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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.

It's okay! I'm down with any option hence why I asked. But I agree: Most players would likely not approve of such a change being done retroactively and affecting all old FM's, so it would likely be best as a derivative entity for mappers to use in the future based on new or existing lamps that can provide one. In any case it would likely require engine changes, not something you can currently do with a script: Lights already use their own hardcoded script classname which can't be overridden. Even if it weren't for that I don't think there's a way to intercept broadhead arrow collisions and check what kind of surface they hit, even with the Stim / Response system. There should probably be two new spawnargs: A breakable boolean enabling the feature on an entity, and a skin_broken to specify the skin used when a light was smashed.

I think there is no problem with noshadows parallel lights: they are well-defined in the current engine. It can be used as local light to brighten the window, as @HMart does. I hope there is no reason to have shadows in this case? The parallel and parallelSky are almost the same thing, except that parallelSky traces light beams from areas containing portalsky world surfaces, while parallel traces light beams from the area where light origin is located, which is never what you need for a global parallel light (like moonlight). There are many missions where this issue is hacked around, and all of them result in issues like double lighting if door is open, or lack of lighting in some outdoors areas. And there is no way to fix the engine to make these missions work properly --- the maps themselves are wrong. If you want to do a global parallel light, the parallelSky is surely what you want to have, and parallel is most likely not. But note that to make parallelSky work you also need to follow some rules. The issue with local parallel light is that objects outside light volume can cast shadow over objects inside light volume. This is pretty weird by itself: you move object closer to light volume, and at some point its shadow instantly turns on. The engine determines whether object intersects light volume approximately (using bounding boxes and such stuff), so whether you get shadow from an object close to light volume or not is implementation-defined. Today you have no shadow and it looks nice, tomorrow culling is changed and the scene gets unexpected shadow. So the bottom line is: Global parallel lights should use parallelSky and follow some rules. Local parallel lights should be noshadows. All the rest is not well-defined: you'll avoid a lot of trouble by avoiding it altogether.

This kind of mechanic would break a ton of existing FMs. Some (I dare say even most) mappers often choose electric lamps so that they can't be extinguished or turned off, forcing the player to time their movements through the light. There are of course switchable electric lights, but that is up to the author on how they want to implement those. It would definitely be fun to see an FM implement this Splinter Cell-style mechanic, where the mapper has designed their map to function in such a way, but to add this as a core feature would break the gameplay of countless maps

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.

I'm seeing the weirdest thing on my map, not public yet but I have the case for testing: Not only does the light leak, and it does so even as I've textured the walls with shadowcaulk... a light actually leaks only while the door is closed, once I open it the undesired light goes away. It's the glow on the left side of the door and little triangle it casts on the floor in front of it. I think it might be the light at the right shining through though, not sure if it's the light in the newly opened room. The interesting thing is opening the door makes it go away, also using shadowcaulk over mere caulk doesn't seem to matter which is quite odd.

Though this is related to PBR as a component in getting it done right (like reflection probes) I thought it's an improvement of its own that's worth discussing. I don't know if this is implemented or estimated in some form, but working with light entities in my own FM's I haven't seen any spawnargs for it so I presume it's not. At the moment lights in TDM act as zero-scale points, light sources have no actual radius. I know what you might be thinking: Of course lights have a radius, it's the box that decides how far a light shines and what it affects! What I'm referring to is not the range but the emission radius, representing the scale of the bulb itself: Think of it as a minimum radius... at the moment lights only have a maximum radius, the minimum is currently a point. In modern engines this affects both specularity and shadow softness as well as how the light is distributed. Like most engines we shouldn't need anything more than a float describing the size of the bulb, a simple sphere ought to be enough... given we already work with radius boxes, we could instead use a separate box which would give us better control with unevenly shaped bulbs. Every default light entity should of course be updated to use this: Torches / candles would set it to the average size of their flame particles, gas / electric lamps should have it represent the scale of the light bulb or the lamp head. If done right this can greatly improve our graphics and add more realism, but as with most things it's not going to be that simple. Also this would create changes to the lightgem in all FM's but very minuscule ones that shouldn't even be detectable. There's 3 different components I presume we have to tackle independently. Soft shadows: Shadowmap softness is probably the easiest, just add the average bulb radius to their value. Specularity: At the moment all lights seem to produce specular orbs of the same fuzziness on shiny surfaces. What we probably want is for lights that keep their min radius 0 to produce a fully sharp orb or dot, softness is added to each light's ball based on this radius. Light projection: The biggest aspect is changing how light is distributed, the projection texture / falloff material would emanate very differently. Everything inside the bulb would shine at the intensity of the center pixel and should start fading from the min radius toward the max, the projection texture would get slightly inflated like a balloon. The best solution (which also accounts for blur) seems like a 2D shader that copies the light texture onto itself at slightly different offsets to make it fuzzy: There's already a blur filter that does just that when you're underwater for example, we could to get away with doing the same thing to light textures using the min radius as the offset parameter. As lights typically don't change scale, this should be possible to do only once at map start rather than every frame including for moving lights like torches, this way we should have no performance loss.

This case in Poets and Peasants is something new: In this case we have on same line: light brush wall fully closed room closed door with visportal in a brush wall player Since only backfaces cast shadows, only the door and the first brush wall can cast shadows. The brush wall does not cast shadows because the entirety of its area is unreachable by light. So the door should. It turns out that all doors that are connected to visportal should automatically get this "forceShadowBehindOpaque" flag. When the door is closed, it closes the visportal and thus becomes part of the wall, just like a brush would be in its place.

DarkRadiant does not care about engines at all, it only cares about file formats. Whether you can use DR with your Godot-based game will therefore depend on whether your game's assets are arranged in the same way as TDM. More specifically: Your game will need to read map data from the Doom 3 .map format. If it does not, there will be no way to save your map from DarkRadiant in a form that your game can access. Export to OBJ is available but if all you want to do is produce OBJ models then DarkRadiant isn't the right tool for the job (you should use a proper 3D modelling app like Blender/Max/Maya/LightWave etc). Your game assets will need a tree of .def files defining important entities to be placed in your map, including certain "fixed" entity types which are used directly by DarkRadiant itself. There will need to be a light entity defining light volumes, a func_static entity defining a static model, an info_player_start entity to define the starting position, a speaker entity to define sound sources, and probably several others. If these entity types are not defined, then built-in features like "Create light" and "Place player start here" will not work correctly. Your game will need a tree of .mtr files defining material shaders, referring to image paths which will be resolved to either uncompressed .tga files in a textures/ hierarchy, or compressed DDS files in a dds/ hierarchy. If these material shaders are not defined, no materials will appear in DarkRadiant. DR does not make any attempt to load "raw" image file hierarchies which are not referred to by material shaders. Your game will need to define a hierarchy of 3D models in ASE or LWO format. No other formats will show up in the model selector. These models can be stored directly on disk (there is no "model shader" tree required like with materials).

Since I'm bored and haven't posted in a while and yet still finished Thief 4 a few times, I feel compelled to post. In response to a number of observations @Rio_Walker made: Seeing your hands and all the animations newGarrett would do was fun... at first. But given all the looting and environmental interactions the game has it really did slow things down a lot, especially when the game would occasionally realign the player just perfectly before playing an animation to open a drawer. If they had an option to disable these animations or speed them up significantly I'd have been happy. I've played using the Custom difficulty with the option to disable focus and the experience is kinda mixed. While it does make things a bit more traditional without the superpower ability to find loot more easily, it does seem like the game is designed very much for focus and disabling it can hide things you never even knew were present. If it weren't for the focus for example, I would never have noticed the "special" candles hidden around the city that talk when you light them. This game reminds me of a movie that has been reshot several times with footage from separate reshoots blended together with bad editing. It's painfully clear the story has been chopped and changed over the many years of its development and there's assets in the game that clearly had greater importance in a previous iteration but for which their plot points were cut. The most obvious example is the automatons. There's a dude who provides missions on obtaining pieces for one he's building, but apart from that there's also signs in other areas they had more importance (e.g. you see rooms full of them when going up an elevator, the Baron has disassembled ones on tables in his cutscene, etc.) Some plot elements just feel not fleshed out because they had to cobble together something to create this Frankenstein's monster of a game from so many elements. The ending sucks and is incredibly abrupt. Do we even know what the deal is with that half-built ship? Probably another abandoned plot point. With all of its problems, I still kinda like it in so far as its general gameplay. But it doesn't have the longevity of something like TDM or the classic Thief games especially with all the user missions available for them. Oh well, maybe I'm just pining for what it could have been in the hands of a better developer.

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

Normally the aiSee property is set on the light entity, and in this case the property has been set on the light's material. The property sets whether the light makes things more visible to AIs, so its not meaningful to set this property on model materials. If you want to stop AIs from reacting to an object you need to disable its visual stim, and if you want AIs to be able to see through it you need to give it a material that doesn't contain visual clip. Id say we can be grateful someone had the foresight to implement this as a material keyword, too, in cases like this one where you probably can't set spawnargs.

I am pleased to announce the release of our new fan mission, The Hare in the Snare: Part 1 Mission type: City Missions + Inn/Tavern Description: People are being abducted off the streets and a Watch Captain requires the services of a thief to help him find out why. Download link (v1.0.2-release): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYvM_u56wDB16uIlb7qgS_q3P24V69MO/view?usp=sharing Credits: Mapping and original characters: @Frost_Salamander Story, readables, custom models, voices and cinematics: @Kerry000 Menu title track produced and mixed by @JackFarmer with selected gigagooga sound samples Beta testers: @Cambridge Spy @Zerg Rush @Amadeus @Acolytesix @Lzocast @wesp5 @nbohr1more @Kerry000 @ate0ate @Wellingtoncrab @prjames Additional thanks: @Dragofer, @nbohr1moreand @peter_spyfor technical help @Springheel for the modules and tutorials @kingsalfor allowing @Kerry000to abuse his manbeast everyone else on Discord and the TDM forums who offered assistance Requirements and notes: This mission requires TDM 2.09. Earlier versions will probably work but you might see one or two missing models. You may experience some FPS drops in some areas with lower-end hardware. Mid-range and above should be fine. If you have issues, I highly recommend you use shadow maps instead of stencil (settings -> advanced -> shadows implementation). It makes a big difference. For 'Hard' and 'Expert' the light gem sensitivity has been increased by '1' (meaning easier for AI to detect you). Screenshots:

Regarding worldspawn "forceAllShadowsBehindOpaque" set to "1", it doesn't seem to get restored on game load. To reproduce (works with any fixed mission using "forceAllShadowsBehindOpaque"): Add "forceAllShadowsBehindOpaque" "1" to the worldspawn in the map file. From main menu, "Start this Mission" or "Restart Mission". setviewpos Notice that the light leak is fixed (not present). Save game. Load game. Notice that the light leak is present (not fixed). Example 1. From main menu, "Start this Mission" or "Restart Mission". 2. Run setviewpos. 3. Save game. 4. Load game.

Thief's Den 3: Heart of Lone Salvation 1736.48 3691.68 -137.75 -5.4 101.1 0.0 Light leak: No light leak:

You cheeky nandos. XD Have you not considered using the screen? She walks behind it, there is a shadow of her lifting her arms, the light flickers - POOF - model swap, she steps out clothed. Although, there had to be something preventing the player from walking behind the screen. I liked how you handled her undressing to begin with. What startled me earlier tho, along with creepy music while the Builder's priest sings in the background, is the dress mannequin... with human hands.

Oh yes: I have both sight and hearing set to Forgiving. I didn't think that would be related: IIRC it only affects the multiplier for how much being seen in light or heard while making noise increases the alert level per event. I should test on a higher alert level too just in case: I tend to be sloppy and impatient thus I used that for years so I wouldn't get caught all the time on more difficult FM's (lots of guards in tight areas with lights you can't turn off). I have noticed an aspect that does work well: If you're making noise by running even in darkness, alert AI will head toward your direction while searching, they won't go around randomly but actually care where the impulse came from. The problem is that this doesn't seem to scale over larger distances: If they briefly see you in broad light at a distance enough to draw weapons, AI won't head toward your general direction but begin searching their own vicinity... and at least on Forgiving the same happens if you shoot a broadhead arrow at a guard's helmet: I still think the guard should actively run toward your location instead, not exactly where you are but they should go to that road or barge into the same building.

I've been involved in the TDM community now since before we had a game, since way back when we were arguing over lock picking methods lol Finally, I'm finished with Briarwood Manor - my first Fan Mission for The Dark Mod. I've been hatching this for a year so I'm wrapped it's finally done. Briarwood Manor Crowind - made the Briefing for the mission: This is the HD version. Briarwood Manor is a old manor house built and added on to over the years which gives it it's design. The family part is the original home, and two other parts were added on later. Inspiration came from an image in the TDM Editors Inspiration thread. Available through in-game downloader. - available also in the link below. Update Version 1.93 - Fixed a few issues that surfaced, and added a sign to the Armory because people were missing it and thinking the mission was very thin on resources. Remaining Issue: - DO NOT BE SEEN BY THE STEWARD AT ALL! Update Version 1.91 - Removed an erroneous LARGE file that had accidently been in the mission blow the mission size up dramatically other assorted bugs fixed that were pointed out by the Community. Thank you Also replaced the missing script file that controlled the Drop Key which I accidently deleted. LOL Update Version 1.9 - Fixed a bug caused by roof projecting into the sleeping maids room upstairs. Update Version 1.81 - Fixed a bug caused by a faulty newspaper readable that I couldn't fix, so I converted it to a static model that is no longer frobbable. Update Version 1.8 - Fixed a problem with a patch that somehow got misaligned in the previous version of the level creating a ceiling shadow. Update Version 1.7 - Fixed some brush splitting, and a problem with the stairs. Also fixed a readable problem, and a few other minor problems. Added little more detail around the woodshed. Update Version 1.6 - Fixed problem with Crowleys Diary, and a screwed up shadow in the old well. Update: Version 1.5 - Resolved the problems with the Steward and the Dropkey. They should never be a problem again. Unless you decide to hit him, then you are going to break him from his route lol. Fix an sound issue, and fixed a problem where the player could get into places he shouldn't until the right time. lol Improved the performance for the garden area. It should be playable for low end PC's now. If you get stutter issues, drop your video settings, especially the LOD setting. With LOD set to Very Low, Fog will be gone, and detail will be dropped a lot at a distance. The higher you raise your LOD the more you get. ie at LOW LOD Fog comes back. Experiment so you get a setting your PC is happy with. You can use the console command com_showfps 1 to see what FPS you are getting. 30 and above are acceptable. Enjoy. Update: Version 1.4 - Resolved (partially the drop key issue - save before you go into Stewards room, fixed many other minor problems picked up by Abusimplea. Added a new room, made the map a bit more open, solved some of the difficulty issues people had. The map should now be ghostable. I hope. Should be added to the in game downloader within a day or so depending. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I_-ZJDGUtK7P4-b5zsGsEcYAH0vYdgnw/view?usp=sharing If you download from this link, top right arrow pointing down, is how you download it. Click it. A few things to note: 1+ Hour of gameplay - Easy Difficulty is intended for new players. Hard/Expert for most of the TDM Community. This is a challenging map for new players. Use your tools Features a custom intro (above) and a few custom sounds, and some voice acting. Warning: This mission is not for low end PC's. The house is fine, but the garden will make lower end PC's grind. The map has been made sensitive to LOD settings. So if it's grinding you're PC drop you're LOD settings for it, then you can return them to normal once you've finished. On my Medium PC gtx 760 with Normal LOD I get 30 to 60 fps in the garden. I upgraded to GTX 1070 and get pretty good 60 fps in the garden. Briefing Video made by Crowind and I can't thank him enough. He did an amazing job of this. I was so lucky to have him do this. Cast: Voice Actors (Intro) : 1St Merchant: Crowind, 2nd Merchant: Mykel19XX Corbin: Goldwell Voice Actors (Mission): Corbin played by Goldwell, Morgan Crowley played by V-Man, Giles MacCadie (Steward) played by myself Thank you to my Beta Testers: Cambridge Spy, OldJim, V-Man, Jaxa, duzenko and Bikerdude. Cambridge Spy and OldJim did most of the hard grind in finding problems, so thank you both so much. If you are stuck or need help, fastest way to reach me is message me on my youtube channel (link bottom of this post). Use the resources you were given and you should have no problems. Otherwise post spoiler free in this thread. TIP: Don't be seen by the Steward, or he might glitch out. Credits: Crowind put my briefing text into a more thiefy style for Goldwell to voice. He also helped with refining the trailer for the mission. Bikerdude (did the coal door for me and let me use his moonbeam method) and sorted the performance side of things out and thereby taught me how to do performance., grayman for providing a script to handle the drop key (Abuseinplea for fixing it from bouncing) and grayman for solving some conversation problems. EHR+ or showing me how to do the double secret door and Fidcal for his Fidcal's A-Z tutorial for Dark Radiant. Without this starting point I would not have started. Changes 1.2 to 1.93 - Added a second way to get into the building - Dining Room and Parlour doors now pickable, to make it bit less linear - Electric Light in Lobby dropped it's luminosity from 240 to 220 Little bit darker. - Door on the landing (catwalk) is now unlocked - Spider no longer walks down to the ladder, or clips into the floor. - Opened up the level more so you can choose more how you want to tackle it; except for family rooms (top of stairs) - Fixed a graphical bug with the back stairs caused by TDM upgrading to 2.06 - Added some plants around bottom of garden wall alongside cart. I don't like seeing planes meeting. lol - Made some changes to the fog in the garden. - Fixed a problem with the newspaper that was allowing the no frobbing bug to occur. Enjoy Neon PS: Why does TAB key no longer tab? It drops to the bottom of the page. I have to say I hate this editor.

http://k.min.us/jCfGA.jpg "At night, they say, the Builders' hand comes loose from his mighty hammer and creatures wander out from their hiding places while he slumbers. But tis this night, above all others that unholy vapours cloak the land with gloomy curtains and night creatures dance and sing in the twilight. I can't say I'm looking forward to my endeavors this night.... I've been given a job by a Priest to retrieve two holy artifacts from an abandoned cloister in Eldin woods north of the city, simple job I thought, but the priest failed to mention the placed was haunted." Build Time: - version 1.0 was about 5 weeks, but we are now upto version 3.11. Thanks: Respect to the Dark Mod team for putting up with all my questions and knocking up the various updates in short order!. Special thanks to Flanders and Springheel for their models and my testers for helping me squash all the bugs etc. Testers: Flanders, Jaxa, nbohr1more, Aluminumhaste, Baal,l Oldjim, Cookie, Obsttorte, lux, Mat99, AluminumHaste, thebigh Readables: Darkangel/Flanders/b1k3rdude with special thanks to Flanders for his original story.. Resource: Flanders/Springheel - art direction and models. Misc: This is a homage to the original Thief2 mission from 2001 (The Cathedral of the Damned) Download: - The latest version is now available via the in-game downloader. Info: This version has been heavily updated from the original, this came about as a result of need to be compatible with TDM 2.10+ Repeat after me, "Read and explore, Read and explore" The mission is fully l10n ready. (thanks Tels) The mission now has EFX Reverb The mission now has Volumetric Light effects The mission now uses LOD settings for different detail levels There is now a script event related to the "Curse" A few new surprises... Known issues: This mission will have less than optimal fps at a few points on the map, but most of my testers with lowish end rigs (P4/HD4650) are getting 30fps+ at the worst spots) For very low end PCs I recommend the following settings: V-sync is off, AA is off, Aniso is 4x or lower, advanced settings are simple/default & Post processing of disabled and as a last resort the command line arg ' r_skipFogLights 1 ' (turns off the fog)

Type of mission: Mansion/Estate/Horror Story: Lord Blackgrove recently purchased a rare expensive artifact. The whole family has now disappeared leaving the manor empty. Time to check out the manor and see if the artifact can be found. Build time: My first map ever, 300 hours (5 months). Credits: Kingsal - Breaker script for light switches and elevator Dragofer - Ambience Track 'Intent' Springheel and Sotha - Video Tutorials (those videos really helped) Feedback and testing: Cambridge Spy, Dragofer, nbohr1more, Acolytesix, wesp5, Shadow, Zerg Rush, AluminumHaste, prjames The whole community. Download (1.03): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wZc_nqHoX7kQvzfg08EpoRy2hyuH7mw3/view?usp=sharing Edit: Version 1.02 provides large performance improvements in the outdoor areas. Be sure to set TDM Object Details (LOD) to Normal (or lower) to take advantage of some of the optimizations. Edit: Version 1.03 further improves performance around hedges thanks to HMart's alternative hedge model. I’ve had a mission like this in mind for years. My main influences and inspirations are: Deus Ex - Chateau DuClare (https://youtu.be/9QLT_l8aH78) Clive Barker’s Undying - Main Mansion (https://youtu.be/t8PyXhCQB3Q?t=90) Thief Deadly Shadows - Shalebridge Cradle (Almost everyone should be very familiar with this one) (https://youtu.be/Rw4YZuRUgXA) In case anyone gets stuck and needs help, I’ve listed some questions and answers below that will hopefully help. FAQ

There's a lighting issue in "William Steele 1: In the North" at -1153.92 3523.22 -955.75 29.8 -145.6 0.0 There's a candle on the other side of the wall. In 2.12 dev, that candle's light leaks through the wall at the base of the door as seen in the video, comparing 2.11 and 2.12-r10451.

The light coming from the windows was actually added in the very last update before release. Originally, only the windows facing the moon were lit up and projected moonbeams, but Dragofer remarked that following purely realistic lighting practices often results in an under-lit mission. Although I also find it a bit strange that such stark moonbeams are coming in from all the windows, I think the lighting of the pre-escape sequence is all the better for it. Thanks for playing my FM, Hightide, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

So, I just retextured the caulk brushes to shadowcaulk and this seems to be working fine. Suitable fix??? However, I did find another light leak right next to this one: