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Thanks for playing and the kind feedback re: the bugs: the brew tank is a new one - thanks for that. Will add it to the list for any future update. the bow: I think that's a TDM bug. I experienced it as well, but only the early days of developing the mission so I thought it had gone away, but I guess not: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21345-210-crashes-may-be-bow-frontend-acceleration-related/ the keys on the guard: never did get to the bottom of that one as I could never reproduce it.

Unless the fashion in Bridgeport is wearing wooden soled clogs, chances is everyone's footwear is already made entirely of leather in the game's setting. If the thief needs quiet shoes they would not be hard to get: just procure a pair of the cheapest, thinnest soled shoes money can buy from the nearest cobbler. That's going to be as quiet as anything short of space age nanotech assassin boots or just going barefoot. At some point one must accept that footsteps in the Thief games and TDM are a pure gameplay contrivance. Except when walking on gravel, water, snow, dry forest debris, or squeaky wooden flooring it should not be possible to consistently hear any character's footsteps. There is certainly no reason a nobleman's marble dance floor should be louder than the flooring in a pauper's tenement building. The point isn't realism though. Thief and TDM aren't meant to be realistic burglary simulators. It's a metaphor about social hierarchies. Tile floors are loud because invading the private estates of the elite is dangerous for a commoner. Sewers are loud because wading around in sewage is unpleasant and degrading. Builder, Mechanist, and Watch metal floors are very loud because these are oppressive institutions dedicated to stamping out all independency in their subservient populations. It's about creating tension to tell a compelling story. I agree that it would be nice to be able to adjust footstep volume for those who find it distracting. In fact, given the importance of sound as a game mechanic, the more granularity of control players have over the volume of different sound sources the better. But once you start trying to relitigate sound volume on the basis of realism there is just no winning.

Yeah; I'd almost expect an optional 'soft-sole' boots purchasable special equipment option...as the default boots are SUPER-LOUD ON COBBLE. Probably realistic - as rubber soles won't be common (guild Electrical Technician boots?).

Thanks! Hint for the safe code here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21837-fan-mission-the-lieutenant-2-high-expectations-by-frost_salamander-20230424/&do=findComment&comment=485264 Actually, it's probably time I added these hints to the original post....

Perhaps but the game, has gameplay features that can muffle your footsteps sounds, carpet and other ground textures, the vine arrows also, so by making them more silent/quiet, imo you may end removing the incentive, for mission makers and players to make use of those. To me, If a player thinks the footsteps are to loud then maybe the mission maker, didn't put enough ways for the player to walk more silently in the level and so he always hears loud footsteps and thinks that is bad/broken. Btw what about incentivizing mission makers to do certain things, by the older more experienced mission makers, agreeing on a small list of "best practices for mission makers" for performance, looks and gameplay and pin that at the top of the forum? Then any new developer may learn something from that and avoid some rookie mistakes, like for example, not putting enough ways in a level for a player to walk more quietly. Just my two cents.

I never realised Bill Gates was a member of these forums. Welcome to the community! I hope you enjoy The Dark Mod. Perhaps your Foundation could help pay for the server hosting or fund the development of some new features?

Previously, I was told that editing the .sndshd files isn't a good solution and that the volume cannot be raised with .sndshd files. Also, those changed .sndshd files may need to be maintained and updated for each TDM release. That's why I chose the solution of reducing the volume on the sound files themselves. I haven't noticed any sound artifacts, especially since the original sound files are only edited once. There is a benefit: It's not too loud anymore. Editing a volume property in a .sndshd file is no more cumbersome than editing a volume property in my script and rerunning it. Reducing the volume on the sound files themselves was arrived at after discussing it with other devs and mission authors and after weighing the pros and cons. You may not think it is the best solution, but it sure isn't the worst. You sound like you know all about this. Could you please teach us how to edit sound volumes, lowering and raising them using .sndshd files? I look forward to your how-to guide. Then, your how-to guide can be another resource for players.

While that may be an acceptable solution for you, it is the worst possible way to reduce the volume of sounds. You are introducing serial recompression artifacts for no benefit, and the process is unnecessarily cumbersome if you want to experiment with several different volume levels. Instead, you should just edit (or add) the volume field in the respective .sndshd files, which changes the volume in-game without touching the sound files. For example, "volume -3" will make the sound approximately half as loud. This is a one-line change which is quick and easy to test and does not introduce any compression artifacts.

Thanks for the replies, gonna try those spoiler Tags again now for my short review (oh well it inserted one above my text now and I can't seem to delete it on mobile - this text editor is strange)

Just finished this mission and wow I gotta say in great honor to Grayman and of course the rest of the team picking it up, this was something I've never seen before in any other TDM mission, especially visually wise. I am so happy that grayson gave green light for other experienced mappers to finish his last mission. And what came out of this is really something special. I'll put my review in spoiler tags since I'm now referring to critical mission details. Edit - How do I put spoiler text here on mobile?? [spoiler] test [/spoiler][SPOILER] test [/SPOILER] [spoiler[spoiler [sfah

You can try my alternative footstep sounds package which addressed the things you described together with a lot of other footstep sounds both for player and AI if you want to. https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/17631-new-footstep-sounds/

Yeah, this would be a bit challenging to do at the moment, since the player footstep sound volumes vary a lot. For example, I find water and metal footstep sounds to be way too loud and painful. The way I made it better for myself is I found the corresponding sound files and edited them to reduce their volumes.

What's the problem that this would solve? Are player or AI footsteps too loud, so it's painful to listen to? Are you wanting AI footsteps to be more audible ("can't go completely silent"), so it's easier to tell where AI are? Something else?

Mods can this moved again? @Acolytesix- can you make sure you post in the beta thread instead of this one please (this one is public, the beta thread is only for logged-in forum members): https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21822-beta-testing-high-expectations/

sure - I would only ask that you follow the thread to make sure you don't report stuff that has already been mentioned: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21822-beta-testing-high-expectations/

heh i was thinking the same though it might just have been a glitch when writing the names are pretty similar. But for correctness it is called the dark engine and the newer version that allows us to run these beauties on win10/11 is called newdark. newdark is kinda interresting as it just suddenly popped up on a french forum some time ago by an anonymous developer with the alias le corbeau who allegedly got his hands on the original source code and started updating it for modern OS. this was the original thread i believe -> https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140085 bikerdude was on that forum to when the patch hit i noticed hehe.

Okay, I had no idea, I have googled it up now and you are right, to my own surprise. Done, I´ve put some paragraphs which were previously not in spoiler tags into spoilers.

Thebigh is right. The pronunciation tripped me up too, but that is apparently how Leicester is pronounced. Also @TarhielI'm glad you are loving the FM but do you mind putting spoiler tags on your post please

We will look at some of this stuff, but SPOILER tags, please!!!

This may make sense in that the performance impact of the volumetric effect can scale with how much of the effect is filling the screen. We shipped with a “performance mode” but had to setup the entities by hand to do it (so it’s not perfect). If you change the LOD detail settings to “Low” or “Lowest” this will disable certain lights, particles and such that can be very heavy to render. You can try these settings and see if you notice an improvement. If not sending us some pictures of heavy areas (with spoiler tags please) will be helpful with tuning these “performance modes” in subsequent patches. Thanks for playing!

Interesting, although I'm not sure what to make of that. One of my favorite games (The Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena) was published by Atari, and, they don't even seem to care to keep the activation servers running much. Or remove/change the copy protection, which doesn't work at all on Windows 11. I really hope that Nightdive delivers at the end of May... I'm not one of the shit storm crowd (it's absolutely horrible on the Steam forums...), but, 7 years of development is a long time, and delaying the release obviously has become a bit of a habit, to say the least.

(I apologize for the odd poll question layout. I wasn't able to add five yes-no questions, because polls are limited to three questions.) Hi everyone, I've recently been working on some patches for issues that I've read about from players on the TDM and TTLG forums — and Discord. My goal is to make it as easy as possible for players, especially new players and those who need usability/accessibility options, to find what they need in order to have a better TDM experience. I've already written the GUI and game engine code for these settings, which I've been using in my personal build. The reason for this poll and discussion is to both guide the finalization of my work and collect data to help inform the dev team. Which patches I submit depend on the outcome of this poll, discussion, and what the dev team agrees to accept. Once decided, I can coordinate with the dev team. I've attached screenshots of what the new settings menu would look like if all of the settings are accepted. Below, I have detailed each menu setting, so you can have an easier time understanding each one. Very important to keep in mind: None of these settings change TDM default behavior. They are all opt-in. If you are already happy with the behavior of 2.10, 2.11, etc. and these menu settings are accepted, nothing will change for you. Rename "Always Run" to "Run Mode" with options "None, Always, Toggle" After 2.11 was released, @i30817 requested that "toggle run" be added to the settings menu. Its cvar is already in TDM as "in_toggleRun" (same as Doom 3). I propose renaming the "Always Run" setting to "Run Mode" with options: "None", "Always", and "Toggle". None = in_alwaysRun 0; in_toggleRun 0 Always = in_alwaysRun 1; in_toggleRun 0 Toggle = in_alwaysRun 0; in_toggleRun 1 Show Blackjack Helper @Wellingtoncrab suggested that the new blackjack helper be added to the settings menu. Its cvar was added to 2.11 as "tdm_blackjack_indicate". More info: It's the new blackjack helper added to 2.11. When the game detects that the blackjack can be used for a successful hit or KO, the blackjack will rise slightly. I propose a "Yes/No" setting for this. Slider for "View: Head Bob" @ChronA requested a way to disable head bobbing, because a viewer watching him play was having severe motion sickness. Also, there was a bug in TDM that made setting the head bob in the console not stick after loading a saved game. (Even with 2.11, if a mission overrides the "tdm_player_thief.def" file and sets "pm_bobroll", "pm_bobpitch", "pm_bobup", and other cvars, it will override player preferences.) As far back as 2008, players have had trouble setting head bob. Another one from 2018. At the end of 2022, @Shadowex3 registered just to voice the need for a way to control head bob. I propose that a slider be added to adjust the amount of head bob. This would use a new "pm_headbob_mod" cvar with a value between 0.0 and 1.0 (default 1.0, no change). The "pm_headbob_mod" would be a multiplier for "pm_bobroll", "pm_bobpitch", and "pm_bobup". The advantage to this approach is that missions like Volta 2 and Hazard Pay would not need to adjust their "tdm_player_thief.def" files for head bob to work properly. And, the player can still adjust "pm_bobroll", "pm_bobpitch", and "pm_bobup" as they like. Slider for "View: Mantle Roll" This is similar to head bob for those who are sensitive to motion. Its cvar was added to 2.11 as "pm_mantle_roll_mod". A Thief player on Discord said, "2.11 will have a cvar to tune down the mantling animation at last." I propose that a slider be added for "pm_mantle_roll_mod". Auto-Search Bodies @Zaratul requested the "auto-search bodies" feature from Thief 1 & 2. Its cvar was added to 2.12 dev16783-10307 as "tdm_autosearch_bodies". I did a poll on the a Thief Discord server and roughly 20% of players there use the Thief auto-search bodies feature. I propose a menu setting for this, so that players coming from Thief 1 & 2 can easily find it.

Arrow / Weapon BIND STACKING: AKA old Quake mod style re-use of Impulse 1,2,3,4,5....plus tool-variations But; built around General Type/Intended Use: Blackjack / Club / Heavy-Vase / Hammer / Ether & Rag, ect... {Knockout weapons/tools} Short-Sword / Dagger / Stiletto, Blow-darts, ect... {Killing weapons/tools} Water (arrows) / Extinguisher (manual water pump) / Soot (arrows)... {Light Dousing tools} Fire; 'Explosive' (arrows) / Concussion (arrow) / Incendiary (arrow)... {Explosive weapon/tools} Rope (arrows) / Vine (arrows) / Grappling-Hook (hook & chain)... {Vertical movement tools} 'Ether' Gas (arrows) / 'Tear' Gas (arrows) / 'Mustard' Gas (arrows)... {Mixed use gas/vapour tools} Moss (arrows) / Paint (arrows) ...{Sound-impact / light absorbing tools} Glue (arrows) / Flash (arrows) / Noisemaker (arrows) / Fire-crackers... {Distracting / disabling tools} Noting the following are new; Heavy-Vase: used double-handed; a loud single use blackjack that leaves a mess... Dagger, Stilleto: Short range, Can't block - the latter CAN penetrate armour if attacking a weak-point... Blow-Darts: Specialized tool of assassins - useful dealing with multiple guards...or special people (its deadly). Ether-vial & Rag: Used from behind its very effective at disabling. It will evaporate in moments, limited uses. Extinguisher: Ever wanted to just spray some water on a torch? This, does that. That's it. Only close up. Paint Arrows: Permanently covers electric light sources & blinds optical sensors [which WILL trigger them!]. Glue Arrows: So, you need to stop charging guards?; Loosing one of these creates a puddle of Ultra-Adhesive capable of binding anything together for a little while. Works against Bi-pedal AND Quadrupedal foes! I think TDM; needs more puzzle-ish odd tools and places to use 'em! (and not having more re-bind things for every darn map)

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

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.