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Greetings taffers, Here's an early Halloween offering for you, a spooky little haunted house mission. Content warnings include zombies, spiders, and body horror. I set myself a challenge to fit the whole thing in a 1024x1280x1024 box-- mappertools, skybox, everything-- so opening this beast up in DarkRadiant might be the most horrifying thing about it. I'm grateful to my beta testers, as well as various people who put music and sound effects on the net for free, so be sure to check the Notes in the Dark Mod mission selection menu. It may be small, but it should take ~45 minutes for a first playthrough. Enjoy! Third mission in my series.

I am going to sort-of reveal that this is loosely like the nature of my upcoming mission. I noted it here when JackFarmer asked about things that are coming along in this post: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/profile/37993-jackfarmer/&status=3943&type=status It too is a builder church. The player is requested by a hopefully famous character in another mission to handle some business that is affecting the congregation. I am looking to invoke some info and history laid down in other missions as a hook story.

I created the page: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Lightgem In the source I placed the following text: <!-- Page text made by forum user Fiver: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22327-how-can-i-create-an-account-on-the-tdm-wiki/&do=findComment&comment=491145 --> Personally I think the page isn't really necessary because the info is already present under HUD.

In the first post of the other topic Geep proposed: Then Stgatilov's answer: But I think applying subtitles in different languages shouldn't be too hard I would think, but I don't know how the current translation system works. The engine should apply the correct subtitles based on the applied language setting, this doesn't need a whole new language system I think. Not sure who's going to write those subtitles though. I can only do Dutch and English and nobody needs Dutch I think. I suggest further discussion of this to take place in topic https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21741-subtitles-possibilities-beyond-211/

So, for sources of ideas for Gothic Horror-Low Fantasy, some settings that I feel are useful for worldbuilding inspiration that could work as Easter Eggs in TDM are Dark Souls, with a sword in a bonfire. Bloodborne, references to a werebeast outbreak in a city called Yharnam. Ravenloft, you could reference a vampire count named Strahd. Warhammer Fantasy, you could mention Witch Hunters that work for the Builder church. Any other Easter egg references you have ideas for in missions, or missions that already have Easter Eggs in them?

Recently while thinking about this subject it occurred to me that much of horror could be considered as belonging to one of two archetypes: one that's commonly seen in old Victorian novels, and another that's represented in many modern horror movies, games and other media. In my opinion 'modern' horror could be seen as relying on eerie environments which are populated by creepy creatures such as zombies or possessed children and are often laden with shock moments. I think it's widely agreed that these elements alone don't suffice to achieve the desired effect, and in my case they're more likely to conjure feelings of adventure than fear. 'Victorian' horror, on the other hand, often lacks most of those elements. A good case study to exemplify this archetype may be the short story Monkey's Paw. The paw is an item which is capable of granting any three wishes, but it's cursed to grant each wish in the most malevolent way possible. By the time it became horribly clear how the third - unintentional - wish would be carried out I felt a chill down the spine, in what was possibly one of the tensest moments in my reading career. How does one go about achieving this kind of effect in TDM? I'd begin with saying that creating a horror novella as a fan mission isn't such a good way, as it's prone to becoming linear and may feel more like an interactive storybook experience. I think this is more a matter of giving the feeling that something is very wrong about the place you're in. For example: A ) In an isolated manor in the woods one could find a readable saying that several family members have gone missing in the woods, or one in which the son says that when he looks out of his window at night he sometimes catches the flash of a pair of eyes looking back at him. This may make a sudden loud noise coming from the ground floor sound considerably more threatening, as whatever was out there might now be in here. B ) In Ominous Bequest I remember a scene where you descended in an elevator and caught a glimpse through a crack in the wall into the sealed off room, where you saw a noose and signs of a struggle. This made me feel both eager and tense to find out what came to pass in there. C ) In the Broken Triad (semi-spoilers ahead), your realisation of who actually committed the horrible murders across town abruptly put everything into a disturbing light. So, in view of these case studies and examples, I'd argue much of the tension in good horror results out of thought processes in the head, trying to work out the mysteries and what might possibly happen next, and only little out of what happens on the screen in terms of enemies, shocks etc. The latter does have its place in terms of creating authentic environments, but the real horror is in the mind. What horror experiences really stood out for you? And what do you think made them have that effect?

Anyone noticed this game, which has you play as a Thief who enters an abandoned, haunted mansion ro steal 20 moneybags while avoiding a supernatural threat?

Creating a new thread for this as it was being discussed in an old beta-testing thread starting here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21822-beta-testing-high-expectations/&do=findComment&comment=490751 I suppose the main questions are: when should this spawnarg be used, if at all? why was it introduced in the first place? Can we get it documented properly on the Wiki so misuse isn't propagated? @stgatilov @Dragofer

Would Lovecraftian horror themed missions fit into the aesthetic of The Dark Mod, seeing as to how the First City in the original Thief worshipped a Cthulhu-lookalike with the name N'lahotep?

The poll function is acting up, so tell me, what was the better Horror DLC, "inFamous Festival of Blood" or "Borderlands: Zombie Island of Dr. Ned"?

Hello! Tracking down information on software and plug-ins that work with D3 / TDM can be a tough. So I have created a thread here where people can post what software/ plug-ins/ tutorials or other references they've had success or failure with in TDM. 3DS MAX 2013 64bit .ase - Default .ASE model exporter works. However you have to open the .ase file in text edit and manual change the *BITMAP line on each material to read something like: "//base/textures/common/collision" which allows the engine to read the correct material path. md5.mesh / animation - Beserker's md5 exporter/importers for 3dsmax. http://www.katsbits.com/tools, Importing and exporting works. The model must be textured, UV'd, with a skin modifier attached to the bones to export. PM me (Kingsal) for help with this. Imported models using the script will not be weighted appropriately, so this is not recommended if you are simply trying to edit existing tdm content. (Use blender instead) MAYA 2011 32bit md5.mesh - So far I've not had any luck with Maya 2011. I am using Greebo's MayaImportx86 for Maya 2011. I've got the importer working however I get a "Unexpected Internal Failure(kFailure)" and the import fails. This could be due to something finicky in Maya that I am not doing correctly. Will keep trying.. Blender 2.7 about - Blender is commonly used and pretty well supported on the forums/ wiki. Various versions may work as well - https://www.blender.org/download/ md5.mesh / animation Blender MD5 importer/exporter (io_scene_md5.zip): https://sourceforge.net/projects/blenderbitsbobs/files/ Sotha's guide Blender Male/ Female rigs by Arcturus - Here Edit by Dragofer: more links found in this post.

Yes, psychological horror is fine. To be clear, the mission doesn’t even have to be horror themed. You could just have a heist set in a late fall season ( for example ). It’s up to the mission author to convince players to give the mission a good theme score so the mission could completely ignore the theme as long as players are happy with its inclusion in the contest in some way. And really, going out late and stealing stuff is also already a creepy activity so any other horror attributes are a bonus to the default creep factor.

Let's forget about copyright for a moment, and let's say someone made a video game that was like Ravenloft, where different places of horror from different dimensions are mishmashed into a dimension of horror. What if someone decided to artificially do that with video games? What sort of games would you like to see in it? I've had this idea for a while now, but never shared it. Imagine Raccoon City & the Arklay Mountains, moved next to Silent Hill, and past that, Mount Massive Asylum from Outlast, and a few mountains over is Castle Brennemburg frim Amnesia, then Innsmouth and Yha-Nthlei from the original Call of Cthulhu game at a seaside area. I originally got this idea combining a server in The Matrix I read about online for the matrix mmo, then combined the idea with Ravenloft. What do you guys think?

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?

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.

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

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, who here has heard of Operation Insomnia and other horror story readers on YouTube? They read horror stories from places like Reddit's r/nosleep, where people congregate to tell horror stories. Some of these, if adapted right, could make decent fan missions. A source of ideas for unique monsters by those who are able to texture, model, and program is the Twitter page "slimyswampghost", who created the titular monster of the game Sirenhead.

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

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/

The thing is, the games I mentioned are not "my" great games; they are considered cult classics by players, game historians, critics, both mainstream and small media outlets, etc. Dead Space is sort of Resident Evil 4 in space + Even Horizon vibes. It basically brought back space horror in times when nobody was doing any of that. Prey 2016 basically is System Shock 3, translating some of the classic SS2 goodness into more modern era. Dishonored is somewhere between Thief and sort of "pacifist Hitman", as it's not really about stealing stuff, first im-sim game in a really long time. FNV is "the proper Fallout 3", as some say: by original creators, with the mix of wackiness and retro-futuristic techno-horror stuff you had in Fallout 2. Bethesda did lay the groundwork with 3d assets and systems they made, but it was nowhere near as imaginative. You could argue that it's a similar situation as with Thief 1 & 2, the Metal Age is not really genre-defining in comparison to Dark Project, but it improves on it in many ways. Also, it's easy to romanticize the late 90s and early 2000s, but it's also worth remembering many of these games sank the companies. LGS went bankrupt because of Thief 2, Ion Storm was closed after Thief 3 (which I also like, and made a couple of mediocre maps for, ages ago). While I don't want the cinema-popcorn-like entertainment, because I don't have much time for it, I certainly don't want developers to bleed for my pleasure, or for some kind of higher art goals.

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