Search the Community

@stgatilov @nbohr1more I'm wondering if it would be possible to get this implemented for 2.13? I'm really not loving the EFX files - it's way too easy to miss/forget locations and just a general PITA. I am even considering offering to help implement - any reluctance on my part is purely down to lack of confidence. But with some hand-holding I could possibly accomplish something that isn't a total disaster. Maybe an alternative is to have a feature that allows DR to manage the EFX preset in the EFX file? Basically what I'd like is to be able to manage everything related to a location entity in the one place, preferably in DR. Not sure if that's ever been considered? @greebo?

Megatextures were a horrible idea for obvious reasons, not sure why ID chose to learn that the hard way. The concept from what I remember is the whole map uses a single gigantic texture... instead of how we independently pick a couple of 1024 px brick materials for a few brushes and surfaces, the whole map acts as one model with one material and a single texture which probably needs to be 1 million x 1 million pixels even for a small level. This is ridiculous from a perspective of system resources with 100's of GB's of storage and huge (v)RAM requirements and hours of loading time, as well as raising the skills required for level editing since you now need mappers to also be texture artists and sculpt / paint their levels instead of just placing stuff. The only thinkable benefit is there's no repetition since every pixel on every part of the world is unique, but who notices any similarity with independent texturing if it's done right anyway? Detail textures have yet another advantage there: Since you scale the pattern independently on top of the original texture, you can make every surface appear as if it has unique pixels like megatextures. Hence why I'd advice having the details be very high-res, 4k or 8k even 16k if we can take it: Yes that's enormous, but remember we'd only have a few patterns probably no more than 15 in total, and can store them as grayscale then use a single image to modify both albedo / specular / normal (heightmap to normalmap): Map the detail in world space rather than the brush or model UV map, and the resulting pattern on every surface in the world will always be unique since the original and detail textures will be out of sync.

Having trouble sleeping? Is the moon too bright? The music too loud ? This FM is for you. Kingsal presents: Moongate Ruckus Finally, a fan mission about some taffin' peace and quiet. DOWNLOAD HERE (v2) ------------------------------------------------------- Testers: - Welly, Goldy, and Amady Vocals: The very talented Goldwell as grumpy Corbin. ------------------------------------------------------- This map, gatehouse_final.map, was based on the very first mission I ever put together back in 2014. It was originally suppose to be part of Volta 1, but didn't make the cut. Here it is now, refurbished, re-worked, graphics set to HIGH, and.... Wait... What is that... It's the music again... ohhh the music!

If by this you mean a series of missions in one pack, like the recent Thief Gold Black Parade campaign I'm a billion percent for this!! No offence to DM FM creators, I know one mission takes a lot of hard work, but I'm fed up of the 'one mission and out' type of missions to be honest. I crave a proper story for once with a series of missions and stuff, not just random associate says steal thing because reasons, oh and you have to steal all this loot but you can't spend it.

This is caused by DXT1 compression of textures/darkmod/sfx/black_matt.tga. This image has constant color (1, 1, 1) everywhere, i.e. almost black. Previously, the image was compressed by OpenGL driver, so you could get different results depending on vendor. I got (0, 0, 0) everywhere, you probably got the same. But someone else on another vendor could get something else. Now, compression is done by our code, same for everyone. It compresses the color to (0, 1, 0). Obviously, this is a bit closer to (1, 1, 1) than (0, 0, 0) Notice that DXT1 uses 5 bits for red and blue but 6 bits for green. So while it is possible to represent 1/255 value for green, it is not possible to do the same for red and blue. However, this 1 tick adds a bit of green to the overly black picture, and then you apply huge gamma correction (basically take sqrt of all color components) and this green becomes noticeable. Some ways to fix the issue: Use _black texture. It is (0, 0, 0), and I am rather sure it will be compressed to (0, 0, 0) by all implementations. Modify textures/darkmod/sfx/black_matt to be full black (0, 0, 0). Add forceHighQuality to the stage which blends textures/darkmod/sfx/black_matt. Add DDS version of textures/darkmod/sfx/black_matt to core assets. Note that points 1, 2, 4 produce equivalent output, i.e. force texture to (0, 0, 0) color. Point 3 leaves the texture as (1, 1, 1), but there is no way to do this for all materials: the keyword has to be added to each material. Points 1 and 3 look bad because they fix the problem now, but don't stop the problem from happening again in the future.

There are many uses of this texture, and all of them use this compression algorithm. Perhaps replace it with full black texture would be better, since it already works that way. I wonder why this texture was even created with (1, 1, 1)... //matt black - there are already blacks but cannot get _black nor bc_black to reference as diffusemap // NB: this texture still has default specular reflections. For complete black, use black_pure below textures/darkmod/sfx/black_matt { qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/sfx/black_matt_ed diffusemap textures/darkmod/sfx/black_matt } The original code comes from 2008. And there is also 4151, where black_pure and white_pure materials were added. I hope someone familiar with assets will help decide

With TDM 2.12, after the credits finished, the "Mission Complete" screen did not display. I found that the screen was black and I could hear my footsteps when I tried to move around. I think the reason for the mission not completing successfully was that the "Do not kill or harm allies" objective was never marked as "1 = STATE_COMPLETE" instead it was left as "0 = STATE_INCOMPLETE". Note, I didn't use noclip throughout the mission. Same as: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/18054-fan-mission-the-accountant-2-new-in-town-by-goldwell-20160509/&do=findComment&comment=458491

So this online store I bought a pair of headphones from decided to gift me 12$ today. Since the voucher would expire in in two weeks unless used and I had nothing else to get, I decided to spend it on a 17$ gamepad so I'd have one of these as well. I understand they should work fine under Linux these days, plus it supports both dinput and xinput so I'm not concerned. I never played any FPS or most games using something other than the keyboard and mouse, this feels like an interesting opportunity to try it out. TDM is one of the games I might enjoy playing with such a thing, especially since it doesn't require super-fast reactions till I get used to it like a deathmatch shooter. So until the device arrives tomorrow, I figured I'd ask how well I can expect TDM to run on such a thing! Especially now that we have a new rendering and input management system for the upcoming TDM 2.10. There's a few things I wanted to know. One is if both looking around as well as movement using the finger pads is supported. I remember some games allowed walking more slowly if you only pushed the pad slightly; Does this mean it's possible to sneak by only moving the pad a bit, in a way that affects how much guards hear you? Otherwise I was curious if force feedback (vibration) is implemented and used. For TDM this mainly makes sense when you take damage, are in radius of a sound that has the shake effect, and other potential situations I might be missing now. Is gamepad vibration a feature in the engine at least?

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

The latest dev build (dev16629-10139) contains some changes regarding frob highlight. The full explanation is given in 5427. Most importantly, the material stages are now generated by default if they are missing. The core materials will be cleaned accordingly in near future. Also we added new syntax for customizing frob-highlight in simple cases. First of all, you can set frob-highlight with custom texture (e.g. it can be specular map) and arbitrary coefficients: frobstage_texture textures/darkmod/sfx/whiteglass2 0.25 0.5 Since diffuse texture is used in most materials, here is a shortcut for it: frobstage_diffuse 0.1 0.35 The first number is the multiplier applied to texture, and the second number is the amount of white color added. You can also make non-white multiplier or addition by putting three numbers in parentheses, e.g.: frobstage_diffuse (0.15 0.35 0.15) 0.4 Of course, the most recommended approach is to not write any frob text, in which case frobstages are added implicitly as "frobstage_diffuse 0.15 0.4". The implicit frobstages are added only if there are no frobstages specified explicitly. If you want to suppress implicit generation of frobstages (not recommended), you can write: frobstage_none Finally, if you want to make something special and customizations listed above are not enough, then you can just write frobstages the old way via parm11 parameter. The old frob-highlight stages should continue to work properly. If you write frobstages manually, please follow the rules (or you'll get warnings): Start every frobstage exactly with if (parm11 > 0) condition. Do not mention parm11 outside frobstages. P.S. Here is previous discussion of frob highlight, in case anyone is interested:

Completely disagree it was a very good idea that unfortunately came too early with idSoftware RAGE 1 because hardware was still and is not truly ready for it. Megatexture is for textures, what UE5 nanite is for geometry, it permits huge amounts of texture data in a level and even totally unique textures per each surface, no repetition unlike older methods. MT isn't simple a giant texture slapped unto a level, it is a type of virtual texturing system, the MT is a huge "texture" but it's data, is not all drawn on a level at the same time, like a normal one is, it is broken into smaller squared peace's and those peace's into even smaller ones for LOD aka mipmapping, then those peace's are streamed in, in real time has the player moves around. Again IMO It is a very cool idea and if the hardware was fast enough, to stream it fast and it was possible to compress the MT data, to very small amounts and still keep good quality, it would be a fantastic system for very unique levels. Rage 1 world may look bad at close distance, but at medium to large distances imo it looks fantastic and totally unique.

EDIT - v1.1 can be found a few posts below ------------------------------------------------------------------ Nameless Objects Mod v1.0 Description: this mod adds names to almost all core objects players can grab and hold in their hands. ------------------------------------------------------------------- How to use: As of this moment the Mod only works if you have "Core Essentials", which is included in TDM Modpack v4.0. Make sure to have "Core Essentials" and then download the *.pk4 attached to this post and place it in your TDM folder. I try my best to provide stuff people can experience first hand to form an opinion. I suggest you try "Business as Usual" by Bikerdude since this mission includes quite a few items you can grab right at the beginning. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Technical: The mod consists in a couple of def files and a script. I had to include two defs because otherwise there can be issues related with inheritance. The script does most of the work and it will run in the background as soon as a mission starts. The script runs once but it takes its time (10 to 30 seconds) not to hinder performance. All this is transparent to you. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Future: I wouldn't like this to remain as a mod and I volunteer to add names to all core defs for 2.13. I would, of course, use the translation system so that names can be translated in the future to languages other than English. I can name all core defs in a couple of rainy mornings but the Development Team must guarantee this work won't go to waste. The idea is that we name all core objects today and we let it stay: nothing changes in the source code and nothing gets displayed on screen. We get stuff done in the background and someday perhaps, all or part of it sees the light in some form. ------------------------------------------------------------------ There are quite a few things that must be discussed and agreed before we get started but the first step is: yes or no. People that might be interested in supporting and helping with this initiative: @datiswous, @Geep. Cheers! z_nameless_objects_mod_v1.0.pk4

Damn right, and I personally am going to keep making changes on how I want MY mission to be played and what I think is best for MY FMs. If that's not to your tastes, then I'm sorry these changes don't align with your preferences, but there are tons of other missions you can play that do. FM authors have ZERO obligation to provide uniform experiences that try to cater to everyone. Some people are going to enjoy these custom changes (I really loved the Resident Evil style saves, and I can't wait to see more missions with that) and other players are gonna be unhappy about them, and that's a crying shame, but it is not going to stop me from making FMs how I want them to be. Never once has a beta tester or a player brought up an issue about these kinds of choices I made for my FMs

Sounds great. Unfortunately you don't have to get very far in any discussion about either changing existing gameplay mechanics or about giving players more in game customization options to see why mappers stop bothering with the debate club politics and instead divert the energy to do what they can to address what issues they can themselves. There is clearly also a disconnect between how people think they feel about these changes and how they do in practice. Kingsal's missions seem to be widely considered as some of the most polished missions in the game, because they are a holistic designs that look, sound and play a certain way. As a result I have never seen a player complain about something like the run modifier being increased in a particular missions thread and it’s clear there are very few players who are ultimately conscious of anything besides that the overall experience feels good. So there is reason these get adopted by other authors. The players are entitled to their opinion - but it's the mission authors choice ultimately. And I can only speak for myself, but I came to TDM because I saw working examples of things I wanted in my mission. These were not “stock” or “standard”. They were achievable by virtue of the games extendability. If the day comes where we get locked out of that kind of control of our designs, I would probably walk.

I don't know about actually breaking lights, but I have considered the idea of using water arrows on electric lights to short circuit them temporarily, making them flicker, and go out temporarily. How much they flicker could be set by the modder, and depend on difficulty level.

I agree entirely. Unless a mission is aiming to present a completely different gameplay experience (like making a rapid-fire archery-based combat mission instead of a stealth mission), I see no reason why things like bow aiming should vary on a mission-by-mission basis. If the defaults are widely disliked, they should be changed. If they are a matter of taste and there is no agreement on what the value should be, they should be configurable by the player and take effect in all missions. Imagine if every desktop application made its own tweaks to your keyboard layout or mouse acceleration because the author didn't personally approve of the default values. It would be a horrible user experience. Some applications actually do this with fonts, and yes, it's horrible. Potentially useful functionality made inaccessible because the author decided to ignore system font choices and DPI, and impose his hand-picked non-scalable 10pt font which I can barely read.

As you probably know, overriding core files which are not specifically designed for that is fragile and unsupported. Indeed, it usually works... until it does not Here is the list of missions which completely override tdm_weapon_arrow.script: ahouseoflockedsecrets @Moonbo byanyothername @joebarnin cauldron_v2_2 @kingsal good @Amadeus hazard @kingsal northdale1 @Goldwell northdale2 @Goldwell seeking @Amadeus@Dragofer@Wellingtoncrab snowed_inn @Goldwell @kingsal written @Amadeus @Dragofer I have just got rid of creating cvars dynamically (5600), and shooting the bow stopped working in these missions. Because they distribute an old version of the script which runs in "debug mode" that relies on dynamic cvars. Core version was updated some time ago and this debug mode was removed. I'd like to ask authors: why did you decide to override this script? Perhaps we can add some customization points and delete overrides?

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.

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

Currently mappers can't edit the objective screen gui. 1. But let's say you create a mission where you don't want any difference in difficulty, or set it in a different way, then I think you should be able to remove the 3 difficulty selections from the objective/dificulty screen. (Edit: Not possible yet, but objectives could be set in mission briefing and then difficulty selection screen can be skipped, See below.) 2. Also, maybe you don't want to list the objectives on an objective screen before mission start. Maybe you want to have a mission briefing, start the mission and after that give the objectives somewhere during the mission. Or maybe you want players to select difficulty inside the mission in some way. In this case there's no need for the objectives screen and you might as well skip this screen. (Edit: Already possible with #define ENABLE_MAINMENU_DIFF_SELECT 0 in mainmenu_custom_defs.gui )

Hello Everyone! I've been a fan of the TDM community for some time now. Over the last year or so, I've been chipping away at an FM of my own and it's finally ready for release. Volta 1 : The Stone Volta and the Stone is a fairly large Thief-style mission (Lord Bafford's Manor). It is the first mission of a campaign that follows the Thief and his encounter with an archaic and powerful force. The campaign will span from robbing noble houses to being hunted by malevolent creatures from beyond the Veil. The emphasis is on creating a mood and tone that will hopefully feel familiar to fans of The Dark Mod and the original Thief games. Available through in-game downloader. Or Download here. A few notes Dark Mod v2.8 Required Normal difficulty is intended for new players. Hard/ Expert for most of the TDM community 2+ Hours of gameplay Features lots of custom art/ sounds/ and intro video. If you are stuck or need help: Please PM me or post spoiler free in this thread. I will make an FAQ with hints as they come up! Thanks: Bikerdude, Oldjim, Taquito, Melan, and Goldwell for beta testing. Andrew Bartmess for the wonderful narrator vocals. (v1.2) Special thanks: to FinalBoss and Tins for early alpha testing. I hope you enjoy it!

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/

Part of my point was that breakable electric lights could have an interesting contrast: They'd attract attention while also making it harder for you to get caught. When broken they should create a loud popping noise that makes nearby AI walk to them and investigate the disturbance, if they see the broken lamp even draw their swords and do an alert search... however once they've calmed down and moved on, you're rewarded with the ability to sneak there without being seen. The player will have one of two typical strategies: Either wait until there's no guards nearby in order to shoot a lamp, or shoot such lights if it's better to have guards searching but not able to see you compared to the guards being calm but able to spot you in bright light. Mappers would themselves place those lamps in areas where they want to create this particular challenge.

In By Any Other Name, I needed to deactivate the sword, bow, and blackjack for a while (during the middle part of the mission). I couldn't figure out how to "turn off" the bow, and then later turn it back on again. So I ended up cloning tdm_weapon_arrow.script, and modding it (adding a special variable that got checked when you tried to raise the bow). Pretty kludgy, and obviously can lead to breakage. (I also had to make similar changes to tdm_weapon_blackjack.script and tdm_weapon_shortsword.script.) Maybe all I need to do is remove all of the arrow ammo. That way the bow won't raise. That still leaves the blackjack and sword. I think there was a way of deactivating weapons, but I couldn't activate them back on again (?)

Decided to start dedicated thread about this problem. Right now at least @Jedi_Wannabe and @id3839315 have it. Let's continue the discussion here.