crowbars82

I noticed that there was a minor update for 2.05 so I had another play-through tonight and have some more feedback. This mission is really great, I am almost ready to reinstall DarkRadiant and have another bash at it again! Hope this helps you guys!

Hi Oldjim, If you get hold of IrfanView you can load up a DarkMod screenshot in that and do Shift + U (or Menu/Image/Auto Adjust Colours) and 9/10 times it will automatically brighten the screenshot enough for posting! - C

Hi TDM Team! Thanks for the 2.05 update! Absolutely loving the new first starter mission! Everything is pretty much spot on, I have a little bit of feedback for you guys. Regards, Crowbars82

Cheers Dragofer! I've played your mission about 6 times now, and have discovered a new moment of obscurity... I'll quickly post it in the other thread, but then I must get some kip!

Good evening all! So that time comes around again when the weekend is but a memory and the day job continues in but a few hours... ...perfect time for thinking of new ideas when you've run out of water arrows, but the torch is right next to you! How about heading back to the kitchen and grabbing a tankard, but the sink is empty and the tap is borked! Head outside to the fountain and scoop up some water... don't run back though or you might spill it everywhere! Careful you don't burn yourself! [insert water graphics here!] Other thinking for this situation was some kind of soaking wet cloth that contains 1 use. The cloth could be dunked in a water source, perhaps carried in some kind of leather pouch. The cloth can be shlomped or flung over a burning torch. This would extinguish the torch, but if not removed before a guard goes to relight the torch, he'll find a soaking cloth over the top... "Hey! I... I think we got a taffer in the building lads!" This concludes this episode of "Late night random thoughts", good night everyone! Edited due to borked images

Hi Sotha! I would be happy to help if I can. Although new to beta-testing, I believe Dragofer found my feedback to be of use, which was cool. Let me know if I can help in any way! Are there any specific rules of guidelines for beta-testing, or is it a case of making sure of the following: check there are no holes to the voidAI pathing is correctcheck for typos in readablescollision testing with all sorts of objects in all kinda of placesobjects stuck in brushes or other objectsscripted sequences act out okay without disruptionclimb everywhere possiblefind any Z-fightinglook for misaligned textures and brushesplay through the map at least 5 timeschecking all ambient sound and other sound levelsall moveables have correct weight and play correct sounds if a door or windowcheck for any FPS dropssave and load and make sure the mission reloads properlyalert guards and makes sure they don't sit down in the middle of a corridor...this type of stuff? ( I was playing through your "Thomas Porter 2: Beleaguered Fence" earlier today and what a tricky mission that is on expert difficulty! Almost threw the rig out the window, however... this is exactly what I'm looking for in a game. A challenge! )

I enjoyed watching this video. It reinforced my reasoning for continually playing older games or good remakes of older games. I got into Minecraft for ages, but now I can't play it without adding various mods that add temperature and thirst, making mining stone really slow, force you to keep your diet varied, remove the punching of trees and introduce flint shovels, picks and axes, make items fall flat to the floor instead of floating pickups so they get lost in the long grass, making torches burn out so you have to relight them, and various other things that add so many more challenging aspects to the game. I don't quite know why, but I prefer having to work with next to nothing to try and survive or get anywhere in a game. Like Project Zomboid where you will start the game with a fork or a spoon, and you'd be lucky to have a rolling pin nearby! Thief games have this to a degree because you really have to save your limited supply of arrows until you really need them, and The Dark Mod really brings this back, which is probably why I play it almost every day. I was playing the mission "Thomas Porter 2: Beleaguered Fence" earlier and almost threw my computer out of the window. I've put the mission on pause for now, but I will return to it... and I will complete it... and then and only then will I feel rewarded!

Or even a time limit when a guard will generally wake back up again, although depending where the guard has been hidden like under a shelf... they may not get back up too easily I guess. I've always liked the idea of an unconscious time limit, but this would be quite hard to put into the game. I don't normally like time limits on anything, however a reasonable time limit until the sun came up or something like this could work? I've seen fully functional clocks in some missions so the player could keep an eye on the time, or even have a pocket watch item as well!

As I voted "Other" on all three I shall explain... What do I think about objectives that limit my ability to KO AI? This could be contextual to the mission itself. If the mission's story rules are to sneak in and out of a mansion without being seen at all, and knockouts would giveaway that someone was there that night when stealing the Sceptre of Costsalot from Lord Ivan O'Locksondoors. A good way to not have to enforce a specific knockout limit would be for map designers to put in the guards with the special "I can't be knocked out" helmets in key locations perhaps? Although, I have played several missions with non-knockoutable guards, allowing me to choose whether or not to distract the guard from their post to drop a heavy crate on their head, thus possibly alerting even more guards if nearby! A mild issue that I have faced with missions where you are not allowed to knock out a single guard... you have to wait for ages and ages for the guards to patrol back and forth, waiting for that moment to creep across the hallway without being seen. This can get a little boring after a while, so I've bound [PgUp] and [PgDn] for "Timescale 2" and "Timescale 1"! What do you think about objectives that prohibit killing? This makes sense all round and also good to be mission dependant. If it were Garrett from Thief then this option should always be permanent because Garrett is not a killer, he's a thief! However, this is The Dark Mod and every mission has a story to it... so I think prohibiting killing is fine but it is down to the player's choice too. I prefer to play on expert every time because of the challenge, and not being allowed to kill guards is a personal choice I play by default. However the mission "Trapped!" is great fun because of having the option to once in a while go bow-crazy and headshot everyone for the lols! What do you think about "collect X loot" objectives? I don't mind too much because I usually grab the required amount to steal by the end of each mission, but there is always that extra bit that I missed and sometimes I've replayed missions again and again and still cannot find the actual total loot within each level. I'll admit I've even resorted to binding a key to "TDM_Show_Loot" and NoClip+NoTarget through the map because of simply needing to know where that remaining loot actually was! Terrible I know, but a settled mind is better than madness. Perhaps if a mission stated that the character that you are playing as required X-amount of loot to pay off this guy and that loan-shark and etc etc... this would make more sense. But then it IS a game after all, so as for collecting 100 rings in Sonic the Hedgehog is the thing to do to get rank "A", it makes sense to have to collect 700 loot on easy but 1500 loot on expert and so on. For that little extra realism, I've always wanted a "Loot Sack Weight" mechanic, where you have a limit for how much loot you can actually carry at once, before you should head back to the start location to drop off what you have found so far, or hide it in a bush as a loot pile to collect later and then return to where you got to in that mission. I would really like a mechanic like this, especially when I just stole 3 massive golden urns from a mantlepiece and then in my mind I'm thinking - "Where the hell am I carrying all this loot? In my Star Trek Elite Force Holo-Belt?" All in all I think these a good questions, and as long as a balance between good gameplay and strategy is met then each option can work! Example of how a "Loot Sack Limit" could look * Edited for spelling failures

This is too true. After gaming since 1986 I've watched how the "games industry" has developed and how over time it seems to be more about how to make more money whilst the true core of what gaming actually is seems to dwindle away sometimes. This is not always the case, but there is definitely an increase in linearity and "help me play this game" icons pointing you to what you need to do, follow the dotted line to the exit, "press A to complete the game" type thing. I find it a little sad that because of the rush involved to meet tight deadlines, things get borked and patched later, but still never be as good or polished as they could have been if we didn't have "money" perhaps?

And a greetings from me! In my opinion nothing really replaced the Thief shaped hole since Thief 2. I still need to complete Thief 3, which didn't quite feel the same to me. The latest Thief game is very different to what I expected and is just odd. The Dark Mod is most excellent however, and I agree with being blown away with the content and detail put into it. Even when getting the angle wrong when trying to blackjack someone and hitting the celing instead of the back of the dude's neck!

I would be happy to help out. A have quite the meticulous nature when it comes to these things. I'm currently playing through all of the fan missions by date of release, from oldest to newest, and logging any issues I find and short review. Finally completed the Heart of Lone Salvation. My god, what a mission... excellent however!

Thanks Grayman for your reply on this, makes very much sense indeed! I'm currently totally stuck in Thief's Den 3: Heart of Lone Salvation. Totally stuck. I like the fact that I am stuck however! I'm going to restart this one methinks, and attempt to pay more attention. There goes the weekend!

It would be a mission in itself to add such a lighting mechanic. It must be tricky, perhaps a little restricting, when adding any new developments or features to The Dark Mod due to how they could potentially break existing missions. I truly appreciate this entirely however because of this fact. So much work has already gone into this game and I simply cannot stop playing and replaying The Dark Mod because it is actually that fantastic! I've decided to even purchase some of those flickering LED candles to set up around my rig for Dark Mod sessions. Obsession... dedidcation... or just plain weird... I don't mind

This is a good point, although I've yet to play a mission that doesn't have at least one moveable candle. And of course some missions have the option to purchase a lantern at the start. I'm replaying through all the maps in 2.04 for a laugh so I will keep this in mind! [EDIT] So yeah, this one would be tricky to read but not impossible. In the first mission The Outpost there are 2 patrolling guards in this room. If you play on Expert Mode then you must not attract any attension at all else mission is failed. If this sort of lighting mechanic was implemented for readables, to be able to read the note on the wall you have to wait for one guard to go around the corner and the other guard to stand looking out the window. Then a quick-key to turn lantern on, right-click to read note, read the note quickly, right-click to stop reading, quick-key to lantern off before the guard turns around. (Fingers poised ready to Quick Load, haha!) I just tried this myself and it is do'able but very risky, especially if you're so hardcore you don't even want to Quick Save/Load!