The Dark Mod - TTLG Forums

CaptSyn on 15/2/2011 at 03:52

Just tried the training mission. The lockpick issue is all me apparently. I wasn't aware someone decided to reinvent the wheel and complicate it.

I also tried a few other FMs. All are unplayable due to being blurry, even the training mission. It hurts my eyes. I didn't have this problem a year ago, so I can only assume TDM was never designed to be played at modern resolutions. Maybe it's a Doom 3 engine issue, I don't know. That game sucks so bad, I haven't bothered trying it in years.

Time to delete TDM once again.

*Out of curiosity, I just ran Doom 3 and found it supports a max resolution of 1600x1200 and looks fine. No wonder TDM looks like crap. The mod is forcing the engine to do things it's not supposed to do.

I'll give this one more shot at 1600x1200 and see if TDM looks any better.

New Horizon on 15/2/2011 at 04:01

Quote Posted by CaptSyn

I just played another FM and now I'm sure TDM has serious visual issues.

...or some doom 3 cvars have been inadvertently enabled. I play doom 3 at a high resolution and nothing is blurry....and we would have certainly gotten a lot of complaints if this were a wide spread issue. :) We have people who play at your resolution, and they don't have this problem.

Check this video out for example. It's at 3330x1680
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySpAh-pVXDc&feature=player_embedded#at=46)

I would suggest bringing down the console and checking to see if image_downsize, image_downSizeBump, image_downSizeSpecular are set to 0 or 1...if they're set to 1, then set them to 0.

Also, for best quality...the following should be...
image_useAllFormats this should be 1
image_useCompression should be 0
image_useNormalCompression should be 0

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Everything is a bit blurry. AA and AF have zero effect. And all the fonts are far too small. I don't have these issues with any other games, not even the Thief series.

Not sure why the fonts are too small, I honestly don't have this issue either.

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Also, there's no way to aim the arrows. Why not? This just makes me want to use Cheat Engine to keep from wasting precious arrows.

In Thief 1 / 2, the bow is offset to the right of the crosshair...so the bowsite was added to compensate. In TDM, we instead offset the bow below the cross hair. If you aim just slightly above the tip of the arrow, you should find using the bow isn't that hard. It just takes some getting used to. TDM is similar, but it's not an exact copy.

CaptSyn on 15/2/2011 at 04:12

Resolution was definitely the problem visually. I set TDM to 1600x1200 and full AA/AF and it looks fantastic. Even all the fonts are much improved and easily readable. Nothing is blurry anymore.

New Horizon on 15/2/2011 at 04:14

Quote Posted by CaptSyn

Just tried the training mission. The lockpick issue is all me apparently. I wasn't aware someone decided to reinvent the wheel and complicate it.

We created the training mission to guide people though most of these differences. We also have a gameplay guide on the wiki to help people find the differences between Thief and TDM.

(http://modetwo.net/darkmod/wiki/index.php?title=The_Dark_Mod_Gameplay)

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I also tried a few other FMs. All are unplayable due to being blurry, even the training mission. It hurts my eyes. I didn't have this problem a year ago, so I can only assume TDM was never designed to be played at modern resolutions.

Check the settings I listed in my previous post. It makes absolutely no sense for a higher resolution to make things blurry like this, especially when it's not affecting others.

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Time to delete TDM once again.

Jeez man, could you perhaps give us some time to try and help you. :(

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No wonder TDM looks like crap. The mod is forcing the engine to do things it's not supposed to do.

No, it is not. The idtech4 engine can handle all kinds of additional resolutions. They're simply not in doom 3 because there was no need for them during doom 3's release. The engine is extremely scalable.

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I'll give this one more shot at 1600x1200 and see if TDM looks any better.

Try the settings I gave you.

Edit:

For reference, I have played TDM at 1920x1080 on my new monitor and it isn't blurry.

CaptSyn on 15/2/2011 at 04:24

So how do I open the console? The tilde key doesn't do it.

Quote Posted by New Horizon

Jeez man, could you perhaps give us some time to try and help you.

I get very impatient when I have to change lots of settings and do a lot of trial and error to get a game running properly. It shouldn't be necessary. I rarely have to do such things with most other games and I get rid of those that take a lot of work. I have plenty of other games I can play that don't require such trials.

New Horizon on 15/2/2011 at 04:32

Quote Posted by CaptSyn

So how do I open the console? The tilde key doesn't do it.

CTRL ALT ~ is used to open the console.

Out of curiosity, what type of monitor are you playing on? I'm assuming LCD? If it's LCD what is the recommended resolution for the monitor? For my laptop it is 1366 x 768, but for my external monitor it is 1920x1080.

Since it now looks fine at the lower resolution, this sounds more like a result of the LCD monitor itself. If I try to run at 1920 x 1080 on my 1366 laptop monitor, it will indeed blur since the lcd pixels aren't designed to scale beyond their optimum level.

Still, check out those settings though.

Also, in the game menu there is an option to set lockpicking to 'auto' if you feel you can't get the hang of the new lockpicking...or you simply don't like it.

New Horizon on 15/2/2011 at 04:49

Quote Posted by CaptSyn

Well, we are here to help. I can understand the frustration, but quite often the issues are extremely simple....and yes, in a perfect world...no extra work would be necessary to get something up and running, but that isn't always the reality.

I've run TDM on 3 different systems during our testing phases. Every time we issue a new update, I run our tdm updated and download a completely fresh install...just like an end user would...I also do an update over top of an older version. I've never run into any issues where I had to change settings.

The settings I listed for you to look into were simply a guess, but it sounds like the resolution was the problem.

In any case, the more info we can collect on issues, the more it helps us make the mod better, and avoid such trials in the future. We'll be releasing yet another update relatively soon. We've been putting a lot of effort into streamlining the update process recently to help us roll out updates and fixes in a more timely fashion. Our entire updating process has been completely revamped.

CaptSyn on 15/2/2011 at 05:56

Quote Posted by New Horizon

My monitor is an HD LCD. It's an Asus VW246H and it's native res is 1920x1080. It works fine at that resolution on other games.

I'll try the console stuff.

The settings you mentioned are all spot on except the last 2.

image_useCompression = 1
image_useNormalCompression = 2

I tried setting them both to 0, but the console returned "couldn't write." This was while an FM was loaded.

Exiting back to Windows, then loading TDM again, I checked those 2 settings without loading an FM. They were both set to 0.

*Loaded my save game in an FM, and checked those 2 settings again. They were both set to 0. I guess they get changed during play.

New Horizon on 15/2/2011 at 12:34

Quote Posted by CaptSyn

*Loaded my save game in an FM, and checked those 2 settings again. They were both set to 0. I guess they get changed during play.

Yep, the mission would have to be reloaded for any of those settings to take effect. With the two settings you mentioned set to 1, the textures were likely being re-compressed at load time.

If that isn't the cause of the blurriness at 1920x1080, then I'm not sure what could be happening as 1920x1080 looks wonderful on my external monitor which is also native 1920x1080.

Springheel on 15/2/2011 at 16:37

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Resolution was definitely the problem visually. I set TDM to 1600x1200 and full AA/AF and it looks fantastic.

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Just tried the training mission. The lockpick issue is all me apparently.

So now that it looks fantastic and you know how lockpicking works, are there any other problems with TDM we can fix for you?