wesp5

I just played this small mission yesterday and think it's a wonderful example of how much cool gameplay and great atmosphere TDM and Sotha can create out of only 10 MB ! I need to report two issues though, of which at least one might be fixable: - When I tried to blackjack the lord while he was taking a piss, I couldn't hit him at all. No sound and no effect hitting other things or people too, even after reloading a save! I then had the idea to draw the sword, sheath it again, get the blackjack out and afterwards it worked as intended! Is this a known random bug or some new problem of 2.05? - When I flipped the switch for the secret door I was too close to the wall so it didn't open and I searched the whole floor for any changes! I tried the switch several times until I finally was far away enough to see the door half opened. I suggest to make that door open into the other direction, onto the landing, then this shouldn't be possible anymore!

So when and how is an update to that map coming? Or will you wait for the Steam release?

Maybe, but still I think we should make the "official missions" more prominent, which would be easy by renaming them. Speaking of which, after downloading 2.05 and all new missions I have a lot of duplicates in the mission list! Are updated missions not supposed to replace the old ones? Also I noticed that there are quite a lot of connected or campaign missions that have no common title which makes the whole thing look very confusing. I think it would be really great if someone could take a look and make the naming consistent before TDM appears on Steam...

Yes, they are hard to find. I'll repeat my suggestion to rename them to 1. Mission, 2. Mission and so forth so they will be right on top of the mission list! As there will be a needed update due to the bugs, this should somehow be made before the Steam release. Maybe this could be a way to get rid of the buggy mission too, like people will play the renamed mission and the buggy one can be just deleted from the mission list?

Yes, there is no 2.05 there. Also can't be a 2.05a or something be released over the downloader too? Beause this is a serious issue, especially when TDM ends up on Steam and hundreds of newbies will try the game...

I thought as much and guess Springheel will fix this when he fixes the frob problem! I hope he doesn't ignore my input because of the discussions for exstinguishable oil-lamps that I love to start . I was very tempted to do it here too, as while the mission is great otherwise, this issue is obvious with all those small oil-lamps on the walls. I even managed to cover the one in the kitchen area by a bucket! So while there will not be a universal solution to this, has it been discussed to add an extinguisher item for modders who want their oil-lamps being exstinguishable? Which I could cheat myself to have for my immersion ?

Great! I hope that fixes it. The bad name of the other guy points to a copy-and-paste-error as well, maybe the whole rooms were switched...

Wasn't something like this done with the updater when campaign missions were renamed to have the same name?

I can state that I couldn't frob the ring inside that desk and it did not move and did not connect with the door.

While Sotha is looking into the desk problems, I want to repeat the issues I had with the other guy and the names. Maybe he can fix these as well! I attached a screenshot which clearly shows that his purse looks at if it can be frobbed, but it can't. Is this a similar bug to the desk one or just a graphical problem with the purse looking much brighter than the rest of his model? Also as I wrote his name should be changed from "Lord Something" to "Body" or "Guest" and the real lord should get the lord name. Last not least, what do you think about renaming the introduction missions to 1. Mission and 2. Mission to always make them stay on the top of the mission list?

This would fit with the swapped names that two of the guests have, maybe Springheel moved some of the stuff around and didn't fix the names. Should be easy to correct though!

P.S.: Just checked the downloadable mission window and there even is space in the GUI below "Select for download>>" to add a "Select all missions>>" option. We wouldn't want people coming to the game from Steam to download all the missions available right now one by one, wouldn't we?

Yes, but it still messes up the desktop brightness for me. Any way to fix that? Also 2.05 added a seperate sound to opening chests as I suggested which is great !

I had that problem too! At first I could frob neither the ring nor the journal and got stuck. After checking here and reloading a save it suddenly worked. This needs to be fixed fast, otherwise new players will get stuck on their very first mission and get a bad impression of the mod! I found another minor bug that should be fixed: If you shoulder the guy in the other room, the description calls him the Lord which had me crouching and hoping all over his body because I thought his special purse was the one with the rubies in it. Solution: Either swap the name with the real Lord who is just called "Body" now, or maybe better, call all of them "Body" because you can't really know that the name of the guard is "Rolf" before reading the journal either. Also I would replace the special purse on the other guy with a normal frobable one, as this again might confuse new players a lot to see a non frobably purse there. Overall though I have to say that this was a fantastic mission and a much better introduction to TDM than the boring tutorial ! This is exactly what I meant when I wrote here earlier that there are better gameplay tutorials around. Maybe you could even improve on that by adding more text hints to cover basics like crouching and mantling, or even add water arrows and rope arrows to the starting equipment to trigger hints at suitable places so that for seasoned Thief player this mission alone could serve as the tutorial! Which only leaves one last problem: Visibility! If I hadn't read about the mission here I would have overlooked it between all the other finished and unfinished mission on my computer. I have the following suggestion to fix that: Just rename the mission from "Mission 1: A new job" to "1. Mission: A new job"! This should move it up in the mission list and keep it there. Do the same for the Lucia mission, like "2. Mission: Tears of St. Lucia", and maybe even rename the tutorial to "0. Mission: Tutorial" and everybody, whether they are a new player or a veteran, will not be able to miss them! With the years you could also add new numbered campaign missions to that so finally people claiming TDM is no game will have to shut up !

This should be made more obvious, because I didn't even noticed a new one not downloaded!

Okay, I'll highjack this thread for a bit as it is connected. After updating to 2.05 without problems, I noticed a lot of new missions because I didn't play TDM for a long time and I really missed a "Select all for download" button after having to select all of them once by one! Also what is the name of the new introduction mission mentioned in the announcement? And please add it to the announcement message too.

Indeed. And while the idea itself was great, after you played all variations once, which takes only a few minutes, the game is over. The Dark Mod has hours of fun and will hopefully continue with every new fan mission!

Let's hope The Dark Mod can make it on Greenlight now, because Valve's greed is infinite! They just announced Steam Direct where every new project has to pay to get on Steam, I don't see that working with a free game like The Dark Mod: https://www.bluesnews.com/s/178292/steam-greenlight-giving-way-to-steam-direct

The training mission is not great! Except for the outside part where the archery is shown it consists of boring rooms and corridors which don't do the mod justice.

That on the other hand is a problem of the training mission itself. There are other games that seemlessly integrate a training tutorial into a real mission! Maybe there is a suitable FM available to do this for TDM?

Great! I also assume that TDM will be continue to be released as a non Steam version as well?

Also this will not work on old FMs unless this is intended to not distrub their balance or something...

How does this work? Is this done inside the map editor or externally using Blender or similar? Is the map editor only used to combine the geometry models with other models, lights, entities and scripts?

Interesting. I do a little bit of Bloodlines mapping, which uses the Source engine and thus is probably similar to DarkRadiant. Is Unreal 3/4 and Unity editing similar to DromEd in comparison?

Why are there still much more FMs being released for T2 than TDM? I would have thought the former to be outclassed for years or has there been a makeover that can rival the TDM graphics? Or is using DarkRadiant much more difficult than using DromEd?