Search the Community

EDIT - Please note this is Work In Progress and there are more versions available further down this thread ------------------------------------------------------- Hey, A post about a handheld lantern met my eye and sometime later @RedNoodles shared the source files. I don't know who created the lantern in the first place but as per the below post @Dragofer, @Amadeus and @Goldwell were involved. EDIT: @Obsttorte is to be credited BIG TIME, according to Amadeus: I have since been toying with the files and made further improvements: Term "Lantern" replaced with "Lamp" to distinguish it from the former. Comprehensive code clean-up. Removal of unnecessary files. Adjustments here and there. There still is room for more improvement: Better looking inventory icon Better sounds (it currently uses Blackjack sounds) Sounds improved thanks to @Goldwell The lamp clips through walls when up close (no idea how to fix this) The lamp still makes use of def/tdm_player_thief.def and script/tdm_user_addons.script and therefore it isn't compatible with all mission or other mods. I would like this lamp to be truly standalone and compatible with everything but I am not sure how to proceed from this point on. If you ask me, this neat lamp should be properly integrated in the game for mappers to make good use of it. You can find my version attached to this post. Place the *.pk4 in your TDM folder and access the lamp by scrolling through your weapons. Remember: the lamp isn't compatible with other mods. Cheers! z_handheld_lamp_v0.1.pk4

Yeah, I guess I didn't consider making a new entity for future mappers to implement in their future maps when I responded to you (sorry!), but that is not a bad idea. The changes should be done in a way where it wouldn't affect older FMs, and it would be a fair chunk of work. I actually have a few breakable lights in my WIP, although they are kinda glitchy and far from perfect.

Hello again I just want you guys to double check fms because i think files got mixed up Localization Packs: Vengeance for a Thief Part 1 its says it is for a pawn in the game localization pack String table English (iso-8859-1) for: Vengeance for a Thief Part 1: A Pawn in the Game But it is under VFAT1: The Angel's Tear download I have looked in my fm archieve and i foun fm named The Accountant: Part 1 - A Noble Home (prologue) It is not listed in download section. any idea about this one ?? is it a part of accountant campaign ? Is it obsolete ? or it is missed ? Also i came across Samhain Night on Bone Hill By PranQster Version: 0.9.7 Back again to version matter. Maybe it is not important to keep versions, maybe it is. For me it is important as i am updating my archive of fms so it is nice to just see version straight away than looking in every pk4 file for it. Also it would be very helpful just to add in download section beside released date, update date as well Maybe Sir You just like me. You look but you can not see TDM Fan Mission Lists: Released and Upcoming Thread https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Fan_Missions_for_The_Dark_Mod

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm all for breaking glass, also windows (the "penalty" is that it should be very loud to A.I. So, a thing you surely will only do very rarely.). I think this will take a lot of consideration on the mapper side, though. Amount of arrows in the starting gear and in the mission itself, consideration where to put destructable lamps, and where to avoid them. Not to mention that I don't know how much effort has to be put in the technical side (making the lamp destructable and killing the light it sheds). Thinking about it, I think it kinda defeats the "stealth" element, doesn't it? Why would you make loads of noise and possible alert half the A.I. in a mission, for pretty little benefit? A thief surely will do everything to avoid that kind of noise and attention.

A couple more: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21739-resolved-allow-mantling-while-carrying-a-body/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22211-feature-proposal-new-lean-for-tdm-212/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22198-feature-proposal-frob-to-use-world-item/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22249-212-auto-search-bodies/

The real St. Alban was a pagan who became a celebrated religious personality, this All Saints Day 2010 The Dark Mod places its own spin on this mythical figure. Screenshots: Intro: "'Business' has been slow lately, even more so after most of my gear got snatched during a Watch raid... I've since been forced to hit the streets and pick pockets for a living. But my luck was about to change, last night I was approached by a red hooded figure with a proposition... As we sat down in a dark corner of a nearby inn, he told to me that the Builders of St. Alban's Cathedral in the Old Quarter had recently unearthed a discovery that might lead to the final resting place of some saint." " But before I do anything, I need to get my tools and stash from the evidence room at the local watch station." "with the hawks, doves will congregate they will drop honey from the cliffs wine will surge over the earth the sheep will wander harmlessly with the wolf then the wicked will rise, but to retribution" - 'scripture of St Alban' There is a new version out now, see the following thread St Albans Cathedral version 1.6 Build Time: about 2-3 months. Thanks:- Huge respect to the Dark Mod team for such a great mod and for all the hard work they put into it and continue to put into it. Special thanks to Fidcal, Serpentine and others for their help on the forums and to Testing:Ugoliant, Baddcog, Grayman, Lost soul, Bjorn and Baal (for doing all the Vp work in the town. Readables: Ungoliant and Mortemdesino for all awesome work on the readables. Resource: Fids, Grayman, Ungoliant - guis, models & images. Misc: Loren Schmidt - the author of the map I based the cathedral on. Info: # Like Thief2, some things are climable, pipes, wall vines etc.. You can also drop some of the keys, some door that are frobbabe mean there is another way inside - explore u taffer! # Due to TDM being a lot more of a resource hog than T2 I have been forced to limit the number of Ai in the mission, but they have better placement than my last mission. # On all difficulty levels the player starts with vertualy no tools/weapons, there are weapons to be found - read, read, read! # For the love of all that is holy, read the briefing otherwise you will problems completing the mission. Known issues:- # This mission will have less than optimal fps at a few points on the map, mid range DX9 card(X1900/GF7800) or higher required. # On low end PCs I recommend, V-sync is off, AA is off, Aniso is 4x or lower and that any and all background apps are closed.

@nbohr1more another idea: there are several abandoned WIPs. Maybe doing some sort of contest with them?

Author Note: This is a brand new mission and a new entry into the accountant series. There are some different than usual puzzles in this FM, so if you find yourself stuck try to think about your pathway forward in a logical manner. And if you're still having troubles then pop by this thread and ask (preferably with spoiler tags). This FM is brand new and serves as the first installment in The Accountant series, a few years back there was a small prologue style mission released however I felt that it did not represent The Accountant series so I decided to go back to the drawing board and do a whole new mission that's larger, has a better level design and has a story that lines up closer to what I plan to do with the accountant series. The mission is medium sized and you can expect between 30-90 minutes to complete it depending on your playstyle. Beta Testers Captain Cleveland Crowind Kingsal PukeyBee Skacky SquadaFroinx Voice Actors AndrosTheOxen Epifire Goldwell Stevenpfortune Yandros Custom assets Airship Ballet Bentraxx Bob Necro Dragofer DrKubiac Epifire Kingsal MalachiAD Sotha Springheel SquadaFroinx Available via in-game downloader File Size: 233 MB - Updated to v 1.1 (01.06.2018)

2 Ideas: 1. As a temporarly workaround would it be possibe to override the mainmenu_debriefing_video.gui file ? Since it's just a gui it might be possible to place a different kind of briefing gui there. 2. An idea is to place a debriefing button in the mission succes screen, so you can replay the debriefing.

Yes please: I've wanted something like this for a long time! One thing that always makes me sad in TDM is when a mission just... abruptly ends: Obviously every FM has an ending, but I never liked just transitioning to a stats screen as if nothing you did in the world mattered. I'd absolutely love a debriefing GUI just like the briefing one, where you can either have text or an image slideshow with music and voice-over which would be even better! Maybe some old FM's can be updated to use this too, I'd totally replay them just for that. One additional idea: Since FM's with multiple endings are something I always wished for and would love to do myself, support for multiple debriefing GUI's would be ideal, so the kinds of objectives you completed can execute a different one or skip / add certain passages. Absolutely hope the team can consider this, should be just a GUI execution hook to implement it so why not

That would be another good method. The one I used was easier for me, given that I was also supporting a SFW difficulty level where she is already dressed before reaching the attic. Thanks. No animation available for that either, so all done with cut-scene fakery and video editing. Glad you enjoyed a bit of sparks with those. Although I can't take any credit for the idea of dress mannequins with human hands... you'll see them IRL at any mall. But the implementation in TDM... therein the magic: It's 11pm here, and I'm off. Thanks for chatting.

Welcome to the forums Ansome! And congrats on making it to beta phase!

Yeah it would be cool to see some more detailed statistics and it’s a shame they aren’t really captured. Since we are talking about fan mission platforms, where players also make the content for the game, I feel like the best thing we’ve got is you can look at the number of content releases for the games. Keep in mind the graph counts campaigns as single missions - so for example NHAT and TBP both count as 1 mission. A good year for TDM has has approaching maybe 50% - mostly we’re 25-30%. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152494 You could also look at the number of ratings thief missions get on https://www.thiefguild.com/ vs TDM ones, but that is pretty iffy in that you could chalk that up to more awareness of the site in the thief community than TDM Out of curiosity is there a reason a thief player can’t be a new player? I kind of think a player is a player and new players would be ones who are playing the dark mod who weren't? Is there disagreement the base of players most likely to pick up the game are fans of the thief games? They are certainly the most fruitful place to find feedback on the game beyond the sphere of this forum that I have seen. When we were trying to finish up SLL there was a lot of discussion on the forums about how long it had been since there was a release for the game. I am thankful that the stats show at least some stability over the years in terms of releases for TDM, but the trend for all of the games is decline. Not doing anything is a valid response if that’s what the devs want to do - it is not possible to provide evidence that any effort will slow that inertia. As a player and content maker I would just prefer trying to find feedback where it is offered from players who were willing to try the game but ultimately could not engage with it and see if there is anything that can be done within reason to ease them into the game. The game has a lot to offer imo. All those players are potential contributors - contributions in turn attract players - it’d be nice to see the cycle go on as long as it can.

I'd love some criticism, thank you! I'm very glad that you got super absorbed into this FM's atmosphere, I loved reading your theories about the story! Your criticism about the readables/story is entirely valid and highlights an element that is most often criticized about Lovecraft's work: you rarely get straight answers or a clear picture of the greater threat. I encourage you to read the original "The Terrible Old Man" (all of H.P. Lovecraft's works are in the public domain and readable online), as you'll get an idea of how short and vague the source material was as well as the careful moves I had to make to not show my hand too much when constructing the narrative. Whether or not I kept in line with Lovecraft's principles is for others to judge, but I'm glad your imagination went wild with this FM! Your curiosity regarding what the bottles are, what the purpose of the little statuettes is, and immersion into the story from what little breadcrumbs I planted gave me a smile from ear to ear. Thanks, Bergante!

Noted. I initially had an idea for a skill-set but when I started working on some of them I wasn't sure what the final form or name would be. I opted for generic names and these generic names are now all over the code. I guess I got used to them. Well, Mission Complete! It is good that people like stuff but I don't get to hear what people don't like. By all means, let us know what you dislike or disagree with and why!

I haven't played the mission yet, so, I can't comment on it. Regarding the criticism: I think it should also be allowed to note some things you saw as points of criticism. Actually, IMO, negative criticism is better than positive, because it points out what you maybe didn't think through thoroughly, or you simply didn't see when you created the mission on your own. I'm aware that there is a lot of work involved, and people do it in their spare time for their own or other people's pleasure. But, that really shouldn't be a reason to praise everything to the skies. Actually, I've seen my fair share of average missions which have been totally overrated. Again, that shouldn't knock anynone's work, and, I have no idea how this mission is. Just wanted to point out that noting negative things shouldn't be taken as discouraging, but rather the opposite. I've seen some mission authors for Dark Mod going from average to absolutely fantastic missions, because they learned what it takes to make good missions. It's an art, and obviously takes time to perfect.

It occurred to me that, by now, this package goes well beyond mere bugfixes by including a range of gameplay changes (i.e. adding the ability to frob-extinguish oil candles, which isn't a bug that was patched). Maybe players would have a better idea of what this package does if it had a more fitting name, similar to how Snatcher calls his work a modpack? In other communities the term "unofficial patch" is typically associated with collections of community fixes to bugs that exist in the core game and were never addressed by the devs. Most players would therefore expect an "unofficial patch" to provide them the same experience as originally intended by the devs, but without technical problems.

I just finished The Black Parade (it was really nice), and, now I kind of tasted blood. You guys know some top notch fan missions for either game, which I should play? They should be of similar quality as the missions in The Black Parade. I frankly have no idea about the mission makers in Thief and Thief 2, so, I have to ask. I know that Melan did some missions for TG and TMA, but, frankly, I liked his TDM missions better. With the other mission authors, I have no idea.

Yes, I think I agree. Fifteen years ago TDM was brand new. Nobody had a firm idea of its future direction. People just made the levels they wanted and had a blast. I think we should do that again. Hence, I humbly submit Proposal 5 Proposal 5) No expectations, restrictions, set theme, or requirements. Anything goes! Make a mission, any mission you want! Be as creative as you like, or stick to tried-and-true formulas if you prefer. Make a huge sprawling masterpiece if you're up for it, or a little bite-sized gem if that's more your style. Just put something out there.

Thanks Skaruts! I don't really like auto-door close either, but I put that on the exterior doors for performance reasons (to close vis-portals). "stop_when_blocked 0" is a great idea for drawers; I didn't know about that. Random head turning looks easy to turn off. I have always found that annoying too. I would probably save it for select guards, or maybe just have it enabled when they are on alert. Yeah, the "ShouldBeClosed" door property seemed like a good idea, but can be troublesome as it's noticed by all the AI and not just the room guard.

Losing the option for stencil shadows would be extremely sad. TDM has the best stencil shadows implementation I've ever seen, and they look far better than shadow maps. They also perform wonderfully. Stencil shadows not supporting shadows on translucent surfaces is a bummer, but that's a fine tradeoff. Personally, I'd rather not see alpha-tested shadow occluders, because they look awful and are distracting. Shadow maps in general look bad and pixelated -- quite immersion breaking. Another issue with shadow maps is that they substantially increase the usage of the GPU. For those using laptops or integrated GPUs, it could cause performance or heat issues. For those with decent dedicated GPUs, increased wattage (and therefore heat) can and does turn on its GPU fans. The wattage on my AMD RX 6700 XT can become tripled when using shadow maps. That's undesirable. The advice I give players is: There really isn't a "best" shadows implementation these days. Some devs and players prefer one over the other. Regardless of which is chosen, stencil shadows and maps are used where needed. So, I'd try out both and pick the one you prefer. Here's Fen complaining about shadow maps. Complaint #1 (7:28): Complaint #2 (23:46): In his next video (Written in Stone - 4 - Chocolate Coated Brendel Bar), he turned on stencil shadows, and as far as I know, he never complained again. The following area in Written in Stone shows a good example of alpha-tested shadow occluders. Yes, technically the moving leaves cast shadows, but it looks awful in game, in my opinion. I know others like it. The same scene using stencil shadows looks amazing in game. (The screenshots don't do a good job demonstrating how it looks in game.) The current hybrid system is fantastic. It gives people choice. Those who prefer stencil shadows can use them; those who prefer shadow maps can use them. People become attached to the "art" and "style" of a mission, and changing the shadow implementation changes the art and style. If one must be dropped, I'd say shadow maps should be dropped from the menu settings. Use shadow maps for volumetric lights and stencil shadows everywhere else. And, I agree with nbohr1more that defaulting to rules consistent with stencil shadows is a good idea.

I think this will always be a divide. Engine coders will want a universal behavior that acts the same way across all missions. So if we want to offer the additional benefits of Shadow Maps, we will need to break lots of missions and then work to fix them. Mappers will probably want material or entity flags that force these behaviors so that they can force usage where they prefer. I think defaulting to consistent with Stencil rules is a good idea. Maybe this is a good case for using mission.cfg and have it force the cvars to enable the features?

Okay, I'd like to throw in one idea. Open the spoilers for several disclaimers. Imagine 1. a real-time, online Multiplayer for Dark Mod (or similar 3D-first-person-medieval-theft-style game inspired by thief) 2. every real person has an account with a virtual money balance as acquired by playing the game 3 however, if one's virtual character dies, so does the account, and then the money is gone. One can decide to start fresh with a new account though. 4. top players and their accounts are listed somewhere on the games central website, bla bla bla, so there is motivation to have a long-lived character with a lot of money So far so good (?). Now for some gameplay specifics: 5. there are maps, of course. Everyone is free to design Maps. (since availability of maps is certainly one of the bigger bottlenecks, the initiative for someone to submit a map should be rewarded, or at least not made difficult). 6. There is an official entrance for the map, where the guards enter. And then there is a (or several?) inoffical entrance(s). There thieves might enter. The map creator is responsible for making sure both types of entrances (official and inoffical) exist. (As with single-player maps, the map creator should make sure there are official and inofficial routes throughout - in other words, an interesting, explorable, thief-style map). 7. The map creator is also responsible for making some riddles, which potential thiefs must solve in order to get into the map. Riddles should be hard (only solvable with a "hacker-mentality" - think of the cognitive tasks thieves face when trying to get entrance to a complicated system) (or, metaphorically speaking - the thieves play out their own version of a cutscene before a heist - of course only in their mind, not with a video ) 8. The goal of the guards is to, well, guard a specific object (or keep thieves from achieving a certain objective) for a certain amount of time. If they succeed, they will be paid accordingly (or rather the player's accounts)). 9. Per map, there is a maximum number of guards. This number is defined by the map creator. Also, the map creator equips each guard. Before a map starts, each guard position must be filled. If more people are interested than open positions exist, there will be a competitive selection procedure (maybe one-on-one fights in a "sandbox" mode against contestants? Or a quiz how well they are familiar with the map they want to guard?) 10. Importantly, the map creator CANNOT specify routes of guards. This is up to the players playing the guards. 11. Even more importantly - the group of guards do not know when of even if thieves will appear. This should encourage patrolling-style behaviors automatically. 12. The entrance riddle of thieves should be difficult. This is the main trade-off for the lucrative prize, together with the high guards:thieves ratio. 13. Within the map, there is no chat. People (guards and thieves) should only be allowed to cooperate via game-play elements. Therefore, guards writing letters should be possible, but thieves might steal this information within the map. (maybe talking is also possible, but this should be audible in a realistic way - thieves should be careful to not raise their voices and were they want to speak) 14. When the set time for a map is done, the players may decide each time if they want to play for the guards or the thieves next time. All in all, I believe this gameplay style would offer trade-offs for each party (guards, thieves) to make it difficult for both but balanced. Going back to the disclaimer: I'm aware that the online, real-time nature of my suggestion is difficult to implement at best, impossible at worst. But then, why these specific ideas? I believe such an approach could circumvent several dangers Dark Mod is facing: - rather unrealistic/easy AI --> not an issue here, because there is no AI, only natural human intelligence. - small ratio between map playing time : map creation time (not so much an issue as maps may be reused, but the feel for the mission is kinda new each time) - this might inspire some opening up of the community to new players, or encourage people to hand in maps, with the prospect that they might be used in a real-time, MP, higher-stakes scenario. So! I think I'm ready now being torn apart by you guys

New script for mappers: my flavour of a fog density fading script. To add this to your FM, add the line "thread FogIntensityLoop();" to your map's void main() function (see the example in fogfade.script) and set "fog_fade" "1" on each foglight to enable script control of it. Set "fog_intensity_multiplier" on each info_location entity to change how thick the fog is in that location (practically speaking it's a multiplier for visibility distance). Lastly, "fog_fade_speed" on each foglight determines how quickly it will change its density. The speed scales with the current value of shaderParm3, using shaderParm3 = 1000 as a baseline. So i.e. if shaderParm is currently at 1/10th of 1000, then fade speed will be 1/10th as fast. Differences to Obsttorte's script: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/14394-apples-and-peaches-obsttortes-mapping-and-scripting-thread/&do=findComment&comment=310436 my script uses fog lights you created, rather than creating one for you. Obsttorte's script will delete the foglight if entering a fogfree zone and recreate it later more than one fog light can be controlled (however, no per-fog-light level of control) adding this to the map requires adding a line to your void main() script, rather than adding an info_locations_settings entity with a custom scriptobject spawnarg in my script, mappers set a multiplier of fog visibility distance (shaderParm3), while in Obsttorte's script a "fog_density" spawnarg is used as an alternative to shaderParm3 smaller and less compactly written script fogfade.scriptfogfade.map