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Not to be a nag, but I was thinking about the columns problem. If you go to the view source tab in the wiki article: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Fan_Missions_for_The_Dark_Mod&action=edit The raw table data is accessible directly: |- !align=left|{{TDM-FM|written|Written in Stone}} |Bikerdude, Amadeus, Dragofer |{{Forumlink|https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21265-written-in-stone-beta-210-only-20220128/}} |2022-01-28 |338 |Yes |Yes |CCC 22, Elixir |City Missions |Undead, Horror Themes |- Each pipe character represents one of the columns.

Creating a new thread for this as it was being discussed in an old beta-testing thread starting here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21822-beta-testing-high-expectations/&do=findComment&comment=490751 I suppose the main questions are: when should this spawnarg be used, if at all? why was it introduced in the first place? Can we get it documented properly on the Wiki so misuse isn't propagated? @stgatilov @Dragofer

I'd like to follow up on an earlier post, that keeps with the simple approach of retaining a fixed subtitle fieldwidth. Regarding about how one might test that a subtitle fieldwidth is "just right" for a given subtitle-line character limit (e.g., 42/line), font, and font scale, here's what I would suggest. Using dummy sound files, create a set of about 100 "worst likely case" subtitles that are exactly the length of the character limit. These are directly derived from the corpus of existing "story" and "speech" subtitles. Turn this set into 100 sound shaders for another version of my testSubtitles... program (with the desired fieldwidth, font, and font scale under test), and step through them. What you are looking to achieve is NO auto-wrap from the first to second line. If you get auto-wrap, then adjust the font scale and/or fieldwidth and iterate until good. This gives assurance about "worst likely cases", not "worst possible case", e.g, 42 W's in a row. Details: Suppose you have a function that takes a subtitle string and a font, and returns the "draw length" of that string in internal scale-independent font units, that is, pre-scaling/rendering. It's just a summation of lookups into the appropriate static character-width table (assuming kerning is not an issue). Because we will be using the calculated value just to rank the strings for "worse-ness", the "font unit" is arbitrary. [ @stgatilov, maybe you could provide me with such a function in C++? Then I could do what follows. ] OK, so that is embedded into a program that is turned loose on the existing subtitles, to: look for 2-line subtitles (in inline or srt form) where the lines together exceed the character limit convert those to a single string by replacing the linebreak with a space truncate them to the character limit calculate the "draw length" of each export the strings and their draw lengths into a csv (along with a field indicating the source) Do that for each available subtitle source (FM or stock barks), and import all the .csv files as sets of rows in a spreadsheet. Then sort the rows by draw length and deduplicate (ignoring source). Take the 100 "worst likely case" rows, export them, and turn them (using techniques already developed) into sound shaders for the testSubtitles... program. So, a bit of work, but you get assurance that you've optimized things to minimize future problems.

Hello! Tracking down information on software and plug-ins that work with D3 / TDM can be a tough. So I have created a thread here where people can post what software/ plug-ins/ tutorials or other references they've had success or failure with in TDM. 3DS MAX 2013 64bit .ase - Default .ASE model exporter works. However you have to open the .ase file in text edit and manual change the *BITMAP line on each material to read something like: "//base/textures/common/collision" which allows the engine to read the correct material path. md5.mesh / animation - Beserker's md5 exporter/importers for 3dsmax. http://www.katsbits.com/tools, Importing and exporting works. The model must be textured, UV'd, with a skin modifier attached to the bones to export. PM me (Kingsal) for help with this. Imported models using the script will not be weighted appropriately, so this is not recommended if you are simply trying to edit existing tdm content. (Use blender instead) MAYA 2011 32bit md5.mesh - So far I've not had any luck with Maya 2011. I am using Greebo's MayaImportx86 for Maya 2011. I've got the importer working however I get a "Unexpected Internal Failure(kFailure)" and the import fails. This could be due to something finicky in Maya that I am not doing correctly. Will keep trying.. Blender 2.7 about - Blender is commonly used and pretty well supported on the forums/ wiki. Various versions may work as well - https://www.blender.org/download/ md5.mesh / animation Blender MD5 importer/exporter (io_scene_md5.zip): https://sourceforge.net/projects/blenderbitsbobs/files/ Sotha's guide Blender Male/ Female rigs by Arcturus - Here Edit by Dragofer: more links found in this post.

Very nice as a quality small FM, clear and well set up. Definitely didn't get everything but found most of what there was to find. Sadly also a few bugs, makes me a little sad I missed the beta testing to catch them earlier. Other bugs involve the secondary main character...

True, thanks God I loved Mooncrash back then, etc. The whole point of Mooncrash was to force you to apply different character strategies (not just Rambo style). Increasing pressure (timer) and some random events force you to improvise a lot and go with the flow. It's a great showcase of emergent gameplay systems, and a ton of fun, if you let go of your "im-sim habits". I had many great moments with Mooncrash, because of "near miss" and "last second save" type of moments, typically amid total chaos of the last stretches between me and the escape pod. That said, Mooncrash is kinda hard to get in the beginning. There are things which are totally random, other things are persistent throughout a run, then things become persistent throughout multiple runs. But the game leaves most of it to be discovered by you – which is both a blessing and a curse, because many players will bounce off it before getting to really awesome bits.

I still need a second NPC voice actor for my upcoming mission. It's about a person who is stuck in the level and will have all sorts of things to report over a loudspeaker system and who is between scared, desperate and hysterical but all with a funny undertone. So things like: "How could that have happened to me? Now, of all times, when I only have to fulfill another 35 months of my three-year contract! Any new or old volunteers here? Andros (Jonus Thorunsson, an Inventor) and Malasdair (The Thief) are already on board.

Looking at the code, the originals were "pm_mantle_pull 750" and "pm_mantle_pullFast 450". The new "pm_mantle_pull" value is "400". A "pm_mantle_pullFast" value of "450" would be slower than regular pull, not faster. With both being set to "400", they are at least similar. Other than that, it's subjective and the feedback from playtesters was positive. Also, referenced internally here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22256-movementcontrols-settings-in-main-menu/&do=findComment&comment=489158

https://github.com/Acly/krita-ai-diffusion Generate images from within Krita with minimal fuss: Select an area, push a button, and new content that matches your image will be generated. Or expand your canvas and fill new areas with generated content that blends right in. Text prompts are optional. No tweaking required! This plugin seeks to provide what "Generative Fill/Expand" do in Photoshop - and go beyond. Adjust strength to refine existing content (img2img) or generate images from scratch. Powerful customization is available for advanced users. Features Features are designed to fit an interactive workflow where AI generation is used as just another tool while painting. They are meant to synergize with traditional tools and the layer stack. Inpaint: Use Krita's selection tools to mark an area and remove or replace existing content in the image. Simple text prompts can be used to steer generation. Outpaint: Extend your canvas, select a blank area and automatically fill it with content that seamlessly blends into the existing image. Generate: Create new images from scratch by decribing them with words or existing images. Supports SD1.5 and SDXL. Refine: Use the strength slider to refine existing image content instead of replacing it entirely. This also works great for adding new things to an image by painting a (crude) approximation and refining at high strength! Control: Guide image creation directly with sketches or line art. Use depth or normal maps from existing images or 3D scenes. Transfer character pose from snapshots. Control composition with segmentation maps. Resolutions: Work efficiently at any resolution. The plugin will automatically use resolutions appropriate for the AI model, and scale them to fit your image region. Upscaling: Upscale and enrich images to 4k, 8k and beyond without running out of memory. Job Queue: Depending on hardware, image generation can take some time. The plugin allows you to queue and cancel jobs while working on your image. History: Not every image will turn out a masterpiece. Preview results and browse previous generations and prompts at any time. Strong Defaults: Versatile default style presets allow for a simple UI which covers many scenarios. Customization: Create your own presets - select a Stable Diffusion checkpoint, add LoRA, tweak samplers and more.

That sort of tone doesn't fly in our forums.

So, I've got a confession to make: Up until recently, I hadn't really played a full FM in quite some time as I only did the occasional playtesting. I am currently trying to catch up and boy did I miss some gems! This FM is one of them and easily one of my all-time favorites. The save-system on expert combined with the incredible athmosphere of your mission created a tension I haven't felt in a Thief-style game in a long, long time. Thank you, thank you, thank you and bravo @kingsal. TDM and its mappers have really come a long way, competing high up there with commercial productions. Your FM inspired me in two ways: At one point, I died due to my character not jumping off a slope, eventhough I felt like I pressed jump at the right time. I think everybody of us knows this issue and you always have this kind of in the back of your head that you don't jump when the ground is not perfectly even. This failed jump was of course very annoying due to the saving constraints, so I instantly started thinking how we could solve this. There's a technique known primarily from platformers but also from FPS like Doom Eternal, and that technique is called "Coyote Time". It allows the player to jump for some short timespan after leaving a platform. We should maybe explore something similar for TDM, to make jumping off slopes more reliable. We have to be careful to not allow the player to cross further distances this way of course. I loved the save restriction and the tension it create so much, that I want more of it. I started to brainstorm and remembered the optional game mutators from Unreal back in the day. These mutators allowed you to enable extra challenges or modified physics etc. for your game. Coming back to the save restriction, a respective mutator for TDM could be that each savegame costs some resource. Some resource that hurts, like a water arrow or a health potion, to make the player think twice about saving. A mutator like that would honestly be my default play-setting, I think. Other obvious mutators could be "Ghost" (missions fails as soon as the stealth score is non-zero and blackjacking is disabled), "Ironman" (no saves), "Strong Enemies" (enemies hit harder, have more health). I shall follow up on both of these points soon.

The subtitles of The Wench vocal set are now available for eventual incorporation into TDM Two versions, created earlier in the year, are released today with just-revised names. The first (created on Apr 21) was fully QA tested under April's 2.12dev: testSubtitlesWenchOriginal.pk4 But it was noticed at the time that some of the voice clips do not correspond well with their TDM event categorizations. So, the second testSubtitlesWench version (created on Apr 24) is designed to be used with corrected voice clip names and categorizations, as detailed in bugtracker 6284. It was hoped that this bug report could be addressed in a timely way, so that this patched version could also be given final testing. But waited long enough; released now without final testing: testSubtitlesWenchPatched.pk4 CAUTION: If you run this version with current 2.12dev and step through the subtitles, at some point it will fail with a console error. It will only fully succeed with a future 2.12dev with bugtracker 6284 changes incorporated. EDIT: Since this was posted, progress has occurred on 6284. The result is reportedly a bit at odds with "Patched". Expect a 3rd, fully-aligned version of testSubtitlesWench to be forthcoming. About The Wench The Wench character is described as "uneducated, saucy and bold. The wench has been around the block; she is confident and flirty." She is further characterized in the wiki as "a low-class woman with something of a foul mouth". This vocal set comes with slightly different versions for soft-spoken women and "barmaids, whores, and female thieves". Statistics Original: In file fm_root.subs there are 535 inlines, including: 50 with an explicit linebreak, intending 2 lines 485 without Patched: In file fm_root.subs there are 533 inlines, including: 48 with an explicit linebreak, intending 2 lines 485 without None of these needed explicit duration extensions. For both original and patched, there are 20 SRTs, including: 19 with 2 messages 1 with 3 messages Of the 41 total SRT messages, there are: 13 with an explicit linebreak, intending 2 lines 28 without In all, in this vocal set, there are: Original: 555 voice clips with subtitles, showing 576 messages. Patched: 553 voice clips with subtitles, showing 574 messages. Corresponding Excel Spreadsheet WenchOriginalSubtitles.xlsx This spreadsheet was organized with an early "v1" barks template.

The subtitles of The Critic (aka Bossy) vocal set are now available for eventual incorporation into TMD: testSubtitlesCritic.pk4 The wiki's "Voices" article describes The Critic as "a slightly upper-class, know-it-all voice", good for a male character who "has an opinion on everything and frequently offers advice. Suitable for nobles, mages, inventors, and snooty servants or guards." For inventors and mages, specific vocal phrases are provided. This speaker is a relatively fast talker, requiring more subtitle time extensions than most characters. Statistics In file fm_root.subs there are 293 inlines, including: 79 with an explicit linebreak, intending 2 lines 214 without 69 of these inlines have explicit duration extensions, as follows: 33 from 0.25 to 0.49, for 17 cps 32 capped at 0.50 seconds, for 17-20 cps 4 with more than 0.50 seconds, for 20 cps. The worst case one of these also was given non-verbatim shortening ("would have" replaced by "would've") There are 14 SRT files, including: 12 with 2 messages 2 with 3 messages Of these, 7 were given a time extension past the end of the clip, in the range 0.20-0.50 sec, analogous to duration extensions in the inline files. (In fm_root.subs, there are actually 15 srt commands. Two of these had the same subtitle text and so shared an .srt file. This file is one of those with a time extension.) Of the 30 total SRT messages, there are: 21 with an explicit linebreak, intending 2 lines 9 without In all, for this vocal set, there are 307 voice clips with subtitles, showing 323 messages. Corresponding Excel Spreadsheet SubtitlesCritic.xlsx As usual, this is based on Version 5 of the Excel Template for TDM bark subtitles.

I would use this massive list for any fan missions, it includes campaigns too: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148090 There are a lot of Fan Missions for the picking, I myself go for the lesser known ones and the short variety, because sometimes they hide a gem or two. Just like jaxa, I'm a bit outdated after the temporal retirement, but I do remember some amazing campaigns like "The Black Frog". If you intend to play The Black Frog, you should play the first two of the L'Arsene series missions, it's how I did it myself. Also, yes, L'Arsene are a fantastic series. The first mission of L'Arsene is a "rough draft", author was a bit new to Thief level making, but still great either way, after the 3rd you will see how his skill increased by a massive amount.

Unfortunately, TDM forum deletes the separator between the numbers. So I have to guess where one number ends and the next starts Also, user can rename screenshot manually, or push it through something that would rename it automatically. Thenwe won't see coordinates on screenshot address on forums.

tdm_show_viewpos cvar and screenshot_viewpos command: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22310-212-viewpos-on-player-hud-and-screenshots/

I've just found this topic by accident by looking for information on how the lines of code regarding weapons function in TDM* and I figured I could give some advices regarding world-building and writing if you're interested, MirceaKitsune *for the moment after exploring the Dhewm3 wiki I'm getting a vague understanding about how it all works, the .def and .script files etc, but I don't find where these files are located in the TDM pak files and the function of a lot of lines remain mysterious for lack of commentaries, I found no information about that in the Dark Radiant wiki... is there a tutorial somewhere listing the functions of all the lines of code in the .def and .script weapon files ? One important thing to do if you want to make your universe and story timeless is to put it openly in an alternate universe, by using the usual "Year X after the Big World-Changing Catastrophe" chronological dating trick: it will allow you to include anything you want in the universe of your game, including anything concerning technology, objects, etc without risking it to become irrelevant or dated as real years pass in real life. This way, your universe is like in a self-contained box isolated from the real life and the "real future" anyone will experience in the following years from today. It's a basic story/world-building trick, but it's a must. Of course, to justify that technology in your fictitious universe has reached such a high point after a huge cataclysm that sent the world back to a Middle-Age level of technology, your plot/story inside your universe will take place several hundred years after that cataclysm. So, it's "Xth Century after the Big World-Changing Catastrophe", to be precise In passing, if you like 1970's aesthetic and music, I suggest you listen to this, from Shawn Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=appJZrqNYPg Most of his music have that 1970's thriller movie vibe with repetitive piano and violin, cool bass lines, wah-wah effects, the whole stuff. Depending on if you want your universe to have a realistic tone or a more "fantasy" one, you should change the name if you go for a realistic tone: in real life, intelligence services use bland names, often in the form of an acronym or an initialism. For instance, the CIA's department in charge of assassinations and any clandestine action requiring the use of violence is the S.A.D, for Special Activities Division. In france, the name of the section of the DGSE (= french CIA) in charge of that kind of work is the D.O., for Division of Operations, after having been called "S.A." for Service Action until the 1990s and since the 1970s if I remember correctly. Same thing for the name of the specific military units employed for these tasks, in france it is called "(the) alpha cell", which was an open secret for anyone that is a bit learned about any things military but was suddenly discovered by the general public after a shitty president, françois hollande, told of their existence to two journalists just to look "badass" and impress people, and then all the journalist were visibly shocked to learn that a government has to settle things in a permanent way sometimes, like these former nazi supplying terrorists with weapons as arms dealers in the 1950s as a way of getting a revenge against the french government for contributing to hitler's defeat during WW2... they had it comin'. Anyway, about Umbra the fictitious secret government agency in your universe, if you aim for a realistic tone, I suggest to create instead an intelligence agency that is absolutely not secret and on the contrary openly known by the population, with a bland acronym for name, let's say ORIA for "Office for Research and Intelligence Analysis", whether your fictitious society is a republic such as pretty much every country now or instead a dictatorship: as paradoxical as it may seem, even in a dictatorship everyone know the name of the secret police because it is a necessity to keep the population afraid -the citizens need a name to be afraid of, and to be threatened with by the government. Think about the KGB for instance, or, in Romania, the Securitate under Ceaucescu: even if it was a secret police, everyone knew its name and its existence, and even in the 1950's in Soviet Russia everyone knew that the Lubyanka is the name of the building where the KGB operated and where people were sent to disappear if they didn't obey or were "suspicious". Also, whether it's the intelligence service of a republic or of a dictatorship, the thing that is truly secret is always its inner departments/offices/sections, and a lot of time it's often just an open secret as I mentioned. Inside your fictitious intelligence service, there should not be "a special unit specialised in espionage and assassinations": in real life, every intel service is separated in specialized departments having each one its specific task and isolated from every other one (a basic way to avoid getting your whole organization going to shit if it was infiltrated by a rival intelligence service). Which means that: - the unit dedicated to killing people and blowing up stuff will only know and be told "go there and kill this one" or "go there and make a sound-and-light show of this hidden weapons depot there", but never more than that, again as a security measure (OpSec, operational security) in case there is someone of them taken prisoner or decides to betray. - that unit will often have no official existence (like the "alpha cell/alpha commando" I mentioned: you can be sure this name won't appear on the paycheck of its members, they'll just get called as any other agent by your intelligence service's accountants and nowhere in its Organizational Chart will this kind of unit will be named as such, it's usually an oral name, never written down anywhere), and will only be a part of a department such as "The Special Division Tasked With Planning Actions", without any contact with the other departments (again, security: the whole "oh noes, the enemy has stolen the List of all them agentz and made it public this is such an original plot for every so-called spy movie since the last 25 years !!!" doesn't happen in real life). - that department which controls this unit is just one among other departments in your intelligence service, where there are a department tasked with spying (recruiting agents, managing a network of spies which means paying them, keeping notes of the information they provide, making sure they really work for you and that they don't tell you bullshit, etc) and only with spying, another department tasked with building spy gadgets and only that task (GPS beacons disguised as a shoe sole that will be placed in the shoe of such person by a unit from another department that is specialized in clandestine operations that do not involve killing and blowing stuff up), etc. That separation in several services to maintain security is also the reason why every country has 2 intelligence services (15 or more if you're the USA, but that's not the subject ) : - one "internal intelligence service" in charge of everything that happens inside the country, is usually "civilian", has only police powers and spends its time investigating stuff and gathering information on various groups threatening the society from within and what are their projects/actions, which includes spying on and trying to infiltrate organized crime (think: FBI) - and one "external intelligence service" in charge of every threat happening outside the country (think: CIA), usually half-"civilian" half-"military", that spends its time spying outside the country, getting caught spying, killing innocent people who have discovered that agency's involvement in human experimentation for stupid mind-control projects that couldn't work anyway, testing toxic substances on the population of a remote french village or on the population of the USA because it's not like if they have a Constitution to respect or anything, and has a couple of units specialized in killing and blowing stuff up. But not more than a couple of these units: one important thing to know is that an intel service, unless it also serve as a secret police (in such case it will also be tasked with punishing the average citizen for not being doing docile or just being suspect of wrongthink) or has way too much budget and starts believing in "mind-control" and tries testing stupid ideas to achieve this, is primarily tasked with spying, just that. That is, gathering information, whether it is by planting spies somewhere (the glamorous movie-like aspect) or by just paying people to know stuff (the real, mundane day-to-day inglorious that's-not-gonna-make-a-good-action-movie functioning of an intelligence service everywhere, even in a dictatorship). An intelligence service is an institution just like the State' postal service, the State's department of transportation and motor vehicles in charge of delivering driving licenses, the State's military or the State's police: an institution rarely rebels against its own government, just because, well, it's the government and its politicians that pay its member's wages... if you want a true story, after the spying powers of the internal french intelligence service (the DGSI, formerly called the DST) were expended to allow them to more easily struggle against terrorists, they suddenly had their funding seriously diminished. Why ? Well, with these new spying powers they had got, they kept bumping on cases of governmental corruption during their investigations on terrorism funding, as a side discovery while following such or such lead... so the politicians neutralized them as much as they could, re-organized some services to prevent them looking into incriminating stuff, halved their budget, etc, and then some massive terrorist attacks occurred a couple of years later. The agents of that intelligence service were seriously pissed, some were so disgusted that they revealed that information to anyone that could relay it, and no TV or paper journalist ever talked about it. That's all: no rebellion, no "let's bring that government down", nothing. Because the head of the intelligence service is a civil servant / functionary whom wage is payed by the State, and because everyone at each echelon of the hierarchy is more concerned about having a good career than by doing anything, society be damned. And even if they were so pissed that they wanted to put the whole government down, they can't: they have families to feed, rents to pay, etc, so they have nothing to gain and much to lose should they put the political system down -who knows what would replace it ?. In a dictatorship, an intelligence service will be even less inclined to act against the government because 1) the agents often share the same ideology (a KGB agent is as much communist as the Dear Leader), 2) given how hated they are by the population that the agents or their predecessors have been bullying since all these decades, they just don't think it's a good idea to suddenly support The People to try to pass as the heroes. It's only in very specific cases such as for instance in Romania where at some point the Securitate ended up that fed up with Ceaucescu, and, very very certainly, knew that so much citizen were fed up with him too, that a whole intelligence service and not a few angry agents can decide to rebel against a government that pay their wages and provide them with a career and some nice social advantages: the Securitate finally decided to revolt because every element among a long list showed that it was the most rational choice. That's why no intelligence service ever rebels against its government or betray its politicians, so, for the plot of your story that will serve to introduce people to your universe, and again if you want it to have a realistic tone instead of a fantasy tone: only the player character decides that enough is enough and starts going rogue, supported on the margin by a few colleagues that would (or just could) provide only the bare minimum to help. Some money but not much, a former safe house that is unoccupied at the moment, some ammo miraculously lost from the armory, etc, but not more, no support apart these crumbles that they painfully managed to make at the player character's disposal. As for the player character's motivation, the massive reason why that agent finally decided to rebel, see what follows just below One suggestion regarding your story, relying on the groups you have detailed (specifically, the Gak or Draconi): during the first mission of your game, the Umbra intel service (I'm keeping this name for clarity's sake -oh, unintended pun, eheh) sends the player character in a building/research center/whatever belonging to that weird organization called Transgenic Security to find information on what they're doing, because Umbra has gathered a lot of information that makes its director think, once combined, that some very shady stuff is happening. At that point of your story, no one knows the Gak or Draconi, neither the characters nor the player. The player character discovers suspicious stuff, notably documents (emails, etc) revealing that the government is involved in schemes (corruption) with Transgenic Security. Nothing more: no discovery of the Gak or Draconi, nothing. On mission 2, the player character is send on another mission, not related to Transgenic Security, let's say in another country or in the desert, sneaking (or breaking, depending on how the player wants to play) into the base of terrorists to find information. There, the player character ends up discovering (or facing, if the players preferred to go all guns blazing) the Gak or the Draconi. Powerful beings genetically engineered, which is a Great Taboo in your fictitious society, just as today (judeo-christian beliefs firmly rooted in the society, genetic modification Is Teh Evilz, etc). The player character succeeds in accomplishing the mission, that was unrelated to the Gak or the Draconi's presence, keep that in mind, and passes on the unbelievable information regarding the presence of these weird and superhuman creatures, not knowing what they are, if they come from somewhere in the galaxy or if they are engineered through human researches. Mission 3 begins with the player character sent on another unrelated mission, tasked with accomplishing an objective unrelated to Transgenic Security and the Gak or the Draconi. The player character doesn't face or see them this time amongst the local NPCs, but suddenly discovers that Transgenic Security is responsible for the Gak or the Draconi's creation, is shocked, and even more shocked to learn that the government not only knows but has authorized research on genetic engineering in spite of the Great Taboo that this is, in exchange of a lot of money from Transgenic Security and the funding of the next political campaign and the recruitment of the president's cousin on their board of administration. At the end of the mission, the player character is forced to escape as Gak or Draconi troops converge in the location of the mission and have come to kill him/her, and understands that the government knows that he/she knows. Enough is enough: the Great Taboo is broken, genetic research is Teh Great Evilz, the government is corrupted AND they want the player character dead, so with all of this, the character is so pushed over the edge that the only solution is to go rogue and live in clandestinity with the help of the few colleagues that know the truth and have warned the player character about the arrival of the Gak or the Draconi. From now on, the player character has only one objective: to bring the government down, a long-term objective that will very slowly be on the verge of getting done through a lot of fan-made missions If the tone you want to obtain leans toward realistic rather than fantasy, the police force should always side with Umbra but always side against the player character of course, and always attack Draconi / Gak because their existence is so unfathomable due to the Great Taboo that is genetic research that, well, the average police officer seeing Draconi / Gak would believe they are monsters and, as such, threats. Regarding the formulation, one little detail: the police cannot be "hired as guard" by government agencies, since the police itself is a government agency, so any gov agency just receive protection from the police as the government orders the police to protect such or such gov agency when the need arise. The idea of creating an army of superhuman soldiers make the tone of your story and universe lean more toward the "fantasy" than toward the "realistic" side, that's a choice as valid as the other (even if a bit stereotypical), I'm just pointing the effect that this idea has on the general tone To make the government's corruption problem much more important and "motivating" for the player character to choose to rebel, because embezzlement of taxpayers' money would not be scandalous enough for an intelligence agency (they actually are guilty of that themselves, in some countries), the fact that Transgenic Security isn't seen well by the government should be changed and the government should see them as "just another company" officially while being secretly corrupted by them, again this suggestion is only valid if you choose to go for a realistic tone instead of a fantasy one Instead of taking over Transgenic Security's labs to use them, the Draconi should have raided these labs to get some equipment, captures a few high-level scientists and keep them hostages while having blown up the labs to lead everyone to believe these scientists are dead, blown to pieces by the explosion, and established a clandestine base in, say, an isolated hospital, still in working condition and operating patients daily, to justify the fact that they can still pay the electricity bills as they need a power source for their equipment. They would have dig the equivalent of an underground bunker under the hospital, using the old service tunnels as a base from which to dig, a bunker where they hide all the equipment needed to make more of them by cloning, hoping to grow in enough numbers to one day get their revenge against the government, and in the meantime they can employ the player character for missions whom aim is to obtain new scientists via kidnapping, steal more efficient cloning equipment, steal valuable stuff that would be resold to get more money to clone more Draconi or start buying weapons, etc. I hope this helps

There's a group of players who have meticulously tested and adjusted ghosting rules for The Dark Mod. Please see: Official Ghosting Rules: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148523 Ghost Rules Discussion: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487 Why alienate an established group of dedicated players?

Relax @Näkki, it's great to hear you enjoyed the game. My personal expectations were just a bit different when I read the Steam page, although the various trailers should have been a warning that stealth maybe wasn't the biggest priority of the devs. From the Steam page: "Weird west legends meet eldritch horror in BLOOD WEST, an immersive stealth FPS." Also "Blood West is a stealth FPS inspired by the genre classics such as the Thief series (whose fans will be happy to hear the voice of Stephen Russell, the actor voicing the master-thief Garrett, returning here as the protagonist), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, or - from the contemporary catalog - Hunt: Showdown. The gameplay rewards the careful approach: scouting the area, stalking your enemies, and striking from the shadows. Can you figure out a way to clear a fort full of ghouls and monsters without raising an alarm?" From my personal experience I think the game is predominantly Hunt: Showdown, a bit of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and a very small portion Thief. Stealth is very unforgiving and makes it almost impossible early game when there are various enemies around, but hey maybe I just suck at it. I don't see Deus Ex in it, unless the skill leveling is the Deus Ex part for you and then I have to disagree with you, as that seems like the trait system in Hunt: Showdown. Edit: What I also understood from the Steam forums is that the original VA was dropped close before the release of the full version and replaced by Russell with no real explanation from the devs why this was done.

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.

The way I see it is that when playing a game for the first time players always play the vanilla version. Exceptions are when a game is known for critical bugs or old enough that requires a fix or patch to run properly but regardless, players don't mod games on their first run. Now, playing a game a second time opens up a whole new scenario and here is where mods spice things up: play the same but differently. Here is an idea. The Augmented are qualified players from a future, cyberpunk era. Augmented participate in simulations by impersonating a character and in the Mircea complex the Augmented line up for the upcoming Tournament: The Dark Module. Equipment, mechanics and rules differ from module to module but all games share the same, single goal: complete a simulation as fast as possible. Now, if you like this premise then the Augmentation Mod must be built around the one rule: get to the Mission Complete as fast as you can. In order to make the most out of the limb damage system I suggest a kind of weak character with outstanding healing capabilities. And since the mod is about speed I suggest players level up or level down in accordance with how much they run.

DarkRadiant 3.8.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Support new frob-related material keywords Improvement: Mission selection list in Game setup is not alphabetically sorted Improvement: Better distinction between inherited and regular spawnargs Improvement: Silence sound shader button Improvement: Add Reload Definitions button to Model Chooser Fixed: Model Selector widgets are cut off and flicker constantly on Linux Fixed: DarkRadiant will not start without Dark Mod plugins Fixed: GenericEntityNode not calculating the direction correctly with "editor_rotatable" Fixed: RenderableArrow not drawing the tip correctly for arbitrary rotations Fixed: Light Inspector crashes on Linux Fixed: Models glitch out when filtering then showing them Fixed: Skin Editor: models not centered well in preview Fixed: "Copy Resource Path" includes top level folders Fixed: Skin Editor: internal test skins are shown if Material Editor was open previously Fixed: Changing Game/Project doesn't update loaded assets correctly Fixed: Model Chooser: initially hidden materials aren't revealed when enabling them Fixed: Choosing AI entity class 'atdm:townsfolk_commoner_update' causes crash Fixed: Sporadic assertion failure on shutdown due to LocalBitmapArtProvider destruction Fixed: Prefab Selector spams infinite error dialogs on Linux Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.8.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep using DarkRadiant to create Fan Missions - they are the main reason for me to keep going. Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Keep on mapping!

So, if I understand you, no Thief Gold FM does sound and text notifications of completed objectives? The missions in The Black Parade surely did. I'm completely confused now. I was sure that original Thief Gold had those objective complete notifications (at least the sound). Reading this thread suggests otherwise though: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132977

Similar: My suggestion is getting rid of needing tdm_custom_scripts.script as a requirement. The problem is that unlike every other asset, be it a def or a skin or model or texture, scripts need to be referenced from a core script file for execution: FM's each need to contain a file with that exact name including their custom scripts. The problem with this is that no mods containing scripts can work out-of-the-box as a drag-and-drop pk4, the same way that say a custom character (just AI model or skin) can: Each individual FM needs to integrate it manually, universal mods aren't possible since the last pk4 loaded will override tdm_custom_scripts.script or tdm_user_addons.script breaking all previous mods referencing their own scripts from those files. The ideal solution would be just auto-loading scripts like everything else. But I imagine this may no longer be possible as it could break a lot of existing things like older FM's. One compromise I believe I suggested was allowing a dynamically named script to be auto-loaded by the engine, which would make it so different pk4's don't override the exact same file and conflict with each other: If your mod is named "whatever.pk4" for instance, the engine should auto-execute the script named "scripts/whatever.script" located in that archive... this would provide an elegant and equally sandboxed solution to this long standing issue.

Several days ago I was thrilled to hear that TDM 2.08 contains several new characters along with other fantastic improvements. Seeing how much work had been done on this release gave me a motivational boost to try contributing something myself, especially having worked on porting human(oid) characters to TDM in the past... this time I wanted to submit something that can hopefully be included in vanilla TDM perhaps with 2.09. As I was testing the new release I remembered an old submission on Blendswap called BGE Dragon, featuring a polished quality dragon for the now defunct Blender Game Engine, notable for the fact that it comes with animations for walking / running which makes working with it easier as you don't have to make those yourself. I always felt dragons would fit the theme of TDM wonderfully and allow for some amazing missions, to be fair suggesting them had long been on my mind... remembering how easy it was to work with this one, I figured I'd do the groundwork and instead submit a blend that contains everything needed to port it to The Dark Mod. I'm happy to announce I now have such a blend available! The first thing was the polygon count; The original mesh is pretty high poly, clocking at about 30,000 polys which may be too much for TDM on most people's devices. I played with mesh decimation then did some manual corrections, managing to retain acceptable quality while generating models with okay polygon counts: lod0 = 9.306, lod1 = 6.009, lod2 = 3.218, shadow = 2.265. The original quality mesh is still included in the blend file, so if we need to re-generate any LOD version this can be easily done at any time. Next I worked on separating the armature into two objects, based on the example for the human model I built my previous characters upon: The real armature that deforms the model and is used to export animations, with a control armature driving its bones that's only used to design said animations inside Blender. As the control armature uses a complex IK setup for bones this took some toying with, but in the end I could generate a simple armature which will hopefully work in exporting the md5anim set. Speaking of animations I made sure those are also covered. For the endlessly looping walk and run animations I added markers that identify the frames between which they must be exported to get a seamless loop. I next turned the idle animation into a randomly occurring gesture, then proceeded to animate everything else from scratch to obtain: Walk Run Idle (with two random gestures, stretching / pacing and looking around) Sit (with "lay down", "stand up", "idle" animations) (seamlessly connects to "idle") Sleep (with "lay down", "stand up", "idle" animations) (seamlessly connects to "idle") Attack (two types, bite and slash) (seamlessly connects to "idle") Die (brief animation at the end of which the ragdoll system is supposed to take over) An example gif of the idle gesture from the Blendswap submission, converted to and intended as a random occurrence in-game: From here on I need your help and am calling on the artists who helped create the new monsters (eg: Manbeast) to aid in making this come true as well! I've done most of the work as far as the model goes, putting aside any tweaks that might be needed (eg: model scale and animation length). I'm also going to work on the texture next to produce the proper maps... my target is to have 4 different skins / colors in total. I also believe I can produce the sounds having already found promising submissions to start from on OpenGameArt. But before putting more work into this, I wish to be sure someone can help with the remaining steps so we can get the model in the game. What I need from fellow developers should be: A new AI type for the dragon. Note that it's not intended to fly, especially not in its initial implementation; Later on we may add a fly animation and data to the AI for knowing how to use it... for now I only care to have it work like the spider, wandering around and attacking if it sees a hostile entity. This should thus be easy if we can copy another monster's code. Exporting the assets from Blender to TDM, particularly the model and animations. As I don't have an AI nor a test case handy nor ever worked with exporting TDM animations or models for non-human characters, I need someone else to generate and test the mesh files. First the md5 mesh for each LOD, everything is included in the blend even the low-poly shadow mesh... afterward the armature actions for it need to be exported to md5anim files. Lastly the defs need to be written, along with any other step I may have missed to make the character actually work. I should be able to do the material based on my previous examples once I finish the textures, so don't worry about that part... please just make sure the materials in the exported md5mesh have the same name as the material names in Blender. Download blend version 0.5 I look forward to hearing your thoughts! If any developers or experienced contributors confirm they can take care of the integration, I can get started on the remaining assets soon