Search the Community

I have a bit of energy this morning, so I copied the tdm_player_thief.def into my fm\def folder and made the changes. Didn't help. Even did a dmap just to be sure, but the darn hat still blocks the view. WHAT am I doing wrong? Think maybe this stuff is just beyond my aging brain... :{

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/

I just read@motorsep Discovered that you are able to create a brush, then select it and right click "create light". Now you have a light that ha the radius of the former brush. Just read it on discord and thought it may be of use for some people in the forums here too.

If you already know this ignore it but if you don't, then know that if's in materials stages turn on and off those stages, so you need to make sure you are setting parm11 to a valid value above zero in a script somewhere. But if removing those, didn't solved the problem, then the problem could be the vertex colors itself, are you sure the model has the correct vertex color info on it? Afaik the engine only supports grayscale vertex colors in the RGB format no alpha. Also instead of blend diffusemap keyword try the blend add (gl_src_one gl_dst_one) not sure if this matters but the basic example for vertex colors in this link uses it. I haven't used vertex blending for a very long time so all of this is rusty on my mind unfortunately. Also not sure what you mean with ""lawn_vertex_blend" is the vertex-blended DDS image file exported from Blender and is also referenced in the .ase file." but a material name like yours "textures/darkmod/map_specific/lawn_vertex_blend" shouldn't be a link to a real texture, in reality that is just a virtual path to a fake folder that DarkRadient uses to display in the media section of the editor. You can have a material with just a single word on its name and it will show in the media tab, just not inside a folder but in the global space. it is like this: virtual path/material name { material code } or material name { material code }

I just found this thread on ttlg listing Immersive Sims: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151176

Recently revisiting the forums after a longer period of time I wanted to check the unread content. I don't know if I am doing this wrong since.. ever... but on mobile (visiting the unread content page on my smartphone) you have to click on that tiny speech bubble to go to the most recent post in a thread. If you don't click correctly you'll hit the headline and end up at post 1 in the beginning of the thread. It's terrible on mobile, since not only the speech bubble is really small and was to miss. But also the thread headline is just millimeters away from it so you go right to the first post that was ever made instead of the most recent ones. Am I doing it wrong? I just want to go through u read content a d the to the newest post from that topic.

And here is the tdm_weapon_blackjack.script for By Any Other Name by @joebarnin updated to 2.11/2.11a standards. Nobody asked for it but here it is anyway. To test it, place the *.pk4 in the mission folder, like this: \fms\byanyothername\zzz_byanyothername_blackjack_script_211.pk4 No issues found on my side. zzz_byanyothername_blackjack_script_211.pk4

Find attached the tdm_weapon_blackjack.script for A House of Locked Secrets updated to 2.11/2.11a standards. To test it, place the *.pk4 in the mission folder, like this: \fms\ahouseoflockedsecrets\zzz_ahouseoflockedsecrets_blackjack_script_211.pk4 I have tested it myself and didn't find any issues. zzz_ahouseoflockedsecrets_blackjack_script_211.pk4

A@datiswous Ah yeah, well sorry, I was quiet busy and only visiting discord. First time here on the forums since months now I think.. Thank you for the subtitles. I encourage everyone who is interested in using them to download it from here as I'm not sure when I'll be able to implement them myself into the mission. Again, thank you for your work.

Out of interest: What did mission makers change about the weapons? As I can see, there are a lot of weapon.def's in the mission folder. I mean, I'm aware that there are custom weapons in some missions, but, I wasn't aware that existing weapons also are altered. And, TBH, personally, I find that a bit problematic, as the player cannot know that a weapon behaves differently in a mission.

There's a good middle ground as well. You can have consistent patrol routes with minor variations. Say a watchman walks into a large courtyard. Maybe on the way through he stops to warm his hands by the fire cage; on the next pass he detours to have a brief word with another watchman; on the next he just carries on without dawdling. It just adds some interest and variety to a patrol route without making it too unpredictable. And part of planning involves deducing how guards will behave even when you can't observe their whole patrol route, or watch him go through it enough times to discover all the variations in it. You've got to be able to say things like: That's a watchman, he's likely to have a long, fixed patrol route with few if any deviations. She's a servant, she'll be bustling around randomly in a handful of rooms. That's a zombie, it'll be wandering around the whole crypt slowly along a few familiar well-trodden paths that it selects randomly. It's up to the mapper to respect common sense this way but I don't think it's correct to say that only fixed and unvarying patrol routes are fair.

I created a simple installer script, that uses a popular method to install TDM as non steam game to steamdeck: Just run several commands, by running a desktop-shortcut. (this creates a folder in the homefolder, downloads the official installer zip package, unzip it and runs the TDM installer unattended) go to desktop mode Download the attached file from this post, to the desktop and run it. hit execute button and wait. After the process, you wil find the TDM folder in de home folder Add the file "thedarkmod.x64" from that folder, as a nonsteam game to the steam library tdminstall.desktop

Finally, someone who says it. Especially in stealth games, the A.I. has to be predictable to a certain degree, otherwise you really can scratch your planning and approach. Plus, it's more realistic for guards to have fixed paths anyway. No point in letting them guard places where 3 or 4 of them stack up, and leave the other areas unguarded. That said, the A.I. in most missions works predictably (fortunately).

I dislike this as well, especially if the path to the main objective is very linear. On the flip side, my FM's do have random AI paths depending on the area difficulty, ie: Armory with a ton of loot will have some guards that are unpredictable (high risk, high reward). Medium difficulty will have at least one, easy will have guards that are all predictable. All my objectives are optional, the FM can be completed without taking the risk. I find this method helps the FM's replayability.

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

Ignoring is somewhat inadequate as you still see other members engaging in a discussion with the problematic user, and as Wellingtoncrab says such discussions displace all other content within that channel. Moderation is also imperfect as being unpleasant to engage with is not in itself banworthy, so there is nothing more to do if such people return to their old behaviour after a moderator had a talk with them, except live with it or move away. I'd be more willing to deal with it if it felt like there were more on-topic discussion, i.e. thoughts about recently played fan missions or mappers showcasing their progress, rather than a stream of consciousness about a meta topic that may or not have to do with TDM. I guess the forums already serve the desired purpose, or they just compartmentalise discussions better.

Vertigo is a fun project, multiple paths will result with different outcomes, increasing replayability. I'm building the FM in shapes, ie: The standard city block: 512x512, alleyways: 256x512, market 1024x1024 (with minor deviations) etc. After building the presets, I stack them like legos; I found this method speeds up my build time by a huge margin, it also makes it easier to optimize with visportals. Also, I found building in this fashion (with twisting alleyways), increases performance by a lot, making it easier to add an incredible amount of visual fidelity. My original intention with Vertigo was to keep it small, but it's definitely grown in scale since I've started. I can't apply this method to Life of the Party considering I'm trying to keep key areas recognizable, while adding my own spin on how creative I want to be.

These are some really cool screenshots! Glad to see you've taken up DR and are working on an FM. If you'll permit me one suggestion, I think you should have some hills and elevated terrain in the yard in that second image. The yard and paths look pretty flat and could definitely use some height variation.

I don't recall a system for noise masking. It sounds like it'd be a good idea, but when you get into the details you realize it'd be complicated to implement. It's not only noise that that goes into it, I think. E.g., a high register can cut through even a loud but low register rumble. And it's not like the .wav file even has data on the register of what it's playing. So either you have to add meta-data (which is insane), or you have to have a system to literally check pitch on the .wav data and paramaterize it in time to know when it's going to cut through what other parameters from other sounds. For that matter, it doesn't even have the data on the loudness either, so you'd have to get that off the file too and time the peaks with the "simultaneous" moment at arbitrary places in every other sound file correctly. And then position is going to matter independently for each AI. So it's not like you can have one computation that works the same for all AI. You'd have to compute the masking level for each one, and then you get into the expense you're mentioning. I know there was a long discussion about it in the internal forums, and probably on the public subforums too, but it's been so long ago now I can't even remember the gist of them. Anyway the main issue is I don't know if you'll find a champion that wants to work on it. But if you're really curious to see how it might work, you could always try your hand at coding & implementing it. Nothing beats a good demo to test an idea in action. And there's no better way to learn how to code than a little project like that. I always encourage people to try to implement an idea they have, whether or not it may be a good idea, just because it shows the power of an open source game. We fans can try anything we want and see if it works!

Personally I can't quite pin-point what makes missions fun for me, but I can pin-point things that have ruined the fun for me. The biggest is unpredictable AI. If the AI isn't predictable, then a player can't strategize and the gameplay is merely a gamble where you just quicksave and blindly press forward hoping randomness is on your side. For example: Random AI paths/waits. When I see a guard go left, and then I strategize based on that, and when I'm ready to apply my strategy... the guard goes right. Or when I got caught by an AI that started patrolling, and I quickloaded thinking of waiting for the AI to pass by, but... the AI decides to wait in its post for an extra 10 seconds this time... Random head turns. I really get thrown off when I'm sneaking behind a guard and he randomly looks behind and catches me. This also ruins strategic planning. Another thing that throws me off is when you have to step into complete light to open a door, and there's a guard on the other side looking at it every 5 seconds. I just lose trust in that mission's sense of fairness.

I had a look at the C++ code, here's what I found (I'm no expert). There is code that attempts to deal with AI being blocked when on a path. Specifically, MovementSubsystem::CheckBlocked has this line: if (traveledPrev < 0.1) // movement is very close to zero traveledPrev is the distance travelled during the previous cycle. If this check is true, the system thinks that the AI might be blocked, and it starts processing movement a bit differently. With most AI, their walking speed is such that this check only happens when they bump into something. But the spider_child walks so slowly that sometimes this check happens even when isn't blocked. I think that's what is happening here - normal walking by the spider results in the movement subsystem thinking that the spider is blocked, so it has the spider back up and try a different path. So the spider looks like it is doing an animal patrol. The walking speed of an AI is determined by its walking animation. To test my theory, I made a custom spider_child that uses the ai_spider's animation, and sure enough, it followed the corner paths correctly (because it is walking faster). The downside is, the spider_child looked weird as heck, because the animation is made for a larger spider. So this really isn't a solution. Maybe the spider_child animation needs to be modified (sped up)? Or the code needs to handle slower creatures? I don't know. This explains why your timescale change allowed the spider to follow the paths - by speeding it up, it was moving fast enough to avoid that check in the C++ code. Edit: If you set "anim_rate_walk" to 1.6 or greater on the spider_child, it seems to work fine. Give it a try.

I'm using the version from kcghost. I just tested and I can't see any difference inside the inventory. On the stats itself it doesn't show the different loot types (still seen in the inventory), but instead gives more info on stealth score. Edit: I see Dragofer made an updated version of his script. I have to check that out. Edit2: That version works: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=21272&key=02755164a3bed10498683771fe9a0453

Not sure if you got it working, but I got it working by simply putting the audiograph.map file inside the maps folder and then in tdm open the console and type dmap audiograph and after type map audiograph . This probably automatically works because the resources are now in core already.

I looked but didn't see this video posted in these forums. It's pretty cool.

It wasn't a "sacrifice", it was a deliberate decision. People wanted the game to be as close as possible to the original, including pixelated graphics. If you ask me, the former version based on the Unity engine looked and felt better. But, hey... I guess I'm not the right person to judge that, as I never played the original, and always found that the art style of System Shock 2 is much better anyway. This also illustrates the issue with community funded games: Too many cooks spoil the broth. In game design, you need freedom, not thousands of people who want you to do this and this and that. Just take a look at the Steam forums and see how all those wimps complain again about everything. Hopeless.