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It took awhile to get used to the size of this mission. The long loading times didn't help, but after passing a certain point, I get it now. However, I will say this - the AI is crazy on this map. I started, right? And the first thing I see - all guards going ape because some thug cut loose. I sat in the dark corner, for like ten minutes, waiting for them to calm down, because I figured I should look around for loot (I only found some of it much later when I was returning here after finishing the mission) The same thing happened later, when I needed to pass an abandoned mansion. I waited for the epic battle, instead it was a massacre, but like an idiot I saved AFTER I left the tunnel, not before. So I couldn't reload and see if next time the battle will go differently. (Am I crazy or do leather thugs spawn after a moment?) I had to use up all gas arrows to pass that part because they kept trimming the bushes. The evidence part got me confused because I dropped a piece of evidence, but it didn't count, so I dropped everything that said evidence. Only then it counted, but later, as I was still hunting for loot, I finally remembered that I had a vent key and came looking and found yet another piece of evidence?! Finding Smythe was funny, because he kept saying "Show yourself" and the moment I did... I gathered skulls before I was prompted to, but Edgar... I don't get it. edit: Those glasses, tho. Holy crap, I did not expect to see "actual glass" in this game. The hidden room took me ages to find, despite TWO blatant hints. But I was sleep-deprived at the time. There was one snag, and one confusion that I had. The snag was that, when I finally reached the alchemist, the note told me to use the vent, right? But... I couldn't open the second vent in his lab. I don't know which key I was missing for that. So I figured - I could just go back the same way... and game CTD. I walked there again - CTD. I noclipped through that locked vent, killed the spiders, and tried to open the doors to my left (got spooked by friendly guards) - CTD. Only when I walked right and up the stairs did I finally progressed. Not sure what that was about. The confusion, however, came from Builders. I knocked out most of them in the Builder's outpost, but when I dealt with the Mr. Nom-nom-zom, they vanished. I guess they needed that many people to dig him out of the spider outhouse? (Never found the second news flash either) I still somehow missed 3.5k, and noticed that lights kept poking through walls (there is a piece of light pointed at doors leading into the inner garden of Builder's outpost that nearly got me killed a few times) Overall, however, this was an impressive piece of work.

Breakable lights might be an interesting concept so long as they are not implemented retroactively. Add a loud sound or other punishment for breaking them as you see fit, but it would still change the difficulty and design intended by level authors if you applied it to all previously made levels. I would also suggest that if you instead intend to make breakable variants of existing light models that you add a clear visual indicator that the light is breakable, otherwise it would require explicit messaging to the player that electric lights are breakable in that particular FM. I’m hesitant to see something of this sort added as it is in stark contrast to Thief precedent, but I would be more supportive of it if it was added carefully and responsibly.

There might be another way, or at least it's what I thought of as a non-developer: Use a different way to transform mouse movement into camera rotation or viewport offset. Is there no alternative to calculating the distance from the pointer to the window center before resetting the pointer to the middle? There must be other mouse look implementations that could work. Most obvious alternative: We can detect how much the pointer moved on the screen compared not to the center, but to its previous position wherever that may be. While of course still trying to lock it in the middle, but if that fails at least it doesn't cause the view to go crazy: The only issue then will be the cursor reaching the screen edge and having to be re-engaged so you can keep scrolling in that direction, which is also a big annoyance but comparatively less bad and not as noticeable unless you do long-range movements in one go. Any reason why we couldn't give this option a try?

Cannot reproduce on Ubuntu 22.04. Although the Entity List can take a long time to load in a large map (painterswife.pk4) at no point does it lock the system or capture the mouse.

When I open the entitylist DR freezes a while while loading the entitylist. On very large missions this can be very long. At that moment at first it seemed the whole system freezes, but I found that I can still use the rest of the system with the keyboard, but not with the mouse. System: Manjaro Linux xfce Version DR: 3.8 Flatpack install

Noticed all of these only because I played TDM by doing the opposite of stealth to practice swordfights. None of these bugs appeared as long as I played the game stealthily. Should also note that I used Snatcher's Core Essentials @snatcher on and off, but your mod does not alter the AI anyway, correct? Bugs happened both ways. 1) AI freezes in combat - https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6371 It happens a lot with auto-parry disabled. It never happened with auto-parry enabled. It never happened with some guards, while it happened many times with specific guards. They unfreeze when player dies, or when AI is forced to re-equip the melee when player returned from a spot that usually causes them to throw rocks. Also experienced behavior of them only slowly walking towards me at the pace of "hunched sneakily searching mode", attacking once finally in proximity. 2) AI may collectively lose the ability to hear any of the players noise caused by footsteps / landing. Still unsure of what causes this, but Lockner Manor has a good layout to get to the result. Just follow the right-most path and repeat the process of winning sword-fights with City Watch, and then jump around the next guard to see if they can hear you. If they can not hear you, likely nobody can. If they still can, just combat them too and you will likely have deaf AI by the time you have dealt with the 3 Watch Guards outside. In my experience, when they hear the death scream well enough to run to its location or start searching - the deafening did not work. 3) Helmeted AI does not react to (nor hear) players overhead sword strikes made directly on helmet, stealthily from behind. Not sure if the same issue as deaf AI bug, but happened at least once while it was active. (Lockner Manor) 4) (Moor?) AI may lose the ability to hear AND see player after nearby swordfights and after two slashes to bloody their face. (I may have also Moss Arrowed them to face). Any sword strikes I make simply go through their model with no audio of impact. Collision still gets player detected. (A Good Neighbor) 5) Crash to desktop when archer puts bow away to take out melee (while I may have collided with them on staircase). (Lockner Manor) 6) Crash to desktop when I shot a shortsword-wielding charging Noble. Sound of a deflected arrow played (same that you hear when shooting a stone wall), when I expected a flesh-hitting sound. (A Good Neighbor) 7?) Sometimes AI says "Ow that hurt" merely because I block their strikes. - Is this an intended feature? Do they take actual damage too? Anyway, I didn't find mentions about many of these issues. Reporting aside, if you want me to experiment with something or find ways to replicate - I don't mind updating this thread, as I plan to mess around with sword-fights anyway. Just posted this initial version should anyone want to chime in with similar experiences, and I wanted to know if some of these bugs could be mission-, or mod-specific. Maybe caused by much or unfortunately timed quicksaving / loading?

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.

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

Is there a reason why you post with white background and black letters? Because it is really hard on the eyes with a dark setting!

I played it twice. Maybe it's because I finished first Dishonored not long before playing for the second time, with clean hands, and sought another thrill of picking open a safe while Target is roaming the same room. The first time, I did run around killing guards, but eventually I couldn't get past a mission and quit. The second time, I just threw my hat in the wind and used WeMod. Once you're invisible to everything, ghosting isn't an issue =| Are there some cool tricks in this game? Yeah. I liked seeing my hands (a real kink at this point) fumble for a hidden switch, or smoothly yoink purses off guards. Focus was cheating, really, but I didn't hate it exactly. I just thought that this is Tomb Raider reboot/Arkham all over again. Hub? Nice, shame nothing we collect mean anything. Vendors out in the "open"? Hey, that feels like I'm actually in that world. What I hated was the ending. Or that Chase sequence. Loading screens masked as "cutscenes"? Ugh... The plot holes not helping either. But the worst thing are "Hidden" areas in the overworld. I think even with the guide, I haven't found all of them. But at least I finished it.

I think it's ok to include shadow maps features as long as fms don't become depended on it. Meaning you can't play it properly with stencil shadows enabled.

this was a nice little mission, though just long and twisty enough to create a sense of dread! next Dark Mod update needs I fully expected the bottles to become important later, and they did. The layout was a bit tubular, especially coming back - having some new pathways open up and others close at the big trigger would have been interesting. I didn't try to get onto that first balcony because I figured I would reach it later. Well, I did but I did find it a little strange that the moon was low on one side of the house, but there was such strong light coming in windows from both sides even on the lower floor. It added atmosphere, but I kept wondering where it was coming from (since the surround area has been built up, and probably overshadows the house).

Overall, your pack seems almost perfect to me!) Maybe it would be possible to add a frob outline like in the unofficial patch. I only play with the Steam Deck, and using the console on it is very difficult. After all, each button on it needs to be configured separately. Maybe if someone suggests what I can directly configure in the config, it will completely solve my problem. I haven't played many missions yet, and the ones I remember are the two standard ones and "No Honor Among Thieves." There are a lot of items in these missions. Adding new skills has become frustrating for me because it takes a long time to find the right item in my inventory, and this happens every time. I also wanted to say that I haven't found a proper use for the OBSERVATION, COMBINATION, DISTRACTION, and ALTERATION skills. I play on the highest difficulty and don't feel like it's too hard for me, and all these skills, in my understanding, are designed to simplify the gameplay. In theory, MANIPULATION should also be on this list, but I found a use for it.) But no matter where or how I use OBSERVATION, I always see blackness. Maybe it depends on the map? The main problem is still the inventory. I would like it to have fewer unused items.) I even throw away picked up books and scrolls after reading them to keep them from cluttering up my inventory. I also installed the original Thief games, and it feels like they have a lot fewer items. That's how it is.

@snatcher I understand that when you feel your work doesn't live up to your goals that you don't want it out in the wild advertising your own perceived shortcomings but that leads to a troubling dilemma of authors who are never satisfied with their work offering fleeting access to their in-progress designs then rescinding them or allowing them to be lost. When I was a member of Doom3world forums, I would often see members do interesting experiments and sometimes that work would languish until someone new would examine it and pickup the torch. This seemed like a perfectly viable system until Doom3world was killed by spambots and countless projects and conceptual works were lost. I guess what I am trying to say is that mods don't need to be perfect to be valuable. If they contain some grain of a useable feature they might be adapted by mission authors in custom scenarios. They might offer instructive details that others trying to achieve the same results can examine. It would be great if known compelling works were kept somewhere safe other than via forum attachments and temporary file sharing sites. I suppose we used to collect such things in our internal SVN for safe keeping but even that isn't always viable. If folks would rather not post beta or incomplete mods to TDM's Moddb page, perhaps they would consider creating their own Moddb page or allow them to be added to my page for safe keeping. Please don't look at this as some sort of pressure campaign or anything. I fully understand anyone not willing to put their name next to something they aren't fully happy with. As a general proviso, ( if possible \ permitted ) I just want to prevent the loss of some valuable investigations and formative works. The end of Doom3world was a digital apocalypse similar to the death of photobucket. It is one of my greatest fears that TDM will become a digital memory with only the skeletons of old forum threads at the wayback archive site.

Rest assured, I haven't received nothing but praise thus far. Most of the constructive criticism about this FM's design arose during beta testing, and Dragofer in particular gave me a very useful write-up about what can be improved next time. Some examples being that he FM is a bit too spacious at times, its difficulty is rather low (a sentiment shared by thebigh), and the house design is a bit strange or tubular as a result of the FM's more linear nature. It's all been invaluable feedback as I continue to learn DR, and I intend to write up a post-first FM release retrospective near the end of this week going over what I've learned. I'm quite overjoyed about all the positive feedback I've received thus far, but that's not because I'm afraid of criticism, rather I was afraid of how a less traditional mission would be received by the community. I wanted to make something a bit weird with my first mission, and I was wary of how a short, linear mission with a limited player toolset would be viewed. Fortunately, the community has been very welcoming and accepting of weird little ideas, and I intend to take what I've learned into my next project right after my eyes stop burning from all those late-night Dark Radiant sessions. I hope you enjoy the FM, Chakkman!

Congrats on the release! Remember to check ThiefGuild as well as the DarkFate forums (via Google Translate) for additional feedback.

The alternative footstep sound download url is not working. This one is correct (1st post)

You're too kind! I don't think I've created something on par with what some of the veteran creators have put out just yet, but I'm very happy about how well it's been received. It's been especially nice reading messages sent to me about the lighting and sound design inside the house, as I spent a long time tweaking it and was afraid others wouldn't appreciate those tiny details. I'll certainly be back again to release another mission in the future as you've all been very welcoming, especially the dev team!

I may know why the builders and guards suddenly go all aggro, and it has nothing to do with a window. If you wait long enough, eventually Malachi gets killed by the elevator and they don't think it was because they elevator lacks safety features. I did a playthrough and Malachi was killed by the elevator but I had knocked out all the other roving builders that would have seen him. After I finished, I went in and set up on the table by the elevator that had a candlestick on it. Eventually old Malachi got chewed by the elevator and they all alerted. Sometimes other people get killed on the elevator at that point and sometimes it says I failed the don't kill anybody objective and sometimes it doesn't. Don't know if it'll happen every time. My first attempt either I didn't wait long enough or it may be some triggers need to happen. The second time I still waited quite a while but Malachi eventually died on the elevator again. So if that isn't intentional, that may be what starts the issue.

I think the default gamma was raised to 1.2 to reduce banding and color precision artifacts at the low end of the brightness scale. There are probably some confounding factors that make that a questionable decision. 1) At the time of this discussion, I believe TDM's bloom settings were generating extra contrast and thus lowering gamma 2) By the time that soft gamma was implemented, we also were using a new bloom system that does not tie the bloom effect to other post processing effects 3) There was some attempt to make TDM shaders compliant with industry gamma defaults but that attempt to adhere to standards may have caused problems because most games are much brighter than TDM so using calibration established for use in brighter games may cause unintended results. These days, I normally set gamma to 1 ambient gamma to 1.1 and set my postprocess color curve to 0.2 or 0.3 which darkens gamma back to something similar to 1. Maybe someday I'll purchase a monitor calibration machine and try to sort out the ideal default state.

Another issue I ran into which I remember from playing the mission way back: you can basically softlock yourself here if you jump onto the boulders as they float up. You get stuck in them and can't jump anymore. Edit: if you just stay on one of these boulders for too long, you get stuck too.

Sorry - my response was a long way of saying I'd be fine with going to maps only as a strategy. I voted option 1. But this is without understanding some things in your top post. What is an 'Alpha-tested shadow occluder' and how does it affect me as a mapper? What is an example of a translucent object that won't cast shadows?

Find attached to this post v0.5 of the Player Lamp, updated to 2.12 standards. The Lamp can run in parallel with other mods Updated tdm_player_thief.def from 2.12 Download the pk4 and place it in your TDM folder. Launch a mission and cycle through the weapons. Nothing else and nothing more. Enjoy! z_handheld_lamp_v0.5.pk4

I like how this has essentially become a Linux thread despite it not being the intended focus. I play around with Ubuntu MATE because I like Ubuntu and the MATE variant has an environment I prefer with a bunch of changes I like, a good compromise between old and new. That said, TDM behaves a bit oddly in Linux. For some reason in TDM it misses the occasional mouse click - if I happen to click fast enough there's a chance the event won't register. It seems to be something inherent to the Doom 3 engine in Linux - even in dhewm3, if I make a really fast click on the mouse it can sometimes ignore that mouse event and not fire the weapon. Generally you have to be really quick on the down/up event for it to happen, but it happens, it's reproducible and I can't just accept having to consciously be aware of my mouse behaviour and remembering to click long enough to guarantee the event is registered. I'm sure many won't notice this issue, but I'm pretty fussy about such things so it annoys me. This doesn't happen on anything else in Linux, just Doom3/TDM. Not surprisingly Windows doesn't have this issue, and it's a good example of the reasons why I don't bother moving entirely to Linux. I can't stand odd quirks like this and there's odd quirks EVERYWHERE in Linux. There's quirks aplenty in Windows too of course, but I'm used to them.

The latch is just like any any other entity - you can use any model or func_static you like as long as the mechanism translates or rotates (or both).