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Author note: It's hard to believe it's already been a year since Act 1 came out! Well during this mission the player will be following Corbin into the Grimwood district to followup on a lead from last night (Act 1) .. the mysterious tablet! This mission is my first time including full EFX support as well as a HD briefing video file, additionally a new script has been added crafted by the talented Obsttorte which has loot flying towards the player when you pick it up. On a level design front I have tried to change things up a bit by really catering towards a number of play styles, this mission can be completely ghosted or you can use the tools at your disposal to wreak havoc on the citizens of Northdale. For the first time I have tried to create more sandbox environments which don't offer clear answers handed directly to you, so if you're having trouble figuring something out try a different method. This mission takes between 1 - 2 hours to finish depending on the difficulty you play on and how thoroughly you explore. I hope you enjoy your night in Northdale! - Goldwell Voice actors Fen Phoenix Goldwell Random_taffer Yandros Beta testers Amadeus Boiler's Hiss Cambridge Spy Chakkman Crowind Epifire Kingsal SquadaFroinx Custom Assets Andreas Rocha DrK Epifire Grayman Kingsal MalachiAD Obsttorte Sotha Springheel SquadaFroinx Purgator With special thanks to Epifire for creating a large collection of custom models, Grayman for helping out with coding, Kingsal for drawing the ingame map and Moonbo for his script revision on the briefing video. Available via in-game downloader MIRROR File Size: 417 mb EDIT: If you are having performance issues please consult this post by Nbohr1more which may address your issue http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19936-fan-mission-shadows-of-northdale-act-ii-by-goldwell-20190320/page-2?do=findComment&comment=436271

We didn't make the holidays (such a busy time of year) so here's a New Year's gift, an unusual little mission. Window of Opportunity Recover an item for a regretful trader out in a wilderness setting, and discover more! Available within the in-game mission downloader or: Download: http://www.thedarkmo...ndetails/?id=79 Alternative: https://drive.google...WTMzQXZtMVFBSG8 Some unorthodox gameplay on regular/ghost difficulties. (Arachnophobes might prefer short mode...) Please expect to need your lantern in regular and ghost modes! Short ("easy") mode is a smaller map, so if you are looking for areas others reference below, or 100% of the loot, you'll need to play on another mode. I wanted to create my first mission before I became influenced by too many others' ideas, and limited myself to what has been done before. As such, this mission is not set in a city/town, and has some features that are likely to be provocative. There's a section some really like, which others don't, either way I kept it short to not last too long. That being said, I hope you do find it fun! :-) Special thanks to those who provided valuable testing and feedback: Goldwell, Kyyrma, plotzzz, 161803398874989, PPoe & Bikerdude (who also contributed a sound). (Please remember spoiler tags to not expose things meant to be discovered by playing.) Like so: [spoiler]secrets[/spoiler] If you are having trouble finding the main objective, here's what to pay attention to in the mission for hints: There is a spot it's possible to get stuck on the ground in the corner by the cliff/rockfall where there's a rope laying on the ground, please take care if you poke around there!

Beta 11 Fix finished-on state auto-update was unreliable Slighty improve scanner title/author detect Tags are now named some whatever regular-version-looking thing to force GitHub to put the newest at the top

Ok so the original reason I came up with this question is that I was looking at Sotha's Button Controlled Animated Briefing To make that work, you have to edit a gui file and put the text blocks in it. Wouldn't it be easier if you can use text from xdata instead? Then the gui file is just for the looks and operation, like a template that you snap onto your mission, while you create the text in the xdata file. I wondered if that's possible. The normal text based briefing also uses a gui (obviously), which then includes the xdata file. At that point I was thinking of a broader aproach for other gui's, but I probably should've keep it simple.

New script for mappers: my flavour of a fog density fading script. To add this to your FM, add the line "thread FogIntensityLoop();" to your map's void main() function (see the example in fogfade.script) and set "fog_fade" "1" on each foglight to enable script control of it. Set "fog_intensity_multiplier" on each info_location entity to change how thick the fog is in that location (practically speaking it's a multiplier for visibility distance). Lastly, "fog_fade_speed" on each foglight determines how quickly it will change its density. The speed scales with the current value of shaderParm3, using shaderParm3 = 1000 as a baseline. So i.e. if shaderParm is currently at 1/10th of 1000, then fade speed will be 1/10th as fast. Differences to Obsttorte's script: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/14394-apples-and-peaches-obsttortes-mapping-and-scripting-thread/&do=findComment&comment=310436 my script uses fog lights you created, rather than creating one for you. Obsttorte's script will delete the foglight if entering a fogfree zone and recreate it later more than one fog light can be controlled (however, no per-fog-light level of control) adding this to the map requires adding a line to your void main() script, rather than adding an info_locations_settings entity with a custom scriptobject spawnarg in my script, mappers set a multiplier of fog visibility distance (shaderParm3), while in Obsttorte's script a "fog_density" spawnarg is used as an alternative to shaderParm3 smaller and less compactly written script fogfade.scriptfogfade.map

The devs didn't title this thread, and @datiswous said they're attempting to mislead people by using Russell's name and a retro style to make it resemble Thief, which is cynical. I grew up on forums like I'm sure anyone who likes a game from '98 did. I actually left the Discord immediately after joining it because it was more off-topic doom-posting than anything relevant to the mod. I thought the forums might be better, but it's mostly just grown men yelling at clouds and telling strangers how mature they are, and a few brave souls actually developing anything. Depressing place, I'll just stick to enjoying new missions every 6 months without an account.

True, but, 1. this thread is called "Western stealth FPS with Stephen Russell", and, 2. nothing you said changes anything for me. The gameplay still doesn't look like something I'd enjoy. And, if you really think this forum is cynical, then you don't visit forums much. Actually, the majority of the users are are pretty mature, unlike in other forums.

Good work! I enjoy short missions because things are nice and focused - you get in, you get out. Also I tend to do better with the loot amounts and I was able to get all the loot without too much trouble, which is rare for me. If I were to make a suggestion though - I found the intro briefing sequence a bit distracting because it was so obvious the narration was pitch-shifted to make a deeper voice. If you felt the original voice wasn't deep enough for your needs, I would either get someone on the forums to record it for you or just leave as is. That's my only real complaint and it's not even about the mission itself, so pretty good first start!

Almost a year ago I raised concern about reckless overriding of main menu GUI files (which explicitly say they must not be overridden) by mappers. I have changed ton of things now, and I think I'm ready to show the new version for beta testing. If everything goes well, these changes will be released in TDM 2.10. You can obtain the game build for beta testing via tdm_installer. Just check "Get custom version" on the first page and select "test-menugui-N" version in test build. Note that it is close to the latest dev build, and thus includes all the changes done since 2.09. Here is the list of customizations in the new version that I know of: Change background everywhere. Change music everywhere. Disable mission-specific screens. Briefing and Debriefing videos (done the "old" way). Replace briefing screen with whatever mapper wants. Custom mission loading GUIs. All of the above can be set independently for each mission in a campaign. Customize the "Wait until ready" screen. I did not expose the ability to change stuff in Credits screen, since in my understanding that's credits for TheDarkMod itself, thus mission authors should not touch it. The instructions about how to achieve points 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 are given in "mainmenu_custom_defs.gui". Here are things which I have marked as deprecated and want to remove: Videos "controlled by SDK". The "old" approach can now be used both for briefing and debriefing, even in campaign. Custom title. As far as I remember, it has only been used to hack custom background into the menu. Why keeping it? Of course, all the missions which use deprecated features need to be fixed to rely on something else. The missions which override .gui files in unsupported way are most likely broken too and need fixing. All the other missions should work properly now. Here is the policy about fixing FMs: I will fix all FMs, unless mission author wants to do it himself. Fix will only change .gui files, nothing else. Fixed mission should work as intended in 2.10. Fixed mission should play well in 2.09, except that main menu can look differently, and probably briefing/debriefing video can be skipped. Every mission will be briefly beta-tested here. Not the gameplay of course (that would take too much effort), but various menu/gui interactions. Until 2.10 is released, the fixed missions will be stored on separate server and will only be available via special cvars tweaking. Ordinary players will still get non-fixed versions, since they most likely use TDM 2.09. In order to download fixed FMs, you should add the following line to "autoexec.cfg": set tdm_mission_list_urls "http://darkmod.taaaki.za.net/5323_menugui/missionlist.xml" If you want to join testing, I suggest copying TDM installation without FMs, then updating it to appropriate version and changing "autoexec.cfg". Trying to juggle with one installation will be confusing.

I have now 2 possible screens in the briefing page: The Briefing text The Startlocation selection If I'm in the Startlocation screen, but click on Back and then in the mainmenu start the mission again, I see the Startlocation screen again, instead of the briefing text. How can I set it so that it will go back to the briefing text every time I start the mission in the main menu?

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Briefing#Controlling_Where_the_Player_Starts On the section about "Controlling Where the Player Starts" there is a download link, but it's a dead link. Does somebody have this altered mainmenu_briefing.gui ? Or otherwise, is there a mission where it's used? I thought maybe it could be added to core, to the same file, but have that section editted out by default, or make a renamed version? Same for Button Controlled Animated Briefing and Timed Flowing Briefing (although maybe without the example images), I think they should be things in core. Doesn't take up much space and then they never get lost. Edit: Testmap: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YQQknGlVJE9TJyItE_H2KjggvrIAuhnf/view?usp=sharing (with working self-made test mainmenu_briefing.gui file) When you start normal startlocation is near sand-sack. When in last frame of briefing you klick on text, mission starts near bucket oposite of room instead. Currently only works up to TDM 2.09

Sorry for the "math speak". By modulo 5 (aka just mod 5), I mean integer values of 5, 10, 15, etc., and referring to the duration in units of seconds. Since the duration is a float, we're really talking 5.000, 10.000, 15.000, etc. No good reason, IMHO. Not at this time. I only got about through about 50 voice clips in the spreadsheet, before it became obvious that there was this problem. My workflow doesn't generate the .subs file of a test mission (initially with all inline, with srt candidates flagged by comments) until the spreadsheet is done. It's because the vocal set is chopped into individual voice clips, that the game individually invokes. So (unlike subtitling a movie or TDM video briefing), each unique voice clip must be represented by either a separate inline entry or srt file. The inline entry is an easier prep. It generally handles > 95% of a vocal set's clips. And would for Lady02 if the .ogg files had been properly trimmed.

GAMEPLAY * Frob controls have been reworked completely. Previously players were annoyed by having to do three presses to extinguish a light. Also, some player didn't even know that bodies could be shouldered and were limited with dragging bodies. Now simply clicking the frob button performs the action player needs most of the time, and pressing-and-holding the same button performs alternative actions like dragging bodies and extinguishing candles (thread). * Several aspects of mantling has been improved: overhead mantling has become faster, mantling over low obstacles is allowed while carrying an item or a body. Also it is possible to switch weapon while being on rope/ladder or mantling. Pressing crouch button on rope/ladder now starts slide-down immediately. * Some aspects of gameplay can be further simplified. Auto-search bodies is for players who don't want to waste time searching for keys and purses on guard bodies. Lockpicking "Auto" difficulty now indeed trivializes lockpicking (thread). * Leaning animation has been improved with lower head tilt (thread). * Player footstep sounds have been rebalanced. Metal and water sounds were especially painful previously. * Further improvements of subtitles: revised location and font to avoid overlapping with other GUI elements, added directional cue, better slot allocation. Each subtitle is now displayed for at least one second even if the sound is very short. * More settings to reduce camera bobbing/rolling/shaking, which is good for players who feel motion sickness from default camera animations. * Now several script addons can coexist and work independently (thread). ENGINE * Optimized generation of light-entity interactions in rendering frontend. Also greatly optimized shadow processing, especially for moving lights. Unfortunately, many existing missions are not compatible with these changes, so you might see light leaking through walls (mainly with stencil shadows). Please report all such cases, we'll apply workaround on case by case basis (thread). * The "old" and "new" rendering backends are finally merged into one. It is as nice to program as the new backend, and as old-fashioned and reliable as the old backend. Single-pass shadow maps enabled by default and now respect noselfshadow. * Materials with polygonoffset now interact with lights. So static decals can have bumpmap and specular lighting. Note however: dynamic decals still don't interact with lights. * Revised parallelSky lights and marked shadowing parallel lights as deprecated (thread). * PNG image format now behaves equally to other supported formats. In particular, it is not required to explicitly specify its extension, and it can be referenced directly in GUI code. * Added functions min/max to material expressions, which can be useful for clamping. * Fixed minor culling bugs on animated entities and enabled entity scissors by default. * Reduced color banding for fog with some dithering at tonemapping stage. * Finally our C++ code can compress and decompress all texture formats we use, meaning that we no longer depend on occasionally buggy/slow vendor implementations. BUGS * Now both OGG and WAV sounds work the same way and stop playing while in main menu. * Fixed "gui::startSelect" as a feature that allows to choose player starting location in GUI briefing. * Fixed warnings in newspaper_bridgeport0X core readable GUI. ASSETS * Added automatic turrets, to be combined with security cameras (Thread). * Added more covered furniture models (6289). * Added wall models from Seeking Lady Leicester (6293). * New and fixed versions of atdm:lamp_electric_square_3_lit_unattached (6315). * Fixed UV map on Stove models (6312). * Fixed some issues with moor AI (6345).

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

How about using TDM automation framework (and maybe pcem/qemu)? More info see: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19828-automation-features-and-discussion/

I dom't use it, i found it here with the filter set to OpenSource. the TOS and PP isn't excluding for an OpenSource app, if they use ads mean that they also need to pay an server for this online service. OpenSource is not synonymous with free either, perhaps after the beta phase it is no longer free, so perhaps you can take advantage of the fact that it is still free to create a series of textures that can be used or search another one in Futuretools. AI generated textures and assets, by definition, don't have any copyright, so you can use them as you want. https://www.futuretools.io/?pricing-model=free|open-source&tags-n5zn=gaming

If the "mission fails as soon as stealth score turns non-zero," that would not be good for ghost players. They might need to find out "how" they failed and experiment to avoid alerting guards. They might need to take those score points as a "bust". They might need to take those score points to complete an objective. Then, mission authors would need to encode exceptions into their missions, which would be a lot of work (if they decide to do it at all). However, part of what makes ghosting challenging and fun is when mission authors do not create their missions with ghosting in mind. Please see: Official Ghosting Rules: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148523 Writing code for these rules would be a huge undertaking. Ghost Rules Discussion: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487 Creating an official mode could alienate these dedicated ghost players, because it would clash with what is considered ghosting in the community. Including the Stealth Stat Tool mod in the official release would be more useful. Or, making the audible alert states of guards quick and easy to recognize could help as well. For these reasons, I don't agree with an official "Ghost" mode. If the dev team were to do it, we should consult with @Klatremus so we get it 100% correct or not pursue it at all. (This ghosting bit should probably be in its own thread.)

My own suggestion which I was thinking of earlier after this was brought up again: When a new mission is started, under the 3 difficulty options (Easy, Medium, Hard), why not offer a separate setting for save restriction independent of difficulty level? It could be a separate checkbox with which the map's difficulty setting decides how severe save restrictions should be. While initially I may have welcomed this as a map choice for the standard difficulty setting, I now believe restricting saves should be a separate user-controlled choice, which would oppositely also make it usable on all old FM's. I think there's one potential issue with this plan, correct me if I'm wrong: Some FM's implemented checkpoints where the map itself decides when to auto-save, and that can only be specified by maps themselves. If the two features can be separated, does anyone else think we can limit no-saving to a separate field picked in the mission briefing menu?

Mandrasola is a small sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter steals some herbal products from a smuggler. The mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank Bikerdude, BrokenArts and Ocn for playtesting and voice acting. Thanks goes naturally to everyone contributing and making TDM possible. This mission occurs chronologically before the Knighton's Manor, making it the first mission in the Thomas Porter series. Events in chronological order are: Mandrasola, The Knighton's Manor, The Beleaguered Fence, The Glenham Tower and The Transaction. The winter came early and suddenly this year. Weeks of strong blizzards and extremely harsh cold weather hit Bridgeport hard. With the seas completely frozen, a rare occurence indeed, most of the City harbor commerce has stopped completely. Vessels are stuck in the ice and no ship can leave or enter the City, resulting in the availability imported goods declining and their prices skyrocketing. One of these imported items is Mandrasola, a rare herbal product, which is imported overseas from the far southern continents. Mandrasola has its uses in alchemical cures and poisons, but mostly this substance is used for its narcotic qualities by commoners and even the nobility. The problem with Mandrasola is that excessive use is extremely addicting and the withdrawal effects are most grievious. Many are utterly incapable of stopping using Mandrasola and are transformed into quivering human ruins if they do no get their daily dose. And now this expensive and rare substance is running out from the whole City. Me and my fence, Lark Butternose, would love to grab this monopoly to ourselves: selling the last few doses in the City would probably be worth a fortune. According to Lark's sources, there remains only one smuggling lord who still has Mandrasola in stock. The problem is that this individual maintains an exclusive clandestine operation and only supplies a few nobles. Despite our best information gathering efforts we couldn't learn who the smuggler is and where he or she operates. Luckily we have an alternate plan. While searching for Mandrasola related information, we learned that a noblewoman called Lady Ludmilla is addicted to the substance and has paid high prices for small amounts of it. We also know that she has visited frequently someone in the Tanner's Ward waterfront, and since she goes to the area personally we believe she is visiting the smuggler. The plan is simple: I must monitor Ludmilla's most likely entryway to the Waterfront and then follow her to the smugglers hideout. I'd better be very careful around Ludmilla. She must not realise I'm following her or she probably won't lead me to her dealer. Hurting her is also out of the question. After she leads me to the smuggler's hideout, I can take my time to break in carefully and steal all the Mandrasola I can find. While I'm there it wouldn't be a bad idea to grab some loose valuables as well. I've now waited in the blistering cold for a few hours already. Looks like there are a few city watch patrols in the area to complicate matters... I think I heard a womans voice beyond the north gate. That must be lady Ludmilla, I haven't seen many ladies in these parts. I'd better get ready.. Links: Use the ingame downloader to get it. WARNING! Someone always fails to use spoiler tags. I do not recommend reading any further until you've played the mission.

To cater to both audiences. I mentioned LibreGameWiki as one example. nbohr1more mentioned other uses. Explicitly allowing reuse and spread will help TDM reach a wider audience and would hopefully attract more volunteers. More volunteers which can help improve both TDM versions. There are several benefits for a project of being in the Debian repo. One is that TDM Debian-users can report defects on any package directly to Debian (no need to register on separate forums). Debian may then fix the issue themselves (in their "TDM-libre" package) and will offer the patch upstream to TDM, who can then choose to accept or reject the patch. I envision "TDM-libre" to have the same capability of downloading any mission as regular TDM. The only difference is that "TDM-libre" would come packaged with the regular engine (which is GPL+BSD) and an included mission that has libre media/gamedata. When I play TDM by myself, I want the unlimited-play and can accept commercial restrictions. But if I were to promote it somewhere, or charge for a stream when playing online, or make a video, I would want a version without commercial restrictions (and can temporarily accept limited-play) to make sure I don't violate anyone's copyright. Perhaps. That's what I'm trying to find out.

I suggest you use the term "I", to make clear that it is something YOU want, and that you speak for yourself. But, as wesp5 mentioned, I don't really know what this is about, at all. And, I'm also wondering about all the newly registered people lately, who just arrived at this forum, and already want to revolutionize this mod. This is a thing I noticed 2 or 3 years ago, and which hasn't been present in the 15 years I play this mod and frequent these forums now. Really seems like a common thing these days, to not knock on the door, but kick it in, and stomp right in.