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Good ideas here Breathren & Demagogue! ... and good tips and advices from the Darkmod Veterans. My advice about setting up a successful campaign story: Take a close look how the TV-series (with season meta plots) do it! Babylon 5 being a good example. To do so: Create a overall rough arch with the main characters: protagonist, antagonist and a few important interesting personas along the way (like producing the meta arch of a TV seasons). With involved fractions, personas, their distinguished characteristics and motivations being most important in setup advance to starting everyone mapping. This setup should be able to answer following questions: 1) How do the main story and characters connect the missions. 2) What are the joining element in every missions of the campaign 3) How do story and characters hold player interest with gradually increasing elements of gameplay tension (see classic Greek drama for example which setup is used in most films stilll today for good reason!). Don't waste time and energy in creating the main arch and characters democratic: have it your part, responsibility and decisions (or one other story director person's). Set it as frame for every participant and the campaign. Be open for advice or changes as the project proceed. Don't be afraid to bend/change stroy parts later for gameplay or tech reasons. With the campaign meta plot being set give mappers the freedom to come up with any theme and sub-story as they want for their own map (like writing and directing a TV episode of a season). The pre-setting to their creativity: integrating the main story cornerstones, fraction(s)/settings and characters that connect the missions. No special mention needed that you obviously won't like having everyone do a manson or were beast level Generally some good questions to ask yourself while scripting a story setup usually are: + What aspect(s) of the plot might hook player interest immediatly? + Want you the objectives to increase with difficulty and/or story progress? + Are there map locations that players can relate to and might be especially eager to visit? + Should the meta plot have any drastic change / surprise? + What obstacles should he deal with and why/who/what should he care about? What are the motivations of the player character? What does he feels about the world and people he must deal with? + Should the protagonist be an uncharacterized John Taffer Doe (so that every player can make his own character projections to him) or a person with characteristica being setup. + What history that matter does the player character have? How much and in which way do you turn these into gameplay. + If the protagonist is no "Taffer Doe": What positive and negative traits do emphasize him? + What motivations and characteristica do the antagonist(s) have? + What are the player characters connections to the antagonist(s) and the fractions? + Should the protagonist change throughout the campaign? In what way? Are these events and decisions interesting and surprising? Are they at the right moment? + Should be other interesting characters in the campaign a player would be eager to know about, see, avoid or defeat? + Have the main story, places and people within the campaign a good gradually rising tension curve? + Have you set up anticipation for a climax or special location during the course of the campaign or map? T3 succeded here very well with Gamal (on meta story level) and The Cradle (on map level). + Do you want an exciting first mission bang to draw people in? And an climax finale mission? ... and so on. These are some thoughts in the setup Thief (all three) did design and implement really, really well !! Some of these story considerations might be too ambitious / out-of-scale for a Novice campaign of course. But they are very advisable for a campaign focused on promoting the Dark Mod ... like Demagogue's idea. Breathren your idea sound very basic democratic if I don't mistake your posts. A campaign project is in general well adviced having one "Campaign Director" doing the organisation (discussions and dates), keeping things and people focused and having the final say. Ideally (but not necessarily) he/she is also being the main story director. That director's moderation and decisions are very important when things are undecided or when too much time is wasted in detail discussions or coordination - and that will happen very soon in projects scaled like these Hope some of these thoughts will be of help. Keep the enthusiasm guys ...!

After an TDM quiksave crash a few weeks ago I experienced that as well. No big prop. But also the DoomConfig settings had been reinitalized with no key binds and defaulted gfx settings. Can't say 'cos of the crash or the D3 key inquiry. But felt everything had been reset. Ijust assumed the crash did forced the reset and key inquiry.

well.. you know, it's like if you place a button in a map and a sign next to it labeled "don't push!" hh

Really strange about the movement - ... after TDS the dunken Thief TDM is such a huge relief in the feel of movement. Dram's bow aimer

I was very pleased with the movement right from the start. But like you I wasn't comfortable with the FOV and bow aiming at the beginning. Since I do set g_fov 85 in autoexec and use Dram's excellent bow-aimer add-in the distance and aiming do feel spot on to me.

stumpy's Lord Dufford's is missing from the download manager as well.

Hey Sotha you seam to grow some knack for toilet entries in your FMs And of course just when opening the seat one of these dealer guys urged in... Thinks I like in Mandasola in particular are: Thanks for the TP series so far Sotha! It's an splendid series and Mandasola an excellent addition to it. My Thomas Porter fun so far: Transaction 4,5 > Glanham 4 > Mandasola = Knighton 3,5 > Beleagured Fence 3 Much looking forward with what you come up for us next...

Some story questions answered like I mentioned here.

Very cool sketches Glyth I would like to see the Pagan - and any other upcoming - lore and beasts in TDM different and original instead adding things with a different name and look from Thief. Thief stage it's world and lore so really well. Alas TDM should feel familiar but at the same time distinguish in offering some fresh and new elements to the world, fractions, beastary and religions. Regarding pagans, Pict, Celtic, Saxon, North etc. mythology has ton to offer that all can be spiced with supernatural elements, for example. yeah, not that Thiefs' pagans hadn't be inspired from some of these as well

Thanks for the wiki update. I certainly would like to see different difficulty AI settings used by FMAs.

That had been some nice taffing ... ! Loved many of the textures, the little twist and the visuals and feel of the garden area. Also good to see lot of steampunk stuff included. I can confirm the bugs mentioned (wrong loot objective amout, map inventory icon missing, broken sound propagation in the Lendermann house). Performance hadn't be well on my rig unfortunatly. Though getting good 30-50 fps all way through I experienced lot of micro stutter. Especially with opening doors to the streets or taffing the streets. My PC tend rather at the low end. But strange enough I didn't experienced stutters in any of the other FM I played so far except Fauchard and RttC (v2). In Fauchard even more than in RttC. Thank you Melan for this fun mission and the splendid dev diary read!

Looks very T3-ish, this in a fantastic way Dual language voice-clips? You guys are really ambitious... splendid!!

This would be of course best but such only work when having a common protagonist like in Thief. In TDM mappers have very different player characters in their FM's. So we would have to stick to one guy doing all the voice acting for very different alter egos for upcoming FMs having voice overs. And even possibly end in a mismatch of voices for the same player character having some common stuff in TDM like "this would be a good way to get out once I'm done" and FM specific custom lines probably done from a different voice actor... That is one of the reasons I'm more tempted to go for text messages regarding player thoughts.

Backtracking most of the time isn't much fun. Therefore I am really thankful for every mapper who choose a different exit location as the "leave where you came from". Yes. I think it could be that important. For example after all taffing done in RttC I didn't know where I was supposed to leave even I've already found the exit long before completed all objectives. A subtle message with a players thought "I have some thing to do before leaving town" would have helped. And would have less broke immersion but wandering not knowing where to leave even I already been there without knowing An atdm:gui_message gui without background image doesn't block sight much . ... Indeed I try to use messages for displaying thoughts of the protagonist similar like voice overs in Thief OM's, NHAT or 1940's hard boiled Film Noir movies. Not everyone might welcome such kind of elements. But to me "player thoughts" can add A LOT to identification! Just wish mappers could position message gui's relative on screen. for example with an arg like 'bottom middle', 'middle middle', 'top left', et cetera - probably just didn't found it or have to learn to make my own gui? Edit: found the args, changing the rect values in windowDef myMessage in the gui file do the trick

A smithing sound would add well to the atmosphere I think. So why not using the hammer sound until opening the room door (or crossing some stim brush)? It can be heard taffing around nearby and making the player aware that there is a blacksmith. Maybe even let the smith pause his job, sit and eating upon the player entering the room (explaining the sound did end). With Fidcals solution if the AI is KO/killed. Just an idea...

Glad to see your much promising work steadily progessing PranQster

try lightgem_adjust on worldspawn. As this affect the whole map that might not do the trick if the colored ambient light is locale.

Even better if we got you motivated trying to finish any of your hibernating maps SP!

Exiting new assets Springheel! ... love that subtle moody loading screen as well

Bikerdude teamed up with Shadowhide for an updated version of Winter Harvest. WH (v1) has some technical glitches which will be dealed with in v2. It isn't abandoned or was offered as such. Glad to see that new cooperation between Biker and SH for v2

Added Shadowhide's castle.

Following the discussion of the Released and Upcoming thread Fidcal and I came up with some ideas how we could save abandoned labours of love. We came up with the following for contributing and adopting unfinished work maintained in this thread: How to contribute? If for any reason you decide to quit working on a map, map parts, etc. please consider contributing your abandoned work to the community! Proof of concepts and appealing results from "just playing around" alike may be interesting for other people to pick up. To do so just send a private message to a team member (preferably a mission manager like nbohr1more) with all relevant information about your work so far (see format below) and a link where it can be downloaded. Please do not post any download links in this thread. Your work will be archived on one of the Team's TDM servers. FM's (WIP) Name: ... Former author(s): ... Current author(s): (If any) Status: (free for adoption / in work) Due Date: (the next date I expect a new WIP version and progress report) Type: (Mansion, City, Crypt, Wilderness, ...) Theme: (Gold Heist, Horror, Story Focused, Inventors, ...) Progress: (Geometry, Details, AI, Gameplay, ... in some rough percentage) Informations: (anything the authors like to share about the work so far) How to adopt? Send a PM to a team member (ideally a mission manager). If you have already released an FM for TDM then most likely adoption will be granted. If you have never released an FM it'll be less likely.. If you did release FM's for Thief or a mod for any other game please send details that help us to decide. If you're the original author you can always pick up your committed work again as long as it is still (or again) "free for adoption". What do we expect from authors who did adopt assets? All former authors must be given credit upon release. You may like to use the unfinished assets the way you like: use parts in your own map or continue finishing the abandoned map. We and the former authors have to trust anyone given responsibility of the assets of a possibly already superb unfinished map. We all know that it sometimes happens that people cannot continue a work for various reasons (if so, please PM the team member), lose interest or in the worst case just disappear! In this case, or if we try to contact you for a status update and do not hear from you in a reasonable amount of time, we will offer the map again for adoption to someone else who might want to finish the FM. We hope to see some great unfinished works being worked on again and completed. So, fellow authors ... contribute your unfinished work List of Abandoned Works _________________________________________ Please check the wiki for details of abandoned work free for adoption and adopted maps: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Abandoned_Works

No first release is expected to be a "Magus Opus". You put very ambitious stuff in your very first FM.... and see, votes aren't that dishearting so far, are they? Even "Rome wasn't build in one day" Melan is an excellent mapper who did build long years in dromed before changing to DR. And even he did not really succeed with RttC (version 1) with a performance far from good because of an also too much ambitious frist TDM map . And know what?? Even advanced mappers need and ask for help sometimes. And even an excellent, intelligent FM author like Melan did not hestiate when Biker offered his help ... and together they rebuild the very excellent polished Version 2 merging the strengths of Melans architecture & story with Bikers skill doing great visual details and performance optimizing Just remember: Mapping isn't about competition! It's about you having fun creating and mapping!! Even consulting with others is sometimes fun... And if a few people have some good hours playing what you've build and give positive feedback that's of course great. It needs time (and some FM releases) to get that experienced to be able to build very ambitious works. Just notice how Sotha and Biker get better and better with every new release! Even people like Purah and Yandros didn't build their master works in their first map! ( And no, don't even try to compare with Saturnine ) So don't be easily dishearted....! Just listen to the many experienced people around when the say: Start small! show some respect for other peoples efforts. And ask (politly) for advice is needed. Bugs can be fixed. Intro easily changed for good. Story and people's background is in your head. It just need to be fleshed out in some readables like mentioned. ... add to that a little polishing in architecture and gameplay here and there ... together with a proper beta test ... ... and your FM will doing well

Congrats to your first release Shadowhide! Find my detailed thoughts in the spoiler: If you will flesh out the story details the player will become emotionally connected to that and the people/AI's so that the objectives, world and playthrough will be much more immersed. I think you had some good ideas.... the mission has a good premise, ok visuals, and also some enjoyable moments. But also bugs, some bad sound choices, a few poor map-design decisions, no story background and two or three moments of frustration (to me). Nothing that couldn't be fixed and improved in an updated version...! back to "Winter's coming" Game of Thrones ...

I do. .. and very glad about that feature greebo. works without problems on my system. Try to use it guys ... it will save you some headaches