Sotha

I know that a rating system was discussed to be added in the downloader. I don't remember now what was the final decision. But you can easily contact the FM authors via this forum. All the FMs have their own thread in the Fan Mission section. Constructive feedback is always appreciated. Having the contact possibility via forum in which the user needs to register is better than anonymous via in-game downloader.

Hey are we gonna have a TDM christmas contest?

Hey, what an interesting discussion! On a campaign: Not much point to repeat what has been said. Basically it would be nice to have, yes there would be a benefit, but the team should be able to focus fully on the REAL things and not on a campaign. So here is simply a thought. Most of you have probably thought about it anyways, but I'll put it on-screen. Gather a bunch of mappers from the community.Together, devise a main story concept. Examples: "A master thief in the turmoils of the metal age." "A clever burglar gets stuck in hidden warfare between the nobility of Bridgeport"Together, write a story, which spans multiple missions. (Mission amount = the amount of participating mappers). The story proceed by the-tip-of-the-iceberg -style: first missions only hints of whats to come. Then midpoint with dreadful ramifications and finally the ending.Then each mapper go and creates the map which provides the needed story-fragment. Freely, but within the campaign story specifications. Each map should be aimed to be roughly medium-sized. We know from our contests that nice medium/small missions can be created in few months.Betatesting would be also done by the main mapper circle. Graphical genius mappers could help not-so-graphical genius mappers.Combine missions, add briefings, TDM team codes campaign support.We have a ready campaign which could be supplied with the MOD. Even the tutorial mission could be updated, converted and written so that it fits IN the campaign. Additional points: The plot and the maps would be only known by the main mappers, but the community could provide supporting assistance.Community could support the mapping progress by creating sounds, models and textures, whatever each can or is able to create.Even people who have limited time could spend a hour of ten by make prefabs, steampunk prop buildings, or similar objects (on-request) to help the campaign contributing main mappers.

Whoa! I've not checked this thread for a while and now I did. What a beautiful piece of work! The globe really cries to be frobbed. Could it be possible to have the globe and the holder as separate models? Then the thing could be done into a functional prefab, which could be frobbed and then the globe would rotate in a cool manner, possibly triggering hidden hatches or something. Or what do others think?

Heh, indeed. On TDM promotion: I dunno about the fan merchandise, I'm not interested in that kind of stuff and I suspect it would not be very effective, due to reason already mentioned. On the other hand, internet promotion is something we can do easily. Everyone is probably member of some other internet community. We should drop an offtopic thread for TDM in these other communities. I actively follow this and one other forum. When I wrote about TDM at this other forum, people seemed quite interested. So internet communities might be a really nice way to make TDM more known. Those who are members in facebook (I am not) could set up a TDM fan group or something. Those who blog actively, could mention their finest TDM moments (or blog FM reviews) and maybe new people will spot the mod. Every little bit makes TDM more known. Yeah, some kind of big media circus would also help. The hype/excitement source could be an official campaign OR even simply a new TDM version. I still think that when new TDM version comes out, we should be rather loud about it. Nbohr could write a huge/cool/awesome article (with screenies and videos and bells and whistles and eggsalad) about the new version in moddb. Yep, we should use the publicity when we have something new which interests people..

Yes, exactly. It is a trouble/benefit ratio -thing and I do not see it worth the trouble. Well, I do sometimes. It is very rare because usually I get the correct impression of my surroundings simply by moving. More commonly I do left/right leaning to see better objects obstructed by other objects. Exactly. There are brilliant mappers, who are capable of creating fantastic scenes, but sometimes with the expense of gameplay. All these mappers need to do is to take one unit of mapping energy and place it in gameplay rather than appearance. Perfect missions would be generated.. But of course, the main motivation to map is because it is fun. And people feel entertained differently, if someone really enjoys honing the appearance to perfection, it is certainly their right.

Oh, and nbohr, about that screenie you showed from Knighton Manor. Remember that the player can move in the game. Moving about makes the edge obvious.

Yep.. Now I will reveal why I do not make so high detail maps. I confess I do not see any differences between the screenies here. All of them look really good to me, and none of the screenies is better in my eyes than the other. Therefore, why bother to see trouble implementing a decal, which is invisible in the scene? But yep, this is just me rambling. I'm prolly blind or something. Keep up the good work!

Yeah, same thoughts here. It looked nice, not bad at all. But it was a generic zombie, not much different from the ones we have: it shambles forward, makes zombieish noises and claws the player. But yeah, if someone made better high quality models, animations and voice sets, I wouldn't object at all. More options the mappers have, the better.

Whew! The attention to detail is impeccable. Only a few mappers have what it takes to build details like that. I certainly don't. Please make sure it plays as good as it looks. EDIT: Viewed the images again in large scale. Most of the screenshots truly are like paintings which one could watch and sip some red wine and each time you look at them you spot something new.

Yep it always gets difficult when people can only work with their spare time.. So.. How many missions did you plan your campaign to have in total?

I have to admit that I did the same for some time before I got in the forums and got hooked. Yeah, it would be really beneficial to update the main page more often. Would it be too much if all the content nbohr puts in moddb would be also put in the darkmod.com news? It would definately show that TDM is alive and healthy. You're welcome! I didn't see your votes in the FM thread yet, interesting to know whether you like the mission or not...

Hi! I was wondering from where people first heard or got interested in TDM, so I decided to put up a poll. It might be beneficial to see which sites or things guide people to our forums.

One of my pal was thinking of maybe trying TDM, but is discouraged to buy D3 because there are contradicting information on the net whether D3 works with vista or not. So I'd like to as the community, is there people running D3/TDM on windows Vista 32bit/64bit? Does it work? Any issues? Thanks!

Yugh. Having a crosshair for bow shooting sounds really awful. Why does it have to be easy, when it can be challenging and fun. Most of the community does not fancy dumbed down console-like features. Using a bow properly takes skill, and remember that the crosshair would not help for all distances since the arrow is affected by gravity. Try the bow range in the tutorial mission. It is easy to learn to use the bow without a crosshair and the bow remains challenging and fun in the missions.

Yeah it says you can vote unregistered, but those votes are only counted in case of ties. You need to be registered to be able to cast votes that really count.

I usually do not register to any sites I do not visit very actively. I registered to moddb only to vote for TDM. Dear community, it is time to promote TDM.

It says in moddb that the nomination for the Mod of the Year 2010 has started. Everyone here should go, login in moddb and vote for TDM. Mod of the year would be the ultimate PR victory..

Many preferential things are subjective things. The only logical and concrete reason not to have it is the lack of a motivated/talented person interested in investing their personal time in the creation of the said crosshair in such a level of quality it would be accepted in the mod. Please note that I am not speaking for the team, but I am under the impression that they do not mind if others create high quality features which could be added to the mod. I'd await the teams feedback, and if they give the all-clear, please go ahead and create the crosshair. I would certainly at least try it if it was well done and subtle enough not obstruct the view or otherwise deteriorate the gaming experience. Maybe if it was completely transparent, but it smoothly became more visible when the frobber is active? That would be cool.

This has been discussed before, search the forums for crosshair. This is a difficult topic due to the diversity of personal preferences. (As already seen in this topic.) I personally find it difficult to choose a specific object among other objects; a subtle translucent crosshair would help. But then again, crosshair would look a bit dumb on the screen: it isn't well suited for TDM style. And it would be only needed at a few situations. Note that play experience reduces the need of crosshair as you learn the intricacies of the frobbing system / aiming the KO.

This saving thing is quite opinion splitter, I think. Overusing it dilutes the excitement. I bought the Hitman ultimate contract pack, which contains all the games of the series. I loved and hated the fact Hitman1 allowed absolutely no saves. I hated it because it was really easy to screw up and then have to replay the whole mission. But then again I remember my heart rate and the excitement, when you are doing fine and approaching the end of the mission. This week I played Left 4 Dead 2 with my buddies on a more difficult setting than we are used to. All my pals got downed and I was badly wounded, moving at crawl speed. Going back to help my buddies would have been suicide, so I simply left them to die and tried to crawl to the safe room knowing that dying would mean starting all over again. Success would allow us to get to the next map, plus everyone is resurrected. I just barely made it to the safe room, but the feeling of crawling, one hit kills you, desperation... I was ecstatic when I reached the room and moving there my heart rate was probably dangerously high. Add a quicksave there, and it wouldn't have been so fun and exciting. Saving option is needed, of course, because games will crash occasionally. It is up to the player to know when to save, but everyone should at least try sometimes play an ironman game with minimal/none saves. It really brings the experience to the next level. Of course playing it ironman will mean that you cannot play the game the way you've used to: you have to be much more cautious and clever, which only makes it even more interesting.

This sentence captures well the fundamental charm of sneaking games. The AI's should be more powerful than the player, and this improves the excitement in avoiding the AI. "If they spot me I must escape, if I can't escape, I'll get my ass handed to me on a platter." For me, save/loading dilutes this excitement a lot during the mission and that's why I try to avoid it: I allow myself a few 'checkpoint' saves during a FM. I wish TDM AI was more difficult to beat in swordplay (think about it: the player has a tiny shortsword vs. typical guards longsword). Yeah, I know I should disable the auto-parry option, but I am too wimpy to do that. Does the guards wielding a longsword have longer attack range than the player, by the way? When Doom3 came out and I played it through my thoughts were: How much more cool this would have been if the demons were really so tough that the player would fight them only when well prepared and even then as a last resort. I guess that's the evolution of gaming: Back in the days of pacman the player could only run away from the superior bad dudes and only seldom fight back. Todays gaming makes the player an über hercules who can easily and constantly kill hundreds of onrushing well armed bad guys (crysis).

Happened to have few moments to test this.. I played heretic and hexen long time ago and they were fun. I'm probably just getting old, this kind of gameplay does not appeal to me at all anymore. The player runs constantly around 40km/h and the poor AI does not have a chance since they can be outrunned at any situation. Attacking with the mace didn't feel like attacking with a mace. It felt like attacking with a hollow ultra light plastic toy mace. Bat monsters fireball-thingies can hit you only if you decide to allow that to happen. The puzzles in this boil down to "find a switch or key." Weird logic: why on earth would there be a spiketrap floor in the middle of the town? I liked the idea of finding journals around but somehow they did not feel beliavable at all. They simply could not relate the terror of the city residents, because of the standard gameplay (player running speed, pathetic monsters). Disbelief was too strong to get any feeling from the books. The first map had some good mapping ideas for locations. Gotta pick up a few pointers from it. But anyway main verdict with one word: Booriing. [delete mod]

What a nice topic, no need to apologize, in my opinion. Basically people can see the aspects I love in sneaking games in my maps, I try to distill the experience to revolve around my favourite things. The things I like, are: The joy of sneaking past guards. Frantic lockpicking at well lit door before the guard comes. Locations telling a story. Opportunities for clever use of equipment. Freedom to explore the location freely. Freedom to make decisions how to proceed. Decisions with consequences. I hate: Looking for keys or any other kind of artificial obstacle which grinds the mission to a halt or requires forum aid. OT: what is with the internets-thing in you signature? Whats that about?

Oh, the map file names are knightonS_manor and the workname was "knightonS manor". I renamed the mission to The Knighton Manor just before releasing, because the latter felt more correct. It would have been error prone to go and start renaming the files simply because of a name correction.