Nightcrawler

Hey folks, I wonder if there will be also a built of this new version for Ubuntu 14.04. made available. I'd like to avoid compiling it myself if possible, as I once tried to compile a former version of DR and messed it up...

The problem I can see in modifying stuff is not that it would make things just easier for the player - that's not a problem - but that in some circumstances the player could achieve s.th. completely new; something the level author didn't want the player to do... To go back to my suggestion: You might see that it would make things easier for the player but couldn't mess up a mission - simply because it doesn't really add a new feature: The player already can blind the AI and knock them out - right now he just has to approach more carefully, because he must not get spotted before...

I wonder how much it would take to implement my suggestion. I mean I might have tried it out, if I had an Idea what must be changed. But as a newbie I have no Idea where to start... So Ideas are welcome. Just to be clear once again: I want to act blinded AIs the same no matter if the have been alerted before you blinded them or not.

I tested it extensively in the training mission to see how blinded guards act. You can knock out an unalerted and blinded guard (without helmet) from any direction, if he was alerted before knock-outs work only from behind. However I didn't test the behaviour of helmet guards so far.

The second downside is that you have to know the area you want to pass running before. Otherwise you'll get lost very easily I'm not saying that you should use flashbombs for easily knocking out ALL the AI's: I just want the flashbombs to be a bit more useful and the blinded fellows to act a bit more realistic. I know you fear that even this will make some levels too easy. But consider that in general flashbombs (and unhelmed guards) are quite rare in tdm levels; which will prevent an overuse of that "flash-and-blackjack gambit" by the player.

That's also why I want blinded AIs to ignore their alarm status. They way lighting bombs (or lightning mines - they're even more useless) are currently working doesn't make them very useful tools.

Cool feature. Didn't know you could let that have displayed. Do you know what's the difference between the red and green cone?

I also have a better idea now of what exactly should be changed of the behaviour of blinded AIs: They simply should be knock-outable like unalerted AIs. When you blind an unhelmed and unalarmed AI you can knock him easily out (even from the front). However if he was alarmed before and you blind him he staggers around helplessly as before but he cannot be knocked out. That makes no sense to me... The alertness level shouldn't matter here.

I got back to the training area to practice knock-outs and I even could knock-out an alerted unhelmed guy from behind. It took me quite a lot of attempts until it worked. It felt like I had to search for a single tiny weak point at his head.... The way knocking-out in tdm works right now seems a bit arbitrary: Some times it works, some times not - even if you hit him in the same way. You'd have my 100% support for this idea!

I might disagree with that. Last time I blinded a guard with a flash bomb I remember him saying first s.th like "I can't see." and a few moments later s.th like "What is going on?" I think 2 simple comments from the AI may be enough to indicate to the player which state of blindness they're in.

And even then, there is a grace period of a second or so where you can still KO a guard once he is alerted. I think in the video at 2:42 you've just nailed what my problem was: I was always getting to close bumping into the AI. But i'm still sure that the knock-out doesn't work as intended: When I bump into an AI and even hit them with the blackjack in the very same second the ai won't go down (although that's what should happen, right?) but go on alert and attack me. So no grace second for me - never had that And it also proves wrong point 2: Bare-headed guards from behind when alert and/or their weapon is out. Nope no chance for me to knock out the ai Once it gets suspicious I can beat the back of his head 1000x till it's wound he wouldn't faint. I don't know if that's happening because the game mechanic is really not working as it should or because I've just been too clumsy when knocking AI's out... Soo can any other players relate to that problem or is it just me?

My experience so far is: Once alerted an AI cannot be knocked out no matter from which direction. I frequently run into the following problem: I try to knock out a walking guard from behind, but when I hit him he doesn't faint but screams "ouch", traws his weapon and butchers me:/ I must have made him suspicious while approaching him from behind...so i'm almost 100% sure that an alerted ai (even only to the lowest levels) is imune to knock-outs. I'm not sure if that's the way it's intended to be. Knocking s.b. out is quite a huge challange in tdm... Making blinded AIs get kocked out easily would change game dynamics, that's a point. But consider that in order to blind and knock-out an ai the player has to throw the bomb, look away from the impact, then return to the ai and blackjack each. I'm not sure how many you could knock-out within 5-8 seconds, but if you think the impact lasts too long I suggest a 2-phase blindness: Phase 1: Around the first seconds (3-4s maybe?) the ai gets knocked out easily. Phase 2: AI is still blinded but can protect himself so it doesn't get knocked-out easily.

As you mentioned the flashbombs another solution came to my mind: In "good old" Thief you could easily knock-out blinded AIs. In tdm all you can do is flee from a blinded AI... Wouldn't it be a better solution to set up blinded AI's to get knocked out more easily in tdm? At least this scenario would seem more realistic than the player pushing the AI without making the AI starting to attack him, it seems to me.

I don't think there are any real tdm fan pages out there. But some Thief fan pages also post news about tdm: http://www.taffersparadise.net/index.html Regarding asset repositories Fidcal's website comes to my mind. However it never made it to a good and full repository but stayed quite empty: http://www.fidcal.com/DarkModContributions/

The model is Fujitsu Lifebook AH53 (if you still need it). Sorry i wasn't online for a while. But it seems you already have figured the gpu out by yourselves... Just out of curiosity: Is there an easy way (or command) in Ubuntu that shows your gpu?

gfx card is "Intel Ironlake Mobile x86/MMX/SSE2"

All settings are set to the lowest option, vsync is off and the darkmod.cfg is set like it's recommended on the wiki: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=FAQ#The_game_is_very_slow.21 I'm running tdm with a resulution of 1366x768. Any lower res corrupts my screen. As you told me a few weeks ago, my tiny RAM of 1,8 GB is most likely the problem, so i guess i have to get some more... btw what's this vanilla mod thing you are talking about?

In indoor areas i usually get around 20-25 fps, but when i go outside or AIs are around it goes down on 10 fps Kinda sucks but tdm is such a great game that i still can enjoy it - playing even at such a low framerate.

I would consider myself as an average player and be pleased if i can help with testing. I'm running tdm on my laptop with Ubuntu 14.04. (32 bit) - Intel Pentium CPU P6200 @ 2.13GHz × 2 - 1,8 GiB RAM - Intel Ironlake Mobile x86/MMX/SSE2 I think that pc is the lowest end you can tdm probably run on - it might be even to low to do good testing. I should also say i haven't done any beta-testing so far. But if that's no problem and if you're in need of testers you can count me in.

How inventive! Didn't expect a storyline like this!

That's the way it is set in the Darkmod.cfg: bind "UPARROW" "_forward" bind "DOWNARROW" "_back" bind "LEFTARROW" "_left" bind "RIGHTARROW" "_right" It works as it should in the Windows version under wine, but - and this puzzles me a lot - in the tdm linux version when i press the keys, tdm doesn't react... I suppose with the controls GUI you mean tdm_gui01.pk4/guis/mainmenu_settings_controls.gui ? That looks quite complicated to me...

Thanks, i can call the console with ctrl + alt + ^. Do you have any idea what could be wrong with the arrow key bindingin the linux version?

Phew, restoring the old driver was more complicated than i thougt. I couldn't do it with synaptic, but fortunately Ubuntu stored the old drivers in /var/cache/apt/archives. So I could go there, copy the old drivers in a new folder and run "sudo dpkg -i *.deb" within that folder to restore the drivers. Oibaf's Version from the 15.09. works fine However i encountered a few other strange things while experimenting with the tdm.exe version: - In the Linux version (.x86) i cannot bind any function to the arrow keys, seems like tdm doesn't recognize the keys. It says "0x00" when i try to bind s.th. to them. (In the past i didn't give much about it and used the numblock instead, but I realized in the .exe-version I can bind them!) - In tdm.exe I cannot call the console pressing "^". - The Savegames from the 2 differnet versions don't seem compatible: When I try to load a game saved with the linux version with tdm.exe it keeps stuck at loading; when i try to load a game saved with tdm.exe with the linux version, tdm crashes... Can anyone confirm some of the above bugs?

No, doesn't seem to do anything...

Yes, i'm pretty sure that i'm using the latest drivers... I got the mesa graphics driver from this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers?field.series_filter=trusty Today i updated them, which was quite a mistake, because the graphics in tdm are now corrupted: When i'm walking the light is flickers heavily which makes tdm nearly unplayable. You might see those dark stripes on the ceiling and the floor... I didn't had that before the update. Is there a way i could restore the previous installed version?