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Hopefully, this feature returns for 2.14! There is a special engine-builtin image called _menuLastGameFrame, and every time player switches from the game into the main menu, the latest game screenshot is saved into it. Note that screenshot does not contains HUD, game console, subtitles, readables, etc. This image can be used in materials displayed in in-game main menu. In the simplest case you can just use textures/common/menuLastGameFrame --- this is core material which uses the image as is. If you want some custom postprocessing on top of it, you are welcome to create a custom material. Then you define a custom menu background in mainmenu_background_custom.gui: windowDef BackgroundGameFrame { rect 0, 0, 640, 480 background "textures/common/menuLastGameFrame" BACKGROUND_DEFAULT_BEHAVIOR(BackgroundGameFrame) } And configure the menu backgrounds to use only this one (mainmenu_custom_defs.gui /// In-game menu (game being played). /// Unlike "EXTRAMENU", the left half of the screen is well visible in these states. #define MM_BACKGROUNDS_MAINMENU_INGAME BackgroundGameFrame /// Extra screens of default menu (game NOT started): objectives, etc. /// Almost the whole screen is occluded by parchments in these states. #define MM_BACKGROUNDS_EXTRAMENU_INGAME BackgroundGameFrame This is tracked as https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6608#c17097

Angling along alleyways, gliding among gamblers, fleecing the financiers, and lip-locking the ladies... Here's the prequel to the earlier-released "Away 1: Air Pocket". That was a bite-sized nautical adventure, but this, the back story, is a full-featured offering. Version 2 (V2) Now Available (2022/03/24). Also BONUS illustrated document: Making of Away 0's Video Cutscenes Why Version 2? V2, built under TDM 2.10, is primarily a spit-and-polish release with little impact on the storyline. While a few of the many changes will be obvious to someone doing a re-visit, most are minor improvements. Also, you can now replay cutscenes without needing a workaround. For more, see the Release Notes. Probably you should wait until after you've played the game at least once to check the docs below out, to avoid getting too many hints. if you get stumped, the Maintenance Guide may be helpful, or the forum thread here. Additional Documents, Available Here and Within the .pk4 These are also included within the .pk4 in the /supplementals/docs/ folder: Away 0 V2 Credits & Acknowledgements.docx Now crediting those with suggestions about V1 Away 0 V2 Maintenance Guide.docx Includes information for potential translators Away 0 Use of Historic Paintings.docx Unchanged from V1 Additional Documents, Available Here Only Away 0 V2 Release Notes - Changes from V1 Release.docx Of most interest to folks giving feedback on V1 BONUS (and NSFW): Making of Away 0's Video Cutscenes.docx Alternative Downloads It is recommended to simply use your installed TDM's mission downloader menu to get this FM (now V2). But if you want to bother with a manual install, here's a link to fetch it: away0.pk4 Version 2 While Version 2 is dmap'd under 2.10, it should still work under 2.09; there are no 2.10-only features used. If you run into problems under 2.09, you can reinstall the old version from here (for a while): away0.pk4 Version 1 (original). Does not includes the Dec 16 2021 patch for then-upcoming TDM 2.10

Mandrasola is a small sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter steals some herbal products from a smuggler. The mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank Bikerdude, BrokenArts and Ocn for playtesting and voice acting. Thanks goes naturally to everyone contributing and making TDM possible. This mission occurs chronologically before the Knighton's Manor, making it the first mission in the Thomas Porter series. Events in chronological order are: Mandrasola, The Knighton's Manor, The Beleaguered Fence, The Glenham Tower and The Transaction. The winter came early and suddenly this year. Weeks of strong blizzards and extremely harsh cold weather hit Bridgeport hard. With the seas completely frozen, a rare occurence indeed, most of the City harbor commerce has stopped completely. Vessels are stuck in the ice and no ship can leave or enter the City, resulting in the availability imported goods declining and their prices skyrocketing. One of these imported items is Mandrasola, a rare herbal product, which is imported overseas from the far southern continents. Mandrasola has its uses in alchemical cures and poisons, but mostly this substance is used for its narcotic qualities by commoners and even the nobility. The problem with Mandrasola is that excessive use is extremely addicting and the withdrawal effects are most grievious. Many are utterly incapable of stopping using Mandrasola and are transformed into quivering human ruins if they do no get their daily dose. And now this expensive and rare substance is running out from the whole City. Me and my fence, Lark Butternose, would love to grab this monopoly to ourselves: selling the last few doses in the City would probably be worth a fortune. According to Lark's sources, there remains only one smuggling lord who still has Mandrasola in stock. The problem is that this individual maintains an exclusive clandestine operation and only supplies a few nobles. Despite our best information gathering efforts we couldn't learn who the smuggler is and where he or she operates. Luckily we have an alternate plan. While searching for Mandrasola related information, we learned that a noblewoman called Lady Ludmilla is addicted to the substance and has paid high prices for small amounts of it. We also know that she has visited frequently someone in the Tanner's Ward waterfront, and since she goes to the area personally we believe she is visiting the smuggler. The plan is simple: I must monitor Ludmilla's most likely entryway to the Waterfront and then follow her to the smugglers hideout. I'd better be very careful around Ludmilla. She must not realise I'm following her or she probably won't lead me to her dealer. Hurting her is also out of the question. After she leads me to the smuggler's hideout, I can take my time to break in carefully and steal all the Mandrasola I can find. While I'm there it wouldn't be a bad idea to grab some loose valuables as well. I've now waited in the blistering cold for a few hours already. Looks like there are a few city watch patrols in the area to complicate matters... I think I heard a womans voice beyond the north gate. That must be lady Ludmilla, I haven't seen many ladies in these parts. I'd better get ready.. Links: Use the ingame downloader to get it. WARNING! Someone always fails to use spoiler tags. I do not recommend reading any further until you've played the mission.

Complaint From Players The player must pick up candles before extinguishing them, and then the player must remember to drop the candle. The player must drag a body before shouldering it (picking it up), and the player must remember to frob again to stop dragging the body. The player finds this annoying or easy to make mistakes. For players who ghost, some of them have the goal of returning objects back to their original positions. With the current "pick up, use item, and drop" system, the item might not return easily or at all to its original position. For example, a candlestick might bounce off its holder. (See player quotes at the bottom.) Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6316 Problems to Solve How can the "pick up" step be eliminated so that the player can directly use or interact with the item where it is in the game world? How can so much key pressing and mouse clicking be eliminated when the player wants to directly use an item? How can candles be extinguished and lanterns toggled off/on without first picking them up? How can bodies be shouldered without first dragging them? Solution Design Goals Make TDM easier for new players while also improving it for longtime players. Reduce tedious steps for common frob interactions. Make it intuitive so that menu settings are unnecessary. Do not introduce bugs or break the game. Terms frob -- the frob button action happens instantly. hold frob -- the frob button is held for 200ms before the action happens. (This can be changed via cvar: 200ms by default.) Proposed Solution Note: Some issues have been struckthrough to show changes since the patch has been updated. Change how frobbing works for bodies, candles, and lanterns. For bodies: Frob to shoulder (pick up) a body. Second frob to drop shouldered body, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Hold frob (key down) to start drag, continue to hold frob (key down) to drag body, and then release frob (key up) to stop dragging body. Also, a body can be dragged immediately by holding frob and moving the mouse. For candles/lanterns: Frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. Hold frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. For food: Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to eat food. For other items: No change. New cvar "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"200" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or extinguish. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Benefits Bodies: New players will have less to learn to get started moving knocked out guards. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players have played several missions before realizing that they could shoulder a body instead of dragging it long distances. Frob to shoulder body matches Thief, so longtime Thief players will find it familiar. Second frob drops a shouldered body. Players still have the ability to both shoulder and drag bodies. Compatible with the new auto-search bodies feature. Dragging feels more natural -- just grab, hold, and drop with a single button press. There is no longer the need to press the button twice. Also, it's no longer possible to walk away from a body while unintentionally dragging it. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Candles: New players will have less to learn to get started extinguishing candles. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players didn't know they could extinguish candles by picking them up and using them. Instead, they resorted to throwing them to extinguish them or hiding them. Hold frob to extinguish a candle feels like "pinching" it out. Once a candle is picked up, players still have the ability to manipulate and use them the same way they are used to in TDM v2.11 and earlier. For players who ghost and have the goal of putting objects back to their original positions, they'll have an easier time and not have to deal with candles popping off their holders when trying to place them back carefully. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Issues Bodies: Frob does not drop a shouldered body, so that might be unexpected for new players. This is also different than Thief where a second frob will drop a body. "Use Inv. Item" or "Drop Inv. Item" drops the body. This is the same as TDM v2.11 and earlier. This is the price to pay for being able to frob (open/close) doors while shouldering a body. Patch was updated to drop body on second frob, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Candles: Picking up a candle or lantern requires a slight delay, because the player must hold the frob button. The player might unintentionally extinguish a candle while moving it if they hold down frob. The player will need to learn that holding frob will extinguish the candle. The player can change the delay period via the "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar. Also, when the cvar is set to a delay of 0, the behavior matches TDM v2.11 and earlier, meaning the player would have to first "Frob/Interact" to pick up the candle and then press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish it. Some players might unintentionally extinguish a candle when they are trying to move it or pick it up. They need to make sure to hold frob to initiate moving the candle. When a candle is unlit, it will highlight but do nothing on frob. That might confuse players. However, the player will likely learn after extinguishing several candles that an unlit candle still highlights. It makes sense that an already-extinguished candle cannot be extinguished on frob. The official "Training Mission" might need to have its instructions updated to correctly guide the player through candle manipulation training. Updating the training mission to include the hold frob to extinguish would probably be helpful. Similar Solutions In Fallout 4, frob uses an item and long-press frob picks it up. Goldwell's mission, "Accountant 2: New In Town", has candles that extinguish on frob without the need of picking them up first. Snatcher's TDM Modpack includes a "Blow / Ignite" item that allows the player to blow out candles Wesp5's Unofficial Patch provides a way to directly extinguish movable candles by frobbing. Demonstration Videos Note: The last two videos don't quite demonstrate the latest patch anymore. But the gist is the same. This feature proposal is best experienced in game, but some demonstration videos are better than nothing. The following videos show either a clear improvement or that the player is not slowed down with the change in controls. For example, "long-press" sounds long, but it really isn't. Video: Body Shouldering and Dragging The purpose of this video is to show that frob to shoulder a body is fast and long-press frob to drag a body is fast enough and accurate. Video: Long-Press Frob to Pick Up Candle The purpose of this video is to show how the long-press frob to pick up a candle isn't really much slower than regular frob. Video: Frob to Extinguish The purpose of this video -- if a bit contrived -- is to show the efficiency and precision of this proposed feature. The task in the video was for the player to as quickly and accurately as possible extinguish candles and put them back in their original positions. On the left, TDM v2.11 is shown. The player has to highlight each candle, press "Frob/Interact" to pick up, press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish, make sure the candle is back in place, and finally press "Frob/Interact" to drop the candle. The result shows mistakes and candles getting misplaced. On the right, the proposed feature is shown. The player frobs to extinguish the candles. The result shows no mistakes and candles are kept in their original positions. Special Thanks @Wellingtoncrab was instrumental in improving this feature during its early stages. We had many discussions covering varying scenarios, pros, and cons, and how it would affect the gameplay and player experience. Originally, I had a completely different solution that added a special "use modifier" keybinding. He suggested the frob to use and long-press frob to pick up mechanics. I coded it up, gave it a try, and found it to be too good. Without his feedback and patience, this feature wouldn't be as good as it is. Thank you, @Wellingtoncrab! And, of note, @Wellingtoncrab hasn't been able to try it in game yet, because I'm using Linux and can't compile a Windows build for him. So, if this feature isn't good, that's my fault. Code Patch I'll post the code patch in another post below this one so that folks who compile TDM themselves can give this proposal a try in game. And, if you do, I look forward to your feedback! Player Complaints TTLG (2023-01-10) Player 1: TDM Forums (2021-03-13) Player 2: Player 3: TDM Forums (2023-06-17) Player 4: TDM Discord (2021-05-18) Player 5: TDM Discord (2023-02-14) Player 6: Player 7: Player 8:

Hey guys, Haven't played in a while. Another question. In episode 1, I got to the painting opened it up, but couldn't grab the painting. I opened the glass door... Is there something wrong with her nose? Thought there may be a diamond or some thing, I can't do anything with it. It's just a grey spot. Another question, when I now just downloaded episode 3, does that incorparate to the old one from 2024 or do I have to start all over again?can you tell me which buttons to use to the next level with the last Vengince of this year 2026? I don't wanna do 1 again that was so confusing.

@Mike__ could you please put this in spoiler tags?

This looks really cool, amazing work in my opinion: https://www.moddb.com/mods/thieves-guild I'm surprised that it flew completely under the radar. I hadn't heard about it until today - just by coincidence I saw it on the TTLG Discord. From the footage available I would say, a Thief game similar to Deadly Shadows created with the original Unreal Engine. Apparently, the base game is available on GOG, however, I cannot find it there. Plus, according to ProtonDB not fully functional on Linux systems. EDIT: Here is a game play trailer from 8+ years ago (the development of the game took quite some time), there seem to be RPG elements as well: Edit 2: This seems to be a project our forum member @Jetrellis heavily involved in. Congratulations on the release! You have been working 10+ years on this? Truly a superhuman effort!

I recently found this 2022 album of environmental sound ambience (no music) on Soundcloud, by an author going by the moniker of "Cyberwave Orchestra". It's likely not royalty-free and you have to buy it and such, but I think it might be useful for FM authors if they want a few more custom ambient soundscapes for their FMs. The tracks loop. Having listened to the album, I think the most useful for TDM FM purposes would be the sound ambience of outdoors nature ("Mountain Canyon", "From Dusk Till Dawn", "The Swamps at Night", the "Cursed Lands", "Cursed Lands 2" tracks), underground spaces ("Secret Cave 2"), maybe industrial ("The Great Mine" and "The Great Mine 2", I suppose), dungeon/prison spaces ("Dungeon of Sorrow", "Dungeon of Madness", "Chambers of Hell (No Boiling)", "Chambers of Hell 2") and some of the rural ambience (the "Fishing Village", "Fishing Village At Night" ambience tracks, "Summer Night Near The Village"). The tracks with more urban sound ambience aren't bad, but might not be quite what we need for most TDM mission night time town/city ambience. IMHO, they feel like mostly daytime ambience. The two "Port Town" and "Port Town (No Bells)" ambience tracks seem by far the best fit for town ambience of TDM. "Village on a Windy Day" could work for dusk and the early evening, but not night. "Onboard the Ship (No Voices)" might work for a ship docked in port at night time, but it might feel a bit loud to FM-builder tastes. I'd suggest lowering the volumes and doing similar tweaks.

A recent thread of discussion has cropped up in the TDM Discord channel and a couple forum threads ( this comment and the general discussion after it came to mind) about the usability and efficacy of Flashbombs in TDM. To wit, most people seem to think they're kinda bad because they're just a stun, which still requires you to hide in a very narrow time frame and then wait for the AI to cool off after use. One of the big upsides of flashbombs in TG/T2 was that, if you had alerted human enemies chasing you, you could drop a flashbomb and then turn around and blackjack them to non-lethally remove them from play. It was an inventory-limited opportunity to recover from failure and continue playing the game, as opposed to just reloading a save. This is a fun and proactive interaction, and I propose that we add it to TDM. Specifically, I think this can be accomplished with minimal code. After a read through the public TDM git repository, I think the most appropriate change would be to adjust the condition here: https://github.com/stgatilov/darkmod_src/blob/ac0a286561630eefee1cbb44d09d77128cd3d8e7/game/ai/AI.cpp#L11892 to read as follows: if ((GetMoveType() == MOVETYPE_SLEEP || // grayman #3951 GetMind()->GetState()->GetStr() == "Blinded") && // proposed - maybe there's a better way to write this condition like checking the type or something? ((minDotVert != 1.0f) && (minDotHoriz != 1.0f))) // cos(DEG2RAD(0.0f)) indicates elite faceguard helmet { Currently, this check does not pass for blinded AIs and they move to the if-else branch at L11903, and since they're very alert because they were actively chasing the player, they cannot be blackjacked. This change should give a flashbomb-blinded AI the same knockout vulnerability angle as a sleeping AI. Helmeted human AIs (and undead/magical AIs because they can't enter that particular mind state) retain their blackjack immunity, and everyone else can be clunked in the face as a reward to the player for spending a limited resource, not flashing themselves, and having the quick thinking to turn around and draw the blackjack. The blinded mind state lasts for about 8 seconds (I forget where I found that but its a hardcoded magic number in a Damage() function somewhere), which feels a bit short but about right, and then when the state changes the player's window of opportunity is lost. My brain kinda glazed over when I looked at the SVN checkout+compilation.txt instructions, but if I can help test or debug this with a little hand holding I'd be happy to do so.

Ah, I thought so, about it not being among the core assets. Bikerdude's old Business as Usual FM and Bienie's The Night of Reluctant Benefaction FM both had it, so I'll probably poke around those FM files. I'm not really making a holiday FM - yet - but I'd like to put those assets aside for when I do make a somewhat holiday-themed mission in the near future. Thanks for confirming I won't find it in the core game assets.

Ulysses 2: Protecting the Flock By Sotha The mission starts some time after the events of Ulysses: Genesis, and continues the story of Ulysses. It is a medium sized mission with a focus on stealthy assassinations and hostage liberation. BUILD TIME: 12/2014 - 05/2015 CREDITS The TDM Community is thanked for steady supply of excellent mapping advice. Thanks goes also to everyone contributing to TDM! Voice Actors: Goldwell (as Goubert and Ulysses), Goldwell's Girlfriend (as Alis) Betatesters: Airship Ballet, Ryan101. Special Thanks to: Springheel and Melan (for proofreading). Story: Read & listen it in game. Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwR0ORZU5sraRGduUWlVRmtsX3c/view?usp=sharing Other: Spoilers: When discussing, please use spoiler tags, like this: [spoiler] Hidden text. [/spoiler] Mirrors: Could someone put this on TDM ingame downloader? Thanks!

Hypothetically if Ray casting was used to bake efficiency into the brushwork itself it would make the penalty of a forward renderers lighting under id Tech 4 more agreeable. If Gemini AI is even half right this state of content efficiency would make id Tech 4 10-20 times more efficient per watt than Unreal Engine 5. For mobile platforms you are sitting on one of the best game engines on Earth. Of course I've yet to find a mapper that's willing to spend 3 to 4 years refactoring an entire commercial products slop. From the 13 objects overlapping in space, to decals hidden behind walls, entire rooms unused, brush faces behind other brushes. I'm the first. The ability to automate what I've done even just 90% would take the weaknesses of id Tech 4 and turn them into strengths. There is nothing faster than precomputation. If you can reverse engineer the flexibility of modern game engines without the per frame overhead it's going to curbstomp Unreal Engine 6 in raw efficiency. You also would be taking the former Chief Technical Officer of Metas core design and making it achieve what hasn't yet by industry. They probably would be knocking at your door with offers to commercialize or at minimum rush to replicate your work. They are all in in Alternate Reality Virtual Reality. Too bad their 5% GPU utilization offended one of their best employees. It's because thermal throttling boost behavior modern game engine inefficiencies and battery life. The Dark Mod could be a technology demonstrator that can do things modern game engines super can't. My texture pack 60GB+ (Prey 2006 Remake) is entirely custom. 5120x5120, 7168x7168, 9216x9216, 10,240x10240 and beyond. My texel resolution is extremely uniform and optimized at point blank mip map 0 for human vision. So it's literally a 2002 game engine beating id Tech 8 in asset resolution. Texture streaming doesn't like custom resolutions. Nor do development teams. It's just another way id Tech 4 is superior to modern game engines in a not abstract way. The general public is not aware of how inefficient modern game engines are or how much technical debt they tolerate. It's a more interesting topic to an engineer than a entertainment seeking random individual admittedly. There are inherent advantages to the older methods that are incredibly underappreciated. If I can motivate some of the software engineers to develop this capability that would be rather useful. Especially since it's already in part been done to bake shadows into Doom 3. Which in part defeat the purpose of unified lighting. But it's an existence proof. If you would like to see my 60GB file in its development state that can be arranged. But you also better have 24GBs of video memory. Most people will opt for lower resolution packs when generated by my Python scripts. The ability to hit per pixel 4k point blank is not just overkill. It's a measuring rubric.

Hello everyone! I'm excited to bring you Cauldron of the Gods, the second mission in the Volta series. This mission is large, so I'd expect anywhere from 1.5 - 2+ hours depending on your play style. **Hard and Expert difficulties increase AI awareness, patrols, and amount of health potions in the level.** Version 2.3 (requires 2.12) Available in the in-game downloader or HERE Credits: Vocals: Andrew Bartmess - The Thief / Narrator Goldwell - Bellero / Drunk Nobleman Yandros - The Manbeasts Modeling: Epifire - Builder props Drdocker - Rock models **See cauldron_v1/models/model_credits.txt for full list. Music Credit: Ghast, Gigagooga, Sephy, Spadey **See cauldron_v1/sound/sound_credits.txt for full list. Scripting help: Obsttorte, SteveL Special thanks to these awesome beta testers: Bikerdude, Boilder's_hiss, Epifire, DrDocker, FinalBoss, Goldwell, Judith, Springheel New to TDM? -I'd recommend playing the tutorial and Volta 1: The Stone before playing this this mission. Stuck or having a problem? Tips: A couple screen shots: I hope you enjoy it! -Kingsal

How do I get into the room? I can reach the balcony fine, but then neither the side with the red light nor the roof seems accessible. PS: After an eternity with ~10 fps, the game recovered into the low 20s. I have no idea whether there is one specific trigger or if this just happens after a while (a loooong while). Also, is there a list of the cheese circles? I'm running around with the last piece and have absolutely no idea what I missed.

Ok cool. Just tested Thieves Guild 1.02 with the GOG Rune Gold (1.07) version, in Linux via Lutris. Super easy to install. 1. Install Rune Gold via Lutris, I use winxp 32bit as installer preset. You select the installer ( setup_rune_gold_2.0.0.5.exe ) file that can be found in the Extras folder of the Rune Classic install. This will install Rune Gold 1.07. 2. Download Thief's Guild and copy the contents to ~/Rune-gold/drive_c/GOG Games/Rune Gold/ (where ~/Rune-Gold is the folder name and location where you installed it). No files get overwritten. 3. Click right mouse button on Rune-Gold Instance in Lutris and click in menu on "Configure". 4. Go to Tab "Game Options" and type behind "Arguments": tg When you start it, it will directly go to Thief's Guild. Via pressing the Esc-key in-game you can still start a regular Rune game if you want.

A total conversion is a mod, the point of it being that you've changed a copy of an existing game to be a fully-fledged game in its own right. This isn't just a Thief addon for Rune, but a fully-fledged Thief-like mod of Rune. You still need the original game to run a total conversion mod, including a mod for Rune, and including games that have built-in modular support for total conversion mods (e.g. Mount & Blade has this foresight to its modding-friendly structure). The thing is, I'm not that knowledgeable about the mod, and though I knew you weren't the sole author, I don't know the names or nicknames of the other authors. If you can provide at least a few, I'll definitely add them to the article.

You could never crouch on climbables. The only thing you can do is uncrouch to standing-up state once, while attached to climbable. This was always intended design and dates back to commits from 2007. However, it used to be possible to set the crouch-intent while attached to climbable, i.e., you could tell the game that you want to be crouched or standing up when detaching from the climbable, which is a useful feature. For whatever reason, Daft Mugi disabled this behaviour with his patch for #5973. Probably just an oversight. I think I will look into fixing this for 2.14. Edit: Done.

Greetings everyone! I recently got into TDM and am already having a lot of fun playing through and ghosting missions. However, coming from Thief, I am mostly relying on the rules and my experience with that game, while there are clearly differences in how TDM works. Right now, there is talk in the ghosting discussion thread on TTLG to amend the ruleset and include clarifications pertaining to TDM. So I wanted to drop by and ask: is there an active TDM ghosting community already and have any rules for this playstyle been developed? I would also like to ask someone to take a look at the draft of this addendum to see whether everything looks correct: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487&page=16&p=2473352&viewfull=1#post2473352 Thanks!

I've read about this before here on the forums, even when the contest had just recently concluded, but reading about it in greater detail years later is certainly interesting. Thank you. It's a pity that it was mostly the marketing people who were involved on the Square Enix side, as I had the impression it was also the devs at EM that had played Requiem and all the other submitted missions and really liked them. I suppose it was as well, but the TDM team mostly heard from the marketing people. Yes, I wanted to note that as well. I even remember how the people over here in the TDM forums were sort of laughing at the fact that the results of the contest were favourable to TDM and had, in a sense, "proven" TDM as a worthy freeware successor to the Thief IP, with all the modding and mapping tools at one's disposal and so on, whereas Thief 4 or Thi4f or whatever Square Enix were calling it at that point, offered no such possibilities. The entire contest, while no doubt declared in good will and something I actually appreciated seeing, was such a self-own for Square Enix, ultimately to the detriment of them trying to bring back and market the reboot of an older IP. Even if Thief 2014 was a terrific reboot (which I doubt it would ever be), it would still have been hampered by people learning about modding being impossible, and looking to the trilogy and to TDM instead, to make new Thief-style stealth gaming content. Still, I appreciate they recognized the quality's of Moonbo's Requiem FM. Given many retrospectives I've seen over the years, gradually, on the 2014 Thief reboot attempt, one thing a surprising amount of them shared was noting how the game didn't feel cohesive in concept and execution, at any point. Not only not to the same level as the Thief trilogy, but also not even at the level when you consider it as an individual game, a new game on its own. Errant Signal, who's not some deep Thief fan, replayed the older games and played the reboot back when it came out, and made this exact observation already a decade ago. The reboot was just all over the place, in every department, felt clearly unfinished or rushed, and the most interesting story would be the behind the scenes at Eidos Montreal, on how mismanaged the entire project became over the course of several years. I think it's telling that, while even heavily discounted on GOG.com, Thief 2014 hasn't been selling well there, nor attracting much interest, whereas the original trilogy sells for figurative (and sometimes literal) cents on that same site - you can buy the whole trilogy for a smaller price than the reboot, which is kind of hilarious - and continues to have great sales and is considered one of the all-time bestsellers. Same here. I concur with demagogue that the actual Eidos Montreal devs behind Thief 2014, at least those who cared enough to make it at least somewhat presentable and playable - even if the actual game directors never got their act together and never decided on a consistent design approach - those would have been much more interesting to be in contact with, even regarding the fan mission contest. The sad truth of the matter is that all too many big publishers these days, especially those formed through larger mergers, like the Eidos buyout by Square Enix, are often marketing-first, interest in developers, and veteran players and new players alike, second. I still remember the sheer amount of money spent on pointless external marketing for Thief 2014, all the while that reboot attempt never really coalesced into anything that felt consistent (rather than throwing everything at the wall, in a panic, hoping something would stick), and was also plagued by all manner of technical issues. Just an overall embarassment, and I'm not surprised that even very lenient-leaning game retrospectives of that reboot attempt. The fact that the Thief IP has been sold away to Nordic Games and Embracer in more recent years, with Square Enix no longer caring about it and other older game IPs, also says a lot. Given the Embracer Group's own woes and bad decisions, I'm not sure any new development team will ever attempt another installment of Thief, even if it was a second reboot attempt.

It's funny, I was just watching this video ("How Modern Game Engines Degraded — And Who’s to Blame?") and then I saw this post. That's some cosmic timing. But anyway, what you're saying is making sense. It's not even that surprising. Anybody working with Unreal 5 that was working with these old engines back in the day can see the differences in optimization smacking them in the face. For the record, the team has done serious optimization work compared to what we started with, and the examples you mention are mapper optimizations, not engine. The team is pretty small, and I don't know if they have ambitions to take the engine other places. But anyway the engine is under GPL3 and nothing it stopping people from taking it and running with it. And people have. Blendo's game Skin Deep uses it, or a version of it (as I understand it; we're in the credits), and you can find people posting about their own projects on it. I think people would encourage and help out any big project doing the kinds of things you're talking about. Like most everything, it mostly comes down to who's gonna be a champion for it. Edit: Another funny coincidence, that video I posted at the top is talking about Cryengine as its example of the better optimized older engine, which is the engine that started this thread.

Subtitle capabilities available in 2.10/2.11 are described in the wiki "Subtitles". For info about one new project using these capabilities, see the thread "English Subtitles for AI Barks". That project includes development of a TDM subtitle style guide. The thread here is mainly focused on ideas that would require future engine changes to implement. A. Automatic Switching Between Subtitle Languages Based on Settings This is a follow-on of a forum discussion between datiswous and Geep. It is desirable to have a standardized method for: subtitles to be authored in multiple languages, and so packaged and distributed as part of TDM and its FMs a gamer to dynamically select subtitles in a desired language The subtitle language choice might be controlled by the existing TDM language choice within Settings, or a separate "Subtitles Language" setting. B. Other Possible Improvements Requiring Engine Changes Most of these involve allowing the subtitle code to know something about game entities, and convey that to the gamer. Examples of useful knowledge: the ID of the speaker (or other source) the location of the speaker, relative to the player, the player's view, and other speaking AI. This type of information helps to disambiguate when there are multiple voices present. There are lots of ways such info is visually conveyed in other subtitle/caption systems, and might be added to TDM. C. Providing Subtitles for Existing FX These would have the "verbosity effects" subtitle tag. Beyond 2.11 capabilities, some of the location aspects of (B) would be pertinent.

PLAYERS Flashbombs have become more useful. Now guards can be knocked out with blackjack from any direction briefly after flashbomb explosion. The only exception is the guards with a facemask helmet: these ones cannot be knocked out easily (thread 6635). Tonemapping no longer affects UI elements like HUD and main menu. Gamma, brightness, sharpness are all applied only to the game. Cutscenes should not play without color banding, just like in a normal video player. Guard animations were improved for more smooth and natural movements, fixing bad transitions happening occasionally. You can follow the process by looking at: post, post, post, post. Frontend Acceleration settings was further improved with smart scheduling and less overhead. This improves FPS on some missions like Scroll of Remembrance. Added "Full" LOD settings for the players which want to see everything in full detail regardless of distance, without any LOD switches whatsoever. MAPPERS The list of new and updated assets in available separately: thread. Now the engine defines macros TDM_VERSION/TDM_REVISION/TDM_VERSION_FULL in game scripts and GUI scripts. This adds more flexibility in making a mission compatible with several versions of the game despite occasional breaking changes (thread). Changed the rendering system for runtime-projected decals. Now they can be interact with lights if interaction stages are available (thread). The smoke particle generation system was reimplemented, fixing several discrepancies with particle generation for particle models and particle deform. In particular, it is not possible to use proper cycling, although this needs use_cycles spawnarg (thread). Returned back the _menuLastGameFrame feature which did not make it into 2.13. It allows you to use the last in-game footage as background in the in-game main menu. On a related node, fixed several one-frame glitches (thread). There are several performance-related changes for mirrors and remote camera screens. Mirrors resolution can now be controlled by using the new mirrorResolutionFactor material parameter, and remote resolution can now be set in better way using remoteResolution parameter. Made several engine optimizations as well (thread). Value portal_dist is now multiplied by LOD coefficient which depends on player setting. Just like hide_distance from LOD. Dmap should no longer leave some files from the previous compilation, which used to cause confusion previously (thread). NOTABLE BUGFIXES * Fixed Linux crash when material with custom GLSL shader is loaded during gameplay (6510). * Fixed dynamically started looping sounds with leadin, including main menu ones (6647). * Fixed major issues in using OBJ meshes from Blender. * Fixed backface shadows for parallel lights in light estimate system (6649). * Various campaign fixes: GUI of wrong mission being shown (thread), next mission not starting if some menu screens were disabled (6648, post), shortsword name in tdm_campaign.def (post). * Fixed promoting mission override into user value for some cvars (6655). * Fixed crash from having many localization packs (6611). * Fixed too many decals spawned by brittle fracture sometimes (6588). * AI should now notice absence and blood markers again (6623). * Fixed shadow culling bug with volumetric lights (post). * Removed collision from func_cameraTarget (6654). * Fixed saving/loading the special liquid model.

Yes HPL2 can be considered a nice engine for a Thief 3 plus like game, as it has full real time lighting like TDM engine and even has a better physics engine but it lacks a few cool stuff TDM engine does and it also suffers from almost the same limitations of the TDM engine, as open spaces is concerned. I feel like a few people here really underestimate how powerful TDM engine really is, yes is old by today standards and it has almost no support for open spaces, but has excellent support for "corridor" games and a very advanced fps controller. Just a tiny comparation of what I know about both engines, I could really compare way more but imo this should be enough to show that TDM engine isn't as basic as some may assume: ** TDM Engine ** ** HPL2 **

IMO this will render gas arrows and also (!) blackjack useless and the game will become too easy, which is literally cheating. Why then use the rest of the tools if you can just pew-pew every guard from a safe distance? I like the gas arrows exactly for the reason that they are limited and thus very valuable, which adds an element of strategy. What I'd like to see in TDM is some refinement for inventory to prevent unnecessary clutter. Like having a key-chain that would hold all keys together and separate tab for the notes you find.

So I just read in a post about the black parade over at ttlg that someone was using a custom script to create a little challenge. You can only save your game for every 200 loot you gather. As many missions struggle to give loot a valuable sense of existence because it is only used as a mission goal (while not being part of a campaign where it would carry over), I personally found this a really good and refreshing idea. So, would this be possible in the dark mod too, either as a customizable game option or as a custom script j in a fan mission ? What are your thoughts on this idea in general ?