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truth be told a lot of game sources with third party propriarity code has allready solutions to work around those. bink and derivates > ffmpeg, 3ds > lib3ds, tons of cad format libraries and physics libraries some with even better support than what was there at the time. so its not like the community cant handle only being given parts of a code base. for some stuff we have atleast workable solutions for other stuff we have something even better hehe. but over the years the modding community somewhat died because of a new breed of modders who wanted to use the code a lot of us worked our asses of to replace broken engine parts to make money and newer share they're own work. so a lot of us either retired or hid away in obscure parts of the internet.

That's correct but many people just use the in-game mission downloader to check for new stuff without even looking at the forums, which is what I did. In the past a lot of missions that required a newer version of the game executable and assets would tell you this when you tried to start them up. I was just reporting on this and that you don't need to reinstall, just update via tdm_updater if you find this issue.

Hrm I wasn't able to type on *after* the spoiler and accidentally already submitted the reply.. (Does this forum somewhere have a raw mode where you type text with tags around them or something instead of this broken WYSIWYG editor?) Anyway, what I was gonna add: This was a great mission and I already played Away1 - I'm really looking forward to Away2, want to see how the story goes on

@chakkmanBefore joining this forum I completed all available fan missions for TDM, but before playing them I had significant experience with other stealth games and fan missions for Thief series and I will tell you that I hated TDM's gameplay for its jankiness, but at the same time, paradoxically, I learned my ways around all those broken mechanics. And yet I still don't think that this jank should be a norm for TDM and your point of view only proves it, because you're not alone who may see things like this when they had better experience in other stealth games. And so this huge pile of gameplay imperfections just does TREMENDOUS disservice to the popularity of TDM, some people may try it and just say to themselves: "Screw this crap, I prefer player friendly games!" and they will be absolutely right. But why I learned to be tolerant to such things? Well, because I saw a lot of passion in all those fan missions I played and still exactly because of this I think that TDM has no right to be so broken. I think that it is mostly thanks to the modding community TDM is not dead, without all the great fan missions barely anybody would ever touch it and they just deserve better platform for their work. The problem here is that TDM wasn't created by a professional game designer, it's harsh but true. As I understand it, the dev team just had their opinion about certain things and instead of doing them in the best way possible they simply ignored all the better examples in the stealth genre.

I've also put Airship's stuff into the TDM Community Github org (with permission). That way, you'll know where to find it. (pssst: there is other stuff there too...) https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity/merry-paintings-2 https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity/merry-chests-2

Practically speaking, to get on to Steam you also need to formalize the team as a legal entity, which brings up stuff like tax filings, a board of directors and executives, reporting requirements, etc., that I think nobody was keen to take on or hand over to others to take on. To begin with, it'd change the whole character of the team & the project a lot, I think. I forgot the issues with GOG and Itch now. I think everybody admitted it sounds good in principle at least. It's just herding cats when you get into the details, and half the cats are missing. That's before you even get to the actual mess with all the licenses. --- I noticed in the credits of Blendo Game's Skin Deep, when I played it recently, that there's a credit for the TDM Engine, from which he evidently lifted some things for his game. Brendon has long been making his games with Doom engines, so there's a reason he did that. I'd say he's also a friend of the community. He's visited the forum & is known for his games & thinking on immersive sims. But the point is that there's an example of someone branching off the TDM engine for a commercial project (that's also on Steam BTW). So if you have questions about it, that's someone you can contact to ask about it. I'm sure it matters that probably none of the assets carried over, though, only the game engine, or parts of it.

Might this not be better suited to https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/forum/58-tdm-tech-support/ or failing that make the text collapsable.

This seems like a futile process to me. We all love TheDarkMod and tremendous work has been done on the engine, but I suspect that when developing a new project, especially commercial, almost everyone would rather go for a more modern engine because the reality is that stealth games are a relatively small niche and you need everything you can get to make people notice and buy your thing. TDM with its historical limits on polycounts (unless switching to lightmaps removed that?) and other features that we're used to and have no problem with but that are not exactly state of the art in my opinion just isn't "it", and it's only going to be less and less "it" over time, despite being a brilliant game on its own. And making the game fully libre just so it can be included in certain distributions' free repos, while stripping out almost everything that makes TDM what it is, the community content, doesn't make sense to me either. If anything that could hurt its reputation because people who tried that wouldn't experience the actual game. I only skimmed parts of the thread, have I missed a good reason to do this? Also, another big issue that I think wasn't spelled out explicitly enough: I too thought that it would be awesome to have TDM on Steam. After looking into it, being educated by others and doing some searching I found out that TDM very likely contains a nontrivial amount of old content that may be seemingly re-licensed as CC-BY-NC, but legally cannot be, as its original license does not allow it. I'm talking specifically about old textures.com content - it uses its own asset license that explicitly disallows being released as CC (because CC allows redistribution anywhere and textures.com license explicitly prohibits that). Yet some of those assets are a part of TDM, and it's likely that nobody knows for sure which ones and how many there are. Textures.com was at one point even recommended as a source to create assets on the wiki. So you may get permission from some old mission author who doesn't even remember that he did this, but his content can still be non-free and in fact infringing on its original license. Realistically nobody cares because there's no damage to textures.com being done (the textures are not being redistributed anywhere, they're "just" being incorrectly rebranded with a license that would allow it), but it makes the whole libre thing even more difficult.

It most certainly wont play like a traditional Thief game but it really could be a lot of fun if done right. One of the things I realized about folks doing the Half-Life Alyx mod for keyboard/mouse, is that the game REALLY isn't built for that. Spatial controller based puzzles are one thing but just the overall gameplay pacing would feel terrible outside of that medium. As most enemies and interactions in VR need to be much slower paced. I hope it's decent. I'm not holding my breath but this is a pretty good (VR based) company behind this development. I don't know how well they'll really "get" this community or universe but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Skacky is the one who created the textures. He took the photos himself. He released this pack to the Thief community a few months ago and I reached out directly to him and asked if we could add this to TDM; he said yes. Biker and I have been working on these off and on for a little while and they look pretty good so far. I'll share a few screenshots soon

I think it's for good. In best case (game would be success and praised by players and critics) we would have new installment in franchise. In worst case (game would be failure and banned by the most) we would have new installment in franchise. Possibly new faces will appear in community. As for "Thief is female" - I don't care. There are Thief 2X and TDM's own Goldwell's mission Noble Affairs so it's not a problem. Making 1998-2004's Garrett some kind of relic from ancient times is not that bad. I have no VR so I hope for non-VR rerelease and/or new non-VR/VR optional game in franchise.

Double topic. See also topic: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22754-thief-vr-legacy-of-shadow-announcement/

i am having a hard time searching for specific keyword in bug tracker so i decided to wade into google search and found similar thread with similar issue : https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/13723-key-drop-melee-animation-glitch/

TDM no, but about Thief 2 an entire campaign.....T2X FM:T2X Shadows of the Metal Age - Dark Engineering Guild | Thief Wiki | Fandom Are you all really old guard taffers (so you of course remember T2X) or just old? On May 25th, 2000, Looking Glass Studios closed down. Shortly thereafter, a group of 60-100 designers, artists, audio talents, writers and programmers from the gaming community, contributed their talents to realize a fresh new Thief experience. With their own story to tell, they joined to form TTLG's Dark Engineering Guild. The designing and development took five hard years, and finally, in 2005 the result was an unofficial Thief II expansion pack titled Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age. Based on the critically-acclaimed Thief series, T2X builds on the same technology and universe that made Thief 2 a classic.

Just to complicate your life, there are 3 additional aspects to consider about the circa-2014 Mason files, and subsequent circa-2017 improvements to the 'english' version perhaps applicable to your work. (These issues are covered in the wiki "Mason Font" article, with a bit more in my "Analysis of 2.12 TDM Fonts", https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22427-analysis-of-212-tdm-fonts/. The 2017 changes can be seen in the *current* 2.13 TDM English Mason files.) 1) Need for custom DAT-scaling on certain Mason characters The source TTF had upper-case and lower-case characters that were early-on considered too similar to size. So (before 2014) in the DAT, selective per-character scaling was used to differentiate them. See https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Font_Metrics_%26_DAT_File_Format#Per-Character_Font_Scaling for details. As you add new characters, you should do likewise (relatively easy with refont). 2) Creating the "glow" of mason_glow How Tels created the glow (for 'english' carleton & mason) is discussed in reasonable detail here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/12863-translating-the-tdm-gui/page/5/#findComment-262661 That could be done for Russian too, which I recall currently fakes a glow, and possibly would require a minor GUI or engine code change to use. Note: To best accommodate glow and retain GIMP-visualization-alignment between base and glow characters, Tels moved some base characters within their bitmap, to keep their glyphs 2-3 pixels away from any bitmap edge. You should consider this when placing new base glyphs. Note: For the 3 mason bitmaps doubled in size circa-2017 as discussed next, the mason_glow bitmaps were also doubled. 3) Extensive bitmap editing to solve main menu character jaggedness. On Oct. 5, 2017, @Springheel in https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19129-menu-update/#findComment-412921 said: "Looking at the Mason fonts, it looks like they were super low res to begin with, and were then just resized [presumably referring to per-character scaling], making them even worse. I'll see what I can do." [Further on, referring to fonts in the TDM menu system:] "It appears that resizing the dds file to make it higher res is possible, so I'll proceed." Later, on Oct 13, 2017, he concluded within a "More detailed list of changes: "Updated the menu fonts, which were surprisingly bad before" Unfortunately, I couldn't find details on how this work was actually done. I assume the bitmap editing was all done in GIMP. It started with doubling the size of certain bitmaps from 256x256 to 512x512. This was done for the first 3 bitmaps (i.e., those with ASCII, some Latin-1). Then characters were made more crisp and smooth-edged. How? Dunno. Also, some odd but harmless artifacts happened within GIMP (noted in https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22427-analysis-of-212-tdm-fonts/page/3/#findComment-499660)

Or, just get in contact with the owners of the IP and ask them since just because an IP lawyer in one jurisdiction says it would be okay, doesn't mean it would be okay globally. There are several packs out there of scripts/definition files which are licenced under free licences (CC0 and WTFPL mostly) and claim their freedom by recreating them using "clean-room way". In fact, I used them in getting TDM running with mostly free licenced files by selectively choosing which had clearly been written from scratch albeit with reference to the originals, and which were just direct copy and paste with claimed free licences (I didn't use them). Then it was a case of finding/replacing the core engine textures, sounds, etc. the engine required to launch with free alternatives (again checking the packs since some were just copied direct from the game files and claiming to be free). In the end, the only non-free licenced files that were still required were those from TDM itself. The result of this TDM version is the screenshot I posted some posts ago here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22346-libre-version-of-tdm/page/3/#findComment-500642 However, you will notice the giant cursor on the screen in the screenshot, why? because the only reference to hiding the cursor is within the UI files which come under the game eula, so I didn't add in the command to hide it in game. In the case of the script/def files, this "clean-room" approach has stood up in a court of law when I looked online, however you wouldn't really want to end up being in the position of ending up in court defending yourself in the first place. The flaw in the def/scripts that were recreated are that they all wrote their files using the originals as reference. So if the originals are under the game eula, and if the information contained is in some way protected, then all these "clean-room" files revert to the original game eula, as the authors didn't have the right to change the licence. I believe (with a pinch of salt )that if the core scripts/files were made GPL by idSoftware/Microsoft then as files based off of or using them as parents (basically all TDM scripts/defs as far as I can make out) then all of the TDM scripts and def files would automatically become GPL as their authors could also not claim their work was NC-BY since it was then based on GPL work.

I haven't used Font Lab, but perhaps there's an online user community that can help. Drawing font glyphs is challenging but yes possible. I can help you with Mason files, but I need to find the right version... I'll get back to you. As for DAT, think of it this way: a TDM file is described by BOTH DAT and TGA/DDS. DAT has the metadata needed for character spacing and scaling. TGA/DDS has the glyph images. See https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Font_Metrics_%26_DAT_File_Format

Regarding the existing Russian version of TDM's MasonAlternative font, this had a different origin than those Russian fonts processed by Riff_Keeper. Tels created this in 2012. He started from bitmaps of an ASCII Mason font, then used his Perl patch program to copy selected ASCII glyphs (that resemble in some way Cyrillic) to new font "MasonAlternative". See https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/12863-translating-the-tdm-gui/page/15/#findComment-274617 In GIMP, he flipped or otherwise hand-edited to make them Cyrillic. He said, "There are still a few dozen missing, but this is enough to render the two headlines we have (New Mission and Setting)" https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/12863-translating-the-tdm-gui/page/15/#findComment-274623 This accounts for the incomplete coverage. Speculatively, he took this approach because it couldn't find a Mason-style TTF font with both Russian characters and an acceptable license (e.g., public domain, or at the least freely redistributable for non-commercial use). @kalinovka,I wonder what the licensing is for your masonchronicles3.ttf.

Evidently a significant portion of the Cyrillic work was done by Keeper_Riff (in conjunction with Tels) back in 2011. These folks are not active in TDM these days. Keeper_Riff outlined a workflow, starting with FontLab to edit TTF files... https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/12863-translating-the-tdm-gui/page/12/#findComment-271548 Specifically Carleton: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/12863-translating-the-tdm-gui/page/4/#findComment-262135

Quite recently, I switched to a laptop with 240Hz display. While I don't see that much improvement over 120 Hz/FPS threshold (maybe it's the age and reaction time thing), I do like the improved latency quite a bit. I know it's not that relevant in a stealth game with slower-paced gameplay, but it's just nice in how smooth the game response to input is.

Asked ChatGPT to take this random screenshot from the metal age and "turn RTX on". just for giggles. Looks nice.

I listened to Palingenesis, and it definitely sounds like a track you would hear in a TDM mission. Well done. Clicked on "On The Edge Of Dawn" and it sent me straight to the second track, "Dawn Fades". It's good but may be a bit busy/loud by TDM standards. YMMV. I'd like to use this thread to point out that T1/T2 made use of short ambient loops, repeated, mixed up, and layered. This was probably due to technical limitations, but it can contribute to the hypnotic feel of the soundtrack, and isn't often replicated by the usual completed tracks we hear now. I don't know if any TDM mappers have taken this approach, but boiling down ambients to their smallest components might be a good idea from a creative standpoint. For example, I downloaded Thief 2 to this computer. Ambients are in RES/snd.crf/SFX. You can open it with 7zip, sort by size or name, and start loading them in your media player without extracting. One iconic mission, Framed, uses these: m04ring (36s) S0400 (24s) m04lo (23s) s0401 through s0407end in snd.crd/MiscVOs/english Some areas in missions are only/primarily playing a short loop in the background, such as: voicel1 (13s) SUBSON1 (4s) m01drone (~1s) Lhouse (4s) L7baseM (4s) L2_base1 (6s) voxloop2 (4s) brassL (6s) Some sounds may be played randomly (not sure), such as FB1 through fb10. The largest file, swells2.wav, is used in Shipping and Receiving and another mission, and it's still only 44 seconds long. Another fun thing are the "twangs", "openers" or whatever you would call them, that only play at the very beginning of the mission. There are two main ones in Thief 2: ambstart.wav (6s) BELLTHMP (6s) I think there's a third variation, might only be in Dark Project My point in bringing all this up is that to get that Dark Project/Metal Age feel, maybe we need to go back to the basics.

Hello, my name is Wolfmond, I am 41 years old and I come from Northern Germany. I am your new member. In my youth I played Thief: The Dark Project with great enthusiasm. Recently I discovered and started playing The Dark Mod and I am very happy that there is still an active community around this beautiful game. I am especially interested in level design and creating my own campaigns. In my spare time I like to walk around, record sounds (field recording), make dark ambient and experimental music, and code. My dark ambient music is available for free at https://wolfmond.bandcamp.com I'm currently working through the Youtube Tutorial from @Springheel and I'm really enjoying learning level design. I look forward to getting in touch with you and contributing my skills to the community. Best regards, Wolfmond ___________________________________ Hallo Ich heiße Wolfmond, bin 41 Jahre alt und komme aus Norddeutschland. Ich bin euer Neuzugang. In meiner Jugend habe ich mit großer Begeisterung Thief: The Dark Project gespielt. Vor kurzem habe ich The Dark Mod entdeckt und begonnen zu spielen und bin beigestert, dass es immer noch eine aktive Community um dieses schöne Spiel gibt. Mich interessiert vor allem das Leveldesign und die Erstellung eigener Kampagnen. In meiner Freizeit gehe ich gerne durch die Gegend, nehme Geräusche auf (Field Recording), mache Dark Ambient und und Experimentelle Musik, und programmiere gerne. Meine Dark Ambient Musik gibt es kostenlos auf https://wolfmond.bandcamp.com Aktuell arbeite ich das Tutorial von @Springheel durch und habe große Freude daran, Leveldesign zu lernen. Ich freue mich darauf, mit euch in Kontakt zu sein und meine Fähigkeiten in die Community mit einfließen zu lassen. Viele Grüße, Wolfmond

And some info can be found on this forum topics and wiki. Wiki article: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Parallax_mapping Topic: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22574-experimental-support-of-parallax-mapping-in-213/

Thanks for playing and taking your time to comment! I like reading mission comments. I agree that efx really brings missions to next level. If there is someone in the community who would like to contribute by creating an efx version for this mission, I would be totally fine with that: feel free to add yourself to the credits after doing this service. Thank you!