Sotha

Thanks for playing and glad you liked the mission. I didn't make any special KO-ability changes to the AI in thr mission: they are stock TDM. KOing rules in TDM are much more complex than in the original Thief games. For example, if a guard with a helmet is alerted and has weapon in hand, you can never KO them anymore, not even when they relax from the alert. Good rules of a thumb: Always KO and unaware AI from the rear. If helmet and weapon in hand, do not KO. If helmet with face grill, do not KO. If bare head, KO from behind. If the AI is in combat or searching, do not KO. More info here: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=The_Dark_Mod_Gameplay#Blackjacking

Here is an article on game design, which is an interesting read: http://tynansylvester.com/2013/06/the-simulation-dream/ FMA's might benefit from the part dealing with apophenia. Also, for improving storytelling, a list of emotional triggers is given here: https://memetechnology.org/2013/06/13/emotional-triggers/ Reading these might give some food for thought.

Thanks! Wikified. It is now in the Inventory wiki article! http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Inventory#How_to_make_inventory_items_to_interact_with_world_objects

Does someone know what alert level must be exceeded in order to conversation to terminate?

Nice! Could I ask you to write a brief summary how the mapper can make "use inventory item on frob highlighted object" behavior? I've always wondered how to do it, and perhaps others as well. I will add the info to the wiki ao that everyone can learn how to do it. It would be very useful to make adventure like "use items to solve puzzles" kind of missions. Thanks for considering my proposal!

Thank you for the update! Much appreciated!

Is it like dropping the item on the altar or using the item from inventory with ENTER key while frob highlighting the altar? If just dropping, you could use stim/response or hidden objective. For stim/response: add a custom stim on the object, and add a response to the location is should be brought. You could look at Lich Queen's Demise map cannon and cannon ball for an example. For hidden objective, see wiki objective editor entry for "item is in location". You could check Coercion blackmail note for an example. For item using while frobbing, I have no clue.

Hello! I would like to ask if there are any female voice actors available in our community? Does our community members have wives or friends who would be interested? I'm thinking about the conversations for my WIP FM. No point in writing female lines if there are no available actresses. Don't get too excited, the mission is far from finished. Just planning ahead. Thank you!

@esme, Thanks for the effort you put in the long explanation. I guess I mostly agree. Fear comes from uncertainty and Trump is the embodiment of unpredictability. Well, at least for now... That said, fortunately, the US is not a dictatorship, so the officials and bureucratic machinery can still probably limit worst of the worst. Remember, too much worrying, over a long period of time, may be detrimental for your health and general well being. Surely Trumps US won't be Nazi Germany. I hope... A good rule of a thumb would be probably that when you start seeing any news about political purges, it is time to pack your stuff and move somewhere else. It always has to start with the purges...

Trump is part of the *economical* elite, not *political* elite. He was completely shunned by the *political* elite (both democrats and republicans!). So it looks like, that the people wanted to bash the *political* elite but not the *economical* elite. That is assuming the masses functioned in a logical fashion. It could be that they voted for Trump just because he is a TrueTV character they are familiar with from their evening videoshows, or because he shouted the harshest and loudest. @Esme Why exactly are you scared? I ask because I am trying to gauge how terrified I should be because of this....

My uneducated guess: The ruling elite has been ignoring the economical decline of the uneducated lower middle class for too long. The lower middle class, who do not normally vote, mobilizes en masse as they realize they can give the ruling elite "a good thrashing." -> Surprise election victory on all fronts for republicans.

Sorry, I not so much into conspiracy theories. If there is one, and it remains a secret, it is not very complicated and significant. If it is a significant one, it will be revealed eventually, because puny humans are not generally able to run complicated conspiracies that concern many people. If there isn't one, lots of time and effort is wasted by the useless paranoid speculation. But that is the main fun in nice and respective political discussion. There is no single truth, but different values and opinions. If one keeps an open mind and pays attention, one might learn something new and interesting, and possibly even broaden one's perspective. I would love to hear this justification, too. Not that I want to condemn anyone, but because it is interesting to know why people feel strongly about something. You have stated you opinion, and you have right to have that opinion, but it would be interesting to know why your opinion exists. The justification is the key in mutual understanding. Without the justification, your opinion is just another "opinion" and not as "valuable" or "reliable" as a "well justified opinion." ... At the time I am writing this the Times Square is silent and it looks like Trump is going to win. Scary, scary indeed. Nobody knows what he is really going to do and many of his promises he cannot keep. If elected, how could he unite the country when rending appears to be his speciality? If truth is relative, how can you maintain consistent policy? In worst case, now instead of one unpredictable superpower we get two unpredictable superpowers. All in the world that needs more stability.

I completely agree that mixing reality and fiction is not a good thing, and I have not proposed it in any way, nor did I interpret anyone doing so. What I was after was how to get that extra impact into the fiction to help immersion, and hopefully even yield a tear shedding empathic response. In GOT and WD the scripters really have a knack of getting that extra impact into the field.

This is an interesting topic! I run a tabletop roleplaying games for friends and I've bumped into this "death and suffering of fictional characters" thing, too. Often, the game master will want to present the players with certain kind of atmosphere or moral decisions. Some kind of decision, which is not a no-brainer, and could be done either way, but would have interesting consequences. Let's take the prisoner dilemma. The players fight bad guys and down them without killing them. The players decide it is safer simply to snap their necks and proceed without any problems. The moral dilemma wasn't at all a dilemma in the end, because the players are sociopathic towards the inhabitants of the fictional world. Decision becomes a simple game term risk analysis, where less enemies is less enemies, which is better than criminal act of murdering defenceless prisoners. If you don't get caught, everything is allowed, and moral dilemmas do not actually exist. It is just entertainment. But why is that? The fictional world exists for our amusement and not the other way around as it sometimes feels with real world. Now, in theory, for immersion purposes, I think a TDM FM would "feel" more interesting if this "entertainment sociopathy" could be avoided. Apparently, some players have higher capacity to avoid "entertainment sociopathy," than others, and I think they are the kind that enjoy higher immersion while playing. But what can the FMA do about it? What good is a sad story, if the player cannot empathically relate to the poor victim NPCs, because they are fictional and their victimization is just a plot element generated for the amusement of the player? Best stories always touch emotionally, but how can you do it if the story-consumer is unempathic towards the fictional world?

I don't think so. On mapper level, you can just trigger something if the AI is killed or KO'd. It does not distinguish how it happens.

Who would have thought the brits go and do Brexit? It did happen and everyone was stumped. Even the people who machinated it all. Also, who would have thought that will be a time when party who gives a loan PAYS to the lender to take their money? Happens nowadays. I would be careful in stating what is a fairytale and what is not.

If there is only one superpower, they can do pretty much what they like to small countries. If there are two superpowers, status quo is maintained, because one superpower does not want to step on the toes of another. Trump has said that US would reduce their support for Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization

I'm loving the discussion thus far and it is nice to see varying points of view. Our community's ability to civil discussion is an example for many! I see some threats here: 1) americans are divided into two somehow. Is it wealth or education I am not sure. Both factions live in their own bubble and cannot tolerate the other. Could this eventually in long run fester into a civil war of some level? The rethoric is quite threatening even now. Instability in the US would be problematic globally. So thus the US leaders should probably seek some sort of unification and reconciliation. I think the whole world benefits from good leaders and stability in the US. 2) Trump is Putin's choice for president. I live in Finland, which is a small country bordering Putin's Russia. That tells everything, right? I'm relatively certain Trump would cause massive damage to US and the world in general. Of course, the officials probably do their best to quell the worst madness. Clinton, is a relative guarantee the everything continues pretty much like it used to, both in good and bad. I would vote for stability rather than chaos. But many people are so hopeless that they are voting for chaos just in the hope that things will get better?

Or combination of both. S&R reponse frob on the pot. That triggers a trigger_once that triggers the target_callscriptfunction which calls the script.

Exciting times, and the US presidential elections are just behind the corner. Anyone up for some politics discussion? What do you think about the whole thing? In a democracy the people get the president they deserve? What about the rest of the world? Is the era of facts, numbers and rationality replaced by the era of emotion, shouting and populism? It does not need to *be* right as long as it *feels* right? Is this the next Brexit? People are pissed off, and they angrily vote to get things worse for themselves. What do you think happens next week? In addition to a brief stock market panic, that is...

I can confirm this. Winning AI in one to one combat is really easy. I just beat a revenant in 1t1 combat easily. Combat difficulty = normal. It works like said by OP: AI spots you. Prepare sword to hitting. The revenants chooses to block correspondently. Stand in place and wait for the revenant to get bored. When they do, they drop the defence and try to attack. Now, you can release the mouse and move backwards. You get a hit in, and the revenant misses. Rinse and repeat and you will win if you have enough room to back down and no other enemies attack you. I am not sure if it an expoit, though. If you get attacked by multiple enemies, you are screwed.

There are no fighting focused missions. Some missions do have forced fight as part of their plot. If you want to fight, try Transaction. That has a single forced fighting session as a plot element. You might also want to try Lich Queen's Demise. The revenants in that mission respawn if you kill them. That should perhaps make the mission more "fightable" than most.

About thrown bricks... Could we let the AI cheat just a little bit? When the AI detects being hit by a brick, get current player position. AI goes WTF and moves to the position. Sure the player has time to move between brick throwing and brick landing, but considering the fly speed of brick is fast and throw distance is short, the delta between the throwing position and the position the player is when the brick hits cannot be too different. Could this cheating be applied to AI who are shot with an arrow and survive? Currently, you can pepper an AI from the darkness with arrows until they die and they passively take hits without doing much. Would it be better if the AI cheated just a little bit and would run to the shooting position? It would be similar abstraction to the "arrow to the head does not kill alert AI" rule. The AI feels the direction from which the attack came, and attacks there to avoid being hurt again. Of course some additional fuzzyness could be added. Instead of sending the AI to the exact player position, send the AI to random position within 5m radius of the player position.

Yes, Grayman's children are on par with tripleA title AIs, if not exceeding them. I do not claim to know anything about AI programming, but some of the critique presented in the video feels a bit unfair. The list of possible situations a stealth AI might encounter is long and complicated compared to shooter AI. It surely is very difficult to get the AI to react appropriately to every foreseeable circumstance. So hats off and cheers to all the AI programmers. Ours have done a particularily good job!