Leaderboard

Phew. Been a while. A combination of life and computer issues meant that I wasn’t playing much Dark Mod for a bit, much less working on reviews. I’m a little more caught up now, so hopefully I can provide some more content while playing my next block of missions. Thank you all for your support, it really does mean a lot to me to know that people enjoy reading these. ------------------- My reputation as a reviewer is riding on this! A Reputation to Uphold (by Springheel) is a sequel to A Score to Settle. (Although you don't need to play that mission to understand what’s going on here, barring a readable reference to those events.) This time, Corbin is after something of actual value: a necklace that was swiped before he could get at it and is now in the possession of a criminal organization. It’s due to be sold to a fence, forcing Corbin to follow the seller and buyer...or not. Reputation’s main gimmick is that it has three different play styles, similar to Fieldmedic’s “Not an Ordinary Guest.” On “Shadow” it’s a traditional follow and then steal mission (although you don’t have to follow very closely), “Timed Shadow” keeps things the same but gives you a time limit to steal the necklace, and “Break-In” forgoes the stalking altogether in favor of making you at least partially visible, even in shadows. It lacks the same variation as the above mentioned mission, but does provide some replay value. The problem is that, to me, there wasn’t enough variation. Timed Shadow was an interesting curiosity, but because I had no idea what the limit was during the mission (about eight minutes, as I found out in the thread), it’s hard to tell if I blazed through it with time to spare or if it was much tighter than I thought. Break-In is the most interesting, but once you’ve played the mission twice getting to it (as I did), you know what you’re doing, although I know one item is slightly moved around across difficulty levels. Graphics-wise, it’s similar to A Score to Settle: Lots of dim, uneven streets and doing an excellent job of selling the fact that you’re creeping around in gang territory, with a few “handy” touches here and there to sell it. Like its predecessor, I wish that there was a little more to do, although there is a neat little Easter Egg and reference to a previous mission, if you can find it. Difficulty-wise, it’s fair. Like I mentioned, after going through all the difficulty levels, you’ll have a pretty good grasp on this straightforward mission. There aren’t as many unique parts as Score, but it’s still well-done, and the latter two difficulties do present a fair challenge, especially to the ghoster. Of note for said ghoster is one piece of loot in particular that’s impossible to get without at least swinging the blackjack with wild abandon, or firing an arrow into the darkness. Getting the loot goal isn’t super difficult though, even on Break-In where it’s a required objective. All an all, a slightly over ambitious but still very solid mission. Recommended.

Story: Build Time: Thanks: Download: Gallery: Hints, Tips, Walkthroughs, Spoilers(!): Disclaimers, Player Information. Thank you for playing! What did you think of the mission? I look forward to your honest feedback!

More videos are coming!!! I need to cover many topics in the videos, including some already discussed here. Those videos would need more editing. The 2 videos I posted are of "low production quality" and offers zero explanation of pros/cons, or maybe hints, it doesn't show implications of the development / design decisions, says nothing about performance. EDIT: the angle can be tweaked. It is not like you always have to rotate your head 90 degrees to achieve 90 degrees in TDM, right now the angle is upscaled a little, so maybe my head at 70 degrees makes 90 in TDM. BUT EVERYTHING CAN BE EASILY TWEAKED!!! DON'T THINK THE ANGLES OR THE HEAD ROTATION IS BOUND TO BE MADE ONLY IN THE WAY I SHOWED IN THE VIDEOS! IT CAN BE EASILY ADAPTED FOR HIGHER SENSITIVITY, FOR EXAMPLE IF YOU ROTATE YOUR HEAD 15 DEGREES THE GAME ROTATES 60 DEGREES!!! IT IS ADJUSTABLE! ALSO, A MAXIMUM ANGLE CAN BE SET SIDE-TO-SIDE IN TDM!!! Remember: side-to-side lean in TDM was bound with a maximum angle of 15 degrees only!!

Thank you for your reply!!! EDIT: I forgot something very important: I think the input lag you saw was on the first seconds after starting the map? Please, look again. Follow the entire sequence. It takes 2 or 3 seconds I think "to build up", and after that "warming up" period it works great and is more responsive. Maybe look at the video that says test 1, the "darker video". There I play through a FM until I die. It is very important that you say which input lag have you spotted, which video and at what time. (The "warming up" I think it is related to: (1) intrinsic WiFi operation (when it changes from a "send nothing" state to "send data at X rate" state). (2) OS buffering. (3) My algorithm for processing data ) So ... you could see it!!! No one else said anything about latency. Let me explain: yes, you're right, it has lag, but I think it can be diminished. Let's say this: to make this video I configured it for stability, I mean minimize shaking. I could try making it go faster and loose some stability. I really did not test its parameters widely, I only tested 2 times, the first was horribly sluggish, the second was convincing enough to me for making these 2 videos (I didn't think that someone would notice it so early ). Some more testing (maybe 15 or 30 minutes) and maybe I will find a better parameter to minimize latency while not losing much stability. (I must say: all this was forethought, I didn't leave it to chance ) No, it won't. Think of what I made like this: "an extension to monitor + controller" (where controller could be keyboard + mouse, or your favorite gamepad). So it doesn't compete with VR, nor did I think it is on the same realm. This would be for a better experience inside the game while you play with your monitor (and believe me: it is really fun leaning yourself to lean in the game! ). You are totally right, but just because of "real physical limitations", not limitations on the phone sensor nor the data. Example: when you move the mouse you're moving 2 axis. I think they would be called yaw/pitch like you said. Let's call them X and Y axis. The player rotation in the X or -X direction won't be very useful (although it is "doable" if I code it), because of limitations of your own head and the visual field of your eyes. The same would happen with rotation in the +Y or -Y, though it would be worse, because human sight (or field of view) is more limited upside/down than left to right. So I would say, there's human limitations, not hardware limitations. Moreover, I'm shortsighted and I use lenses (don't ask me to wear contact lenses because I hate them) and the lenses (depending on the design of the frame) puts more constraints over your side-to-side and to your upside/down view when rotating your head. Not in this case. The App sends 3 coordinates. From there I could interpret the "whole orientation" of my cell phone (or any cell phone). What I cannot achieve with this method is global positioning of the cell phone in a room. That would require lots of other stuff, and maybe cannot be done (but I don't say it's impossible .... nowhere near impossible). The 3 coordinates: think of them like this: if you leave your phone over a table the Z axis is going through it (gravity vector is parallel to Z axis in this case), so the phone App reads X=0, Y=0, Z = 9.81 (the last value could be gravity vector or could be anything else, depending on the data the sensor sends or that the App sends). Exactly. EDIT: If you're referring to rotating yaw/pitch, then you're right, and I gave the explanation above. If you're referring to what @peter_spy said in one of this posts, then no, you're wrong. I mean, this kind of leaning does work, I find it useful inside the game, and it doesn't feel weird, or disorient you in any way. Please, test what I'm saying in your house, in a room, wherever ... what happens when you lean to a side and look at the horizon? Does the image your eyes receive or your brain processes rotate or looks weird? No, it doesn't. I tested leaning 90 degrees to a side, it looks like the brain compensates it or corrects it, and makes it horizontal all the time, like if your head never rotated. I think that's a brain ability, compensation, or whatever, I think it is built-in into humans. EDIT: FUNNY DEVELOPMENT NOTE: before testing it inside TDM, this required various tests for the coordinates received and its processing, and I needed to test which would be the maximum and minimum values "achievable" by a human neck/head going at maximum speed for correctly setting a scaling factor. The human neck/head was mine, and the tests were moving my head "in the most violent way possible" from side to side for capturing those minimum and maximum values. (This could sound weird but it was needed!). NO HEAD/NECK WAS BROKEN WHILE MAKING THOSE TESTS.

Wow! Looks cool The latency is huge though. If VR sets processed input with this latency, everyone would get motion sickness very soon So I doubt this could really substitute a dedicated VR hardware. Also, I guess you cannot modify yaw/pitch the same way, since gravity data is one-dimensional, while orientation is three-dimensional. Anyway, with static monitor it makes no sense to rotate head around.

I wish there was more tours like this: The only nitpick I have is the framerate. 24 fps and motion blur looks poor on bigger screens.

Kind of bummed that the weekend is over. Been wishing a new collectathon platformer would release on PS4, I loved those as a kid. Hoping for something to break the soul-aching boredom I've been feeling. Wish my parents actually wanted to hang out with me on the weekends, although I get they work during the week, I'm 25, yeah. I'm autistic but high functioning, I go to a special ed program to get help preparing to live on my own when the state finally finds affordable housing for me, so.wthing that has been years waiting for and probably years more to wait for. I like my job at the Dollar store, just feeling shitty alone at home in the basement. Might be the lack of windows. I used to love the cool darkness, but it's been affecting my mental health. I need sun and nature and to talk with people I'm close to. Instead at home I'm locked in my basement apartment, there's nothing to do in my town without a car, I don't have a driver's license, and the shitty state program I go to off work requires strict time regulation. Doesn't help most of the people there are low functioning or neurotic. Okay, that's unfair, it's not shitty in and of itself. There are nice people who work there and rely on their services. But the new manager of the place is a total NPR "Islam can do no wrong" stickler to the rules idiot who makes even my autistic, liberal ass think of the 4channers' word "cuck" when he opens his egotistical, asshole mouth. I fucking can't stand him. I wish his predecessor was still in charge, she gave the caretakers more freedom in what they could do with their charges.

I just finished this FM and i am quite impressed. The level design is very good (although sometimes confusing -- that is, until you get used to it) and after i finished this FM i was amazed by how big it was. For me, a good FM should have a good amount of lore (i really like to read) and this FM didn't disappoint me. Sure, most of it was not important to finish the game, but it is what makes a FM a good thief game. I also appreciated that touch at the end of the mission - you don't fell an abrupt end with the default (and immersion breaker) "mission completed" screen and gives us a smoother experience. So i really enjoyed it and i must thank grayman for the time i spend on it.Next stop: WS2.

@Springheel Since you're killing it with new characters lately, what about some pagans?

Yes, Vulkan would need porting shaders, too. Actually, the porting itself has been completed in the meantime, but Vulkan would need more - Vulkan requires compiled shaders in the SPIR-V format, so the entire pipeline for shaders would have to change somewhat. The problem is, with Vulkan you'd basically have to completely reimplement the entire rendering pipeline and properly decouple some additional parts of the engine, all of which is a massive undertaking (though very educational, I'm sure). Modern OpenGL techniques, on the other hand, can be integrated piece by piece and coexist with the existing pipeline, so much more manageable. It's also doubtful that Vulkan would deliver significant improvements over modern OpenGL, because the engine has more glaring bottlenecks. So, given the effort required and the expected negligible gains just make a Vulkan port rather impractical. Not saying that it wouldn't be fun to do, just not practical

Hah, big head mode in TDM.

Oh its the Penumbra engine used in overture cool. Looks like it uses cmake and Cg shaders, going to have a look at it soon

Im a bit on off these days, (retired) but from time to time i do still code a bit. The tools are all there but the documentation for them lacks a bit, you might have better luck getting help from unityhq since they still work on lithtech stuff. A few of the tools required obscure compilers like borland C++ 6.0 which no longer works if you use win10 so i took the liberty of rebuilding those with the latest embarcadero compiler after fixing incompatibilities they dont get built by default anyway. Not familiar with HPL1 ? but if looking for another engine to sink your teeth into then serious sam engine was opensourced to. -> https://github.com/Croteam-official/Serious-Engine This is the first iteration of it so its a bit dated but it looked ok even for its time and the community has been hard at it adding bumpmapping and fixing other stuff.

A screenshot from my upcoming FM "A Good Neighbor"

On the subject of new content, here is a clothed zombie I created using Kingsal's Volta corpse textures and an old corpse head I'd used for my first mission. These guys can be used for zombies who were never buried, or some type of infected commoner, or any other situation where the zombie would be likely to still have clothes on. The ragdoll also makes a convenient dead body that has been exposed to the elements for a while.

Just a bit of news: All FMs to date are now documented on the wiki.

I think my skybox needs more consistently thick-looking particle fog to go with the middleground, but the city lights have come out nicely. They're actually particles too, so the player will occasionally notice some randomly fading in/out; perf cost is probably similar to a weather patch: Since volumetric lights are still being worked on, for this background scene with ambient characters I tried faking it with fog. In conclusion: faking it with patches is a lot more versatile and less finnicky. Still, behold what might be the only projected foglight ever to find a use:

Added some temporary lights to FM that is just entering beta - I guess there is not much to show if all lights are off in your mission... http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19886-fm-marsh-of-rahena-beta-testing/