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So, I'm actually trying to figure out just how the combat system works in TDM. From what I can see, it actually looks great, but I tend to be very bad at it (yet people think I'm good in PVKII, Condemned and Chivalry, just not an expert). It seems to work just like the Doom 3 fists; Sometimes you know you hit him because the hands pretty much "passed through", but you just didn't. So...The hit detection is actually terrible? I have noticed that each part has its own damage, for example, hitting the head will deal more damage than hitting the arm, while hitting the torso deals more damage than hitting a leg. The shortsword, as I said before, acts like a "stabber". You can swing, left or right, but there's a chance you might not hit or hit the wrong "part", so the stabbing itself and the overhead is actually better than that. Now, whenever I attack and hit a human, there's a blood mark, this helps a lot knowing where I really hit him, since I'm aiming at the head and apparently I hit his chest. But one big problem is when I fight the rest, especially undead. I try killing a Haunt (Yep, I'm that stupidly reckless. By the way, that's his name?) and when I stab his chest, I think I stabbed his...Arm, butt or even head, but I'm not too sure. tdm_show_health, 220 to 210. Undeath are harder to kill than humans, but still... A zombie at 160 HP, I hit him, I think I hit his torso, and he loses 40, reaching 120. I don't get it, did I really hit the torso or I hit his head? I know this is a stealth game and combat is not something that should be focused a lot, but is there no way to improve it or learn it better? Also, I play it at a normal difficulting. Another thing; If I remember right, the "attack moves" are mouse-dependant and not move-dependant or button-dependant. That means that if you aim up, you'll do stab, if you aim down, overhead (Or the other way). Same with the swings, you aim left or right. Nothing to complain, except, can we get an optional "marker"? If you guys ever played PVKII with the attack moves being Mouse-oriented, you'll understand what I mean. A small circle appears when you're about to attack, and then a dot is in the centre, you'll have to move it left, right, up or down. It's very fast so you don't have to really look up.

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

Hey all! I haven't properly played the Dark Mod since 2.05 or maybe even 2.04 until now and I've noticed that whatever I do in game the center and LFE channels of my 5.1 sound system remain silent. In other words, the output is actually 4.0 (2 front + 2 rear speakers) rather than 5.1. Now, I am not sure exactly but I recall no problems previously - until the EFX update 2.06, I think. I even found my older post about extremely loud LFE channel here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/18741-really-loud-music/&tab=comments#comment-405277 As I understand, it is often made that the center and LFE channels are reserved for special sounds and not used often as the front speakers. For example, in Witcher3 center is mostly used for voices in the dialogs and the best way to check LFE is to use the aard sign magic. Or, in Skyrim it is known that LFE plays only when the dragon hits the ground. The first question is: do I have an issue with sound or not? Because maybe the sound output is ok and I've simply met no specific conditions utilizing the center and LFE channels? Minding my previous paragraph, I don't think it's EFX related but maybe the sound shaders simply changed since 2.05? This all brings me to another question: is there a way to check somehow in the Dark Mod wether the game outputs the sound correctly? About my setup now. I output sound via HDMI to Pioneer receiver with 5.1 setup. Everything works fine in modern games that provide 5.1 output support like the Witcher3 or Mortal Kombat 10 and 11. The windows sound configuration in control panel allows me to check all the speakers and it's fine. I have win 7 64 bit, OpenAl installed. The Dark Mod allows me to set 5.1 sound in options with no warning (I know that in other cases it gives a message like "your system does not support this sound configuration"). Please, help me to find out if anything's wrong with my setup and why my center and LFE channels are silent. Hate to start new threads but I didn't find anything related to my problem. Moreover, I feel the lack of sound-related discussions considering our community's interests.

I also feel you. I used to be a regular here in the forums, but since my son was born in 2022, it basically grunded to halt, although I still get the mails on threads that I wrote in. Ironically, your post in June about not having time got me back here and got me motivated to try and use some of my precious spare time to get some progress on the map I started years ago. I still have not been able to finish a map and want to change that, as long long as the community here is still active

This thread can also be used to discuss about TDM combat overall. I just noticed there is a combat difficulty setting in the options. What does it do exactly? I didn't find any info on it in the wiki. I've disabled autoparry and nowadays I think the AI is a bit too easy to beat in one-on-one melee. I also can cycle through the melee trainer in the training mission without auto-parry on. Hopefully the melee combat option can be used to increase the challenge. The easiest way to winning a melee is the thrust attack. It seems really easy to hit AI in the head and they almost always go down in a single hit. Usually when they rush at you with their sword raised you can kill them with a single thrust. Actually the thrust attack is so powerful that there is not much point in using the other attacks. Is this intentional? Also it would be nice to have a bit more variety in the sword-vs-sword clashing sound. It seems like there is only one or two very similar sounds for that at the moment.

Of course, it is one of the reasons for the decline of online forums, since the advent of mobile phones. Forums on a mobile are a pain in the ass, but on the other hand, for certain things there are no real alternatives to forums, social networks cannot be with their sequential threads, where it is almost impossible to retrieve answers to a question that is asked. has done days ago. For devs for internal communication, the only thing offered is a collaborative app, such as System D (not to be confused with systemd). FOSS, free and anonymous registration, access further members only by invitation, full encrypted and private. https://www.system-d.org

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.

Once the new Blackjack arrives in the official Developer Builds it should get more attention by players so there will be more feedback. There are probably a whole class of players like myself who rarely Blackjack or engage in combat to stay as close to the ghost ethos as possible. Players with that play style generally wont care too much if Blackjack is made easier because any use of the Blackjack is considered "cheating" from their perspective. The current "Blackjack mini-game" ( skull baseball ) is pretty fun when you get the hang of it but the lack of visual cues to execute it are why most new players get frustrated with it. I think more players would enjoy that mini-game if there were something like a frob highlight on the head when the player is properly positioned to execute a successful Blackjack but that might also make the mini-game too easy ? Rant time: As a general proviso, I've always liked the Zelda lock-on combat design for this type of thing: 1) Engage a weapon with some sort of HUD, cross-hair, etc that highlights your target when you are pointed at it 2) Once you have activated a valid target hold down a "lock-on" button 3) The player is frozen in place and can only manipulate the weapon aim 4) A second attack button is engaged to attack the targeted enemy In some Zelda games, when you do not use the "lock-on" mechanic the game tries to guess who you intend to attack based on your position and the position of enemies. It is a design that gives players the most control while allowing them to move freely. To me a perfect design would also include a momentum mechanic where the amount of time you hold down the attack button increases the power of the attack. This would make the whole attack process feel very close to real-world manipulation and better match the "Immersive Sim" design. We already have some of the basic implementation details for such a lock-on system with the combination safe entities that use the scroll wheel. All this said, I guess anyone wanting this level of control during combat might as well skip past a "lock-on system" and simply wait until they can play TDM with VR and use actual arm swinging ( motion control ) to control Blackjack hits.

So giving it none of those tags, but making the AI invisible, silent, non-solid, and on a team neutral to everyone would not work? Oh well, it was a horrible inelegant idea anyway.

I know as a Thief-like game, The Dark Mod is not really supposed to be focused on fighting, but there should be reasonable fighting mechanics. I don't know how to beat any of the heavily armored enemies in the tutorial apart from shooting an arrow right in their face. *Combat Issues: - AI blocks perfectly every time, the moment you even start swinging the sword. - AI side swing and over-head swing are difficult to distinguish. - Your block must start the moment the AI even begins to swing. Any later and your block may unexpectedly fail even though it's the correct direction and the visuals display you fully blocking. To fix the issues, I can only think of suggesting that the AI might need a random chance of blocking correctly, higher with class of fighter. The animation and sword movements need to be a bit more obvious so the side swing and over-head are easily distinguishable. The player's mechanics either need to be tweaked so blocking correctly is more likely or maybe an auto-block with a high chance of blocking correctly (last resort). What do you think?

Dis-armament... So Armed foes drop their main weapon when downed - what if...They could be Dis-Armed in combat? Perhaps as an optional challenge this applied to players too? As to how it happens / what kind of combat technique, poor-block or random bad-luck...I'd leave that up to playtesting. This leaves another 'gap'; Unarmed/Melee fighters - whom might still be willing to fight on... implies the need for some kind of 'unarmed' stance / animation set for this to work.

Hey, Every time I've try to use the Full Editor when PM'ing someone, and every single time I get an error. Whoever is in charge of the forum, is it possible that this could be fixed? Thanks Neon

Regardless of team shouldn't the other AI react to audible combat nearby? The team civilians will flee I would guess...

Yes AI in combat or search alert other AI. Are these AI on the same "team"?

That looks stupid. Isn't there a setting to make guards alerted if they hear combat sounds or other guards nearby are alerted? Even Bloodlines has the first option as standard that can be set for any AI and can do the other using stats!