Leaderboard

Public release v1.7.6 (with Dark Mod support) is out. Improvements since the final beta 14 are: Fixed a few remaining bugs with zip/pk4 support. Game Versions window now properly displays TDM version. Import window no longer has a vestigial off-screen TDM field (because TDM doesn't need or support importing). Web search option is now disabled if an unknown/unsupported FM is selected. If an FM with an unknown or unsupported game type is selected, the messages in the tab area now no longer refer to Thief 3 ("Mod management is not supported for Thief: Deadly Shadows"). The full changelog can be viewed at the release link. The de facto official AngelLoader thread is here: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149706 Bug reports, feature requests etc. are usually posted there. I'll continue following this thread though. Thanks everyone and enjoy!

Welcome to the Snatcher's Workshop. Come on in, we may have something for you today. Feel free to look around. We trade everything here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We realize new ideas and take existing ideas for a spin. For fun. Somewhere in this post you will find a download with mods. Good care was put to make all mods as little intrusive as possible to make them compatible with as many missions as possible. This set of mods will never break your game but some features won't be available in a handful of missions (the reasons are known). Feel free to report here what works and what doesn't. TDM Modpack vs. Unofficial Patch The TDM Modpack and wesp5's Unofficial Patch are incompatible since both the Pack and the Patch use a similar approach to mods. With the release of recent versions of the TDM Modpack I consider the most relevant features of the Unofficial Patch have been matched, superseded, improved, or simply implemented in different ways. More importantly, the TDM Modpack is not only tightly packed and it has a minimal impact in your install but it achieves more by altering less core files, meaning more compatibility and less maintenance. One can, of course, argue. TDM Modpack v4.0 Compatible with The Dark Mod 2.12 ONLY A lightweight, stable, non-intrusive, mission-friendly Modpack for The Dark Mod that includes many enhancements and a new set of tools and abilities for our protagonist: peek through doors, blow and ignite candles, whistle to distract enemies, mark your location, an invisibility-speed combo and more. Mods included in the pack do not alter your game or any of the missions in any relevant way. The pack includes enhancements to the core game and additions that can be used in missions but at the same time respects the vision of the mission creators. It is up to you to make use of any of the new tools and abilities or not. Please note that sometimes authors include in their missions their own versions of core files and as a result, some mods are not available in some missions. All missions will play fine regardless. Release posts: v4 series: v4.0 v3 series: v3.8 | v3.6 | v3.5 | v3.4 | v3.3 | v3.2 | v3.0 v2 series: v2.8 | v2.7 | v2.6 | v2.5 | v2.4 | v2.2 | v2.0 v1 series: v1.8 | v1.6 | v1.4 | v1.2 | v1.0 What's included in the pack? -:- APP: GENERIC MOD ENABLER -:- Credits: JoneSoft License: Free for unlimited time for Home users and non-profit organizations. Description: A portable, freely distributable Mod enabler/disabler. This application is required to run mods safely and it is included in the pack. At the heart of the Modpack resides JSGME (JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler), an application that allows players to enable and disable mods with one click. JSGME has been around for more than a decade and it is to be fully trusted. Refer to the install instructions section at the bottom for full details. -:- MOD: AUTO COMMANDS -:- By activating Auto Commands some key bindings will be set automatically. F1, F2, F3 and F4 keys are not used by the game and we are reserving them for mods: - F1: Cycle through the Skills category - F2: Cycle through the Tools category - F3: Switch between Loot and Stealth stats - F4: Direct shortcut to "Penumbra" None of these categories or shortcuts can be set to any hotkey in-game currently, so we are using the built-in autocommands.cfg file to set up the keys. It may be the case you already make use of the autocommands.cfg file to configure other things to your needs or liking therefore consider yourself warned. Enable Auto Commands if you plan on using Core Essentials and/or the Skill Upgrade. -:- MOD: CORE ESSENTIALS -:- A pack that includes a variety of mods from the best modders of TDM: ~ FAST DOORS Credits: Idea and programming by Obsttorte. Treatment by snatcher. Availability: All missions except Noble Affairs, Seeking Lady Leicester, Shadows of Northdale ACT II, Snowed Inn and a handful of lesser missions. Description: Being chased? In a rush? No problem: doors open and close faster when running. Topic: Slam doors open while running ~ QUIET DOORS Credits: An idea by SeriousToni (Sneak & Destroy mission). Mod by snatcher. Availability: All missions except Noble Affairs, Seeking Lady Leicester, Shadows of Northdale ACT II, Snowed Inn and a handful of lesser missions. Description: A vast number of doors play more subtle, sneaky sounds for a quieter, stealthier experience. This applies to doors that come with default sounds but only when manipulated by the player. Topic: Decrease volume of open/close door sounds triggered by player ~ LOOT ANIMATIONS Credits: Original idea by Goldwell (Noble Affairs mission). Programming by Obsttorte. Treatment by snatcher and wesp5. Availability: All missions except Noble Affairs, Seeking Lady Leicester, Shadows of Northdale ACT II, Snowed Inn and a handful of lesser missions. Description: Moves the loot towards the player before putting it in the inventory, underlining the impression of actually taking it. This mod comes with a subtle new loot sound that goes along nicely with the animation. ~ DYNAMIC LOOT INVENTORY Credits: snatcher. Availability: All missions except Noble Affairs, Seeking Lady Leicester, Shadows of Northdale ACT II, Snowed Inn and a handful of lesser missions. Description: When picking up loot this mod displays the loot info in the inventory and shortly after reverts back to the last non-loot item selected. ~ SMART CONTAINERS Credits: Obsttorte (source code updates), Dragofer (similar attempts), snatcher. Availability: All missions. Description: To facilitate looting, the bottom of many containers (chests, jewellery boxes, etc...) gets automatically disabled at the beginning of the mission and only the lid remains frobable. ~ STEALTH MONITOR Credits: kcghost, Dragofer, snatcher. Availability: All missions. Description: Display some stats (Suspicions / Searches / Sightings) and the Stealth Score during a mission. Bring up the "Loot" inventory icon and press "Use" or just press F3 repeatedly if using Auto Commands. ~ STEALTH ALERT Credits: snatcher. Availability: All missions. Description: Completing a mission without being seen is something that can be done with some practice and patience. This mod will play an alerting chime whenever you are seen so that you don't have to monitor the Stealth stats all the time. ~ BLINKING ITEMS Credits: snatcher. Availability: All missions. Requisites: Console command r_newFrob must be 0, which is the game default. Description: Items within frob distance that go into the inventory (plus static readables) emit a subtle blink. This pulse can help you identify some valuable items that otherwise are difficult to detect. Topic: New Frob Shader ~ SMART OBJECTS Credits: snatcher, Dragofer. Availability: All missions. Description: Sometimes it is difficult to tell if an object is being held or not. Three dots will be displayed on screen whenever you grab an object, unless the object has name, in which case the name of the object will be displayed. In addition, objects (except AI entities) do not make or propagate sounds on impact while being manipulated. Topics: No impact sounds while holding an object / Nameless objects... a missed opportunity ~ SHADOWMARK TOOL Credits: snatcher, Obsttorte. Availability: All missions. Description: Our protagonist's lucky deck! When the item is selected the player can drop and throw playing cards to mark a location. Cards can be retrieved. AI will not normally mind a single card lying around but cards can sometimes be noticed. Topic: Find more details in this post ~ ALT FOOTSTEPS ON WATER Credits: SeriousToni. Availability: All missions except Hazard Pay, Noble Affairs, Shadows of Northdale ACT I and ACT II, Snowed Inn, Volta 2: Cauldron and a handful of lesser missions. Description: Alternative sounds of footsteps on water for our protagonist (walk / run / land). Topic: New Footstep sounds ~ OTHER ADDITIONS Re-worked Inventory menu (more compact). Semi-transparent backgrounds for the in-game Inventory Grid and Objectives screen. Alternative high mantle sound for our protagonist. Revamped and extended "Mission Complete" audio theme. -:- MOD: SKILL UPGRADE -:- A new "Skills" category is added to the inventory on mission load and the category includes the below abilities: Did you know? When using Auto Commands you can press F1 to access the "Skills" category and F4 to quickly access "Penumbra"... ~ SKILL: OBSERVATION Credits: Dragofer, snatcher, wesp5 Availability: All missions. Description: When the "Peek Door" item is selected the player can peek through any regular door. Select the item in the inventory and "Use" it on a door. Topic: Peek through (almost) every door ~ SKILL: MANIPULATION Credits: Dragofer, wesp5, Obsttorte, snatcher. Availability: All missions. Description: When the "Blow / Ignite" item is selected the player can blow out and light up candles and oil lamps. Select the item in the inventory and "Use" it on small flame sources. Topic: Extinguish small lights with a blow ~ SKILL: COMBINATION Credits: OrbWeaver, MirceaKitsune, datiswous, wesp5, snatcher. Availability: All missions. Description: When the "Alchemy" item is selected the player can alter the properties of broadhead arrows by applying different reagents. Select the item in the inventory and "Use" it repeatedly to cycle through the different arrow types. Topic: Alchemy to alter arrow properties? Arrow types: Shadow arrow compound or "Darkdust": Widely believed to be a myth, little to nothing is known about anti-light matter. Where did our protagonist get his formula from? When this substance is subject to strain the particles implode and the residual component absorbs light until it dissipates completely. Flare arrow compound or "Starlight": A recipe based on luminescent mushrooms and other exotic herbs. The resulting powder produces, for limited time, a dim but steady blue-ish glow when mixed with the right reactive. A high concentration of the active mixture can cause a burning sensation to the eyes. ~ SKILL: DISTRACTION Credits: snatcher. Availability: All missions. Description: When the "Whistle" item is selected the player can whistle and draw the attention of nearby AI. The more you whistle, the more attention it draws. Select the item in the inventory and just "Use" it. Keep a safe distance. ~ SKILL: ALTERATION Credits: VanishedOne (speed potion), kingsal (invisibility potion), snatcher (alchemy). Availability: All missions. Description: When the "Penumbra" item is selected the player can avoid light sources and run faster than usual for limited time. Health consumed will gradually be restored. Penumbra doesn't muffle the noise you make and it doesn't work when in contact with water. Press F4 to quickly access this ability if using Auto Commands. THE PATH TO UMBRA: How to become one with the shadows -:- MOD: CLASSIC BLACKJACK -:- Credits: Obsttorte, snatcher. Availability: All missions except A House of Locked Secrets and By Any Other Name. Description: A straightforward approach to blackjacking with new rules and mechanics inspired by the original Thief games. Never miss a KO again! - No indicator required. "Classic Blackjack" rules: Some AI are KO-immune and cannot be KOed: * Undead, creatures... * Guards wearing heavy helmets (to respect TDM vision) * Other: set by mission authors for the plot, in example The rest of AI can be KOed, just aim for the head: * Civilians: Can always be knocked out from any direction * Combatants: Can always be knocked out (including when fleeing) from any direction except when in high alert state (normally in combat mode) As reference, you can find in the Wiki the set of rules of the non-modded TDM: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=The_Dark_Mod_Gameplay#Blackjacking -:- MOD: FLASH GRENADE -:- Credits: snatcher, kingsal. Availability: All missions except Hazard Pay and Moongate Ruckus. Description: Flashbombs are clumsy and loud but as effective as ever. Instead of throwing Flashbombs like a cannonball we now toss them. Instead of exploding on impact Flashbombs now have a fuse. The chances of blinding have been greatly increased. -:- MOD: HUNTER BOW -:- Credits: snatcher. Availability: Most missions (a few missions do things differently but you should never notice). Description: Nock and draw arrows at a faster rate. Extended radius of gas arrow effect. Chance to retrieve rope arrows when missing a shot. -:- MOD: SHOCK MINE -:- Credits: wesp5, snatcher. Availability: All missions. Description: This mod replaces the Flashmines with customized, "High Voltage" electric mines. Remember: mines can be disarmed with the lockpicks! -:- MOD: SIMPLE SUBTITLES -:- Credits: Geep, stgatilov, snatcher. Availability: All missions. Description: A minimalist, imperfect approach to subtitles (you can set the scope of the subs in the audio settings). Topics: Subtitles - Possibilities Beyond 2.11 / English Subtitles for AI Barks Go to the audio settings and set the scope you prefer: Story: Story only On: Story and general speech (Give it a try!) Off: Disable subtitles Features of the mod: Background replaced with a font outline. Audio source widget replaced with a text transparency based on distance (volume) to the source. Yellow font color for story subs for best contrast, light grey font color for anything else. Non-story subs limited to a single instance, so that players aren't bothered too much with non-relevant subs (barks). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOWNLOADS / INSTALL / UNINSTALL So, how do I install and play with all this? Quite easy, but pay attention. I don't want you to break your game so we will be using a "Mod Enabler". A Mod Enabler allows you to enable and disable mods at will, with a few clicks. Before moving forward you must know a couple of things: The moment you enable a mod, previous saves will not work. If you want to load previous saves then you will have to disable the mod. If you play a mission with mods, the saves will only work when that exact set of mods are enabled. This above is important in case you deem your current saves precious. Consider yourself informed. DOWNLOADS You can download the TDM Modpack from Mod DB: INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS Download the zip, unzip it, and move contents to your TDM root folder: Folder "MODS" File "JSGME.exe" Go to your TDM root folder and double click on JSGME.exe (yellow icon). The first time you launch JSGME, it will ask for the "Mods Folder Name". Leave "MODS" and click OK. Now to your left you will find a list of mods available. To your right you will find a list of mods currently enabled. To enable a mod, select a mod on the left, and click on the arrow pointing to the right. To disable a mod, select a mod on the right, and click on the arrow pointing to the left. Go and enable the mods you want: UNINSTALL INSTRUCTIONS Quit the game (to unblock files) Go to your TDM root folder and double click on JSGME.ese (yellow icon) Disable all mods found on the right Close JSGME Delete the following: Folder "MODS" File "JSGME.exe" File "JSGME.ini" --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope you enjoy the mods. No coin? then leave a like for pirate's sake!

Although the argument of using ads to finance creators is legitimate, the abuse that YT makes of them is not and makes the use of adblockers inevitable, if one does not want, for example, a concert to be crushed by interruptions, even with advertorials. , this is independent of countless clickbaits in the thumbnails and other shit that YT wants to push us to use YT Premium with its abusive prices. A few months ago, YT began an aggressive anti-adblock campaign, with pop-ups reminding us of the ban and even blocking the player, in addition to YT Premium's self-advertisements. This leaves the user with only the options of either swallowing the ads interrupted by their favorite videos or signing up for YT Premium. Many have already moved to other platforms, for example Odysee, but the problem is that no other platform can compete in content with YT. Luckily there is a solution to this problem, which, at least for the moment, works and is a small userscript that we can add to our browser. For this we install the Tampermonkey extension and add this script https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/477725-youtube-iframe-adblocker In the Vivaldi browser it is not necessary to use Tampermonkey, there you just have to download this script in a folder (do not delete it) and drag the script to the extensions tab in Developer mode to install it. This surrounds YT's adblock detector, as this script dynamically overlays the video on an iFrame, making the adblocker invisible to YT.

Shadow warrior classic complete or Shadow Warrior Classic 97 is alot of fun. One of the better fps from the good ol days.

Just to remind anybody that this is one of the best FM's out there (though I haven't played all available missions yet). I couldn't find a link to a "Best Fan Mission" thread or a web page anywhere ranking missions, so I'm left with congratulating the author here. So many thanks to Gelo "Moonbo" Fleisher for their mission.

I know, it's just the only easy way I can think of. Fixed script names is what we have now, tdm_custom_scripts.script or tdm_user_addons.script: Every mod will use them up and thus take them away from other mods. We need something that's dynamic and unlimited. A better alternative is a prefix to indicate you want auto-running of that script: Anything called "scripts/include_*.script" would be a good one, just use an unique name and call yours "include_mod_something.script" which will work if no one else names theirs "mod_something". Even better: Have a keyword at the beginning of the script! Like how scripts in Linux start with #!/bin/bash so file managers know how to preview them: Similarly we could add something like #autoexec at the beginning of ours, though this approach requires the engine looping through all script files to detect this keyword. We could imagine making tdm_user_addons.script unique per pk4. But I haven't even mentioned this one as it goes against how the file system works: You can't have multiple files with the same name and different contents, the latest archive in alphabetical order must always override a file loaded by an earlier archive. What gets close to that is a special text file in each pk4 like a package.txt which references the inclusion script as a flag. FM's kind of do that with darkmod.txt: When each pk4 is iterated by the engine at startup, it could read a script name mentioned there and execute the file referenced. But this seems more complicated than necessary unless this configuration is used for more stuff, maybe to list loaded mods in the main menu with their title / description / author / version the same way missions are?

This is most excellent news! Break the Modpack or any other add-ons / mods in the process if you must. We shall gladly rebuild them! Set up a good foundation. The most exciting and ambitious mods will require config files and dedicated guis, but we aren't there yet.

For scripting it's essential what order the functions come in because a function can only call another function or access a variable if it has already been seen by the scripting engine. This would make auto-loading scripts in alphabetical order problematic unless all core and FM scripts have their names changed in a way that mimics their current #include orders. It would be better if the order no longer mattered, but that's probably a change in a different ballpark entirely. Also note that tdm_custom_scripts.script is explicitly for mappers and tdm_user_addons.script is explicitly for users/addon creators, with warnings in the respective files similar to how most of our GUI files point people to which ones are safe for them to tamper with. The messup with Hazard Pay happened because the FM provided a copy of tdm_user_addons.script (accidentally left behind after testing), conflicting with other addons. @wesp5files outside of .pk4s already overwrite same-named files inside .pk4s, both on the core and FM levels. In any case, we've recently started looking into a way of supporting unlimited addons in parallel by auto-including and auto-calling script files and functions whose names follow a specific naming convention (tdm_user_addon*).

The first thing you need is to make sure all your script files have inclusion guards so they can only be loaded into the script stack once (these are the #endif lines you see at the start and end of official TDM script files). If you have those, then as long as both your addon and the FM author use the same name for the same .script file there shouldn't be an issue in terms of re-inclusion. Problems can still arise if both the author and you try to initialise the custom script separately, i.e. in this case you would have 2 copies of the stealth statistics scroll. Another issue arises if the FM author overwrites tdm_user_addons.script, which is the case here, because that will overwrite your addons. This is an error that should be corrected by the FM author (they should use tdm_custom_scripts.script, which is designed for mappers to use), and I've already told kingsal about this just now. Ultimately I think it's hard to avoid conflicts if the FM author integrates a user addon into his map. The best thing you can probably do besides what's above is to make sure each of your files and functions has unique names so both copies of the script can run in parallel in peace. Ofc this doesn't help if the author got the addon from your addon pack. We should probably discourage FM authors from integrating addon packs and instead ask them to point players to a download link.

This sounds like something that could be scripted into (more) Tutorial missions / maps... ..or perhaps some more 'Advanced' Training maps that show off 'Master' level taffer tricks? How to deal with Undead (Holy Water, Mines, Fire-arrows, ect...) Sneaky tricks (Trapping guards in locked rooms, mis-uses of heavy crates) Spider Hunting 101 (Best sword Stabbin' angles, Use of Arrows on Arachnid weak-points) Distracting troublesome Mercs (Noise makers, regular arrows, thrown stuff..throwing even)

Nice OpenSource app which I use now on Desktop https://omega.gg/MotionBox/ MotionBox accesses and aggregates videos via the VBML language. It supports DuckDuckGo, BitTorrent, TMDB, YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, Odysee, PeerTube, Last.fm and SoundCloud. All of this inside multiple tabs and without ever showing an ad.

Okay now I actually think we need a tip system, since in 10 years I never had any idea you can use lockpicks to disarm mines

Sorry for being cryptic, that didn't work very well. It's the lockpicks. Yeah but what if the player has the setting off? Mappers can display tips already although I am not sure how intuitive or easy implementing messages is.

Part of the issue, at least for me, is that I didn't even start using an ad-blocker until ads had become so ridiculous they were actually impacting the performance of my computer. I started using a blocker way, way back when I had a single-core CPU. I can even remember what it was - a Flash ad displayed on DeviantArt. The problem now is that I've become so used to a cleaned-up web experience that browsing the web in a non-blocked fashion is so incredibly shitty that if it weren't for ad-blockers, I'd barely use the Internet. I can understand YouTube wanting to block ads, I really do. But from what I've read the increase in ads on YouTube over recent years is just not going to encourage me to disable my blocker and I'm not prepared to pay for Premium since I don't use YT much anyway. Is it unethical/immoral? Well I've crossed that bridge years ago; the web is so horrible without blockers that if it's unethical/immoral to block them, then I'm happy to be judged so. What I can say is that I would use YouTube even LESS if I was forced to view ads. EDIT: For what it's worth I've never had YouTube show me that pop-up yet. I know the rollout is staggered but also that uBlock Origin filters are regularly updated to deal with it, so who knows. Maybe I did have it but the blocker dealt with it silently as with other ads.

I'm with Zerg Rush on this. Non-intrusive moderate advertising is fine but aggressive, extremely irritating ones, especially when Youtube (google) are already making massive profit. (anyone remember early internet when gif ads were irritating?) I use DuckDuckgo to search for videos then download with 4K downloader. Don't even need to go to the Youtube website usually. If the yt website was more friendly I'd much prefer to go there but it ain't. I'll always fight extreme commercial greed and support the friendlies. [EDIT: PS, remember google don't even provide the content, only the platform. Without the providers they are nothing, an empty website.]

Bookmark everything you have an interest in. The Algorithm can still be useful for finding related content, but it can't be relied upon. As for the adblocking, I have different setups that are all still effective at blocking ads, and I spent no effort tweaking these. I usually don't use a user account. Maybe YouTube hasn't rolled everything out yet, IDK. YouTube does have alternate sources of revenue, such as taking a 30% cut of superchats, and 50% cut on channel memberships. For the ads it does run, mobile users block ads less often than desktop users and are probably considered more valuable by advertisers from the information that can be extracted about viewership. I don't think YouTube is particularly unprofitable, and Google is probably willing to run it at cost just to have a cultural behemoth in its pocket. Theoretically, the costs of running a video platform can go down if storage, computing, networking, and codec advancements counteract growth. Google also has advantages over upstart competitors, such as the ability to design its own transcoding chips.

In-app downloading is turning out to be a lot more troublesome than I thought, and some of the auto-detection of stuff the game does is more troublesome than I thought too. So I'm thinking I could just make the first public release sans downloader and then take my time to develop something nice. Anyway, new beta. Beta 10 Auto-update finished difficulty when an FM is finished in-game. If AngelLoader doesn't have a last-played date already, it will pull it from TDM's database. But if it has its own, it will use that, because it's more granular (TDM's only goes down to the day). Sorting for the Archive column for TDM FMs now works correctly. "Play Without FM" for TDM now deselects any selected FM before running it. Don't know, just seemed cleaner. Think of a like a roundabout "download missions" button where you can go in-game with no FM and download some, I dunno. Added support for detecting in-place updated FMs, but only scan on next startup due to race condition with the pk4 Removed support for auto-refreshing on pk4 add, because the game adds pk4s individually to the fms dir before moving them to their own dirs, and we were trying to scan with each one (and failing due to locks and such)

Actually I'd already figured that part out from the source code and a bit of trial-and-error, but thanks nonetheless! I do have one question. The tdm_mission_list_urls cvar has two urls: http://missions.thedarkmod.com/get_available_missions.php http://missions.thedarkmod.com/available_missions.xml They both appear to lead to the exact same xml file, except the first one has an xml header and the second one doesn't. From looking at the code it seems like it tries them in order. Should I be doing this too? Are they just mirrors and one might be down? Since they're both on the same domain it seems odd they'd be mirrors, surely if one was down the other would be too, but I dunno.

Let me say I appreciate what you did and what you do. You weren't satisfied with something, you put up good fights, you came up with ideas and solutions, and you shared the results. You didn't give up. Thanks for that. Problems can be approached in different ways. Yesterday there was one solution and today there are two alternatives. Having seen what's going on behind curtains, I regard the blow as the more elegant and less intrusive solution. At this point I can only wish some authors would support our tools by course correcting some decisions. I think I now understand the implications and I also think I figured out an an elegant way out. Solutions will be presented privately in due time.

I don’t follow really - your mod and others will need to be maintained as well and some very popular missions include alterations to base content of the game - which is one reason I don’t install patches/mods as a player because I know FM authors do this and a patch won’t even work in those circumstances - another benefit of integrating directly into missions is you don’t actually have to replace things when you can just add them. Just pointing out there may be something of interest to mappers in these mods/patches instead of just players, as mechanics tend to shine when they are accounted for in the design. Even if it’s not for everyone you all seem to put a lot of work into these mechanics - I don’t know how many players mod the game but it’s pretty much a guarantee they all play fms so if you’ve got something cool getting some mappers on board seems like a way for more players to see your work.

I ended up loving Mooncrash, although it takes time to embrace the concept. Marrying im-sim principles with Dark Souls / rogue-lite rules of play isn't something super intuitive, and there's a lot of stuff you have to discover yourself. The whole thing seems to be targeting all the careful ghosters and save scummers, to show them that their play style is boring and the real fun is elsewhere. There are no saves, so you have to play past your mistakes. You have preset character abilities, so you need to change your play style from person to person. And you have to take quick and decisive actions, as there's time limit for all characters. But, as with Dark Souls, this is a game of learning and repetition, with some things being persistent and other things not. It definitely pushes you out of a comfort zone, if you have a one style for im-sim games. I didn't like it at first, but I think it's an excellent construct, design-wise. But I also believe this might be a niche within a niche. I guess most im-sim fans love their freedom of choice, i.e. freedom not to change their habits, and that's why this DLC is probably not as popular as it should be.