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Hey all. I spoke to Biker and @nbohr1more about this but wanted to ask everyone participating. @Ansome@thebigh @xlm @Nico A.@jonri@Petike the Taffer @grodenglaive@Uncertain Title@DeTeEff I had some time free up in October, potentially allowing me to finish Volta 3 for this. Would it be fair to enter this late? The mission's been in the works for a long time. At the end of the day, I just want to celebrate 15 years of TDM with everyone . Either by participating in this, or just releasing Volta 3 later in the month, around Halloween this year.

As an added incentive, Bikderdude is offering TDM "Cog Keyfobs" to the winner(s) of the contest: The were created by @AluminumHaste !

The Imperial Sword By: Bikerdude "When passing through the small town of Brouften, the locals mentioned that the Town Council have been having issues with one of the local nobels. One Lord Drafferi, who has been interrupting Town Council meetings and claiming that nobody on the council has any authority on town matters..." Notes: - TDM 2.12 or later is REQUIRED to play this mission. - This FM is based on an abandoned old version of The Elixir that doesn't resemble the current mission at all as a base for town of Brouften. - This FM should play on the vast majority of systems. I have perf tweaked this thing to within an inch of its life. And have moved almost all of the VL ligh effects to the ‘ better’ LOD level. - min recommended spec (as per beta testing) Intel Core i7(3rd gen), nvidia 1030 4gb (GDDR5), will get you 60fps inside and 45fps outside. - Various areas will look better with shadow maps enabled (SoftShadows set to high and Shadows Softness set to zero) at the possible expense of performance. - When you play there are 2 LOD settings of note, normal and better. On better all of the VL lights and alpha shadows are turned on. - I also suggest using MAPS shadows with softness set to low and quality so to medium or high. - And lastly this mission has subtitles for all the custom audio and briefing. Tip: - When searching for needed items, use the "F" \ "Lean Forward" Key Brunting Steel: The sword in this mission is made of Brunting Steel which is a semi-mythical metal in the TDM universe. It is similar to Damascus Steel which was famed for it's strength in comparison to other steel swords. In TDM mythology, it was originally forged on an island utopia, similar to the fabled metal "Orichalcum" crafted in Atlantis. The first mission to mention Brunting Steel is "Crucible of Omens: Behind Closed Doors" Download Link: - (v1.3.6) - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mu-FdGH1FivMgt4Fy1OgwiDjvIpA1Uck/view Changes: The briefing has been tweaked to remove some of the confusing aspects, aswell as the audio, so the narration is easier to understand. There is now more than one exit point to complete then mission. A number of annoyances that some players reported have been tweaked or outright changed. In game map ( The mission is also available in the Mission Database ) https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?internalName=imperial_sword Credits: A big thanks goes to - - nbhor1more for his fantastic story and readables. - WellingtonCrab for the fantastic signs, plaques, decals & other textures. - Mortem desino, Narrator for their awesome and subtle custom dialog. - Goldwell for the "Grumpy old man voice" - Datiswous for the subtitles - Kingsal for the awesome new grass and flowers. - Flanders and Melan for their excellent models and textures. - Nobiax for his excellent small plants - nobiax.deviantart.com. - kyyrma and GigaGooga for thier ever-handy sounds packs. - Obstortte for the custom frob script. - Jackfarmer for the brilliant custom briefing. - freesound.org for ambient tracks, further details in sndshd file. - Beta testers: Mat99 (star tester), Nbhor1more, Amadeus, Xak, Jackfarmer, MikeA1 and S1lverwolf. Teaser: Before and After screens: 15yr Anniversary Contest Thread:

LOL no they weren't!

Sounds like SEED templates: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=SEED_-_Templates_via_Spawnargs

In any case, I am at an age since it is clear to me that I do not have enough years left to see the outcome of this comedy, I only hope that our children and grandchildren do not piss in "gratitude" on our graves. All that remains for me is to try to find out why the most stupid and inept sons of a bitch are always chosen to run the world, watching the news in the morning.

So I may become the first mapper crazy enough to not only make a full on daytime FM, but the ever first TDM level to have a daytime cycle. Not a smooth one where you watch the sun go down, the system for that would be far more complex and the rotating parallel light would wreck performance. Instead there's going to be a day a dusk and a night that switch when the player completes key objectives. I'm using 4 global lights only 2 of which change: The ambient world which I may want to remove, and fog which is constant since that seems to have issues with being toggled... the actual ambiance is achieved by using cubemap illumination which was recently fixed, and of course a parallel light sun. All torches and street lamps are off during the day and dusk and come on during night... for performance sake more than anything, even without other lights a single parallel sky will still wreck the FPS. Kinda tragic that volumetric lighting doesn't work with parallel / parallelsky or else it would be even prettier... rather tempted to ask about that. Don't worry about the lightgem: The goal is to only have guards turn hostile at night... either the player must do something to upset them before the sun goes down, or I might go with the classic curfew so they're only enemies at night. I thought of making it cyclical so you can use the bed to endlessly advance by 6 hours, but I doubt it's worth the extra complexity for an already complex setup, I may leave it for my open world concept if that ever happens. In the meantime, if anyone's wondered what a detailed daytime level looks like in TheDarkMod, here's a glimpse into something more unusual!

More than just a lick

I was here daily for a while looking for hints on various missions, then just played (and replayed) missions for a while without visiting. Can't believe I missed this one on release. And so many pages of messages in a short time! I do like to read here so I don't find out something long after I've already been through an area and then have to backtrack. But then again, some of the missions are so incredibly immersive that I don't mind an immediate replay armed with new information. I can't tell if I'm bad at controls or if my computer doesn't allow me to jump well, but I sure can't get where other people seem to be able to go. Sometimes I stack to get to places I'm not sure if you're supposed to get to, but sometimes I have to do things like this to get where others seem to be able to go. (pic) I'm not sure if my life is boring or if this is just incredibly great, but thank you to all of the people who do incredibly good work and make very high quality games. Haven't started yet, but I'm sure it's a treat as all of you developers just seem to get better and better.

Biker's mission "The Imperial Sword" is almost ready for release! The town of Broufton awaits:

The balance of this map seems way off, small rooms in the fort each with anywhere between 3-5 guards, it's too much. I'm hiding under a staircase atm and I have about 10 guards looking for me. Maps which offer an equal opportuntiy to ghost/slaughter are ideal, but it seems like mass knockout/slaughter is my only option here.