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Our friend Skacky ( and his team "Feuillade Industries" ) has released a full sized Thief expansion \ campaign "The Black Parade": https://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-the-black-parade t is finally here! After 7-ish years of development, The Black Parade is finally released. So, what awaits you in this campaign? - 10 huge, open-ended and meticulously crafted missions with varied themes packed with content. - A brand new protagonist thrown into a dark, intricately woven story of crime and conspiracies. - 4 new tools happily supplied by the undermarket, at a price. - Many tweaks to the AI to make the game a bit more challenging but still fair. - A brand new "banter" system where AIs greet each other during their rounds and nightly life. - 28 voiced characters totaling roughly 1,800 new lines of dialogue. - 30 minutes of gorgeous hand-drawn briefings and cutscenes. - Brand new AI motions making the denizens of The City look more alive. - Full English subtitles. In The Black Parade you play the character of Hume, a hardened criminal who was sent into exile as a punishment for his crimes. The year is 833, you are now back in The City, a sprawling metropolis of soot-caked brick, greasy fumes and noisy machinery, with many a sinister conspiracy whispered behind closed doors. Lost and without a penny to your name, you are back to your life of thievery and must find your old associate Dahlquist. Shadows and silence are your allies. Light is your enemy. Stealth and cunning are your tools. And the riches of others are yours for the taking. The Black Parade aims at being a love letter to Thief: The Dark Project, and we hope we succeeded! It is recommended to have played through Thief: The Dark Project and/or Thief 2: The Metal Age at least once beforehand, since these missions are overall tougher than the base game. The Black Parade also comes with a few tweaks to the classic Thief gameplay formula: - Hume is not a Keeper and thus never received Garrett’s training: AIs will now notice you if they bump into you or vice versa, sometimes even in a perfect shadow. Be careful! - Hume can move banners aside instead of having to slash them. - Hume has additional footstep sounds for chains and pipes; these are metal sounds that aren’t as noisy as regular metal (about as noisy as stone/wood). - Water arrows can now be used to expand moss patches. - Servants will re-light extinguished torches on higher difficulty levels. - Servants may clean moss on the floor if they notice it on higher difficulty levels. - Zombies now smash wooden doors open instead of simply opening them. - Electric lanterns carried by guards can be turned off. - A few guards in the campaign are outfitted with heavy armor and helms so they cannot be knocked out using the Blackjack. - Hume can pick up small creature corpses such as spiders or sweels. DOWNLOAD (912 MB) MIRROR 1 MIRROR 2 Here is a very handy guide by nicked on how to set up Thief Gold for Fan Missions. !!!IMPORTANT NOTES!!! The Black Parade requires NewDark 1.26 or above! Make sure you use the latest version of TFix/TFix Lite before playing! The Black Parade should be launched with FMSel, NewDarkLoader or AngelLoader. It is not recommended to launch this campaign with DarkLoader or GarrettLoader. Note that mods such as Thief Gold HD Mod, NecroAge or Enhancement Pack are not compatible with this campaign. Remember that this is a campaign for THIEF GOLD, not Thief 2! Known issues: - Due to the complexity of the missions, there can be cases where some NPCs might get stuck walking against walls. There is unfortunately not much that can be done about this. Happy 25th anniversary to Thief: The Dark Project, and have fun taffers!

Yeah it would be cool to see some more detailed statistics and it’s a shame they aren’t really captured. Since we are talking about fan mission platforms, where players also make the content for the game, I feel like the best thing we’ve got is you can look at the number of content releases for the games. Keep in mind the graph counts campaigns as single missions - so for example NHAT and TBP both count as 1 mission. A good year for TDM has has approaching maybe 50% - mostly we’re 25-30%. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152494 You could also look at the number of ratings thief missions get on https://www.thiefguild.com/ vs TDM ones, but that is pretty iffy in that you could chalk that up to more awareness of the site in the thief community than TDM Out of curiosity is there a reason a thief player can’t be a new player? I kind of think a player is a player and new players would be ones who are playing the dark mod who weren't? Is there disagreement the base of players most likely to pick up the game are fans of the thief games? They are certainly the most fruitful place to find feedback on the game beyond the sphere of this forum that I have seen. When we were trying to finish up SLL there was a lot of discussion on the forums about how long it had been since there was a release for the game. I am thankful that the stats show at least some stability over the years in terms of releases for TDM, but the trend for all of the games is decline. Not doing anything is a valid response if that’s what the devs want to do - it is not possible to provide evidence that any effort will slow that inertia. As a player and content maker I would just prefer trying to find feedback where it is offered from players who were willing to try the game but ultimately could not engage with it and see if there is anything that can be done within reason to ease them into the game. The game has a lot to offer imo. All those players are potential contributors - contributions in turn attract players - it’d be nice to see the cycle go on as long as it can.

Personally I can see some ancillary benefits from trying to move TDM from non-commercial-libre to true-libre, beyond getting off the FOSS community's naughty list. There are a fair few indie devs who have tried to make modernized Thief-likes. None of them have done half as good a job as this community. I think that is generally down to the engine. All the detection and movement systems take a lot of time to implement, which you guys have already paid down. Imagine if those indie devs had the option to use TDM as the base for their games. More of these games would be published, and more would be successful. And this in turn would grow the public knowledge base about working in Dark Radiant and TDM. Some of those devs might make their own public FMs. Some might contribute to the wiki and documentation. Some might contribute to project maintenance or even donate new features that they develop. Personally I would call this one of the bigger things that you could do to keep the project alive. It would definitely be a big project to bring the project assets into compliance or to fork off a compliant TDM-lite. A year ago I would have said it is impossible, but AI is changing things. It can make art and it can write code, and especially when it has a working example of the thing it is recreating to learn from. It still would not be easy, but at least possible. Let this be a lesson for creators to select your licensing carefully. It is not always easy to change after the fact.

You'll be surprised to hear but I don't quite get it either. Based on my understanding, there are a few confounding factors that make this a challenge. 1. We did a lot of work to ensure that the "included missions" were made part of the install so first time players would have a curated experience. Moving the missions back to the mission database might require undoing that work. 2. It is entirely possible to add the missions to the mission database while also being included in the installer but doing this will invite a few problems: 2a. What if the user updates the mission and then finds that their TDM install is somehow borked. They might run the installer to repair it and this will revert the mission version. If they fail to update their mission after this revert they might have incompatible save games that cause crashes and confusion 2b. What if a user starts downloading a mission update and at the same time starts a TDM upgrade ? 2c. Users opening bug tickets for a base TDM version due to problems seen in the included mission that are no longer present in the updated one, thus making it more tedious to narrow down duplicate bug submissions. 2d. Players seeing the missions on the TDM missions download page and downloading the package to install in the FMS directory then seeing duplicates in the mission list because the downloads page renames the packages with hashed filenames. All the above challenges revolve around potential user error and even though it should be obvious not to do these things, we have to compare the above to the vast swaths of folks who are begging to include TDM into Steam because unpacking a zip file and running an installer executable within a folder is "too difficult and confusing". One thing that we have the ability to do is change the file in the 2.12 installer repo so that if users run the updater it will apply the new mission. This change would not be visible to users so they would not get any alert about it. We would just have to announce it and hope that players watch for TDM announcements. I am doubtful anyone would want to work on it but I suppose that there could be some way to pass some sort of signal to the mission downloader when included missions have been changed on the installer side so they get a different update indicator. Still would be kludgy because you'd either be telling the player to exit TDM and run the installer or making TDM invoke the installer internally. So that is my take on "why" based on my own knowledge. Of course, part of my inability to "understand it" is due to my incredulity that we need to cater to players who are so below the bar in computer literacy that they would inflict these problems on themselves in the first place. None of this is an official stance just my own take on why the proposal to "let two updater processes control the same files in the same folder" has been rejected ( other than that such designs usually horrify programmers on a primordial gut level and if you mention that any program that does this you will see any programmer in vicinity instinctively reach for headache or stomach medicine ).

Complaint From Players The player must pick up candles before extinguishing them, and then the player must remember to drop the candle. The player must drag a body before shouldering it (picking it up), and the player must remember to frob again to stop dragging the body. The player finds this annoying or easy to make mistakes. For players who ghost, some of them have the goal of returning objects back to their original positions. With the current "pick up, use item, and drop" system, the item might not return easily or at all to its original position. For example, a candlestick might bounce off its holder. (See player quotes at the bottom.) Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6316 Problems to Solve How can the "pick up" step be eliminated so that the player can directly use or interact with the item where it is in the game world? How can so much key pressing and mouse clicking be eliminated when the player wants to directly use an item? How can candles be extinguished and lanterns toggled off/on without first picking them up? How can bodies be shouldered without first dragging them? Solution Design Goals Make TDM easier for new players while also improving it for longtime players. Reduce tedious steps for common frob interactions. Make it intuitive so that menu settings are unnecessary. Do not introduce bugs or break the game. Terms frob -- the frob button action happens instantly. hold frob -- the frob button is held for 200ms before the action happens. (This can be changed via cvar: 200ms by default.) Proposed Solution Note: Some issues have been struckthrough to show changes since the patch has been updated. Change how frobbing works for bodies, candles, and lanterns. For bodies: Frob to shoulder (pick up) a body. Second frob to drop shouldered body, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Hold frob (key down) to start drag, continue to hold frob (key down) to drag body, and then release frob (key up) to stop dragging body. Also, a body can be dragged immediately by holding frob and moving the mouse. For candles/lanterns: Frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. Hold frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. For food: Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to eat food. For other items: No change. New cvar "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"200" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or extinguish. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Benefits Bodies: New players will have less to learn to get started moving knocked out guards. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players have played several missions before realizing that they could shoulder a body instead of dragging it long distances. Frob to shoulder body matches Thief, so longtime Thief players will find it familiar. Second frob drops a shouldered body. Players still have the ability to both shoulder and drag bodies. Compatible with the new auto-search bodies feature. Dragging feels more natural -- just grab, hold, and drop with a single button press. There is no longer the need to press the button twice. Also, it's no longer possible to walk away from a body while unintentionally dragging it. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Candles: New players will have less to learn to get started extinguishing candles. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players didn't know they could extinguish candles by picking them up and using them. Instead, they resorted to throwing them to extinguish them or hiding them. Hold frob to extinguish a candle feels like "pinching" it out. Once a candle is picked up, players still have the ability to manipulate and use them the same way they are used to in TDM v2.11 and earlier. For players who ghost and have the goal of putting objects back to their original positions, they'll have an easier time and not have to deal with candles popping off their holders when trying to place them back carefully. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Issues Bodies: Frob does not drop a shouldered body, so that might be unexpected for new players. This is also different than Thief where a second frob will drop a body. "Use Inv. Item" or "Drop Inv. Item" drops the body. This is the same as TDM v2.11 and earlier. This is the price to pay for being able to frob (open/close) doors while shouldering a body. Patch was updated to drop body on second frob, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Candles: Picking up a candle or lantern requires a slight delay, because the player must hold the frob button. The player might unintentionally extinguish a candle while moving it if they hold down frob. The player will need to learn that holding frob will extinguish the candle. The player can change the delay period via the "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar. Also, when the cvar is set to a delay of 0, the behavior matches TDM v2.11 and earlier, meaning the player would have to first "Frob/Interact" to pick up the candle and then press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish it. Some players might unintentionally extinguish a candle when they are trying to move it or pick it up. They need to make sure to hold frob to initiate moving the candle. When a candle is unlit, it will highlight but do nothing on frob. That might confuse players. However, the player will likely learn after extinguishing several candles that an unlit candle still highlights. It makes sense that an already-extinguished candle cannot be extinguished on frob. The official "Training Mission" might need to have its instructions updated to correctly guide the player through candle manipulation training. Updating the training mission to include the hold frob to extinguish would probably be helpful. Similar Solutions In Fallout 4, frob uses an item and long-press frob picks it up. Goldwell's mission, "Accountant 2: New In Town", has candles that extinguish on frob without the need of picking them up first. Snatcher's TDM Modpack includes a "Blow / Ignite" item that allows the player to blow out candles Wesp5's Unofficial Patch provides a way to directly extinguish movable candles by frobbing. Demonstration Videos Note: The last two videos don't quite demonstrate the latest patch anymore. But the gist is the same. This feature proposal is best experienced in game, but some demonstration videos are better than nothing. The following videos show either a clear improvement or that the player is not slowed down with the change in controls. For example, "long-press" sounds long, but it really isn't. Video: Body Shouldering and Dragging The purpose of this video is to show that frob to shoulder a body is fast and long-press frob to drag a body is fast enough and accurate. Video: Long-Press Frob to Pick Up Candle The purpose of this video is to show how the long-press frob to pick up a candle isn't really much slower than regular frob. Video: Frob to Extinguish The purpose of this video -- if a bit contrived -- is to show the efficiency and precision of this proposed feature. The task in the video was for the player to as quickly and accurately as possible extinguish candles and put them back in their original positions. On the left, TDM v2.11 is shown. The player has to highlight each candle, press "Frob/Interact" to pick up, press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish, make sure the candle is back in place, and finally press "Frob/Interact" to drop the candle. The result shows mistakes and candles getting misplaced. On the right, the proposed feature is shown. The player frobs to extinguish the candles. The result shows no mistakes and candles are kept in their original positions. Special Thanks @Wellingtoncrab was instrumental in improving this feature during its early stages. We had many discussions covering varying scenarios, pros, and cons, and how it would affect the gameplay and player experience. Originally, I had a completely different solution that added a special "use modifier" keybinding. He suggested the frob to use and long-press frob to pick up mechanics. I coded it up, gave it a try, and found it to be too good. Without his feedback and patience, this feature wouldn't be as good as it is. Thank you, @Wellingtoncrab! And, of note, @Wellingtoncrab hasn't been able to try it in game yet, because I'm using Linux and can't compile a Windows build for him. So, if this feature isn't good, that's my fault. Code Patch I'll post the code patch in another post below this one so that folks who compile TDM themselves can give this proposal a try in game. And, if you do, I look forward to your feedback! Player Complaints TTLG (2023-01-10) Player 1: TDM Forums (2021-03-13) Player 2: Player 3: TDM Forums (2023-06-17) Player 4: TDM Discord (2021-05-18) Player 5: TDM Discord (2023-02-14) Player 6: Player 7: Player 8:

@snatcher I understand that when you feel your work doesn't live up to your goals that you don't want it out in the wild advertising your own perceived shortcomings but that leads to a troubling dilemma of authors who are never satisfied with their work offering fleeting access to their in-progress designs then rescinding them or allowing them to be lost. When I was a member of Doom3world forums, I would often see members do interesting experiments and sometimes that work would languish until someone new would examine it and pickup the torch. This seemed like a perfectly viable system until Doom3world was killed by spambots and countless projects and conceptual works were lost. I guess what I am trying to say is that mods don't need to be perfect to be valuable. If they contain some grain of a useable feature they might be adapted by mission authors in custom scenarios. They might offer instructive details that others trying to achieve the same results can examine. It would be great if known compelling works were kept somewhere safe other than via forum attachments and temporary file sharing sites. I suppose we used to collect such things in our internal SVN for safe keeping but even that isn't always viable. If folks would rather not post beta or incomplete mods to TDM's Moddb page, perhaps they would consider creating their own Moddb page or allow them to be added to my page for safe keeping. Please don't look at this as some sort of pressure campaign or anything. I fully understand anyone not willing to put their name next to something they aren't fully happy with. As a general proviso, ( if possible \ permitted ) I just want to prevent the loss of some valuable investigations and formative works. The end of Doom3world was a digital apocalypse similar to the death of photobucket. It is one of my greatest fears that TDM will become a digital memory with only the skeletons of old forum threads at the wayback archive site.

Congrats on the release! Remember to check ThiefGuild as well as the DarkFate forums (via Google Translate) for additional feedback.

Announcing the release of Braeden Church. Summary William Steele: In the North introduced us to some memorable characters: Lord Harckoff, Lieutenant Trumble, Father Grimmore ... The setting was a renovated Builder church. But what was that church like, back when Father Grimmore was alive and the Harckoff family was nowhere to be seen? This mission takes place on one very nasty night back then, when a gang of murderers and thieves raided the church. You happen to be in Braeden on the same night, and you decide to visit the church, with a goal that's quite different than what the gang had in mind. Download This mission requires TDM 2.06 or later. Available through the in-game mission downloader. Build Time Who knows? This was an idea I had after releasing In the North, and it got built in bits and pieces over the years. Its time has finally come. Thanks to ... Bikerdude, Amadeus, Cambridge Spy, Ubersuntzu, s.urfer, and AluminumHaste for beta testing. Bikerdude and Mortem Desino for the conversation voices. I18N Initially, this mission is not ready for translation. I intend to deal with that in the future. Recommendations 1. If you haven't played In the North, I recommend you play it before you play Braeden Church. (Braeden Church is NOT a Steele mission.) 2. For those of you inclined to race past conversations, I suggest you don't in this case. The opening conversation is an important part of the mission. Enjoy!!

Just curious, based on this discussion: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19239-soft-r-gamma/?p=427350

Author Note: This is a brand new mission and a new entry into the accountant series. There are some different than usual puzzles in this FM, so if you find yourself stuck try to think about your pathway forward in a logical manner. And if you're still having troubles then pop by this thread and ask (preferably with spoiler tags). This FM is brand new and serves as the first installment in The Accountant series, a few years back there was a small prologue style mission released however I felt that it did not represent The Accountant series so I decided to go back to the drawing board and do a whole new mission that's larger, has a better level design and has a story that lines up closer to what I plan to do with the accountant series. The mission is medium sized and you can expect between 30-90 minutes to complete it depending on your playstyle. Beta Testers Captain Cleveland Crowind Kingsal PukeyBee Skacky SquadaFroinx Voice Actors AndrosTheOxen Epifire Goldwell Stevenpfortune Yandros Custom assets Airship Ballet Bentraxx Bob Necro Dragofer DrKubiac Epifire Kingsal MalachiAD Sotha Springheel SquadaFroinx Available via in-game downloader File Size: 233 MB - Updated to v 1.1 (01.06.2018)

It seems like more and more "thief" and "thief players" is becoming a short hand to dismiss community members earnest desire to improve the game - which happens to be a barely legally distinct "thief style" game which was made by thief fans for thief fans and is "designed to simulate the stealth gameplay of Thief". Who is the predominant player base of the game supposed to be beyond fans of the thief games? Is there some better avenue to find feedback for the game beyond this forum? FOSS and linux forums? I have seen maybe half a dozen posts from that segment. I am a thief fan, I play thief fms, my association with those games is what drives me to play and make things for this game. Are we supposed to pretend the original games are not a huge reason why most of us are here at all? TL;DR version:

Hi, I'm messing around with patches to see what can be done with them, and I have a couple of questions. None are critical issues, as a matter of fact, I doubt I'd notice them or cared if I were playing someone else's map, but as I'm learning, knowing what can't be done is sometimes as important as what can be done. Here's the thing: is it possible to bevel a surface not parallel to one of the orthogonal axes, in other words, a slanted bevel? To be more specific: I'm having problems with snapping it to the grid; it doesn't want to. I mean, I have done the bevel, and it looks nice from a distance, but the slanted surface refuses to snap to the grid, which causes a visible, although small, seam (or at least I assume that's the reason.) And projecting the texture is also a bit of pain. Let's see if I can attach a picture... OK... [a few/lots of minutes later] messing around with it one side now looks much better (almost imperceptible seam, tbh,) but the other side still looks off. I still can't snap to the grid the four corners (interestingly, it's the main brush, the frustum, the one that refuses, not the bevel, which is perfectly snapped). I can snap three of the four corners, but there is always one that shifts on its own will, even when using the smallest grid. See the next two pictures, where I have the main brush and the patch selected; the dots overlap except that one. And if I snap that one, another will shift (clockwise? I think.) I mean, that's like... what, 1/3 of 1/8 of a Doom Unit? 1mm? Not game-breaking, really, and nothing that can't be hidden with some trim or just in shadows, but I wonder if there's a technique for this or what I did wrong. [Hmmm, after some thinking, I wonder if my issue was creating the original cube on grid X and then cutting the triangular corner for the bevel on a different grid size so the corners were weirdly placed... I'd have to test that out] And speaking of seams, is it possible to make a smooth texture transition from the surface of a cylinder (or ring or whatever) to its cap? See the third picture, which is the rounded base of a column. If it's not (or it takes a lot of effort or editing), then it's no big deal, as there are more important things to worry about. But if there's a quick & easy way (natural projection hasn't worked for me in this instance), it would be good to know. Thanks!

Ever since I worked on "Chalice of Kings" with Bikerdude, I have wanted to get flame particles with new particle glares into the core mod. My reasoning was that the candles have glares and the un-glared torches look mismatched. This proposal was met with mixed reactions, so (knowing the history of TDM feature proposals...) I have created a technical demo. You may download it here: zzz_flameglare.pk4.txt (fixed) Just rename without the .txt extension at the end and place it in your Darkmod directory. Here are some screens. Using particles for this is probably the wrong way to go now that Duzenko has an emissive light feature in his branch: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19659-feature-request-emissive-materialsvolumetric-lights/

Announcing the release of the fourth William Steele mission! Summary Steele is in what’s left of the quarantined Warrens, where he searches for the elusive murderer Gyles Deacon and evidence that Deacon was responsible for murdering Steele’s parents. The William Steele Missions The Warrens is the fourth of several Steele missions. Altogether they'll tell a story of corruption, greed, and revenge. At some point, I might package them as a campaign, in addition to the single missions. (We’ll see about that.) If you haven’t played WS1: In the North, WS2: Home Again, or WS3: Cleighmoor I suggest you complete those before playing WS4: The Warrens. Download The mission is available from the in-game download page. In addition, it can be obtained here. Place ws4_warrens.pk4 in your fms folder. TDM will recognize it as a new mission. Build Time Nearly 4 years. I18n The Warrens is ready for translation. EFX This mission is the first William Steele mission to take advantage of EFX, so make sure you turn that on. Thanks Thanks to the TDM team for creating a terrific platform for storytelling and stealth gaming. Thanks to my beta testers: Abusimplea, Aluminum Haste, Bikerdude, Boiler's_hiss, Cambridge Spy, ERH+, nbohr1more, Ubersuntzu, unfairlight, and Xarg. Thanks to Goldwell for his voice work on the opening monologue and the voice on the cylinder. Thanks to Sotha for a praying animation for the priest. And thanks to YOU, for playing! Known Issues If you experience low frame rates, please consult the Performance Tweaks page on the Wiki. Important This mission requires TDM 2.06 or later. The William Steele story relies a lot on readables. Please try to read every readable you find. Most importantly, Enjoy! Screenshots WS5: Commerce Bank Commerce Bank finds William Steele seeking important information in the halls of a prestigious institution. You can find it here.

Hello! I am going through the (painful) process of detaching some custom stuff I've made over the years from the base mod so I am not replacing so many tdm_ core files in my FMs. I'll be posting updates in here as I know a few people have used custom volta stuff in their missions. @Goldwell @Amadeus @Wellingtoncrab If you are using CUSTOM VOLTA arrows please replace this file: tdm_weapon_arrow.script - Ive updated this script with core mod changes - The only thing that's being replaced is: ARROW_ZOOMDELAY 3 // Shortened time from 6 to 3 seconds If you want to use the default 6 second zoom delay, just delete this file and remove it from your custom_scripts.script. If anyone knows a way I can change ARROW_ZOOMDELAY without overriding the entire file, please let me know asap. Thanks everyone

"...to a robber whose soul is in his profession, there is a lure about a very old and feeble man who pays for his few necessities with Spanish gold." Good day, TDM community! I'm Ansome, a long-time forums lurker, and I'm here to recruit beta testers for my first FM: "The Terrible Old Man", based on H.P. Lovecraft's short story of the same name. This is a short (30-45 minute), story-driven FM with plenty of readables and a gloomy atmosphere. Do keep in mind that this is a more linear FM than you may be used to as it was deemed necessary for the purposes of the story's pacing. Regardless, the player does still have a degree of freedom in tackling challenges in the latter half of the FM. If this sounds interesting to you, please head over to the beta testing thread I will be posting shortly. Thank you!

Announcing the release of the third William Steele mission! Summary Cleighmoor takes Steele inside Cleighmoor Gaol, where Warden Fielder likes nothing better than a glass of wine and some cheese, while watching a miscreant hang from his gallows. Steele is tracking down the evidence of his parents’ murder. The mission starts in the sewers, and progresses to Cleighmoor’s compound. The William Steele Missions Cleighmoor is the third of several Steele missions. Altogether they'll tell a story of corruption, greed, and revenge. At some point, I'll start packaging them as a campaign, in addition to the single missions. If you haven’t played WS1: In the North, or WS2: Home Again, I suggest you complete those before playing WS3: Cleighmoor. Download Cleighmoor is available in the in-game downloader. Problem with Suicidal AI Occasionally, someone reports that a distant AI commits suicide. Since one of the mission objectives is to kill only in self-defense, this fails the mission when it occurs. To avoid that, I've created a replacement *.map file that you can obtain here. After you've downloaded and installed the mission, create a new folder named "maps" so that you have: darkmod/fms/ws3_cleighmoor/maps/ Unzip the replacement *.map file and place the new *.map file into the maps folder. So now you have: darkmod/fms/ws3_cleighmoor/maps/ws3_cleighmoor.map This should solve the suicide problem. A new version of the mission will be released after TDM 2.05. Build Time Nearly 4 years. (This was my first attempt at a mission, and it sat on the back burners until being folded into Steele’s story.) I18n Cleighmoor is ready for translation. Thanks Thanks to the TDM team for creating a terrific platform for storytelling and stealth gaming. Thanks to my beta testers: AluminumHaste, Bikerdude, Goldwell, Xarg, Lux, Moonbo, Deadlove, and plotzzz. Thanks to Goldwell for his voice work on the conversations. And thanks to YOU, for playing! Known Issues This is a large mission. To ease the burden on older systems, consider shutting doors behind you as you go. If you experience low frame rates, please consult the Performance Tweaks page on the Wiki. Performance Tweaks For very low end PCs I recommend the following settings: V-sync is off AA is off Aniso is 4x or lower Advanced settings are simple/default Post processing is disabled Anyone having performance issues with TDM missions can put the following cvars into their Darkmod.cfg file. This will improve the framerate and stutter/chop when in-game, but may increase loading times a little. image_usePrecompressedTextures "1" image_useNormalCompression "2" image_useAllFormats "1" image_useCompression "1" image_preload "1" Important This mission requires TDM 2.01 or later. The William Steele story is heavy with readables. Please try to read every readable you find. Most importantly, Enjoy! Screenshots WS4: The Warrens Steele ventures into The Warrens, a dangerous area near Bridgeport's docks. You can find it here.

Ambient atmospheres are in my opinion one of the best parts of the Dark Mod experience, not just for getting a mission to have the right feel but also for inspiration and to have them playing in the background when creating maps. The more the merrier, so here's a thread to collect all the links to ambient music and environmental sounds that could have a spot in TDM's setting. Ambients from the TDM forums Gast's Eerie Lullabies Magnanimous Merry's Miscellanea Orbweaver's Dark Ambients Spadey's Ambients Radioteque's Ambients Kyyrma's Composing Ambient Tracks for Dummies - Kyyrma shows how ambient soundtracks can be made from a set of sounds. Also contains some of his finished ambients. Request for more interior sounds - this thread is a very productive community session where members came up with a large and good selection of new ambients. Uncle Peti's Sound Den Dragofer's Ambients - post #6 in this thread SeriousToni's Ambients - posts #8, 12, 15 and 19 in this thread Ambients from the TTLG forums Custom resources list Gigagooga's Ambients 1 - possibly the largest pack of ambient musics and nature sounds, all of them high quality. Gigagooga's Ambients 2 - this pack puts more weight on shorter swells/hits/pads to be layered on top of a subtle ambient. Gigagooga's Ambients 3 Yandros' ambient loop Sephy's Ambients - a large collection of ambient pieces, including many shorter ones which will be valuable for anyone wanting to try a layered ambience approach like in the Thief OMs and Full Moon Fever. Internet databases www.freesound.org - some of the better composers in my opinion are ERH and BrandonNyte. www.purple-planet.com - a large selection of all kinds of ambient and musical soundtracks to be used freely. www.darkwinter.com - an internet label that publishes a lot of dark ambient music under a Creative Commons license. www.endlessascent.com - sister website of Darkwinter for non-dark ambients. Youtube Asatru Dark - also has very nice reference images for outdoor stone memorials, statue arrangements etc. #4 Void by Raffaele du Marteau & #6 Dreaming of Nowhere by Raffaele du Marteau - possibly the most forlorn pieces I've found on the internet. Alacazam - a prolific Creative Commons ambients composer . Cryo Chamber - for-profit label for dark ambient music with a large selection on offer. Going by their Youtube comments they're fine with people using their soundtracks for games etc., although you'd probably need to buy the soundtracks first. Dark Ambient Mixed Session - as much ambient as something to have in the background while mapping.

A couple more: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21739-resolved-allow-mantling-while-carrying-a-body/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22211-feature-proposal-new-lean-for-tdm-212/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22198-feature-proposal-frob-to-use-world-item/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22249-212-auto-search-bodies/

beta212-04 is released It does not contain much changes, except for the huge pack of new subtitles

The real St. Alban was a pagan who became a celebrated religious personality, this All Saints Day 2010 The Dark Mod places its own spin on this mythical figure. Screenshots: Intro: "'Business' has been slow lately, even more so after most of my gear got snatched during a Watch raid... I've since been forced to hit the streets and pick pockets for a living. But my luck was about to change, last night I was approached by a red hooded figure with a proposition... As we sat down in a dark corner of a nearby inn, he told to me that the Builders of St. Alban's Cathedral in the Old Quarter had recently unearthed a discovery that might lead to the final resting place of some saint." " But before I do anything, I need to get my tools and stash from the evidence room at the local watch station." "with the hawks, doves will congregate they will drop honey from the cliffs wine will surge over the earth the sheep will wander harmlessly with the wolf then the wicked will rise, but to retribution" - 'scripture of St Alban' There is a new version out now, see the following thread St Albans Cathedral version 1.6 Build Time: about 2-3 months. Thanks:- Huge respect to the Dark Mod team for such a great mod and for all the hard work they put into it and continue to put into it. Special thanks to Fidcal, Serpentine and others for their help on the forums and to Testing:Ugoliant, Baddcog, Grayman, Lost soul, Bjorn and Baal (for doing all the Vp work in the town. Readables: Ungoliant and Mortemdesino for all awesome work on the readables. Resource: Fids, Grayman, Ungoliant - guis, models & images. Misc: Loren Schmidt - the author of the map I based the cathedral on. Info: # Like Thief2, some things are climable, pipes, wall vines etc.. You can also drop some of the keys, some door that are frobbabe mean there is another way inside - explore u taffer! # Due to TDM being a lot more of a resource hog than T2 I have been forced to limit the number of Ai in the mission, but they have better placement than my last mission. # On all difficulty levels the player starts with vertualy no tools/weapons, there are weapons to be found - read, read, read! # For the love of all that is holy, read the briefing otherwise you will problems completing the mission. Known issues:- # This mission will have less than optimal fps at a few points on the map, mid range DX9 card(X1900/GF7800) or higher required. # On low end PCs I recommend, V-sync is off, AA is off, Aniso is 4x or lower and that any and all background apps are closed.

New fresnel mod: https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/addons/fresnel-mod-212-beta-3 Probably not needed. I don't think anything in the previous base pk4 changed but I built it just in case.

I’ve been tinkering with the player footsteps sounds for the 3 surfaces that I found to be the weakest in the base game. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get anything to sound right from just editing the existing sound files, so I hunted down for some free sounds to create a sound pack that tries to emulate the feel of Thief’s footsteps for tile, wood, and stone that people can use if they want to. I understand why this kind of stuff is usually avoided because of copyright shenanigans and such, and that’s why I’m just posting this as a sound pack people can choose to use if they want to instead of expecting it to be put into the base game or anything like that. Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ysfamuwxd5cisws/Thiefier_Sounds.zip?dl=0 To install, use 7zip to open the “tdm_sound_sfx02.pk4” in your TDM install directory as an archive, and replace the folders in it with the ones in the link above. I’m not sure how often I will come back to edit this. I’ve been working on this on and off to try to keep a neutral ear to it, but I’m also not a sound designer so I probably won’t be able to make it much better than this. Credits: Wood and Stone: Everyday Cinematic Sounds https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKhZFIZjpB7Vtf_XKOvBzrg Tile: Music & Sounds Effect Library https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb-iLJ2ifYw0mV8AaAa1fFA