Schwaa2 on 20/10/2009 at 16:33
Quote Posted by Turin Turambar
So i already played the tutorial and the three missions. Now what? :P
I know, i know. You have worked for lots of years to release the damn mod, for free, and here we are asking for even more. But damn, only three short missions at release is very little content. In fact, forget about me, i can have patience, but there will be lots of people who only have a passing interest in this, they will download the mod, play the three missions in one evening and they will forget The Dark Mod forever, even if later you bring tons of content.
So the simple question here is,
How many unreleased FMs you know are "in development" status? 2, 3? 10? 100?
How many of the previous FMs are close to being done (say... in the next three months) and how many are in the "sometime around next year... or who know when" status?
Just to have a general idea of what i should expect. That's better than having no idea.
In the official TDM forum there should be a "in development" FM section so mappers can show their work, have feedback from users, upload beta versions, etc.
The Dark Mod is a 'toolkit' to make FM's. The FM's are a bonus. Can't speak about how many FM's are in the works, when they'll be done but hopefully more people will start to make FM's now.
I plan to try and start with Fidcal's Mission Base soon and see what I can whip up (I haven't touched Radiant for a year but it's easy, just have to get used to shortcuts again.
I actually want to try and match the Hammer shortcuts since the engines are very similar and I'm very used to Hammer right now.
I know there is a beta mappers section with maps/progress. Not sure if that is or will be opened to public though.
Would be very cool to see a Dark Mod FM noobs contest soon to promote more FM's quickly.
New Horizon on 20/10/2009 at 17:20
Quote Posted by Wille
1.
First of all melee fighting. In most first person games where you use melee weapons, the attacks are executed with attack and movement keys but in TDM you have to use mouse to tell the game what kind of slash you want to use. This is very akward to put it simply. Mouse movement should only be used for you know... looking around and aiming ;).
Our fighting system is inspired by the game "Mount and Blade". If you're unfamiliar with that game, then this system will take some getting used to, but it can be learned. Give it time. If you simply don't want to use it, go into the settings menu and set it to automatic. We won't be dumping the system.
New Horizon on 20/10/2009 at 17:33
Quote Posted by Turin Turambar
So i already played the tutorial and the three missions. Now what? :P
Well, you can download Dark Radiant and start making missions. :)
Quote:
I know, i know. You have worked for lots of years to release the damn mod, for free, and here we are asking for even more. But damn, only three short missions at release is very little content.
Very little content? You just downloaded 1.5 gigs worth of content. :) There is enough content to build almost any mission you want. In all seriousness though, three missions IS a lot....especially when you consider that working on missions while the tools are still 'in production' can be a challenging task.
Quote:
In fact, forget about me, i can have patience, but there will be lots of people who only have a passing interest in this, they will download the mod, play the three missions in one evening and they will forget The Dark Mod forever, even if later you bring tons of content.
It was never our job or goal to deliver a full campaign worth of maps at release. Our job was to create a toolset for the development of FM's by the community. We have delivered upon that goal. To demonstrate how things work, we created a training mission...and 3 playable levels. We didn't have to..we simply could have focussed on the toolset and said..."figure it out" but that wouldn't have been very helpful to the community. Our primary responsibility was the creation of a stable toolset, now that becomes 'maintenance' of the toolset. We will release additional FM's when we can, but please don't confuse the intent of this project. We've been very clear all along on what our goals were.
Quote:
So the simple question here is,
How many unreleased FMs you know are "in development" status? 2, 3? 10? 100?
How many of the previous FMs are close to being done (say... in the next three months) and how many are in the "sometime around next year... or who know when" status?
Just to have a general idea of what i should expect. That's better than having no idea.
The simple answer is, we're not sure. There are a few FM's in production...6 I think, and they will be released as they're finished. Hopefully this will give the community time to experiment with the toolkit and start releasing their own playable missions.
Quote:
In the official TDM forum there should be a "in development" FM section so mappers can show their work, have feedback from users, upload beta versions, etc.
Yup, that would be a good idea.
Fidcal on 20/10/2009 at 17:44
Turin Turambar: I understand your feelings and those of others. Yes, we regret despite our best efforts we could only manage the three FMs plus trainer in time for the release. Just not enough manpower and we certainly didn't want to delay the release until January. Also even if it had been possible to release say, seven FMs then you'd get nothing until next year for sure. You are right though, it's not good enough from a user point of view and I can feel that players are hungry for more but it was physically impossible to do more given our resources. We can only apologize in an exhausted, crushed, defeated, sobbing kind of way.
That said, we have maybe 5 or 6 small FMs in various stages of completion. Some need a month or two of beta testing. Some need some extra assets which are not quite ready. Some need just a few more fixes, and so on. I'm hoping 3 or 4 will be released this year. I personally am striving to get one released in a couple of weeks but no promises. In addition we have three larger FMs in production. One I had hoped for release at Christmas but I have been so busy with the launch and helping get the trainer and the three FMs polished off that it had to be shelved for a couple of months so January/February is now the target.
SlyFoxx on 20/10/2009 at 17:57
Oh...how did I miss this?:o
Great news!
Scrooge on 20/10/2009 at 18:55
Hello,
First of all, congratulations for this release. The level of polish, the graphics are great, and give a great artistic personnality to this mod.
Indeed, the only thing that spoils the impression to have a professional, self-contained game and universe, is the title screen:
"The Dark Mod". Boo, why "Mod" ?? :)
Now my little bug report, tested with training mission:
- Config: Vista 32bits, 4GB RAM, ATI Mobility X1900 (256MB, DX9 class card), Catalyst 9.8, using ATI Tray Tools only. (no CCC). Sound chipset ia a Realtek HD Audio ALC885, EAX 2.0 capable.
Graphical bugs:
- I'm forced to use Catalyst AI to "None", but this problem is already known. Comes from optimisations fitted for Doom3 that doesn't apply to DM, apparently.
Sound "bugs":
There comes a strange experiment with my settings.
- If OpenAL is disabled, (seta s_useOpenAL "0") the game stays frozen in the final waiting screen ("Please wait....") and the CPU still runs, like an infinite loop.
- if OpenAL is enabled (seta s_useOpenAL "1") the level starts loading, crash immediatly showing Doom3 console with an error about allocating an OpenAL buffer. If I try again (by "Start Mission"), the levels now runs until the end, and I can play it. The sounds are indeed there. Funny.
Now, just for the others to compare, I found that the following config is a rather good compromise between performance an beauty:
1280x800 (16:10 native format)
- Bloom on (doesn't eat much power, and take the role of pseudo-aliasing too)
- Antialiasing no (see above)
- Anisotropic x2 (Bloom does most of the job)
- Interaction shader and Ambient on max.
and with the following Autoexec.cfg graphical tweaks: (UPDATED with NewHorizon consel)
// Image Cache Tweak
seta image_cacheMegs "1200"
seta image_cacheMinK "20480"
seta image_useCache "1"
//Sound
seta s_useOpenAL "1"
seta s_libOpenAL "openal32.dll"
//seta s_useEAXReverb "1"
//Shadows
seta r_useOptimizedShadows "1"
seta r_useTurboShadow "1"
seta r_useShadowProjectedCull "1"
seta r_useShadowVertexProgram "1"
//r_useIndexBuffers 0 meilleures performances
seta r_useIndexBuffers "0"
seta r_useCulling "2"
seta r_usePortals "1"
seta r_orderIndexes "1"
seta r_vertexBufferMegs "96"
seta r_useTripleTextureARB "1"
seta r_useConstantMaterials "1"
seta com_allowconsole "1"
seta com_showfps "0"
seta image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST"
seta com_videoRam "256"
seta r_UseClippedLightScissors "2" // was 1 (default)
seta r_useTwoSidedStencil "1"
seta r_displayRefresh "60"
//Aspect ratio : 0 is 4:3, 1 is 16:9, 2 is 16:10
seta r_aspectRatio "2"
//Custom resolution 16:10
seta r_mode "-1"
seta r_customHeight "800"
seta r_customWidh "1280"
//image quality
seta image_usePrecompressedTextures "1"
seta image_useCompression "0"
seta image_useNormalCompression "0"
//image size for 256MB video for Dark Mod
seta image_downSize "1"
seta image_downSizeLimit "512"
seta image_downSizeBumpLimit "512"
seta image_downSizeBump "1"
seta image_downSizeSpecularLimit "512"
seta image_downSizeSpecular "1"
vid_restart
With this, I obtain roughly 25-60 fps, which I consider great with my mobility chipset.
Thanks again for such a beautiful work, keep going !
New Horizon on 20/10/2009 at 19:21
I'm concerned that a lot of people are saying they have this setting:
seta image_useCompression "1"
This will compress all the dds textures again, and you will lose visual quality. Only use this setting if you have a low end video card. It will also increase load times.
Vivian on 20/10/2009 at 19:29
Hey - small bug report:
The strafe modifier problem I had was related to the following: On reloading TDM, resolution was set to '640x400' (regardless of what the menu says, thats the res the game was running in) antialiasing was always set back to to '0' from whatever I had set it to, and the 'strafe' bind to the alt key I had deleted in the .cfg was always reinstated.
First thought was that something was just re-writing the .cfg file every time I ran TDM. So I changed all the setting manually and set the .cfg to read only. Same damn problems!
I'm currently reinstalling, which is a pain, but anyone got any ideas? Here's my PC specs:
Vista 64
ATI HD4890 (AI is already off, I learnt that one)
intel e6850 core2duo
Scrooge on 20/10/2009 at 19:37
Quote Posted by New Horizon
I'm concerned that a lot of people are saying they have this setting:
seta image_useCompression "1"
This will compress all the dds textures again, and you will lose visual quality. Only use this setting if you have a low end video card. It will also increase load times.
Thank you for the tip, I set it to "0".
UPDATE : using Doom3 tweaks in (
http://www.tweakguides.com/Doom3_8.html) , these settings are set to maximize performance, with good image quality :
// Image Cache Tweak
seta image_cacheMegs "1200"
seta image_cacheMinK "20480"
seta image_useCache "1"
//Shadows
seta r_useOptimizedShadows "1"
seta r_useTurboShadow "1"
seta r_useShadowProjectedCull "1"
seta r_useShadowVertexProgram "1"
//r_useIndexBuffers 0 meilleures performances
seta r_useIndexBuffers "0"
seta r_usePortals "1"
seta r_useCulling "2"
seta r_orderIndexes "1"
seta r_vertexBufferMegs "96"
seta r_useTripleTextureARB "1"
seta r_useConstantMaterials "1"
seta image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST"
seta com_videoRam "256"
seta r_UseClippedLightScissors "2" // was 1 (default)
seta r_useTwoSidedStencil "1"
//image quality
seta image_usePrecompressedTextures "1"
seta image_useCompression "0"
seta image_useNormalCompression "0"
//image size for 256MB video for Dark Mod
seta image_downSize "1"
seta image_downSizeLimit "512"
seta image_downSizeBumpLimit "512"
seta image_downSizeBump "1"
seta image_downSizeSpecularLimit "512"
seta image_downSizeSpecular "1"
Wille on 20/10/2009 at 19:42
Quote Posted by Bikerdude
Hi Willy, at a guess have you tried doing a complete uinstall and then reinstall of the nVidia drivers..?
No and I probably won't do that. I'm using and older high end CRT which at its age requires careful tuning of color settings. If I install drivers again I will surely loose these settings (I've tried this once) and finding them again is tedious. Saving the settings won't work too as the old settings won't load for some reason anymore, they just crash the NVIDIA control panel.
I'll try to find another way around this.
