Search the Community

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:

TDM has such an implementation, called something like camera jittering. It was used to create high-quality screenshots. It jitters both camera and light positions, which results in perfect antialiasing and soft shadows. But it is very slow, and the resulting images are basically a lie. As far as I remember, it stopped working at some moment because the engine is constantly being modified. Anyway, this idea is useless to combat complaint about MSAA being slow. And simply blurring the whole image would result in trash of course.

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

Some time ago I was looking for a good app to share files, since I wanted to become independent from the famous Imgur, which I find with so many trackers and privacy problems not at all reliable. In Windows I use ShareX, which is perhaps one of the best screen recorders with a huge amount of functions and tools, but it also uses Imgur as an image sharer by default, but allows you to change it. At first I replaced it with vgy.me., an excellent imagehost and sharer, with good privacy, although only limited to images. But a few months ago I found File Coffee, which can be called the definitive solution, because it allows you to host and share any type of file, be it images, documents presentations, texts, multimedia, videos of any extension, it is 100% free, encrypted and private (Made in EU, GDPR norm) safe, blazing fast and stable. It admits without registration 15 Mb per file, with free registration, 30 Mb, being able to control the uploaded files. With this you can forget DropBox, GDrive, Imgur and a lot of other solutions, well, except for PK4 bigger than 30Mb. The best, it also had a own config app for ShareX, which with one click make all the needed settings in ShareX to be used in this tool. Screenshots linked with filecoffee, given image, multimedia and video links can be inserted or, in case of document's or other, they open in a new tab and can be downloaded from there.

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.

In the past I had the Myst serie, apart of a extraordinary Adventure puzzle game, the images and artwork are overhelming and invite a take screenshots to use it as Wallpaper Bundle for "pay what you want" in https://www.epicbundle.com/humble-myst-more-steam-game-bundle/

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.

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.

I can guarantee you that some actual artists are using AI as a tool that complements the human mind. You can feed your sketches or finished work into it (image-to-image) to generate more details, and the best AI art seen today often involves an digital artist cleaning up the AI mistakes by hand (Photoshop). But in general, the artistically unskilled/uninclined are having their human creativity amplified by AI. People have ideas, and now they can make them a reality without hiring anyone or spending 10,000 hours learning how to draw. Exercising their creativity might inspire them to learn the basics of art, to become better at using the AI. I think you will see a drop-off in low effort content that is spat out instantly by AI, whether that's images, videos, or symphonies. In a sea of AI-generated content, the best or most interesting (viral) will rise to the top, and that will tend to favor the things that had some effort put into them. You might not even realize that AI was part of the process. If you listen to a symphony or other music created partially/fully by AI and you enjoy it, what then? Is it "bad" once you know AI was involved?

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.

First of all, ChatGPT , independent of the version, is a language model to be able to interact with the user, imitating being intelligent. It has a knowledge base that dates back to 2021 and adds what users contribute in their chats. This means, first of all, that it is not valid if you are looking for correct answers, since if it does not find the answer in its base, it has a tendency to invent it with approximations or directly with false or obsolete answers. With this, the future will not change, it will occur with AI of a different nature, on the one hand with search engines with AI, since they have access to information in real time, without needing such complex language models and for this reason, they will gradually search engines are going to add AI, not only Bing or Google, but before these there was Andisearch, like the first of all, Perplexity.ai, Phind.com and You.com. Soon there will also be DuckDuckGoAI. On the other hand, generative AI to create images videos and even aplications, music and other, like game assets or 3D models., The risk with AI came up with Auto GPT, initially a tool that seemed useful, but it can be highly dangerous, since on the one hand it has full access to the network and on the other hand it is capable of learning on its own initiative to carry out tasks that are introduced as if it were a Text2Image app out there, what was demonstrated with ChaosGPT, the result of an order introduced in Auto GPT to destroy humanity, which it immediately began to develop with extraordinary efficiency, first trying to access the missile silos nuclear weapons and to fail, luckily, trying to get followers on Twitter with a fake account that he created and where he got more than 6000 followers, hiding later, realizing the danger that can be blocked or deactivated on the network. Currently nothing is known about it, but it is still a danger not exactly to be ruled out, it can really become Skynet. AI is going to change the future, but not ChatGPT which isnt more than a nice toy.

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!

Further thoughts... By not directly accessing crappy unnavigable websites with intrusive, intensely irritating advertising, we can research faster and more efficiently, but to monetize their crappy websites, they'll have to make them more private and secure to stop bots. But openAI is testing a method that can already analyze images really well. In only a few years (months) it will be able to pick out traffic lights and buses in those awful captcha screens better than humans. Then what?

Even the pro-MS sites aren't pulling punches and reporting stuff like this now. https://www.neowin.net/news/edge-sends-images-you-view-online-to-microsoft-here-is-how-to-disable-that/ The simple truth is that today, there are two types of people; those who expect this behavior, and those who don't care. And there are vastly more of the latter than the former.

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

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.

So giving it none of those tags, but making the AI invisible, silent, non-solid, and on a team neutral to everyone would not work? Oh well, it was a horrible inelegant idea anyway.

What I understood is that the idea of TDM was born from that it was unclear if T3 would get a level editor at the time. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20050218173856/http://evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=268

This opens all sorts of possibilities. I was thinking about games as Gabriel knight and Broken Sword where you navigate from different locations on a map, I always liked this approach, playing the mission in a different order. You can also write a story around it in the text based briefing with images. Or for example a choice of who to work for (let's say there are 2 thief gangs that you can work for or you work for yourself). You can also include multiple missions in one map file. I thought you could do a "Choose Your Own Adventure" type briefing, with in the end a different mission start based on your chosen path. There could be conversations in it as well, with multiple choice answers in it.

This one is really essential: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607 Should work fine with the GOG version.

I've created a very simple tutorial on my Wiki home page on how to create a material/texture from an online source (e.g. textures.com) using GIMP. This is something I didn't know how to do and wished that it existed when I started. Yes, there are some existing Wiki pages that kind of describe how to do this, but they are wildly out of date with respect to the tools used and are full of gaps to the uninitiated. What I've pieced together mainly came from existing Wiki sources, but updated with the current version of GIMP. I obviously realise that to a lot of people here this is 101 level stuff, but for myself and other complete n00bs that want to build something, basic tutorials like this are invaluable. It's using GIMP just because it's free and does most things a n00b will want to do, especially when it comes to dealing with older file formats that TDM requires. Anyways, the point of this post is I would like to ask if anyone who DOES know what they are doing could cast their eye over the tutorial and point out any gaffes or downright incorrect/misleading information. Not so much in the proofreading sense or GIMP-specific things (although that would be welcome too), but more around the images/properties themselves. I've labelled some sections with (ADVICE NEEDED) for stuff that I really don't understand very well but the whole thing is fair game. The tutorial is very short, and if anything is glaringly wrong it should be easy to spot by knowledgeable people. The main things I don't understand are the image properties when exporting - there are a million options and I don't know what most of them do. I've looked some of them up, but I don't necessarily know what's best for TDM. All I know is that what I've written seems to work. Perhaps if this gets into a state that makes sense we can add it to the main Wiki and clean up some of the existing sections on this. Link here: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=User:Frost_Salamander#Creating_a_material_using_existing_images_(e.g._from_textures.com)_using_GIMP