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You'll be surprised to hear but I don't quite get it either. Based on my understanding, there are a few confounding factors that make this a challenge. 1. We did a lot of work to ensure that the "included missions" were made part of the install so first time players would have a curated experience. Moving the missions back to the mission database might require undoing that work. 2. It is entirely possible to add the missions to the mission database while also being included in the installer but doing this will invite a few problems: 2a. What if the user updates the mission and then finds that their TDM install is somehow borked. They might run the installer to repair it and this will revert the mission version. If they fail to update their mission after this revert they might have incompatible save games that cause crashes and confusion 2b. What if a user starts downloading a mission update and at the same time starts a TDM upgrade ? 2c. Users opening bug tickets for a base TDM version due to problems seen in the included mission that are no longer present in the updated one, thus making it more tedious to narrow down duplicate bug submissions. 2d. Players seeing the missions on the TDM missions download page and downloading the package to install in the FMS directory then seeing duplicates in the mission list because the downloads page renames the packages with hashed filenames. All the above challenges revolve around potential user error and even though it should be obvious not to do these things, we have to compare the above to the vast swaths of folks who are begging to include TDM into Steam because unpacking a zip file and running an installer executable within a folder is "too difficult and confusing". One thing that we have the ability to do is change the file in the 2.12 installer repo so that if users run the updater it will apply the new mission. This change would not be visible to users so they would not get any alert about it. We would just have to announce it and hope that players watch for TDM announcements. I am doubtful anyone would want to work on it but I suppose that there could be some way to pass some sort of signal to the mission downloader when included missions have been changed on the installer side so they get a different update indicator. Still would be kludgy because you'd either be telling the player to exit TDM and run the installer or making TDM invoke the installer internally. So that is my take on "why" based on my own knowledge. Of course, part of my inability to "understand it" is due to my incredulity that we need to cater to players who are so below the bar in computer literacy that they would inflict these problems on themselves in the first place. None of this is an official stance just my own take on why the proposal to "let two updater processes control the same files in the same folder" has been rejected ( other than that such designs usually horrify programmers on a primordial gut level and if you mention that any program that does this you will see any programmer in vicinity instinctively reach for headache or stomach medicine ).

Quick FAQ: What is this thread for ? It is for discussing the narrative elements of a fan mission you're working on, and how they tie into the gameplay and technical aspects of the mission. If you're stuck with developing the plot for your FM, or are unsure of how to continue, or have the feeling your writing is not up to snuff, you can always seek advice in this thread. Why did you start this in the Editor's Guild ? Truth be told, I was seriously considering starting this thread in the I Want to Help subforum, but then I noticed (and realised) that most of the FM development threads are in the Editor's Guild anyway. So, I decided to rather start this discussion over here, in order to avoid making it "orphaned". But I have a really minor storytelling question... Is it still okay to ask about it here ? Of course it is ! This is practically the only "official" thread on narrative design we have now, so feel free to ask about anything that's primarily related to the storytelling or characters of your FM, and so on... Do we already have any useful resources on narrative and storytelling design ? Oh, certainly. The Story and Plot Design article on our wiki, contributed by demagogue. You should definitely give it a read. Any other threads or articles you might recommend ? Sotha's Mission Design Tips article is also just as helpful as demagogue's (and quite entertaining in places). There's also the Inspiration Thread, providing mostly visual inspiration for FM building, and the Historical resources article, providing links and bibliography for topics related to period living and social history that could influence an FM's design and events. If you find any more in that vein, feel free to recommend them here, and I'll add them to an impromptu list. ---- Ladies and gentlemen, the thread is your's. ---- (Last updated: 18 April 2018)

Announcing the release of “A House of Locked Secrets” for The Dark Mod! Download Download the latest version of the Dark Mod here: http://www.thedarkmod.com/download-the-mod/ Download the mission here: Mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/download/4awe6e756m12p71/ahouseoflockedsecrets.pk4 Southquarter: http://www.southquarter.com/tdm/fms/ahouseoflockedsecrets.pk4Taaki: http://darkmod.taaaki.za.net/fms/ahouseoflockedsecrets.pk4Fidcal.com: http://www.fidcal.com/darkuser/missions/ahouseoflockedsecrets.pk4 The mission should also shortly be up on the in-game downloader. General Notes -A House of Locked Secrets is a campaign, with two levels. -The mission is also a sequel to the Dark Mod FM “Requiem”. While you don’t need to have played Requiem to enjoy this mission, it is recommended, as it will help you better understand the lore of this corner of the TDM universe. -There is a companion novella to this series, Shadowcursed, available at Amazon.com or Smashwords.com. If you beat this FM, you can get a coupon code for 50% off the price! -The map you get of the manor is an automap which tells you which room you are currently in. Use it, along with the compass to help find your way. -Most inventory items in the game can be dropped, so no need to carry them around after they are no longer of any use. -If you use noclip or other console commands while playing, there is a good chance that you will break the intended flow of gameplay. Credits Mapping and Readables: Gelo R. Fleisher Voice Acting: Amber Collins, Bikerdude, Commander, Goldwell, Mortem Desino Additional scripting: Obsttorte, SteveL Additional textures and assets: Bikerdude, Crowind, Fidcal, Flanders, Goldwell, Grayman, Kyyrma, Melan, Nielsen, Sotha, Springheel Additional map optimization: Bikerdude Custom Soundtrack: Sarah Eide - www.saraheide.com Additional Music: cmusounddesign, Gigagooga, Lee Rosevere, Leonardo Badinella, Marianne Lihannah, NewEonOrchestra, Sarah Eide, Tabias Scot, Zoro. Additional Sounds: club20sound, ERH, geoneo0, Grayman, kevinkace, nothayama, qubodup, SoundsExciting, speedygonzo, swiftoid, viznoman. Testers: Airship Ballet, AluminumHaste, Baal, Bikerdude, Deadlove, demagogue, Diego, Dunedain19, gnartsch, Goldwell, Lowenz, Lux, nbohr1more, Oldjim, PranQster, SteveL, Xarg A note from the author After a lot of work ‘A House of Locked Secrets’ is finally ready for everyone to play. More than anything else, this FM was a team project. If the official TDM campaign never gets released, you might consider this to be the unofficial one, as almost everybody on the core TDM team lent a hand toward its completion. Of the many contributors, I especially want to thank SteveL whose custom code turned what was just an idea in my head into the FM you now get to play. I also want to thank Bikerdude, who performed a lot of optimization work on the map, and Goldwell whose voice brought to life many of the mission’s characters. If you like the music in the FM, check out the work of Sarah Eide (www.saraheide.com) who composed most of the custom soundtrack. Also, Marianne Lihannah makes a return from Requiem with a few songs, so check out her work too (www.funeralsinger.net). They'd both love to hear from you, so if you liked their music, let them know! On a personal note, I hope that this FM will give you a few hours of enjoyment, and if it does, feel free to drop me a line either in this forum thread, my work blog, or via email. In the future, other writing and game projects seem set to take up a lot of my time, so I give permission for anyone (preferably the TDM team) to update both Requiem and A House of Locked Secrets to fix any bugs or compatibility issues. I just ask that fixes be limited to correcting for glitches or for issues that come up due to future TDM releases. I do give permission for people to make visual & gameplay changes too but ask that you release these changes in a separate version than my release, and I ask that you make no changes to the story, readables, and plot. With that all out of the way, I want to thank you again for downloading and playing ‘A House of Locked Secrets’; I hope you enjoy it. God bless, Gelo “Moonbo” Fleisher

This post differentiates between "gratis" ("at no monetary cost") and "libre" ("with little or no restriction") per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre * A libre version of TDM could: ** Qualify TDM for an article on the LibreGameWiki *** TDM is currently listed as rejected https://libregamewiki.org/Libregamewiki:Rejected_games_list because "Media is non-commercial (under CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0). The engine is free though (modified Doom 3) (2013-10-19)" ** Qualify for software repositories like Debian *** TDM is currently listed as unsuitable https://wiki.debian.org/Games/Unsuitable#The_Dark_Mod because 1) "The gamedata is very large (2.3 GB)", and 2) "The license of the gamedata (otherwise it must go into non-free with the engine into contrib)" and links to https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src/trunk/LICENSE.txt Questions: 1) tdm_installer.linux64 is 4.2 MB (unzipped), which is far from the 2.3 GB which is said to be too large. Yes, the user can use it to download data that is non-libre, but so can any web browser too. If the installer itself is completely libre, does anyone know the reason why it cannot be accepted into the Debian repository? 2) If adding the installer to the repository is not a viable solution, would it be possible to package the engine with a small and beginner friendly mission built only from libre media/gamedata into a "TDM-libre" release, and add user friendly functionality to download the 2.3 GB media/gamedata using "TDM-libre" (similar to mission downloading)? 3) Would such a "TDM-libre" release be acceptable for the Debian repository? 4) Would such a "TDM-libre" release be acceptable for LibreGameWiki? 5) Would the work be worth it? * Pros: Exposure in channels covering libre software (e.g. the LibreGameWiki). Distribution in channels allowing only libre software (e.g. the Debian repository). * Cons: The work required for the modifictions and release of "TDM-libre". Possible maintenance of "TDM-libre". I'm thinking that the wider reach may attract more volunteers to work on TDM, which may eventually make up for this work and hopefully be net positive. 6) Are there any TDM missions that are libre already today? If not, would anyone be willing to work on one to fulfill this? I'll contribute in any way I can. 7) I found the following related topics on the forum: * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/16226-graphical-installers-for-tdm/ (installing only the updater) * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/16640-problems-i-had-with-tdm-installation-on-linux-w-solutions/ (problems with installation on Linux) * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/17743-building-tdm-on-debian-8-steamos-tdm-203/ (Building TDM on Debian 8 / SteamOS) * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/18592-debian-packaging/ (Dark Radiant) ... but if there are other related previous discussions, I'd appreciate any links to them. Any thoughts or comments?

the firts thing i think of ! in the wiki the " available TDM-Missions " list shows contest relations , but i think it´s not mentioned for every Mission that has partaken on a contest ( ?!?) if trudnicki has found another resource with full listing : please report ! P.S. !!! there´s the : Fan Mission Contests page on wiki

Hi folks! Since today, long awaited features of mission management are available on our portal. Mission reviewing is also here at the same time! For more information check out the post here: https://www.thiefguild.com/news/1/9443/the-guild-of-creators-and-players Creator Account description: https://www.thiefguild.com/showcase/creator_account How to review missions: https://www.thiefguild.com/showcase/reviews

We are proud to announce the release of: The Dark Mod 2.12 ! The 2.12 development cycle introduced many large code overhaul projects. Most of these were to lay the groundwork for future fixes and optimizations. The final release is yet another leap in performance over the already impressive 2.10 and 2.11 releases. A full changelog can be viewed here, but some highlights include: The Dark Mod 2.12 is a major step forward for mission designers! The culling system has been extensively overhauled to ensure that your CPU and GPU are not wasting resources rendering unseen geometry, lights, and shadows. Some of our best map optimization experts have achieved similar performance gains to what this new culling system does but it is a rare skill and we have even managed to improve performance on missions that were generally regarded as “well optimized”. Mission authors both new and old can follow standard mapping practices with no need to dive deep into sophisticated optimization techniques even for some pretty challenging scenarios such as wide open areas and long views. Players will immediately notice many missions that have made their system struggle with FPS now may be running much more smoothly! Smoother controls for players! Also during the 2.12 development cycle, work has been done to make controls more seamless and accessible. Frob can now use hold or click actions to use items. Once you get used to the mechanic, it will be hard to go back to using a separate “use key”. Mantling is now smoother, faster, and less prone to cause the player to clip through geometry. Leaning is now more subtle and less prone to cause motion sickness. To reduce the tedium of shuffling knocked out AI around to search for loot, you can now configure TDM to automatically loot any frobbed AI. A special thanks must go out to community member Geep! Over the course of 2.12 development, Geep has created subtitles for nearly all AI barks along with developing testing tools and procedures for this gargantuan task! You can see these changes in action by changing the Subtitles setting to “On” ( rather than “Story” ) on the Audio settings page. Geep also provided substantial feedback for our GUI and subtitle design process and edited font data to improve text quality overall. Datiswous has complimented the massive work by Geep to create AI bark subtitles by creating mission story subtitles for a large number of missions. Thank you! Turrets are now natively supported in The Dark Mod and can be paired with Security Cameras! Finally, the nasty 2.11 bug that caused AI to allow arrows to pass through them at certain angles was fixed by Joebarnin! Your assassin style play-throughs should be far less frustrating. See also, our 2.12 Feature discussions: To UPDATE, simply run the tdm_installer.exe file in your darkmod folder. Note that tdm_update.exe is no longer supported, but you can download the new installer from the Downloads page if you don’t have it yet. Please be aware that old saved games will not be compatible with 2.12, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first! Also, some missions created prior to 2.12 may need to be updated so they will be playable in 2.12. Use the in-game mission downloader to check for updates.

so secrets are also - no - 2 secrets are Joke ?! but theres still a thievie challenge !!! : Grab the guards arrow - without suspicious ; even it won´t count in the stats . But tell me – why are these April fools so big on the data??? JackFarmers is twice the size – but 5 missions – and each is 10 times bigger

So I've been cleaning off updates on the missions page by updating and replaying them and have been having difficulty with this one. I don't know if there's a trigger broken or what. Aside from my issue listed in my spoiler, I found the update plays much smoother, so thank you for that. I realize this is an older mission so may not get fixed at this point, just thought I'd mention in case.

I've seen fun workarounds like that in other game modding as well. Years ago, maybe even a decade, some fella who was making a mod for Mount & Blade over at the Taleworlds forums revealed that he put invisible human NPCs on the backs of regular horse NPCs, then put the horse NPCs inside a horse corral he built for one of his mod's locations/scenes and then did some minor scripting, so the horses with invisible riders would wander around the corral. The end result was that it looked they're doing this of their own will, rather than an NPC rider being scripted to ride around the corral slowly. Necessity is the mother of invention. I don't know about the newest Mount & Blade game, but the first generation ones (2008-2022) apparently had some sort of hardcoded issue back in the earlier years, where if you left a horse NPC without a rider in its saddle, the horses would just stand around and wait and you couldn't get them to move around. Placing an invisible rider in their saddles suddenly made it viable again, at least for background scenes, of riderless horses wandering around, for added atmosphere. First generation M&B presumed you'd mostly be seeing horses in movement with riders, and the only horses-wandering-loosely animations and scripting were done for situations when the rider was knocked off their horse or dismounted in the middle of a battle. Hence the really odd workarounds. So, an invisible NPC trick might not be out of the question in TDM, even though you could probably still bump into it, despite its invisibility.

We didn't make the holidays (such a busy time of year) so here's a New Year's gift, an unusual little mission. Window of Opportunity Recover an item for a regretful trader out in a wilderness setting, and discover more! Available within the in-game mission downloader or: Download: http://www.thedarkmo...ndetails/?id=79 Alternative: https://drive.google...WTMzQXZtMVFBSG8 Some unorthodox gameplay on regular/ghost difficulties. (Arachnophobes might prefer short mode...) Please expect to need your lantern in regular and ghost modes! Short ("easy") mode is a smaller map, so if you are looking for areas others reference below, or 100% of the loot, you'll need to play on another mode. I wanted to create my first mission before I became influenced by too many others' ideas, and limited myself to what has been done before. As such, this mission is not set in a city/town, and has some features that are likely to be provocative. There's a section some really like, which others don't, either way I kept it short to not last too long. That being said, I hope you do find it fun! :-) Special thanks to those who provided valuable testing and feedback: Goldwell, Kyyrma, plotzzz, 161803398874989, PPoe & Bikerdude (who also contributed a sound). (Please remember spoiler tags to not expose things meant to be discovered by playing.) Like so: [spoiler]secrets[/spoiler] If you are having trouble finding the main objective, here's what to pay attention to in the mission for hints: There is a spot it's possible to get stuck on the ground in the corner by the cliff/rockfall where there's a rope laying on the ground, please take care if you poke around there!

I couldn't help thinking of another realism related suggestion, don't know if it was discussed before but it seemed like an interesting idea. If this were to be changed on existing lights by default, it would have minor gameplay implications, but the sort that make missions easier in a fair way. So... electric lights: Like the real ones of the era, they're implied to use incandescent light bulbs... the kind that in reality will explore and shatter upon the smallest impact, and which like real lamps are encased in glass or paper. In any realistic scenario, shooting a broadhead arrow at a lamp or even throwing a rock at it would cause it to go through the glass and break the light bulb inside. Is it wrong to imagine TDM emulating this behavior as a gameplay mechanic? Just as you can shoot water arrows at flame based lights to put them out, you'd shoot broadhead arrows at electric lights to disable them... you must however hit the glass precisely, there's no room for error and it must be a perfect shot. As a way to compensate for the benefit, AI can treat this as suspicious and become alert if seeing or hearing a lamp break, or finding a broken lamp at any time if that's deemed to provide better balance. A technical look at implementing this: Just as broadhead arrows can go and stick through small soft objects such as books, they should do the same if you hit the glass material on a lamp, while of course still bouncing off if you hit metal: Lamp glass would need a special material flag that sends a signal to the entity upon collisions but allows arrows to go through, unlike glass in other parts of the world which is meant to act as solid and changing that everywhere would break a lot of things. When pierced by an arrow, the lamp should immediately turn itself off while playing a broken glass sound and spawning a few glass particles. The glass material should be hidden if the model is a transparent surface, or replaced with a broken glass texture in case the glass is painted on a lamp model without an interior... obviously this would be done by defining a broken skin for the entity to switch to. This does imply a few complexities which should be manageable: Existing lamps supporting this behavior will need new skins and in a few cases new textures, the def must include a new skin variable similar to the lit / unlit skins in this case a broken skin. Any electric light may be connected to a light switch, we don't want toggling the switch to bring the light bulb back to life... as such a flag to permanently disable triggering the light from that point on would be required. For special purposes such as scripted events to reset the world, we should allow an event to unbreak lamps, setting their state back to being lit / unlit while re-enabling trigger toggling. What do you think about this idea and who else wants it? Would it be worth the trouble to try and implement? If so should it only be done for new lights or as a separate entity definition of existing ones, or would the change be welcome retroactively for existing missions without players and FM authors alike feeling it makes them too easy?

I am pleased to announce the release of our new fan mission, The Hare in the Snare: Part 1 Mission type: City Missions + Inn/Tavern Description: People are being abducted off the streets and a Watch Captain requires the services of a thief to help him find out why. Download link (v1.0.2-release): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYvM_u56wDB16uIlb7qgS_q3P24V69MO/view?usp=sharing Credits: Mapping and original characters: @Frost_Salamander Story, readables, custom models, voices and cinematics: @Kerry000 Menu title track produced and mixed by @JackFarmer with selected gigagooga sound samples Beta testers: @Cambridge Spy @Zerg Rush @Amadeus @Acolytesix @Lzocast @wesp5 @nbohr1more @Kerry000 @ate0ate @Wellingtoncrab @prjames Additional thanks: @Dragofer, @nbohr1moreand @peter_spyfor technical help @Springheel for the modules and tutorials @kingsalfor allowing @Kerry000to abuse his manbeast everyone else on Discord and the TDM forums who offered assistance Requirements and notes: This mission requires TDM 2.09. Earlier versions will probably work but you might see one or two missing models. You may experience some FPS drops in some areas with lower-end hardware. Mid-range and above should be fine. If you have issues, I highly recommend you use shadow maps instead of stencil (settings -> advanced -> shadows implementation). It makes a big difference. For 'Hard' and 'Expert' the light gem sensitivity has been increased by '1' (meaning easier for AI to detect you). Screenshots:

Thanks for the feedback @Rio_Walker As mentioned in other comments in this thread, the optional objective was meant to be for players who enjoy exploring every inch of the map. If all you want to do is complete the mission via the primary objective it's pretty straightforward. It was also meant to be sort of 'open world' in that if you explore everywhere you pick up little hints and bits and pieces and put them together at the end to solve that objective with. It wasn't meant to spoon feed the player. But again maybe not everyone enjoyed that approach. It was also kind of a knee-jerk reaction to players not liking 'linear' missions. But it seems some people still do like that And yeah, some players don't like big maps. I get that. I don't like playing them myself a lot of the time The issue with the bow crash is a known issue (not just with this mission) which we haven't got to the bottom of unfortunately:

Wow... the sheer verticality of the level makes my head spin. The fact that we can climb pipes (that I still couldn't jump up and grab, had to yoink a chair) blew my mind. I got stuck a few times, I couldn't for the life of me discover a way to enter Smythe's apartment. I knew it's possible to enter it, and I assumed I needed to enter it because of a few hints. I loved extra missions. Really felt like it expanded the world. But I'm still confused about the "panic" they showed.

I haven't played the mission yet, so, I can't comment on it. Regarding the criticism: I think it should also be allowed to note some things you saw as points of criticism. Actually, IMO, negative criticism is better than positive, because it points out what you maybe didn't think through thoroughly, or you simply didn't see when you created the mission on your own. I'm aware that there is a lot of work involved, and people do it in their spare time for their own or other people's pleasure. But, that really shouldn't be a reason to praise everything to the skies. Actually, I've seen my fair share of average missions which have been totally overrated. Again, that shouldn't knock anynone's work, and, I have no idea how this mission is. Just wanted to point out that noting negative things shouldn't be taken as discouraging, but rather the opposite. I've seen some mission authors for Dark Mod going from average to absolutely fantastic missions, because they learned what it takes to make good missions. It's an art, and obviously takes time to perfect.

Announcing the release of Sir Taffsalot's Sword. Summary This is my tribute to Sir Taffsalot (Gary Pugh), whom we recently lost. He was a valuable contributor in mission creation, beta testing, and idea contribution. You are tasked with recovering Sir Taffsalot's ceremonial sword, which has been stolen from him and spirited away to the mansion of one Lord Asher. While dealing with (or avoiding) Asher's guards, you need to find the sword and a couple special objects related to Sir Taffsalot. Since Asher isn't a nice fellow, there is (of course) the need to also find evidence he is up to no good. Download You can obtain a copy through the in-game downloader. It requires 2.05 or later. Build Time Roughly three weeks to build and three weeks to beta test. Thanks to my testers Amadeus, Bikerdude, and Epifire. I18N Initially, this mission is not ready for translation. As soon as I'm certain there are no killer problems, I'll produce an I18N-ready version. Enjoy!

Announcing the release of the first William Steele mission! Summary In the North is a mansion heist that takes place outside the town of Braedon, north of Bridgeport. William Steele is an adventurer from Bridgeport who has been away several years, working as a soldier/guard for one Lord Bascombe at his castle in Braedon. Lord Harckoff, a nasty fellow who lives in a renovated Builder church nearby, sees Bascombe as a threat to his shady business, and has put a price on Bascombe's head. Steele decides to visit Harckoff one night to see what he can do to prevent Bascombe's death. The William Steele Missions In the North is the first of several Steele missions. Altogether they'll tell a story of corruption, greed, and revenge. At some point, I'll start packaging them as a campaign, in addition to the single missions. Download This Mission can be obtained using the in-game loader. Look for WS1: In the North. Mission Details and Download: http://www.thedarkmo...ndetails/?id=65 Build Time About one year. Thanks Thanks to the TDM team for creating a terrific platform for storytelling and stealth gaming. Thanks to Bikerdude, Springheel, and AluminumHaste for beta testing, especially at a time when we were all busy dealing with the final phase of TDM 1.08. The Translators (Smallman, Overmann, and Sengu) are hard at work on translations for various languages, so thanks go out to them as well. Localized versions will be available after they're completed and tested. And thanks to YOU for playing! Known Issues This is a large non-linear mission. To ease the burden on slower systems, consider shutting doors behind you as you go. If you experience low frame rates, please consult the Performance Tweaks page on the Wiki. Performance Tweaks For very low end PCs I recommend the following settings: V-sync is offAA is offAniso is 4x or lowerAdvanced settings are simple/defaultPost processing is disabledAnyone having performance issues with TDM missions can put the following cvars into their Darkmod.cfg file. This will improve the framerate and stutter/chop when in-game, but may increase loading times a little. image_usePrecompressedTextures "1" image_useNormalCompression "2" image_useAllFormats "1" image_useCompression "1" image_preload "1" Important This mission requires TDM 1.08 or later. Repeat after me: "Read and explore, Read and explore". Most Importantly, Enjoy! Screenshots WS2: Home Again Steele's story continues with Home Again, which you can find here.

If by this you mean a series of missions in one pack, like the recent Thief Gold Black Parade campaign I'm a billion percent for this!! No offence to DM FM creators, I know one mission takes a lot of hard work, but I'm fed up of the 'one mission and out' type of missions to be honest. I crave a proper story for once with a series of missions and stuff, not just random associate says steal thing because reasons, oh and you have to steal all this loot but you can't spend it.

The coin is a little joke in the mission end stats. It exists solely to mock you, similar to the newspaper stating it's missing. There is no actual coin in the mission. Because it's missing, just like the newspaper says. You can clearly see how TDM players do not believe much in thieving-free missions. There has to be loot, right? Rather than pack their belongings and leave, they chase after a coin that does not exist, only because the stat screen tells them there is a coin even though there is none. TDM is a game about stealing, after all. There's no room left for locking your apartment, stacking your furniture onto a cart, and leaving. But perhaps sometimes that's all you can do. Maybe that is what you should do. Ignore the coin. Ignore the ugly stain on the wall, it's no good. Don't even look at it. Pack your belongings and forget. Ignorance is bliss.

Sadly, since "In Plain Sight" in 2022 08.07. there was no more new fan missions available in the Missions section of "thedarkmod.com". Is there any specific reason for this ? Is no one producing new missions anymore? Greetings Martin

After several months of hard (although very enjoyable) work, I’m proud to announce the release of my first FM - “Cole Hurst 1: Eaton”. Mission description In the northern town of Eaton, Lord Mayor Zelmer is hosting a lavish party at his luxurious estate to celebrate Eaton's establishment... The city's elite, a famous musician and even the Queen will be partaking in tonight's festivities. Screenshots Download “Cole Hurst 1: Eaton” should already be available for download in the game, but you can also grab a copy of version 1.0 from here. To install this copy, simply place the downloaded file named “ch1_eaton.pk4” in your “[the dark mod]/fms/” folder. Notes I would say this FM could primarily be considered a “traditional mansion heist” mission. These were by far my favorite type of Thief 1/2 levels which I have very fond memories of playing through as a child. I suppose this is my humble attempt to create something vaguely similar... I have tried my best to make the story, the readables and the conversations as interesting as I could and so I really do hope that some of you will find it enjoyable. The mission features: I already have some relatively concrete ideas for a follow-on mission in mind, so hopefully I will have time to continue my mapping efforts soon(ish) :) Contributions I have been overwhelmed by the amount of people interested in helping me with this mission. A huge thanks to each and every one of you! Story Kelly Hrupa Voice actors: twhalen2600 (AKA @Benny_the_guard) Kelly Hrupa Testers: @Acolytesix- brisk puzzle solver @duzenko - the man with the admin tools @JackFarmer - objective wrangler @Shadow - a certified spider-monkey who refuse to stay caged @Cambridge Spy - an eagle-eyed book-worm @wesp5 - eager candle-snuffer @madtaffer – readability advisor @prjames - spider assassin @suzy8track – book magician @datiswous – destroyer of crates I would also like to say a special thanks to @Dragofer who has been very helpful with debugging and general advice in cases where I had absolutely no idea what to do. @duzenko has also been very responsive to any game-related bugs that I’ve encountered during the beta phase and also thanks to @nbohr1more for handling this release for me. As I am completely new to mapping in general, I also found @Springheel‘s wonderful TDM New Mappers Workshop extremely helpful when I was first getting started, so thank you very much for creating it. Known bugs/issues While this mission has spent quite some time in beta testing, I’m sure that some of you will discover shortcomings that my wonderful beta testers and I have overlooked. In that case, please do get in touch and I will make sure to address it (to the best of my abilities) in a future update. There are unfortunately also a few (primarily cosmetic) things that I have been unable to solve – at least for this release: The small church model used in Gatwick square has low-resolution textures applied Some picture frames do not match the original frame after being stolen Strange looking shadows on the greenhouses in the garden Visible vertical lines on some interior walls Various gaps/holes in some of the models that I have chosen to use The female mansion lobby guard occasionally sound like a dude

Paying the Bills: 0 - Moving Day You've just heard a sweet tip. Get to work before the window of opportunity closes. Download Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hMqw99FgTk5jkezPnI1aaU2xX_gJ8fwo?usp=sharing Credits Assets: Amadeus - the Golden Lute STRUNK - new kitchen assets as well as fireflies & bats Alpha Testers: Amadeus, Baby Genius, Bienie, dragofer, Epifire, Jack Farmer, joebarnin, kingsal, NeonsStyle, Rotary Racer, The Dark One Beta Testers: Cambridge Spy, Shadow, Abusimplea, JackFarmer, thebigh, wesp5, Amadeus, kingsal, s.urfer, joebarnin, grayman, nbohr1more, prjames, AluminumHaste, Dragofer, datiswous, stgatilov, duzenko, Goldwell, Wellingtoncrab, If I forgot anyone PLEASE LET ME KNOW Notes - TDM 2.10 Beta 5 or later is REQUIRED to play this mission. - This is my first FM and took me roughly 4 years and 1000+ hours. I had originally planned a city map for my first FM, I even had an over-arching story set across 4 missions, but I decided to whip up a prequel to use as my "training-wheels protocol" for DarkRadiant before I move on to my magnum opus, hence why this one is #0. Subsequent entries will be on a micro scale compared to this map. - This FM implements the func_peek mechanic, allowing players to peek through any door that has a keyhole on it by leaning forward. PLEASE NOTE: This function has been known to cause crashes for a small number of players in the past, likely due to using the 32-bit version of TDM. At no point in this mission is it required to use the func_peek mechanic; it is purely optional, so feel free not to use it. - There are spiders - Suggestive themes/references - DISCLAIMER: This is a BIG mission by TDM standards, and has a lot of wide outdoor areas; performance may vary greatly. - Lots of plans for future updates, many ideas still left on paper. Download Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hMqw99FgTk5jkezPnI1aaU2xX_gJ8fwo?usp=sharing (drop the folder into darkmod/fms) Many thanks, have fun!

I plan to gradually try out all or most of the different path node types and adjust them depending on the interaction. Though I don't plan to use it in this particular mission, I have a keen interest in the follow type, as I'll want an NPC to follow the player character in another, future FM I'd like to create. Never too soon to try out various functions while I'm already learning new FM-building skins after a long hiatus. Thank you for the suggestion. I completely forgot about the location system ambients as an option ! A few years back, when I was testing various stuff in DR, I did actually use that approach instead, once or twice. I haven't used DR much in recent years, so I eventually forgot about setting it up that way. Acknowledged, and I'll look into it. It'll save a lot of time concerning the audio side of the mission. My first few missions won't have much a natural environment, they'll largelly be small and focused on buildings or urban spaces, so I won't need to bother with detailed audio for rivers yet. I have an outdoor FM planned for later (it's in the pre-production phase), and I'll have a good reason to study it in greater detail. It's actually okay, I don't reallt need rectangular speakers. Given that I've been reminded I can set a main ambience for each room - something I did know before, but forgot, after not working properly with DR these past few years - I'll do just that, and use the speakers for more secondary ambience concerns. Handy indeed. A rectangular shape would be easier to remember. I'll just use the filters in the editor to put away the speakers if I ever the get the impression they're blocking my view. Also, I don't actually mind the shape all that much. As you and the others say, the size/radius of the speaker is the actual key aspect. I'm a bit disappointed it's seemingly not possible to resize speakers the same way you can resize brushes or certain models, though you can still tweak the radius numerically, manually. As long as I can work with that, the actual shape of a speaker isn't really important. My main concern is expanding the minimum and maximum radius areas to an extent where they'll be audible for most for all of the respective areas the player will visit, rather than fading away quickly once the player leaves the hub of the speaker behind. As was already said above, I'll use the different utility to set the main ambient for the individual rooms, rather than a manually placed speaker, and I'll reserve the speakers for additional sound effects or more local ambience. I've already added some extra parameters to the speakers I'm testing out in my FM, so I'll take a look at those soon, though I'll deal with the main room ambience settings first. I'd like to thank everyone for their replies. While I'm not surprised by the answers, I'm now more confident in working with the path node and speaker entities. On an unrelated sidenote to all of this, the same in-development FM where I'm testing the speaker placement and range was tested yesterday for whether an NPC AI can walk from the ground floor all the way to the topmost floor, without issues. Thankfully, there have been no issues at all, and the test subject - a female mage, whom I won't use in the completed FM, sadly - did a successful first ascent of the tower-like building that'll serve as the main setting. (That's all your getting from me for now, concerning the FM contents.)