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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:

Wow! Incredible mission. Completed in 1:09:30 on the medium difficulty, 5355 loot. I loved the detail work on every single room, alley, nook, and corner. I loved the sheer number of npcs wandering around (although this mission really highlighted how repetitive and wonky some of the TDM stock voice acting is...) and the "crime" system. I loved the incredibly goofy premise, how you can actually find out more about it by digging around the inn. I can't believe its only 7mb. Maybe a little bit cramped, and absolutely pushing TDM to its limits, but 9.5/10 incredible work. I found a few seams in the geometry and places where its possible to get a little bit too much of a look at the skybox (great skybox, btw!). Attaching some pictures with viewpos coordinates for reference. They were quite minor, and rather hard to get to, but the mission sort of encourages scraping the corners and boundaries of the map so inevitably I picked the wrong rooftops to try to clamber onto in my quest for cheese circles.

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.

I don't have a bugtracker account, so no I don't believe there is any tracking for this. I'd be willing to do the actual write-ups, but I'd need to be inducted as a bugtracker person or have someone paste them in for me. I think I'd make three separate tickets at this point? 1. flashbombed state increases the blackjacking radius (the original post) 2. flashbombed state plays its animations properly (wellingtoncrab's june 9th reply here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22738-proposal-flashbombed-ais-become-blackjackable/#findComment-502037 ) 3. flashbombs deal damage to team 9 enemies (undead, not mentioned here but another glaring issue that makes them less useful than their original TG/T2 incarnations)

We have been collecting textures for 4+ years, by nearly a dozen different people. It is inevitable that some textures will not stand up well in terms of quality. This thread is the place to nominate textures you think are poor and should be either fixed or removed. The following process will be followed (we are currently on step 1):

I agree. I had made some edits across all themes for consistency, but this doesn't work for Light. Edit: Removed until there's a better option.

I'm not sure if this should go here or in the Tech Support section, so If this is the wrong place, please let me know. As a hobbyist game developer, I'm curious about how the Light Awareness System works in The Dark Mod. I've been poking through the source code, but haven't found any definitive math explaining it, or code comments mentioning on how it's calculated. If anyone could point me to exactly where to look, or could explain what steps and/or math it's using to calculate how visible the player is, I'd greatly appreciate the insight. For reference, I'm trying to implement a similar system in my own stealth game I'm working on in Unreal Engine 4.

Every now and then people post silly screenshots they've taken from TDM. Why not start an own thread for it? Recently, I've experimented with adding props to AI's. The wiki says "Attaching things to AI is an important way to make your AI unique," and indeed really unique AI's can be created this way. It is summertime. Even the crypt's residents need to do something about that awful pallor...

Back in the day, Tels managed a squad of volunteer translators for TDM. I am not Tels, and could never do that. Nowadays, language translation using AI, either traditional machine learning (ML) models or large language models (LLMs), is common and increasingly fluent. It is often used as an adjunct to speed the work of professional human translators. By itself, AI translation can be imperfect but usually sufficient. Can this "sufficient" approach be used for TDM, to expedite translations? Let's see. I gave some initial thought to a bulk-translation daemon that might range across FMs and fill in all missing translations, without necessarily involving mappers. In the future, possibly AI could tackle that whole enchilada. I was at first visualizing something more modest: a backbone in a standard programming language (I sketched out C++ and C# projects, but lots of other possibilities) that would make calls to an API (I looked at those of Google Translate and ChatGPT). However, I changed focus due to certain concerns... Different FMs, and subsets with each FM, would likely have far better translations if they were properly grouped, ordered, and translated separately, with an appropriate context (e.g., phrase engineering) added. The FM's mapper is best placed to provide this grouping and context. I'll detail what I mean in the next few posts. The mapper would not be expected to know any TDM-supported languages besides English. Instead, each translated phrase could be back-translated to English and examined. Is the "round-trip" meaning OK, even if the English words have changed? Problematic translations could have their context tweaked and rerun. Many AI systems, particularly for API access, require a billing commitment (e.g., credit card). For a professional translator, this is no problem, and subscriptions allow access to more (and putatively better) models and higher quotas. This seems less appealing for TDM. A few paid AI systems have a no-subscription, pay-as-you-go account tier. The cost per translate is typically pennies. But it does introduce quota- and expense-management, and may exclude API usage. Access via API requires an API key (or at the higher end more elaborate security regime), with attendant key-security headaches. Which AI model is thought "best" for translation? Doesn't matter too much, because we can't afford the best. Furthermore, there's endless churn among AI models, with antidotal reports that a given model fluctuates in quality over time, and successor models can be worse than their predecessors. So, with these concerns in mind, I looked for public web-based AI sites that require no billing and provide low-quota but adequate AI. The mapper would enter and retrieve data manually. I will focus on ChatGPT in this exploration, after a quick preliminary test confirmed some promise. Also, as this exploration proceeds, I hope to propose changes to TDM to make it more viable for "sufficient" quality machine translation. Problem areas are incomplete fonts, space-constraints, and layout issues for translated strings. My proposals will likely surface as separate forum threads. That's enough for now. I'll be trying for 1 or 2 substantive posts per week, as I tackle a particular FM.

On a lighter note (and because my holiday started today, oh yeah!), let's have a new thread for music, that you just enjoy and probably is not so well known...or somehow obscure but does not sound as strange as the songs we report in @STiFU's progessive music thread. Here is one of my new favourites, a similar recording of this track by other artists has been used in an US show broadcasted last year ( @Amadeus: What is the name of the show? )

I'm having micro-stutter framerate issues on this mission. Once per second or so, stutter. They started in the areas leading up to the , and have persisted ever since. Once every second or so, the framerate stutters. I gave up on the mission for a long time as a result because it became frustrating to play. Only way to fix is to save frequently and re-load the last saved game... whereby I can only go another minute or two before it starts stuttering again. If you don't re-load, the stutters just progressively get more and more severe. I've tested everything I can think of. Lowered all graphics settings to very low or off, including anti-aliasing, textures, LODs, shadows, soft shadows, parallax mapping, V-Sync, FPS cap, ambient occlusion, bloom, max FPS, field of view, and so on. Also tried going from Borderless to Fullscreen, and messing with some of the audio settings, as well. Other thoughts are appreciated. This map is the first and only time I've seen this issue. Feels like maybe a memory leak of some sort, but I don't know. I tried to leverage the following thread, but I don't see "autexec.cfg" existing in the darkmod directory anymore:

You're welcome! I really like the Volta missions. You do great work (visually, gameplay, and story)! Did you ever make any Thief II fan missions, or non-Volta TDM missions? Poor fish. They just want to enjoy their swimming around Do you mean the ones...

I post for the first time since January with a detailed response about an important(ish) topic and I get a laugh reaction. In all seriousness though, if one doesn't like DRM they have to be careful posting nowadays since a lot of people have a lot of time invested in games and platforms with DRM of various sorts, and any issues you raise with the game/platform these people will take as personal attacks against themselves, even though it was never intended. Not so bad here, but reddit and Steam forums? Good God. Bruh we both live in Australia, it's not that bad here with regards to the authorities most of the time. I mean it does depend where you live (I'm in SA) but comparing our cops to those in the US is like using a cheat code.

I wonder why the discussion lasts so long Yes, indeed there are several graphical settings which require tons of performance but don't work well enough. I think we are aware of it, but it won't change overnight unfortunately. If you have performance problems, use stencil shadows, avoid making them too soft, avoid too much antialiasing... Is it all, or did I forget anything? In general, tooltips in the settings tend to note which settings are overly taxing for performance. Comparing antialiasing to modern games is totally unfair, because modern games stopped using multisampling almost completely. They just use TAA without increasing memory bandwidth that much, of course it is faster. I'm not even talking about all that upscale/framegen.

A Plan for Readables with AI Translations I’ve created a separate forum thread, "Proposal - Fade-In Translations for Readables", for a new style of readable more adaptable to translations. This would require engine changes, but can be faked in the short term. I plan to create custom .gui to do this for Air Pocket. And if the proposal wins favor and moves to timely implementation, to revise Air Pocket to use the new system. I'ill be pausing my posts here for a moment to build out that other thread, then come back to explore the actual AI translations for Air Pocket readables.

I managed to create this during the past 5 days, which is the only thing I find scarier than the fact I managed to make it at all. I'll start with a little background on what I wanted to do and why. I felt that TDM was in need of some kind of playable minigame. Not just because its beautifully flexible scripting and gui system makes it so inviting to code one, but I feel it makes missions more pleasant to go through. A lot of AAA games add complexity in little details to make them enjoyable. During a normal mission in the 3D world, players find brief minigames or side activities to distract themselves and take their mind off the main objectives, after which they resume playing the normal match; This gives the world a nice effect and makes it feel more wholesome overall. I'm presently working on a FM that will feature interactive city hubs, this is one of the things I wanted to have to make each city feel more alive. Onto how it works: This is a pk4 mod you can download and drop in your FM to enable the minigame. The prefab mechanical/game_blocks.pfb contains a functional arcade machine, the entity itself is static/mechanical/atdm:game_blocks. Once you've placed an arcade in the world and compiled your map, simply approach it and frob the screen to bring up the overlay and start playing. It's an item matching game with simple rules: When 3 or more items form a lump their group is cleared and the player gains score, the more score you gain the more items you unlock, however the game gets faster and more difficult. You use the movement keys as follows: Forward to disconnect from the device (un-frob and regain control of the player), backwards to project the active item to the ground when you don't want to wait for it to fall, left and right to move the active item. From here I'll list the important highlights individually: One advantage is that in its current form, the game uses no custom assets (images or sounds): Everything is achieved using the vanilla graphics and audio exclusively. The only three files are a def, a script, and a gui... the prefabs for the default in-world device is also included. Hence why for all the complex functionality it achieves, the pk4 is just a ridiculous 17.0 Kilobytes! The game is highly configurable using spawnargs. From the game rules to the items and background, most aspects can be customized per-entity. This means arcade on the map can have its own rules for items, scoring, leveling, not to mention its unique appearance! See the def and the editor descriptions for info on each spawnarg. The game is meant to interact with the world via targets. You can use multiple trigger_on_* variables to activate objects in various circumstances. This includes starting or ending a game, leveling up, reaching a specific level, or beating the default high score. The later can be used to open a door that's only accessible if you beat the game. I made full use of the gui system. The game is normally played on an overlay, however the entity represents a screen (textures/darkmod/decals/signs/decal_gui plane) which mirrors the same interface. This lets you see your paused game in-world when you disengage the device, even watch the items fall at the edges of the screen if you're facing the right way. There's even a spawnarg to disable the overlay and play only on the world surface, though turning off the overlay isn't recommended as it's much harder to see detail on the surface. Other than the script and entity which you can use with your own geometry, I also created a prefab containing a fully functional arcade game ready to place on the map. I tried making it interactive and operable by adding other in-world entities in the mix: You have a side door which can be lockpicked to give you access to the power button, which lets you turn off the device or reset an active game. When beating the high score, the other utility door will open and give you access to some loot. It also contains details like spinning machine gears, refractive glass screen, even a short-range projector for light emanating from the screen... all are toggled on and off with the device. Despite arcade games being a little questionable for a steampunk world, I stylized it so it looks fitting for the environment. Lastly there's a broken (unplayable) version of the prefab which you can add as an accompanying decoration. I'm eager to hear your thoughts and what you think. If you like this minigame, the best way to support the work I put into it is to include it in your FM and use it, I would enjoy that the most. I'd be happy if it could be included in vanilla TDM in some form... not just because I'd be humbled to have contributed my own creation, but I feel it would benefit the default game to have this accessible to mappers. I'm happy with the base entity and functionality which I think is as good as it gets... beyond that it might need a better model than prefab, perhaps someone could help with creating one? Feel free to look at script too and let me know if you feel it's coded right, if it's something easy I might further improve it. Important: When placing the pk4 in your FM directory, be aware that any existing tdm_custom_scripts.script will either override or be overriden by the game's and break stuff! If you're already using that file, edit the pk4 to delete it from there, then manually add the following line to your existing FM's: #include "script/tdm_game_blocks.script" And here's the pk4 of the initial release as of today, as well as some screenshots of how this all looks so far. Wish TDM had a builtin recorder so I could share a video as well. game_blocks_1.1.pk4

The Problem Readables are available in a wide range of TDM bitmap fonts. Unfortunately, the majority of these fonts lack non-ASCII glyphs for European languages, and it would be a prohibitively lengthy task to craft them. This is one of several translation hurdles. (Another is soliciting, organizing, and distributing the work of human translators; see “AI for Translations: An Exploration” for work on an alternative. This also promotes the use of meaningful alphanumeric #str_ IDs - possibly automatically generated – instead of traditional numeric.) A Proposed Solution Suppose that when a particular page of readable is shown, it is shown first is English, with the mapper-specified font (e.g., Camberic), and then, after a number of seconds, shown in the current user-selected language, with a different font (e.g., Stone), one that offers the needed diacritics? And with the translated font size scaled down to accommodate potentially more-lengthy translated strings? Both the English and translated text can be viewed in sequence. That opens the door to “quick and dirty” default translations, e.g., machine translation. In particular, the reader may sometimes be able to work-around any layout problems and sub-optimal translation by consulting the English text. (Nevertheless, default translations may sometimes miss subtle nuanced hints, so the ability to improve them with tweaked text is a necessity.) The Proposed Mechanics Recall that the game engine currently passes these values to a readable’s gui: gui::title gui::body With a multipage readables, the content of these parameters changes as pages are flipped. For clarity, it is proposed to replace them with: gui::titleEnglish gui::bodyEnglish gui::titleTranslated gui::bodyTranslated The latter 2 would be just like gui::title and gui::body, except that they would serve empty strings when the current language is English or there is no translation available in the current language (and so be used for gui code program logic, to suppress a transition). Observe that this behavior does not substitute an English string for a missing non-English string. Skip the remainder of this section if details are not of interest. Each stock readable .gui would need a one-time conversion to use them. Instead of the traditional 2 winDef overlays for text, there would be 4, corresponding to the 4 text-passing parameters just mentioned. This allows the translated text to fade in while the English text fades out, when an onTime event starts the transition (at 2 seconds in this example). Here is the fragment of .gui code that has been altered: Aspects of this Design – Transition from English The transition is timed, so no extra “Translate” button is shown, nor a hard-to-come-by hot key required. If you want to see the English again, you would briefly navigate away from the page to another, then return; or, if a single-page, close and re-open it. A simple implementation (as the code above and example below) uses a fixed, hard-coded time. Alternative Mechanism. At some cost to code clarity, it is probably possible to get by with just the 2 normal text-passing parameters (gui::title and gui::body) and their traditional 2 overlays, though additional variable(s) would be needed for tight time-synchronization between engine and gui; and overlapping fade-in/fade-out between English and translation would not be possible. Advanced Version. In the longer term, timing could be made more flexible, by passing it as parameter from the engine, e.g.: “gui::transitionTime” Where does this value come from? While it could somehow encoded into the .xd file by the mapper, I prefer a different approach. Have the engine calculate it from character or word count of the body, with user-specified globals for reading rate and min and max bounds, e.g.: sys_readablesWordsPerSecTransTime sys_readablesMinTransTime sys_readablesMaxTransTime A drawback of a timed transition is that additional reading time is needed to get to the translations, which may, with immobile readables, increase risk of discovery by guards. So having these additional user controls would let a user get to the translations faster, even skip the English entirely by setting bounds to zero. A Simulated Example – FM “readableTranslationFadeIn” In the absence of engine support for the 4 text-passing parameters, it is still possible to make an approximately-functional mockup using some hard coding. However, this prototype DOES NOT suppress the transition when the current language is English. That is, it shows (rather than prevents) an English-to-English transition with change of font & font-scale. TDM with the languages set to “Francais” (French). The first screen shot shows page 1 of a 3-page scroll, momentarily displayed in English with Camberic title and body. After a few seconds, it transitions to the second screen shot, in French in Stone font. With accents. While shown here as a scroll, this approach should be easily adaptable to books and sheets. About the Example’s Implementation The screen shots are from a prototype FM: readableTranslationFadeIn Notable files are: guis/readables/scrolls/scroll_calig_camberic.gui, a custom override of the standard Camberic scroll readable, with the translation transition mechanism from above, plus additional simulation fakery described below. strings/all.lang, a UTF-8 file containing 6 #str_ (2 per scroll page – title & body) in each language section. Only the [English] and [French] sections were implemented. The English example content was loosely derived from the St. Lucia FM. The English text (without #str_ structuring) was manually converted to UTF-8 French using Google Translate (website, not API). strings/english.lang & french.lang. These were generated from all.lang using my gen_lang_plus program to create the 8-bit “ANSI” versions as required, e.g., ISO-8859-15 encoding for French. xdata/readableTranslationFadeIn.xd, that contains the #str_IDs for the 3 scroll pages. Within scroll_calig_camberic, this simulation had this fakery: “gui::title” and “gui::body” were stand-ins for hypothetical parameters “gui::titleTranslated” and “gui::bodyTranslated”; The English text was hard-coded, and the appropriate content selected by actual parameter “gui::curPage”, to make up for missing hypothetical parameters “gui::titleEnglish” and “gui::bodyEnglish”. The READABLE_FADE_TIME is currently set to 2 seconds for testing. Probably 5-6 seconds would be better during game play. Aspects of the Design – Font Scaling As mentioned earlier, the translated font is scaled to make the text smaller than the original, to accommodate languages that need more room. A simple implementation (like in the example code) uses fixed values with “textscale”. So the textscale for the two Translated winDef overlays is smaller than for the 2 English winDef overlays. Specifically, in the example GUI code, the text scaling factors from the original Camberic readable were retained: textscale 0.4 // titleEnglish textscale 0.31 // bodyEnglish and supplemented by (with a different font, namely Stone): textscale 0.33 // titleTranslated textscale 0.24 // bodyTranslated The goal is to keep the rendered text smaller than the original English rendering for languages with more characters per sentence. These values, while hard-coded, will differ across readables (due to different starting fonts), and would need to be experimentally determined. But this treatment, with just a fixed scaling value that is independent of both text content and current language, is unlikely to be very satisfactory. Better ideas, needing additional engine modifications, will be considered in a follow-on post. Additional Considerations When Authoring the XD File. Recall that TDM is relatively inflexible when using #str_ within an .xd file. So this form will not work: "page1_body" : { "" "" "#str_fm_scroll_camberic_pg1_body_parish_inspection_excerpts" } Instead use "page1_body" : "#str_fm_scroll_camberic_pg1_body_parish_inspection_excerpts" With the 2 leading linebreaks moved into the #str content as leading \n\n. When Testing. If there is a mismatch between the TDM Language setting and the PC’s language setting (e.g., under Windows), then some characters may turn out wrong or indicated as missing (e.g., as boxes). The degree will vary by language, and is unlikely to be seen in the initial English render (because that’s almost all in ASCII, common to all the ISO encodings.) Even with such mismatches, the translation can be reviewed as to overall length and where linebreaks occur. Be aware that direct editing of *.lang files is not recommended, and could risk converting from a particular “ANSI” raw 8-bit encoding into “UTF-8”. Applying this Technique More Broadly. A few fonts have oddball glyphs for certain characters, e.g., a skull and crossbones in Treasure Map. This would require special handling during translation. For Briefings, Objectives, and Messages, similar approaches can be conceived. However, for each of these (and different from readables), only one particular font is routinely offered. And there are alternative designs to be considered. For instance, the English and Translated text could be shown simultaneously side-by-side in various ways, instead of sequentially. The Objectives have the additional complication that the font size is already user-adjustable.

============== -= IRIS =- ============== WELLINGTONCRAB TDM v 2.11 REQ Ver. 1.3 *For Maureen* -=- "Carry the light of the Builder, Brother. Unto its end." -Valediction of the Devoted "What year is this? Am I dreaming?" -Plea of the Thief Dear Iris, I am old and broken. When we were young it felt like the words came easily. Now I find the ink has long dried on the pen and I'm as wanting for words as coin in my purse. I can tell we are nearing the end of the tale; time enough for one more job before the curtain call... ============== -Installation- Requires minimum version of TDM 2.11 **Dev build dev17056-10800 (2.13) fixes several visual effects which have been broken in the mission since the release of 2.11. For that reason playing with that version or later is currently recommended** -Iris does not support mods or the Unofficial Patch- Download and place the following .pk4 into you FMs directory: Iris Download ============== *Thank you for playing. Iris is a large mission which can either take as quickly or as long as you are compelled to play. I hope someone out there enjoys it and this initial release is not completely busted - I tried the best I could!* *Iris both is and isn't what it seems. If commenting please use spoiler tags where appropriate. If you are not certain if it would be appropriate a good assumption would be to use a spoiler tag* *Support TDM by rating missions on Thief Guild: https://www.thiefguild.com/* ============== WITH LASTING GRATITUDE: OBSTORTTE - Whose gameplay scripts from his thread laid the foundation which made the mission seem like something I could even pull off at all. Also fantastic tutorial videos! DRAGOFER - Who built upon that foundation and made it shine even brighter! And whom also provided immeasurable quantities of help and encouragement the past couple years on the TDM discord. ORBWEAVER & GIGAGOOGA - For generously offering their ambient music up for use. EPIFIRE - Who lent me his fine trash and trash receptacle models. AMADEUS - Who was the first person who wasn't me to play the damn thing and provided his excellent editorial services to improving the readers experience playing TESTERS AND TROUBLESHOOTERS: AMADEUS * DATISWOUS * SPOOKS * ALUMINUMHASTE * JAXA * JACKFARMER * WESP5 * ATE0ATE * MADTAFFER * STGATILOV * DRAGOFER * KINGSAL * KLATREMUS - What can I possibly say? Playing this thing over and over again could not have been easy. Deepest thanks and all apologies. -=THANKS TO ALL ON THE TDM DISCORD AND FORUM=- ==SEE README.TXT FOR ADDITIONAL ATTRIBUTIONS & INFORMATION== HONORABLE MENTION: GOLDWELL - If I hadn't by chance stumbled into Northdale back in 2018/2019 I would probably still be trying to get this thing to work in TDS, which means it probably would not exist - though more details on that in readme. ============== Boring Technical Information: *Iris is a performance intensive mission and I recommend a GTX 1060 or equivalent. I find the performance similar to other demanding TDM missions on my machine, but mileage may vary and my apologies if this prevents anyone from enjoying the mission.* *Iris heavily modifies the behavior of AI in the game, how they relate/respond to each other and the player. So they may act even stranger than they do typically in TDM. Feedback on this is useful - as it can potentially be improved and expanded upon in future patches.* -=- This is my first release and it has been a long time coming! If I forgot anything please let me know! God Speed. 2.10 Features Used:

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

Actually, I was rather facepalming than laughing. But, I guess it could be a good learning effect, which should teach you that you should first check your stuff, before blaming anyone else's work for problems on your end.

Hrm I wasn't able to type on *after* the spoiler and accidentally already submitted the reply.. (Does this forum somewhere have a raw mode where you type text with tags around them or something instead of this broken WYSIWYG editor?) Anyway, what I was gonna add: This was a great mission and I already played Away1 - I'm really looking forward to Away2, want to see how the story goes on

Changelog of 2.13 development: beta213-05 (rev 17312-10946) * Removed back menuLastGameFrame feature because of random texture popup (post). * Console font minor tweak to avoid artifact under P. * Minor fix for Catalan language. beta213-04 (rev 17306-10940) * Fixed bug with compass + X-ray glasses combination. * Fixed two buttons displayed in menu objectives during game (post). * Added new smoking animation. * Added menuLastGameFrame image to show game footage in in-game main menu (6608). * Changed install/uninstall mission to select/deselect in main menu. * Fixed editor images for HD carpets (6607). * More fixes for Catalan language. beta213-03 (rev 17294-10935) * Fixed crash in WS3 due to script name collision in invisibility potion. * Added praying animation. * Fixed heat-haze shaders with nontrivial Render Scale. * Restored back tonemapping in the menus. * Allow settings hotkeys for gasmine, slowfall, invisibility, made strings translatable. * Fixed double-cursor in game console on 1920x1080 (post). * Applied noise reduction to new vocals for drunk "jack" AI. * Added support for Catalan language. * Fixed UV maps on stove models (6312). beta213-02 (rev 17281-10932) * Fixed HOM-like artifacts in AT1 Lucy and trash frames on TDM start on Linux (post, post). * Disabled tonemap compression curve and reverted settings to 2.12 defaults (post). * Added menu options to disable volumetric lights and parallax mapping. * Fixed varioius issues with largesquare01 materials (6579). * Fixed several issues in the new parallax materials (6604). * Deleted plain_redgreen_design_HD material which references non-existent textures (6601). * Some main menu buttons during game start replaced with generic "Next" (post). * Climbing sounds now depend on material (4991). * Added shaded_lamp_with_grill model (6589). * New fabric_ornate and fabric_fleur materials. beta213-01 (rev 17262-10927) * Improving the fonts continued (thread). * Fixed unwanted mine deployment when player eats the last bit of food in hands (6598). * Removed old hack to fix for scripted savegame crash (4967). * Added a model ext_timber01_window01_empty.lwo (6600). * Fixed missing skin for atdm:ai_revenant_spirit (6595). dev17251-10920 * Added slowfall potion. * Added invisibility potion. * New tonemap settings are now default (post). * Added Texture Quality settings in the main menu. * Added pipes_industrial_modular models. * Minor adjustments to colored versions of gen3 environment maps. * Default value of inv_count is back at 1 to fix issues with inventory counts. * Fixed rare crash on loading collision models (post). * Refactored heatHaze shaders. dev17234-10914 * Added many new high-res materials, half of them with parallax mapping. * Implemented optional HDR compression in tonemapping + other improvements (post). * Implemented interactionSeparator syntax in materials (post). * Added new entityDef: atdm:radio. * Added colored versions of gen3 environment cubemaps for metallic materials. * Added new environment cubemaps: sparkles, studio, blurry. * Added coat_commoner_hanging and coat_inventor_hanging models. * Added mantle_clock_ticking sound. * Improved lightgem calculations while leaning (post). * Fixed regression with double-sided materials (5862). * New sorting of inventory grid items (6592). * Reduced font size of mission list, which allows to see more missions and longer names (post). * Added scrollbar to "notes" of a mission in the main menu. * Optimization: don't render interaction groups with black diffuse & specular. * Improved "scepter" material (thread). * Fixed normal map of ornament_relief_mold_eaglelshield (6585). * More tweaks to starry2 materials. * Made material noshadows: moon_full_shaded, shooting_star, moon_glow. * Added "inv_count" "1" spawnarg to atdm:playertool. * Gas mine now costs 125 instead of 75. * Added min/max builtin functions to game scripts. * Added script events about gravity, health, in-air movement. * Added script events setUserBy, setFrobActionScript. dev17171-10894 * Added entityDef archery_target01 with hit detection, it is now used in Training Mission. * Fixed missing steam_pipe02_straight in Training Mission. * Hiding mouse cursor during briefing in official missions (6576). * Cleaned up the code for extracting interaction groups in material. * Parallax mapping: supported "translate", self-shadows are disabled properly (6571). * Fixed meshes generator_big, generator_small, generator2, warehouse_front_doorframe (6581). * Fixed material on model stove_open02 (6580). * Fixed decals on ext_timber01_window01 (5782). * Improved largesquare01 materials with bumpmap and specular (6579). * Added skybox materials clouds3 and clouds_4_small + prefabs. dev17152-10890 * Major update of Training Mission, including vine arrows (4352). * Added TDM version + engine revision in lower-left corner of main menu. * Experimental implementation of parallax mapping (6571). * Fixed frob interaction with candle holder that's initially extinguished (6577). * Better icons for scrollbar thumb in menu, fixed author search (6339 6570 6449). * Fixed hiding mouse cursor during video briefing/debriefing (6576). * Fixed map immobilization not applied if opening map with inv use key. * Forbid adding missions to download when download is in progress (6368). * Skip disabled bump stages in environment mapping (6572). * Disabled texture compression for light images: falloff and IBL cubemaps. * Minor change in shadow map acne / blur radius computation (6571). * Added banner01_edgar and banner01_viktor banners, along with long versions. * Fixed UV map for longbanner_ragged model (6573). * Added missing jack/drunk_idle13.ogg sample (6507). * Fixed handle_curved02_latch prefab, deleted pull_handle (6286). * Replaced normal map of cobblestone_blue_black with high-res version (6574). * More detailed editor images of some materials (6575). * Added small_dresser_openable prefab. * Added banner_sword + tdm_bannerlong_sword materials. * Increased size of secret message overlay GUI. dev17121-10869 * Massive improvements in mission select & download menus, added search (6339 6570 6449). * Improvements and fixes for "builder priest" animated mesh. * Improvements of idle01 animation. * Improved newspaper01 model (6568). * Added gas mine to "map start pack" prefabs (6559). * Fixed text alignment in save/load menus. * Minor CI/build fixes. dev17104-10844 * Enabled the new system for tracking light value by default (6546). * New light value tracking integration covers ropes and doors + optimized shadow rays (6546). * Added atdm:playertools_gasmine (6559). * Workaround for compiler bug which broke particle collisions with texture layout (post). * Fixed r_showTris: color, values 2 and 3 (6560). * Minor improvements to drunk vocals (6507). * More tweaks to sculpted/girard_relief_pho. dev17095-10833 * Major improvements in drunk AIs: setting "drunk" spawnarg is enough now; new sounds, animation improvements, greetings, etc. (6507). Fixed drunk women AI (5047). * Incorporated stone font updates by Geep (thread). * New footstep sounds for ice and broken glass (6551). * Fixed light culling bug on elongated models with non-identity rotation (6557). * Added new system for tracking light value of entities (6546). It is disabled yet. * Technical change in loading of particle collisions (6546). * Now AI follower settings can be set as spawnargs, added prefab (6552). * Added proper dmap error message if map file contains an entity before worldspawn. * Fixed water_medium_running sound (5384). * Fixed window/metal_irregularpanes_moonlit material. * Fixed wood/boards/rough_boards_scratched (4157). * Fixed wall/ship_wheel model (6549). * Fixed gaps in awning_cloth_01_large model (6550). * Added weather particles with static collisions enabled (6545). * Added a pack of new factory_machines models (6537). * Added fabric/cloth_baize materials (red and purple). * Added window/diamond_pattern01_moonlit_bright material (6133). * Added AO and specular maps to sculpted/girard_relief material. * Added musicbox sound, added prefabs for it and for victrola. * Added wood/panels/mary_panel model. * DarkRadiant now knows about parallelSky param (6496). dev17056-10800 * Supported "efx_preset" spawnarg on location entities (6273, thread). * Fixed rendering of volumetric light and particles in X-ray views (6538). * Fixed rendering of particles in mirrors (6538). * Improved volume estimation for subtitles, very quiet subtitles are hidden (6491). * Fixed bug in idClip::Translation of non-centered models. * Third-party integration greatly reworked for better integration with conan (6253). * Stone/subtitle font improvements by Geep. * Fixed sleeping sounds for drunk AIs (6539), and other sounds for them too (6507). * Fixed missing shadow on endtable_001 model (6288). * Added girard_relief material. Known issues: * Shadows of Northdale Act 1 does not start (6509). (mission has been updated) dev17044-10746 * Supported mission overrides for cvars which are tied to gameplay state (5453). * Fixed crash on start with 32-bit Windows build. * Rebuilt all third-party libraries with conan 2 system (6253). * Reverted improvements of capped FPS to fix video/audio desync (5575). dev17042-10732 * Restored ability to create cvars dynamically, fixing bow in missions (5600). * Fixed issue where .cfg files were saved every frame (5600). * Added sys.getcvarf script event for getting float value of cvar (6530). * Extracted most of constants from weapon scripts into cvars (6530). dev17035-10724 * Support passing information between game and briefing/debriefing GUI via persistent info. Also changed start map & location selection, added on_mission_complete script callback (6509 thread). * New bumpmapped environment mapping is now default (6354). * New behavior of zero sound spawnarg is now default (6346). * Added sound for "charge post" model (6527). * Major refactoring of cvars system to simplify future changes (5600). Known issues: * Bow does not shoot in some missions: thread (only in this dev build) dev17026-10712 * Nested subviews (mirrors, remotes, sky, etc.) now work properly (6434). * Added GUI debriefing state on mission success (6509 thread). * Sound argument override with zero now works properly under cvar (6346 thread). * Environment mapping is same on bumpy and non-bumpy surfaces under cvar (6354 thread). * Default console font size reduced to 5, added lower bound depending on resolution. * Added high-quality versions of panel_carved_rectangles (6515). * Added proper normal map for stainglass_saint_03 (6521). * Fixed DestroyDelay warning when closing objectives. * Fixed the only remaining non-threadsafe cvar (5600). * Minor optimization of depth shader. * Added cm_allocator debug cvar (6505). * Fixed r_lockView when compass is enabled. dev17008-10685 * Enabled shadow features specific to maps implementation (poll). * Auto-detect number of parallel threads to use in jobs system (6503). * Improved parallel images loading, parallelized sounds loading, optimized EAS (6503). * Major improvements in mission loading progress bar (6503). * Core missions are now stored uncompressed in assets SVN (6498). * Deleted a lot of old rendering code under useNewRenderPasses + some cleanup (6271). dev16996-10665 * Environment mapping supports texcoord transforms on bumpmap (6500). * Fully disabled shadows on translucent objects (6490). * Fixed dmap making almost axis-aligned visportals buggy (6480). * com_maxFps no longer quantizes by milliseconds on Windows 8+. * Now Uncapped FPS and Vsync are ON by default. * Supported Vsync control on Linux. * Added set of prototype materials (thread). * Fixes to Stone font to remove stray pixels (post). * Loot candlestick no longer toggle the candle when taken. * Optimized volumetric lights and shadows in the new Training Mission (4352). * Fixed frob_light_holder_toggle_light on entities with both skin_lit and skin_unlit. * Now combination lock supports non-door entities by activating them. * Added low-poly version of hedge model (6481). * Added tiling version of distant_cityscape_01 texture (6487). * Added missing editor image for geometric02_red_end_HD (6492). * Added building_facades/city_district decal material. * Fixed rendering with "r_useScissor 0" (6349). * Added r_lockView debug rendering cvar (thread). * Fixed regression in polygon trace model (5887). * Added a set of lampion light entityDefs.

In order to thank the team (and other mappers) for their relentless efforts in contributing, I hereby give the community.... Ulysses: Genesis A FM By Sotha Story: Read & listen it in game. Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwR0ORZU5sraTlJ6ZHlYZ1pJRVE/edit?usp=sharing http://www4.zippysha...95436/file.html Other: Spoilers: When discussing, please use spoiler tags, like this: [spoiler] Hidden text. [/spoiler] Mirrors: Could someone put this on TDM ingame downloader? Thanks!

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!

A lot of questions, and a lot ifs and buts. And, that illustrates the problems with this thing. I doubt that anyone would want to use Windows 7 or Linux to make stuff work. Everybody wants stuff to work with the lates OS on their computers. Which just wouldn't work, when the games were never designed to run on it. And, again, it also denies the fact that software has a shelf-life, like everything. You can't magically keep things working. The best thing you can hope for is some modders modifying the game to work with modern hardware, and, that happens a lot, fortunately.