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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...

Dragofer reported a problem with shadows, but it turned out to be an entirely different problem (5106). Basically, TDM 2.07 introduced a horrible bug to stencil shadows. Most likely, it only affects precomputed stencil shadows for projected/directional lights. Also, it does not affect mappers having too old CPUs. If you dmapped anything with TDM 2.07 with projected/directional lights, it might be worth to re-dmap it with TDM 2.08 when it comes out. P.S. Still, I would be happy to see some testmap with (global) parallel light broken

Happy new year to all ! All the best, and let's make it a good and fruitful year ! To kick off, I've decided to start a discussion based on the question in the title. Aside from the Thief trilogy (and TDM as its spiritual freeware cousin), what are some steampunk or steampunk-esque games that caught your interest ? Both in the past and more recently. Some that I've personally played and/or been impressed by over the years: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura - this is a real classic for a number of reasons. If you can get over the somewhat lackluster combat, it has excellent, memorable writing and an oddly great sense of exploration. Of the games from the isometric, mouse-click control era of CRPGs, this is my favourite. I was fascinated by it already back when I saw the earliest reviews almost two decades ago, and after owning it for years and slowly playing through it, I still keep finding interesting things. The isometric era Fallout games were fine, but if I'm to choose whether they or this cousin of their's grabbed my heart more, the vote definitely goes to Arcanum. Even though it's an old game at this point, much of the voice acting, the atmospheric soundtrack, and the interesting quests (I even helped with resolving a feud between old friends, without fighting or bribes !) still bring my heart joy whenever I play it. Iron Grip series - a surprising favourite of mine. Unfortunately, by yet another already disbanded dev team. Though I think said devs tried doing too many things at once in their later years, including in the third game of this series, the first two games were ace. I also loved the setting they created for the series, one of its strongest suits, besides the gameplay ideas in the first two games. (Technically, the first is a total conversion rather than standalone, but it has the feel of an autonomous game.) The series' lore is still leaving a lasting impression on me, even many years since the original releases and the series going dormant. I don't think I've ever come across another game, before or since, that tried to focus on early 20th century war drama themes (in a context akin to the world wars, Russian civil war, warlord era China, etc.), while also being set in an entirely fictional world, rather than a thinly-veiled or alternate version of real history. There's also a strange whiff of Thief in two aspects of these games: They had a very timeless approach to cultural esthetics, and they had the definite backdrop of an epic, but weren't trying to tell an epic (focusing instead on very ordinary "heroes"). For some reason, that's the sort of approach I like seeing in fantasy steampunk media. (On a final sidenote, I had the pleasure to hear a live orchestral version of Christian Pacaud's mostly electronic OST for the first game. Even saved the video of the performance. As much as I liked the music in the two games, I was stumped at how an orchestral rendition improved things. Pity the devs never used that. It sounded amazing. Have a listen. That's the sort of slightly operatic bombast I expect from a serious war-themed steampunk/dieselpunk game.) Air Power: Battle in the Skies - Dynamix's Red Baron meets FASA's Crimson Skies, but somewhere literally midway between the creation of those two games. Created in the mid-1990s by Rowan Software, who previously worked on several historical flight sims, this was clearly a little passion project of their's and also a rather cheeky departure into a fictional industrial era world, though much like IG, a grounded and non-magical one. The plot is clearly inspired by early WWI dynastic shenanigans, but the airship and aircraft technology is far more 1920s and early-to-mid 1930s, to the devs' creative credit. While AP:BitS is a fairly charming game on the outside in terms of presentation and esthetic approach, and the flight sim gameplay wasn't bad, I feel it was a little too before its time. The tech available then just didn't do it justice, and British developers of the era being far smaller and not having much of a budget, it's no surprise this never really took off (pun intended). Still, along with the really cool PC adaptation of Crimson Skies, some five years later, this was one of those works that cemented my childhood love for the idea of being a sky pirate. Dishonored series - not that surprising, given how its DNA is also tied to Thief for inspiration, even though it's a lot more actiony in terms of gameplay. Though they went for a fairly obvious 18th/19th century aesthetic for this one (and in the first game, Corvo is basically a steampunk Edmond Dantes), I still liked most of their spins on the technology, culture and society in the installments. The whale-oil as a power source idea (even for guns !) might seem a bit silly at face value, but based on their inspiration in whale oil light sources of real history, it at least has some real tech grounding. I can appreciate that in any fantasy setting, even one as weird as this one. (I think the familiar-but-weird tone is what it shares with Thief very well).

This was posted by Azaran on TTLG:

Working on several missions that will rely on 2.08. Yay! Getting treatment for my cancer that has decided to attack after 11 years of remission. Boo! Enjoying my 2-month-old grandson. Yay!

Bummer, today's the last day of my parental leave after my first kid was born six weeks ago. Working again will be exhausting and I'll also miss that little guy.

@Dragofer I found somethng. I looked al all the inherited spawnargs/functions and there is "editor_var frob_action_script" "Script to call when this entity is frobbed." I put it in the custom def file, and it works when frobbed, not yet when triggered, but I get warnings concerning the reuseable script, so there might be something conflicting : )

@JackFarmer the circling suggests the AI is trying to get to a position but can't get close enough because something is in the way (monsterclip or the door). It might be the switch is too close to the door / the path_corner is too close to the switch or the door. I'd suggest spreading the switch & the path_corner out more. (An AI can't get closer than 16 units to a monsterclip wall, and doors/moveables seem to dynamically create monsterclip walls around themselves). Btw the correct way to use path_interact is to use "ent" spawnarg with the name of the entity to interact with.

@STRUNK Thank you very much. I could have lived with the lit model as per my export, but I'll take your version, of course.

@JackFarmer I made one without the light on and one with the light off: Lanternbot models

The Swindle is a rogue-lite steampunk stealth platformer that I enjoyed quite a lot.

@demagogue That's the thing, it only has the model name, nothing more. @JackFarmer Only thing is, it has it's light on ... I'm looking now how to turn that off before exporting the model.

Thanks again for sorting this out, I was wondering what was going on there. Btw, In Remembrance of Him by RPGista is well-known for the whole map being bathed in faint purple parallel moonlight. I don't recall seeing anything wrong when I played it, but you know what you're looking for.

Arx Fatalis is actually a bit steampunk-y. As is Dishonored. I really enjoyed those. Skyrim also has some steampunk elements, I would say (the dwarves' constructions).

Apart from some that are already mentioned Steampunk games that I enjoyed: - Syberia 1 and 2 (Still haven't gotten to the third yet, but reviews suggest that it doesn't have the same magic) - Myst series - Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs - Blood Omen 2 (the whole Soul Reaver and Blood Omen series is awesome) Steampunk games that I didn't enjoy (a lot): - Bioshock Infinite - Damnation PS. There's a spell mod for Skyrim that takes inspiration from Arcanum and there are also several other steampunk based mods.

The update to "Away 1 - Air Pocket" is now available as Beta 2/Release Candidate 1. Now with fewer bugs, more stealth playtime. Links are here.

beside thief serie in my collection, i got also: Assassins creed syndicate. styx - master of shadows. havent got the time yet to play it myself. (but enjoyed the video walktroughs) And if people make a game adaption of the anime movie Steamboy, i would buy/play it immediatly. (does count steampunk elements in games also? like rune 1 and shadow of mordor?)

Well, I did not achieve anything good about this problem. Only fixed popping on perfectly flat walls with rough bumpmap (by hacking shading equation). Looking here and here, I see the following solutions: Offset the front cap of the shadow volume along outer normal by some constant distance. "Front cap" is the part which matches the backfaces. Then enable lighting for backfaces (probably can be done even now with cvar). So, it should make things better, but may introduce light leaks on nearby objects. Render front faces as normal, but then additionally render backfaces where stencil value >= 2. In simple cases there is only one layer of shadow polygons in front of it, and such places will be lit by ordinary shading, which should be smooth and dark anyway. Hack shading equation, so that it makes triangle darker when angle between triangle normal and light direction is small. This is the easiest to do, but my attempts to do so made polygonization or apples even more obvious. I did not try points 1 and 2. Maybe something to consider in future. Point 2 sounds interesting.

Result so far: https://streamable.com/ydj9i

Alright, I've figured out the scriptobjects now, scripting JackFarmer's desired setup as an example. Feel free to correct anything I write below of the way I understand their workings. It's a test map containing 3 cloned setups for a mover (gravestone + speaker + button). The gravestones have numerous custom spawnargs that get looked up by this scriptobject to control various aspects of their movement, i.e. invert 1 and invert_count 4 causes the mover to reverse direction after 4 movements. Both rotation and translation are supported. The scriptobject consists of 3 smaller scripts. First comes the main script (object reusable_script) where you define variables that should be available for all other scripts and what the names of the other scripts are. There must always be an "init" script, and I've also defined a "move_mover" script that does the actual movement. Note that all the variables start with an m_. This is optional and means "member": a member of this particular scriptobject and not available to any other scripts. The "init" script gets run at mapstart. The variables that were defined in the main script now get assigned values by looking up spawnargs on entities in your map. These variables can then be used in the "move_mover" script. The "move_mover" script is basically like a normal script that controls the mover, the button and the speaker. The difference to a normal script is that it uses variable names that are specific to entities associated with that particular mover. So you can simply select 1 mover setup in DR and duplicate it to get more. The only way I could find so far to call the scriptobject is: button -> atdm:target_callobjectfunction with spawnarg "call" "move_mover" -> gravestone mover with spawnarg "scriptobject" "reusable_script". You can have this scriptobject either in your map's .script file, or you can put it in its own .script file in your /script folder. You will need to include the name of that .script file in your tdm_custom_scripts.script file so that it gets loaded. Having it in the /script folder reduces clutter in your map's .script file and makes it available to all of your maps, but you have to restart TDM before changes take effect and you get a blue error window when there's a mistake in the script. (Maybe there's a reloadScripts function?) Click on copy and paste it to a text editor to read the full error message. The lines at the very top and bottom of the script file (#ifndef) ensure the script file can only be included once. scriptobject.pk4.txt

Hi again, you're right, this is the Accountant II ! I was lost because i'd never though it would be a "n°2" something I also played Thief's Remorse and Requiem back in the days, those were also very great missions. Thanks a lot guys, very quick and efficient. Now i have a pleasant evening to come

The Accountant 2: New in Town?

This sounds just like what you're after: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Fan_Mission_Series#Thomas_Porter_series I'm sure that I've played more with a definite Lovecraftian theme but this series of missions stands out. I'm hoping Sotha's working on the next best thing as we speak!

I am not sure, which statue you refer to, but I doubt that it was really meant to be a depiction of Nyalathotep, as Thief has no other examples of Lovecraftian horrors. So I think this is only coincidental. I agree with Dragofer that TDM is very well suited for glum creeping horrors and the scenarios you mentioned in the quoted post are very good examples on how to implement it wihtout having to resort to show (and as a consequence model and animate) the actual monstrosities. I also always liked the madness/horror themes of Edgar Allen Poe. I think his stories are also quite suitable for the TDM setting.