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Preface HUD-elements are often a technical necessity, to convey important information to the player that would otherwise not be available to them. A problem with such HUD-elements is that they don't belong to the virtual world. They make it painfully clear to the player that they are just playing a game, thereby reducing immersion. There are many genres, where you need to have such information available at all times, think fast-paced first person shooters, Mobas, or strategy games. However, especially for genres featuring free exploration, that information is simply not needed at all times. Some games (e.g. Dead Space or Metro series) have gone to extreme lengths to completely eliminate HUD elements by integrating all relevant information in the virtual world. While this is of course the most immersive approach, it is also the hardest to implement. A much easier solution is to rely on a dynamic HUD, where certain HUD elements are displayed depending on context. In recent years, I have become hyper focused on immersion. I can't stand a cluttered HUD ("sensory overload") or a map full of quest pointers ("feels like work"). I want to immerse myself in the world, not tick of pointers on a map. About a year ago, having played a ton of WoW in my youth, I played the alliance fraction on WoW Classic for the first time. Via interface addons, I had my UI completely disappear during exploration, but when I entered combat or clicked on an enemy, the UI would become visible. The minimap would generally only become visible during mouse-over. The same goes for non-combat-relevant action-bars. I paired that with a text-to-voice addon for the quest texts and some nice dynamic camera addons that would zoom in on characters when talking to them. Of course I also did not use any quest-GPS addons, so that I actually had to pay attention and search the world for the quests. It was super immersive and a glorious experience reminiscent of the 2004 release. So naturally, having played a lot of TDM recently, I am thinking about how we could improve our dynamic HUD in TDM for immersion-seekers. Current State of Dynamic HUD in TDM The HUD of TDM already has quite some dynamic elements Healthbar only shows if we are not at 100% health Breathbar only shows if we are not at 100% breath Weapon only shows if a weapon is selected and ammo text only shows if ammo is relevant to that weapon Inventory-Icon and -text only shows if an item is selected Pickup- and object-update texts are only displayed momentarily Ideas for More Dynamic HUD Elements in TDM So basically, with every HUD element, we should ask ourselves the following questions: Added information: Does this HUD element actually convey any information? Relevant when: In what situation is that information relevant? Let's start! (Please note that all proposals below shall be made optional under some "tdm_dynamic_hud"-cvar or something like that, so I am not planning to take anything away from anyone) I will update this list of ideas as we go. Weapon HUD Blackjack and Sword Added information: None. The player can see the 3d model of both weapons, so the HUD does not add any information. Relevant when: Never Proposal: Remove completely --> Very easy (already tested) Bow and arrows Added information: Arrow type and amount. Sadly, the 3d model does not show the type of arrow unless the bow is drawn. So, the icon and weapon text add information. Also, there is the ammo display. Relevant when: Player is equipping the bow Proposal: Investigate if we can alter the non-drawn bow model such that it already shows the arrow type. If that works nicely, remove arrowtype and arrow icon from HUD and potentially move the ammo display around and make it bigger. I would need support from a 3d modeler here! Proposal: Consider showing the arrow amount only briefly when the weapon is selected (and/or when the player presses "R"?) and then fade it out again. Healthbar Added information: Health Relevant when: Player is losing health. Player is likely going to loose health, e.g., when in combat or when breath bar is close to zero. Player is preparing to enter combat. Player has very low health Proposal: Briefly show after losing health; Show when equipping a weapon (possibly limit to sword?); show when breath is close to running out; show when health is below some threshold (like 20%) Breathbar: Already very dynamic. No action needed! Inventory HUD (Not the inventory grid) Compass Added information: direction Relevant when: When player equips it. Must not fade-out unless a different item is selected. Other items: Added information: Selected item Relevant when: Only during selection (or when player forgot which item is selected) or when the item can be used with the world Note: I had added the tdm_frob_item_selects_item to prevent items being selected when picking them up, thereby eliminating the respective HUD annoyance. However, I found that frequently, I wanted to use the picked up item right away (a readable, a key, etc.), so this approach is not working well. Proposal: Briefly show after selecting an item, then fade-out. Show item when it can be used on a world entity. For picking up items, consider selecting, but not showing them, so player can use them right away without HUD pop-in. When HUD is not shown, pressing next or prev item should not go to next / prev item, but just show the HUD element. Are there maybe other types of inventory items that need special treatment? Shouldering HUD Added information: Shouldering state Relevant when: Always when shouldering a body Proposal: It would be awesome if we could actually have the 3d model shouldered in view. Then we could get rid of the HUD, but of course, this would be very hard to achieve. Lightgem Added information: To some degree, visibility of player Relevant when: sneaking about or running to hide (so basically always) Discussion: It is actually debatable, how much information is really added, because the player can already tell how well illuminated they are just by looking at the environment. I would say minimalists simply disable the lightgem and all others keep it on all the time. Crouch-intent indicator Added information: Crouch-intent, i.e., while it is impossible to change crouched-state, the crouch-state that will be assumed once crouched-state is unlocked again. Current crouch state can be seen by looking at the 3d world. No indicator needed for that. Relevant when: Only while crouched-state is locked / cannot be changed. Proposal: Only show when crouched-state and crouch-intent differ? Any other UI elements I forgot? Another aspect of dynamic HUDs is HOW visibility is controlled. HUD elements might pop-in instantly or gradually fade in and out, like our FrobHelper. I would say, having HUD elements fade in and out looks generally more appealing, but I would need some advice on how to best control transparency. Should transparency be handled by the GUI scripting or dictated by the engine like in the case of the FrobHelper? What makes most sense here?

"When the leaves change and the air is still, there is a quiet." -Lady Blackbriar -=| DISPLACEMENT |=- BY AMADEUS & WELLINGTONCRAB = DOWNLOAD = <( | )> -PLAYS BEST ON 2.14- -JOIN THE BETA NOW- *It is recommended to play with Hold/Frob set to disabled until Beta 3 is released* "Seek not the prideful sin that is perfection The Builder's light shines through all flaws. It is His wisdom to recognize a thing is done Before it is ever truly finished." -St. Edgar's Sermon of Rust LAMPFIRE HILLS... They say the woods around here give the tourists bad dreams, but I don't mind. I like it here. I feel like a piece of me belongs here. ... That it fits. DISPLACEMENT is a medium-sized traditional manor mission with a highly variable playtime. *2.14 provides a number of improvements to gameplay, performance, and stability. It is strongly encouraged to play on the latest 2.14 beta release. Join in testing now!* *Mods such as the “Unofficial Patch” and “TDM Modpack” are not supported by this mission and should be used at your own risk* https://www.thiefguild.com/fanmissions/97429/displacement CREDITS: ADDITIONAL MUSIC: -AIRSHIP BALLET -GIGAGOOGA ADDITIONAL SCRIPTING: -DRAGOFER -OBSTORTTE -FROST SALAMANDER -KINGSAL ADDITIONAL ASSETS: -KINGSAL -TDASH -SKACKY -BIKERDUDE -GOLDWELL -EPIFIRE -STRUNK -SHANNEN ART -POLYHAVEN -TEXTURES.COM -SKETCHFAB CULTURAL HERITAGE CC0 COMMUNITY -LOISTE INTERACTIVE -COLINFIZGIG -CDMIR BETA TESTERS: -KINGSAL -GOLDWELL -MAT99 -FROST SALAMANDER -MIKE A -STGATILOV -STIFU -MARBLEMAN -DETEEFF -THEBIGH FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: -STIFU FOR HIS EFFORT IN FIXING THE NOTORIOUS STUCK AI AND ARROW CRASH BUGS. -STGATILOV WHO MADE A NUMBER OF 2.14 OPTIMIZATIONS AND BUG FIXES. -KINGSAL FOR PROVIDING SOME OF THE MAIN MENU GUI ASSETS -PURAH FOR ORIGINATING THE SETTING OF LAMPFIRE HILLS, REIMAGINED HERE, IN HIS THIEF FMS. -GUY-ON THE COUCH AND JAM61 FOR THEIR SILENT HILL COMMUNITY MAPS WHICH HEAVILY INSPIRED THE LAMPFIRE HILLS REGION MAP. -SPECIAL THANKS TO LOISTE INTERACTIVE FOR ALLOWING US TO USE ASSETS FROM THEIR GAME "INFRA." SOME ADDIITONAL DETAILED LICENSING INFORMATION: SOME NOTES ON PERFORMANCE: NOTE TO MAPPERS: MOST OF THE NEW ASSETS IN THE MISSION ARE INCLUDED IN THE 2.14 BETA RELEASE.

I think it would be smart to go ahead and start a "Newbie thread" that covers all newbie questions in one place, as with the TDS Forum. It doesn't have to be this one, just for future reference. Aaanyway, I was going through the A-Z Tutorial, and right about the time you make the pool of water, I fixed some leaks, thought I got them all. Now it won't Dmap again, but when I hit Pointfile, it says "Could not open pointfile: E:/games/ ... /TutorialMap.lin" I don't know why since it's been working up to now. So if I have a leak I can't find it, but it's troubling just that Pointfile suddenly, inexplicably doesn't open! There isn't any ".lin" file either; not sure what happened to it. Any ideas? Edit: I started a map from scratch and Pointfile didn't show up again. So whatever it is, it isn't something I messed up in that first map, but a general problem I'm having with DR. Edit2: But it does Dmap and Map just fine, so that's ok.

Hi, I was playing my map and found that I could mantle straight through a gate onto some nearby stairs, as long as I was aiming through a gap in the gate's bars. Through testing I've found that I can mantle through incredibly small gaps, like this 2x2 unit hole in a 3-unit-thick wall of solid worldspawn (see video): Thicker walls seem to reduce the problem but not remove it: This 22-unit gap in an 8-unit-thick wall is too thin to walk through, but a well-aimed mantle gets me past it (see video): I should note that the positioning is a bit particular, moving the hole or the target platform by a few units can make it harder or impossible to pass through by mantling. In both cases above, I can simply stand still and tap the mantle key or hold the jump key to climb through. Moving or leaning in certain ways could help to perform the exploit in practice, but the core issue seems to be a bug/oversight in mantling in general. I tested this in TDM 2.13 on two different Windows 11 PCs. If you're curious, both of the simple test maps seen above are attached to this post. The player is already in position on map start, just tap mantle or hold jump. (The second map is a bit precise, if you have trouble try binding a keyboard key to Attack so you can start the map without jostling the mouse. Or just spam mantle, it's not pixel-perfect or anything.) mt.map mt2.map

I have a small speed build mission that I need a some custom voice lines for. many thanks.

There's a console command: teleport "entity name" If you know the book and document entity names, you can teleport to them. Alternativly you could open the map in DR, select those entities and add them to new layer. then hide the other layers. then you can select every book, document, etc. and when you position the view there you can sync this view with tdm. You could possibly make a script that runs the map and opens every book/document.

I've just wandered the map trying to Use it everywhere I could think of, but no luck - even as far away as Maybe it needs to be set somewhere to activate? I found no use for the weird potion, but there are lots of ways things can interact now so it might have a real use in the right place/combined with something else. The other two are related; have you found any glowing puzzle pieces? There are a few multi-step side-quests that don't activate any bonus objectives, which might be why you feel lost. They aren't necessary to complete the mission, just add flavor.

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.

I did some testing in the Training Mission. Overall, the tdm_frob_control_style modes feel great, but there are a few rough edges in my view: Frob focus isolation is really well done. You won't accidentally grab an object while bulk-looting in TDM-inverted mode, eating an edible with long-frob keeps the focus on the object (now in your stomach!) until you let go of the input, and long-frobbing a door will also keep the focus on that specific door.> The nitpick I have with this is that long-frobbing the air keeps the focus on nothing, preventing you from interacting with anything until you reset the state. Changing the focus from nothing to the first thing you highlight would be nice, if it's feasible. Long-frob behaviour on one-action objects (junk items, eaten apples, extinguinshed lights) don't feel good in TDM and Thief modes; the same goes for short-frobbing them in TDM-inverted mode. I think making an exception for "consistency" here would make for smoother gameplay, but again I don't know if it's feasible. I'm suspecting this might intended, but big edibles take a bit longer to eat than small ones (bread, cheese or fish take like a full second versus apples, which are instantaneous). As for tdm_door_control, I agree that 3 is the most useful and clean of the bunch paired with the force-close mechanic. Mode 1 is quite cool, but the sound spam and rendering glitches need to be addressed. Mode 2 is practically useless, but it instantly made me think of snatcher's fast-opening mechanic in his TDM Modpack. Wouldn't it make sense to include a force-open mechanic if there's a force-close one now? :)

I'm happy to announce the release of my third FM: Year of the Rat. This is my first city hub map, focused primarily on story characters and environment. It's my most complex project to date, taking its fair share of effort to make which was a good learning experience. As an experiment I opted to use no scripts and rely solely on the default entities, as well as no custom assets apart from the map and splash screen hence the small pk4. It features a few special elements, such as factions that are hostile only when the player commits crime or a decoder lockpick used to open electronic doors. The beta testing thread can be found here, thank you everyone who helped find the most obvious problems. You play as a famous thief nicknamed Black Jack: A man who's pulled many crazy jobs in his life, only to be hired for an absurd and insulting task by an anonymous employer. The objective is pretty straightforward: Be kind to the mice and feed them some cheese! Your silly quest takes you to the Lantern Light district during the Lunar New Year celebration, a place where gangs and corrupt nobles do their dirty deeds together. What ulterior motives and unexpected twists could your adventure entail? While the most obvious problems were patched during beta testing, some issues can't be easily resolved due to the complexity of the entity setup and objectives, meaning you may encounter a few inconsistencies. Most notably surrounding AI, which may float above chairs and not react to alerts or oppositely send the whole map into a panic: This is mostly due to how the engine handles AI and alarms. The map is small since I wanted to add more detail without having to work on large areas, as such some places can feel cramped while the skybox may be visible up close. I'll be busy so further updates are unlikely unless I decide to add new content later... you're welcome to report any issues you encounter, but keep in mind that if something wasn't fixed it's likely known but difficult to address or due to engine functionality. Spoilers for objectives and secrets as follows: Download 1.2: Google Drive, Mega. Screenshots with minor spoilers for the various areas:

@Mike__ could you please put this in spoiler tags?

@stgatilov noted that some of my changes were hidden too well, because they are only introduced as cvars. One of those is tdm_frob_item_selects_item. When you pick up an item, it normally gets automatically selected in your inventory (bottom-right screen corner). With this new cvar switch activated, picked-up items will not be auto-selected anymore. A similar option for weapons already existed. While the latter makes an actual difference in the gameplay (equipping a weapon changes your light gem), the prior is purely cosmetic and intended for those who like to immerse themselves as much as possible by disabling HUD elements. I figured the audience for such a feature is probably rather small, so I left it as a cvar for now.

I might have found a bug in the room with I can't frob the contents of the cabinet drawers. And another a small bug, texture alignment issue -

Completed in 2:35:03 with 4563 loot (+ some indeterminate more on top because I paid for some of my equipment like a chump), reunited the cats, got all 6 relics and 6 special loot items (of which I was only able to sell one because, again, like a chump, I KO'd my good plague doctor friend as soon as I was presented the opportunity - without realizing who he was when I opened the door behind him) Holy shit what an absolute banger of a mission. 10/10 . Everything was on point . I loved the soundtrack, I loved the lighting and texture work, I loved the puzzles, I loved the layout, I loved the weird atmosphere and the writing, I loved the custom GUI work and replacement sound effects. Everything else in this mission being as well considered as it was really drove home how dopey the stock TDM human NPCs look and sound. This mission was at once an incredible showcase of what can be accomplished with TDM and a lampshade hanging over the one feature where it falls short. Found a couple technical nits that maybe could be fixed, but they barely affected how enthralled I was for the rest of my time with this mission: First, the visual effect on the pause menu looked really great, but there seemed to be certain locations in the map where it glitched out and just rendered... I'm not sure, but probably the skybox? I took two screenshots in the same location, in the stairwell of the starting inn area. One shot has my viewpos, and the other shot has the pause menu glitch I was able to see at that exact viewpos (although it seemed like the whole stairwell was glitchy in this way). There were a few other locations where this happened. Second, I found a cabinet that had the first moss arrow I found in the mission and what looked like a readable, but I was unable to interact with either object in the cabinet's drawers - the objects were highlighting correctly, but interacting with them closed the cabinet drawer they were inside of. Bad binding spawnargs maybe? I've attached a screenshot with viewpos of the offending cabinet as well.

After roughly 5 hours and finding a bit over 5.8k loot, I finished the FM. What a time to get back into TDM. What is there to say? Crazy level design. Lampfire Hills is... far from the usual experience. The map has this eerie, dream-like, surreal vibe to it. I love it. Amazing use of all those custom assets, too. Everything feels incredibly fresh, almost like a whole different game. And the sheer creativity; every scene oozes atmosphere. Thank you for gifting the community with this FM! Now I'm gonna replay this piece of art and see what I missed.

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!

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:

The tagline for this Fan Mission, as a player, should be, "Rabbit Hole". By this I mean if you are someone who is easily distracted/sidetracked by discovering a new path, or door, or spotting a likely ledge or window, then this FM is either a dream or a nightmare depending on if you enjoy getting (purposefully) lost or not. Explicit objectives are sparse, but the FM forces you to visit each major 'zone' of the map due to the lack of picks to get you through doors and a lot of the one way latches that featured in 'The lieutenant'. There are also a lot of alternate routes and side areas you can visit, though again, there are no actual boxes to tick by going there. As a showcase of what Dark Mod FMs can do these days it is very impressive, with some outright gorgeous areas and interiors. My only criticism there would be the metal shutters. While DM is generally a steampunk setting, and no stranger to the mechanical, these seems a bit too... modern day industrial, of that makes sense? Spoiler territory: ^ If anyone spotted anything else feel free to shout it out. To the creators, I do have a couple questions if you'll indulge me: Final thoughts; having so many of the clues be things you actually had to read in-game rather than the usual frob-the-note affair threw me for longer than I care to admit but was very cool. Having the mission be set at twilight instead of out and out nighttime was also an interesting challenge. Bug report: - Few paintings in the historical museum floating away from the wall. - Memory error on Linux that seems to affect larger FMs with many actors on 2.13 still present. Several game crashes and one complete Desktop Environment crash that closed my session entirely and booted me back to GDM login screen. Specs: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X CPU, AMD ATI Radeon RX 7800 X GPU, 32GB RAM, Ubuntu 24.04

This is nicely done, good work! I enjoyed playing through it, the light switch scenario with the guard was fun! I did have a gameplay issue though: several areas of the floor that are covered by carpet/rugs still sound like tile, wood, or stone when stepped on. You can see this happening in Cambridge Spy's video above: at 5:18 he visibly steps on the dining room rug, but it sounds like he steps on tile. Later, at 6:24, he steps on the other half of the same rug and it properly sounds like carpet. 8:45, 9:09, 11:14 show more spots where some or all of the carpet doesn't affect footstep sounds as expected, which mirrors what I experienced when playing. Every now and then I've seen other missions have this issue with individual rugs, admittedly I don't know the right way to handle this myself. As for those little lights in the foyer, they didn't work for my first playthrough, but after restarting multiple times in a row I haven't reproduced the issue again. If I reload a quick save I made on that first playthrough then I can see they are still not casting light in that case. And one more very minor thing: I worry the light switch button on the first floor of the foyer doesn't "stand out" as well as it should. The "Private" sign has another small gray thing (the light for the sign) centered under it that's purely decorative, so the small gray thing centered above it doesn't initially read as something useful. Maybe the button should be closer to the stairs instead? Those points aside, once again good job, it's a solid little mission!

I've played it for just less than an hour, but I'm already very impressed. It takes a few seconds after loading into the world to understand why it's so big- production quality is really impressive! A handful of Dishonored vibes along the way (not only art direction-wise), intricate map design with a lot of density. cool secrets and little touches along the way. Really well-executed stuff! So far- a mission to savour and not just beat.

I have a strange situation in DarkRadiant where several map objects (mainly func_static and atdm: entities) have become untethered from their vertex origins. The objects themselves have all clustered around the center point of the map (0, 0, 0) but their vertex origin is still in its original spot. When I look at the entity properties window (screenshot included), the origin property still shows the correct position, but for some reason the entire distance between the proper origin position and the current position of the object is treated as the entire object. This has wreaked havoc on my map (and I foolishly did not keep an emergency backup) so I'll have to reposition them manually unless I can figure out how to undo this. To make matters worse, it happened suddenly while I was saving some other changes and I didn't notice until later, and now I can't simply Ctrl+Z undo it. I still have the origin data in the object properties, but I'm not sure why this happened, or how to revert it. Has this ever happened to anyone, and how badly screwed am I?

Don't like that either, to be honest. I guess I have to find out now which cvars have been changed, and set them back to default after playing the map then...

Since TDM 2.14, there are global macros/defines which reflect the version of the TDM engine. The defines should be available everywhere in game scripts and in GUI scripts. Their values are like this: #define TDM_VERSION 214 #define TDM_REVISION 10969 #define TDM_VERSION_FULL (TDM_VERSION * 1000000 + TDM_REVISION) All of these versions grow monotonically. TDM_REVISION is the SVN revision of the source code repository. Of course, the final 2.14 release will have different value of TDM_REVISION. You can use TDM_VERSION to distinguish between major public releases, and in principle you can use TDM_VERSION_FULL to distinguish dev builds and betas. These macros add more flexibility in making missions compatible with different versions of TDM. I don't think mappers need to use them. It is more useful to the mission maintainers who can now absorb small breaking changes more easily. Here is the specific example it was implemented for: X-ray glasses breaking change. TDM 2.14 no longer applies tonemapping / gamma / brightness to UI elements. Achieving that required more refactoring in X-ray GUI. As the result, it became necessary to handle X-ray overlay in a special way in the engine. But the old way of creating X-ray overlay was not special at all, the engine could not understand which overlays were created for X-ray! So I had to add a new script event createXrayOverlay. Thanks to the version defines, it is possible to fix missions in such a way that they continue working both in 2.13 and in 2.14: #if TDM_VERSION_FULL >= 214010967 overlayHandle = $player1.createXrayOverlay(getKey("gui")); #else overlayHandle = $player1.createOverlay(getKey("gui"), ZOOM_GUI_LAYER); #endif Since TDM 2.13 and earlier do not have these macros, the C preprocessor assumes they to be zero there. The condition evaluates to false, and preprocessor removes the first line and leaves only the second one. In TDM 2.14, the condition will evaluate to true, so the preprocessor will leave the first line intact but delete the second line. P.S. This exact approach is used for compatibility in C/C++ programming with builtin macros like _MSC_VER and __GNUC__.

The CPU gets pretty hammered by a lot of things in this mission, but it's mostly related to draws and thinking entities. In those spots the thing that would seem most likely to me is the sunlight - the map dynamically swaps out light setups, but those are areas which open up into multiple visleafs that require very large light volumes so there is a lot of overdraw. That wouldn't quite explain the sort of extended stuttering that last a few seconds like you are describing though. Seems like that might be more memory related. What sort of hardware do you have?

Here's the map. There's a room with a small area with water in it. When you jump inside, the efx changes to UNDERWATER (when using the efx file). waterefx_test.zip