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Yeah ok, normally I would agree, but in this case the dark theme reflects the tdm style and that of the website better. It's also not like a light theme is always intended if you have a light desktop theme. But that's just my opinion.

It's ok if people prefer the light theme, but to be consistent with the website theme and the overal look in tdm (dark) it makes sense to make the dark theme (v2) the default theme for not logged in and new users. Maybe the theme selection dropdown could be moved to the top of the screen? Like next to Leaderboard? Or otherwise at least made a bit more prominant? It currently looks almost like it's suposed to be not seen.

This mission uses a cubic ambient light, similar to "Gem of Souls" so it will look strange if you are using the "Fresnel Mod". As a workaround, you can either put a copy of your tdm_base01.pk4 into the fm folder or extract the glprogs folder and place it into the fm folder. If there is interest, I can make a fresnel mod version that is compatible with this mission.

I agree. I had made some edits across all themes for consistency, but this doesn't work for Light. Edit: Removed until there's a better option.

This doesn't look pretty for the Light theme.

I don't have a bugtracker account, so no I don't believe there is any tracking for this. I'd be willing to do the actual write-ups, but I'd need to be inducted as a bugtracker person or have someone paste them in for me. I think I'd make three separate tickets at this point? 1. flashbombed state increases the blackjacking radius (the original post) 2. flashbombed state plays its animations properly (wellingtoncrab's june 9th reply here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22738-proposal-flashbombed-ais-become-blackjackable/#findComment-502037 ) 3. flashbombs deal damage to team 9 enemies (undead, not mentioned here but another glaring issue that makes them less useful than their original TG/T2 incarnations)

I'm happy to announce the release of my third FM: Year of the Rat. This is my first city hub map, focused primarily on story characters and environment. It's my most complex project to date, taking its fair share of effort to make which was a good learning experience. As an experiment I opted to use no scripts and rely solely on the default entities, as well as no custom assets apart from the map and splash screen hence the small pk4. It features a few special elements, such as factions that are hostile only when the player commits crime or a decoder lockpick used to open electronic doors. The beta testing thread can be found here, thank you everyone who helped find the most obvious problems. You play as a famous thief nicknamed Black Jack: A man who's pulled many crazy jobs in his life, only to be hired for an absurd and insulting task by an anonymous employer. The objective is pretty straightforward: Be kind to the mice and feed them some cheese! Your silly quest takes you to the Lantern Light district during the Lunar New Year celebration, a place where gangs and corrupt nobles do their dirty deeds together. What ulterior motives and unexpected twists could your adventure entail? While the most obvious problems were patched during beta testing, some issues can't be easily resolved due to the complexity of the entity setup and objectives, meaning you may encounter a few inconsistencies. Most notably surrounding AI, which may float above chairs and not react to alerts or oppositely send the whole map into a panic: This is mostly due to how the engine handles AI and alarms. The map is small since I wanted to add more detail without having to work on large areas, as such some places can feel cramped while the skybox may be visible up close. I'll be busy so further updates are unlikely unless I decide to add new content later... you're welcome to report any issues you encounter, but keep in mind that if something wasn't fixed it's likely known but difficult to address or due to engine functionality. Spoilers for objectives and secrets as follows: Download 1.2: Google Drive, Mega. Screenshots with minor spoilers for the various areas:

Those look fantastic! But, keep in mind, light coming from the Sun or the Moon will be functionally parallel by the time it gets to earth. Unfortunately, I think parallel lights might have been removed from TDM.

Brightness, gamma and ambient. Brightness and gamma are user settings mappers can't (shouldn't) change. My opinion is that players shouldn't feel the need to change these unless real-life conditions change around them (day vs night, lights on/off, new monitor, etc). What mappers do in their missions is setting a single or multiple "ambient" lights to their maps. We can think of it as "the mood of the map or area". This ambient can change between zones: bright fullmoon outdoors, pitch black sewers, blue ghostly atmosphere, etc. My opinion is that players should be able to adjust the ambient of a mission based on their preferences or current mood (brighter or darker). You can try this yourself. Set your brightness and gamma just how you like it. Launch this mission, bring down the console and enter, in example: r_ambientGamma 1.2 The mission suddenly is a tad brighter and the light gem and gui/hud elements remain unaltered. Mind you, r_ambientGamma is persistent: you have to set it back to 1 when you are done with the mission, otherwise it stays at 1.2.

I post for the first time since January with a detailed response about an important(ish) topic and I get a laugh reaction. In all seriousness though, if one doesn't like DRM they have to be careful posting nowadays since a lot of people have a lot of time invested in games and platforms with DRM of various sorts, and any issues you raise with the game/platform these people will take as personal attacks against themselves, even though it was never intended. Not so bad here, but reddit and Steam forums? Good God. Bruh we both live in Australia, it's not that bad here with regards to the authorities most of the time. I mean it does depend where you live (I'm in SA) but comparing our cops to those in the US is like using a cheat code.

And that's MY point, is that it is indeed quite demanding once you turn on any of the hacked in fx or try to use AA, as demanding as many much more modern better looking games. Also 4k isn't super demanding in comparably older titles, it's not the resolution itself that tanks performance, it's the overflow of the vram buffer. I'm playing through Tony Hawk's Underground right now @4k with several demanding shaders (mxao, ambient light), 60fps and barely topping %50 gpu usage. No soft shadows sure, but the game looks pretty good with all of those fancy shaders, and came out around the same time. Yes I only have 6gb vram to work with, but the 3060ti only has 8. I fail to see what this engine is doing that requires so much wasted vram. Perhaps it simply isn't implementing performance optimizations that would normally be in play at 4k, like scaling the resolution of effects independently from render resolution. I'm happy to discuss performance optimizations, but I'd prefer to do so with someone who actually knows what I'm talking about, not someone who is going to repeatedly announce that I'm not using a 4k card, which is obviously dependent on the content being rendered.

One thing that contributed to the difficulties, and also being stuck a few times now, is also the darkness of the mission It's significantly darker than some other missions (not even turning up the gamma or brightness really helped), and there are also shadows in some places I wouldn't have expected, as there's light sources nearby.

@SnugglyBurrickyou could try asking the Gloomwood developers, that game is developed with Unity and has something like a light gem (there it's a small stone on a ring the player is wearing)

Two other little issues: here (1920, -934, 60) I picked up the newsrunner 4 (already had one in inventory) and then dropped it again. Instead of the newsrunner that image was dropped?! The second issue was that I somehow managed to permanently get "needs junkroom key" written on the screen, not sure how.. maybe I saved while it was displayed when frobbing that door? Might even be a non-mission-specific TDM bug, IDK ---- Having finished this mission (on expert): Holy shit, this was insane! Fun and challenging mission and the amount of enemies sometimes reminded me more of Serious Sam than Thief :-D (The amount of enemies might be the main reason why this FM requires more beefy hardware) TBH I tend to just blackjack every enemy to explore maps in peace, which of course can make them a bit easy (even on expert), unless there are superficial restrictions like "don't blackjack (more than N enemies)". I'm usually too impatient for playing as ghost Anyway, this mission was even challenging when blackjacking, which I enjoyed, but I can imagine that it's pretty frustrating for people who insist on ghosting.. OTOH there's no shortage of water arrows, so maybe ghosting is more doable than I assume (as long as the ghost doesn't insist on not extinguishing any lights). This certainly is no criticism from me, just a possible explanation why some people found it too frustrating The story is pretty great and I liked those portals I'm looking forward to Thomas' next adventure! By the way, regarding As others wrote, it is definitely not unplayable and shouldn't be removed. You could fix a few issues, like the locking of those desk drawers, and maybe reduce light in some places (especially that room that Helot is often in at first is pretty overbright), but I don't think it needs a rewrite. It might not be perfect, but who cares. As someone who has played a lot of FMs, this certainly is one of the better ones, especially impressive for a first mission! (Though I enjoy most FMs, even if they're a lot more amateurish than this one). I don't think you should spend more than one or two days with fixes/tweaks on this mission (if at all), as @datiswous wrote, it would be better to start a new mission with the experience gained from this one

And we know exactly how well it works out when tech-illiterate lawmakers start dictating the functions of technology they don't understand. "We don't care about this physics shit! We passed a law that requires you to provide faster-than-light travel and you nerds better figure out how to make it happen!" I don't even understand what these petitioners are asking for. Do they want a law that compels providers of online games to keep the servers running forever (even if the company goes bust)? Provide a refund if the servers have to be switched off (even if the company has already gone bust, and has no money to pay for it)? Implement an offline mode for games like WoW where it makes no sense? Or just never provide online games in the first place? No matter what they're asking for, I'm pretty sure what they're actually going to get (if the law is passed) is games publishers simply not selling into the EU/UK market at all. Just like the web sites which are now blocking UK visitors because the dumb fucks who passed the "Online Safety Act" mistakenly believed they had the power to regulate the entire internet.

somehow the quote box has precluded adding my own text, but I wanted to say I found the hint but never found the location mentioned. Many of my thoughts about the mission (story-light, exploration-heavy) have been posted, but I wanted to acknowledge the reference to The note on the door made me think I needed a key from the Watch Captain so I trekked over there to find I found a foul-smelling key once I was inside, can I have a hint where to use it?

I know this is not the right thread for my question but I didn't want to read through the mission's threads for an answer. Why are the 2 newest missions pitch black?? Like there is no ambient light at all ... it makes playing a lot less fun ... Thought it was only 1 mission but both have the same so I guess it has something to do with new lighting system or something? Question is: how to get "normal" ambient light back?

May the Builder send mighty lightning bolts to destroy your computer so that this debauched and seductive work never sees the light of day!

That's correct but many people just use the in-game mission downloader to check for new stuff without even looking at the forums, which is what I did. In the past a lot of missions that required a newer version of the game executable and assets would tell you this when you tried to start them up. I was just reporting on this and that you don't need to reinstall, just update via tdm_updater if you find this issue.

Yes !? mybe i´m confused ? Snatchers discription : ~ FORWARD LANTERN ~ Replaces the light of the player lantern with a less intense, forward facing version The linked by you is what i though it would be ! Thanks - i downloaded the " z_handheld_lamp_v0.5 " and will look if it works in modPack5

Aight well if I'm poking around posting fm reviews, code change suggestions, and asking for tech help I might as well also put up my work. Putzing around with DarkRadiant is quite fun. Not sure when or if I will produce a full map but, considering that I haven't touched dromed or made maps for other games before, I'm really happy with what I've got so far. Kudos to the tooling designers for making something reasonably idiot-friendly. One of the first things the A-Z tutorial tells you is to not use 0 0 0 for ambient lighting, and I immediately said nuts to that lol. I'm really enjoying the harsh darkness and the contrast from light sources. I didn't intend for it to happen, but I've ended up with something that looks like it crawled straight out of TDS. It also makes traversing the level have an interesting trade off - you need light to see, but enemies can see you carrying it and if its in your hands you have to drop it to pull out the bow or mantle stuff. I'm trying to build a whole level around this "mechanic"/"gimmick".

Hrm I wasn't able to type on *after* the spoiler and accidentally already submitted the reply.. (Does this forum somewhere have a raw mode where you type text with tags around them or something instead of this broken WYSIWYG editor?) Anyway, what I was gonna add: This was a great mission and I already played Away1 - I'm really looking forward to Away2, want to see how the story goes on

Multiple missions, yes Specifics are out of mind by now. Shouldn't take too long to find an example. I would say shorter range sounds tend to be more obvious, so look for things like hissing steam pipes or a lonely light.

The mission easily goes to my list of replayable missions, which is my second highest rank. Yes, some vertexes aren't snipped together and there was a single piece of loot I wasn't able to get , but these are negligible issues. I appreciated the creative elements and little secrets and the way you used the light sources. Thank you for your work.

Oh! Right! LOL! The light! How could I miss that?! Thanks!