What's new in TDM 2.09

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Version 2.09 of The Dark Mod has not been released yet.

See the roadmap on our bugtracker.

The Dark Mod 2.09 Performance Update

TDM 2.09 marks a new phase of performance improvements aimed lowering CPU overhead in rendering.

A new OpenGL 3.3 backend that uses bindless textures, multi-draw, and persistence mapping should significantly reduce
CPU demands bringing TDM closer to Vulkan performance per the "Approaching Zero Driver Overhead" (AZDO) design philosophy.

The work started in 2.08 to port Doom 3 BFG CPU jobs for multi-core acceleration to the frontend is nearly complete.

A new Sharpening Filter has been added which enhances the appearance of existing TDM textures
and also allows you to lower your Render Scale without producing a blurry render

The particle rendering system has been refactored to be more efficient and mathematically correct.
New particle setup features for weather effects like rain and snow have been added.

A new automation system allows mappers to connect TDM to Darkradiant and see real-time in-engine previews of their map



Important CVARS

  • r_useNewBackend: --- which rendering backend to use. Default value of 1 means using the new one.

In case of graphical issues, it might be worth trying to set it to 0 to check if issue goes away.

  • r_useMultiDrawIndirect: --- allow the backend to feed draw calls to the driver from multiple cores at the same time


  • r_useBindlessTextures: --- reduce driver CPU usage by allowing the GPU to keep track of textures associated to shaders ( reduce GL context creation )


  • r_gpuBufferNonpersistentUpdateMode: --- Primarily for Intel GPU's. Improves rendering performance for persistent mapped buffers.


  • r_shadowMapSinglePass: --- experimental optimization for shadow maps only.

By default it is 0 (disabled), it can be enabled to 1 (generate many shadow maps at once) and 2 (compute interactions from many light at once).

  • r_useParallelAddModels: --- controls new acceleration for rendering frontend (Multi-Core Doom 3 BFG job based threading).

Can be changed in Experimental graphics menu under name "Frontend Acceleration". Much more stable in 2.09

  • jobs_numThreads: --- meant to be paired with r_useParallelAddModels. Controls how many CPU cores can be assigned jobs



See also

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