Dave the Taffer

@joebarnin @pax-downunder I'm on Linux too (Debian 12 64 bit), and @Heuli

I don't know him personally, but he has a quite long history in Quake mapping, too. I played various Quake custom maps by him, and they were excellent. I didn't know he is a level designer at Arkane now. Wow.

Thank you very much, I had this curiosity for a very long time. Indeed, those screenshots are impressive.

Hi everyone, I hope this is the correct section (in the Fan Missions section there are mostly topics by mission authors on their new missions). I started playing TDM a few years ago, I completed and replayed a lot missions, but I still have to play a good amount of content, and I would like to find the names of two specific missions... Can someone tell me the name of the mission portrayed in this screenshot and the name of the mission portrayed in the background image of the main page of the TDM website? Thank you in advance.

I just logged in to say that that wasn't necessary to to trigger the bug, but I see that you've already fixed it! Now I'm way deeper into the mission, it's really a great one.

Hi, happy to post again in this forum! I presented myself a couple of years ago, if you can remember, and now I'm quite an experienced player. I hope that I'll be able to post more frequently now, if it's well accepted as I probably will never find the time to directly contribute to this project...but never say never. I also found what I suspect is a bug:

Yeah, it's not that complicated, it just requires some time to adapt but that's it. Maybe it was just me, I have to say that I still have to play Thief...ok now I suppose in five seconds I'll get a lifetime ban from here But now I'm decent at it, I play most missions at the highest difficulty without much trouble, sometimes I even try to ghost some missions at first try but very rarely I maintain the ghost style to the end. I was terrified by the idea of ghosting in my earlier playthroughs, but when I finally understood the pleasure of not having corpses to hide behind me, I changed my mind. In "ghost mode" it's just about you and nowadays I like this.

Thank you! I didn't know Anomaly. If I ever get some time and the determination to recover my Windows HDD I'll try, I guess it doesn't run on Linux... I played Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat multiple times, probably at least 2 times each, loved them, even if they scaried the shit out of me in some of those labs...

Really, one can't ask for more, it's already something incredible as it is right now. Yes, I definitely wanted to report some very positive feedback and experience. I really wanted to write this for a while, I felt like I couldn't play all this good stuff without (at least) saying to the devs how good it is for me. Glad to see the feedback is appreciated!

Oh, great! I'm trying to introduce some friends to TDM. The only "problem", one I believe is implicit in this type of games, it's that (as with all the good things) it is necessary to go through an initial phase of learning the various systems, movement, light/shadow, noise/silence, lockpicking, and all the rest. It required some initial pratice for me. Even when I played Dishonored I needed a lot of learning, and Dishonored is a much easier game compared to TDM, because Corvo is basically a demigod. I was used to Doom I and II, games in which you can outrun your own rockets ahah, and to Quake III, where I would strafejump like crazy while timing items and so on. So I had to learn new rhythms and mechanics. But once the first step is made, the payment in terms of fun, emotions and enjoyment while playing the TDM missions is huge.

Good evening everyone, I hope this is the correct section. I'm writing and posting this just to say THANK YOU for this beautiful game, thank you so much. I'll say a lot of obvious things that all of you know much better than me, but I can't understate what I feel about this. The Dark Mod is far beyond what I believed to be the limits of free software/open source and community driven game development. Sure, there are massive (and successful) open source projects out there, the Linux kernel itself, and a lot of great gaming related stuff, but nothing in free/open videogame development (in my knowledge) seems comparable to this. A free, open immersive simulator (basically a new Thief) based on evolved id Tech 4 technology, seems far too good to be true, but it's done and it's real. And it's evolving and growing! I can't even start to comprehend how much work, passion and love had to be put into this, both engine/tools side and art/mission creation side, especially with a complex and advanced technology like id Tech 4. And I'm so impressed by the advances in engine technology and by the sheer amount of high quality art and missions, when I think about this I shake... I loved and enjoyed a great number of missions (still have to play most of the older ones), got (almost) lost in giant parts of the City, and experimented some of the most beautiful emotions I ever felt playing videogames. There are so many beautiful missions and campaigns out there, Shadow of Northdale, William Steele, The Painter's Wife, Penny Dreadful and many more, so many that I can't name all of them right now. I always was that guy that played Doom and Quake I/III, then another videogame (like Stalker), then return to Doom and Quake and their community works, repeat for n times...but at some time the videogame in the middle of the process was the first Dishonored and its DLCs and after that I was ready for understanding and loving TDM, which I started to play about two years ago. Now TDM is, in pratice, the only game I play and it's free and open source, and so good that's crazy. So, really, a huge thank you to everyone involved and a huge "wow" to programmers, artists, mission authors, and all the others. Can't say "thank you" enough. P.S. Not to mention that right now I'm in quarantine, isolated in a room with covid, so TDM basically saved my mental health and let me feel some freedom :) and so finally I've found the time to write this, I wanted to do this for a while.

I would have a couple of observations/suggestions for this beautiful game, hoping that they're not silly things to say. I also hope this is the correct thread for this kind of suggestions, and please forgive me if this has already been said by someone else. Right now, the main folder of a The Dark Mod installation (even new ones) isn't very clean to the eyes. There are a lot .pk4 and text files everywhere. It's true that the executables are easy to find, but a great feeling of confusion remains. It's also true that probably most players use some kind of desktop launcher and rarely/never open this folder. But my question remains: there is a reason for this specific directory structure? Couldn't those files be put in some subdirectories? Obviously I'm referring to future updates, I suppose that the engine needs to be updated for this. Maybe these subdirectories could be called something like "assets" (or "base"), "docs", and so on. Would something like this be a sensible thing to do? Ok, now I forgot the other question/suggestion if I can remember it I'll post it later, excuse me. What a broken brain I have!

Hi, I re-played this mission between yesterday and today. I had already played it some time ago, but I didn't complete it to the end; this time I finished it with all side objectives completed except for the loot one, 4/5 secrets and about 4500 loot. I enjoyed this mission very much, and I am really eager to play the sequel(s), which, to my understanding, is being worked on. I want to post here a couple of thoughts that came to my mind while playing it; obviously I know that what follows is my very humble opinion. I loved so much almost everything, the story, the characters, the design, the readables, the little details and all the rest. But, both time I played this, I didn't like the overly sensitive light gem. From the literal start I've had the impression that I could do nothing to avoid making the guards suspicious, and even later I felt that playing though this without causing suspicion was difficult in an unfair way. As a consequence, I have lowered the AI's hearing and vision sensitivity to the very minimum, and I had never done that before. So I want to ask to the creators: please consider the option of using the normal light gem sensitivity in the (eventual) sequel(s), sequel(s) that I desire very much. Another thing I felt was that the were too small. Last thought: yes, the loot objective was very high, maybe too high, but it was optional, so I haven't felt that as a problem, I was okay with that. For the rest, as I've already said I really loved this mission, and I really want to know how the story continues. P.S. As I've already said in another thread, I am new to this forum, but not new to The Dark Mod, I usually play on the highest difficulty, sometimes even ghosting the missions. Sure, I'm not and I'll never be the best TDM player out there, but probably I don't completely suck either. Anyway, excellent work!

Hi everyone, I installed 2.10 beta 8 updating over beta 7, and now even with shadow mode set to "Stencil" Written in Stone no longer crashes near the start on my system. I add that yesterday evening I played and almost finished Written in Stone with beta 7 and shadow mode set to "Maps" without any problem.

@nbohr1more That's really interesting! @Amadeus That's for sure the next thing I'm going to do this evening! Thank you and the others for the mission

Ok, changing shadow mode to "Maps" worked fine and the mission no longer crashes for me! I did try changing some video settings before posting here, but I didn't think about shadows. As a side note, I did try executing TDM in GDB as suggested, and when I encounter the crash, the TDM window freezes but doesn't disappear, and it seems that a big part of my entire desktop freezes. I still can change GNOME 3's virtual desktops with Ctrl + Alt + Uparrow or Downarrow, but other things seems to be frozen, including the mouse, forcing me to reboot the PC with its On/Off button. I tried two times and this happened two times. Very strange. So I couldn't copy the contents of the GDB console, because I had to reboot. Anyway, this is not needed anymore, as the problem is resolved. As another side note, even the first problem (the one about frozen aim during the charge of a shot) seems to be gone! I tried with different missions, even with my original settings and I couldn't reproduce it anymore. Computers will never stop surprising me So, another time, really huge thank you. I hope my posts have been (or will be) useful in some ways for this game.

Thank you again. I followed the steps 1), 2), 4), and 5), trying after every one of them, and the crash still occurred every single time. I'm uploading again those two files, if they can help, especially crash_written_2.txt. I have to say that (in 2.09b) my GT1030 handled well The Painter's Wife, Behind Closed Doors and every other mission I ever tried at 1080p and with the settings you can see in the first Darkmod.cfg file I posted. I honestly can't remember if she could reach stable 60 fps with those huge missions, but the game was smooth enough and it never crashed. I literally never experienced a crash with TDM before this one. Concerning point 3), I'm pretty sure I installed the correct version of the proprietary Nvidia driver that is available in Debian 11 standard, probably I could get a more recent version from the backports, but I don't want to do this. I don't really understand what I have to do exactly with GDB, it doesn't happen anything when I run that command in Bash. If I can offer more help. I'll be happy to do so. Thank you, again. Maybe this evening I'll try to do a clean reinstall of TDM and see if the problems go away, but I doubt it, this one already was a pretty recent installation. crash_written_2.txt Darkmod.cfg

Oh, sorry, I didn't think about Darkmod.cfg. Here it is, together with the other file you requested. I don't know if I've done this correctly, I started TDM, loaded Written in Stone, got the usual crash, and then I rebooted the game and invoked that command. Have I got it right? Howewer, thank you! crash_written.txt Darkmod.cfg

Good afternoon to you all, I'm a new user of this forum, but I play TDM since a couple of years now. I just registered to ask you about a couple of issues I encountered while trying the new 2.10 beta 7 version, that I installed in my computer updating over 2.09b and following the official instructions. I'm using Debian GNU/Linux 11 64 bit on a Intel i5 PC with a Nvidia Geforce GT 1030 and the proprietary Nvidia driver. The first problem is: I cannot aim anymore while "charging" a shot with the blackjack or with the bow. So, if I "charge" the shot holding the Attack button, I cannot aim with the mouse until I release it (but I can move with WASD). This wasn't happening in 2.09b. I haven't tried the previous 2.10 beta versions. The second problem is: in the new mission Written in Stone, the map loads regularly after the cutscenes, I can move in the little starting area but as I approach what I suppose is a larger square nearby the game instantly crashes to my desktop. This happened every time I tried, both with loading a savegame and restarting the mission from scratch. With the other new mission Iris I've not encountered this problem, and with 2.09b (and 2.08 too), not with Written in Stone of course, the game never crashed on my computer. I tried to modify various settings but nothing solved these two issues. I hope that this post actually helps and that there are not stupid things or English grammar horrors. Sorry for the really direct and short presentation, I hope that this isn't too rough, maybe I should introduce myself a little more after this.