chakkman

There are no Mechanists in The Dark Mod. There are a few missions with machines though, and some utilize that security bot, whose designation I don't know now. For example, some of JackFarmer's missions: https://www.thedarkmod.com/missions/?sort=author Most notably in that regard: The Anomaly. Don't expect them to be like Thief II though, they aren't.

I had the same issue when I played.

Seems to be so hard to trigger that I never ran into it, in over 15 years I play this mod now.

And again, you're shifting the blame. Obviously, Reshade doesn't perform very well with OpenGL. Stop using that crap, and play TDM without such layers which lower performance.

TBH, I'd rather have FM authors adjust brightness so that it's uniform among missions, otherwise you have to adjust the settings for every single mission, and, you have no uniformity in the game whatsoever. Unless people really like to have to adjust their settings for every single mission. I surely don't. The Training mission should be a reference, because, there is a dedicated section where people adjust gamma/brightness. Otherwise that section is really pointless, and should be removed, when it's all over the place in the other fan missions anyway.

I guess we have to agree to disagree on that. I saw horrible pictures from overseas, with unrelated innocent people targetted once again by "protesters" (which are in fact rioters), and they would do sh** about that in California, if it wasn't for government intervention. Their governor is an absolute laughing stock. If they don't do anything about it, it'll only get worse and worse. And, I don't even want to think about when stuff like that will happen over here in Europe/Germany (which I think it will). Because, in Germany, I guarantee you, they wouldn't do anything about it, apart from playing the neutral idle bystander, because politicians are scared to take the unpopular side.

Actually, I was rather facepalming than laughing. But, I guess it could be a good learning effect, which should teach you that you should first check your stuff, before blaming anyone else's work for problems on your end.

Frankly, I'd prefer to have headphones plugged into the front connector, and the speakers to the rear connector, and just switch the audio devices in the Windows settings, that way, the ports don't wear out either, which they do, if you keep connecting and disconnecting stuff. Again, it's not a big issue, I notice very quickly when I start the game, that I forgot to switch audio devices. It's more of a "nice to have", when the game allows switching audio devices ingame, by using the gamebar, or Alt-Tab out of the game, and use the Windows audio device settings (can also shortcut to them pressing Ctrl+Windows-key+V).

No stress. As I said, I understand why it wouldn't be highest priority. Regarding the headphones, I have them plugged in constantly, I just forget to switch the audio devices sometimes, before I start the games. Most games allow for switching audio devices ingame, but, TDM isn't one of them. I have no idea how complex or simple solving this "problem" would be programmatically, of course.

... or maybe the TDM developers take it on one day. Again, I get why it wouldn't be highest priority.

Unfortunately, that doesn't change the audio device in TDM.

TBH, in the country I live in (Germany), I would prefer if we had a lot more security cameras, as it's such an essential ressource for prosecution to solve crimes. And, for law enforcement and the cities to prevent crimes. Other countries rely much more on it (USA and the UK, for example), and don't have this stupid "The right of privacy weighs more than the prevention of serious crime". Actually, a representative of a city nearby said that 1:1, when there were questions raised about the installation of security cameras in criminal hotspots. I don't understand this mentality. It's pretty misanthropic in my eyes.

That is your subjective opinion ("games that look better"). And, as you mentioned Dishonored 2 earlier, it's pretty comparable to TDMs performance in maximum details. Note also that some fan missions look significantly better than others, due to lighting, the amount of detail and the textures in the maps.

Usually, I like it dark, but, if I don't know where I'm going, then it becomes a tad too much...

Thanks, I'll have a look. Regarding the dark ambient, could just be that we have different monitors, with different gamma etc. I noticed the gamma and brightness in Dark Mod is a bit off as well, as I have a monitor with nearly perfect gamma, and, I need to set gamma to about 0.9, and brightness to about 0.8, which pretty much makes it perfect with the Training mission. Logically, a monitor with perfect, or nearly perfect gamma, shouldn't need any ingame adjustment. Unless the ingame settings were calibrated with a monitor with non perfect gamma. There are quite a few games now which look perfect in terms of gamma/brightness, and, I don't have to adjust anything, but, there are such games as well where I need to adjust it.