Bienie

I'm having a problem in my mission where on certain difficulties the player is handed two versions of the map. Easy difficulty it's just one, but medium and hard it's two. I don't think it's a shop problem since I've checked it and there's no mention of maps in there. Furthermore if the player decides to drop the map in the shop he has no map when spawned. I've looked through all my entities for duplicate atdm:map_of's. I do have a separate map of the mansion that you have to find in game on hard difficulty (but not on medium so I don't think that is related). Is there any other place where there could be instructions to give the player a map? Maybe in a file in my fm folder somewhere? Or could it be a rougue spawnarg on some entity? Could there be some glitching with the atdm:map_of entities? (I have 5 in total; One for the street map (which is the one I'm having problems with), two for the mansion 1st floor map (easy+medium has inv_map_start 1 and the other entity has it 0 for hard) and two for mansion 2nd floor map (same principle as 1st floor).

I would say maybe give Ulysses 1 a go as well. The only map I know of that has actual robot enemies. A lot of missions have industrial warehouses etc though, A Matter of Hours for example though it's a short one, and Quinn Co. has some bank heists. Aside from that ERH+ is working on a massive steampunk submarine mission, and MirceaKitsune is working on a cyberpunk conversion of TDM though release dates are understandibly TBD.

Wow it's cool you were able to whip up this concept in only three days! I will definitely give this one a spin, should be fun!

Aha! So I wasn't just too stupid to make it work

Sorry for the delay guys! The thread has been created in the beta testers' forum: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19342-chronicles-of-skulduggery-pearls-and-swine-betatest/

Ok, great! I will zip the mission up and get a version uploaded during the day!

I'm finally ready to move my first mission into the beta testing phase! Looking for willing thieves to make sure everything is up to scratch. Come one and all! Once a group of a few testers is formed I will package my mission and make a thread in the now public beta testers' sub forum.

I also think an official channel would be great! and would add that I think it should have video updates with a short trailer for every new FM that is released. I'm sure there are many people who "forget" about TDM because they have to either check the forums or load up the client in order to find out if there are any new FMs. But with a simple YT subscription they would get a little notification whenever there is a new one, making it a lot more likely they'll see it.

So glad to head that! I would think minimizing the CPU bottleneck would be the key to TDM's performance in VR, since that seems to be where it already is in standard TDM. Best of luck in your endeavours and I can't wait to one day jump into TDM-VR!

OK, figured it out. For the next person with this problem let me post the solution here since it's not in writing anywhere else. 1. Open the archive tdm_base01.pk4 in something like 7zip 2. Navigate to the scripts folder and extract the file called "tdm_numberwheel_lock.script" 3. Open tdm_numberwheel_lock.script in a word processor like notepad and scroll down to the line that reads: "callGlobalFunction("closeBar",$safe_bar);" and delete the whole line. 4. Save the file (don't change the name and make sure the file type is still .script) 5. Make a folder called "scripts" in your project folder (the name of the map) and place the script file in here. Now the custom script file overwrites the faulty stock TDM one, and it should no longer crash when you change the combination after unlocking it.

I did read it, but I'm not that familiar with scripting... I thougt that would require a custom script file to be added with the mission, hence my question if such a file already exists. I can do this with spawnargs (or some other way from within DR) is what you're saying?

Of course crowdfunding has its problems, but if it is properly managed it is the only "pure" way to make games, in a way bypassing capitalism, or at least the slimy part of it. Here's some food for thought on the future of the AAA "gaming" industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgMw6punQrE Here's an entertaining positive review of Kingdom Come Deliverance, that highlights the shortcomings of the AAA developers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y80jiJvr8HA

Yay it's finally out! Congrats, I will have to give this a go at some point in it's final form.

Got a couple of irritating glitches I'm trying to squash today... let's start with the numberwheel that comes with TDM 2.05, which causes a crash whenever the combination is changed after being opened once. See Goldwell's post here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18525-beta-testing-205/?p=400078 What can I do about this? Is there a script that someone has made that will override the "closeBar" function, or should I try and figure out some way to make it unfrobbable after the correct combination is entered?

I actually love the idea of crowdfunding for games. It allows fans of a game to actually choose what they want to have created without having to pass some greedy and ignorant board of shareholders first. The AAA gaming industry is sinking deeper and deeper into the shit pit every year as investor pressures force game devs to cut corners and milk their customers through "loot crates" and what have you. Honestly the best games of recent years have been crowdfunded, like Elite: Dangerous and Divinity: Original Sin 2. With the accessibility of game development having opened up markedly in the last 5-10 years I think the future of good PC-gaming lies in the hands of crowdfunded projects or purely demonetized fan games (like TDM!). All that being said, there's always a risk a project is going to bite the dust. I think what is needed is a better system of holding crowdfunding projects accountable.

Yeah this map is still the gold standard of mansion missions to me, even 8 years after release. Fidcal really did a lot to help train new mappers as well, a lot of his tutorials are still the go-to for newbies like me.

That's certainly true Judith, but being able to string together a scene in 30 minutes that looks like 30 hours of work certainly gives mappers the time and motivation to focus on instead improving things like gameplay and immersion which is really helpful and arguably leads to a better end result.

Indeed, I've watched all your tutorial videos (along with Biker's building of The Elixir, Sotha's Bakery Job) with much enthusiasm, and that was what made me determined to make one of my own. I've tried before using basically all brushes but it was too exhausting and I gave up, but with the new modules worldbuilding is a breeze. Unfortunately(?) I instead focus my energy on fleshing out the world maybe too much and have poured countless hours into that instead. I think that's just my style so I will instead have to put more stringent restrictions of size on to my next project.

I have been thinking about this for a while as well. I know my daughter asks me at least once a week "Daddy, are there any new Dark Mod missions out?" and most of the time I have to disappoint her with a no. Even missions that can be completed in 20 minutes most often give a satisfying "stealth hit" that can keep you going between the larger releases. I also know from working on my own map that feature creep is a real time sink. Seems like every time I boot up DR I find another little nook where I can add more content... at this point almost all buildings in my map are explorable, it's not a bad thing of course but it's a lot of time on development. At least I've told myself to not add any more streets! I'm thinking that, provided my mission is well received, I will focus on smaller projects henceforth. Maybe make a series of unconnected (or at most loosely connected) FMs that are pretty small so that I don't need to spend 8 months+ on each. The recent drought of mission releases (many are in the works I know) has only cemented this idea. My thoughts on the optimization situation is that there has to be a balance between acceptable performance and eye candy that fits within the mission author's time and effort. We don't want to exclude people based on their computer specs, but we can't limit ourselves from making more intricate (high poly /shadow) missions that allow TDM to stay relevant. I know TDM is never going to be cutting edge on graphics but compare some of the really old FMs to todays and the increase in visual fidelity is quite obvious.

Well I tried your idea out and it seems to work like a charm. Much more painless than I thought! Since I'll only have one or two instances of this in my map I'm sure it'll be ok. Thanks for the tip! Does anyone have a solution for this one?

It really is not possible to do it without using an objective? Maybe I wasn't clear, the idea behind this spoken line is just like a Garret quip basically, and is not connected to any objectives (in fact 95% of players probably won't see it at all). Even if it's a hidden objective, it's not going to cause trouble having many, complicated objectives? I'm going to have other questions about objectives later since I'm having some big problems with that as well.

I'm now back to troubleshooting my mission while I take a little creative break. There's quite a list of annyoing issues I'm having, but I will try to solve them one by one to not get overwhelmed. I've got two small ones on my mind that have been bugging me lately. 1. How to make an AI "hold a pose", specifically I want an AI to be in a kneeling position until I trigger him to move to another path node. The closest I've gotten so far is to have him repeat the animation over and over like he's doing lunges on leg day, not quite the effect I was going for. 2. How to trigger the player say something after closing a readable. I know how to make him say something after picking something up with a trigger once -> atdm:voice thingy, but when I target the readable instead of the item nothing happens. I know that you can make an objective trigger after closing (or only when opening?) a readable, so I feel like it must be possible on voice as well?

My condolences to family and friends of Gary. From the few interactions I had with him he seemed like a swell guy. I also thoroughly enjoyed his FMs! If I remember Vengeance for a Thief was one of the first campaigns of TDM, and it had an engaging storyline. Kano, I'm your age too and it can seem like life is hopeless for me as well sometimes. My friends have pretty much dried up and disappeared as well, people tend to strike out on their own in their 20's and not look back. I know I'm guilty of this as well, and rekindling old friendships can feel like it requires a lot of effort even though it really doesn't. Family is forever though, and I feel like that's where my tether to reality is. Other than that finding a creative hobby, or finding ways to help others in your community really tend to bring out the spark of life I find. I wish you the best!

Here are some outdoors pics from my first mission, which is nearing completion.

Disregard above post... it had nothing to do with the way the visportals were set up it seems like. I followed your recommendation demagogue and rebuild all the worldspawn, this time with grid-snapped, thicker walls and no unevenness and now the portals both work fine! Thanks again you've really helped me sqash these annoying bugs today! Feels like I'm pretty close to a beta now, or at least alpha!