The Dark Mod 2.07 takes the big changes from 2.06 and refines them further with many bug fixes, crash fixes, and code stability changes. This may be the most rock solid TDM release since 1.07.

Posted by nbohr1more on Feb 2nd, 2019

The Dark Mod 2.07 Stability Release!!!

We admit it! 2.06 was a little "rough around the edges".

Players could ignore the new features like Soft Shadows, Multi-Core and Uncapped FPS

and have a mostly unchanged experience from 2.05.

But we all know that wasn't going to happen...

Players stumbled into issues with these new features rather quickly.

In 2.07 you no longer need to worry about these things!

2.07 Fixes!

Soft Shadows with real MSAA

In 2.06, we sorta faked AA when Soft Shadows were enabled.

Instead of rendering true MSAA, we simply increased the internal resolution to

something higher than the native resolution.

This resulted in a HUGE performance hit when enabling AA.

In 2.07 this is fixed. You can use AA without any huge performance loss or screen artifacts.

Multi-Core without Crashes

2.07 has improved the way that multi-core rendering works.

Now the Vertex Buffer (VBO) is much more friendly to multi-core operations

thanks to Cabalistic, Duzenko, and Stgatilov working to make the VBO more like the one

in Doom 3 BFG.

Glass effects with no line artifacts

Shaders that use the Depth buffer were causing feedback loops and line artifacts in 2.06

when Soft Shadows were enabled. This is now cured.

Bumpmap artifacts eliminated

The new GLSL shaders in 2.06 looked very much like our old ARB shaders but somehow we forgot

to clamp the math for some areas. This lead to many artifacts around lighting with bump maps.

Now the shaders are closer to the ARB versions and many artifacts have been cured.

EFX Reverb only where it belongs

EFX reverb is now only applied to appropriate in-world sound emitters. No longer will you

reverb where it doesn't belong.

Mission Statistics Fixed

Somewhere around 2.05 a bug was introduced that caused the Mission Statistics to render

all Zeros if you got 100% loot in missions that skip the "Shop" at the start.

2.07 now shows all the correct totals in this scenario.

ENVSHOT \ CUBEMAPS are now FIXED

Mappers can now capture cubemaps for in-game mirrors and reflective surfaces

Editing Debug Tools work with Uncapped FPS

Now mappers can debug entities, look at surface info, check light counts, check tri counts,

etc without having to go back and forth to the menu to disable uncapped FPS and multi-core;

In short, TDM 2.07 has tackled the worst bugs from 2.06

and has made the whole project significantly more stable!









NEW 2.07 FEATURES!!!

Along with the many fixes a few new features crept into 2.07!

Mantling Low and Medium objects

Late in the TDM 2.07 release cycle, STiFU decided

"Enough is enough!!!! Mantling small objects is silly in TDM and must be fixed!!!"

He then proceeded to improve mantling in a number of ways including different behaviors

for different heights and added code support for more sounds related to mantle actions!!!!

Frob Helper

Now you can enable an indicator that shows you the center of the screen to help you frob small objects or frob objects cluttered among other frob-able objects.

HRTF Audio

Without even knowing about the old forum thread about modding TDM to use HRTF audio, our Lead Developer stgatilov added it to TDM to fix a positional audio bug. Now TDM has much better positional audio with better 3D presence when wearing headphones (and the bug is fixed).

EFX 2.0 PRESETS!!!

Imagine you are a mission author, and you want to add EFX reverb to your mission.

Now look at this:

// reverb maintenance reverb "maintenance" { "environment" 26 "environment size" 5.0670 "environment diffusion" 0.6030 "room" -411 "room hf" -685 "room lf" 0 "decay time" 1.7360 "decay hf ratio" 0.8030 "decay lf ratio" 1.0000 "reflections" 96 "reflections delay" 0.0080 "reflections pan" 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 "reverb" 27 "reverb delay" 0.0050 "reverb pan" 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 "echo time" 0.0750 "echo depth" 1.0000 "modulation time" 0.2500 "modulation depth" 0.0000 "air absorption hf" -5.0000 "hf reference" 5000.0000 "lf reference" 250.0000 "room rolloff factor" 0.0000 "flags" 56 }

With the new EFX Preset feature, you no longer need to parse all that and can simply choose a preset

with the desired sound preconfigured:

eaxreverb "myclassroom" { preset auditorium }



Whew! Now it will be much easier for mission authors to add EFX to their missions!

Contact Hardening (PCSS) Shadow Maps

The Soft Shadows in 2.06 are really good but one thing that the developers

couldn't quite get right is "Contact Hardening".

In real shadowing, the closer the shadow casting object is to the receiving surface the harder the shadow. In 2.06 we could only get half way there. Objects that were closer to the light source had harder shadows but all shadows became blurrier as the shadow casters were farther from the lights.

To make it easier to achieve this feature, Shadow Maps were added.

In many scenes, Shadow Maps also boost performance because the CPU no longer has to skin the shadow casting objects and determine the silhouette.

OLD

With Stencil Shadows in 2.06 we could only make shadows blurrier as they got farther from the light.

NEW

Va Va Va VOOM! Look at these more realistic contact hardening shadows in 2.07 (shadow map mode).

Notice the ceiling and AI shadow and how they are either softer or harder than the Stencil mode versions. This is more true to the way real shadows behave!

Performance

In 2.06 the 64-bit executable could be substantially slower than the 32-bit version because

it lacked low level SIMD optimizations. In 2.07 both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions now offer

AVX acceleration for SIMD code. Now performance is matched between the versions and they

both have better performance

AI Improvements and Gameplay Improvements

AI react properly to flashbomb attacks while seated

AI properly return to seated coordinates after being interrupted from patrol routes

Improved the way that AI respond to the player escaping to dark ledges

AI can now handle bodies (ragdolls) obstructing door closure

Remote listening support (related to security camera features)

Doubled air regaining speed after dive (Full refill now takes about 8 seconds)

Mantling no longer allowed when "under water"

Soft Gamma

Many old applications change Gamma by directly telling the video card what gamma ramp

to offer the screen. While this works great in-game, it often causes your Desktop to inherit

these Gamma changes if the program closes unexpectedly. We now offer 2 Gamma modes that

use shaders to adjust Gamma so this problem can be avoided. Further, Soft Gamma does a better job

of reducing banding than Hardware Gamma.



(See cvars r_ambientMinLevel and r_ambientGamma.)

New Trap Prefabs

2.07 now ships with pre-made Traps so that mission authors can easily add all sorts of interesting

traps to their missions.

"Select All" in the Mission Downloader

With one click, you can choose every available mission for download rather than needing

to choose them one-by-one.





See further details in our Change Log.









Mission Releases since 2.06

Braeden Church

Grayman gives us a history lesson about what happened in the past for many of the characters and places that populate his William Steele series.

William Steele 4: The Warrens

After a recap about the past of the William Steele adventures, Grayman releases one of his largest William Steele missions yet. A revenge plot and mystery await you here.

Mission of Mercy

joebarnin's first TDM mission! Find the cure to a new plague that has hit Bridgeport.

The Night of Reluctant Benefaction

Biene offers another quality mission for The Dark Mod. This time with a Holiday twist.

Hidden Hands: Initiation

JackFarmer's first TDM mission! An absolutely enormous mission. Try and become a member of the mysterious "Hidden Hands" crime group.