What's new in TDM 2.10: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:27, 2 February 2022

Version 2.10 of The Dark Mod has not been released yet.

See the roadmap on our bugtracker.

The Dark Mod 2.10 Load Time Improvement Release

TDM 2.10 addresses one of the oldest complaints about the project "Load Times".

A lot of effort was put into optimizing loading times.

It includes: better integration of decompression, multi-threading, immutable texture storage, handwritten normal map compression and mipmap generation, removing artificial delays.
As the result, we even had to modify loading screens of some missions, because allocated 10% of loading time was no longer enough for a player to read the hint

Generic performance improvements were done too

Most importantly, we fixed performance regressions since 2.07: rendering static geometry (5598) and soft stencil shadows with anti-aliasing.
This hardly makes a difference, but it is nice to know that TDM can now use AVX instructions on Linux builds too.

Volumetric lights can now be used on projected lights ( also known as "God Rays" )

Unlike adding fake translucent geometry, the real volumetric lights automatically match their source light, including light volume geometry, projection & falloff texture, and even shadows.

We made some changes to window / input systems.

Most importantly, Linux build now relies on GLFW library to create window and handle keyboard / mouse, so a lot of the issues with OS integration on Linux should go away.
On the Windows side, some minor changes were made to fullscreen/borderless modes.

New implementation of object dragging / manipulation

Afraid to grab a candle near a sleeping guard? Hopefully, you will make less noise while moving objects in 2.10. And if you hold the creep button, the moved item will not make any noise at all.
Also, dragging unconscious bodies should feel better now. Rats slighty spoiled the joy of this improvement (rats often do), but hopefully it is fixed now
Finally, now you can control how far a rock flies by holding throw button for a different amount of time.

Tooltips are now shown in the main menu.

Players will now have more detail about what settings do to sound, game-play, graphics, and performance

Tweaked starting new mission in the main menu

The old way of "installing" and starting missions was quite confusing for newcomers.
So we reorganized the main menu a bit, and now it is hopefully more intuitive.

@@ Line 21: / Line 21: @@
 * Most importantly, Linux build now relies on GLFW library to create window and handle keyboard / mouse, so a lot of the issues with OS integration on Linux should go away.
 * On the Windows side, some minor changes were made to fullscreen/borderless modes.
-<br>New implementation of object dragging / manipulation
+<br>New implementation of object '''dragging / manipulation'''
 * Afraid to grab a candle near a sleeping guard? Hopefully, you will make less noise while moving objects in 2.10. And if you hold the creep button, the moved item will not make any noise at all.
 * Also, dragging unconscious bodies should feel better now. Rats slighty spoiled the joy of this improvement (rats often do), but hopefully it is fixed now
 * Finally, now you can control how far a rock flies by holding throw button for a different amount of time.
-<br>Tooltips are now shown in the main menu.
+<br>'''Tooltips''' are now shown in the main menu.
 * Players will now have more detail about what settings do to sound, game-play, graphics, and performance
-<br>Tweaked starting new mission in the main menu
+<br>'''Tweaked starting new mission in the main menu'''
 * The old way of "installing" and starting missions was quite confusing for newcomers.
 * So we reorganized the main menu a bit, and now it is hopefully more intuitive.