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A couple of tips that I found most helpful as a newcomer to music production: When trying to determine whether things sound balanced, try listening quietly. Everything always sounds better when loud, so by listening at a lower volume you make all the flaws a lot more obvious. Put a hard high-pass filter on absolutely every track, then push the cutoff frequency up as far as you can without ruining the sound. The only thing that should have any content in the sub-bass frequencies is the bass track, and even that should have as little as possible. Sub bass frequencies are present in everything (even your closed hihat), but just eat up space in your mix and make everything sound muddy and boomy.

Personally I think this is the worst idea ever. The Reason forums has LOADS of info and knowledge, built up through years and years. I'm really sad to see it go away, and I can't understand why they've made this decision. https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/showthread.php?p=1579099#poststop

Welcome to the New Mappers Workshop! This is a communal workshop for new mappers who have never made a TDM mission before. Each week or two I will make a tutorial video and help to guide everyone through the process of creating a small, complete mission. I'm hoping the participants will feel free to ask questions, no matter how small--we're all here to learn from and encourage each other. Since I expect this thread to get fairly busy, I'm going to be heavy-handed about removing off-topic content. ====================================================================================================================================================================== Lessons often include links or other written instructions; direct links to the lessons are collected below: Lesson 1: Planning http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=407999 Lesson 2: Visportals http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=408253 Lesson 3: Your First Room http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=408484 Lesson 4: Decorating Your Rooms http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=408785 Lesson 5: Connecting Your Rooms http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=409215 Lesson 6: Outdoor "Rooms" http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=409322 Lesson 7: Creating Doors http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=409547 Lesson 8: Functional Props (ie, entities) http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=409731 Lesson 9: Immersive Details (sound/particles) http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=410258 Lesson 10: Advanced Brushwork (ladders/water) http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=410667 Lesson 11: AI http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18945-tdm-new-mappers-workshop/?p=411192

Above 3 items are released now, on the "Barks" thread: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21740-english-subtitles-for-ai-barks/&do=findComment&comment=483331

When I tried your .exe, I got this: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21477-water-effects-not-rendered-through-warp-glass/&do=findComment&comment=475732 You also suggested trying the 'latest development build'. I asked if that can be obtained using tdm_installer, and you said 'yes'. That's what I reported here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21477-water-effects-not-rendered-through-warp-glass/&do=findComment&comment=475856 So - I am probably doing something wrong but not sure what

Instead of that, you could, in that time period, start learning your own missions and in doing so become more active on the forums, learning from others. It's also great to understand how things work in the engine, when you play. It might spoil some immersion though.. Or learn to build games with other engines, like Godot for example.

That, quite literally, is a dark game. Didn't see nough to decide whether it looks good. It definitely needs sound randomization - multiple clips for each sound to shoose from and could also randomize volume and pitch. Footsteps seem to be pretty loud in general when compared to voice lines.

Thanks for the feedback. Remember that the idea was that this feature should help players when running away after getting detected, not to increase the speed of the player so he runs through the level all the time. Therefore a few aspects haven't been taken into consideration as they are not relevant for that case, but obviously would need to be added when implementing, while some of your points result from the unintented way of using it. Crouching: left out due to the above reasons, but obviously you should not slam open doors while crouching The noise propagated needs tweaking I guess, and the door should make a different sound when slammed. This would require changes to the door or some default fallback sound to be played as alternative to the typical open/close sound to reflect that it is loud. The aspect you mentioned in regards to closing doors without passing them is correct. I'll have to give this a thought. Regarding closed doors: I guess if you run into them in full speed expecting them to be openable quickly, the sudden stop you'll experience will make quiet some noise I don't really see any reason to tweak that.

Dear @Obsttorte , I have been testing v2 for some time and I don't have any positive points, I am afraid. The following are in-game sensations (didn't check or alter your scripts). Your script works fine when running away from AI, but my main testbed this time around has been a house with long carpeted corridors and AI doing its business unalerted. 1) The sound propagation spoiled the fun of the first version and AI is on me in more numbers and much faster than before. And while the idea of some noise could make sense, it doesn't translate well on screen because quickly opening doors doesn't feel too-fast or too-loud to me. The feeling is that I certainly am opening doors faster but with enough control not to slam the door against walls or frames. I like it better that AI detects me because of my floor steps and or simply because they see me. Ghosting at high speed undetected is actually fun! In addition, trying to quickly opening a door that is locked will alert nearby AI. And while it may be a realistic on paper it doesn't translate well to the screen: why is this guy coming here? 2) Players shouldn't be able to quickly open doors when crouching, but I guess this could depend on whether sound propagation stays or not. It currently doesn't feel right to me and I find quickly open doors when crouching a mechanic that may encourages players to go fast. 3) There's a situation where quickly closing doors doesn't feel right. Put yourself in a long corridor, there's a door to your right that is open. You want to close that door but stay on the current corridor, running in the same direction. You make the move but get no feedback in that split second. Weird. I say leave "quickly opening doors when running in stand up position" and forget about the rest. Less is more isn't it? That feature alone adds a lot and there's always time for upgrades. Cheers!

There is no SS3, how can they do a remake? And thank god they got rid of unity, that engine is total trash garbage on anything over 60 fps. Just spend 5 minutes on steam forums for Unity project games, and there's just thousands of people complaining about poor performance, stuttering etc.

There are lots of downsides with killing people. It's loud, other guards are likely to come running, and to discover the corpses (and get alert for ages), and I think (correct me if I'm wrong) the AI will spot the blood as well. I haven't played this mission yet, but, usually, you won't be able to kill undead that way either. Anyway, as has been pointed out, the game lets you play it in multiple ways, and that's good. Restrictions restrict the way you want to play the game, which is bad. If you don't want to play the way which is shown in the video (which is not the normal way you can deal with the undead anyway), then just don't do it. Case solved. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the game in this regard, so why fix something which isn't broken?

@snatcherHere is a modified version of the script that causes a sound to be propagated, hearable for nearby AI. Initially the sound origin was the door in question, but for some reason that doesn't work if the door is touching a visportal, which it usually does. Therefore the sound is emitted by the player. As they are nearby when a door gets slam open or closed it doesn't make a big difference, though. You can play with the number in the propSoundMod function call to modify how loud the propagated sound is (note that the player cannot hear it, it's only for alerting the AI).

Okay, I haven't read all the long posts in this thread, but speaking of tools reminded me of the crowbar that was available in one of the recent missions. I rather liked it to open some crates but of course in the context of the mission you needed to use it. But how about adding it to the core game to open any crate or any wooden door without having a key, but making a loud noise instead? One could argue that this might break a lot of missions though in which certain keys are needed to find in order...

1. Yes, most interactions with the environment mean noise, which can lead to failure. If you want to incentivize using tools and experimenting with guards and environment, why did you choose Thief gameplay and implemented stealth score? 2. Not really, if you balance it out. You can create more paths, e.g. a shorter one, but lit by a lantern that goes out for a while, every now and then. Or another shorter path behind guards back, but with a loud surface. This way player has a risk-reward kind of choice (get somewhere faster, but have to creep carefully behind AIs back, or time their move through a temporarily unlit area). Again, it's easier and faster to discuss these things when you know the contents of that presentation.

Hunt Showdown lets you immediately open doors while running by melee bashing them, easily the most satisfying (and loud) thing to do. Can't do it by accident that way, but I think it'd be less useful in TDM.

Probably the .script file that's needed, but unfortunately can't be included with a prefab. Maybe there's a comment somewhere in the prefab (or in the wiki or forums) that says what script it needs and where to find it. (The similar combination setup I used earlier doesn't involve "slot", so clearly uses a different script that I what I have.)

I recently replayed that game and I very much disliked that approach to the game. However, it was tightly integrated into the detection / sound system of the game. If there were loud environmental noises playing you could go a little faster without being heard. In practice, I never really used more than 2 or 3 movement speeds.

Since it already has been mentioned in the forums, I'd like to announce a small project of mine. A few weeks ago I was playing Legend of Grimrock and it struck me that their level design is extremely simple and modular, and yet, the player can spend quite a lot of time in the game. And it looks pretty, too! So I wondered if it wouldn't be possible to create a modern "Dungeon Crawler" (solve puzzles, fight monsters, collect loot, progress your character, upgrade your equipment) type of game inside the TDM engine. The engine already supports a lot of things one needs for this, and the overal structure and assets work, too. And with prefabs, one might get the level layout done quickly. However, building a few test prefabs in DR is easy, but creating a full mission out of them is quite painful. Not only needs it a lot of planning, but you can also spend a lot of time "upgrading" things later on. For instance if you later want to add a grime decal to the walls, you have to revisit the entire map. Even worse is if you find out later that your block size must be bigger or smaller. So the idea was born to create a sort of framework that can assemble missions from prefabs. Preferable while getting the description of the mission from a text file. So far, this has been a lot easier than I thought. Here is what I got working so far: Overview: You can describe your mission in a (Unicode) text file. This contains overall options, different locations (each location can have its own ambient light, music,name, fog), and the connections between the locations. Each location can have multiple "floor levels", these are stacked on top of each other. The config file also specifies which symbol means "use this prefab". It is also possible to specify links (per location), which means you can say "this lever with the symbol A opens the door with the symbol D". The framework reads the prefabs, and then positiones them in the map. It also glues all the locations together, adds location_info entities, a player start, an exit, and an objective to reach the exit. The resulting map is then enhanced with script objects (all nec. assets are bundled together), and automatically dmapped via TDM. Everything then is packaged together into a working .PK4 file. My demo map takes about 20 seconds, where 15 are dmap. In addition to the "basic" stuff I also managed to get a few things working, like a pressure plate, portcullies, and also made some puzzles. Oh, and per location fog (fading from location to location). Different difficulty levels are also supported, one can specify "this prefab appears only on easy" etc. You can find more info and screenshots and demo here: http://bloodgate.com/swift/ There is also a developer diary where I will be posting interesting entries from time to time. Here is an DR shot of a sample level, consisting of small modular prefabs and one large (the large hall on the lower left): The next steps will be to add more randomness (either static at map generation, or at runtime, so the map is slightly different each time you replay it). Also, while it is already possible to "overlay" prefabs (e.g. "for this location, look first here before falling back to the default"), it is not yet possible to "reskin" prefabs. This would be something which is impossible in DR (you cannot really reskin worldspawn brushes, unless you live with the fact that it is all manual For now I'm quite excited!

More suggestions: 1) Make the mission completed marker more visible. The little green tick that's currently used is barely visible. 2) An option to disable or lower the volume of the mission complete jingle. It's blaring and loud and and a poor way to end what may have been an hour of gameplay in near silence.

Thank you for a great puzzle fm! I'm having real trouble with the TDM v 2.10-64bit on Linux Mint 21.1 Link to the guide supplied by V-Man339 https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/15844-fan-mission-the-gatehouse-by-bikerdude-goldchocobo-updated-02112014/page/7/#comment-429405

I agree. I'm copying this idea over to the https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21741-subtitles-possibilities-beyond-211/ thread. Related: I'll probably do some more experiments with the current TDM font & size, to understand max char count versus field width.

Made 2.09b the default version. I hope at least a few people have installed and played it I'll finish the release process tomorrow (tags, source, pdb, etc.)