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That sounds like a good proposal to me, since it places responsibility for modulating the difficulty effects fully in the player's hands. I think that is a good solution to the authorial intent problem. However, if you go that route I think a certain amount of cleverness is needed to really make the feature successful. In most situations, whether guards remain alerted for 30 seconds, 30 minutes, or 30 years makes no difference at all to difficulty. If you successfully get away, you will have plenty of maneuvering room and/or combat tools at your disposal to deal with the heightened threat. It just requires a bit more caution and patience. And if you don't get away, or just can't be bothered, then you will reload and the guards will switch back to unalerted regardless. Absent a carefully engineered scenario where guard activity patterns adjust depending on alert state (and save scumming is inhibited somehow), this proposed behavior amount to a cosmetic adjustment that most players will never even notice. Right now, as a practical matter, yes. There are currently some open source language models that can run on local hardware, but all the ones I have seen lack the ingenuity and self-awareness of GPT-4, which remains the gold standard. I do not think they could make very good guards. That said, I think it is reasonably likely that we could get to that point with local, consumer grade hardware within 3-5 years. There are a lot of signs suggesting GPT-4 is poorly optimized as neural networks go. Its brain contains a lot of connections that chew up compute resources, but only a small proportion of them do anything useful.

Hello TDM-ers. I am encountering an issue where textures seem to partially disappear. I tried searching the forums, but, I don't know what to search for. The missing textures are a worldspawn brush acting as a roof with {for now} flat iron texture. There are other worldspawn brushes right below to create an attic ceiling with roof framework board texture. These gaps appeared a few edits ago. I can't "undo" to get back before whatever edit did this. The gaps are only visible during play and are not visible during editing. Closing and reopening DR and TDM do not fix anything. Some of the brushes overlap in areas behind the play area but I have never seen an issue doing that. The attached image has the effect I am now seeing. Ideas on where to start debugging this? Very much appreciated. Clint

(I apologize for the odd poll question layout. I wasn't able to add five yes-no questions, because polls are limited to three questions.) Hi everyone, I've recently been working on some patches for issues that I've read about from players on the TDM and TTLG forums — and Discord. My goal is to make it as easy as possible for players, especially new players and those who need usability/accessibility options, to find what they need in order to have a better TDM experience. I've already written the GUI and game engine code for these settings, which I've been using in my personal build. The reason for this poll and discussion is to both guide the finalization of my work and collect data to help inform the dev team. Which patches I submit depend on the outcome of this poll, discussion, and what the dev team agrees to accept. Once decided, I can coordinate with the dev team. I've attached screenshots of what the new settings menu would look like if all of the settings are accepted. Below, I have detailed each menu setting, so you can have an easier time understanding each one. Very important to keep in mind: None of these settings change TDM default behavior. They are all opt-in. If you are already happy with the behavior of 2.10, 2.11, etc. and these menu settings are accepted, nothing will change for you. Rename "Always Run" to "Run Mode" with options "None, Always, Toggle" After 2.11 was released, @i30817 requested that "toggle run" be added to the settings menu. Its cvar is already in TDM as "in_toggleRun" (same as Doom 3). I propose renaming the "Always Run" setting to "Run Mode" with options: "None", "Always", and "Toggle". None = in_alwaysRun 0; in_toggleRun 0 Always = in_alwaysRun 1; in_toggleRun 0 Toggle = in_alwaysRun 0; in_toggleRun 1 Show Blackjack Helper @Wellingtoncrab suggested that the new blackjack helper be added to the settings menu. Its cvar was added to 2.11 as "tdm_blackjack_indicate". More info: It's the new blackjack helper added to 2.11. When the game detects that the blackjack can be used for a successful hit or KO, the blackjack will rise slightly. I propose a "Yes/No" setting for this. Slider for "View: Head Bob" @ChronA requested a way to disable head bobbing, because a viewer watching him play was having severe motion sickness. Also, there was a bug in TDM that made setting the head bob in the console not stick after loading a saved game. (Even with 2.11, if a mission overrides the "tdm_player_thief.def" file and sets "pm_bobroll", "pm_bobpitch", "pm_bobup", and other cvars, it will override player preferences.) As far back as 2008, players have had trouble setting head bob. Another one from 2018. At the end of 2022, @Shadowex3 registered just to voice the need for a way to control head bob. I propose that a slider be added to adjust the amount of head bob. This would use a new "pm_headbob_mod" cvar with a value between 0.0 and 1.0 (default 1.0, no change). The "pm_headbob_mod" would be a multiplier for "pm_bobroll", "pm_bobpitch", and "pm_bobup". The advantage to this approach is that missions like Volta 2 and Hazard Pay would not need to adjust their "tdm_player_thief.def" files for head bob to work properly. And, the player can still adjust "pm_bobroll", "pm_bobpitch", and "pm_bobup" as they like. Slider for "View: Mantle Roll" This is similar to head bob for those who are sensitive to motion. Its cvar was added to 2.11 as "pm_mantle_roll_mod". A Thief player on Discord said, "2.11 will have a cvar to tune down the mantling animation at last." I propose that a slider be added for "pm_mantle_roll_mod". Auto-Search Bodies @Zaratul requested the "auto-search bodies" feature from Thief 1 & 2. Its cvar was added to 2.12 dev16783-10307 as "tdm_autosearch_bodies". I did a poll on the a Thief Discord server and roughly 20% of players there use the Thief auto-search bodies feature. I propose a menu setting for this, so that players coming from Thief 1 & 2 can easily find it.

Awesome! Post is up! https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22200-beta-testing-the-house-of-delisle/#comment-487365 Thanks!

Biggest disappointment so far is the melee combat. As others have said, it's hard to tell when you score a hit. There really is no "thwack" sound, be it a fleshy one when fighting mutants, or a metallic one when fighting bots, and they don't recoil. This is one aspect that id games always got right. You always knew when you scored a hit on their monsters.

Hi guys, through the "cheats" topic I got the idea, that it would be quite useful, if there were tags for missions (the post was about removing the killing restriction in some missions to suit the prefered play style). I don't know how easy or difficult this is, but with them, it would be quite convenient to pick missions with playstyles, environment, etc one does want to use. This could also be expanded to other mission properties. I remember a discussion about climbable drains, handles on doors, that cannot be picked and other things the map author chooses for himself. That way these things would be clearer and as I said before, it is easier to choose missions with playstyles that suit oneself. What do think?

id Studio did a poor job in defining its categorization of variable nomenclature, so in subsequent documentation and discussions there are divergent views (or just slop). In my series, I had to choose something, and went with what I thought would be clearest for the GUI programmer: Properties, which are either Registers (like true variables) Non-registers (like tags) User Variables (also true variables) I see that your view is more along these lines (which perhaps reflects C++ internals?): Flags (like my non-registers) Properties, which are either Built-in (like my registers) Custom (like user Variables) Also, elsewhere, you refer to "registers" as temporaries. I am willing to consider that there could be temporary registers during expression evaluation, but by my interpretation those would be in addition to named property registers. I'm not sure where to go next with this particular aspect, but at least can state it.

well, I found flaws in combat mechanism. If I face to the foe and just hold left mouse button (ready to strike and steady) He doesn't attack at all and just keep following me, even I turn around against him, unless you release your left click. It can be useful if you want to bring an enemy to where you want to get him Missile combat is flawed too. archers are really dumb. if I stand by the corner slightly, he cannot hit me by arrows but I can. Also, If I stand under him between walls or fences I see his head, He just yells and standing there like who wants to get his head fierced. He should take cover to protect his head, shouldn't he? needs some solutions. sorry for my poor english

The *DOOM3* shaders are ARB2 ('cause of old GeForce support) carmack plan + arb2 - OpenGL / OpenGL: Advanced Coding - Khronos Forums

I disagree a little, as I think you are right as far as the likely dynamic in vanilla Thief/TDM, but since the discussion is about stealth games in general I am not sure this is entirely true. It probably does cause players to try and avoid detection and other risk in games, but the idea is when it occurs the player must then engage with the detection/combat mechanics or at least weigh this against significant progress loss. This understandably sounds like a bad compromise to those players who are not interested and typically always just quickload when this sort of thing kicks off. This is kind of the loop in the modern wolfenstein games - when the player is discovered you go loud so to speak and it works (Especially in New World Order) because that side of the game holds up really well (it also lets you quick save and the encounters are short with generous autosaves so restarting does not come at risk of significant loss of progress). In vanilla thief/TDM this experience is likely to be miserable in the most common scenarios in the game, so forcing players to engage with it seems like a mistake. If you want players to engage with the detection/combat loop making it fun is my mind a more successful approach than restricting a players ability to save (I think Hazard Pay also does this relatively well in the enemy design, which is another reason why I think it works and why we should not be closed off to this avenue for designers). But I do think it is a way to get more players to engage with a different side of a game, or at least those that would typically just quickload to reassert their typical play style instead of using the quickload as a means to experiment with the game as you describe.

That's completely wrong, if anything, save restrictions would cause players to AVOID combat, which comes with the HUGE penalty of death and causing the loss of all progress since last save / mission start. If anything, quicksaving before a combat encounter should encourage players to try something daring and dangerous and not too bright. Can I make that jump? Can I take on 2 guards at once? Can I just run by these undead? etc etc. Quicksaving provides safety net for trying things without huge punishment.

Thanks, I can also recommend gog galaxy. The idea of the custom tags is really nice, I'll have to try this out too!

Keep in mind also that mission size, and complexity have increased dramatically since the beginning. For a lot of veteran mappers, it can take over a year to get a map made and released. The last dozen missions have for the most part been pretty massive, with new textures, sounds, scripts, models etc. We seem to be long past the point of people loading up the tools, and banging out a mission in a few weeks that's very barebones. We still do see some of those, but I noticed in the beta mapper forums and on Discord, that mappers seem to make these maps, but don't release them, and instead use the knowledge gained to make something even better. Could just be bias on my part scrolling through the forums and discord server though.

YOU TAFFERS! Happy new year! Deadeye is a small/tiny assassination mission recommended for TDM newcomers and veterans alike. Briefing: Download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JWslTAC3Ai9kkl1VCvJb14ZlVxWMmkUj/view?usp=sharing Enjoy! EDIT: I promised to someone to write something about the design of the map. This is in spoiler tags below. Possibly useful to new mappers or players interested in developer commentary.

Seems to confirm: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=5718 does it happen in the latest dev build: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20824-public-access-to-development-versions/

For me, save restriction does not work in hardcore stealth games because there is no alternative. If I fail this knockout or get accidentally caught here, then I have options: quickload die and replay a whole section from scratch run away and wait for a long time, after which have much more problems during the whole rest of the mission because every guard is prepared for combat (and killing people is annoying and often forbidden) That's boring! The options 2 and 3 are absolutely opposite to having fun! What is even worse, if I start to care about risk, then I have to restrain myself from exploration. I should not go to some places because I find them too risky! Doing so is absolutely stupid in a game like thief/TDM, where exploration is the core aspect of the game. I never understood what's the pleasure of playing TDM/Thief in ironman mode, even though I tried to do that on a small mission. On the other hand, I won Dishonored 2 in ironman mode without dying/loading and had a lot of fun with it. And the reason why it was fun is that I knew I had a lot of alternatives when I messed up. Like sleeping darts, stun weapons, and unarmed combat. And most importantly, I could pull out my pistol and shoot out through the crowd if things went really bad! As the result, the cases where I failed stealth were the best moments in the whole playthrough, even though I was mostly stealthy and non-lethal. No-killing is a tradition for TDM, we cannot go against it, partly because AI is tuned to calm behavior more than to combat. Turning the player into fighting beast (like in Dishonored) is not an option either. Hence there is no way to restrict save/load without breaking the fun completely for most players. And speaking about cheats in general, there are many reasons to have them. The most important is young players (although this probably does not apply to TDM) and players lacking skill. My dad was a geek. He brought PC to our house when I was six, and showed be QBasic. He also showed me how to use Hex Editor to change gold/time in savegames before anything like Artmoney existed (that was DOS times, so I converted between hex and decimal on paper). I remember how I lifted time restrictions from games, like Prince of Persia and King's Bounty. That's the only way I could play through those games at that age. Of course, much later I revisited them and won them without cheating. I played ADOM for a long time with backing up my savefiles, effectively removing the permadeath restriction of roguelike genre. The fun thing: it did not help me to win the game After spoiling myself with reading a lot of wiki, I managed to win the game and then started to play it without backups. On the other hand, I'm opposed to having such customizations anywhere in the menu. Having more options usually means that things break more often, and also it hinders players away from the experience prepared by the mapper.

https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/tags <- directx 12 wrapper for dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/tags <- directx to vulkan wrappers D3D 9 to 11 eg. dxvk if you want to try it with horizon zero dawn you need to copy out dxcompiler.dll from Tools\ShaderCompiler\PC\1.0.2595\x64 and bink2w64.dll from Tools\bin and place them next to HorizonZeroDawn.exe. then copy over dxgi.dll from dxvk and d3d12.dll from vkd3d and place them next to it to. now fire up the game and let the shaders recompile -> profit.

TTLG? That's Through the Looking Glass Forums. A looking glass fan community. Has been around for a long, long time. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/