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Hello. There's one suggestion I wanted to make in regard to potential new entities and assets. I noticed there are now rat and horse NPC's, which can be placed on maps and offer a nice touch. Since the action usually takes place in towns, and players can break into people's houses or encounter civilians, I was wondering if cats and dogs could ever be expected. I think they'd add some nice extra detail to towns, and could even have a few roles in regard to gameplay. I was thinking of something among these lines: Cats: Can run about as fast as rats, and have the ability to somewhat block the player (slightly impede movement). Additionally, they can jump and may bump into objects... causing a noise that can alert guards, just like the player throwing objects at walls does. Obviously it should be a very small alert... we wouldn't want an entire army / gang running around the place because a cat bumped into a vase Dogs: Slower than cats and rats but still faster than players, blocks movement like a human NPC. I believe there should be two categories: Dogs that attack, and dogs that only bark (potentially attacking if attacked first). An enemy dog that barks can make a lot of noise, and alert guards from afar to your location.

I've been wondering whether it might make sense to consider adding child NPC's to character arsenal of TDM. If of course we had a model artist wanting to create one, and a real life teen willing to record a new voice package. Currently I'm thinking of two categories: Children from poor families who are dirty and dressed in rags, and children from rich families who are dressed as lords. Art wise, I think it would add more detail and diversity to the populations of towns, which is the same reason why I suggested pets a while ago. It could also help put more accent on family life in the medieval age, as actual families (man + woman + children) could be found living in homes which the player can visit. Another reason is that the story of a mission might want to include kids as actors, especially since we have artists who create TDM missions based on books. Hint: Until official child NPC's would exist, a hack to do this with the existing ones might be possible. You could create an entity definition which scales down the model and bounding box of a normal NPC, then scales the head up slightly to make it larger than the body. Main problem is they would still use the voices of adults, which would probably sound very weird in most cases. Also, because I know someone will eventually bring this up: I'm aware that certain people will find the idea controversial, simply because kids could (like every other NPC) get killed by the player, which is known to make some people angry even when it's just art. Hopefully everyone understands this is a suggestion intended for extra detail, and to give more artistic choices to the mapper. Unless the mission will require it as an objective, which I seriously doubt anyone will do, no one will have to watch kids die unless they intentionally want to be evil. So that's hopefully out of the way.

I assume this should already be possible... but I haven't seen it enabled in any missions so far, and was curious how to do it. Is there a way to make guards which are knocked out (not killed) wake up after a given interval, and sound the alarm once they realize they've been blackjacked? Separately, can an NPC wake up an unconscious ally when (s)he sees one and checks the body?

One of the many things I love about TDM is that its mechanics are realistic and historically accurate, but not necessarily its missions and assets. There are glowing mushrooms, giant spiders, not to mention the many variations of undead... used inside stories about spells and magic. I'm really curious whether this department could hold even more plans for the future... especially in the era of NPC's. Any chance of seeing more mythical creatures, either added to TDM or distributed as mods? The first that comes to mind are dragons. Especially because TDM looks so much like Skyrim from a graphical perspective, and this would be a neat extra resemblance. But I assume they're out of the question at this stage. Since I doubt there is an AI for flying yet (not even birds exist), and large creatures might not have a purpose in the Thief gameplay TDM goes for. Despite being potentially useful to make outdoor areas unsafe, and encouraging the player to stay in the dark outside. I guess they're still a thought however, given how popular they are in nearly every medieval fantasy story, which could now be "written" inside TDM as well. At a smaller scale, there are a few more creatures I wanted to speak my mind about. Trolls are one thing TDM could probably use... in regard to assets of course, not players Goblins come close, like the "my precious" guy in Lord of the Rings There could also be tree people (walking trees) as depicted by some fantasy films, not to mention stone golems. Lastly, witches and faeries and mermaids (in their case for decorative purposes since they couldn't walk) might be another idea, as well as easy to do since they could be based on the existing character models. Are any of these ideas viable at all, or perhaps more could be added if I missed any? I think TDM's existing gameplay and art could do for some lovely fantasy missions, as maps using the undead NPC's have probably proven already.

I know I've made several threads about different features, so I hope I'm not overdoing it. There is one more thing I've been wondering about, which is also relevant to my plans to make TDM maps in the future. I was wondering to what extent TDM can allow dialogues between players and NPC's. Sure, I've seen missions in which an NPC talks toward the player when he gets close, and there are occasionally people conversing about mission related information which you can eavesdrop on. There are however a few points I'm specifically interested in, and how they must be done in scripts or DarkRadiant: - Exchanging sentences between two or more NPC's and / or the player: An NPC talking by itself is pretty easy and obvious. But what about making multiple characters have a conversation... in which each one plays several voice files in order, while waiting for the other to finish and do the same? Further more, what about conversations between an NPC and the player... where the player hears himself talk, then the NPC says his / her sentence, then the player talks again, and so on? I've seen inter-NPC conversations in some TDM missions, but was curious how the mapper must do it. - Choices: This is the part that interests me most. Does scripting currently allow the player to choose how to continue a dialogue, similar to how this is done in some 2D RPG games? What this means is that during an exchange of sentences, the conversation pauses and the player gets a list of options. For example, and NPC can tell the player "Do you want this mission", then the player could either press the 1 key to select "Yes, I'll get to it" or 2 to select "Not now, I'll have to think about it"... of course influencing whether or not he receives a new objective. - Subtitles: Triggering text to show on the screen when an NPC starts talking should be an easy thing. But for subtitles to work, this text must be renewed once the other participant starts to speak, and expire at the appropriate time after the conversation ends. Is this possible to do currently... for dialogues as well as characters idly talking or yelling when they're alerted? - Translations: I noticed that TDM has a system to translate missions to various languages. I wanted to know how much it covers: Can you only translate text found on notes, or also character voices and subtitles (if they exist)? And does the mission need to be edited in DarkRadiant for this, or can people download and select translation packages for any mission individually, which can change text and voice content? That might be tricky if voices aren't calculated in realtime, since it also changes the duration of voice files.