darksilence
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Posts posted by darksilence
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12 minutes ago, Obsttorte said:
Church/Experimental
Thanks. Updated.
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45 minutes ago, Obsttorte said:
Nice and thank you for the hard word that definetely went into this. One note, though: You categorized my FM "Builder Roads" as horror, but it doesn't contain any horror elements. It is intented to be ghosted more or less, so maybe that caused some confusion.
Thanks!
Sorry about the confusion, but the "Mission Type" came from the wiki page, where it is categorized as "Horror".
What would you say is the type of your mission (I still haven't played it), among the following:
SpoilerBank Jobs Fan mission involving a heist or other thievy action inside a local banking institution. Will often contain the outsmarting of security systems, gaining access to a safe and cracking its code. Castle/Fortress Fan mission involving a heist or other thievy action inside or outside a castle or fortress, either one that serves as a military garrison, or as someone's private residence. Frequently involves background characters from the nobility. City Missions Fan mission that is set mainly in the streets and public spaces of an urban area, such as a town or city. Though the player is most often out on the streets, these missions tend to also involve some degree of exploration and infiltration into private and public buildings alike. Church/Cathedral Fan mission set in and around religious buildings and institutions, such as churches, monasteries, cathedrals, church bureaus, church workshops, etc. Frequently involves ecclesiastical characters from the TDM setting's Builder Church. Experimental Fan mission which involves some creative design or gameplay element that isn't typical for the vast majority of TDM missions. FMs set in highly unusual environments, or with a puzzle-like nature, can fit under this label. Inn/Tavern Fan mission set mostly in and around an inn, tavern or shanty. Usually focused on robbing some rich guest, acquiring an item stored by the guest at the inn, or gathering intel at the inn. Jail/Prison Fan mission involving an escape from a prison (by the imprisoned player character), infiltration of a prison to gather intel from inmates or help an inmate escape the prison, etc. Lost Civilizations Fan mission focused on the exploration of ancient ruins, whether above ground or in deep subterranean caverns. Can often overlap with the Horror or Tombs, Catacombs & Crypts type of mission, but not necessarily. Horror Fan mission with an overt horror theme. Depending on the author's approach and intentions, it can focus on psychological horror, or horror based on danger from supernatural threats, or varying combinations of both. Mansion/Estate Fan mission involving a heist or other thievy action inside someone's private residence (a fancy house, a manor house) and its surrounding grounds. Frequently involves background characters from the nobility or the more affluent townsmen or citizens. Museum Heists Fan mission focusing on a heist in a museum, art gallery or other institution storing priceless artefacts, artworks, gemstone collections, etc. Outdoor/Caves Fan mission set in a mostly natural outdoor environment, but involving the exploration of natural caves and caverns. Outdoor/Daylight Fan mission set in a mostly outdoor environment, during the daytime (in contrast to the usual TDM missions, set at night time or early dusk). Outdoor/Pagan Fan mission set in a mostly natural outdoor environment, involving some presence of pagan tribes from TDM's setting. Perhaps even pagan camps and settlements. Pirate Fan mission involving the presence of characters engaging in piracy or smuggling, and various related piratical themes. Can overlap with the Ship type of mission, but not necessarily. Platforming/Jumping Fan mission focusing on testing the player's movement, jumping and climbing skills, with or without equipment. Sewers Fan mission which involves the use of the city sewers or others sewers in some way, often as a stealthy means of entry or escape. Ship Fan mission which takes place aboard a vessel, in port or at sea, or otherwise involves ships to a great degree. Can overlap with the Pirate type of mission, but not necessarily. Thieves' Highway / Rooftop Fan mission involving a lot of movement and travel on the rooftops of a town or city (colloquially "The Thieves' Highway"). Tombs, Catacombs & Crypts Fan mission involving the exploration of old tombs, catacombs and crypts, often for the purposes of treasure and artefact hunting. Can often overlap with the Horror or Lost Civilizations type of mission, but not necessarily. Training Fan mission label that is unique to the official Training Mission, an open-ended tutorial mission where players can practice and test their TDM gameplay skills at their own leisure, and to the smaller blackjacking-trainer FM, which focuses on practicing NPC knockouts by the player. Warehouse Fan mission which takes place in and around a warehouse, usually in some industrial area of a city, or at a port. Multiple types are also accepted, if that's the case.
Thanks
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3 hours ago, stgatilov said:
If you choose between editing a wiki and editing a custom database, it is easier to edit the wiki.
And more people have permission to edit our wiki than anything official.So while it does not sound right from programming point, wiki table seems to be a better source of truth than official database.
I agree that editing a database manually is not ideal, but this doesn't have to be the case: an interface can be easily developed for that.
For instance, the way TDMDB was engineered, such an interface would be very easy to add (and in fact it's in my TODO list). With such interface, adding/editing missions would imply a few seconds of filling some inputs and marking checkboxes. Quick and easy.
I also agree that the wiki is a great source at the moment, and that's why I retrieved most of the information by scraping it, although some information was more accurate on thedarkmod.com (such as mission size), hence the scripts selected each piece of information from the most reliable source for each field.
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Thanks @stgatilov
Regarding avoiding scraping, the way to do this is to have an official, trusted database, and then have everywhere else pull data from it through an API request, instead of HTML scraping.
For example, suppose that in the future tdmdb.com becomes the trusted DB and is managed by the TDM team. Then, I could write a simple REST API so that mission data can be obtained through a call that returns a nice JSON with such data.
This way, a lot of the information that appears in the wiki could also be automated, such as the list of missions, without the requirement of having someone manually edit the table every time a new mission comes out.
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9 hours ago, Amadeus said:
So this might be a long way off, @darksilence but do you plan on putting in Thief fan missions as well as some point? I'm sure a lot of people here would make use of that as well.
The idea is to focus exclusively on TDM, since this is meant to be a TDM resource/asset, and not an independent website.
If, in the future, adding Thief fan missions becomes a very real request, this is something that can of course be discussed.
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Thanks everyone for reviewing the application and for sharing all of that feedback.
@Amadeus I agree with the header. I've made its font bigger, so hopefully it looks better now
@roygato @Amadeus @stgatilov I also agree with the problem of spoiling the presence of monsters. I just pushed an update so that this is not shown right away; a "Click to show" button is now there instead. If a filter for a certain monster category is in use though, the spoiler will be visible right away for that category.
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Hi,
v1.0 of this is ready! More info here:
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- Popular Post
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Since my first map might take a while to be finished (a few years at least), I developed TDMDB in the meantime, a database application that allows to more easily view and filter all available missions, simplifying the process of finding missions that are suited to one's taste.
You can just go ahead and check it out here: tdmdb.com/missions. It's on a very limited shared server, so don't expect blazing speeds, although loading times appear to be reasonable enough.
You can use the application to, for example, find all city missions that are also part of a series, and have them sorted by size. Or all independent missions that have undead and spiders. Or missions by a specific author that have EFX Reverb support. And so on.
Or you can just scroll down through all missions, reading about them and looking at their pictures.
All of the information was retrieved from the wiki and thedarkmod.com by a couple of scripts, and stored in a database.
The application may be installed as an official TDM resource, which was my original idea and motivation (more on this thread). For this purpose, you may find the full source code and installation instructions on this GitHub repo. The data retrieval process might change if this becomes an official resource, but that can actually be a good thing, since scraping the wiki and thedarkmod.com is not ideal long-term.
In any case, for the time being, the application can be fully used on tdmdb.com. Hopefully it helps many find the missions of their dreams! (it did help me find some amazing series).
By the way, if this is breaking any rules, just let me know. Also, please feel free to tell me if you find any bugs, missing data, or if you have any suggestions on how to make the application better
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6 hours ago, stgatilov said:
I did not. Although I did not try hard enough, to be honest.
Anyway, I have fixed the problem. You won't see it in future versions.
Thanks!
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1 hour ago, stgatilov said:
Thank you very much for your report!
Assuming that it is a hard-to-reproduce issue, it could go unnoticed by developers for a long time.I have created an issue about it: 5331
The main question to you: Do you use Uncapped FPS mode?
Thanks!
Yes, I use uncapped FPS mode. Were you able to reproduce this issue only when using uncapped FPS mode?
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Hi!
I decided to undertake this project, and wanted to show a little bit of what I have so far. Here's a quick video of the app in use: https://streamable.com/2mbs0w.
You may notice that I decided to go for something a bit more appealing to the eye than the original tables I proposed. This also results in a mobile-friendly application (this way, people can search for their next mission while chilling on the sofa). I'm satisfied with how it looks, but I could be wrong, hence any feedback is welcome.
I retrieved all data so far by scraping thedarkmod.com and the wiki with a couple of scripts. I will also be publishing the source code to a repo on GitHub once the project becomes a reality.
I'm working now on the filters/sorting, and after a few more touches the first version should be ready for beta-testing.
All thoughts/feedback appreciated. This is also your time to stop me before I get too attached to this project
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Description of the problem: after spending a couple hours on a mission, sometimes doors get broken. They cannot be opened anymore, and the AI cannot open them either. AIs get stuck next to doors, making the mission unplayable.
I don't know what triggers it exactly, but here you can download a savegame suffering from the issue (in CoS2: A Precarious Position). As soon as you load it, you should have a "broken door" in front of you. It's impossible to exit the room in which you are without resorting to noclip. Other doors in the mission are also broken, such as the door in the bakery leading to the storage room.
I have also experienced this problem in "Crucible of Omens: Behind closed doors", after spending quite some time in it as well.
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Thanks for the replies!
16 hours ago, STiFU said:Would users be able to add custom tags and downvote / upvote certain tags, much like the system of Steam? This would also allow to add tags like "beautiful", or "difficult". Actually, the more users can contribute to this system, the better, because it will be automatically maintained then.
I'm thinking that in order to keep it simple, at first we wouldn't allow users to provide subjective opinions directly, mainly to avoid the issues mentioned above, such as spamming or demoralizing opinions, but I agree that at some point down the road, if this works well, this may evolve into what you are thinking.
One thing that the system could do though is scrape forum threads for information about particular missions. For example, there are many threads asking people what are their top missions; the system could add some kind of tag to missions appearing in those lists (e.g., "Top Mission", or a star or medal icon), and maybe even provide more recognition to those that appear in the majority of top lists.
Another thing that the system could do is pull data from the thread of each mission. For example, in the thread for In The North, there are lots of mentions of the mission being atmospheric and having great architecture. So that could lead to the tags "atmospheric" and "great architecture".
Another thing: in the past, demagogue suggested sending stealth server scores to a server. If we end up having this kind of data for missions, this could be a great way of showing other pieces of objective information about missions, such as average stealth scores, average completion time, etc. which could be very valuable to indicate difficulty and length of a mission, as well as whether a mission is fully ghostable (or whether it has ever been ghosted, to be more precise).
QuoteThe browser should also contain a flag for whether the FM belongs to a connected series of FMs or not and have the capability to go to the previous or next FM in that series.
There should also be a flag for fully fledges campaigns.
Good idea! What about a filter such as "Is mission part of a campaign?" This allows finding campaigns in which at least one of the missions meets the filter requirements (for example, one of the missions in the campaign has rain and it's a city mission).
QuoteSome might like a flag whether or not an FM is "ghostable".
Good idea too. Please see my comment a few paragraphs above regarding how to automate this. Seems that at first though we'd rely on forum threads for this information.
QuoteLove that undead boolean.
Would like size in mb please so i can type it myself.
Awesome idea! Good job so far!
I agree with MBs, although maybe we need two independent filters? One for MBs (which seems like a more advanced filter for experienced players) and another one more "human" (e.g., small/medium/large/very large)? I'm saying this mainly because the size in MBs doesn't really say much to new players.
QuoteIf this gets implemented successfully, I see a potential follow-on project that could use some of the same architecture, but for a mapper audience. Namely, find all official FMs that use a specific resource (e.g., texture, material, model, audio file, AI character, script or script function). Essentially, there would be a similar search form, a new backend database with this information, and new indexing scripts to gather it (run whenever an FM is released/updated). Some of this scripting would be easy; some would require inference (e.g., usage of prefabs). The search results would have not just each FM hit, but a link to detail info (e.g., where the resource is defined; where it is deployed in the particular map).
As it stands now, a mapper can use generic full-text-search tools on their dev box (and some manual poking around) to do this, but only over FMs they have downloaded and retained.
Raising the stakes, but I like this idea! We could actually use the same application, just use different DB tables for the mapper tools. In some cases we could even interconnect some of the data, and maybe find out some interesting relationships between resources used by FMs and their reception by the public (a simple example: maybe we find out that FMs using a specific set of resources tend to be regarded as "atmospheric").
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Let's say that you want to play a city mission with snow, at night, medium-sized and without undead. You add those filters and get a list of missions matching them, as in the attached image.
It's just a rough sketch, but hopefully it portrays the idea I have in mind! More data and filters could be added, but the idea in any case is that players (especially new ones) have an easier time finding missions suited to their taste.
The "mission finder" would be a web application, which could be placed either on a new domain or a subdomain of thedarkmod.com.
I have plenty of experience working as a data systems developer, so I could fully take care of this.
What do you think? Could this be useful? Maybe not as useful as I think and would be a waste of time instead?
Interested in hearing other people's opinions on the subject.
Edit: Maybe this should have been posted in "I want to help"? Please feel free to move this thread there
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Another workaround for this (which could also help identifying the cause of the bug), is to close and reopen DarkRadiant before duplicating scaled models.
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2 hours ago, Goldwell said:
That song is Midnight Tale by Kevin MacLeod which can be found here:
It's such a beautiful song, I found myself listening and humming to it a lot during the making of Snowed Inn
Thanks! I agree, it's beautiful!
While playing your mission I found myself getting back to the inn's tavern often, and risking getting caught just to listen to it from as close to the musician as possible
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9 hours ago, stgatilov said:
Can you reproduce it reliably? Or at reproduce once in a few runs?
Maybe you have a savegame which is already "stuck"?
I cannot reproduce it reliably, I just tried and was unable to do so.
I will save the next time I run into the bug though, with the book "stuck", and update this thread.
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In the mission "Snowed Inn" (amazing, beautiful mission btw), there's a tavern where a musician is playing live.
What's the name of that song? Is it in DarkRadiant? Is it in YouTube maybe so I can listen to it?
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8 hours ago, Springheel said:
Penalties are applied to something. I don't see how that fits.
Hey, first of all thanks for all of your work! I'm having a blast with The Dark Mod and with learning DarkRadiant (I'm truly enjoying your Speed Build challenge by the way).
I agree that penalty might not be the most appropriate word.
What I meant was that the current stealth score is something that is supposed to be minimized. The breakdown of the score is actually a set of penalty points applied to different situations in which the AI was alerted, so this score is more like an "AI alerted points" (again, not the perfect words, but it's along those lines) than an actual stealth score.
It could be converted into a score if it was presented over a total. For example, 0 could be converted to 100/100, a 1 to 99/100 and so on. That way, when a user sees:
Stealth score: 97/100
they immediately understand it wasn't perfect but it was close. When they see:
Stealth score: 3
the immediate reaction is confusion and that they played it terribly, especially the first time they see this, but again, if it was more like:
Stealth [insert word referencing something negative that needs to be minimized]: 3
users could better understand they did minimize what was supposed to be minimized.
Anyways, just my two cents. Thanks for reading.
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Any thoughts about this? It's really not a score, but a penalty. It would be much nicer (and less confusing for new players) to see at the end:
Stealth penalty: 0
Maybe "penalty" is not exactly the right word though, but it seems that something like that would fit much better with what that number actually means.
Thoughts?
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I took a screenshot and marked the position where the guard got stuck walking in circles, you can see it here: https://imgur.com/a/0qu8G6v.
The door is irrelevant I think, I just opened a door in order to distract him so he'd stop walking in circles.
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This is a bug I run into often.
When reading a book with multiple pages, sometimes the pages become blank, and the book cannot be closed anymore. It looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/kAahZZe.
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12 hours ago, grayman said:
Are you playing an existing mission, or creating one?
I was actually playing WS5
(amazing series by the way, looking forward to WS6!).
A guard had gotten stuck at the top of the stairs that lead to the security office, walking in circles. I solved it by opening the door of a manager office, so when he saw the door open he went to investigate, and then his path got fixed.
This is a problem that I've noticed in other missions too (not in the WS series, but in others), it's rare like demagogue said, but it happens. It's hard to reproduce too, although I've seen it happen in other stairs (for example, in the ship of Perilous Refuge, I had 3 guards stuck on a stair the whole mission, and I only realized it at the end).
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Sometimes the AI gets stuck. For example, a guard may be treadmilling on a specific point, or walking around a small circle.
Is there some kind of console command to solve that issue, at least while playing? Maybe a console command to reset AI paths, or relocate the one that is stuck so they can continue their patrol?
I can develop an advanced mission finder
in I want to Help
Posted · Edited by darksilence
Excellent idea!
For starters, I've added an XML feed to TDMDB, which includes all missions data, here: https://tdmdb.com/xml. This can be quickly parsed in order to reuse any of the information that currently is only available in both the wiki and TDMDB.
Note that I added the tag DarkModComId to each mission, which represents the mission id that appears on thedarkmod.com, which I assume is the id for each mission in the official DB (for example, for The Lost Citadel, the DarkModComId is 150 -> https://www.thedarkmod.com/missiondetails/?id=150).