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I kind of miss our old status-bar on the right, where you could casually share what's on your mind or what is happening in your life right now. So, I figured, let's just start a thread for that. Let's get this started...

I am working on improvements I can make to all.lang. The potential scope of work is overwhelmning, so I'm focusing at this time on the Main Menu, particularly Settings. I'd appreciate your review of the workplan, which has 3 main components - 1) commenting-out #str phrases no longer useful 2) adding #str to replace phrases hard-coded in English, in the relevant GUI files. a) in [English] b) in other languages (using AI) 3) For existing Settings #str in the GUI files, that were translated for some languages: do the remaining languages (using AI). I'm excluding this - - strings in *.cpp files - translations into Dutch and Swedish, where almost all strings are untranslated. Each of these is a project in itself, and I'm not up to it currently. Reviewers... My base is the 2.14 all.lang. If you know of 2.15 changes that could affect individual #str, please mention it here Details I have a revised all.lang WIP with the following changes done so far: - Group (1) work in both [English] and all other sections, as summarized and itemized here... - Group (2a), only in [English] so far, as summarized and itemized here... Workplan for Group 3 is WIP.

I'm surprised I could find any thread here for chat-GPT. Version 4 is outstanding from all reports I saw and I can't wait to get my hands on. It's not just a chat-bot (though it can discuss anything with you in great depth.) It can grasp the MEANING of sentences and write its own. In future games, you'll be able to talk to NPC's like you would any human. Search for video: Unbelievable AI Breakthrough Interactive AI Characters in a Videogame for the First Time! This demo is outstanding. GPT will be WRITING games! It can write meaningful stories. It can fill in your tax form, prepare your business/wedding speech and discuss its merits with you, and organise your professional work rapidly It can understand humour It can teach! Efficently! Sensibly! Find the Khan Academy video. It can write code/script good enough to frighten a senior programmer who can see it already is as good as junior coders and some seniors. He's afraid because it is certain to take over HIS job in due time, possibly only months away. An AI bomb has been dropped with GPT-4 and many do not yet realise how life-changing it will be - greater even than the advent of the internet. I give it 5 years to change the efficiency of almost everything tenfold, a hundredfold.

Hi team, I've come back to the FreeBSD native port that I was working on and have some patches that I would like to upstream. What is the best way to submit patches for consideration? Is there a public tracker/email list, or is it best to post patches somewhere here on the forums? Thanks!

If like me you scour the web looking for inspiration for your next TDM mission then look no further.. Now... talking of images have you guys seen the latest from the master that is DrK from his Rocksbourg4 campaign. We need more dirty texture in TDM me thinks...

I'm got this. Easy to adapt from my C++ pivot_all_lang program. Basics are mostly working for .pot file gen, but needs a bit more work on header & comments. Then expand to do gen .po files. I've downloaded the poedit editor. Just kicking the tires on the free version so far. There's some paid versions that tie in with AI translations, and that may be worth it for me (at least for a year: $40 for Pro+). I've also downloaded a github project with a set of sample/text .po (and .pot) files for > 200 languages & dialects. Very helpful. Gettext supports languages with more than 2 singular/plural forms in the .po file. It fires when given a numeric value, e.g., in a "%d" string format, and applying a categorization do that number based on a c-style rule description. Evidently some of our languages are best translated with that feature. With 3 forms: Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian. This is not high priority, but presumably our "Translate()" function could do likewise.

I think it is actually quite weird that we don't have a thread on graphics technology, yet. So, I would like to encourage you to share awesome new demos, talks, articles or papers about graphics technology here. I recently came accross this brilliant analysis of the rendering pipeline of "Rise of the Tomb Raider". I would love to see something like that for Doom Eternal, but so far, I could only find this rather superficial (but nevertheless interesting) review by Digital Foundry. Epic revealed Unreal Engine 5 today, which looks absolutely stunning. That Nanite-Technology will probably save game developers quite a bit of time. I do wonder, 'though, how the actually do it? Do they dynamically generate LOD-models? Also, does their Lumen technology require RTX?

Hello I currently tried to update the game to release version 214 but after a, by the way, very slow downloading process of about 15 minutes, I repeatedly get an error message about the hash value, when the game start to install. I tried installing with default settings as well as custom select the release 214. Both tries gives the same error messge. Could someone possibly help me with this ? Is there a way to download the complete installer manually somewhere, and run the installation process offline then ? Further the installer tells that it "was run as admin what is strongly discouraged" even though I didn't started it as admin and can't even stop it from doing so by itself. But that behavior was always like this, as I remember it right, and don't ever seemed to be a problem in the past. Greetings martin

okay 1 testbed is done , time to post to ttlg , here is the link : https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153456&page=2&p=2542791&viewfull=1#post2542791 originally windows 7 isnt recommended but i decided to go down the path i have no dx9 gpu left ( and the hwtl document itself doesnt recommend dx9 era gpu) The remaining test results from other PCs and laptops will follow

Darkmod underutilizes, in my opinion, capabilities for procedural animation. We already do some, like the random head and torso turns that are added on top of existing animations. There's also possibility for separate animation for top and bottom of the character as well as head. There's a missing opportunity for varied facial expressions. I talked about animation blending in this thread. Here's something that for example Thief: Deadly Shadows did. It's swaying side to side while turning. I used Gemini to add code to the tdm_ai_base.script. I don't know if this is the most efficient way of doing it, probably not. Here are the parts added: Gemini came up with the term "banking" which is used in car racing. I don't know if that's what it's called in animation or games. There's a lot of variables that can be tweaked. You can rotate this way any bone you wish. I use 'Origin', 'Spine_Dummy' and 'Neck' bones: You can tweak amount of rotation for each bone. setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle, 1, jointRotation * 1); setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle1, 1, jointRotation * 0.6); setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle2, 1, jointRotation * -1.5); There's also global intensity: (targetBanking = deltaYaw * 1.4;) and attenuation: m_bankingCurrentValue = (m_bankingCurrentValue * 0.95) + (targetBanking * 0.05); modifiers. Gemini also proposed to add an LOD system, which I thought was a great idea. So currently at a distance of 1500 from player the swaying will be disabled. Here are examples, each with slightly different values: And here's comically exaggerated one:

so after some digging, i found out that system shock 2 only has very few places using dynamic lights. the rest of the lightmaps are static which would explain why dynamic shadows dont seem to work. the water effects for thief 2 actually works for system shock 2 as well despite it not being worded as such (cant remember if there are any underwater sections in SS2 ? so im not sure if these would work as well. but the water surface in hydroponics looks amazing). ps the mods/hwtl folder for the water effects needs to be installed as a mod. simply copy the hwtl folder to the dmm folder and use the modmanager to activate it (priority should be highest). bloom is very heavy with the default values so some tinkering is nessesary if you want to have this on.

bad wording on my part yeah it would not be dynamic if the light source was static. what i ment performance wise was that like quake it actually had to many light sources. but Ss2 does not seem to be able to do shadows at all on any object but in thief these work. so other than for some post processing effects (which also seem to work with the non hwtl newdark) there is little reason to use it in Ss2.

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.

got a few old dx9 gpu's left if you want to hear results from them. ATI X1900 or nvidia quadro fx1800. i even have a matrox G450 but i suspect that one would croak rather spectacularily if i tried the hwtl version on it . a bit more modern but i also have two geforce 560 ti i run in sli in my retro gamer. these are however dx 10/11 cards (no vulkan support). transform and lighting is as old as the first geforce card but i suspect it would fail rather badly at running this . system shock 2 runs at about 45 fps on my rtx 3070 so even a relatively new card has problems getting good fps with all the bells and whistles on. i suspect that it needs some modifications to game files before it will run without the horrible frame pacing it currently suffers. might also fix the problem it currently has with no dynamic shadows due to most lightmaps being static. that said i managed to make it look rather good now with some modifications to the default values for the lights bloom parallax ssao etc. i disabled shadows completely (no reason to have it on when they dont work).

seems there is a new version of newdark out https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153456 version 1.29 the hwtl version supports shadowmaps postprocessing effects (bloom etc) and other nifty stuff. this one done by le corbeau himself. the hwtl version gets rather spooky with dynamic shadowmaps on . EDIT: ah just noticed it was posted earlier lol.

strangely dynamic shadows dont seem to work in system shock 2 ?. some options are also really heavy on the performance (parallax hardware ligting and ssao) the game nearly crawls with these on. this might be because it suffers from the same problems we ran into in some quake ports. basically it has to do light / shadow calculations at runtime when there are no pre baked light sources. cant quite figure out why system shock 2 has no shadows though (yeah i enabled them in cam.cfg and the same settings work in thief 2). btw player shadow size can be adjusted so it does'nt look half bad, there is also a setting for turning of ai awareness of the player shadow.

"Out of all the districts in Bridgeport, the Pagan Quarter is probably the second worst... it's certainly the last place I'd want to live. Sadly, I don't have a choice in the matter." It's with great pleasure that I present my third Dark Mod FM, "The Maybury Idol, Part 1: A Trip to the Museum" https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?internalName=maybury1 This is the first in a planned 4-part series which is largely already plotted out to conclusion, and I'm planning to get started on Part 2 soon. Compared to the last FM I submitted, this one is a lot more linear and story-driven, but it also includes conversations and a mid-mission cutscene... which along with learning some basic scripting has really opened up a lot of possibilities in mission creation, and I'm looking forward to putting the lessons learned here to use in future. I'd like to thank everybody in the Beta Testing thread for ironing out the many, many wrinkles that came up and for offering helping advice in how to patch up the map's shortcomings: @Baal, @Cambridge Spy, @Bikerdude, @wesp5, @Bergante, @Keruah, and @tapewolf I hope you enjoy it.

On a lighter note (and because my holiday started today, oh yeah!), let's have a new thread for music, that you just enjoy and probably is not so well known...or somehow obscure but does not sound as strange as the songs we report in @STiFU's progessive music thread. Here is one of my new favourites, a similar recording of this track by other artists has been used in an US show broadcasted last year ( @Amadeus: What is the name of the show? )

My old friend Andreas urgently needs my help. He asked if I could meet him at the Lion's Head Inn, our favourite retreat in a quaint part of the city called Mirkway Quarter. He’s got a small apartment nearby where he makes a modest living off paintings he sells to pompous nobles and the odd merchant. Not long ago, his wife Lily was hired as a servant at the manor of the local alderman, one Lord Marlow. Now she hasn't been home for days. Andreas went to the manor looking for her, but the guards shoved him into the gutter and warned him not to return. Andreas is certain that something bad has happened, and I don’t think he’s wrong. Gallery Authors’ Notes It all started many years ago when Shadowhide laid the foundation for a sprawling and convoluted city and worked with MoroseTroll and Clearing to create a macabre storyline to befit this medieval metropolis. At some point, however, the beast grew too large to handle, so he handed the keys to the City to Bikerdude and Melan. Together, the two worked tirelessly, passing the map back and forth, each playing to their respective strengths. Notably, Melan reworked the story concept, toning down many of its darker, R-rated elements. Eventually Melan, too, moved on in 2017, but by then large swathes of the community had become involved in this map’s development. Mapping work was contributed by Baal, Grayman, Fidcal, Ubermann, Skacky, and Flanders, while Destined, nbohr1more, and Obsttorte wrote story texts. Several scripts were provided by Grayman, Baal and Obsttorte, such as an elevator with scissor gates, a TDM first. Even after all this input, the daunting task still remained to transform what had grown into the largest TDM map ever made into a playable mission. Bikerdude hammered away at this for some more years still, on and off between other projects, until in early 2020 when he deemed it ready for public viewing. It was then that Dragofer and Amadeus joined in. In the months that followed, the trio reworked, finished, and polished the mission in nearly every aspect, fully writing out and editing the story as well as adding countless scripted effects and (with help from Bienie) many new readables. The good working atmosphere and pooled creativity brought forth several new secrets, of which the largest likely hasn’t been done before in TDM (hint: check the libraries). In the very end, the name “Fractured Glass Company” was drawn up to refer to everybody who was involved in creating this very special mission. Without the hard work of all these people, most of all Bikerdude and Shadowhide, this mission would likely never have seen the light of day, let alone become what you see here before you. The mission is, as Bikerdude puts it, a homage to Thief 1 & 2, and it’s our hope that you catch these vibes as you explore and enjoy this mission. Update 1.2 (released 04/04/2021) Update 1.1 (released 11/11/2020) Credits - Mapping: Shadowhide, Bikerdude, Amadeus, Baal, Dragofer, Fidcal, Flanders, Melan, Skacky, UberMann - Original Story Concept: Clearing, MoroseTroll, Shadowhide - Story & Readables: Amadeus, Bienie, Bikerdude, Dragofer, Destined, Melan, nbohr1more, Obsttorte, Shadowhide - Editor: Amadeus - Scripting: Dragofer, Baal, Grayman, Obsttorte - Voice Acting: AndrosTheOxen (Andreas), Joe Noelker (Player) - Video Editing: Bikerdude (briefing), Goldwell (briefing intro) - Custom Models: Bikerdude, Dragofer, Dram, Epifire, Grayman, Obsttorte - Custom Textures: Airship Ballet, Dmv88, Hugo Lobo - Custom Sounds: GigaGooga, Sephy, Shadow Sneaker, alanmcki, andre_onate, Deathscyp, dl-sounds.com, Dmv88, dwoboyle, eugensid90, gzmo, lucasduff, mistersherlock, qubodup, randommynd, richerlandtv, sfx4animation, Speedenza - Betatesting: Amadeus, ate0ate, Biene, Bluerat, CambridgeSpy, Cardia, Dragofer, Garrett(Monolyth-42), JoeBarnin, Kingsal, Krilmar, ManzanitaCrow, MikeA, Noodles, S1lverwolf, s.urfer Download Note: this mission requires TDM 2.08, which is now available for download. Please be aware that old saved games will no longer work after you upgrade to 2.08's release build. Note: it’s highly recommended to run this mission using the 64-bit client (TheDarkModx64.exe), since there've been frequent reports the mission won't load on the 32-bit client (TheDarkMod.exe). Both are found in the same folder. The mission is available from the ingame downloader. In addition to that, here are some more mirrors, as well as the official screenshots for anybody uploading this mission to a FM database: Mission: Google Drive / OneDrive Mission (v1.1, slimmed down version for 32-bit clients): Google Drive / OneDrive Official Screenshots: Google Drive / OneDrive Hi-Res Map: Imgur Links Secret loot & areas walkthrough by @Lzocast

Looks like at least some other Frenchies have access to it: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152974

I have committed my changes to SVN, now SVN works on the UTF-8 system. It reads all language strings from all.utf8lang file, and only reads old-style {language}.lang files for missions if the equivalent new-style files are not available. The core .lang / .map files are present yet, but will hopefully be deleted. In the end, I had to manually add some characters to utf8map to suppress warnings. They were not handled by the old engine: I simply remapped them all to the question mark. It seems that the majority of them come from language names, and I don't care if they look broken or have question marks. I have already stated my position about language names. At the current moment, .utf8lang uses the same format as .lang, but this is temporary. As I said before, this must be changed in order to not lock us into compatibility trap. The format should be a sequence of "commands", each command starting with a keyword saying which command it is. And global state should be kept to minimum (e.g. current language seems acceptable). In addition to the current "#str_{name}" placeholders, I'd like to add two more types of replacements for missions. 1) Plain-text replacements, i.e. replace "Not enough drive space to save the game." with "Não há espaço para salvar o jogo.", as I suggested before. This approach provides zero inconvenience for the mapper, but it rather unreliable. It becomes especially bad for short strings. This kind of replacements is not cheap to perform, but I think I know how to do it efficiently. The first version will do it with bruteforce algorithm, we don't have any plain-text replacements yet anyway. 2) Full-text + ID replacements, i.e. replace "Not enough drive space to save the game.#id_nospacesave#" with "Não há espaço para salvar o jogo.#id_nospacesave#". The #id_...# placeholders are stripped from the text by the engine even if translation does not exist. If translation exists, then the engine verifies the context around the placeholder and does not apply it in case of mismatch. This approach gives mild inconvenience to the mapper, since he can clearly see the original text but has to tolerance this annoying tag at the end. The mapper can even edit the text without touching the placeholder: the obsolete translations will stop working automatically. I have a feeling that plain-text replacements won't be enough for the missions, and hope that such extra "tags" can be used here and there to make it more reliable.

@stgatilov, I've tried to get up to speed on the xgettext/.pot/.po stuff, and the implications of migrating to using that for the core all.lang data (setting aside usage for FM data). In my remarks here, I'm going to use REVALL to refer to my revised/restructured all.lang[English] file. My goals were – to preserve in some form the new manual contextual structuring (order & comments) I developed for REVALL. The .pot/.po format is not ideal for that, being flatter than .json or .xml, but probably close enough. avoid having such contextual structuring accidentally deleted by updates. (That is, don't use standard xgettext to automatically extract and update the .pot file, since this would throw away manual structuring) support the "stays the same" annotations from translators. be likely compatible with editors like poedit. (These would presumably ignore the use of trailing comments. The "po way" of doing things is to have preceding full-line comments, each beginning with "#".) Although TDM engine code would not have to adhere to standard "gettext()" syntax/semantics when parsing a .po file, introducing our own customizations to .pot/.po might well conflict with standard po editors. Anyway, given where we are now with REVALL, I don't think it's viable to use standard (or even customized) xgettext to extracts translatable content and generate a .pot file. Instead, a reasonable, poedit-compliant .pot can be one-time hand-created from REVALL. This would then be used with msgmerge (or more likely from within poedit) to generate language-specific (BUT still utf8) .po files. Consider this 2-line fragment from REVALL: // Used after applying the holy water. Appears also in inventory: "#str_08610" "Holy Water Arrow" Here's what a corresponding .pot entry would look like, where "#." (hash-dot) here indicates a message TO the translators (as if extracted from the source material). Messages FROM the translator (e.g., "stays the same", would be on a preceding line beginning with "# " (hash-space). FORMAT A - #str_id as comment #. Used after applying the holy water. Appears also in inventory: #. "#str_08610" msgid "Holy Water Arrow" msgstr "" // Will be filled in to make language-specific .po FORMAT B - #str_id as key #. Used after applying the holy water. Appears also in inventory: #. "Holy Water Arrow" msgid "#str_08610" msgstr "" // Will be filled in to make language-specific .po With Format A, there is some possibility of multiple meanings for the same msgid. To prevent key collisions, standard Gettext uses an optional msgctxt (message context) attribute. The combination of msgctxt + msgid forms a unique composite key. Probably TDM's Translate() could just look for the preceding #str_id comment. I didn't show reference comments beginning with "#:", to indicate the file(s) and even line numbers where the pseudo-extraction was done from. These could be added with additional work. Also, the REVALL special "//&" notation... I'd have to think further about that.

Realtime shadows only work with dynamic lights, pre baked light maps won't have dynamic shadows. So that might be a reason why.

============== -= 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 ============== Beta Russian Language Translations by @kalinovka Mirror #1: yandex.ru Mirror #2: Google Drive ============== *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: