Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Xolvix

Member
  • Posts

    341
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    11

Everything posted by Xolvix

  1. Apologies but I don't think I can. All I remember is it first appeared a while back (not sure which update) and I'm pretty sure it was in one of those "Beta testing" threads for the version in question. That's all I can remember, apart from seeing the report once.
  2. I've noticed this bug was introduced a number of updates ago and I think it's been reported as I remember reading the same comment in another thread, but given it's mostly aesthetic and extremely quick I don't think priority has been given to fix it yet. HOWEVER... around the same time this bug was introduced I did notice that sometimes, if there's a guard in your area looking at you but you're hidden in darkness, but you save then quickload, the guard will sometimes react that they've noticed something. If you quickload again then generally they won't react. Basically I wonder if that brief flash you are seeing also affected the global illumination when it happens and as a result it also affects gameplay because it reveals your location for a split second.
  3. I generally dislike DOF in games except in three circumstances: (1) in-game cinematics, (2) characters engaging in conversations with someone, or (3) some sort of in-game menu system. Basically so long as the depth of field is being used in non-gameplay parts of the game, that's completely fine and often enhances the result. But TDM is virtually all gameplay and doesn't have such systems, so all DOF is going to do is make the game harder by making things in the distance less clearly visible. All that said, I ain't got a problem with it being integrated into the engine. There's a handful of missions that do have cinematics, albeit small ones, so it'd be kinda cool to see it being used in such situations.
  4. Depending on what it's using, if it's simple enough it should be able to run using Mono on Linux though. Look at how KeePass 2 runs on Linux to see how to run a .NET application in Linux (specifically the Other Unix-like systems section): https://keepass.info/help/v2/setup.html#mono
  5. If you're asking if I have the ability to make GUIs then yes, you can literally draw them using Qt creator/designer. If you're asking if I'm going to do it for the purposes of this project, probably not right now as I've got barely enough time to play TDM as it is. I just don't think that website development translates well to desktop development. But you are right, these days you'll certainly find more people in general able to do UI development using web-based technologies, so in terms of the availability of people it most definitely has an advantage over traditional native apps. BTW, that joke about rewriting using Rust is because it's basically a meme in the programming community to rewrite old codebases in Rust because it's more secure or something like that. Plus it has a lot of fanboys. Just wanted to address the confusion.
  6. Unfortunately this is also the reason we're getting slower applications with greater memory requirements. People don't want to build native applications anymore, they want languages originally intended for web development but repurposed for the desktop via Electron because it's... easier. Somehow we managed to make zippy applications using C/C++ for ages (even cross-platform using toolkits like Qt/GTK) but now that's IMPOSSIBLE apparently. /old-man rant
  7. You've named the Nameless mod twice already. You have good taste. I may as well also suggest Deus Ex: Nihilum. Kinda similar in terms of production values as well as having plenty of voiced NPCs.
  8. Just make sure it's rewritten using Rust, that's what all the cool kids are using these days apparently.
  9. I agree that the mission browser and management functions in TDM are limited due to the nature of the in-game UI. You could implement a launcher component that is part of the main code rather than a third-party tool, and that might be useful because you can then transfer all the mission selection stuff to the "launcher" which by using the desktop windowing system, will have much greater opportunity for flexibility. Unfortunately it won't integrate as nicely into the TDM GUI itself though. On the other hand... you could just redesign the entire TDM GUI. Smaller fonts, push menu elements out to the edges of the screen a bit more to allow for a greater density of info in the middle of the screen for the mission browser. That kinda sounds like a major task though.
  10. I guess the issue is that The Dark Mod is just the one executable. It doesn't have a launcher since the means of browsing, downloading and launching missions is all integrated into the same program used to actually play the game. Which I kinda prefer due to its simplicity, but I suppose it does limit the number of extra features you can shove into the GUI. Technically I guess there's nothing stopping anyone from making a separate launcher. The code for reading the mission server, acquiring missions, unpacking and reading mission metadata is all there anyway. One could build a GUI application that would then allow the extra features you wanted, plus the information density would be much greater compared to the in-game browser. Even launching missions would be easy since you'd just have to change the currentfm.txt file and then launch TDM as normal. So yeah. Someone could write that I guess, as a side project...
  11. Oh man. I have a lot to say about Invisible War but I think this dude summarizes most of what I think much better than I could explain: Also if you do intend to play Invisible War at some point, please for the love of God, install this unofficial patch after installing the game: https://www.moddb.com/mods/deus-ex-2-visible-upgrade/downloads/visible-upgrade-full-edition The quality of life improvements are so significant it's basically mandatory on modern systems. It adds widescreen resolutions, removes the pop back to desktop between level loads/quickloads, adds some really good community texture packs, and so on. If you go and look up screenshots of Invisible War, it's actually quite fascinating just how much variation there is between pre-release screenshots made during development and what was actually released. There is a particular screenshot that shows what is clearly a PC-centric HUD kinda similar to that in the original Deus Ex, which makes me think the decision to make the game cross-platform with the Xbox was not in the original design and perhaps came from Eidos management. Unfortunately the exact screenshot I remember well but seems to be partially lost to the Internet as it's REALLY hard to find. I'll keep looking. EDIT: This isn't the image I'm looking for but it does show the HUD I'm thinking about. If only they didn't experiment with the eyeball HUD they ended up with...
  12. They're gone? Shame. I was about to accuse them of being Nort.
  13. I had a similar problem a long time ago back when I was a bit of a gamma/brightness nut (see my older posts). I was obsessed with getting the best level of contrast between shadows and lights, however given it was also adjusting all elements of the interface it was overblowing maps and readables, the background to the inventory screen and even the menu. Some of it was tolerable, but other times it looked like I was staring into the sun. The solution was to basically give up and remain with the defaults. Not only did the stop my obsessive-compulsiveness but it was better because it made missions look more or less the way that the mapper likely intended it to look.
  14. What is this feature? I'm not sure I even know what you're referring to. I guess that means a no for me then.
  15. Look I'm still trying to learn how to render donuts in Blender, it's gonna take time! Anyway, I like the hand-le but to be honest, that's the kind of detail that even with a super high-poly count you're not likely to notice as a player. You'd have to get really close and be in the mindset of wanting to pay attention to the details to actually notice. Most players (including myself) would be preoccupied with the act of lock-picking and/or opening and then grabbing what's inside. It's one of the dangers of putting in a lot of detail into assets that barely get a second look by players. I do try to stop and "smell the roses" from time to time, but I also miss a lot of nice details even when trying.
  16. Not quite. The project is based on this: https://github.com/copy/v86 The source package for Felix's windows95 is around 2.35 MB, but the actual full releases are in the area of 300 MB so he must be bundling a Windows 95 base package alongside it. Basically this project is about adapting an x86 emulator running in Javascript to be run within an Electron framework, and tailored specifically to run Windows 95 smoothly. I'm not downplaying Felix's efforts though - taking bits and putting them together such that you can run Windows 95 in Electron in a fast, smooth and reliable way takes effort and skill. But he didn't build Windows 95 in Javascript and frankly I don't know how he could since its source code is still locked up at Microsoft.
  17. Maybe I'm just a little tired but when I opened up the thread and glanced at the image, I thought the idea was how you were going to create a new asset based off the real-life safe shown in the image. It took a bit before I realized it wasn't actually a photograph! I got nothing to contribute except to go for it, we need more safes!
  18. Finally got around to this mission, I have a soft spot for good old classic mansion missions so this was a worthy experience. My only real complaint about the mission was how Anyway, still a great mission. I had to play on the medium difficulty due to wanting to KO guards, but that's fine since once you've played a mission you're better able to tackle ghosting in a future replay as you will still remember the layout.
  19. You're basically me. Despite my initial enthusiasm I didn't have much fun with it at the time of release, but within the last month I gave it another go and was quite impressed. There were a lot of factors that went into my improving my impression though. I have much better hardware now compared to the time of release, and improved FPS and graphical settings is what this game was designed for. Also the current version of the game is a LOT better than at release, and not just due to bug fixes but also quality of life improvements, added features like new apartments and just general polish. Also it has to be said that time away from caring about the hype helped a lot, since I was no longer disappointed from the E3 trailer and impressions about what the game "should" be like, and was better able to judge it without the comparison. So as you've noticed, every time you click a number it changes the range of numbers you can pick from row to column to row to column and so on. The thing is, your cyberdeck will have a buffer of numbers that can be filled in before the hack is terminated, and you can fill in nonsense numbers in that buffer if it means you're able to highlight the row or column you DO need. So for example, if you need to select the full code 55 AE, if the first line you select has a 55 but doesn't have the AE when it changes orientation, just select any other number you can that, when selected, will swap orientation so that the next number you do pick DOES have the AE. Basically, sacrifice numbers so that the row/columns are changed to give you access to the numbers you want. Different cyberdecks have different buffer sizes, which means you have more space to fill with nonsense numbers in order to get the actual parts of the code you want. I hope that makes sense.
  20. I guess part of the issue is that I can't recall any situation in which this has happened to me. In my experience, if the stealth score has increased from 0 then it's been my fault, and if the score has remained at 0 and yet guards are still alerted, I've normally been able to track down the cause as being something else that doesn't involve the AI actually looking at me. If you can find a means of recording a way to trigger the AI reacting to visibly seeing you, then running tdm_end_mission to trigger the mission over screen which also shows stealth statistics and show the score remaining at 0, then that would be useful for debugging maybe.
  21. The thing is, there are so many ways for the AI to be put into an alerted state without actually seeing you: You didn't hide a body properly and it was discovered. You killed someone, didn't remove the blood stain using a water arrow and it was noticed. You took loot that had a special flag set so that the AI would notice its absence and go into an alerted state. There's more than one enemy AI faction and if they encounter each other can cause battles independent of your actions. Some missions have the AI scripted to be in an alerted state after something important happens during the mission, like an objective being completed for example. As far as I know, NONE of the above will actually raise the stealth score because you weren't visibly the cause.
  22. Baby steps. Be grateful this appears to be a regular installation and not a virtual machine.
  23. I've said this before but back when TDM was literally a Doom 3 mod and required the base game to be installed, I envisioned the idea of being able to go on a complete power-trip and hoped it was possible to open the console, type in "give all" and then it'd spawn all the Doom 3 weapons in TDM. It never actually worked, but taking on the builders or the undead with a chainsaw or shotgun or even the BFG would be... entertaining.
  24. Another thing. The Dark Mod is, by its nature, rather punishing to mistakes. Fail to hit a guard perfectly on the sweet spot of their head/neck to trigger a blackjack KO? They're on full alert gunning for you, triggering the attention of nearby AI and you can do fuck all except to flee and hide. Since they'll be alerted for quite a while, this can potentially ruin an entire playthrough (not to mention your stealth score). Games like the Deus Ex and Dishonored series? At least in those games if you blow your stealth approach, you've got guns/swords/weapons/augs/powers to bring to bear. You can adapt and take down those pesky AI even if you screw up. Those games allow for a rapid change of playstyle which makes mistakes cost very little. TDM deliberately gimps the player because you're playing a lowly thief after all, not a highly-trained bodyguard/augmented individual. The penalties for failure are much higher because you can't respond with force. So I quicksave like a scummy bastard before almost every blackjack attempt and before any use of an arrow aimed at an AI target. Hell I sometimes quicksave before using water arrows if they're limited. I have no shame because the cost of failure is too high to avoid, at least for me.
  25. It's interesting because I recently read a thread on the Doomworld forums on people's opinions of single-segmenting maps in classic Doom/Doom 2. In other words, playing a map from start to finish without using saves - if you die, you have to replay the entire map. The general consensus was that saves are useful, however there was some merit in there being extra tension and challenge knowing that death couldn't be rewound easily by reloading a save. On the other hand (and speaking as an adult), people have to work and often have limited time for gaming. Having to replay a long map because you died can be quite off-putting and takes the joy out of a game if it happens often enough. Savegames keep the tempo going, keeps the feeling of progress going. Also someone pointed out that starting a map from scratch after a death is kinda like using saves anyway, just a single save at the beginning. You're just being tedious by denying the use of saves in this case. Dunno where I'm going with this. Trying to be diplomatic and say I can see all sides to the discussion.
×
×
  • Create New...