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With as little fanfare as possible, I'd like to announce the release of the third installment of The Lieutenant series: Foreign Affairs. Huge thanks for my beta testers: @Bergante @Cambridge Spy @chakkman @Mat99 @Shadow @wesp5 For a full list of credits, please see the readme.txt that ships with the mission, or go here. More screenshots can be viewed here: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBr44M Download link #1: https://github.com/FrostSalamander/lt3/releases/download/1.0/faffairs.pk4 Download link #2: https://drive.proton.me/urls/JESNV8CNKW#ljttGnbkkAOh @nbohr1more here's the 800x600 versions of the screenshots: https://drive.proton.me/urls/MFGZ3WXCAW#WXXAnYkPgGZX Stuff to be aware of: TDM 2.12 required The only difference in difficulty settings is the (optional) loot goal If you see a tile material, chances are it's a custom version changed to sound like stone. I did this in order to preserve the aesthetic of the setting without making it maddening to play. Some vines are climbable, some aren't. Just try them and see. The FM makes use of latches on doors, a new feature created by @Wellingtoncrab and myself. Read more here: https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity/test-latch/wiki Here's a list of the secret locations. Obvious spoilers:

The map files in NHAT v4 were too large to diff in Notepad++ or Meld ( etc) so I decided to test out the old I18N.pl script and it still works fine for me. Caveats? It doesn't understand campaign packs so you have to split the maps and xdata and create a fake darkmod.txt without the "mission 1 , mission 2, etc" part. Then you have to renumber the "#str_xxxx" entries in the other maps so they don't collide. Luckily find and replace can easily fix that. A lot of work to get this working with the latest NHAT version, phew!

It seems like I missed this mission somehow. I'm down in the crypt with the slow match, but I can't get the torches on each side of the gold statue to light. How do I remove the gold statue?

I hope that is not the new TDM version. https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20784-render-bug-large-black-box-occluding-screen/

A Readable? I invite you to read the documentation, experience mods first hand and draw your own conclusions. It's ok. You did the right thing. Fair point but the Blow removes the need for Water Arrows which mission authors might provide for their stories. Justifying our decisions is a tricky business. Ok. No idea but I can tell you item sorting, except for weapons, is messed up: you have 4 keys and pick up another one: the 5th key gets listed first in the inventory but last in the inventory menu. Why? Who knows.

The topic says it all, the error goes away when Bloom is disabled, otherwise it looks like this in the training mission for basically all items you can take:

I have numbered your suggestions because I find it hard to multiquote here. As for calling blow and whistle tools and not skills, this was just done to not confuse the player with another inventory class. Also what would the Numbers scroll be? 1) Is there an advantage of your method vs mine? If the result is the same, nothing needs to be changed. 2) I don't know what you mean with blinking being out of sync. Should all loot blink in the same rhythm? 3) It removes the need for slow matches and flints which mission authors might provide for their stories. 4) This is what it looked when I copied it from you, but I had to rename it to avoid duplicate definitions!

About the chest sounds, I wasn't aware the Modpack does change them too. Would it make sense for the patch to use your way or would it produce another duplicate script? I can set the blinking to another frequency, but are you sure this is not due to the game trying to apply two blinking scripts at the same time? It looks fine if I only use the patch. Your blow skill is just a last resort for mission unique lights that can't be extinguished by my frob script. Also my version does not include free relighting so it is inferior to yours ;)!

WOW, what a pleasant surprise! I expected this day would come but not this soon. There they are :) Here is an initial, quick assessment. Currently the Modpack loads last, therefore it takes preference. We can test the other way around at a later stage. tdm_frobactions.script No conflict detected. The Modpack's version takes preference and it apparently works as intended. The Patch changes some chest sounds in a separate script at mission start but then the Modpack overrides these sounds on the fly. Blinking items Threads from both the Modpack and the Patch run in parallel throughout the mission. I don't notice anything unusual except that sometimes the blink is out of sync. The reason is that something fishy is going on between milliseconds 16 and 17 in Uncapped FPS mode. In v4 of the Modpack I set the wait time to 15 milliseconds to avoid the issue and you should do the same in the Patch: tdm_froblock_frobability.script > mod_frob_highlight_blinking() > sys.wait(0.015) Containers Threads from both the Modpack and the Patch run in parallel at mission start. I honestly don't know what the game is doing in this case but the outcome apparently is not negative. No issues detected. Body names Threads from both the Modpack and the Patch run in parallel throughout the mission. I don't notice anything unusual but most probably names are being displayed twice. Shock / Electric mine No conflicts that I can detect at a glance. Whistle No conflicts that I can detect. Players however end up with two different versions of the same feature in different categories. Blow No apparent conflicts. Players however end up with two different versions of a same feature in different categories. This one is interesting because the Patch introduces "extinguish on frob" on small candle sources and players are spoiled by options now.

The project to round up viable orphaned translations is mostly complete now. https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4726 Since Darkfate has their own translations it took awhile to merge the older translations with the darkfate formatting since they generated new string numbers from scratch. A few missions are so radically changed that the old translations are practically worthless now ( and some Darkfate translations are also incompatible with the latest mission versions ) but most of the work was salvageable. I added a "Translation Pack" column to the Missions wiki: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Fan_Missions_for_The_Dark_Mod all entries marked with "Yes" are working translations that use Darkfate's translation design ( includes xdata, GUI and Map files if the author didn't perform localization changes in their own mission pack ). Sadly, these changes do not show in the mission downloader list. You will need to delete mission_l10n.pk4 files from the darkmod/fms/mission_name folders to acquire the new translation packs that "actually work". Not all mission packs contain all languages. Mostly you can count on Russian being in there, but a good percentage have German and Italian strings too. French, Polish, and a few other languages are represented but not very broadly. Hopefully now that the packs work other contributors will add more language strings. Mission administration details: Going forward, it would be courteous if the mission admins ( like myself ) would diff the map files when new mission updates are supplied and replace all the objectives, inv_name, pop-up messages, and shouldered names in a copy of the new map file with the previous string codes then copy that file to the map folder in the translation pack folder. Ideally, authors will be encouraged to run their missions through the converter so only new strings need be added to the packs but not everyone likes that workflow and how cumbersome it makes future edits to the mission.

The Frob Helper doesn't work in this mission. I suggest an update of tdm_player_thief.def to the latest version.

If you wanna put together a prototype implementation, we could provide assistance. I think it mostly just requires adding EFX parser parts to the entity def parser. The big wrinkle is what to do if a mission has both EFX and Entity Def args?

A new "trick" to cover up a security camera using moss arrow and broadhead arrow : This is a huge leap forward from previous old tricks : - using rope arrow and pickable book bug: - the other random bug: But carrying all of these things throughout the mission will weigh down your time....

Thanks for the replies, particularly the reference to the embarrassingly-obvious "Music & SFX" subforum just below this one. I just like the music: I don't have any illusions about creating a fan mission. I messed with Dromed way back in the day, and I remember what a black hole of time and sanity it was.

Originally it was actually from a mansion mission I had in Shadows of Northdale, but it ended up getting cut. I really dug the architecture of the courtyard so I just added in the kitchen area for voila, April fools 5 min jam done haha. Thank you mate! Maybe next year i'll make a mission twice as long! 4 minutes instead of 2

For free ambience tracks it's as Freky said: you look around on the internet for tracks with the appropriate license to be included in your FM. Fortunately, you likely don't even need to bother doing this as a beginner as there's an entire "Music & SFX" section of the forums full of good ambient tracks for you to use if the stock tracks do not meet your fancy. You might also be interested in Orbweaver's "Dark Ambients", which come with a sndshd file already written for you.

Hey maybe you can add the alternative combined lockpick to core? So mappers might more often include it. Mission is great.

Please make the mission complete sound the default for TDM! It was short but I liked it.

Unlike some fan missions for the Thief games, the TDM fan mission authors take care that there is no copyrighted material in the missions.

While I really like new things in TDM, I fear that as long as these ideas are not part of the core mod, only very mission authors will use them...

A big thank you and congratulations for this mission I would rate 10/10. I can't find a better one in my memory. It's so big and varied, full of new assets. Just... wow ! Finding a way through the was hard for me, as well as being able to jump and go through a narrow hole in the I also gut stuck in this area just below the horizontal mesh hatch that opens with Oh, and my game use to crash when firing a fire arrow at a Thanks again, you are so good at this.

I just made an interesting discovery. In my FM that's in beta I have custom main menu music, but it doesn't always work. Basically it works: When you first start the game (whether the FM is currently selected or if you change to this mission and the game restarts) during the text briefing It doesn't work (i.e. you only get silence) When escaping back to the main menu while in-game After quitting a mission and it goes back to menu As far as I know I had all the correct settings in mainmenu_custom_defs.gui: /// Menu music after startup (not in-game) #define MM_MENU_SOUND_CMD "music fs_muslim;" /// Played in main menu when in-game (ESCaping out of the game) #define MM_INGAME_MENU_SOUND_CMD "music fs_muslim;" /// Played during non-video briefing #define MM_BRIEFING_SOUND_CMD "music fs_muslim;" It turns out the problem was I had this line set in the sound shader: leadin sound/ambient/ambience/silence.ogg Commenting that out on a hunch fixed the problem. So you might be saying to yourself 'that's all very interesting but who cares?'. My point is: Just an FYI in case someone else runs into this I don't think there is anywhere on the Wiki that covers menu customization? @Geep you've done a whole bunch around GUI scripting recently - is there somewhere you can recommend I can stick this?

For the FM? For beta 1 it's here: https://drive.proton.me/urls/H1QBB04GA0#oBZTb1CmVFQb I've already done around 100 fixes though, so you might want to wait for beta 2 which should be ready in a couple of days hopefully. All links are in the first post of the beta thread here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22439-the-lieutenant-3-foreign-affairs-beta-testing/

This topic is going in different directions and it is difficult to tell if we all are in the same page. Facts: Stgatilov wants to change (improve, I guess) something and while implementing the change he realizes he will break some mission in the process. Mappers have been including (now obsolete) core files in their missions and the developer wants to know why these files were included in the first place, as in: the purpose. Changes in two mission are unavoidable, unless the authors go back and revisit the entire logic of their missions. Changes in eight missions are avoidable, in the sense that missions remain essentially the same with or without these changes. Regardless, if the improvements are to be implemented ten missions need to be reviewed and updated. Now my opinion: Considering how the topic is going the next time Stgatilov wants to improve something similar he might think it twice (we all lose because of ten missions). If these same improvements were to be implemented in the future chances are not ten but fifteen missions would have to be reviewed and updated which begs the question, does the inclusion of core files in missions put the present and future development of some areas at risk? No, as long as things remain under control: preserve what must be preserved, encourage and support innovations, identify and address trends. This requires an effort by all parties involved.

That's a very valid question. Personally, I'd say the key is to watch what the otherwise-disengaged fringes of the community are saying. If first time posters or long time lurkers start coming out of the woodwork about well made new missions, praising them for their geometry and story but saying that innovative parts of the gameplay felt frustrating or off, that's probably the first sign that the innovations are starting to get out of hand. For a more concrete example, re-read the comments on Hazard Pay. As much as I and many others love that mission, it's clearly a case where the author strayed further than many people were comfortable with. It also points to the likely endgame if authors do take their customization too far. After getting the negative feedback, kingsal made adjustments, and now the mission is much more friendly towards player preferences that don't match the author's original vision. You don't need to restrict the mapmakers' tools to stop them from straying too far from the traditional formula. When people start speaking up, the authors will rein themselves in on their own.