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Messages - nbohr1more

#1


https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/news/the-dark-mod-206-is-here


After a lengthy public beta phase, we are proud to announce
the release of The Dark Mod 2.06!

The Dark Mod has undergone a lot of reorganization under the hood.

A substantial amount of work was done to improve
rendering performance and overall framework tech.

Legacy OpenGL methods have been replaced
with their equivalents in modern OpenGL.

This is also the first TDM release to offer a native 64-bit build using code ported from Dhemw3.



A full changelog can be viewed here, but some highlights include:


Better Visuals: Duzenko and Stgatilov have implemented a Soft Shadows option that finally removes the sharp edges of TDM shadows. This has a huge impact on the visuals of TDM missions. This option is currently labelled "Experimental" in the menu as we have had reports of issues on certain hardware. See our wiki if you are experiencing flickering or other problems.

(For the id Tech engine folks... Our current Soft Shadow setup is still using Shadow Volumes and is blurring them in an FBO with an algorithm similar to PCSS. It performs pretty well but our development builds already have some Shadow Map support and that has already shown promise for some of our most pathological shadowed scenes. TDM may do exclusively Shadow Mapping if nothing is done to redeem Shadow Volumes in the next development cycle.)

Better Sound: EFX audio now allows users without Creative hardware to enable EAX in the menu—a feature that processes reverb data and changes sounds based on the surrounding environment. Currently, only a few maps, like Volta 2: Cauldron of the Gods, by Kingsal, are set up to use EAX effects, but since all users can now benefit from it, mappers are encouraged to use this feature going forward. Interested mappers should see here. (Another benefit from Dhewm3 porting.)

Better Menus: The TDM menus have also been given a visual update, boosting the resolution and adjusting the graphics for widescreen monitors. Durandall has added scrollbar functionality to the mission menus, and Obsttorte has implemented a new menu option that allows users to customize the size and opacity of HUD elements, complete with a visual preview.

New Assets: A new set of Springheel's architectural modules is included in this release–a set of 50 models for creating church interiors. A number of new models have been added to other sets. Also included is a huge number of new prefabs, allowing mappers to quickly and easily create detailed map sections, as demonstrated in Springheel's Speedbuild series.

Better Mission Intros: This is the first TDM release to offer video codec support other than ROQ. TDM 2.06 allows for FFMPEG video support, which means that mappers will now have an easier time adding video briefings to their missions.

Better Gameplay: An error that kept food from restoring health has been fixed, and all food will now restore a certain amount of health when eaten. Guards can now sleep and wake up while seated.

Better Performance: Finally, experimental multi-core support is included for the first time, via patches from Cabalistic's VR branch. While this can cause performance enhancements, it is currently in "Experimental" form as some users may experience random crashes with this option enabled. Uncapped FPS is also now an option for users after this update.

To update, simply run the tdm_update.exe file in your darkmod folder. Please be aware that old saved games will not be compatible with 2.06, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first!
#2
Strutt your stuff! / The Dark Mod on Greenlight
February 05, 2017, 11:30:11 PM
Pigs are flying! We finally did it.

(After much acrimony...) We have finally created a Greenlight page to meet a longstanding community request:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=858048394

Feel free to visit and vote if you want The Dark Mod to be a permanent resident on the Steam platform.

Thanks!
#3
Strutt your stuff! / Re: Camping Grounds Doom 3 Remake
September 11, 2016, 03:41:20 PM
The Dark Mod has a reasonably large library of vegetation assets. I can't say whether they are of the quality you are seeking out
as most of them are from contributors at Doom3world so they vary in resolution from 2009 era to more modern updates in 2013.
Still they are non-commercial CC assets you can use if you need.
#4
Clip textures get converted to surface flags for path \ area determination in dmap.
They usually have the forceOpaque keyword.

Material.cpp

else if ( !token.Icmp( "forceOpaque" ) ) {
         coverage = MC_OPAQUE;
continue;


Dmap:

for ( i=1 ; i<b->numsides ; i++, s++ ) {
      s = &b->sides;

      if ( !s->material ) {
         continue;
      }

      c2 = s->material->GetContentFlags();
      if (c2 != contents) {
         mixed = true;
         contents |= c2;
      }

      if ( s->material->Coverage() != MC_OPAQUE ) {
         b->opaque = false;
      }
   }

   if ( contents & CONTENTS_AREAPORTAL ) {
      c_areaportals++;
   }

   b->contents = contents;
}
#5
id Tech 4 Mods / Re: The Dark Mod - ID4..?
August 08, 2016, 11:50:03 AM
We also have a simpler math based approach. tdm_lg_weak cvar.

The current (heavy) implementation gathers not only the shadow locations but also
the amount of light produced by the light projection\falloff textures on the player.

It has been speculated that we could improve things by sampling all these textures into low resolution tables then
using that data rather than the more expensive capture\decode operations but this hasn't been tried yet (lots of conversion work).
#6
id Tech 4 Mods / Re: The Dark Mod - ID4..?
August 08, 2016, 10:38:26 AM
The Light Gem?

One of the early TDM developers found that they could output a screen-capture to memory then
use extensions to the SDK game code to analyze it and use it for a visibility system.

Here is an old explanation:

https://modwiki.xnet.fi/Rendering_with_the_D3_renderengine
#7
I didn't mean to knock the engine, it's a great technical achievement to be sure. It's just hard to say whether
anything from the Id Tech lineage was really responsible for it's greatness. If the engine is 70% Crytech now,
why not just use Crytech (etc) or keep tabs on what Crytech will come up with next?

Still, Megatexture has been pretty well vindicated now...

(though it was only idiot end-users and clueless benchmark sites who were short-sighted
enough to believe that Megatexture was some sort of mega-failure and would never be used again...
all during that time they were apparently in cognitive dissonance about the fact that most other engine developers
were exploring similar tech...).

What would get a big rise outta me?

1) A promise to release the source code :)
2) Some sort of megatexture for geometry (the original anticipated Id tech 6 feature)
3) Some more aggressive move toward Raytracing
#8
Pretty neat stuff but there's nothing there to excite old Carmack fans other than the dynamic resolution scaling tech.
Most of the other new stuff is building on techniques developed at Crytech or new mainstream developer trends ( Clustered Rendering is hot now ).

Though I will admit that it's neat to see Megatexture getting used for light-map and shadow-map management. This was discussed long long ago at Doom3world
and The Dark Mod forums as an interesting way to hack the feature into Doom 3. As I recall, Doom 3's megatexture implementation is as bad or worse than
the ETQW version where vertical UV and pixel density is stretched so it's not a fully 3D solution but I suppose an artist could workaround that by convolving the
environment model flat then replacing the bake images from the 3D representation with the flat representation. No tool to handily achieve that though.
#9
We had a prototype of LATC compression (3Dc for OpenGL) but Intel did not have driver support for it.
It might be that a 4.x profile driver from them includes it but then you basically need to do multiple profiles :(
Everyone has RGTC
#10
Yes, this is pretty ideal.

We'd need to covert a bunch of our custom ARB to GLSL but I believe SteveL is more comfortable with GLSL anyway.

This along with some of the work that Revelator has done with threading will be some nice improvements.

Still mostly looking forward to GPU Skinning and RGTC normal map compression though.
#11
Is the shading hard-coded to a direction or does it follow the light_center value?
#12
HD Video takes a lot of space too. Don't be surprised to find that the bulk of the storage is just cutscenes and cinematics.
People aren't happy with 640x480 ROQ videos these days, ya know. (I prefer in-engine cutscenes but that's just me. It's not
like one of the most popular games of all time (cough HL2) used them to great acclaim and people have been complaining about
pre-rendered cutscenes both before and after that release... Nope, gamers know nothing... Just keep wasting their HDD space
with video files...)
#13
Strutt your stuff! / Re: Arx is close to release
April 17, 2016, 11:34:35 PM
YES!!! :)
#14
Strutt your stuff! / Re: fhDOOM (modernized idTech4)
April 17, 2016, 10:57:01 AM
Extra food for thought:

Pat Raynor has a hybrid Vanilla\BFG Doom 3 here:

https://github.com/raynorpat/Doom3

Relevators vanilla Doom 3 with Depth Bounds and BFG fixes:

https://github.com/revelator/Revelation

Perpixel's Oculus Rift branch:

https://github.com/Perpixel/Doom3

Sikkpin Feedback. Prey style shader system:

https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/Sikkpin-Feedback
#15
Both Parallax and Tessellation can be done badly.

The problem with both effects is that people want to see "the effect" so it's often implemented in a very garish way
where the geometries are exaggerated from a subtle normal map.

Good Tessellation (or Parallax) is a subtle effect and will give a scene an almost intangible improvement and (in the case of Tessellation)
you'll also get a performance boost due to more efficient LOD management.

The reason that Carmack gave for not including Truform (DX8 Tessellation)?

"The Meshes would have silhouettes that didn't match the shadows."

And lo, most Doom 3 modders make "Shadow Meshes" which cause that mismatch issue anyway for the sake of performance (and I'll bet that vanilla Doom 3 has a few too).

Honestly, I believe he was planning on having Tessellation in Doom 3 because it was demoed along with early Radeon demos.
The blocky heads were perfect candidates to exaggerate the benefits.
He probably stopped working on it or yanked it after ATI employees leaked his E3 Demo.

The only thing I wonder about is whether it would be too expensive to adjust normal map projections in the shader to accommodate the new geometry without distortion.
Of course that's only a concern if you bother to render normal maps on top of tessellated geometry rather than just using tessellation in place of normal maps.