Goldwell

A new screenshot from Shadows of Northdale Act 3

lantern_sheath.ogg Lantern sheath lantern_unsheath.ogg Lantern unsheath

Title has been updated now. Thanks everyone for having a little bit of fun! Now back to the Dark Radiant mines!

Version 3.14.15926 General Changes: Added a new game mode where all AI are replaced with clowns. All loot items now make a "boing" sound when picked up. All in-game text has been translated to Pig Latin. Players now have a 50% chance of slipping on banana peels. Guards now have a 50% chance of sneezing, alerting nearby enemies. AI Changes: Guards now randomly break into song and dance numbers. Thieves now occasionally stumble and trip over themselves, making them easier for guards to catch. Zombies now wear silly hats. Level Design Changes: The player's objective is now to steal a giant rubber chicken from a noble's mansion. All buildings in the game world now have exaggerated, cartoonish proportions. The game now takes place entirely in a giant ball pit. Audio Changes: All sound effects have been replaced with foley sounds created by mouth noises. The soundtrack now exclusively features kazoo covers of popular songs. Bug Fixes: Fixed a bug where players could get stuck in a wall by crouching and jumping repeatedly. Fixed a bug where players could "swim" through the air by rapidly jumping while falling. Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes try to speak in emojis.

There's nothing to make clear. I didn't mention once in my original post that I thought the missions were broken because of the blackjack changes. I'm only updating them because I want them to take advantage of the new blackjacking changes.

That is good to know! Ill delete the blackjack def file in my upcoming missions. And when I update my existing ones, I’ll remove it for them too. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!

Thanks for the update Greebo! I did send you a message on discord back in the end of December about a rather annoying bug which I don't seem to see is fixed in the list. And it's quite frustrating to deal with. So the arrow that goes between targeted entities doesn't render correctly when updated to a different entity. The spawn arg updates but not in the orthoview. It's easy to replicate though. Drop in two models and create a trigger once. Set the trigger once to be targeted to model 1. Then duplicate the trigger once and change it's target from model 1 to model 2 and the arrow doesn't update but the spawnarg does. For example it looks like this: In order to get it to display correctly I have to hide the entity it's targeting, and then reshow it which causes it to update to the proper view like this:

Thank you for the kind words! It's hard to believe this mission is nearly 10 years old too! Time really does fly. Also re: the convo's. I try to add a little bit of humor to every mission or at least a bit more flavor. I've always loved it in the thief series when I stumble across a conversation & can eavesdrop in, it helps to make the world just feel that little bit more lived in, rather than just standard NPC barks everywhere. I also have a lot of fun implementing them, I was working on a mission in Shadows of Northdale Act 3 the other night and was laughing so hard at a scene I put in there. So it's nice to know that these convos are appreciated by others too

Wait what.. people actually wanted a sequel to this? Originally I was working on the sequel, but it just didn't work out due to technical limitations. And then I moved on to Shadows of Northdale. There were a few cancelled missions inbetween then and now as well. Right now my efforts are being focussed on getting the Shadows of Northdale campaign completed as well as a couple of collab projects. After that... who knows what the future may hold

Why was sneak and destroy not updated to 2022 on the mission release page? https://www.thedarkmod.com/missions/?sort=releasedate

I just go by the count on the mission releases page on the official site found here: https://www.thedarkmod.com/missions/ There’s 13 missions released in 2022 so that’s the number I go by

Thank you for your handwork Geep! The wiki's are an incredibly valuable asset for mapping work, whether it's to learn something new, touch up on old skills or just double check something. So having the wiki updated and organized in such a beautiful way makes life easier! Your work is greatly appreciated!

Due to a lack of contestants (I think i'm the only one now...) i'm going to be pulling out my entry as well. It's disappointing but I don't want to release a mission for a contest where i'm the only one competing. The mission i've shown off in the what are you working on thread will still see release in the future eventually though when the timing feels right, so I guess not all is lost.

Yeah I noticed that too, I do have plans to rename the missions so that they flow more naturally in the mission selection screen.

Damn that skin editor is seriously awesome and will save me so much time!! Thank you Greebo!

Roof, front door, back door, window... 4th dimension?

Please say darkmode please say darkmode please say darkmode....

*ahem* I did include that in my post

Some screenshots from my upcoming "horror for Christmas" contest mission. It's set in one of the abandoned districts of Northdale. If those screenshots are too dark, here are some brightened versions

I do have some cut content from a mission originally intended for my Shadows of Northdale campaign. I have wanted to rework it for a while and this seems like a perfect opportunity to put it to good use. So provided folks are okay with that, I will enter. Half of the mission will be brand new and half will be from the existing map. And of course, I have prepared a video!

Thanks for playing! It's hard to say when Act 3 will be released. The majority of the mission is done, except for two buildings that need an interior, one being decently sized. The briefing video, readables, patrol routes, voice acting and objectives are all finished, in game, polished and ready to go. It's just a matter of finding the time to get that last little bit done. Progress is happening, slowly but surely

Difficulty is an interesting one to tackle, like most things it is highly subjective. I have had people complain that a mission is both too easy and others say it's too hard before, much like some people will enjoy a mission and some wont. It all comes down to tastes and playstyles. The route I like to take is somewhere down the middle with a little more leaning on the easier side. I would rather people have an enjoyable time in a mission than not. However I do offer up more difficult tasks within levels. So for example @Obsttorte the meat factory you mentioned is an expert contract. So for those I don't offer as much hand holding and expect the player to figure out their own way forward. If this was a main objective you would have things more directly telling you what to do and where to go, there would be less AI down there and it would be better lit. But because it's not a main objective, it's an expert contract, I wanted to provide more of a challenge to folks. Perhaps I could convey that some areas are tougher by having an onscreen text read "You are in an expert area" but I feel that takes away from the immersion of the level so I just leave things as is. In regards to there being an unnecessary amount of gear, that's another point I don't agree on. As TDM is an immersive sim, I feel it's important to give the player as many options as possible. So say while you may not find any of that gear necessary another playstyle might. Do you want to go in with just a black jack, go ahead, or if you want to go in heavy then you can stock up on mines and fire arrows and wreck havoc, or maybe a flash bomb. Perhaps the roof is better, so a rope arrow will make that easier, etc. You did mention the issue of spending 15 minutes in the manor but 45 minutes outside. That's because the mission was originally only the manor, it felt too short so I decided to expand the things to do in the mission by building the city around it. I can see the argument that the logical pathway is to improve the main objective aka the manor, however I wanted to make things more interesting and give folks more side content through the contracts. That way if you want a quick and easy mission you can just break into the manor and get out and that's maybe a short 20 minute mission. But if you want to go the completionist route then it's going to add a lot more content. That's why in games the main storyline takes 15-20 hours to complete but a completionist will take 100 hours to complete. Again it's all about giving the player more choice. Re: the performance. Well you got me there, dead to rights. I wanted it to look pretty and fancy with loads of custom textures and sounds. I tried as hard as I could to optimize the area, but there definitely is some sluggish performance in certain areas.

Thank you and congratulations on your release! This looks bloody brilliant! Going to jump in tonight