MirceaKitsune

Thanks. Linux user and I play TDM at least weekly: Never noticed any physics issues myself, whatever happened in the FM must be a relatively rare scenario... that's a FM I haven't revisited so I was lucky to miss the bug then. There is in fact a little problem in latest Beta, though it's so small I didn't bother to document it carefully, but I'll share the idea of it at least: If you climb into a tight space between an object and the ceiling and turn on the flashlight, jumping may cause the light to phase through the floor and disappear temporarily. Say you have a crate pressed against a ceiling where you can only climp and go in while crouched... if the surface is high enough to allow a jump but just low to force you to be crouched, you'll see the light source of the lantern disappear temporarily in mid air. Think I saw it in The King Of Diamonds, if it's important I'll boot it up again and noclip to get a viewpos. Just to make sure you've seen my mention: Please check my message a few posts above where I attached a log, we have a crash where killing AI with a broadhead arrow can cause the engine to go down with a "tried to free uncached trace model" error... not even a main menu crash but one to the OS. It's pretty rare but if you fatally shoot AI often enough it will occur eventually.

I can see that as a design choice, but the practical problem is pretty striking: If you're looking at a readable and an AI mutters something nearby, the subtitles will cover the text on your readable. It's the game's equivalent of someone putting their palm in front of your face while you're reading a book. Since subtitles are secondary, layering behind readables would make sense... or even better, disable subtitles while readables or the inventory menu are open.

Saw this FM in my list and it said my last playthrough was in 2020 so figured I'd try it again to see what was updated. What a good gem this one was! I think it's at the top when it comes to story and world building, one of the FM's where readables do a lot to immerse you and paint what's going on while events are dynamic and actually feel involved: I'd paint this as a textbook example on doing progression and elements of surprise in a FM... just my own feeling, but recent ones have become a bit too linear and predictable even if the graphics are more impressive, I feel kind of nostalgic for missions like this. With that being said, I should end with a hilarious thing that happened at the end and had me laughing out loud.

Gotta say: As much as I thought I knew what all of the voices said, with subtitles I'm finding a corrections to what I had believed over the years: Part of me actually feels like the illusion was broken even if they make more sense now. Some examples just for the fun: "Shipment was late, who does he think he's fooling": Due to the accent I always thought the merchant said light instead of late... that actually made me wonder if back in the day they had a policy to charge more if the ship was too empty and not carrying enough goods for a trip to be worth it. I always thought the cynic said "god keeps the leftovers, that's why I never get any"... it's actually the cook. "Deadly boring, I could use a big of fun": Always heard the thug say a bit of fighting, real version is less exciting lol. Used to think the thug says "gonna get me a good ole' after this", which I interpreted as getting something to drink especially as it sounded like ale with an accent... nah he actually says whore

An issue worth mentioning I'm sure others have observed: When reading a readable, subtitles of nearby AI can cover it and make it harder to read the text. Can be quite annoying, would definitely layer them behind readables and the inventory menu and so on.

Would like to remind of a notable bug that persists in latest beta: Sometimes when you kill AI with a broadhead arrow, TDM will crash instantly or soon after their death. I'm currently replaying King of Diamonds and got a case of that, previously experienced during another FM with one of the dev versions. Here's the qconsole.log once more, hope it's enough to help track down the issue... the one line I believe is relevant: WARNING:idClipModel::FreeTraceModel: tried to free uncached trace model (index=0) qconsole.log

Thanks. If you press X to activate the clipper tool and cut a brush, can you confirm that breaks even this solution until Radiant is restarted?

Got to try it out with an older FM: Very nice stuff to see! Looks good for the most part: If anything I think there are a few issues with certain punctuation making sense... other than that, only change I'd like to see is a more stylized dialog box instead of a flat background, still black and transparent and subtle but better themed and maybe using a more appropriate font.

Finally did it with success! Very nice and fun FM, loved every bit of it. Haven't found all of the hidden things, should definitely play this again someday but for now I'm happy I finished it at last.

It sucks that I've already finished every FM especially recent ones: I really need to find something to replay so I can properly try this out now that it's in at last

I agree the future is reflection probes: The old mirror system used to work back in the day because due to resource limitations, you'd have extremely low geometry in the world, thus in some areas you could have one giant floor or wall as a mirror. Today the target is PBR, as we'll want every surface with a specular channel to have a bit of reflection shining through. Of course one-way sharp mirrors should continue working as well, but hopefully under a new system that supports universal reflections the right way... definitely not a 2.12 thing but maybe something to dream of for 2.13.

There's a bug I've been noticing for a long time, but for some reason it didn't click with me to mention it till someone else just mentioned seeing the same thing and I realized I'm not the only one. The contents of some chests and small containers like drawers will sometimes not become frobable when you open that container: You may need to close the door and open it again, after which you can frob any scrolls / keys / etc inside. Most likely something is happening with target_setfrobable getting triggered at the wrong time. Even when they are frobable, tiny items in small containers will sometimes only highlight from a very specific position and angle: I've had cases where I needed to lean forward and look at a coin just right and it would only highlight when my crosshair was on that one pixel. I'm sorry I didn't think to note down a FM and viewpos where to test it; If you need I'll keep that mind for when I play the next one. This doesn't happen a lot any might be hard to catch, but often enough as to be noticeable... in most recent FM's it seems to occur at least once in some drawer or lockbox.

Yeah it looks too distracting so I wouldn't go with that. Only rush would be the upcoming release, I should have posted those concerns earlier but got focused on other stuff... it's no tragedy if the change doesn't make it in 2.12 though, hopefully at least the toggles can be solved which I'd say are the main issue.

I believe TDM takes a minimalistic approach to he HUD, which I think is a good idea since we prefer realism and focusing on the environment rather than having icons and indicators everywhere. Something like modifying the frob helper crosshair when looking at a body could work though, eg: Empty circle when AI is dead or the normal white dot when alive. It works that way by default yeah, it's what I was referring to: If you pick up a body the text confirms it, will say "person" or "person's body" accordingly. It does require picking up and moving the AI: A solution might be the text appearing just by highlighting the body, still relies on the HUD confirming it but that would be like checking the AI's pulse so it works.

The sides of the lightgem are better, but then you need to have the same thing on either side or else it looks ugly. Maybe the thing at each side of the gem can refer to a specific mode, like left is crouching and right is running, but that might get a little too complicated... if not a posture symbol could be in the middle of the gem, it's not like it obstructs its visibility as there's plenty of surface area to tell the value from, but upon a quick edit for this idea I don't much like how it looks either.

Initially wanted not to post about this, I told myself it's just another useless feature that would waste time before a release and all. But it does carry actual gameplay limitations I run into: I often have no way to tell if an enemy is dead or just knocked out. If the FM has a "don't kill anyone" objective that makes it clear, otherwise you need to pick up the body and see what the text says. In the past you could tell by their eyes: Dead AI would have them open while knocked out AI had them closed. Last time I played it seemed like even this stopped working and both cases had their eyes shut... a recent bug perhaps? In any case it's often a difficult cue to find, so I wonder if anything better would be possible. Obviously AI become ragdolls so animating any important bones is surely impossible: I'd suggest making them move slightly so it's clear they're still breathing, but this would likely send the ragdoll shaking all over the place since they probably can't handle an animation being mixed in. So here's one idea that should work great: Alongside the eyes we could have the mouth be open, which is easier to spot from a close distance. Knocked out AI have their mouth closed, dead AI have it open which is a clear cue and also looks more... well, dead. Another would be to add the snoring sound to knocked out AI... now I'm curious if in real life someone being knocked unconscious snores like when they're asleep, don't try it out of course

Very rough example of what I'm imagining, obviously not to scale or anything just the general idea of it. Made with this and this if anyone's curious or could use the graphics for anything. Feels that something this could look pretty good if done well.

Thanks, that would be one of the issues down. Could you also make it so when both creep and run are set to toggle, toggling one on also turns the other off? This way whenever you come out of running or creeping, you know you'll be back to walking instead of jumping straight to the other mode. Currently creeping blocks running entirely, you need to manually turn it off before the run toggle works at all which can be inconvenient if want to just jump to the mode of the key you pressed. I've always wondered if the HUD and menu graphics could be modernized to be a little more high resolution: We could surely have a nicer looking lightgem, one that actually looks more like a gem and maybe makes light level even clearer. I've tinkered with the HUD and could technically look at it, but I'm working on several projects now and don't even know for sure what changes would be accepted in vanilla. Hope someone else can provide more feedback and maybe take a look! Can't say I'm a big fan of the current crouch indicator in general: It's two decorations on the side of the lightgem that stretch to the bottom of the screen, makes the point clear but looks kind of ugly. I can't readily think of anything else that wouldn't be distracting though. Normally we could use an icon indicating posture as a silhouette of the person, but that might be too large and distracting and modern looking... the later issue can be fixed by making it more like a symbol carved into a rune.

I know this is a bit late for 2.12 Beta 3, was planning on asking earlier but other things kept me busy. Latest TDM version allows toggling not just crouching but also walking and sneaking, which is a great feature and I prefer it over having to keep the key pressed. There is however one problem I keep running into: There's no indication as to when crouching or walking is toggled, the same way there is a HUD element for crouching. This can be a problem when you're sneaking from a nearby AI or stuck in a tight space, as you need to test which modes are used by walking around. Think there would be a way to make the symbols on the sides of the lightgem also change shape based on those modes, or another good way of making them clear? Also noticed an additional problem: Sneak and run are mutually exclusive yet get enabled independently. I often find myself not knowing why I'm slow, noticing it's because creeping was on, but then I disable it to find myself running and making too much noise so I have to hit the run key as well but a guard may have already heard me... you basically need to tinker with two keys to switch between the 3 modes (creep, walk, run). When both creep and run are set to toggle, would it be better if pressing either key would also toggle the other mode? Yet another confusing though less problematic aspect is the toggles not persisting between saves: I have running turned on, do a save, run into trouble and reload, then I'm suddenly slow again. Since crouching is persistent in saves, can the toggles for creeping and running do the same?

Is the change still not good enough to make it into vanilla as implemented? I imagine it's too late to make its way into the current beta for 2.12.

Very interesting FM, was fun to have played through it. Also large, felt like it's around the top in terms of scale factor. Must say it got rather tedious at some point: Finished it after over half a month, didn't manage to get one optional objective done as I stopped trying to find it. Will definitely be interesting to see future parts to this series or anything else you choose to make!

Oh wow, how did I miss that? I still need to finish my ongoing FM and the save would likely be rendered incompatible, so I'll check the beta and this feature out once I find the next FM to get to

So do we have subtitles for all the voices now? If so can we get a new dev snapshot once they're ready? I think last one's well over a month old now, this would be a great time to enjoy something new

I keep it that way for realism. Video compression makes it look worse, normally it's a little better. I occasionally try to tweak the lighting to make it brighter but without making the whole world gray everywhere the way gamma does.

Not quite the same issue and slightly less funny, but had some more fun testing how guards react in real situations. Somehow he doesn't notice the 4 people he's guarding flee the room in terror screaming about an intruder. If his reaction couldn't be chugged to AI errors, you'd think he hates the people he's guarding and pretended to see nothing just to be smug