wesp5

Maybe because it would be unrealistic? Which was the main reason I brought this topic up in the first place. I don't see the player exstingishing a torch without having either a huge wet cloth or getting the torch out and stomping on it on the floor which isn't always possible. Breaking an electrical lamp would make a lot of noise and you would need to fumble inside to destroy whatever gives off the light without getting electrocuted. But to play devils advocate: of course this could be added and it would give much more depth and realism to the game! Add an inventory item "cloth" and maybe "pliers" and off you go. But I'm really certain that no developer would stray so far away from what is tradition here !

Yes, but that was years ago and as it isn't the best mission either, I would assume people forget about such things . Still this could be fixed by the random tips that are going to be introduced in the next version! I just played the "Crown of Penitence" mission and extinguishing the oil lamps was a blast! There were a lot of them all over the mansion, but I don't think I used this to blackjack a guard that I couldn't have done otherwise. I noticed though, that I use to extingish all candles and lamps to mark my progress ...

Generally I agree to this, but here it's not that simple. Because unless you read somewhere about it, novice players don't even know that takeable candles can be put out! This seperation might be clear for the advanced TDM player, but for everyone else the logical real world approach would be more obvious and as some others beside me have stated, it just makes no sense that candles can be put out but oil lamps can't. As for torches and braziers and everything else suggested, this would need either new tools or the entity to be moved or destroyed. There is a huge diffence here that should be obvious to everyone.

What would be the difference to the AI difficulty settings that might do the same for any old map? Maybe add the option to the difficulty settings instead to general?

I don't think it's a good idea to post small individual patches to turn things like this on and off. The best solution really would be to add this to the options menu, then it would be included in future versions of the game as well! I don't know how difficult it is to make the options do something, but basically all that would be needed is to swap two tdm_lights_static.def files...

About the pk4s, I think I already tried the files being outside in the folders but it didn't work. Maybe I mistyped something though... I don't really know what the spawnarg thing means, but I guess I know where this is going and added other options to the poll. Can we revote or reset the votes? I think you mean that mappers can set the oil lamps to be extinguishable in DR, no? Would it be too much to ask for an option added to the gameplay settings too? There is a lot of room left there ...

Can I get the modified files to work without putting them into the archive pk4s? In that case it would be very easy to release an Unofficial Patch or something ! What other things are you adding to your variations of the game that the rest of us don't know about? Like demagogue hinted at in the improvement thread... I know! I'm as stubborn as some of the developers are and this isn't the first time either . You must understand I really love TDM and admire all the work that went into it, but I just can't understand why quite often suggestions are blocked "because we mustn't change existing missions." Has anyone ever tried if changing a detail like this would actually break something? Maybe people are fearing feature creep or similar, but since I play TDM, I haven't noticed anything much in regard of new or modified features at all. Maybe there were a lot of bug fixes, but most of the time I probably didn't even notice them. So have new features been added since 2.0?

Talk was about fixed *close-up* extinguishable lights. I'm pretty sure none of the above are of that kind, except for the last one which I didn't know existed, and which is another big argument in favor of my suggestion! How do you explain that movable oil lamps can be extinugished, but the same kind of static oil lamps can't?

When I changed the oil lamps I only found two candle types among the static lights, both of which have multiple candles so that I assume that they can't be extinguished either without water arrows. So besides placing a lot of cupboards or holders with moveable candles, what are the options? My impression was that there simply are no close-up-exstinguishable static lights. Or am I missing something?

The problem with this is that the discussion involved maybe a handful of people, half of which were developers who have enough work just fixing the bugs. Still interest was high enough to make a quick solution available which in my opion is really wasted knowledge if it only ends up in my own personal TDM version...

I don't think this is really true, because to light e.g. a corridor of a mansion that is not electrified, you have had no other options that using oil lamps. Also oil lamps can already be extinguished with water arrows so the change isn't critical.

Why? Because it might make some missions easier by saving a water arrow or two? Sometimes I have the feeling that real improvements rather than mere bug fixes most of the time get rather conservative responses here like: do not change our game, it's great exactly like it is !

Okay, now that the oil lamp fix is working, I want to discuss some other minor issues I noticed while testing it by starting missions over and over again: 1. Skipping a mission intro is only possible by using the attack key (or left mouse button?) with no info about this. The FROB key and ESC do not work! So please either add more options like FROB to do the same or add an info text to the screen like "(Skip with attack key/frob key/left mouse)". 2. When pressing ESC during the intro you end up in the main menu without the option to resume, only restarting is possible. So please either make it possible to skip the intro with ESC or give the option to resume at the moment we escaped. Right now it just cuts off the intro with no way back!

The title says it all. In my opinion it's only logical that the player can snuff out these oil lamps the same way as candles and adding this is as easy as changing one def file. I doubt it will change actual mission gameplay much as you need to be very close to the lamps to do this in the first place.

It's working now and it's looking great! I think this would be a nice addition to the game giving the player more and realistic options. For now I only changed it for oil lamps, because I don't know how it would look for chandeliers and scones with several candles. Maybe we could do a poll if this should be included into the base game? Especially at it is so easy to add and the script file will be updated anyway...

Yeah, that's what I overlooked myself. I will try it this evening! And yes, I started new games just to be sure...

Okay, I inserted this for testing purposes into tdm_lights_static.def right at the start in both entityDef atdm:static_light_lit_base and atdm:static_light_unlit_base. Then I copied the file into /script and also tried /def and /script/def but it is not working. The oil lamps are again not even frobable. What am I doing wrong? Update: I tried the same with the lines inserted in all the seperate oil lamp entities, it's still not working! I put the file into tdm_defs01.pk4, still nothing!

I wasn't aware that changing things in TDM could be so easy for people like you. I'm aware that some people modify my Bloodlines patch for their special needs as well, but most of the time when people argue to include stuff that makes sense to me I do. Or I add an option to turn it on and off if I see that there are two parties with different opinions. Maybe this would be possible here too...

So if I place the changed def file outside the pk4, will it override the included version or do I need to pack it into the pk4 instead? Changing the author's intent is not what I want and I believe a lot of you are overreacting to the suggestion. When I tried to test my changes I loaded the last missions that I played and it was hard to find an oil lamp in reach in the first place! This is not about making missions easier, but making the game world more consistent...

Of course I don't want this to be possible only in newly created maps, but in all the existing ones as well. Will this work by changing the def files alone?

In which archive did you find them? The script may be the one in tdm_moveable_lights.def: "equip_action_script" "frob_light_holder_ext" Update: I found the static lights file now, I must have overlooked it. I added "frobable" "1" and "frob_action_script" "frob_light_holder_toggle_light" to all oil lamps but nothing happens inside the game. The oil lamps are not even frobable! What did I do wrong?

Well, I just took a look at the pk4 files and extracted some that looked like they could contain this but I haven't found stationary oil lamps yet. In which file are they defined? Or did I overlook them somehow? I found some very interesting stuff in the tdm_moveable_lights.def file though. There are torches that can be carried and lit and exstinguished! I can't remember finding any of those yet in a mission, but it gives me the impression that even torches can be extinguished when one is close enough. Also there are several oil lantern that can be carried and lit and extinguished. Are these the base of the inventory lantern or something different? If so, oil lamps that can be extinguished are possible already! Another thing that took my eye in case you really want to continue down this road. Is there a way to light lamps apart from fire arrows and mines going off? Like an inventory item "flint stones" to light a frobable entity nearby...

Does that really work so simple? Wouldn't they need to be frobable in the first place which I always assumed was defined in the mission files.

You have a point, but that are more or less all the same reasons. To me arrows are meant to reach far away targets! Except for rare cases when you climb down you won't fire a rope arrow right beside you. Normally you won't fire a moss arrow at your feet but some way ahead. Right now in TDM there are no ways to do such things up close except for the candles which break the rule! Oil lamps could become another exception or even better , an option could be added to do everything with arrows in another way up close like you suggested above. Taking more time of course or having other disadvantages. I know this would mean changing TDM a lot so it won't happen, but then it was just an idea. I can easily live with how it is right now! I rarely run out of water arrows anyway ...

This reminds me a lot of my favorite game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines! Of course it's not a real Thief game, but if you build your character with Stealth or even choose a clan with invisibility, you get what they planned at the time: a stealth game in modern nights with magic background and fractions fighting each other!