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So a long standing issue with the light model entities in the core, is that the main light source is hard bound to the origin of the model. This isnt great, because it means the origin of the light is then directly in the same plain as a wall or ceiling @ 0, 0, 0. which has an unpleasant effect visual effect on a lot of the stock textures. If the engine code could be updated/edited so the main/default light for each light entity could be somewhere that isn't the at 0 0 0 of a model, I would have no issue taking on the task of checking and fixed every stock light.. In my humble opinion, this should 'not' significantly break any existing FM's, because all we will be doing is moving the origin of the light source to where light would be emitted from IRL, eg the housing, bulb or arc etc.

This was also always an issue for me. When I place lights, I like to control and fit the location of the light volume exactly into its environment (for example to keep lights from extending into adjacent areas or to create shadows). That means the center (or origin) of the light volume is at some random location in the room, and almost always the wrong place for the model (which is on the wall or ceiling in most cases). But that's how all the light entities work and I have to use an inconvenient workaround.

So as many mappers may know, getting NPC's to path find over the top of func_static patch based terrain is a ball ache. The current method is to place lots of perpendicular MC brush at varying heights under the patch, loosely aligned to the surface of the terrain etc. When the terrain brush is all one texture type, the above is a viable solution. But when you introduce vertex painted terrain patches, the issue of different foot sounds becomes a question. As in for reasons I don't understand yet, you only hear one foot sound type, eg grass or stone etc. So I came up with a technique that I don't know if anyone has used before. To get around the foot sound issue, I place a nodraw solid brush (NDS) with different textures (grass/stone/etc) to cover the different parts of the terrain . And as every mapper knows, trying to raise/lower the vert point of a square brush, inevitably causes other verts to move when you don't want them too. So my solution was cut the square brush up into triangles, so for a square brush that's 4 triangles. Here is an example of a large vertex painting terrain brush, with 3 different textures that I have placed a bunch of NDS brush under.

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

That's a cool feature that I will have to have a look into at some point, however - - you would be doing ping-pong workflow between blender and DR, trying to guess in blender where the raised parts of the terrain should be and then finding in DR its cliping into or cover something etc. - texturing on brush would be a nightmare in DR, and this would also have to be done in blender. This would be fine if the terrain brush was the only one in that location, but if it had adjacent terrain that the texture had to align too - more ping-pong. The above only works if your creating the terrain/s right at the start when blocking out your map, but some mappers don't work that way (ie me) I build stuff on the fly and out of order and sometime come back to a map to do a detail pass and change a bunch of stuff.

I don't think it is okay for randomly force non-native letters onto languages. For instance, there are 8 non-ASCII letters in the English set now. Isn't it that every language has its own font texture? { char 0xC2 0xAC : 0xAC // ¬ -> ¬ char 0xC2 0xAE : 0xAE // ® -> ® char 0xC3 0xA0 : 0xE0 // à -> à char 0xC3 0xA2 : 0xE2 // â -> â char 0xC3 0xA7 : 0xE7 // ç -> ç char 0xC3 0xAA : 0xEA // ê -> ê char 0xC3 0xB1 : 0xF1 // ñ -> ñ char 0xC3 0xBC : 0xFC // ü -> ü }

I remember there was something like this in fm The Accountant. Probably not done the same way. I guess it kind of depends how you want it to be. Do you want it to look like the animation goes to the middle, or do you want it to look like the animation goes inward. If you then look to the side, it looks kind of wrong. I wonder if you could do this with a pom texture.

the dev of the dcotepatch actually managed to recreate the script engine source code from the debug files on the cd. you can also modify running speed and jump height with the patch as well as sanity thresholds to make it a little less painfull to play. i use an old tool to patch the game executable to limit cores to 4 since it has problems with todays multicore processors (also needed with the gog version if you have a cpu with more than 4 cores) the gog version is limited to 60 fps cause unlimited breaks multiple sequences like attack of the fishmen so you cannot escape when they break down the door to your room. there was an old bug with shaders that caused raindrops to look like diamonds on ATI/AMD cards. this was also fixed by the gog version as well as the invisible sorcerer bug in dangerous voyage. if you encounter stuttering while moving it is caused by mouse polling acting up (many old games from back then had the same problem on modern machines "F.E.A.R feks.). there is a directinput wrapper on the pc gaming wiki that fixes this though it is for F.E.A.R it works fine with this game as well. alt tabbing crashes the game, use dgvoodoo2 or dxvk to allow it. the game also looks kinda bad on widescreen this can be fixed by using this https://github.com/ThirteenAG/WidescreenFixesPack/releases/tag/callofcthulhu for other bugs that might crop up see https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Call_of_Cthulhu:_Dark_Corners_of_the_Earth there is also a HD pack for it though it uses an old version of sweetfx (reshade nowadays) works quite fine though the upscaled textures themself do not up the looks by that much (probably because upscaling filters back then were rather poor "no AI"). if you want to try your hand at upscaling the games texture use this -> https://dcotetools.sucklead.com/p/xbdsplit.html be sure to backup all files just in case. the game uses dds format so they will have to be converted beforehand if using upscayl as it does not support dds format. afterwards you will have to convert the upscaled images back so be sure to note which dds format the game uses.

in the material file: tdm_forest_treebark_mossy The normal texture has a typo: .../forest_treebafork_mossy_local should read: .../forest_treebark_mossy_local

I see we have independently noticed this problem. I have proposed named strings for these instead of numbered strings in https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/23204-proposed-i18n-improvements-for-tdm-215/ Would you be willing to change your patch to use those names? I'm translating those strings into the 16 languages now. I'll look to your translations for the German versions.

How you can help depends a lot on what skills you have. I can Record Video Recording "Let's Play" videos or simple walkthroughs of existing missions and posting them to Youtube is great exposure for the mod (see example .) Be sure to let us know so we can link to them. If you have some editing ability, Video tutorials, where you explain how the mod works, or how to use specific tools, would also be great. Video trailers, showcasing interesting places and features, are also great for publicity. An example is . I can Write Writing reviews for missions are always nice, especially if they include good screenshots. Not only does it give us something to post on other forums, but it makes mappers feel good when their mission gets attention (especially if it's positive). We have a collective thread to post reviews in: http://forums.thedar...s-walkthroughs/ Writing reviews of the mod as a whole, targetted an an audience that doesn't know much about TDM, is also very useful. You could also try offering your services to mappers to create interesting readables, or to proofread for their mission. I can Act and Record Audio We are always on the lookout for good quality audio recordings for vocal sets. If interested, you can pick a few different lines from this script: http://wiki.thedarkm...t:_Average_Jack and send the recordings to Springheel, who then writes a script based on the type of voice you have. I can Translate We could always use translations of our menu/hud into more languages. Also, only a few FMs are aavailable in more than one language, so there is a lot of work there, see the I18N Translator's Guide in the Wiki. I can Model Great! Take a look at the model request thread:http://forums.thedar...-requests-here/ and pick something that interests you. Or just post a, "Hey, anybody want a model?" thread in this forum and I'm sure mappers will get back to you. I can Animate Fantastic. We can always use more good animations. Our current character rigs use a Maya skeleton. PM Springheel for more info. I know C++ Have a look at our coding section in the wiki, pick an issue or feature from the bugtracker of the mod or the leveleditor, download the recent sourcecode release (or better ask for an SVN checkout) and get cracking. Make sure nobody is already working on that specific issue and feel free to ask questions. I can Edit Images We can always use completely new textures and/or improved versions of older textures. How to get started and how to import them into the mod. I can Take Photos Good quality photos of useful textures (medieval-ish building facades, dirt, rocks, wood, etc) are always welcome. The fewer directional shadows and higher resolution, the better. I don't have any skills Even if you can't do any of the above, you can still help out. Talk about TDM in other forums; share your (preferably positive) experiences with other gamers you know. Last, but not least, compliment people when you like their work. Saying "thanks", to a developer or, "I really enjoyed your mission" to a mapper will make their day. -------------------- I'll update this further as more things occur to me.

I think you can get pretty close. I made a hole in the floor and converted it to atdm:liquid_water_murky, and put a nonsolid patch with a mud texture a few units below the surface. Looks pretty good. Then add a forcefield of the same dimentions as the water. The implosion spawn arg pulls you to the centre.

my only stint with a flight simulator was with one of the first from microsoft. sadly while i had no problem lifting off or even flying the model landing it was another matter (got everyone myself included killed) . i was pretty mortified as i allways wanted to be a pilot so i newer touched it again. but yeah it can be both boring and gratifying to work with, if you can pull it off. had some game ideas i wished i had the skills to make (sadly im no artist in regards to making game content) and even development soon exceeded my coding skills so it newer really came together. allways been a fan of mythos related games though good ones are few and far between, and idtech 4 with some modifications could probably make an excellent game engine for those kind of games. it would have to be modified for a more open world experience atleast (something like the stem engine from the evil within which was based on idtech 4). one i would have liked to recreate was dark corners of the earth, and i would have loved to make one based on the mountains of madness. many critisized that dark coreners of the earth had weapons in some maps which is kinda ok if you think of it as mainly a survival / horror game. but tbf it does not really ruin the game like many believe. think of it this way what use is a revolver against a shaggoth ? or even a starspawn of cthulhu (yep you will meet both in this game). the was a game based on the mountains of madness which looked really impressive (Edge of Nowhere), but it was VR only grrrr.

Back in the day, Tels managed a squad of volunteer translators for TDM. I am not Tels, and could never do that. Nowadays, language translation using AI, either traditional machine learning (ML) models or large language models (LLMs), is common and increasingly fluent. It is often used as an adjunct to speed the work of professional human translators. By itself, AI translation can be imperfect but usually sufficient. Can this "sufficient" approach be used for TDM, to expedite translations? Let's see. I gave some initial thought to a bulk-translation daemon that might range across FMs and fill in all missing translations, without necessarily involving mappers. In the future, possibly AI could tackle that whole enchilada. I was at first visualizing something more modest: a backbone in a standard programming language (I sketched out C++ and C# projects, but lots of other possibilities) that would make calls to an API (I looked at those of Google Translate and ChatGPT). However, I changed focus due to certain concerns... Different FMs, and subsets with each FM, would likely have far better translations if they were properly grouped, ordered, and translated separately, with an appropriate context (e.g., phrase engineering) added. The FM's mapper is best placed to provide this grouping and context. I'll detail what I mean in the next few posts. The mapper would not be expected to know any TDM-supported languages besides English. Instead, each translated phrase could be back-translated to English and examined. Is the "round-trip" meaning OK, even if the English words have changed? Problematic translations could have their context tweaked and rerun. Many AI systems, particularly for API access, require a billing commitment (e.g., credit card). For a professional translator, this is no problem, and subscriptions allow access to more (and putatively better) models and higher quotas. This seems less appealing for TDM. A few paid AI systems have a no-subscription, pay-as-you-go account tier. The cost per translate is typically pennies. But it does introduce quota- and expense-management, and may exclude API usage. Access via API requires an API key (or at the higher end more elaborate security regime), with attendant key-security headaches. Which AI model is thought "best" for translation? Doesn't matter too much, because we can't afford the best. Furthermore, there's endless churn among AI models, with antidotal reports that a given model fluctuates in quality over time, and successor models can be worse than their predecessors. So, with these concerns in mind, I looked for public web-based AI sites that require no billing and provide low-quota but adequate AI. The mapper would enter and retrieve data manually. I will focus on ChatGPT in this exploration, after a quick preliminary test confirmed some promise. Also, as this exploration proceeds, I hope to propose changes to TDM to make it more viable for "sufficient" quality machine translation. Problem areas are incomplete fonts, space-constraints, and layout issues for translated strings. My proposals will likely surface as separate forum threads. That's enough for now. I'll be trying for 1 or 2 substantive posts per week, as I tackle a particular FM.

Yes, instead of starting with the English text in the prompt, it is better to point it to a file instead, when the amount of text is voluminous (as it will be in my upcoming Group 3 work in https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/23204-proposed-i18n-improvements-for-tdm-215/ ). Good to know Google Translate supports URL file access. So does ChatGPT (even the basic version without login).

probably more fun if they had made an am4 model of the 9800x3d . the 5800x3d is still plenty good so nice to see it getting a new lease on life on the kids gamer . the 9800x3d is probably overkill for the gfx cards i have anyway hehe. my ryzen setup is second hand anyway so if the used pricing on them had actually resembled its age i could easily live with a used one. 350$ is unfortunatly way beyond my current monetary situation sigh .

currently working on a HD pack for nblood which uses parts from the XHD and upscale projects as well as smoothblood. takes for freaking ever to sort out the missing textures in the XHD pack and adding them from the upscale project but its allready looking pretty good. i also added parts of the voxel project for the stuff XHD lacked. XHD uses a different naming scheme for textures instead of tile numbers so in the interrest of consistency im renaming the tiles for the groups that make sense (or adding new groups if nessesary). as for voxels i found that you need to make sure you are not using a voxel to overide an md3 model as this causes a lot of problems. allready looks pretty modern while keeping the atmosphere .

We have been collecting textures for 4+ years, by nearly a dozen different people. It is inevitable that some textures will not stand up well in terms of quality. This thread is the place to nominate textures you think are poor and should be either fixed or removed. The following process will be followed (we are currently on step 1):

So following on from the conversation here - Here is the first draft of a basic block-out of that church, if there is interest I will complete the creation info a flashed out prefab and model - church.pfbx

I believe the consensus is mid-late 2027 for AMD RDNA5, and possibly well into 2028 for Nvidia RTX 60 series. It likely depends on pricing and availability of ~36 Gbps 3 GB GDDR7 modules, and Nvidia's willingness to give a crap about the gaming segment. Nvidia's 50 Supers have been leaked for a long time and could act as a stopgap half generation, but they are completely stymied by 3 GB GDDR7 pricing. BTW, Nvidia just raised the price of the Blackwell Pro 96 GB to $16,000: https://www.techpowerup.com/351549/nvidia-rtx-pro-6000-blackwell-96-gb-gpu-now-costs-usd-16-000 It's presumed that 3 GB costs $60-70. So an RTX 5070 18 GB could cost $420 (if not more) for just the memory, and that is not counting anything else or fat margins on top. This advancement (TurboQuant) was overhyped and only affected one aspect of the process. https://wccftech.com/googles-turboquant-made-everyone-panic-about-memory-demand/ Even if it did significantly reduce memory requirements, Jevons Paradox would likely rear its ugly head. Many came to similar conclusions, but I don't think the situation will be that bad. The push for consumer 8K has failed or been delayed by years/decades, nobody cares about it. Cards are often powerful enough for decent 1440p/4K gaming at reasonable settings, with mandatory "better than native" AI upscaling (DLSS 3/4 or FSR 4). Many people are still fine with 1080p at 60 Hz. Consider that 4K120 is 8x the pixels per second. Weaker CPUs are also fine for lower frame rates. We are likely to see a handheld version of the PS6 next generation pushing as low as 1080p30 with relatively weak hardware. If you care about refresh rates significantly above 240 Hz, frame generation will be the feasible way to hit them. Some of the generational stagnation is down to waiting/settling on nodes. Nvidia 40 and 50 series consumer GPUs use the same node. RTX 5090 brute forces its performance by using twice the die area of the 5080, and a significant increase over the 4090, putting it close to the reticle limit. Chiplets can potentially be a way to break the reticle limit while optimizing costs for all segments. RDNA3 used chiplets, RDNA4 switched back to monolithic. RDNA5 is expected to have chiplets shared between dGPUs, APUs, and professional products. You won't see multiple GCDs soon, but the movement is in the right direction. I don't think your "complexity" argument actually makes sense. And it could be disproven by GPU technical details like RDNA5 moving from Infinity Cache (typically 32-128 MiB L3) to smaller, optimized L2 caches as low as 10 MiB. Separate from the AI memory apocalypse, we're seeing a slowdown of Moore's law, more expensive process nodes even before demand is considered, and lackluster competition. There's still nodes planned through around 2041, including new types of transistors. There's a 3D revolution waiting to happen in both memory and logic. Intel may exit gaming dGPUs, but could enter into the area of mega APUs with Razor Lake-AX. Chinese companies are also making viable gaming dGPUs. Gaming requirements are generally aligned with the console market. If you can match or beat the estimated performance of the PS6 handheld (which may include some advanced features such as neural texture compression), you are at least good for 1080p gaming throughout the next 10-15 years. Because games will continue to target PS5 for a few years, and then target the PS6 for a few years even if a PS7 arrives in the late 2030s.

The in-game objectives menu could do with being darker, it's very bright and causes eyestrain after awhile. It is akin to shining a torch in one's eyes in a dark room. This is the one thing that I'd change if I had the technical knowhow. Also, the space between the objectives can be needlessly big. For example, let's say you have 10 objectives, each of which occupy a single line of text. There will still be ~3-4 lines-worth of empty space between each objective. I get that the objectives UI needs to allow for longer objectives, but it would be nice if the objectives text organised itself to be more compact rather than leaving lots of empty space, which again, only contributes to more "whiteness" and thus, more eyestrain. The parchment texture for "Commander Michaels letter" in FM "The Gatehouse" is much easier on the eyes. An option to disable the mission complete jingle would be most welcome. For a game all about subtlety and quiet, hearing the loud horn jingle on mission complete just makes me lower my laptop volume. Also, headshots should mean headshots. An arrow to the face should be an immediate kill regardless of alert status. I've played TDM for over a decade at this point, and these tend to be the recurring bugbears of an otherwise excellent game.

yeah the 2080 ti seems to become just as long lived as the 1080 ti was before it. the 3080 while more powerfull on paper only manages about a 5% to 10% performance increase in games. the 3080 ti manages 25% but is also quite expensive (actually had a bigger msrp than the 2080 ti) not to mention the pretty meh ammount of vram on all the cards. performance wise it still is neck to neck with a 5060 ti despite that card using multi framegen and sporting a much newer DLSS model. the latest DLSS enabler now also introduces multi framegen for the older 2xxx and 3xxx cards which does help quite a bit in 4K but the lack of vram is the big killer for these cards performance here. to see how much it is loosing due to vram try googling the 2080 ti mod that doubles the vram to 22 gb it is quite the eye opener . mine is the asus rog strix gaming OC model with tri coolers, its a rather beefy card so can be hard to fit in small cabbies as it is 34 cm's long. my newer lian li is the PC B25F which is a tool less cabby and one of the last mainstream alu cases they made. it is also the only model that unfortunatly sports some plastic parts (unfortunate because the plastic has a tendency of cracking after a few years) the drive case is located at the front and goes all the way up so cards greater than 30 cm cannot be mounted in it. the older lian li i have is full alu and actually smaller than the PC B25F but the drive case is located at the bottom so if you forego mounting any dvd drives in the lower brackets then you can mount the 2080 ti in it. only backside to the older one is that it has a tendency to become quite cluttered because it is so compact. there are pictures of my older lian li case in the cpu/gpu section and the PC B25F you can see here -> https://mobilespecs.net/cases/Lian/Lian_Li_PC-B25F_Black.html

What are the steps for importing an obj model sucesfully into tdm, without converting it to ase or lwo? I tried it recently with a cat model, but it didn't show up well in tdm, while the lwo version did. (If obj support doesn't work properly after all it should be investigated, fixed, or support should be removed)

Hello and thanks for checking out this post. I'm delighted to announce that version 1.1 of my fan mission "Cole Hurst 1: Eaton" is now available to download and play. This post is spoiler free, so please don't avoid digging into the details below if you are interested. I'm just using the spoiler tags to organize this post a bit. Let me start by saying "thank you" to anyone who has either previously played - or is considering playing this mission. It really means a lot to me. I have been away for a while, but following a round of beta testing that took place some time last year, I've only just recently managed to finish this update. I'm slightly embarrassed by how long it has taken me to complete, but I wanted to make sure that the valuable feedback I received was all properly addressed. Mission description "Tonight, Eaton's wealthiest citizens will gather at Lord Mayor Zelmer's estate to celebrate the city's founding. Nobles, dignitaries, a famed musician, and even the Queen will pass through its gates. While the guests celebrate Eaton's future, Cole Hurst is looking for a way out." For those new to and/or curious about this mission: I guess I would describe it as a traditional heist-style mission - although with a couple of major plot twist along the way. It's a very large map and I think it should take most players at least a few hours to complete. Screenshots Changes in version 1.1 Countless additions and a large amount of smaller tweaks and changes have all made it into this release. I may have already forgot a few things, but here are what I consider to be the main highlights: * New secrets & optional side quests * Story tweaks and reworked readables * Subtitles * Difficulty tweaks and related changes * Stability fixes * Various cosmetic changes * Audio tweaks * TDM version 2.13 now required Contributions and acknowledgments A special thanks to all of those listed below. I'm sincerely grateful for all your contributions! Mission testers and technical support @nbohr1more, @stgatilov, @duzenko, @Acolytesix, @Dragofer, @JackFarmer, @Shadow, @Cambridge Spy, @wesp5, @madtaffer, @prjames, @suzy8track, @datiswous, @boissiere and @Bergante Story Kelly Hrupa Voice actors twhalen2600 (AKA @Benny_the_guard) and Kelly Hrupa