demagogue

No not our group, another Game Club group for playing and talking about games. They've been making icons for all the games they've played, and they wanted one for Darkmod, since that's one of the games we played, and I helped them find it. I was thinking, now that they've made it, we ought to give it to the Darkmod Discord group as well, or anyone else that may want it. I don't really know anything about Discord, but I figure I can just give an admin (or anybody else that wants it for any other reason) the raw file, whatever it is, and they can do whatever it is they do with it. Anyway I'll ask them for the file and attach or link to it here so anyone can just take it. I'll try to remember to do that at some point. I've hung out in the Darkmod Discord sometimes, but I'll grant it's not often, it's been a while, and even when I visit I won't be really posting. But I'm not really spending much if any time on any Discord group I'm a member of, not just that one.

As a quick update, the one I found, which is basically what datiswous posted as well, does the job perfectly fine. The icon ended up looking great. Actually it's for Discord. We have a Discord emoji and sticker now if anybody else wants them. So I don't need anything more. But I like the discussion y'all are having about a 3D version for future uses like this. It's not something I need now, so not something I'd work on, but if someone ever did make one, I'd be happy to see it.

Hi, I'd like to use the golden clock icon of this website, the one in the corner up there, as an icon for TDM stuff. Does anyone know where I can get a high resolution image of the full clock that I can use, or just attach one to a post here or something like that? I tried searching for it and couldn't find it actually, just either partial versions or versions covered with text, etc. Cheers. Edit: This is the best version I can find but still has text in front of it. Edit2: I found this version https://www.steamgriddb.com/grid/416897 which comes from this page: https://www.steamgriddb.com/game/5252610 That may work if I can't find one better. But if anyone knows where a better or more HR version is, let me know.

I meant it's not the team's responsibility to ensure backwards compatibility, at least if it's some special case (they use a deprecated system in a weird way that breaks, which is how it usually if very rarely happens). It's just managing mapper expectations that there's a small chance their FM may become broken in the indefinite future if they do that. But I basically agree with stgatilov that this, and the other things he mentioned, aren't really the job of the TOS but some "Read this before you submit an FM" note. Edit: Oh one thing about disgruntled mappers though, in my own org we'd have some term that if there is a dispute between the mapper and the organization, they agree to good faith private negotiations and failing that arbitration instead of going to court. But we've never had any dispute to that level. By the way, I don't do IP law professionally (although I took the class). I work in a different area. So I don't necessarily know anything anybody couldn't learn with a few hours online research. But it makes sense to have a statement that our terms disallow illegal or infringing material so there can't be any claim that the forum / team condones or invites it, mostly as a formality. If I were tasked with making a TOS, the first thing I'd do is find a number of other TOS's out there for similar projects and use them as a template or starting point. The bigger the org, the more likely it was vetted by their lawyers. If there are terms they almost all share, that's a sign they're the important ones. There's also the part about creating or modifying a TOS mid-stream, after 100s of FMs were released under whatever terms they were at the time (I haven't looked at it recently).

Yeah the reason you'd mention no illegal or infringing material is for us to be able to say we're acting in good faith, if somebody finds their IP in an FM, they can't or it's not as straightforward to want to sue us for it. In practice I think it's more of a formality. As for FMs that don't finish or have buggy elements, there are demo-like or novelty FMs that might have both of those. Somebody mentioned the Tutorial itself. I wouldn't want to discourage somebody being creative, and I'd probably word it differently. Something like FMs should be "complete" before being submitted, but leaving it technically open what "complete" means. I guess it might give some examples "... including but not necessarily in special cases ..." that it starts and ends, is not egregiously buggy, does not consistently crash, etc. But I think even here it should be an encouragement instead of a hard rule, like we encourage mappers to get their FMs beta-tested, confirm that it starts and finishes, doesn't consistently crash, before submitting, and we may ask that you work on an FM more before uploading it if it is manifestly broken "without justification" (to leave open the possibility of "broken" FMs with a justification, like a novelty FM). Some of you might remember that TTLG ran a "buggy FM" contest once where broken FMs was actually the theme, and it was an amazing contest. Some of those FMs were broken in very creating, fun, and interesting ways, and it might be good to have FMs like that sometimes. The intentionality part was important though; you could have something broken if that's part of the artistic intention, so language that could leave something like that open may be good, or again encouraging people to always betatest and avoid unintentional crashing or broken FMs, etc. Because of past experience, we might also have language to give expectations regarding possible changes after they submit. Like an alert that while we make every effort to make sure future changes to the game are backwards compatible, it's possible a change breaks an FM. Also other people may want to take assets or things from the FM for their own FM, so we should say that technically, when you submit, you agree to the license we have for our assets (I forget exactly, CC-nc something something). So under that license people can use those assets. If you don't want that, you might make a personal appeal in the readme... The other worry is when people just take big chunks of the map itself, or make their own levels in the same maps... I wonder if we could have people make explicit what they consent to having done to their maps post release, if they allow the translation file, other people to use their map work, etc. But make it clear that the map is under the CC license, which allows people to use anything from it, and they can make a personal appeal that isn't binding, but people may be moved by it. And then we might have our own internal standards what seems egregious enough not to allow, like if someone completely takes another person's map and basically tries to recycle it under their own name, or when it's a team made map and the team disagrees what happens to it. Anyway, whatever we think, it's good to have language about it here to help manage expectations about what might happen, so it's good to think about what we should say to minimize conflict later on.

Another seasonal must-play is Snowed Inn. I'd recommend it as a great bite-sized FM even aside from the snow.

I take it this is the reason why my browser just said there's a security risk visiting this site and stopped me from visiting until I approved it, and that will go away when this certificate is reset.

He's right though. The first step in any feature request is to make an entry in the bugtracker, so it's in a list, and it gets discussed and developed from there. It just gets buried and forgotten about if it's only in a thread. I was going to do it myself, but it apparently takes some time to dig through the entries even with the filter.

If I were designing it from the ground up, I'd have a top row of small boxes designated for weapons ordered numerically, actually now that I think about it, with the ability to rearrange objects into those boxes so the designated object pops up when you push 1-9 on the keyboard, Minecraft style.

The info_location location can cover multiple portal rooms though, and often times can be quite large, such as an entire mansion or neighborhood if the mapper wanted the same ambient playing for it. It'd probably be better to get the portal room, the internal number dmapping gives to that room, if you were going that route, although that's more complicated to work with. But actually I'd recommend just a simple radius value from the object, then it's the same amount of space in every case.

First of all thanks for the contribution! For the record I'm a fan of these kinds of fan patches that change some fundamental parts of a game, because I think people have moods that play to different sides of games sometimes. But I don't think changing or adding to the core game is the way to cater to most of them. (Games usually have a natural tendency towards some norms to the exclusion of others, and a good designer respects what their game is telling them it should be.) But having a fan patch with these other styles is the way to do it anyway because we can, and freedom is power. Save restrictions is a good example of this. We do put the number of re-loads in the debrief stat screen. I still agree that that's the best way to deal with these kinds of meta-game things in this kind of genre, so if a person does ghost or ironman a map, the stat screen will verify their claim with a 0 Stealth Score and 0 Reload stats. Having a save room actually changes how the player approaches the gameplay, so it's not just a meta-game thing. It puts it more in the territory of a rogue-like, not quite no-save permadeath, but it raises the stakes. I think that'd be a nice vibe sometimes. I still agree I don't think it's great for the core game because it puts meta things into the game world, which isn't our core vibe. But again a fan patch for it when you're in the mood is a good way to play in that way anyway. I don't know if I'm going to try it any time soon. I might. But in any event I'd be really interested in seeing someone make a let's play video to see it in action.

For T2 FMs, this list from a post is pretty good, starting with the ones in bold, but it leaves out a lot of the top rated ones on CheapThiefMissions, which covers classic FMs. At least the top 10 on that site are also must plays. (I think the link already takes you to the ordered list, but click the "Rating" button to make sure it's ordered by rating if it's not already.) And for recent FMs, there's the Thief Guild's top rated list.

I script a lot of FMs that I don't have time to make, including an entire massive campaign! The one I mentioned above is one on that list. It's not Patently Dangerous, which was an FM I actually released.

Funny. I scripted an FM once about an author abandoning an FM, and the NPCs are just left there to fend for themselves and find meaning in their existence.

In principle I like the idea of community campaign building. But the official campaign itself never really captured my imagination, not to mention it'd be hard for people to have an idea of where it's going, much less making it cohere. I scripted a Dark Mod campaign meant to introduce the districts, factions, and lore that does capture my imagination. But I'm not in any real position to ask people to build for it, and also there's still the problem that people may have different visions for it that may not cohere well. As for the "connecting mission", that might be interesting... But I'd reframe it a little, not that it has to be connecting per se, but you know, a hero or even another character from some FM in an adjacent setting alongside (or before or after) an existing FM, kind of like what Rozencranz and Guildenstern did for Hamlet, if you know about that. I think it's better to have it more open ended how an author wants to build off an existing FM than only connecting two FMs per se. That might be a really interesting theme to see play out.