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Welcome to the Dark Mod forums MarsManon! Thank you very much for the kind words about SLL, it's always nice to hear We all worked real hard on bringing Grayman's map to life and I'm glad you enjoyed it

I was so enchanted by this FM, I had to sign up to the forums the same day I finished it to come thank the authors Genuinely, truly incredible work! I was so overwhelmed in places that I resorted to just shouting joy at my monitor two, three, maybe four entirely separate times while playing. Exploring, puzzling, finding something new, trying to use it, and finding it does a whole new, separate, wonderful thing! There aren't enough words inside me to describe the feeling. It was breathtaking. I don't have any specific feedback that hasn't come through this thread before Thanks so much for making this, for all the inspiration and ingenuity and effort it took. If I never play another level this good, in any other game, in my life, I'd be fine with that.

Not so difficult, when you use Mushrooms with a high enough Sodiumlevel. There are also other elements with a strong exothermic reaktion with water.

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?

It's difficult. Either you give the AIs the ability to open locked doors with a key they no longer have, which is unrealistic, or they just stand there gawping at the door like idiots after trying the handle once or twice. That's also unrealistic.

At the risk of derailing the conversation, here's something I threw together today. It's a re-imagining of a tiny part of the training mission, specifically the hallway where you use moss arrows to sneak up on a Builder guard and then hide his body in an upstairs storeroom. I agree with @ChronA that the training mission is only competent, not exceptional, and as a tool for attracting new players to TDM it doesn't really get the job done. One problem is that the TDM universe doesn't really have anything like the Keepers, so it's difficult to reproduce a cool training mission like A Keeper's Training. The changes I made for this tiny snippet is that the instructions are nearby, not hidden in a static book in another room. The crucial information regarding shouldering v dragging is communicated via a GUI immediately after you KO the Builder guard. @Wellingtoncrab, if you'd seen this popup on your play of the training mission would it have taken a happy accident to rediscover how to shoulder bodies later? I also added volumetric lights, EAX, and secrets because I figure if the training mission were ever to be revamped it should show off all the coolest new features :] (if you look around a bit you'll also see a shout-out to T1 architecture. because I like it, and because I think paying respects to the original is decent) ztraining.pk4

Don't you get that I mentioned my alternative over and over again? The original players had an issue because they didn't know they need to use a different key for shouldering a body. If this is done by long frobbing instead, the same as e. g. multilooting or extinguishing a candle in your current patch this problem is solved! I have no issues with the idea, I only would like to have the order consistent: short frob - pick up (as is normal with all moveables in TDM), long frob - special action (like shouldering, extinguishing, multilooting or maybe eating consumables next). The thing I find inconsistent is that you see shouldering not as a special action. Also I hope Daft is kind enough to add a cvar variable with which this can be adjusted, it shouldn't be too difficult to reverse short and long triggers.

The fewer words you need to explain your mechanic the better it is designed: For static objects press "frob" to interact with them. For moveables press "frob" to grab them and "use" to interact with them. TDM follows these simple rules nicely. @Daft Mugi I welcome this initiative and I encourage you to carry on experimenting. Here are my thoughts: Interacting with moveable lights: currently to extinguish a candle I must "frob" it and "use" it. If I extinguish a candle unintentionally it is my fault (I pressed the wrong button). With your design, is it my fault if I frobbed a candle 201 milliseconds and extinguished it unintentionally? Long-pressing buttons in TDM is faulty because there isn't any visual timer / bar / whatever. Dragging vs shouldering a body: interacting with the limbs of a body is the more challenging of the two mechanics. Do we really want to promote the easiest of the two and make the challenging mechanic more difficult? Besides, with your design I unintentionally drop bodies often while I intend to interact with doors, is it my fault? In my opinion the short term solution is a very long frob (0,5 secs or longer) to extinguish a candle and/or shoulder a body. Leave the original mechanic intact but have the new functionality somewhere in there for those who want them. The long term solution is something else: what would you do if you were to build these mechanics from scratch? Think big. PS1: Developers should never point players to anything that isn't available in the in-game settings. cvars should be there for 1) debugging 2) testing 3) very special cases, mainly accessibility / usability. PS2: "This is how Thief does it" sounds like a lame excuse. Thief is dead, TDM is alive!

I think shooting bow should be made more difficult while leaning at least. The length of time that you can hold it decreased. But maybe this is another feature discussion.

I did some LARP bow shooting and would guess that's it would be really difficult to do this while leaning. Also doesn't the player basically get an full invisible shot if the enemies can't see him or can enemies see a leaning player?

OK I think I've got to the bottom of this. I've created this forum thread (with bug report): https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22221-bug-drowning-ai-in-shallow-water/ I can apply a workaround, although it won't be perfect and the bug itself needs fixing in the engine. There are a few other things that need fixing so will put an update together soonish.

If any mappers have encountered weirdness with kill objectives not working with drowning AI, I think I've found out why. I don't think it would be a particularly difficult one to fix either. I've raised this bug report: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6323 Some context here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21837-fan-mission-the-lieutenant-2-high-expectations-by-frost_salamander-20230424/&do=findComment&comment=487316 I think this is a bug, but just raising here in case some people think otherwise.

I dom't use it, i found it here with the filter set to OpenSource. the TOS and PP isn't excluding for an OpenSource app, if they use ads mean that they also need to pay an server for this online service. OpenSource is not synonymous with free either, perhaps after the beta phase it is no longer free, so perhaps you can take advantage of the fact that it is still free to create a series of textures that can be used or search another one in Futuretools. AI generated textures and assets, by definition, don't have any copyright, so you can use them as you want. https://www.futuretools.io/?pricing-model=free|open-source&tags-n5zn=gaming

Yeah - haven’t ever had much luck working with transparencies TBH. It can be quite difficult to make objects read as loot as well. I have been working on some Half-Life 2 esque water materials with depth based opacity/planar reflections but haven’t gotten there and the reflection effect is obviously quite expensive. Maybe some of the same principals could be applied to a nice crystal or glass effect. However the blockout calls, and I must soon answer.

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.

That would be a completely valid response if not for: 1) The Android phone manufacturers proclivity for following Apples design choices 2) My wife's addiction to the Apple ecosystem I just wish someone in the tech journalism sphere would call out these glaring downgrades and get folks to focus on the correct things. Remove useful physical interfaces == Terrible Upgrade computing power and efficiency == Should be "celebrated" instead of being yawned at Its an overall sign of intellectual decadence that the tech press are ignoring the most critical and difficult technical advancements and concerning themselves only with form factor and aesthetics.

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

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

Complaint From Players The player must pick up candles before extinguishing them, and then the player must remember to drop the candle. The player must drag a body before shouldering it (picking it up), and the player must remember to frob again to stop dragging the body. The player finds this annoying or easy to make mistakes. For players who ghost, some of them have the goal of returning objects back to their original positions. With the current "pick up, use item, and drop" system, the item might not return easily or at all to its original position. For example, a candlestick might bounce off its holder. (See player quotes at the bottom.) Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6316 Problems to Solve How can the "pick up" step be eliminated so that the player can directly use or interact with the item where it is in the game world? How can so much key pressing and mouse clicking be eliminated when the player wants to directly use an item? How can candles be extinguished and lanterns toggled off/on without first picking them up? How can bodies be shouldered without first dragging them? Solution Design Goals Make TDM easier for new players while also improving it for longtime players. Reduce tedious steps for common frob interactions. Make it intuitive so that menu settings are unnecessary. Do not introduce bugs or break the game. Terms frob -- the frob button action happens instantly. hold frob -- the frob button is held for 200ms before the action happens. (This can be changed via cvar: 200ms by default.) Proposed Solution Note: Some issues have been struckthrough to show changes since the patch has been updated. Change how frobbing works for bodies, candles, and lanterns. For bodies: Frob to shoulder (pick up) a body. Second frob to drop shouldered body, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Hold frob (key down) to start drag, continue to hold frob (key down) to drag body, and then release frob (key up) to stop dragging body. Also, a body can be dragged immediately by holding frob and moving the mouse. For candles/lanterns: Frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. Hold frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. For food: Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to eat food. For other items: No change. New cvar "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"200" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or extinguish. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Benefits Bodies: New players will have less to learn to get started moving knocked out guards. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players have played several missions before realizing that they could shoulder a body instead of dragging it long distances. Frob to shoulder body matches Thief, so longtime Thief players will find it familiar. Second frob drops a shouldered body. Players still have the ability to both shoulder and drag bodies. Compatible with the new auto-search bodies feature. Dragging feels more natural -- just grab, hold, and drop with a single button press. There is no longer the need to press the button twice. Also, it's no longer possible to walk away from a body while unintentionally dragging it. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Candles: New players will have less to learn to get started extinguishing candles. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players didn't know they could extinguish candles by picking them up and using them. Instead, they resorted to throwing them to extinguish them or hiding them. Hold frob to extinguish a candle feels like "pinching" it out. Once a candle is picked up, players still have the ability to manipulate and use them the same way they are used to in TDM v2.11 and earlier. For players who ghost and have the goal of putting objects back to their original positions, they'll have an easier time and not have to deal with candles popping off their holders when trying to place them back carefully. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Issues Bodies: Frob does not drop a shouldered body, so that might be unexpected for new players. This is also different than Thief where a second frob will drop a body. "Use Inv. Item" or "Drop Inv. Item" drops the body. This is the same as TDM v2.11 and earlier. This is the price to pay for being able to frob (open/close) doors while shouldering a body. Patch was updated to drop body on second frob, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Candles: Picking up a candle or lantern requires a slight delay, because the player must hold the frob button. The player might unintentionally extinguish a candle while moving it if they hold down frob. The player will need to learn that holding frob will extinguish the candle. The player can change the delay period via the "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar. Also, when the cvar is set to a delay of 0, the behavior matches TDM v2.11 and earlier, meaning the player would have to first "Frob/Interact" to pick up the candle and then press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish it. Some players might unintentionally extinguish a candle when they are trying to move it or pick it up. They need to make sure to hold frob to initiate moving the candle. When a candle is unlit, it will highlight but do nothing on frob. That might confuse players. However, the player will likely learn after extinguishing several candles that an unlit candle still highlights. It makes sense that an already-extinguished candle cannot be extinguished on frob. The official "Training Mission" might need to have its instructions updated to correctly guide the player through candle manipulation training. Updating the training mission to include the hold frob to extinguish would probably be helpful. Similar Solutions In Fallout 4, frob uses an item and long-press frob picks it up. Goldwell's mission, "Accountant 2: New In Town", has candles that extinguish on frob without the need of picking them up first. Snatcher's TDM Modpack includes a "Blow / Ignite" item that allows the player to blow out candles Wesp5's Unofficial Patch provides a way to directly extinguish movable candles by frobbing. Demonstration Videos Note: The last two videos don't quite demonstrate the latest patch anymore. But the gist is the same. This feature proposal is best experienced in game, but some demonstration videos are better than nothing. The following videos show either a clear improvement or that the player is not slowed down with the change in controls. For example, "long-press" sounds long, but it really isn't. Video: Body Shouldering and Dragging The purpose of this video is to show that frob to shoulder a body is fast and long-press frob to drag a body is fast enough and accurate. Video: Long-Press Frob to Pick Up Candle The purpose of this video is to show how the long-press frob to pick up a candle isn't really much slower than regular frob. Video: Frob to Extinguish The purpose of this video -- if a bit contrived -- is to show the efficiency and precision of this proposed feature. The task in the video was for the player to as quickly and accurately as possible extinguish candles and put them back in their original positions. On the left, TDM v2.11 is shown. The player has to highlight each candle, press "Frob/Interact" to pick up, press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish, make sure the candle is back in place, and finally press "Frob/Interact" to drop the candle. The result shows mistakes and candles getting misplaced. On the right, the proposed feature is shown. The player frobs to extinguish the candles. The result shows no mistakes and candles are kept in their original positions. Special Thanks @Wellingtoncrab was instrumental in improving this feature during its early stages. We had many discussions covering varying scenarios, pros, and cons, and how it would affect the gameplay and player experience. Originally, I had a completely different solution that added a special "use modifier" keybinding. He suggested the frob to use and long-press frob to pick up mechanics. I coded it up, gave it a try, and found it to be too good. Without his feedback and patience, this feature wouldn't be as good as it is. Thank you, @Wellingtoncrab! And, of note, @Wellingtoncrab hasn't been able to try it in game yet, because I'm using Linux and can't compile a Windows build for him. So, if this feature isn't good, that's my fault. Code Patch I'll post the code patch in another post below this one so that folks who compile TDM themselves can give this proposal a try in game. And, if you do, I look forward to your feedback! Player Complaints TTLG (2023-01-10) Player 1: TDM Forums (2021-03-13) Player 2: Player 3: TDM Forums (2023-06-17) Player 4: TDM Discord (2021-05-18) Player 5: TDM Discord (2023-02-14) Player 6: Player 7: Player 8:

I had been using v3.1.1, but I've stopped using openshot altogether. Now I'm using the python PIL library to create each frame individually and then ffmpeg to stitch them together into a video. It's a lot more difficult and time-consuming, but it gives me better control and fewer bugs, and the mp4 that comes out is also much smaller.

Anyone (re-)played the game with Market update? I already was impressed before (played the game shortly after the Tavern update), but, I'm even more impressed now. The changes that have been done to gameplay and balancing in the meantime have lead to a very "round" feeling game (it's well balanced on Full Moon difficulty now, while it was a bit too difficult for my liking before), and, the new town area is very, very nice, and feels very "Thief-y" and "Dishonored-y". Nice locations and shops (even with a shopkeeper ), and some verticality as well. Can't wait for the other areas (there's still a lot to come), and, the story shapes up to be really good as well.

Binding a key solves the "scroll forever" problem in that you can quickly bring up the Stats once you've finished whatever it is you're doing (ex picking locks). The Compass already has a keybind , BUT it shows up in the "inventory slot" which means it keeps disappearing when you need to access some other item. Back to the Lantern. It's part of the inventory, BUT it doesn't show up in the scroll list, (or inventory slot or whatever the list in the bottom right hand corner is called) which is the way it should be. You turn on the Lantern and it remains on until you turn it off. Meanwhile, the scroll list isn't affected. Why can't that work with the Compass or the Stats. Maybe that's a "Hud" issue which probably means the fix is too involved or difficult to bother with. Still.....it would be nice not to have to constantly toggle these things every 5 mins. Remember, when you're picking a particularly difficult lock, it's nice to be able to glance at the stats to see if you're raising suspicions. Thanks Daft Mugi for your input.

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

Why do I have to shoulder entities to get to know their status (KO/dead), or their name (Mr Bad)? The reason we are talking all this is because I wanted to display the "shouldering name" of AI on frob. As soon as the goal was achieved I wondered about non-AI names and here we are. Precisely. A chair is a chair and an apple is an apple. Most of us will see it as redundant and conclude it is pointless or useless. I am not yet ready to give up so let's go beyond the obvious: does having a little tag at the bottom go in detriment of the intended experience? This must be difficult to answer because, I guess, it needs to be experienced. Another little concern in my list is that sometimes you cannot tell if you are holding an object or not. Having a name can help in these situations.

I mean names you can display on screen for the general audience when holding an object. Refer to the screenshots I posted. ------------------------------------------------ I would say we should employ the language/translation system (#str_). I expect most entityDef names (plus model names) are quite descriptive already: atdm:moveable_bowl_large_pewter (bowl01_large.lwo) atdm:moveable_mug_wood_old (mug_wooden01.lwo) atdm:moveable_ball_spiked (spiked_ball.lwo) atdm:moveable_coffeetable (coffeetable1.lwo) atdm:moveable_rock_small01 (smallrock1.lwo) ... When in doubt just fire up DR and see the object in question. Thinking of skins we should avoid including names of materials or colors, in example instead of a "Red Apple", stick to "Apple". Instead of "Pine Chair", let's name it a "Chair". Many times it will be difficult to settle on a name therefore simpler/shorter will be better: up to mappers to spice things up. Now if you ask me, how do we approach existing missions? No idea, haven't thought of it. And bound items such as candles and candle-holders? I don't know, Candle? One case at a time, I guess.