What's new in TDM 2.10

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.

Important CVARS

The Entity limit has been virtually eliminated. With over 65K entities available, mappers will easily hit hardware limits before running out.
Volumetric Lights are here! ( also known as "God Rays" ) Now transparent textures and objects both cast shadows in the dusty \ foggy air!
RGTC Normal Map compression ( also known as ATI 3Dc ) is now complete! Both on-the-fly and pre-compressed loading works as well as keywords to force compression off

The Dmap "map compiler" has been significantly optimized! Compile times are the lowest they have ever been! Dmap is also more precise!
Dmap now has a diagnostic tool to identify "Location bugs". Now it will be easier to find broken locations
Spotlights are now reverted to 2.07 behavior and have been enhanced with clamping rendering to the volume
A new "Secrets" system has been created to easily design rewards for finding mission secret items or areas
PNG loading support has been added