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  1. As I understand it, Bridgeport is on the southern coast of a high latitude continent on the western edge closeish to a Spain / Anatolia-like mixed Ghazi-Builder region, Menoa, Ghazi being the Islam-counterpart. To the direct south is moorish territory, which can be like traditional Ghazi territory (Iraq), and the Baghdad equivalent should be down there, or more like North Africa and the Ghazi center is much further ... east? Edit: Probably west makes more sense. The role of Bridgeport is roughly equivalent to Constantinople (because of the proximity to Menoa), but it has some London flavor. It's still Builder, but a more orthodox brand and it's inflected with the Asiatic-equivalent influence compared to Catholic-like Builderism. To the far east also on the coast is the capital of the Empire, both the political and religious center, Sancta Civitas. There should be a political and theological tension between Bridgeport and S.C., and it's moving towards a break, but currently it's still one unified Empire. Bridgeport is still very much a commercial hub of the Empire. To the north are the Germanic/Baltic-like pagan tribes that are on a spectrum of less Empire influenced as you move north. Edit: I think of the empire more like the Carolingians than anything else, a few major urban centers claiming control over a the whole eastern side of the continent, but really diffuse and fragmented, less than what the HRE was, but more than whatever Germany was after 1600. XD In my reading, the world takes flavors from medieval European and Middle Eastern / North African history, but it mixes them up a bit.
    2 points
  2. Hello, all. I've decided to post some lists of royalty-free music from Kevin MacLeod's well-known site Incompetech.com, lists that include tracks and themes chosen as potentially useful for The Dark Mod mission creators. Mr. MacLeod's made plenty of really good royalty-free music over the years, including various ambient themes and other music that could work pretty well in The Dark Mod. From what I know and remember, there's already been a fair few released FMs that used a few tracks from MacLeod's archive, so he is not unknown to the TDM community. The older (and fully usable) version of MacLeod's site is here and another archive of his royalty-free music can be found here (on Wikimedia Commons). For the sake of easier reading and finding a song in the lists below, I've arranged them all in alphabetical order. Religious / churchly ambients Types of settings: Builder churches, chapels, cathedrals, monasteries, abbeys, etc. Various solemn and calm religious ambients. - Agnus Dei X (somber but livelier in places, male and female choir vocals in muffled Latin) - Gregorian Chant - Lasting Hope - Midnight Meeting - Organic Meditations 1 and Organic Meditations 2 - Rites - Private reflection - Supernatural (good for an abandoned church, spooky candle-lit catacombs, etc.) - Virtutes Vocis Potentially: - Tiny Fugue - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (famous organ composition by Bach, IMHO might sound too Barocque for a late-medieval style setting, but good for a hint of eerieness) Spooky / horror / ominous ambients Types of settings: Crypts, catacombs, haunted caves, eerie ruins, lairs and places where undead and other monsters roam, etc. Some of the more industrial-sounding ones could also be useful for missions set at factories or warehouses occupied by criminal gangs, and so on (i.e. also for non-supernatural threats and non-supernatural creepiness). - Aftermath - Ancient Rite - Anxiety - Apprehension - Blue Sizzle - Bump in the Night - Chase Pulse and Chase Pulse Faster (could work in some ghost-haunted location, with ghosts pursuing the player) - Classic Horror 3 (good for a haunted house, manor house or other private household interior) - Crypto - Dark Pad - Dark Standoff - Darkness Speaks (shorter sting, good for a scripted creepy event) - Decay - Deep Noise - Digital Bark - Distant Tension - Dopplerette - Echoes of Time 1 - Echoes of Time 2 - Fire Prelude - Gathering Darkness - Ghostpocalypse 1 - The Departure - Ghost Processional - Ghost Story - Grave Matters - Heart of the Beast - Himalayan Atmosphere (eerie theme, could work in some ancient ruins) - Ice Demon - Irregular - Land of Phantoms - Lithium - Long Note 1, Long Note 2 and Long Note 3 - Medusa - Mind Scrape - Mirage - Nervous - Night Break - Ominous (shorter ambient, but pretty spooky) - One of Them - Ossuary 1 - Ossuary 5 - Ossuary 6 - Penumbra - Political Action Ad (yes, a song for this concept has such an ominous atmosphere ) - Redletter - Right Behind You - Satiate - strings version - Spacial Harvest - Spacial Winds (might be good for Middle Eastern themed scares) - Spider Eyes (this could work well inside a household, or inside some public building) - Supernatural (calmer melody, good for a haunted religious buldings and its grounds) - Sunset at Glengorm - Steel and Seething - Tenebrous Brothers Carnival - Mermaid (sounds serene, but is rather creepy and tense, maybe underground/underwater ruins) - The Dread - The Hive - The Voices (very otherworldly, good for some haunted area or other dimension) - Unnatural Situation - Unease (would sound best in a manor house, museum, or other fancy interiors) - Unseen Horrors - Very Low Note Tension-building / mysterious / general ambients Type of setting/situation: General ambients, especially in parts of FMs where the plot thickens and some coded development is triggered that makes for a new "act" in the overall story of the mission. (Imagine the likes of moonbo's missions and how they're structured and you get a bit of an idea.) - Air Prelude - Awkward Meeting (our thief hero or heroine meets an ally or informant for a bit of chit-chat) - Blue Sizzle (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Crypto (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Dama-May (a bit of a peculiar tense theme, but some might find some uses for it) - Dark Times - Disappointment - Disconcerned - Dopplerette (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Dragon and Toast - Enter the Maze - Fantastic Dim Bar - Fire Prelude (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Frozen Star (exploring some long-lost ruins, mysterious compound or complex, it's soothing but creepy) - Ghost Processional (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Gloom Horizon - Grave Matters (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Greta Sting (a short sting, under twenty seconds, useful for revelatory scripted scenes and building suspense) - Grim League - Heavy Heart - Industrial Music Box (somber and personal, reminds me of the music box theme we already have in the game) - Interloper - Invariance - Irregular (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness/mysteriousness) - It Is Lost (maybe a theme for exploring some mysterious underground ruins ?) - Lamentation (maybe a castle or manor house household where bad events transpired) - Lasting Hope - Lithium (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Long Note 1, Long Note 2 and Long Note 3 (these are IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Lord of the Land (maybe usable as a quiet background theme while sneaking through a busier castle or manor house) - Lost Frontier (exploring some city or castle ruins in The Empire that seem majestic at first glance but could hide a darker secret) - Mourning Song - New Direction (very interesting ambient, could work well for a slow-burning urban noir atmosphere and doesn't sound modern) - Night of Chaos - Night on the Docks - piano version (part of a trio of slow noir themes, the others use a sax and trumpet, this is the only one that sounds pre-1900) - On The Passing of Time - Oppressive Gloom - Overheat - Quiet Panic (short and quiet, good for tension-building, including for scripted events) - Relent (the clarinet in this one might be slightly anachronistic, but it's an interesting contemplative melody) - Road to Hell - Satiate - strings version (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild horror) - Satiate - percussion version (this one's IMHO better purely as a tension-building theme) - Scissors (this would be an excellent theme for a mission set at a factory, inventor's workshop or a warehouse) - Shores of Avalon (quiter tension-builder) - Simplex (a pretty good one, though some of the quieter beats are a bit more electronic) - Spacial Harvest (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild horror) - Spring Thaw - Stay the Course - Sunset at Glengorm (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Temple of the Manes (I'd imagine this could work in an atmospheric mission set inside a castle or fortified manor house) - Tempting Secrets - Tenebrous Brothers Carnival - Intermission (tense but melodic theme, with some heavy background percussions) - The North - Thunder Dreams - Unanswered Questions - Unnatural Situation (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness) - Unpromised (can work both in an urban and a rural/wilderness environment) - Very Low Note (this one's IMHO versatile enough both for tension-building and mild creepiness, would be ideal for a cave or basement) - Winter Reflections (good for a mission set during a snowed-in winter night) Period instrument background music (stylistically European) Types of settings: Taverns, village scenes, town life, feasts, scenes among commoners or nobles. Mostly stuff with a calm and cosy atmosphere. - Achaidh Cheide - Angevin B (this one sounds a bit more aristocratic or courtly, good for a feast or public event) - Danse Macabre - harp version - Errigal (this one sounds a bit more aristocratic or courtly, but it's a good secular piece of music) - Evening Fall - harp - Folk Round - Heavy Interlude (short but really cool, IMHO could also work for a background scene of two AI characters sparring for fun) - Master of the Feast (good for a scene with at least two or three musicians and multiple noble/patrician characters attending a feast) - Minstrel Guild - Midnight Tale - Old Road - Pale Rider - Pippin the Hunchback - Suonatore di Liuto - Teller of the Tales North African, Middle Eastern and other "exotic" background music Types of settings: The TDM universe's analogues of the Mediterranean, North African, Middle Eastern regions, and other "exotic" locations. - Asian Drums (could work for a Middle Eastern or North African style mission, good slow, tension-building ambient theme) - Desert City (could work for a Middle Eastern or North African style mission, good all-around urban ambient theme) - Drums of the Deep (could work for a Middle Eastern or North African style mission, good tension-building ambient theme) - East of Tunesia (could work in a mission with either a Mediterranean or North African style environment, e.g. a port city) - Ibn Al-Noor (good for a Middle Eastern or North African style mission, especially for a palace or public event environment) - Lotus (good as a general ambient theme for a Middle Eastern or North African style mission, or some other exotic locale) - Mystery Bazaar (another good one for a Middle Eastern or North African style mission, ideally some marketplace or square) - Perigrine Grandeur (Middle Eastern style percussions interspersed with a grunge-like tune reminescent of those from Thief) - Tabuk (slow, but slightly more dramatic theme for a Middle Eastern or North African style environment) - Tenebrous Brothers Carnival - Snake Lady (has a Middle Eastern feel to it, very good for building suspense and tension) Wilderness / nature ambients Types of settings: Outdoor areas with groves, forests, rivers, small lakes, mountain valleys, caves. Potentially also some Pagan villages and camps. - Black Bird (tribal type stuff) - Dewdrop Fantasy - Kalimba Relaxation Music (maybe could work in a cave or similar environment ?) - Evening Fall - harp - Firesong (tribal type stuff) - Intuit (tribal type stuff) - Healing (I think this one could also work in an urban environment) - Heavy Heart (also works as a general ambient theme) - Magic Forest - River Flute - Moorland (could work for an isolated Pagan tribe village) - Shamanistic - Spirit of the Girl - Thunderbird - The North (very short but looping theme, IMHO also works as a general ambient theme) - The Pyre - The Sky of Our Ancestors - Unpromised - Very Low Note (IMHO very good for a cave or cave system) - Virtutes Instrumenti - Willow and the Light - Winter Reflections (good for a mission set in winter or in some cavern strewn with magic crystals) Non-serious bonus suggestion - Crunk Knight (when the Bridgeport City Watch throw an annual office party :-))) ) Giving MacLeod proper attribution if you chose to use this music in your mission Each song comes with an attribution quote that you need to include if you're going to use any of this music in your fan mission. If there is a final credits sequence in your mission, or you can include this quote at least as part of the mission's release notes, please do so. Though you can buy a license from Kevin and don't need to use attribution, all of this music is for free, as long as you give him credit. The credit-giving (attribution) is as follows: Name of Song Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Replace "Name of Song" with the actual name of the song, keep the rest of the quote in this format and include it in your "free music used" credits for your mission, and you're golden. Final note from me If you've found some other good tracks in Kevin's musical archives that could fit the tone of The Dark Mod and its setting and would like to include them in this list, please let me know and I'll update this post. Don't send me a personal message, just post your suggestion in this thread. Thank you ! I sincerely hope these lists will be of at least some use to mission builders. Good luck ! If you want to seek out non-MacLeod royalty-free music and public domain music, I've started a thread for that as well. Not too many download links yet, but it's meant to give you inspiration what sort of ambients or period music you could search for.
    1 point
  3. Recently, about a month ago, @demagogue mentioned the following in another discussion: While we're at it, someone really needs to write an official history of the Empire and a lot of associated fanfic to give our world backstory. And someone ought to make an art book with screenshots across all our FMs and some story, as if it were like one of those travel photo books. Something people put on their coffee table for discussion and just to flip through for fun, or in your case actually make the things. I see the idea you're talking about as something along those lines. I even promised demagogue I might look into it in the future. All of this got me thinking... We know The Dark Mod does not have a strict canon, per se. There's Bridgeport and The Empire, a few other cities, there's notes on what technology, society and the fantastical elements of this setting are, what the various typical "factions" are and how they vary greatly, what the atmosphere and tone is like, and so on and so forth. However, the rest of the things are far more nebulous and are generally down to what an individual player or fan of TDM is willing to accept as potential canon. We had the references to cities (Braeden) or minor setting elements (the mandrasola drug, etc.) throghout multiple missions by unrelated authors, and those are just the simplest of examples. In short, what constitutes as TDM canon, beyond those fairly official basics, is quite maleable. With all of the above in mind, and taking demagogue's ideas into account, I think we could compile a rough, loose history of the overall setting. It doesn't need to be obsessively filled with details, but we could give people some vague idea of what happened in the last two thousand or so years before what we generally portray as the "present day" of the TDM setting. I think we already have plenty of interesting source material to work with, if our goal is to create a rough timeline/outline of The Empire's history, the Builder church's history, and hints at what the history of the world outside of The Empire has been like (also counting with possibly biased accounts, in-universe). Now, speaking about that source material, what do I actually consider as source material ? Technically, every mission or nearly every mission made for TDM could be potentially considered source material. However, I am a little bit more picky about this. I think the closest we have to an established, "hard canon" for the game's universe, is a lot of the above-mentioned source material, and that occurs primarily in two places: In the two or three official missions that come with the basic TDM install (Training Mission, A New Job, The Tears of St Lucia), and in the main Universe articles on the TDM wiki. These are going to be my primary source for compiling the history, chronologically and otherwise. In addition to the official-as-official-gets missions and official universe notes, I am also willing to include stuff from all fan missions, if it expands the history of the setting in interesting, but reasonable ways. If the premise of a mission clearly doesn't fit the rest of the setting directly or is quite jokey, then I won't consider it a reasonable enough source for a potential addition to "canon". Why would demagogue suggest we should compile such a more detailed background history ? Personally, while I don't mind the idea, I am also fine with keeping things as they currently are. At the same time, I have noticed the number of people who come to the forums, clamouring things like "Where's the sprawling story campaign ? Where's the sprawling background story of the setting ?". Less of the latter thankfully, more of the former, for understandable reasons. Still, it seems that a lot of newcomers to TDM, especially those with pre-conceived notions from their time playing Thief (or other fantasy games), seem to want more from the overall setting than just the missions and mission series we have. Honestly, I'm torn on this. I've always been an elliptical storytelling style guy. Less is more. A hint here, a hint there, a throw-away comment there... Some games try to overdo it with super-detailed lore and the results can be... questionable and grating. Part of why I'd prefer that, if we do compile more of a broadly accepted "canon" for TDM's setting, then it should still be accepted in that "broad" way. I.e. it is soft and maleable enough that it does not tie mission-maker's hands, with regards to missions and stories set in the past, present and potential future of the TDM setting. A lot of players think they know what they want if they want a detailed setting, but more often that not, it just ends up with things being overexplained and losing their "charm" and a reasonable degree of mystique. After all, even die-hard Thief fans should acknowledge one thing: Thief didn't try to explain everything. Far from it ! The entire trilogy was very fond of elliptical storytelling, with hinted-at stuff and loads of unexplained stuff and references. I think TDM should keep with that, even if we potentially expand the "hard canon" parts of TDM's canon. Not stuff like "in this or that year, William Steele was born", but certainly stuff like "from the 4th to 7th century of its existence, the Empire was ruled by this or that dynasty, in a unique tetrarchic set-up", and similar.
    1 point
  4. I'm sure it's possible, but I'd prefer not to have to re-invent the wheel, at least in DarkRadiant. The SimpleSockets code in particular looks pretty neat and easy to understand: CActiveSocket socket; // Instantiate active socket object (defaults to TCP). char time[50]; memset(&time, 0, 50); // Initialize our socket object socket.Initialize(); // Create a connection to the time server so that data can be sent // and received. if (socket.Open("time-C.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov", 13)) { // Send a request to the server requesting the current time. if (socket.Send((const uint8 *)"\n", 1)) { // Receive response from the server. socket.Receive(49); memcpy(&time, socket.GetData(), 49); printf("%s\n", time); // Close the connection. socket.Close(); } }
    1 point
  5. Speaking of maps, what often annoys me in fan missions is to see an old map of central Europe with Bridgeport being somewhere on the southern coast of France. This doesn't make much sense regarding language and climate unless you can explain somehow that in the TDM universe the English conquered France and not the other way around ;).
    1 point
  6. thanks, but just to clarify I didn't make that. I'm using the default TDM spyglass overlay. originally i was going to use a thick glass texture and an air filter system (each filter would last 30 seconds or so) but they made navigation too difficult
    1 point
  7. Okay, so I found another issue which may be connected to 2.08 or some specific missions: Sometimes for notes a font is used that is very pixelated and barely readable. See this example from Shadows of Northdale Act II:
    1 point
  8. My pleasure ! I wanted to do something like this for a long time. You make a lot of good points. That said, no one's required to use these, they can use or avoid them at their own leisure. Additionally, some of our members - e.g. Airship Ballet - also made and contributed several home-brewn ambients of their's to the community already a few years ago. One TDM contributor even made a fairly detailed tutorial at how you can mix your own convincing ambient with the use of readily available open-source software. So, if MacLeod's ambients don't suffice for a mission builder, they can always use other ambients we've made ourselves, or the advice in that tutorial. I try to keep the wiki updated and to always update useful info or list threads that can be useful to mission makers beyond the mere physical creation of the mission maps. I think I've covered the tutorial on the wiki as well. And if not, I can add it in the near future.
    1 point
  9. While retired im still playing around at times with the different mods, sadly while one of the better ports dhewm3 does not have a large mod compatibility database so atm im working on getting sikkmod ported to it. I also been working on adding darkmods avx and avx2 extensions (done btw) as well as a hybrid GLSL ARB2 renderer originally by MH but modified heavily by me and 100 % stable now. Interactions are the only thing rendered with GLSL atm. This in turn means that while it is still possible to use sikkmod you cannot use the POM shader as that one is an ARB2 interaction shader. If you want POM you can turn of GLSL interactions or write a GLSL port . Still on my todo list would be darkmods SMP changes, daniel gibson is also working on that. You should prefer the GLSL interactions though as they use half lambertian and lights the scene more while also looking more natural (not as light as rbdoom3bfg though).
    1 point
  10. What I think might have happened is your computer needed a reboot for the background security updates it does. A few things you can do. You can postpone the updates for a week. You can set the time when the computer is allowed to update (just set it out of the range of your usage hours). You can actually completely turn off any ability to update (metered connection), but that's not advised long-term, at least by me. As far as the keyboard goes, sounds like a driver superseded another driver during an update and perhaps it didn't complete installation or was faulty. Either the installed Lenovo apps did this or Windows update did this. Since you deleted the driver and it worked after, I'm thinking the Lenovo drivers took over and after deleting them the default MS drivers got installed from the repository folder. In Device Manager you can see which driver is being used by which manufacturer. Usually I tend to trust the MS drivers unless there is some functionality needed beyond its basic function (think all-in-one scanners/printers). As last resort you can just plug in a USB keyboard if it happens again. BTW, check event viewer in / control panel / administrative tools / to see what happened at the time of the shutdown. It could give a clue as to a conflicting issue.
    1 point
  11. We also have a steadily growing list of missions here, with further detailed information: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Category:Official_FMs This article should also be useful, especially if you are a beginner: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Mission_recommendation_discussions
    1 point
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