Search the Community

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152224 There is a new mapping contest over on TTLG for the Thief: Deadly Shadows 20th Anniversary and the organizers were kind enough to include The Dark Mod along with all of the Thief games as an options for making a mission to submit as an entry. The deadline is a year from yesterday and the rules are pretty open. I recommend going to the original thread for the details but I will summarize here: Rules: - The mission(s) can be for Thief 1, Thief 2, Deadly Shadows or The Dark Mod. - Collaborations are allowed. - Contestants can use any custom resource they want, though TDM cannot use the Deadly Shadows resource pack. - Contestants can submit more than one mission. - Contestants can enter anonymously. - The mission(s) can be of any size. Using prefabs is allowed but the idea is this is a new mission and starting from an abandoned map or importing large areas from other maps is not allowed. Naturally this is on the honor system as we have no way of validating. Mission themes and contents: There is no requirement from a theme or story viewpoint, however contestants might consider that many players may expect or prefer missions to be celebratory of Thief: Deadly Shadows in this respect: castles, manors, museums, ruins inhabited by Pagans and the like, with a balance of magic versus technology. This is entirely up to the authors, though, to follow or not - it is just mentioned here as an FYI and, while individual voters may of course choose to vote higher or lower based on this on their own, it will not be a criteria used explicitly in voting or scoring. Deadline: May 25th, 2024 at 23:59 Pacific Time. See the TTLG thread for details on submissions and the voting process. Provided I can make the deadline I hope to participate. It would be nice to see the entire community do something together, and expressing our complicated relationship with this divisive game seems as good a pretext as any.

What I understood is that the idea of TDM was born from that it was unclear if T3 would get a level editor at the time. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20050218173856/http://evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=268

@stgatilov, you said, RE string comparisons: I'm unclear if you are referring just to changes you made in 2.11. I think equality testing of two strings (one of which is "text") was working and is a good and expected capability, and should be supported. Including against an empty string. I noticed in your bug activities that you did remove some comparisons with ... == "". I see you also removed string concatenation with "\". No problem, but does that mean multiline macros are no longer a thing? (If so, I'll need to change some examples) BTW, the series so far hasn't really tried to cover the 2.11 changes, since I figured it's a work in progress. But since you did a great deal of GUI work in July, perhaps it's stable enough to try to consider it. I see the logs listed in bugtracker, but don't have access to the private forum threads mentioned there: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20526-gui-refactoring/&do=findComment&comment=477179 https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21535-order-of-evaluation-in-expressions-materials-and-gui/ (Nor do I have SVN currently set up on my newer machine, for changelogs from there.) Any place else I should look?

Sometimes I wonder if I need to buy a bigger monitor and get some glasses to find all these secrets/loot people keep finding and I don't. Or maybe I'm just getting old. Anything other than suggesting I suck. Also props to the AI image generation. Those portraits I was thinking looked really good... almost too good, as if they were taken from somewhere. I read @Wellingtoncrab's post on the subject so I know it's all training data from other artists but it was still effective. I've been a bit mixed on the use of AI assets but honestly in this case, they worked well and blended in with the art style. I think used appropriately they work especially well on artwork such as custom portraits which would be difficult to do well unless you're a skill artist.

This one is really essential: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607 Should work fine with the GOG version.

Hi all, after a longer hiatus, during which I was not very active on the board and only occaisonally visited, I wanted to start up The Dark Mod again (and continue to work on my current map). Since time has not stood still here, I wanted to update first, but when I run the updater, it tells me, that all files are up to date? Have there been bigger changes that require a fresh install, or can this have other reasons? If I need a fresh install, could you remind me, hwo to transfer settings. I know, it was not very difficult, but I would like to avoid to miss any files. Thank you very much in advance!

It is correct that the portraits are AI generated, but I would stop short of saying I “made” them. While there is a method to guiding and getting results which are consistent using these ai art tools, it isn’t really an art or craft. That belongs to the artists the “training” algorithm has stolen from. Pictures of AI posed in game were used as a starting image for all of the portraits. From there it was a combination of text prompts and other images being blended together by the ai into each iteration. I am not exactly sure how many times it needed to run through, but it was a lot. I did not use images from other games to influence the result, just old oil painted portraits (such as those by Rembrandt Peele) and feeding the images back into themselves. Sometimes I would feed a siblings portrait into another result in effort to create some kind of sense familial resemblance and bring in more consistency between the portraits without completely losing their relationship with their in-game counterparts (where they had one). Hopefully this makes it feel like the individual portraits of the Leicester family members were all by the same artist. All post processing as well as the frame and canvas materials and height information were made in substance designer. It is very difficult to use technology like this and not feel conflicted about it. Were we not a very small team working on a non commercial project I would not have done it. We did obviously all really like the portraits, but probably did not expect them to be the seemingly standout thing in a mission rather crammed with new assets.

I may see about it in a day or two but right off the bat I am pretty sure func_group never got around to being implemented. SteveL stopped posting on the forums altogether about a year after that post and I've not heard hide nor hair from the feature. I remember testing it, though after five years it's difficult to recall whether it was in 2.03 or 2.04. It "worked" in a very gimped way and I've not touched it or used it in my mapping since. The whole functionality of it has largely been superseded by Dark Radiant's grouping feature, though of course my hope was that this was going to be a wedge for the possible implementation of instanced map regions/map section nesting, like Valve's Hammer editor had (and there's been discussions of that very thing in the forums, recently too I think). The wiki article might simply be useless but you or I could give the func_group thing a whirl in-game and actually check to what extent it works. This week's busy though so unless there are any brave experimenters it will take me to the weekend to get to it.

So I finished Mysteries of the Sith on Thursday and immediately started playing this mission - what a treat! Where to begin - audiovisually this mission is top notch: Story-wise the mission is not anything new, but what it does, it does well and all the clues about what happened makes sense in the end. In general, this mission seem to be more "streamlined" as in not that much of a too difficult puzzles or unclear readables are present, which is definitely a plus, as I can recommend it even to newbie players. What I noticed was, that main protagonist in the intro video kept calling lady Leicester as Lester. I guess the name got modified later on, but then couldn´t the lines be re-recorded, or readables modified? Here are some bugs I found:

Pretty good medium sized mission with interesting story. I found it too difficult though, so I got stuck. Good that you have a hints section. But maybe it's an idea to give more in-mission clues for lower difficulties (although I wasn't playing on easy)? I found some "issues" that I post in screenshots later, but I found especially that the Ambient light in full darkness seemed too bright? Btw. Maybe also there's a lack of specular in some of the textures? Also this still has ambiant light related code in the material, which is overriding what the engine currently does? Don't know if that would matter. Btw. There's lots of redundant and double files in the pk4. especially in the textures, dds, maps and guis folders. So if you would make an update in the future, you could look into this aswell.

I have returned to TheDarkMod after a few years (I played it a lot around 2015-16, even tried making a map, it did not go anywhere so I donated those few assets). The missions are great. In this one in particular, the navigation is awesome. The city is very good. I have noticed a trend though: the puzzles are more complicated; a lever may open something *somewhere*. Do you think that large TDM missions are suffering from "puzzle creep", that the veteran and in-community players do not notice? [/spoiler] So you have to go *all the way back* to use the crystal key on the teleporter thingy? And I don't know how to deal with the burning crystals either. I ended up killing nearly all enemies in the mages' place, with sword and holy water, because, yeah, I need to figure things out and I can't be bothered to stealth from one place to another anymore, lol. I will try checking the readables and environment with a bit more patience and see. [spoiler] The old format for spoiler tags does not work, not does changing the '/'. Wow, what a way to advertise "I am dumb" XD IMO the best way is to place gradual spoilers in the forum thread. I know it's a bit of a burden on the authors but answering 20 questions disjointly from different users is one as well.

Personally I think Moonbo's Requiem FM is about as good as one could wish for in terms of a spiritual successor to the Thief trilogy. The story hits all the important notes, and the level design is uniformly top notch across all the expected axes of stealth gameplay. And there is even a sequel that trailblazes entirely new territory from its predecessor in gameplay, story, and tone. That's just icing on the cake. Indeed there several FMs for TDM that I believe equal or even surpass the quality of the original games' levels. The trouble is how do you discover them in that giant downloader list? Are there other great missions in there that I have yet to find? That is undoubtedly the greatest current weakness of this project. The ability to sort FMs in the game client (i.e. both the downloader and the mission launcher) by date, size, and author would be a great help. Search by keywords or tags and support for grouping missions into collections would also be very useful.

OK, I'll try to rearrange to that directory layout. I'll have to lookup how to do that without screwing up Tortoise. I'm not on that machine at the moment, so I can't check your BTW. I don't remember about "branches", but I do remember a local "tags" directory... don't know if it was populated.

Ideally, you should have checked out "trunk" directory only, so that its contents get into "tdm11dev/darkmod_src" instead of "tdm11dev/darkmod_src/trunk". Do you BTW have all the "branches" and "tags" directories near "trunk" ? Maybe not, because they are still closed for public for some weird reason...

It seems from the topic description that he wanted it for one of his own missions, but I haven't found any of his mission briefings that have this.. I wonder if the modified mainmenu_briefing.gui could be recreated somehow from the info available. Edit: I see now that DR allows you to create multiple info_player_start entities (just copy the main one), didn't know that. Maybe it isn't so difficult to implement..

(I almost went with the title, "BJ -- still too hard?") Been watching a lot of Fen Phoenix's LPs of TDM, and he seems to be having a lot of difficulty with blackjacking. (check out his vids if you haven't already and leave feedback...this is exactly the kind of promotion TDM needs... except when he gets frustrated). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlSwkX1s1m0&feature=g-u-u I've lost the ability to determine whether blackjacking is hard or not, as I've got too much practice. What do others think? Here's a still from one of his vids, where he misses the guard's head and hits the shoulder instead:

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Bridgeport... These little things are neat but damned difficult to use. No, too heavy for an arrow. Hmm... I wonder what's inside this little ball... if I...

Note that, when you take a picture, the brightness of IPS or TN panels are always exaggerated. Their background lighting isn't as bright as in the picture. And, an IPS screen is perfectly alright for playing dark games like TDM, as long as you opt for an IPS with a good contrast ratio, like my AOC 24G2U. It has a contrast ratio of about 1.300:0, which is exceptional for an IPS. If you want a panel tech which is best suited for dark games, there is VA. BUT, they have issues with the black/white reaction time, especially when you have dark screen content. It leads to the typical VA smearing of brighter screen content in dark screen content. Supposedly, the Samsung G7 monitors have the best reaction times of the VA panels, but they are curved displays, which isn't my cup of tea. Difficult topic, choosing a monitor for TDM. As I mentioned, I can recommend the AOC 24G2U. IMO, it's the best compromise. You get a colour accurate IPS panel, and an exceptional contrast ratio, which is very unlike the usual IPS panels. It's also quite cheap. I got mine for 169 €. What I wouldn't do is get a CRT... most of them aren't widescreen, they have old, even mostly analog connectors, which worsen the picture. And, they're also not as colour accurate as IPS screens. Not to mention that you have such a big device sitting on your table, and not to mention the convex curved display either. I really wouldn't bother with such obsolete tech.

Pretty amazing mission. A bit difficult though. I found the (navigation) map a bit too vague and thus almost unusable. A lot of locations can only be accessed via other buildings, but this cannot be seen on the map (no clue). There's a long road that is completely not accessible, but because it looks on the map a regular street I put a lot of effort into trying to reach it somehow, although actually it's a fake road. Also no street names anywhere on buildings doesn't help. I noticed that the mission outro can only be played once. If I try again, the animation halts. For it to be played successfully I have to restart tdm. Also, during that scene with the player looking at the painting in a chair, you are physically still in the location next to the drain pipe lid. Because you can swing your blackjack and hit the lid and you hear the sound during playback. I was wondering why during playback in the center you see a giant cursor: Edit: I was looking at the original video file and it does not have the giant cursur in it. Maybe a gui or mtr related bug? Btw. I noticed that some things, like the streets looked very similar to your newest mission that I betatested. Maybe it's supposed to be the same city? Where can I find the ring that is lost in the museum?

DarkRadiant 3.3.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Remove menu options which are not applicable to current game Feature: Grey-out menu entries that are not applicable Feature: FX Declaration Parsing Support Feature: FX Chooser Feature: Renderer now takes "translucent" keyword into account Fixed: Lighting Mode Renderer draws hidden lights Fixed: Loading map results in "Real Hard DarkRadiant Failure" exception Fixed: Crash when trying to set default mouse or keyboard bindings Fixed: Unit Tests intermittently get stuck on Github runner Fixed: xmlutil thread safety problems Fixed: Some materials aren't displayed correctly Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.3.0 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. Have fun mapping!

Let me elaborate on this tactic: 1) Postulate some crazy concepts about historical events until one gains a little traction either by morons or people who find it to be an amusing meme 2) Test the waters in different forums and social media spaces to see how folks react to this 3) If the forum crowd is determined to be largely left-wing and rationale, overamplify how "idiotic" people are for believing XYZ and then slowly begin associating these "idiots" with anyone they consider their social or political adversaries until you get large numbers of forum members to rant about right-wing "Trump-tards" (etc) and foam at the mouth about all their political grievances 4) Pretend to be a right leaning person, act like a jerk, and get your posts censored 5) Go to right leaning forums and show them that this "theory" is being censored and see if you can get them to integrate it into the larger narrative of "true things that the left is censoring". ( Eg, add it to the pile of Qanon nonsense ). 6) Return to the left leaning forums to mock the right leaning folks for doing step 5. Mission accomplished, you've entrenched more poorly educated people into an absurd belief system and you've ignited a bunch of left-wing derision against them. This type of agitated polarization works well whether you are Putin, the Republican Party, Democrats, etc. Divide and conquer. Here's a tip: Nobody needs to grouse around about what "idiotic" things people believe. If you don't like people believing dumb things, then create a blog, youtube video, or podcast explaining the topic in easy ( and friendly ) terms to those you wish to evangelize into the world of being "not idiotic". The language of referring to people as "those idiots who believe" is a cancer that we suffer too much of these days with political propaganda organizations such as "Media Matters for America" (MMFA) who basically write a single set of political jokes about a daily topic and feed them to all the Late Night television hosts so that if you don't hear them say "republican person X did \ said this dumb thing" from one late night personality, you surely will hear it from another one and the version of what is told omits any nuance or rational counterpoint. In some cases, the words are out-right fabricated from out-of-context statements or things that MMFA thinks people will believe. Here's a perfect example: To this day, late night comedians treat the incriminating emails on Hunter Biden's laptop as "fake Russian slander" even though the New York Times has corroborated their authenticity and they are DKIM signed. They use the laptop story as a talking point about how Republican's are "pro Russian idiots" even though nobody of either political party would be happy to have the son of a vice president using his father's position to arrange financial scams and deals with geopolitical enemies ( China ). Because the latter information is largely invisible to over 50% of the US populace, it serves as a perfect place for political divide and conquer. If the entirety of mainstream entertainment and news are gonna bury or distort legitimate news stories about their allies, what are the chances that anyone will vote for a moderate "middle" candidate? The left will see right-leaning voters who discuss the laptop story as Russian traitors and the Right will see the left as "idiots" who get all their news from television comedians and insane "woke" SJW blue hairs. Perfectly divisive. People need to stop looking at the proles on the ground and start thinking about all the groups that are trying to pull the strings. So I state again, this is no place for astro-turfers, propagandists, and non-linear warfare. Nobody here really cares about what dumb things are floating through the brains of a small group of internet denizens. If these "idiots" grow in numbers, calling them idiots "louder" will not "cure" them or shrink their numbers. The only thing you will achieve is more entrenchment and polarization.