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DarkRadiant 3.3.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Remove menu options which are not applicable to current game Feature: Grey-out menu entries that are not applicable Feature: FX Declaration Parsing Support Feature: FX Chooser Feature: Renderer now takes "translucent" keyword into account Fixed: Lighting Mode Renderer draws hidden lights Fixed: Loading map results in "Real Hard DarkRadiant Failure" exception Fixed: Crash when trying to set default mouse or keyboard bindings Fixed: Unit Tests intermittently get stuck on Github runner Fixed: xmlutil thread safety problems Fixed: Some materials aren't displayed correctly Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.3.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep using DarkRadiant to create Fan Missions - they are the main reason for me to keep going. Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Have fun mapping!

Quicksaves should be restricted because: We want the game to be the exclusive domain of a small minority of hardcore players who are able and willing to spend 14 hours a day honing their Dark Mod skills, and we regard all other players as "scum" who should bugger off and play Candy Crush instead. We assume we know best what gameplay experience will be most rewarding, and want to force our one-size-fits-all solution on every single player for their own good. We want to encourage the development of unofficial forks of the game (since it's open source), and regard the resulting player confusion as just another part of the excitement. We firmly believe that game difficulty should only ever move in one direction: upwards. We are unable to improve any of the unpredictable and confusing mechanics which motivate save-spamming in the first place (like blackjack failures or hitting the wrong part of a light with one of your 6 remaining water arrows), and we consider removal of the save function as the easiest band-aid.

I have created an efx version for the next mod release. I have also fixed several minor optical glitches and fixed several defective Visportals. It would be great to get one or two dedicated fans of the mission for testing. Please sign up here before I start a beta thread in the respective subfolder. Thank you.

You got my main take: Limiting saves forces map makes to be more conscientious in their level design, and encourages players to be more observant and adaptive. To my mind it is actually an extension of the perfectionist ghost-run mentality. A plan or approach that works perfectly every time is more perfect than one that depends on a favorable role of a die. (That's not meant as reproach to you for using quick loading, of course. I can't see how you or anyone else could complete most of those maps otherwise. But I assert that the spirit of a perfect ghost run on a perfect ghosting map would never need reloading.) There are a few other benefits to restricted saves worth noting. It can enable the level author to amp the tension to much higher highs, with correspondingly magnified moments of catharsis. Think how it feels hitting a new bonfire after a deep dungeon dive in any Souls-like. I think Kingsal experimented with this technique in Hazard Pay, but never fully committed to it (which was prudent, as the mission was already riding the bleeding edge with so many of its features). Another innovative thing Hazard Pay did with its save restrictions was to enforce a much more pressing health and ammo conservation dynamic in service of its survival horror theme. Ammo was generous, but every missed shot hurt because it could not be trivially recovered. Would you have enough left to finish the level without going full pacifist? (Yes, but you didn't know that.) If you got hurt, was it worth replaying the whole section for that extra safety margin? Admittedly this was sometimes annoying. But when it worked, it worked well. One other use of limited saves is that if they are tied to items, it can gives a real reward to the loot hunt part of the game. Treasure is literally just a number that is only meaningful to completionists (or kleptos, or people who are regretting playing on the higher difficulty with that impossible loot objective). Weapons and consumables are only valuable if they are something you plan to use AND are running low on. Readables and dioramas are nice for lore fiends and meaningless for everyone else. And keys and MacGuffin are actually annoying; they clutter your inventory and waste your time. But an extra save... now that is something almost anyone can and will use.

I agree with that. I appreciate when mappers try something different in maps, even if I end up disliking the end result.

Making a map, even a small and simple one, is a lot of work and I don't think it's fair to deride even less highly rated levels as "amateurish" or "mediocre". Mappers are creating something and giving it away for free, and that kind of talk seems disrespectful to me.

@wesp5 Quick saving was still an option for players in the only TDM mission which has an optional save restriction mechanic - who is actually ignoring anything? I apologize if I sound short, as I thought throughout this thread I have made my personal perspective pretty clear and don’t think I have much more to say. I, just like every player has personal preferences and often wish mappers or designers would make different choices in missions/games. This includes poorly designed mechanics around saving the game. This does not translate into me thinking authors must confine themselves to my preferences such as in this quote: It is the designer, whose time and sweat will birth the thing, who gets to make their choice. I do not think it is an affront to some sense of freedom that these things do or could exist, as we players will still get our opportunity to stand in judgement.

As far as I'm aware, changes in difficulty are purely up to the mission author. TDM itself doesn't adjust anything automatically. As for your other questions, I'll answer the ones I know something about. Others can chime in or correct anything that's wrong. pass Peeking through keyholes is a mission-specific thing that the author needs to implement not sure you can do any more than what you are already doing - that's about all I ever do not that I'm aware of I learnt as I went along. If you are thinking of trying it, I highly recommend Springheel's New mappers workshop. If it wasn't for those, I probably wouldn't have started. The modules he mentions in the tutorials are super handy for beginners. Just try to build something yourself, and you gain confidence as you go along, then you can decide if you want to shoot for something to release. My first FM took about 4 months, but that was working on it almost daily and it turned out a bit larger than I originally intended. But that was a result of gaining confidence as I went. I was a total n00b as well - no previous experience at all with this kind of thing (not counting a Quake map I did like 25 years ago).

@chakkman Maybe it’s a translation thing, but what the OP is after was pretty clear to me. In terms of “freedom” what about freedom of expression? Doesn’t a mission author have as much right to design their missions in a way that you hate as you then have the right to pan it on the internet? I think it’s worth discussing the merit or value of design decisions, but you lose at me the point we start saying authors “must” adhere to your preferences. Spoonman, author of one the greatest and universally praised TDM missions of all time, now makes bizarre and divisive FMs for Thief that are not for everyone. Is something wrong with that?

I thought the flatpak is using wxWidgets 3.2.0? But as you had the problem with DR 3.0.0 too, I assume it's not caused by wx3.2. I'll check it out as soon as I get a chance.

This is what save scumming is for: To be able to try different solutions without having to reload the whole level.

For the German speaking viewers, here is a relatively new YT video explaining how to use the DM VR mod.

I honestly can't think of any reason for restricting quicksaves other than someone deciding they know the Only Correct Way to play the game and imposing it on others for their own good.

Yeah IRIS is a PHENOMENOL mission, but the Thief community offers much more variety and environments of missions. The best way to sample them all is to play them all. None of this "I have no time to play them" stuff. They aren't going anywhere. Play just an hour a month and maybe in 10 years you'll have played them all. There's no rush.

Oh look the status updates are back!

"Has there ever been so villainous a perversion of the printed page... As brazen and pernicious a scheme to feed the blossom of youth into the gaping maw of chaos and flame?" -Concerned Citizen IRIS has been updated to 1.2 Download via the link in the original post or here Changelog: Higher acuity for AI in hostile areas on higher difficulty levels (original AI scripting is retained on the Nostalgia difficulty) Improved path finding and fixes for AI patrol routes Additional bug fixes New and expanded content! Thanks to: @Dragoferfor scripting consultation @Amadeusfor editing/proof reading Bikerdude for consultation on AAS optimization @Klatremusfor copious testing Carry the light of The Builder, unto its end.

I was taking a look at a gameplay video yesterday and saw something that caught my eye, how the player could hide behind bushes and stay hidden. I would assume its a more vulnerable hiding spot, because of all the open spaces between leaves and branches, but a dense bush should work quite well as cover. Is that accounted for in TDM? Do alpha images hide the player from AI vision behind its opaque areas? Because if they dont, wouldnt hiding behind bushes support be a cool addition to the game? I was thinking that maybe we could use a simple trick - use an entity exactly like a omni light box, that instead of lighting the area, will block the AI vision the closer it is to the center. This means you would be harder to see the closer you are to the center of the bush (either inside the brush, or behind it), less so toward the edges. You could place this entity on any brush big enough to hide the player (hes pretty small when crouching), and now players would be able to use them, or a tree top, as efficient cover. It would also be lovely to have those little leave sounds you make when walking inside the branches, alert close by AI...

Huh? What do you mean by playing on Hardest difficulty? a ) Mission difficulty (gives more objectives), or b ) TDM difficulty (autoparry off, combat difficulty, higher lockpicking difficulty, etc) I usually play on the easy or medium MISSION difficulty. I find it stupid to hunt for the last remnants of some trivial gold coins that have no purpose, but I can't leave the mission because an objective tells me I can't. The mission has the main objective, and I do that and leave. That said, I never save when I'm on a mission, and I get ulcers when I watch let's play videos where the player save/loads constantly. Even more: what's the idea of a difficulty setting if you have unlimited saves and loads? You can just save and load spam yourself to success and many people do that. Totally kills the idea for me. On the TDM difficulty side, I like playing with the factory default settings, because those should be the most well balanced ones. Well, autoparry I keep off. Did not answer the poll because it does not have an option that would suit me.

Yes they do. You can use the current save system any way you want. The problem is in the head. Actually, by implementing a restrictive save system, you'd take freedom, not give it.