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This is a bit late notice (apologies for that), but there's an announcement to be made. I saw it wasn't in this subforum yet, so I'm posting it now so you can all see it. This Saturday (Jan. 28), tomorrow, The Dark Mod team is going to participating in an "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) session on the PCGaming Reddit page starting from 3pm CET / 9am EST. Edit: Here is the official AMA thread! https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/10nfcwj/hello_we_are_the_international_development_team/ They told us it should be stickied and open for questions all day long, so if you see this much later, you can still take a look and participate. Many of your favorite TDM team members ought to be there. (I plan on being in around the background at least.) I think there will be a lot of talk about the inner workings of TDM's development, so if you've ever been curious how TDM got made, why certain decisions were made, what are some interesting stories from the inside, or you're just interested in how games are made generally, I think you'll get something out of it. I think we can also use this thread as a follow up, if you want to talk more about anything brought up in the AMA, post it here and we can have our own little discussion too. I haven't asked anybody else if that's a good idea, but I think it's a good idea, so I'm running with it. Hope everyone interested and available can make it! Cheers!

Question for AMA: What is the vision roadmap beyond 2.12 toward TDM 3?

Hello, I'm Herwig (30) from Germany. I'm a songwriter and Music producer who offers the Mod Team to write Ambient Music or Original Soundtrack for the Game or for some Missions. If this help is needed please feel free to contact me here!

My opinion as a mapper. When I plan a mission, I have to take into account what exactly a player could potentially do (and not do). It's possible a map is built around the fact that you can carry bodies only along certain routes. So a detail like this is pretty important in my opinion, and should not just be changed without careful consideration. @Daft MugiHaving said that, I appreciate the work you put into this. Please don't let yourself be discouraged from contributing in the future.

@Daft Mugi, I am sorry to cause the confusion. I thought I made it clear when you came with the first pack of 5 patches, that such generic changes currently get into release only as an exception, but apparently it was not clear. You are right: I should have been more strict and rejected all the generic changes since at least the New Year. Making exceptions on subjective basis makes things look unfair and can offend people. The current idea is to make the next beta release a "release candidate", and if nothing bad happens, then make it the final release. We are already beta-testing it for 2 months. Looking at the previous beta 2.10, it started 10 days later than this year. Also, it lasted so long exactly because something bad happened in February: some people reported driver-dependent graphical issues. Considering 12 months between subsequent releases, we spend 1/6 of astronomic time in beta phase. And it is tough for developers, because they have to stop normal development during this time. For instance, I'd really want to go on and nuke the old/new backend division due to how much pain it has caused thus far, but I have to wait until 2.11 is out. Or I want to implement a better AI visibility check but it also has to wait. Now imagine that some people want to reduce time interval between releases, for instance to half a year (I recall we have summer release a few years ago). It means 1/3 of our time we'll have to restrain from changes! You should understand that in case of TDM, official releases are rare because how hard it is to test the game. If you want people to see your changes fast, now there are development builds for that. If you want to make something into official release, be ready that your changes will wait for months before that. Here is what happens to your changes now: Everything that is in the latest beta stays there. 6241, 6231 --- will get into 2.11. 6242 --- will not get into release. 5892 --- cvar will get into release, but the following conditions will not. P.S. I must say that I personally would be greatly disappointed if you leave TDM because of this.

Mods said it'll stay open for 24 hrs. I'm on a later schedule in US central time, so I only just now am catching up on the AMA. I'll be sitting in and watching the thread for the rest of the day. I guess this is why we share a dev team that spans multiple continents.

It seems to me that suggestions like this should be judged on a case by case basis. Breaking older missions is a great detriment to the project and community, yes; but one can imagine scenarios where enabling new gameplay modes and new outlets for FM maker creativity might outweigh that consideration. Imagine if the mod had launched without dynamic lighting, or the ability to move objects, or to swing on ropes. Should those features be permanently off limits just because some missions were not designed with them in mind? I think not. The project needs to be able to grow and evolve in order to remain healthy. The problem with the mantling suggestion is that no one has made a cogent argument for why aping the Thief 1&2 system would be a major improvement over the status quo (other than that it conforms better to a few users' expectations). Carrying bodies across the thieves' highway is not a situation that comes up often. Hardly anyone is actively complaining about it (unlike the blackjacking situation), and the community isn't actively excited about exploring the limits of encumbered acrobatics more in future FMs. In fact I struggle to imagine how such a mission could be any fun at all. The preservationist argument has a lot more weight in this case because the proposed benefits of the change are so rare and marginal. Even if we can't specifically point to any mission that would be broken, the amount of work it would take to check would be prohibitive versus the limited utility of the suggestion, so I think the preservationist carry the day by default here. (Ideally this sort of argument should be hashed out well before people start coding.)

That's exactly why there is resistance to changing "what the players could do". No mapper can be expected to consider what players MIGHT be able to do in the future when the rules change.

Of course, all your contributions are welcome. The thing about this specific feature you are implementing is that there was no universal agreement about it within the team to begin with. Just because something is listed on the bugtracker, doesn't mean it is an accepted featurerequest. Anyone can write anything to the backtracker. Furthermore, your patch changes core mechanics in a significant way that have to be thorougly tested not only for 12 hours by you, but by a whole testing community for a week at least, and @JackFarmer already described two maps that would soft-break by this feature. Lastly, you want it to be included now, i.e., at the end of beta phase. Our current beta build is a release candidate, which means that, if no further issues are found, it will be released as is. I am afraid, it is simply too late. You can of course just offer a modded 2.11 with your change included.

I think the reason the dev forums exist is to provide a place where the implementation of features can be discussed without getting mixed up with other debates when someone believes what the devs are doing is wrong. We often post public discussion threads for features with subjective elements like the frob outline, because community feedback is very important. But there will always be vocal defenders with strong views for or against certain features, or how exactly it should be implemented in their opinion. At some point a decision has to be made and be carried through, which is what the dev forums are for. Almost all of the threads are very technical, basically explaining and discussing recent or potential code changes with other devs. Its hard to say. Its a hobby the devs do in their spare time, so people come and go when they're in the mood and when they have the time. The team page is mostly accurate except for some relatively newer additions like myself.

Subtitle capabilities available in 2.10/2.11 are described in the wiki "Subtitles". For info about one new project using these capabilities, see the thread "English Subtitles for AI Barks". That project includes development of a TDM subtitle style guide. The thread here is mainly focused on ideas that would require future engine changes to implement. A. Automatic Switching Between Subtitle Languages Based on Settings This is a follow-on of a forum discussion between datiswous and Geep. It is desirable to have a standardized method for: subtitles to be authored in multiple languages, and so packaged and distributed as part of TDM and its FMs a gamer to dynamically select subtitles in a desired language The subtitle language choice might be controlled by the existing TDM language choice within Settings, or a separate "Subtitles Language" setting. B. Other Possible Improvements Requiring Engine Changes Most of these involve allowing the subtitle code to know something about game entities, and convey that to the gamer. Examples of useful knowledge: the ID of the speaker (or other source) the location of the speaker, relative to the player, the player's view, and other speaking AI. This type of information helps to disambiguate when there are multiple voices present. There are lots of ways such info is visually conveyed in other subtitle/caption systems, and might be added to TDM. C. Providing Subtitles for Existing FX These would have the "verbosity effects" subtitle tag. Beyond 2.11 capabilities, some of the location aspects of (B) would be pertinent.

Edit: in post 5 I discovered Whisper which does this task MUCH better. So don't use vosk. Some of the info till post 5 is still relevant for subtitle editing in Kdenlive in general. I previously posted about this in a status update. To make it a bit more in-view for the future I post the info also in this topic. I recently figured out how to make subtitles work for missions following this wiki guide: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Subtitles You can type in the subtitle-text manually either in the .subs or .srt files (in a text-editor) or use an video editor for that (recomended for .srt). What is also possible on some advanced editors including the free and open source multiplatform (Windows, Linux and Intel-Mac) Kdenlive editor is to auto generate the subtitle text for you from the audio or video file. You can then export to an .srt file that works directly in tdm. If you want to use the subs files for shorter sentences, you can just copy text from the .srt files. In Kdenlive you can install speech to text libraries from VOSK. For this to work you have to download and install Python. Info how to do the process of installation and usage can be seen in the following video (6.5 minutes): To sum it up: Configure first time: Install Python. (on Windows) During setup, you have to select Advanced Options and there mark Add Python to environment variables (super important!). In Kdenlive go to menu settings, click on configure Kdenlive. In that configure window, click in the left menu on Speech to text. There you click on the link to download speech models. On the website ( https://alphacephei.com/vosk/models ) you can click on a model download link, but keep the click pressed and move your mouse with the link to the configure Kdenlive window. Kdenlive then asks to install the model from url. vosk-model-en-us-0.22-lgraph is probably decent for most use cases. but you can install and test them all. To use it: First load an audio or video file into the view by dragging the file in one of the audio or video bars at the bottom (video: v1, v2 or audio: a1, a2). Click on menu Project > Subtitles > Edit Subtitle tool. You see an extra Subtitles bar on top. Now you select the audio or video file (it is sellected when it is outlined with an orange border) in the specific bar and then click on menu Project > Subtitles > Speech recognition. In the Speech recognition dialog, you select the correct language model and choose option Selected clip. After generation, you can preview the generated subtitles via the top right window. Make sure it is at starter position for playback. Using an audio file, you see a black background with the subtitles on top. Now you can tweek the position and edit the text directly in the Subtitles bar. This takes up the most time. Unfortunatelly the generation is not flawless, so you have to correct some words. Tweeking the subtitles for Requiem took me hours, becouse I wanted them to line up differently. Usually the subtitles are not generated as full senteces. This looks sloppy. If you want to add subtitles quickly without spending much time on it, it can be done this way. If you want to do it right, it still takes a lot of time in my experience. To export to .srt is shown in the following video: Although actually it's just one step: Click on menu Project > Subtitles > Export subtitle file. Alternativelly you can just save the kdenlive project and then the srt is exported as well. Every save will update the srt file. I might create a wiki article about it later. Kdenlive edit window:

I wonder why. Are you somehow frustrated with the way or the pace the mod is being developed? I consider critical considerations about future implementations a very good thing. With so many missions out there, it's extremely sensitive which changes can be made without breaking existing missions, or allowing for things which were not intended. And, I think that especially people who are relatively new to the mod should listen to core members who work on this mod for years and years.

The Dark Mod is hosting an Ask Me Anything thread on the PC Gaming reddit forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/10nfcwj/hello_we_are_the_international_development_team/ Feel free to join the discussion there

That is a good example of the mapper having to consider what players could do. If the rules of the game make it possible that the body could somehow get out of reach, you should take that into account.

What you basically described a post earlier is punishing the player for something they couldn't possibly know. That's awful level design.

Currently when subtitles don't work for some reason there is no warning or error in the console. Could this be added?

If anything, it's reasonable not to change the player character move set, because it has been nailed down years ago, and people have been building maps around it. Unless you plan to meticulously replay all the maps in all possible playstyles, to make sure everything is ok, that's a poor idea. Having it as a mod and letting people try it out might be a better option.

Gute Besserung

The AMA is to take place on https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/

I dont know, but i think we need to go to: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDarkMod/ If that doesnt work, we got a discord server:

@datiswous, @Daft Mugi, @wesp5, there are some valid points and questions raised in this thread, which I am happy to address in a lengthy post soon, but at the moment, I am really sick with a nasty cold, so I feel I can't do them justice. Maybe another team member will answer them in my stead, otherwise, you will just have to wait until I feel better. In any case, @Mods, could you please move this discussion to a separate thread like "About our release and decision making processes"? This has nothing to do with beta anymore. FYI: To check which team members are still active, you can just visit their profile and check their "last visited" timestamp. Edit: I now saw that @Dragoferalready gave a good answer to most questions, thanks.

Thank you! The mission database has been updated with this fix.

Some people have been asking about my FM, so I wanted them to have access to a version without the glitch mentioned above (i.e., the pagan woman model that clipped so it looks like she's laying in the sky above Harlan's house). This and it's time that that glitch was fixed anyway. So I made a really quick fix. Basically I opened the .map file and just deleted the pagan woman reference directly. I renamed the file to end with "np" (for "no pagan"). Is it possible for someone to replace the previous version with this one on the download mirrors so it's available in the in-game downloader, etc.? Cheers. (I tested it to confirm the fix.) And this post can also be a general announcement that the glitch was fixed. Here's the link to the new file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-tgN1gyUoYd8qACZ61bd7qHcZAxpAwCN/view?usp=sharing

My own take on the beta process is that devs on one side commit to adding and improving features, but also to ensuring that the new releases are, as far as reasonably achievable, free of bugs and that the new features aren't broken on release. To balance that we have a general policy to freeze the code when the beta starts, where code changes should primarily be fixes to issues detected in the beta. Exceptions are made on a semi-regular basis for changes that go further if they can be justified. That's mainly the case when there's still enough time left in the beta to get the changes properly tested and reviewed, or the risk of breakage is low i.e. because you're adding, but not changing things. For example, I worked extensively on assets this release cycle and didn't manage to get all the work done before the beta, so I was still busy until about the middle of the beta phase. However, I prioritised my work so that asset changes were ready ahead of the beta, while asset additions (which won't break anything) were made during the beta. I also treaded particularly carefully when adding the new assets to compensate for their shorter beta testing time. I might not have been around as much lately, but I only heard of Daft Mugi's slew of patches when we were discussing whether the next beta build should be the release candidate, which gets released as-is if no significant issues are reported. At that point any changes will either prolong the beta testing phase, or carry the risk of not working as intended. The plan was to reach this point at the end of january (if this was not prominently communicated somewhere it was a mistake). Personally I definitely see the value in trying to accommodate as many of these changes as possible because they make TDM more attractive to Thief players, Daft Mugi is even standing ready to introduce them to the TTLG community, and it looks like they're fairly simple changes. However, prolonging the beta comes with its own drawbacks. One is that players and mappers are delayed in getting access to all the other new features. Another is that the beta phase is a relatively draining part of the release cycle for the devs because new projects are mostly on hold while the focus is on getting to a stable build. One of the ideas behind dev builds was to shorten the beta phase by spreading out the testing. Ultimately, we've designated Stgatilov as the project lead so it's his task to call the shots on how to balance these demands.

The subtitle generation doesn't take different voices into account. So often different voices end up in the same subtitle line (so you have to devide them by editting). Can for example be seen in fm Hair in the Snare where the mission intro has 2 voices.

The TDM community is much too small to support multiple versions. For example, snatchers modpack hasn't even reached 100 downloads on ModDB yet and my own patch is still under 700 after some time...

Ok, let me start by saying that TDM was never supposed to be a simple copy Thief 1/2 mechanics in a newer engine. It was always catered towards the more hardcore players, seeking a challenge. Do we really need to restrict mantling while shouldering at all? > Yes, because all the 100+ existing FMs were designed with the current ruleset. Changing the ruleset afterwards could alter or even break the vision an FM author had for their mission and that is something we explicitly want to protect because these authors sometimes put years of work into their missions. If we restrict the player while shouldering, what should the rules be? > It was argued that lifting a body over small ledges is already possible, by dropping the body and moving it around without shouldering. This is very cumbersome, however, so being able to mantle small ledges while shouldering would be a nice quality of life improvement. While shouldering, what's the tallest object that can be mantled? > Waist high. Height could be controlled by a cheat-cvar. While shouldering, should there be different object height requirements between crouched and standing? > Yes, crouched should be lower. It would create some additional tension to have to stand up to perform the mantling. While shouldering, can the player mantle during a fall or jump across to another ledge? > Player cannot jump while shouldering. Conversely, he should not be able to mantle while shouldering and falling. While shouldering, what mantle types are allowed out of: push, pushNonCrouch, pull, pullFast, hang? > Definitely not hang and anything pull. That is only triggered for big heights. While shouldering, it should probably play the usual viewport animation, but a bit slower.

Yes, sorry about that. We could be clearer with our communication in this regard. However, please understand, that it is really not that common for external contributors to be working so much on bug fixes and new features, so this is kind of new to us as well. And of course the team has to agree upon all contributions, regardless of external or internal origin. The beta was announced Dec, 2nd, and that was also the moment for 2.11 feature-freeze.

To be honest, that can be said about 99% of changes to the game Yes, that's exactly what is happening I'm trying to filter all these changes depending on how scary they look to me. Out of what Daft Mugi has listed that is not in beta211-07 yet, I think only the fix for damage from fall + mantle is going to make it. The rest of the changes... I'd better not hurry. The general rule is that we do development before beta starts, not after. And especially not in the second half of beta.

Alright - managed to find the source the error - a single volumetric light had the spawnarg set of ".001/" The map is now fixed. Thanks all!