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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!

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!

Thank you for doing all this research, it's very interesting. I got a response from the person that I reached out to and this is what he found: Couldn't get the mod to work on Rune Classic version 1.10 However, Rune Gold worked with the mod. This is what he did: installed setup_rune_gold_2.0.0.5, it includes version 1.07, then updated to version 1.08 (rhov108upd_full) and installed the mod. I realize none of this is optimal, I am in the process of eliminating the mod's reliance to patch 1.08

Did this in fact actually work? From my experience using the .pk4 only works if you are developing the FM (i.e. the FM is in extracted format). If you then pack it all up into a .pk4 (with a nested .pk4 say with someone else's asset pack), then it doesn't work. I asked the dev team about this and I think stgatilov confirmed it's not supported.

Glad I came to the forums to check out more details about this mission after playing. I was a little confused by a Bikerdude FM only taking 10mins to run through haha. Knowing it's a tech/build demo means I'm not going to spend the next hour or so looping through it trying to figure out if I missed a secret Krampus area or encounter xD.

Hi, I've played Splinter Cell trilogy last year because I joined that 52 games challenge. Furost_nova's profile | Backloggd I made a site full of level design articles in hopes of breaking into the industry. I began with google sites, but now I've migrated to mediawiki. I still want something better than mediawiki, but for now it was the easiest solution to publish text and have more freedom to format than google sites. My plan is to work in the industry. My long term goal is to make that site a professional resource and refactor everything. But that won't come until after some years of professional experience. For now I've stopped adding more articles because it's a futile endeavor. The reason is pretty much this article of mine: https://www.henry-ym.org/index.php/Environment_Art_x_Level_design_x_Writing._Ego_made_me_blind https://www.henry-ym.org I made this: https://www.moddb.com/members/frost-nova/addons I have made maps for Open Arena before. If you ever seen maps called Lego + something. Plus, a colorful map with too many colors at the same time, circular arena style, called RGB. I made it too. I deleted them from moddb because I was going to rename to remove the "lego" trademark, but I guess I forgot to upload them.

There is a new system in 2.14 for generating smoke particles (6309). In general, it reuses more common code from the other ways to generate particles (particle models and particle deform) and its behavior is more aligned with those other ways. Here are some of the differences compared to the old system that I know of. 1) The new system is FPS-independent. If I'm not mistaken, the old one I think generates 5x particles on 300 FPS and 25% of the particles on 15 FPS. 2) Two systems have a bit different spawning time. Particle stages normally work on periods of length (particleLife + deadTime). In the old system, particles spawn uniformly during the first (bunching * (particleLife + deadTime)) time, while in the new system they spawn during the first (bunching * particleLife) time, same as in particle models and particle deforms. 3) The old system does not respect cycling settings in the particle decl. It plays only one period of every particle stage and stops. However, func_smoke specifically has a high-level logic: it restarts itself if all the particles have been generated. This looks like infinite looping, but all the particle stages have the same period in this case (the maximum one). The new system can respect "cycles" parameter from .prt file if you set spawnarg "use_cycles" = "1" on func_smoke entity. So if your .prt file has e.g. 3 stages with different period and "cycles" = "0", then each stages will cycle infinitely with its own period. And if your .prt has "cycles" "10", then func_smoke will play 10 periods and stop. Note that without "use_cycles" spawnarg both systems just play one period of all particle stages. This is a very recent change. The new system is enabled by default, but it is controlled by cvar g_newSmokeParticles. If we discover serious problems with it during beta, we'll have to flip the cvar...

The engine has a rather cool feature of rendering perfect planar reflections using mirrorRenderMap. But it is well known that this feature can be costly, because it requires the whole world (in the worst case) to be rendered twice. There has been a request to support lower-resolution rendering to reduce GPU load (5485). This feature is added in 2.14 with new keyword mirrorResolutionFactor. For example, in order to make mirrored rendering with 1/3 x 1/3 of native resolution, you can write the following in your material: mirrorRenderMap mirrorResolutionFactor 0.333 Of course, this has a downside of making the mirrored view more blurred. But I've seen materials which explicitly blur the rendered view, distort it, or blend with other effects, etc. In these cases the lack of crispness of the reflections is not that ugly. The second change is related to the similar feature remoteRenderMap. There has been a way to specify resolution for this feature already, but it has some weird behavior and thus is now deprecated. If you have a square screen and want it to be rendered at 512 x 512 pixels, then you can write: remoteRenderMap remoteResolution 512 512 A slightly more convoluted way is to specify three numbers: remoteRenderMap remoteResolution 1024 1024 10.0 It means: render 10.0 pixels per 1 doom unit, but limit resolution by 1024 x 1024. So if the screen is of size 64 x 64 doom units, then it will be rendered at resolution 640 x 640, if it has size 16 x 16 units, then it will be rendered at resolution 160 x 160, but if it is stretched over 200 x 200 screen, then it will be rendered at resolution 1024 x 1024 because of the cap. There is also another limit for the remote screen resolution, which is applied at the end: see below. Finally, TDM 2.14 includes a few generic optimizations for these two features: Remote screen resolution is now capped by its size on the screen. So if a remote normally has 512 x 512 resolution but the player looks at it from far enough and it occupies only 100 x 100 pixels on the screen, then the rendering resolution is lowered to 128 x 128. This is controlled by cvar r_remoteLimitResolutionByScreenSize. Mirrored view image was previously copied at fullscreen resolution. Now the copy is limited to bounding rectangle/scissor, which means wasting less GPU bandwidth for mirrored surfaces which cover a small portion of the screen. Remember however, that all the resolution/scissor tweaks can only reduce GPU load. They don't simplify the work of the renderer frontend. So if the game is CPU-limited, none of this helps.

Why would it not work with the Classic version? I think more people have access to that.

I don't have access to GOG's version of Rune but as I understand it, they offer 2 versions, Rune Gold and Rune Classic. I would think their Rune Gold version would work. I have the retail version of Rune Gold and I patched it up to 1.08. Unreal Archive has several Rune patches, v100, v107, and v108 Mod DB Rune Patch has a different v108 Rune patch. I have reached out to someone who was having problems with the mod but they were able to find a solution. I will post their recommendations as soon as I get a response.

You can ask people to test your mission here, but the beta tresting should be in this other section: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/forum/59-tdm-mission-beta-testing/ Read also: I think it's so that there are no spoilers in view for new regular players.

So this mod is not compatible with Rune Classic, it is not compatible with Rune Gold version 1.07 which comes with GOG's Rune Classic as an extra. It requires an unofficial 1.08 patch that is not compatible with GOG's Gold edition. At least that's what I gather. So I don't know what else can be tried to make it work.

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:

I can give it a spin. Like @datiswous says though it's best to create a thread in the beta test forum so we can provide feedback. Discord is another option if you use that. Or do both. EDIT: I've just sent you a PM instead.

I think we should create a thread where you can put requests and suggestions for Orbweaver. This thread should be NOT a discussion thread. If you want to discuss a proposal, create a specific thread for it. I want it to be only for collecting proposals, so we have an overview of what people might want to have. I guess this might also help Orb to decide what he should focus on once he gets productive. BTW: I really appreciate your effort, because we can really use this. So my personal wishlist proposal is that I would like to see a group handler. Similar like in Blender, where you can select several objects and put it in a group. When you select one or more of these groups, the objects are visible. If the group is not selected, it's invisible. In Blender and other 3D apps this is called layers (forgot the name before so I had to look it up).

Also note it doesn't work on patches, only on brushes (including ones you've converted to func_static). I've raised a feature request for it though: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6353

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 apporach - 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.

I kind of miss our old status-bar on the right, where you could casually share what's on your mind or what is happening in your life right now. So, I figured, let's just start a thread for that. Let's get this started...

. THIEF'S DEN! Thief's Den is a re-release of the first Dark Mod tiny demo mission converted by greebo to work with the main Dark Mod release. Steal back your loot and incriminate the thief who double-crossed you! This was the first of the Thief's Den series in which you play Farrell. Read the notes below while you ... DOWNLOAD HERE. (3MB) Play time maybe 30 minutes to an hour first time. This FM needs Dark Mod Update 1.02 or later. This version has been modified to work with the Dark Mod released assets but is still essentially the same. The thief and thug models are updated and there is extra loot to find. IMPORTANT: If you already have the original stand-alone demo version of Thief's Den installed in the same Doom 3 installation then you must delete or move away the folders: doom3\thiefs_den and doom3\darkmod\fms\thiefs_den BEFORE you install this re-release. The original is still available as a stand-alone demo (needs Doom 3 but does not need Dark Mod installing) from http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Thief%27s_Den

Since we have a Random Video of the Day thread, it seems like this is fair. Show us any article you find interesting, or funny, or surprising, or whatever else is out of the ordinary. I'll begin: http://www.dailytech...rticle33998.htm I never imagined people pissing in an elevator. Of all the strange ideas I've had in my life, that was never one of them. Personally, I suspect the thug. ... and this comment cracked me up. "Why in the world would someone pee in an elevator? Also, when the system catches someone, they don't have to call the police. All they have to do is lock the elevator doors, engage the heaters and shaking motors, and get paid ad money on YouTube for the footage. "

been a long time since I visited this thread, my life came to a fork in da road my heartfelt condolences on your loss, revelator

For the people eager to play with the latest state of development, two things are provided: regular dev builds source code SVN repository Development builds are created once per a few weeks from the current trunk. They can be obtained via tdm_installer. Just run the installer, check "Get Custom Version" on the first page, then select proper version in "dev" folder on the second page. Name of any dev version looks like devXXXXX-YYYY, where XXXXX and YYYY are SVN revision numbers from which the build was created. The topmost version in the list is usually the most recent one. Note: unless otherwise specified, savegames are incompatible between any two versions of TDM! Programmers can obtain source code from SVN repository. Trunk can be checked out from here: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src/trunk/ SVN root is: https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src Build instructions are provided inside repository. Note that while you can build executable from the SVN repository, TDM installation of compatible version is required to run it. Official TDM releases are compatible with source code archives provided on the website, and also with corresponding release tags in SVN. A dev build is compatible with SVN trunk of revision YYYY, where YYYY is the second number in its version (as described above). If you only want to experiment with the latest trunk, using the latest dev build gives you the maximum chance of success. P.S. Needless to say, all of this comes with no support. Although we would be glad if you catch and report bugs before the next beta phase starts

I was cautious because I didn't want it to be perceived that I was using The Dark Mod Forums to promote my mod but I get your point - we're all in this together. Over the years we've had a few different team members, but for the past few months it's mostly been just me and one other person. The Thieves Guild project started a long time ago, when Rune was still popular. We liked Thief and we also liked Rune so we combined the two games together. We incorporated all of the cloak & dagger elements from Thief but we also wanted our thief to be able to fight like a Viking. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely a thief/stealth game. Through the 20 or so missions, we tell a story about a thief working for the local thieves' guild, operating within a dark and corrupt city. Under the cover of night, you are assigned a series of dangerous missions - success is rewarded with valuable items, increased wealth, and greater prestige from within the guild. To survive, you must move silently through shadowed alleyways, scale heavily guarded buildings, bypass deadly traps, and pick stubborn locks - all while avoiding detection by the city watch and roaming night patrols. One misstep can mean capture, failure, or worse. In this city, survival belongs to those who remain unseen. Thieves Guild was designed to be played on a computer using a keyboard and mouse. Rune uses the Unreal Engine 1. I'm glad you liked what you saw in "The Dark Side Edition Trailer". This video is a walk-through of The Training Mission.

Yes, I know. I've included some track selections from FMA in the music resource thread. The one downside is that some of the authors have since pulled their music from there or it's gone due to different causes, so not all the links I originally included still work. It can be a bit of a hassle for me to regularly update all the links to various free music databases. Even so, thank you.