Search the Community

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

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

Here is an alternative way to simplify extinguishing candles and shouldering bodies. Player can double-press / double-click frob button to do a mixed frob + use action. The test build is available in tdm_installer as "test-frob-stgatilov". Attached the source code patch too: FrobUse_By_DoubleClick.patch The original TDM controls are left unchanged. The difference starts only when double-click is registered (which unfortunately can happen accidentally). Also, the double-click action always continues the single-click action. So when you grab a body/candle, the single-click action happens immediately: there is no need to delay it. The maximum time between double-clicks is controlled by cvar in_doubleClickDelay, default is 200 ms. In principle, you can set it to zero to return to the old behavior: then double-clicks won't be registered. Here is how it works internally. There is an utility class which tracks held buttons (which are called "impulses" --- Doom 3 has too few "buttons"). I have extended it to also register double-click. So whenever player clicks frob and this is registered as double-click, then: If there is nothing grabbed, then do ordinary "frob" to grab item (this allows to double-click on already grabbed item). If there is nothing grabbed now, then fall back to normal single-click frob (this happens for ungrabable stuff like doors). If there is something grabbed, then "use" it (that's the main part: it shoulders/extinguished/eats the thing). Unless we have a body shouldered, release currently grabbed item (we want to ungrab extinguished candle). And there is also a special case: If there is something equipped at the moment of double-click, the just "use" it instead of anything else (this allows to unshoulder body by double-click).

Yeah, I think I made the mistake taking the whole long-frob instead of the delay. But as you explained it with the key-down key-up way, shouldn't stgatilov be able to replicate that in his version? Also isn't multi-loot already implemented that way?

I think people will have way more misclicks with single-click vs long-click prototype: you don't even need a second press to do the wrong action. And increasing the duration threshold to reduce this chance will also increase delay of single-click actions, which is hard to notice on 200 ms.

If this is the case, I certainly didn't notice a 200 ms delay ;). Can you please do a test version of your setup with delayed long-frob instead of double-frob? This would be the perfect solution for me and snatcher, as it is consistent also to the current multi-frob. And maybe add the consumable long-frob eating for everything to fit together?

Personally, for this kind of game, double-clicking and double-tapping are the kind of things that instantly get a sour taste in my mouth as soon as I hear it, because I already know from experience that it not reliable enough and it's more prone to human error. You said it yourself: It may also happen accidentally if your fingers twitch, or if your mouse misregisters an extra click, or when you think you didn't hit the target and immediately click again, but it so happens that you did hit the target the first time; or when you're hasting to perform the same task multiples times in quick succession (not very relevant here, but I couldn't count how many times I died in minecraft tapping keys to adjust my position and accidentally double-tapping forward and sprinting off a cliff). Also, given that we're talking about the right mouse button, I'm feeling even less inclined. I can double-right-click, but it doesn't feel very comfortable. It's really not something I'm used to, so it requires a degree of effort (and I suppose it will get my hand tired, as @Wellingtoncrabmentioned). Yup. I like ghosting. To be fair, I play with my own lax rules, but I still feel bothered if I have to tamper with the natural order of things, if I think it's unnecessary or that I shouldn't be forced to. It might seem petty, but it's part of what makes the challenge interesting. You never know, the candle owner might have noticed before bed that the candle was about an inch away from a spec of dust, and in the morning he might realize that that distance has changed. So, from a ghosting perspective, when you tamper with things without needing to, you've introduced a point of failure. If the game requires it, that's another story -- it turns into "I can't work around it, so I have to bend the rules because of it". But as far as I'm concerned it still bothers me and kind of ruins the challenge. For example, TDM has been leaving a really sour taste in my mouth when it comes to dropping keys, because lots of missions don't allow it (because unfortunately they're not droppable by default in DR, and for no good reason, afaik). After Snatcher's post about the delay interfering with manipulating bodies, I was growing tempted to agree with reversing it, but then I realized both ways have issues of the same kind. If you can click to shoulder, then you can't click to drag body -- you always have to hold button, which is not great if you're dragging a body a long distance. If you can click to drag a body, then you can't hold to drag a body. You always have to click to drag and then click to release, which is also not great when you're dragging limbs for a pose or something. (I suppose this might be even more annoying than the other.) Maybe I should posting this in that thread.

Your implementation just falls into the following category: "you delay all single-click actions until you are sure it cannot turn into double-click/long-click".

That's the same for all versions, for both double-click or long-click. You either start single-click action immediately when first click starts (proper solution), or you delay all single-click actions until you are sure it cannot turn into double-click/long-click (ugly), or you just map the different action to a different key (proper solution). Pick your poison.

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/

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?

Sorry for the delay. The new version is up in the mission database now.

It is not a long-click, it is click-and-hold, where holding time matters (and is much longer than long click). So with your change it would be short click, long click, and click-and-hold. Click-and-hold at least continues short click, while long click does not. When I pick up a candle, the candle is lift off with delay --- that's because long click does not continue the action of short click, so the code has to wait until mouse is released and can't apply the short-click action immediately. That's exactly the issue that you fixed with crouching, and now you introduce it in another place.

The "external argument about exact duration" is not removed with double click. There is a setting in OS preferences for setting double-click speed, is there not? The challenge of setting the exact duration is the same for both long-press and double-click frob. Therefore, the confusion is not removed with double click. I tuned the long-press frob to be somewhere between "unintentional long-press frob" and "it being too sluggish." Early player feedback guided the current default value of 200ms -- it was originally 300ms. During more play testing, if players are having trouble, the default can be increased and tested. We need to follow the data from actual play testing. The player can adjust the tdm_frobhold_delay cvar to their liking as well. It's more likely that a player will hold frob while moving an item, because for most items, nothing different or bad happens. It's less likely that a player will unintentionally double-click frob an item during pick up, because they know that would cause them to drop it. Therefore, players are more likely to discover long-press frob to extinguish than double-click frob to extinguish, which is a good thing. We want the player to discover it (if they didn't read the manual or play the tutorial mission). Also, long-press frob is used in other games, such as Fallout 4. Getting double-click frob to extinguish to work well along with drop item would be troublesome, because there would always be a double-click delay before a single-click drop initiates. Long-press frob does not have a drop issue, because the player can long-press frob until they see the candle extinguish or quick-press frob to instantly drop it. To be clear, long-press frob also "does not change existing controls, only adds new meaning for" a longer frob press. This long-press frob proposal has already been play tested and agreed to be a good control scheme by several players. Double-click frob would need new code written, would need to be play tested, and would need to be fine tuned based on player feedback. Another rewrite of the code would be a distraction and may not bring us closer to the goal of "providing a better experience for new players as well as longtime players," especially since one has already been found and proven: long-press frob. For longtime players who are not satisfied with this new control scheme, "tdm_frobhold_delay 0" restores TDM 2.11 behavior. After 7 months of player research, code experiments, early player feedback, adjustments, rewriting code, and more player feedback, I believe long-press frob is good enough, given all of the compromises, imperfections, and its iterative design. It solves the problems stated in the proposal on the first page, and its design goals are met.

It’s incredibly common in controller mapping - to the point even the game’s current controller implementation supports it. Not sure if switching this to a double click is additive or subtractive. What is getting lost is the primary interaction with a body imo is actually to shoulder it - not drag it. Obfuscating this behind a second input is clunky and confusing to new players. What is “intuitive” is a matter of perspective, but the current patched method of the initial click shouldering a body makes a lot more sense to me and actually addresses some of the complaints from new players as laid out in the initial post. There is a method via the delay cvar for experienced players who prefer the old system to restore it, so I am uncertain what the down side is really?

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.

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.

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

I would like feedback on the default "tdm_frobhold_delay" of 300ms. Is that: too long? too short? just right? I personally like 200ms. I made the default 300ms, because I thought some players might click a bit slower than me, which might cause them to do the long-press frob action unintentionally. Which delay do you all prefer? @AluminumHaste What are your thoughts?

I admit that I was skeptical myself at first, but once I tried it in game, I changed my mind. So, I recommend applying the patch to a local build and give it a go in game. It's definitely better experienced than thought about. Regarding the candle puzzle in "Seeking Lady Leicester" (SLL), I agree that this proposed change will make that a bit more difficult, but I disagree on the reason why. The released version of SLL has a flint in the inventory to ignite them, so accidentally extinguishing candles shouldn't be much of a problem. Instead, I think the reason for player frustration would be that the unlit candles highlight, showing they can be frobbed, but when the player does frob, nothing would happen. They might not realize the candles can be picked up with a long-press frob. @Wellingtoncrab and I had a discussion about that exact puzzle during the design of this feature. So, what convinced me that it wasn't really a problem? I tried it in game. Players will learn how unlit candles look and behave when frobbed. Like @ChronA said above: "When most players click a candle 99.8% of the time they don't want to move it, they want to put it out." I decided it was better to optimize for what players expect most often and do most often rather than optimize for rare cases. Players already rage in frustration that they have trouble extinguishing candles or don't realize that they can. Another quote from a player on Discord: "I'd even say the "some players didn't know you could extinguish candles by using them" thing is "almost any new player and a lot of old ones too", since I once had an extended conversation about exactly how immersion breaking and weird it was to have to extinguish candles by dropping them, and literally not a single person brought up the fact that [extinguish candles by using them] was possible." During beta testing, the struggle that some beta testers had with the candle puzzle was not knowing about object manipulation. They didn't know about the "Parry/Manipulate" keybinding, or they forgot about object manipulation because they did the training mission roughly 5 years ago and had not needed to do it in a mission afterwards. So, "long-press frob to pick up" is in the same class of player interaction as object manipulation. In other words, the same problem already exists in TDM v2.11. I couldn't find the original screenshot from one of the SLL beta testers, but here's one similar, showing that the player didn't know about object manipulation: If this is truly in a released mission, I'd like to know about it. We can problem solve for that case if it does in fact exist. I don't think we should concern ourselves with something hypothetical, though. And, I disagree that we should make or keep controls cumbersome for the player in order to add challenge. I agree with @ChronA here. I don't think players are playing TDM for that type of challenge. The patch includes the following cvar: "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"300" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or pick up. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. When "tdm_frobhold_delay" is set to 0, candles and bodies have the same behavior as TDM v2.11. As of a few moments ago, bodies didn't quite have the same behavior. But based on your feedback, I updated the patch (linked above) to make bodies behave that way. Thank you for your feedback.

Greetings everyone! I recently got into TDM and am already having a lot of fun playing through and ghosting missions. However, coming from Thief, I am mostly relying on the rules and my experience with that game, while there are clearly differences in how TDM works. Right now, there is talk in the ghosting discussion thread on TTLG to amend the ruleset and include clarifications pertaining to TDM. So I wanted to drop by and ask: is there an active TDM ghosting community already and have any rules for this playstyle been developed? I would also like to ask someone to take a look at the draft of this addendum to see whether everything looks correct: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487&page=16&p=2473352&viewfull=1#post2473352 Thanks!

A Problem Arises I've paused subtitling of the Lady02 vocal set, because of a problem with the voice clips described here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21741-subtitles-possibilities-beyond-211/&do=findComment&comment=490151 While a way forward is being determined, I'll work on a different vocal set. Maybe manbeast, for which Kingsal just provided me the voice script.