What's new in TDM 2.12

Version 2.12 of The Dark Mod has not been released yet.

See the roadmap on our bugtracker.

The Dark Mod 2.12

TDM 2.12 performance

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Important CVARS

GENERIC

TROUBLESHOOTING

Graphics

• Optimized generation of light-entity interactions in rendering frontend. Also greatly optimized shadow processing, especially for moving lights. Unfortunately, many existing missions are not compatible with these changes, so you might see light leaking through walls (mainly with stencil shadows). Please report all such cases, we'll apply workaround on case by case basis (thread).

• The "old" and "new" rendering backends are finally merged into one. It is as nice to program as the new backend, and as old-fashioned and reliable as the old backend. Single-pass shadow maps enabled by default and now respect noselfshadow.

• Materials with polygonoffset now interact with lights. So static decals can have bumpmap and specular lighting. Note however: dynamic decals still don't interact with lights.

• Revised parallelSky lights and marked shadowing parallel lights as deprecated (thread).

• PNG image format now behaves equally to other supported formats. In particular, it is not required to explicitly specify its extension, and it can be referenced directly in GUI code.

• Added functions min/max to material expressions, which can be useful for clamping.

• Fixed minor culling bugs on animated entities and enabled entity scissors by default.

• Reduced color banding for fog with some dithering at tonemapping stage.

• Finally our C++ code can compress and decompress all texture formats we use, meaning that we no longer depend on occasionally buggy/slow vendor implementations.

AI

• Dragofer has added a new Turret entity

Mapping

Coding

Assets

Gameplay

• Frob controls have been reworked completely. Previously players were annoyed by having to do three presses to extinguish a light. Also, some player didn't even know that bodies could be shouldered and were limited with dragging bodies. Now simply clicking the frob button performs the action player needs most of the time, and pressing-and-holding the same button performs alternative actions like dragging bodies and extinguishing candles (thread).

• Several aspects of mantling has been improved: overhead mantling has become faster, mantling over low obstacles is allowed while carrying an item or a body. Also it is possible to switch weapon while being on rope/ladder or mantling. Pressing crouch button on rope/ladder now starts slide-down immediately.

• Some aspects of gameplay can be further simplified. Auto-search bodies is for players who don't want to waste time searching for keys and purses on guard bodies. Lockpicking "Auto" difficulty now indeed trivializes lockpicking (thread).

• Leaning animation has been improved with lower head tilt (thread).

• Player footstep sounds have been rebalanced. Metal and water sounds were especially painful previously.

• More settings to reduce camera bobbing/rolling/shaking, which is good for players who feel motion sickness from default camera animations.

• Now several script addons can coexist and work independently (thread).

GUIs

• Further improvements of subtitles: revised location and font to avoid overlapping with other GUI elements, added directional cue, better slot allocation. Each subtitle is now displayed for at least one second even if the sound is very short.

• Subtitles have been added to all AI barks ( Courtesy of Geeps with a few additions by Datiswous and MirceaKitsune )

Sound

Translation

See also

• What's new in TDM 2.11 (Older releases: What's new in TDM 2.10, What's new in TDM 2.09, v2.08, v2.07, v2.06, v2.05, v2.04, v2.03, v2.02, v2.01, v2.00, v1.08, v1.07, v1.06, v1.05, v1.04, v1.03, v1.02, v1.01)
• Download TDM