Taffingtaffer

That's are relief. I also thought it was a strange feature to ask opinions about here, since I barely understood the implications; I just tried different existing FMs and saw it as a downgrade. I feel a little less moody today, so I'm gonna compare the original values properly with a diff, comment out those in the mod for reference and then revise the edits. The hidden and useless jumping modifiers bother me to no end, but I'll try not to obsess too much about those values... If someone were to fix this, we can either go the Thief way, making jumping always sound very loud, or acknowledge the silent crouch-fall mechanic and make the modifiers actually matter code-wise, and expose them as cvars to fine-tune the overall sound gain increase. It might be also worth to check out unique, libre footstep sounds (the comments in the .sndshd files are pretty self-aware about this) and testing them in this map:

That's reassuring; the length of the play-testing, not so much. I guess that speaks for the current state of the AI, however improved it got over the years. I'd like to mention the blackjack bashing again. The noise does in fact propagate towards AIs, but the real volume value is so low for them that functionally it is useless, despite sounding pretty loud for the player. This is another big stinker that I'm more familiar with: sound indicators. For starters, NPCs footsteps don't travel far enough to serve as a mechanic. This is thankfully rather easy to solve by increasing the volume of their steps, but it needs testing to not go overboard. But the worst indicators are the player's... Leaving aside the questionable blackjack noises, there is an indicator that is absolutely broken: jumping. Jumping always makes the loudest sound possible for AI, no matter if you are creeping+crouching, crouching, crouching+walking, creeping, walking or standing in place. You'd think that's fine because Thief does the same, but TDM has hidden jump modifiers (the other movement states have pm_stepvol_X cvars) that makes the perceived jump noise quieter depending on the movement state. This is baffling because TDM has an elegant "fall quietly when crouching" mechanic that actually makes less noise, whereas in Thief you have to carefully slide off your lower ball or you wake up the whole neighborhood. I don't mean to sound bitter, but it wasn't long that we were debating whether the new, upcoming tone mapping looked good or bad. Where's the discussion about this!? Your own footsteps aren't being honest to you! There is other aspects that could do with a real good cleanup. Pretty much all player footsteps' perceived volume is too quiet, and if you tinker with the values, you have to take in mind the real noise registered by AI (doesn't seem to be much info about this in the wiki) plus keep a close eye ear to every file sound's loudness; water and metal files have clipping (they go beyond 0db). Some materials even recycle sounds. I recall Amadeus found good CC0 sounds for ice and broken glass footsteps, but looking at the .sndshd files, sound design hasn't been touched in years... I have a quick&dirty "mod" with pumped up AI and player footstep volume, a left-over from when Daft Mugi, others and me tried to clean this up, but everyone has lost steam. I guess I've made a brief return here because with the DS FM playthroughs, TDM came to mind and it generally makes you think "Deadly Shadows but better"; the exciment dies out once I look at the files' guts, though. And partially, the rather apathetic mood in the forums Kudos to the active modders.

There is a complain that I see frequently among players: AI takes too much time to chill out. I've personally not played many missions yet to pin-point potential stinkers, but here's an example from a ThiefGuild review for "The Last Night on Crookshank Lane" (a 2025 mission): https://www.thiefguild.com/topics/90163/meh Are we to blame mission authors for this? I know there is a WIP to make flashbombs act like in Thief by making guards vulnerable to KOs, but that doesn't solve the root problem. Players shouldn't have to wait forever to recover from a failed state if they escape from the area alive; that encourages loadscumming. And if the concern is that they will just wait it out in a dark corner... well, then the mission should provide interesting layouts to escape. It's not on the player. I'm currently playing the decent Deadly Shadows FMs and I'll grant that guards are a bit too easy to escape from and forget about you quickly, but TDM is on the opposite extreme. On a related note, guards could do with a "I've found you!" bark followed by a brief surprise animation similar to Deadly Shadows (or take inspiration from the poised sword animation from Thief 1-2). Right now they just stop on their tracks and keep dead quiet, then immediately attack you without warning. Overall, the failed state in TDM feels undercooked. On a slightly different note, what was the reasoning on copying Deadly Shadow's useless blackjack bashing? Making some noise without exposing yourself with the sword or without having to find an object to throw doesn't seem that game-breaking. Some soft surfaces like carpets even play the wrong SFX when hitting them (they sound like metal!)

So the latest dev build enables this by default... I'm not sure if that means the implementation is considered done, but I don't see the improvement; there's an overall grey fog over the image, dark is less dark and colors are less rich. First screenie is on, second is off.

Both points were latent Thief problems waiting to raise up, the first being real a pain in the ass. Unless the frob area around NPCs belts can be improved it'll always kind of suck, no matter which is the primary action. Previously, a missed belt frob would grab the torso and lock your frobbing until you released it.

Fixes the bug for me, too.

Someone referred me to this: https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#How_do_I_launch_native_applications_from_a_Windows_application.3F Dunno how that would help on a Windows app, but just so you know.

If we take that route I fantasize about an actual manual in PDF. Arcane art, I know, but that's how we got our answers a couple of decades back, didn't we? Seriously, though, I don't think an in-game manual in the form of Readable item would feel very good. You can't jump back and forth between sections from an index, and some of the books in Training Mission already span several pages for rather simple things (ie. gamma and contrast values); they kind of suck, frankly. Maybe we can meet halfway by making it an in-game manual accessible from the main menu. I fear that would require touching its UI though, and I get the feeling there isn't much enthusiasm to mess with it at this point.

For the menu setting, maybe we could re-purpose the "Show Menu Tooltips" setting. Who would want to not see the tooltips? They aren't intrusive! As for examples, two come to mind. Player frobs some junk item: Don't let everyone think an elephant entered the room. Hold down the 'Creep' key while you move objects to avoid making a ruckus. A guard starts searching the player: A guard is searching for you. If you dare blackjack them, get the drop on them from behind. Forget about bashing from a side or upfront, you'll only make things worse. First one has been a thing for a while if I'm not mistaken and should be communicated; thought we had to rely on the TDM Modpack... The blackjack effectiviness is known to cause confusion, especially on Thief players, since Garrett seemingly knows just the right spot to bash no matter the alert level of a guard. And I don't believe adding the Deadly Shadows-like animation to TDM was a proper solution; players should be able to read the situation instead of focusing on the blackjack, which sometimes you can't even see because everything is pitch dark. Of course, the second example should take in mind a previous standard explanation on blackjacking under normal circumstances when you equip the blackjack, for example.

Yeah, I already do that. It isn't clear if some series actually released out of order plot-wise or the re-releases pushed the dates forward, though. ie. Thief's Den 1 especifically states that it was re-released, but the oldest Thomas Porter is TP 2.

It always baffled me why the current sorting seemed like a good idea and has remained like this for so long. I agree on putting "The" and "A" to the end of the names, that's how Angel Loader does it. If I could only ask for something it would be an option to sort by Newest/Oldest missions. I prefer to start from the oldies.