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Hello, my provider sent me a little note and bill that my diskspace overdrawn in August. So that's good news, there are a ton of new FMs it seems However, is the bloodgate.com mirror still used by TDM? For instance, sombody uploaded painterswife.pk4 in July, but the download page at https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?id=148 does not link to bloodgate.com. So, I'm asking should I up my account for more storage, or could I just delete some of the files? Best regards, Tels

There was no hint about the desk mechanism that made the combination lock visible. I'll be honest why: that mechanism (the desk with a slider that opens a hidden compartment behind the fake books) is a common asset in TDM - it's used by many missions, so I figured players would be familiar with it. If you've never come across that desk before, I can see how the slider might be hard to find. As for the basement safe key, there is a hint as to its location in the note on Addison's desk. And in the room where you pick up the key, there is a hint as to where it might be used. I didn't want to be too explicit with the name ("basement wall safe key" is too obvious). I know the feeling of a mission getting tedious/frustrating. Feel free to ping the mission announcement threads for hints (and the first post in this thread has a hints section).

Just use www.photopea.com

Straight from Thief 2 warehouse? All those red bricks!

Here's my playthrough video of The Factory Heist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SagaKf88nA

I've been on an FM binging spree - think I've gone through 40+ in the past month and a half or so - and this one is probably in my top 5. Due to a couple of issues I had to restart the mission twice: One pretty far in where my cat hit the restart mission button without me having saved (aka: my fault) and one where I got stuck in geometry, and I didn't even mind! At some point I plan on going more in detail and giving reviews to several of the missions I've played - so I'll keep it brief for now. This was a very pleasant surprise - as I had not gotten to playing any of your maps yet before this one. We're all very fortunate this is how you are spending your retirement. I'll be playing through your other two next! Looking forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

body awareness in Doom 3:

@Acolytesix

@Acolytesix

@Acolytesix

@Silverflame3

@GUFF Thanks for your comments. Re: updating readables. Re: similar theme.

I'll confess that me and Epifire discussed a project to include more usable one-handed sword types and prop melee weapons in TDM, based on historical specimens. From what Epifire showed me and explained to me, rigging usable weapons by swapping the sword for them is certainly possible.

I'm more excited for Crash Bandicoot 4 and Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart

Sort of, yeah. I finished my session with it lately, and I mostly stand by my initial opinion. In similar vein to other AAA colossi, it's a game with gorgeous graphics and lighting, as well as very detailed animation, but with very low standards in all other departments. I can only guess that someday this will be compared to David Cage's work, who'd really like to make movies, but don't want to be judged by criteria applied to the art of cinematography (as both the audience and critics would just trash everything he ever did). The pacing, the dialogue, the narrative structure, the whole buildup and the outcome, it's all fairly cheap, annoying and subpar. I can see the ambition, but it's backed up mostly by technical skills (graphics, camera movement), not by being educated in literature, cinema, or general culture canon (script, dialogue, pacing, editing). It kind of exists in its own bubble, and it uses very extreme emotional situations to manipulate the audience to think this is serious approach to the subject matter. I know I felt manipulated, but it still was cheap. Like waving a set of rattles in front of a baby: Hey, here's your super violent moment! Exciting, huh? And now, super deep empathy moment! And now scoffing teenager dialogue!, Etc., etc., ad nauseam. And with no character development whatsoever. All the consequences come only slightly at the end, in the form of PTSD flashbacks, but that's mostly it. So while I know what the fuss was about now, I hope it wouldn't be regarded as something profound in games, because if so, then this really is a bubble with low standards and only remote connection to reality (cultural and otherwise).

I've always found it amusing that a de facto interactive movie game, where the bad guys are either literal mushroom-zombies or your standard issue "tough post-apocalyptic survivors who 'did what it took to survive, rawr' and are now engaged in typical heartless post-apoc tough-guy buffoonery" villain types, is having any sort of pretentions to artistic and social profundity. Sure, games are art and all that, but a zombie game wouldn't be my first choice of game to search for this sort of profundity. Also, if someone is desperate enough to market their game by intentionally provoking potential controversies well in advance (poking the predictably behaving usual suspects, who go berserk at certain topics), then I'm afraid it might not be much of a game to begin with. TLoU no. 2 exists for a simple reason: The first game was quite popular, made a good deal of money, so they made another one. If you ask me, they didn't have that many places to go, considering the story of the first game (what I know of it), but they did it anyway, because it pays the bills and publishers care about banknotes first, good reviews second, and artistic integrity... maybe somewhere at place 412th. Kojima's Death Stranding, as silly and pretentious and goofily creative as it was, felt to me a bit closer to actually examining the negative and positive impulses that tend to guide human beings, for better or worse, than the Last of Us' n-millionth examination of the "Hey, zombies appeared, the world has gone to crap, and aren't humans now uniformly horrible and selfish, even if it's illogical ?" idea. Death Stranding felt like it has something more to say about humans and their complexities than the rote old messages paying lipservice to Thomas Hobbes. Ironically, DS has the far darker, far more insane setting, and it still felt like it's telling a more interesting story about loss, suffering, the lies we potentially tell ourselves, and the divisions and misunderstandings we create, or how we become prisoners to our own egos (if we're not careful). Creepy setting with some off-beat, rather silly worldbuilding, but I felt the game's narrative had its heart in the right place in a lot of both serious and amusing ways. I can respect that, even without thinking the game's some masterpiece. In contrast, zombies and post-apocalyptic assholery has been done to death, especially in the last decade alone. That alone makes this IMHO forced sequel to an okay but not really exceptional game feel already... well, dated. At least Death Stranding, somewhat like Thief, encourages you to avoid violence and killing if you can, rather than reward it. If all TLoU does to examine human frailty, physical, emotional and mental, in a world riven by catastrophe, is to have players smashing heads in, "making tough decisions who to kill or not kill" and then contemplating its navel about human nature, it doesn't really bring much new to the table. Every single zombie-themed game or work has done that, a million times over. It's almost as clichéd in games and other works as "you're a muscle-bound, grizzled space marine, so tough you shave yourself with a blowtorch, go kick alien/demon/evil corporation ass" being the basis for the whole premise and plot. It just... isn't novel. Not even in a reinvented way. If TLoU didn't have mushroom-zombies as its one claim to originality, then it would be basically like any other zombie work where the undead have collapsed the entirety of society and now everyone's an asshole to each other, because God forbid humans would actually think and cooperate, rather than try to murder each other for silly and petty reasons 100 % of the time. The whole "crazy nihilist warlords who stifle any attempt at rebuilding civilization and bringing human decency" plotting is as clichéd an idea as zombies, space marines, "tough moral choices" (that aren't, or are only false dichotomies), and I could go on. Yeah, there's nothing new under the sun, even Thief pilfered from film noir, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, The Name of the Rose, Thieves' World, and who knows what else, but there's more to making an original game or other artistic work, than just changing a few details, adding pointless trends ("press this to crack open a defenceless person's skull while doing overblown moves; press this to have characters lecture you with wannabe edgy profundity for over fifteen minutes straight, in a blandly staged cutscene") and throwing huge production values at everything. Inevitably, many of these will feel dated sooner or later. Any well-written game will leave you with something interesting to think about not because it told you "Here comes the profound bit, pay attention !", but because it executed its storytelling both verbally and non-verbally (visually, through audio, written content, etc.) in such a manner that it left you with stuff to ponder. Even if it didn't give you all the answers, but it also didn't chicken out by not giving you any either. We want a good game script/story to stimulate us in ways that might be uncomfortable and unusual, but not necessarily cynical and trite, and that have some added value, including in things like humour and levity. I think a lot of the most artistically accomplished games actually don't shy away from humour. Smart, maybe even cute humour, rather than the "I'm an edgy cynic who uses edgy ironic statements" school of thought. I could write hours upon hours on these topics, but I'll cut it short here. You know, with all this silliness around TLoU 2 and other zombie games and post-apocalyptic games, I'm tempted to write a script for a little indie adventure game with a more introspective story. The world is back to normal, but there was some standard issue zombie catastrophe a few years back. In it, your main character (either a guy or a lady, depends on the player's choice) was forced to fight and then kill a friend they really liked, because whatever caused things to go bananas and turn people into ISO standard zombies also affected their friend. They grappled with trying to just defend themselves, tried to capture their friend, then get help and find ways on how to save him or her. They didn't want to kill a good friend, as any decent human wouldn't want to, even if they had the impression their friend might be beyond help at that point. Unfortunately, something happened, the friend got lose, the protagonist was forced to kill them. The friend was killed, but rather than go "Yeah ! Got another one !", the protagonist understandably mourned that they've lost a good friend to such horrible circumstances. The vast majority of the game is set in the present, there's no zombie-killing, scavenging for resources, nothing. The world has gone back to normal, society's generally like before the mysterious catastrophe (you could reveal at the very end that it was some alien goo from a meteor or something similarly silly), but people are still emotionally and mentally scarred from the experience. Our protagonist is trying to cope with the fact they didn't kill some mindless monster, but their unlucky friend. They're trying to find a way forward, within themselves, also via counselling, and they might be thinking about finding a therapy group or similar group of equally affected people. Just to share their story, to cope with others, maybe even find new friends and bond over that awful experience they're trying to overcome. There's your profound, more psychological zombie game. Not the n-millionth "who do we kill or be killed" and "survival of the fittest" nonsense that the prepper-crowd jerks off to. Also, why set it in the US, always the US ? Because markets ? Maybe our story happened in France. Or Kenya. Or Chile. Or South Korea. Or Estonia. You can be plenty more creative than making slightly different variations on "Gun-toting Prepper Simulator 2020: When the Zombies Come, They Ain't Gonna Git Me !", LOL. P.S. If the first game was about the last of them, then who the hell is still running around in the sequel ? I hope this doesn't become some endless series like Assassin's Creed or Final Fantasy, otherwise the TLoU series' title will become increasingly inaccurate, just like the title of the Final Fantasy series. I am actually kind of disappointed TLoU is a series now, to begin with. One game, leave it at that. It ain't no sin, developers and publishers...