. What he means with mesh's, is that the geometry you work with inside that Unreal Engine plugin, is the same one you do when you work in say Blender, Maya, etc, is just triangles and quads. Meaning the geometry is not composed of simple mathematical planes like brush's but real 3D geometry. Why you don't use portals in there? Because Unreal Engine 4/5 afaik have no portal system for visibility culling. Portals are a CPU concept and are normally used to prevent to render things that the player doesn't see during gameplay, but is not the only way to do this job. I think ever since UE4? Epic's engine uses a more advanced system (but more expensive one) called GPU occlusion queries, in simplistic broad terms, it uses the GPU to do "porteling" automatically for you. btw Unreal Engine also used CPU based, manually placed portals not that far in the past. Also the idTech4 BFG fork RBDoom3BFG engine also supports occlusion queries but on the CPU, using a Intel made library, perfect for open spaces.

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

Hypothetically if Ray casting was used to bake efficiency into the brushwork itself it would make the penalty of a forward renderers lighting under id Tech 4 more agreeable. If Gemini AI is even half right this state of content efficiency would make id Tech 4 10-20 times more efficient per watt than Unreal Engine 5. For mobile platforms you are sitting on one of the best game engines on Earth. Of course I've yet to find a mapper that's willing to spend 3 to 4 years refactoring an entire commercial products slop. From the 13 objects overlapping in space, to decals hidden behind walls, entire rooms unused, brush faces behind other brushes. I'm the first. The ability to automate what I've done even just 90% would take the weaknesses of id Tech 4 and turn them into strengths. There is nothing faster than precomputation. If you can reverse engineer the flexibility of modern game engines without the per frame overhead it's going to curbstomp Unreal Engine 6 in raw efficiency. You also would be taking the former Chief Technical Officer of Metas core design and making it achieve what hasn't yet by industry. They probably would be knocking at your door with offers to commercialize or at minimum rush to replicate your work. They are all in in Alternate Reality Virtual Reality. Too bad their 5% GPU utilization offended one of their best employees. It's because thermal throttling boost behavior modern game engine inefficiencies and battery life. The Dark Mod could be a technology demonstrator that can do things modern game engines super can't. My texture pack 60GB+ (Prey 2006 Remake) is entirely custom. 5120x5120, 7168x7168, 9216x9216, 10,240x10240 and beyond. My texel resolution is extremely uniform and optimized at point blank mip map 0 for human vision. So it's literally a 2002 game engine beating id Tech 8 in asset resolution. Texture streaming doesn't like custom resolutions. Nor do development teams. It's just another way id Tech 4 is superior to modern game engines in a not abstract way. The general public is not aware of how inefficient modern game engines are or how much technical debt they tolerate. It's a more interesting topic to an engineer than a entertainment seeking random individual admittedly. There are inherent advantages to the older methods that are incredibly underappreciated. If I can motivate some of the software engineers to develop this capability that would be rather useful. Especially since it's already in part been done to bake shadows into Doom 3. Which in part defeat the purpose of unified lighting. But it's an existence proof. If you would like to see my 60GB file in its development state that can be arranged. But you also better have 24GBs of video memory. Most people will opt for lower resolution packs when generated by my Python scripts. The ability to hit per pixel 4k point blank is not just overkill. It's a measuring rubric.

I guess this is basic stuff for you talented model-boys but now I've trudged for several hours without results and from what I have read in several forums/threads, it's even not that trivial. Therefore I dare to start a thread... I've download some models from the web but these come in some new and fancy format; (FBX, USD etc) not exactly the old and brittle format that we use in TDM So to import these into DarkRadiant I need to convert these to lwo or ASE, right? How do people go about this? I have tried to: - install Blender 5.0 and added an ASE-exporter plugin. Blender actually puts out an ASE-file but as I try to open it in DR, the model is only showed as that checkerboard error-box. Do I need to tinker with the model in a text editor first? I read something about changing something about a BITMAP-line... - use an ancient version (7.0) version of Lightwave but that program cannot even open the files (Not surprising)...

We know. There is already a support topic for that. https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22533-tdm-for-diii4a-support-topic/ And earlier: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/16672-trying-to-run-tdm-on-android/ And other systems: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Installer_and_Manual_Installation#Other_Systems

As my custom assets work has increasingly shifted from models towards scripting, I'll open a new thread here to contain any scripts that I write which can be reused in other missions, starting with the A ) Presence Lamp This is a Lost City-style lamp that brightens and dims depending on the presence of the player or an AI. It fades between 2 colours and can trigger its targets whenever it switches fully on or off, so it should also be viable in various other situations. The standard setup consists of the following: - a trigger_multiple brush. The spawnarg "anyTouch" controls whether AIs, too, are able to activate it - a presence lamp, highly recommended with a colorme skin - one presence light, or any other light with appropriate spawnargs The targeting chain is trigger brush -> lamp -> light When the player or an AI stands in the trigger_multiple brush, the lamp switches on and starts a short timer. Subsequent triggers reset the timer. If the timer runs out because no one's standing in the trigger brush anymore, the lamp switches itself off. Notes - Multiple trigger brushes can target the same lamp, and one trigger brush can target multiple lamps. However, each presence lamp can only target one light, so if you want i.e. a bouncelight you'll need to hide an additional silent presence lamp somewhere and target it from the same trigger brush. - The lamp and the light use their own colour spawnargs respectively, since setting 0 0 0 on a lamp would make it appear pitch black. - Technically the trigger brush can be exchanged for anything else that triggers the lamp every 0.5s (this number can be changed via "update_interval" on the lamp), i.e. a trigger_timer. - This was originally named the proximity lamp and was one of many scripting jobs for The Painter's Wife. I've renamed it to "presence lamp" because the mapper may place the trigger brush(es) wherever he wishes: proximity to the lamp is not a factor. Credits go to Bikerdude for putting together the crystal lamp models. Download Presence Lamps - Google Drive Place or extract the .pk4 into your FM archive, then look up the presence lamp prefabs. If you already are using other custom scripts, remember to add the presence lamp's .script to your tdm_custom_scripts file. B ) Teledoor This is a Skyrim-style door which opens just a bit into a black_matt "void" before teleporting the player to a different area of the map, which may represent the other side of the door. This is used for connecting physically separated map areas with each other, such as when there's an exterior/interior split of a building or ship to allow for more mapping freedom. [Full Thread] C ) Mass Teleport This is a teleportation setup designed to seamlessly teleport the player and any moveables between two identical-looking areas. This allows the mapper to link 2 physically distant areas with each other while maintaining the illusion that they're connected. The teleportation zones should be free of AIs as they can't be teleported like this without their patrols breaking. [Post] D ) Automaton Station A station for Sotha's automatons (includes the automatons) which can be switched on and off by patrolling automatons. (Part of core assets as of 2.10) [Post] E ) Camgoyle A sentient turret originally made for the FM Written in Stone. It's based on the new security camera entity and augmented with scripting to allow it to fire magical projectiles at the enemies it detects. People are more than welcome to use it and to convert it into something else, such as a mechanical turret. [Post] [Download] F ) Audiograph The audiograph is an Inventor's Guild device for playing back recordings stored on spindles, which are small metal cylinders the player can pick up and store in his inventory. [Post] G ) Turret A new companion to security cameras familiar to Thief players. It will become active as soon as an enemy is detected by a targeted security camera, firing projectiles to fend off the intruders. Similar to the security camera and the camgoyle sentry, turrets are highly customisable in their behaviour and appearance. [Thread] G ) Fog Fade Dynamically change fog density depending on what location the player is in. [Thread]

@datiswous Interesting to see someone giving portals another go. Regarding making it a "one-approach" teleport, an approach could be to use the direction of the player's velocity and a pair of small trigger brushes within the doorframe. The idea would be the player has to step into brush 1, then into brush 2 with a velocity +x for the teleport to trigger. If his velocity at any time becomes -x (which happens if he steps into brush 1, then goes back out and around the doorframe and walks into brush 2), he has to go back to brush 1 again. Behind the scenes, stepping into brush 1 would set a global variable to 1, i.e. "can_teleport". While the variable is 1, a looping script would check every frame whether the player's velocity is -x, setting the variable back to 0. Stepping into brush 2 would check whether the global variable is 1. If yes, teleport the player. The teleportation offset is handled by subtracting the origins of the teleport zones from each other. If the brushes were changed, the position of their origin relative to their doorframe may also have changed and you get a noticeable displacement.

============== -= IRIS =- ============== WELLINGTONCRAB TDM v 2.11 REQ Ver. 1.3 *For Maureen* -=- "Carry the light of the Builder, Brother. Unto its end." -Valediction of the Devoted "What year is this? Am I dreaming?" -Plea of the Thief Dear Iris, I am old and broken. When we were young it felt like the words came easily. Now I find the ink has long dried on the pen and I'm as wanting for words as coin in my purse. I can tell we are nearing the end of the tale; time enough for one more job before the curtain call... ============== -Installation- Requires minimum version of TDM 2.11 **Dev build dev17056-10800 (2.13) fixes several visual effects which have been broken in the mission since the release of 2.11. For that reason playing with that version or later is currently recommended** -Iris does not support mods or the Unofficial Patch- Download and place the following .pk4 into you FMs directory: Iris Download ============== *Thank you for playing. Iris is a large mission which can either take as quickly or as long as you are compelled to play. I hope someone out there enjoys it and this initial release is not completely busted - I tried the best I could!* *Iris both is and isn't what it seems. If commenting please use spoiler tags where appropriate. If you are not certain if it would be appropriate a good assumption would be to use a spoiler tag* *Support TDM by rating missions on Thief Guild: https://www.thiefguild.com/* ============== WITH LASTING GRATITUDE: OBSTORTTE - Whose gameplay scripts from his thread laid the foundation which made the mission seem like something I could even pull off at all. Also fantastic tutorial videos! DRAGOFER - Who built upon that foundation and made it shine even brighter! And whom also provided immeasurable quantities of help and encouragement the past couple years on the TDM discord. ORBWEAVER & GIGAGOOGA - For generously offering their ambient music up for use. EPIFIRE - Who lent me his fine trash and trash receptacle models. AMADEUS - Who was the first person who wasn't me to play the damn thing and provided his excellent editorial services to improving the readers experience playing TESTERS AND TROUBLESHOOTERS: AMADEUS * DATISWOUS * SPOOKS * ALUMINUMHASTE * JAXA * JACKFARMER * WESP5 * ATE0ATE * MADTAFFER * STGATILOV * DRAGOFER * KINGSAL * KLATREMUS - What can I possibly say? Playing this thing over and over again could not have been easy. Deepest thanks and all apologies. -=THANKS TO ALL ON THE TDM DISCORD AND FORUM=- ==SEE README.TXT FOR ADDITIONAL ATTRIBUTIONS & INFORMATION== HONORABLE MENTION: GOLDWELL - If I hadn't by chance stumbled into Northdale back in 2018/2019 I would probably still be trying to get this thing to work in TDS, which means it probably would not exist - though more details on that in readme. ============== Boring Technical Information: *Iris is a performance intensive mission and I recommend a GTX 1060 or equivalent. I find the performance similar to other demanding TDM missions on my machine, but mileage may vary and my apologies if this prevents anyone from enjoying the mission.* *Iris heavily modifies the behavior of AI in the game, how they relate/respond to each other and the player. So they may act even stranger than they do typically in TDM. Feedback on this is useful - as it can potentially be improved and expanded upon in future patches.* -=- This is my first release and it has been a long time coming! If I forgot anything please let me know! God Speed. 2.10 Features Used:

I'll probably try Thief 3 for the first time in forever after snobel finishes making a Linux version of Sneaky Upgrade. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607&page=82 https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153010

[edit]Please note that this version of Return to the City has been superseded by an expanded and significantly performance-optimised rerelease, available here. However, I'd appreciate if some of these download links were left around so people can check out the original version if they wish.[/edit] Hello, Taffers! My FM for the Grand Christmas FM Contest, Return to the City, has been completed and available at TTLG (updated Hammers-into-Builders version) www.darklurker.com (updated Hammers-into-Builders version) www.uploading.com (Hammers-into-Builders update) www.mediafire.com (Hammers-into-Builders update) www.mediafire.com (second link - thanks, Vexd) (Hammers-into-Builders update) www.sharebee.com (thanks, Chiron!) (Hammers-into-Builders update) Have fun, and please read the release notes, below! (Especially point 1) Last but definitely not least, thanks are due to my beta testers, who have been very helpful in finding and fixing the bugs that have cropped up, as well as everyone on the TDM forums for their help and support. Thank you! Series information: All of my missions except Unbidden Guest (TMA) take place in a common setting and involve the same protagonist, although under different aliases - Talbot, Messer Johannes, Philby and others. None of them require previous knowledge of previous FMs, but there are common elements and a degree of continuity. The missions, in current order, are: Prowler of the Dark (TDP/Gold) (S): liberate a skull of paganic enchantment from an abandoned church, which is kept sealed and guarded by the Builders.Return to the City (The Dark Mod) (M): plunder the other side of the Builder complex to steal a pack of explosives. Patrols have been heightened because of the recent break-in. (This mission connects to the previous along the North/South axis - too bad I didn't have the time to let you revisit some old areas) (You are here!)Fiasco at Fauchard Street (The Dark Mod) (M): steal a collection of opals from the house of a wealthy usurer.Bad Debts (TMA) (XL): fallen on hard times, you take a job from a diminutive snitch to steal his letter of debt from Markus, a pawnshop owner/usurer (looks like a common theme). Rooftop extravaganza.Disorientation (TMA) (XL): following the events in the previous mission, you attract the unwanted attentions of Lady Azamlarg, district warden and judge, and have to break into her palace to deter her from further assassination attempts. More rooftops and conspiracies.

If I recall correctly, Goldwell wrote in these forums once that he was working on a successor, but, ran into some technical trouble he couldn't solve when designing the mission. I think he's currently working on multiple parts of the Shadows of Northdale series. And, if I'm not mistaken, a little bird (on another forum) told that Act 3 is already in beta.

I say this with the utmost respect and gentleness but the original poster really doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. CryEngine and TDM Engine (it's far enough removed from D3 to call it that) are two completely different engines, designed for VERY different purposes. CryEngine uses a type of height map based method to create organic looking outdoor terrain, the TDM engine is a brush work based engine. You can't simply 'PORT' TDM to CryEngine...what you would be doing is rewriting CryEngine to be like the TDM Engine...and then you would have to recreate all of the functionality that the TDM Editor provides for level creation. The lighting would all have to be recreated. Basically, you're starting over from scratch. I appreciate the enthusiasm but it's naive. As for us not wanting 'nice things'...we already have two VERY nice things...the TDM Engine and Dark Radiant, two of the best pieces of Modded software in community lead mods anywhere! If the original poster doesn't think the TDM Engine is optimized enough for outdoor environments...the time would be better spent optimizing the TDM Engine for those sprawling environments. That being said, TDM Missions / Thief is not about sprawling missions anyway. It's about being in close quarters. Sorry but this whole thread really annoyed me. lol

Well, you were part of the discussion. The reason for the precedence choice was to support dynamic EFX in the future: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21797-efx-preset-spawnarg-for-location-entities/#findComment-495076 I'm sorry this change somehow ruined your experience. If you find the tedious practice of using the EFX files more 'confiniant', feel free to do so, they are still supported after all.

Hi, I'm mainly using dark radiant for Doom 3 mapping, and it's working great, however sometimes just at random it would seem like the DR-feature for grouping adds (right click group) another brush or entity into the group. Not sure what triggers it, but I can come back to something, and the origin is suddenly half across the map because something else is included. So I'm running the risk of mistakenly removing or moving something without even noticing it, making me stare more at the origin than before as soon as I select something. At first, I was just sure I was the cause of it, like forgetting to unselect something, but it happens occasionally and now when I moved to a new computer it seems like the grouping is completely messed up. I made sure to move the entire dir of files where the .map file is, but I don't know, most groupings now are half done or include things half across the map. I'm just curious if anyone else uses this feature extensively and have encountered or experienced anything similar? Just an observation.

That kind of sounds like the issue described here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/23024-strange-behaviour-in-darkradiant-certain-map-objects-untethered-from-vertex-origin/ A couple of us have experienced it but we're not sure what's causing it. In your case do the origins end up at 0,0,0?

A set of some 200 missions is a lot to sift through to find what one likes. I never used your site but if it provided functionality to search missions for parameters like approximate playtime, series v standalone, and tags like undead, spiders, mansion, city, etc, then it sounds plenty useful. Can the functionality be incorporated into the main web page? Perhaps even integrated to fetch underlying data from the wiki (so that trusted editors can keep the parameters up to date)?

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134733

Hmm yeah newdark also works for both thief 1 and 2 and also the gold version it seems. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141148 latest version seems to be from 2019.

Upon further testing, this seems to have only happened to objects/entities that were Grouped. I've noted that mass selecting all the objects clustered around 0 0 0 also selects multiple grouped objects in the map proper that (for some reason) have not moved positions. Again, I'm at a loss to understand why or how this happened. EDIT: I've identified the pattern... this appears to only have happened to worldspawn brushes that were converted into other entities (both func_static and atdm: entities). Entities or func_static objects that were spawned as such are not affected, only worldspawn converted into these entities. EDIT 2: I tried making a worldspawn brush, converting it to func_static, and then moving it. Mouse movement of the entity in orthographic view functions normally. Changing the origin property causes the vertex point to move, but the actual func_static entity to stay in place. Is this normal behavior? I've never experienced this before, but I also generally don't move entities around with the origin property much.

On the upside this might make some people actually happy: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/profile/34053-xolvix/&status=4090&type=status

There is a post over on TTLG: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153145 Just re-checked, it was also just "an idea" and the scripts he posted mainly resolve around the enemy movement speed. I was so hooked up on that idea that I didn't remember this in the first place, sorry!

Thanks everyone for your passionate feedback so far. The topic of save restrictions really brings out the “travelling circus” haha! Even with maybe a clown act or two! I appreciate all the perspectives! @kingsal Just to clarify, the idea was always meant as an optional feature. It was never something forced onto any player. The intent is not to punish or restrict, but to offer map authors and players another tool to curb quicksave and quickload habits if they choose to. So customization would be key part of this, whether you set the loot threshold, turn it off, or adjust it per mission. I completely hear those who feel any kind of restriction undermines player freedom in immersive games. That is why I believe this should be extra and opt-in only, not tied to standard difficulty or forced on anyone who does not want it. On the other hand, I think the proposal from @snatcher about rewarding restraint, such as stealth score bonuses for minimal saving and loading, is an alternative brilliant way to turn the concept into something encouraging rather than restrictive. That could motivate players to play differently without feeling confined. Anyways.. Let us keep the discussion creative and constructive. For next year’s circus, maybe we can add a small demo to show the crowd PS: Thanks a lot @datiswous for taking the time to search the forums again. I somehow wasn't aware that this topic came up already a few times, and the forum search itself often is not working so well. So thank you!

When will they finally update their forums to a mobile friendly version..