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Complaint From Players The player must pick up candles before extinguishing them, and then the player must remember to drop the candle. The player must drag a body before shouldering it (picking it up), and the player must remember to frob again to stop dragging the body. The player finds this annoying or easy to make mistakes. For players who ghost, some of them have the goal of returning objects back to their original positions. With the current "pick up, use item, and drop" system, the item might not return easily or at all to its original position. For example, a candlestick might bounce off its holder. (See player quotes at the bottom.) Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6316 Problems to Solve How can the "pick up" step be eliminated so that the player can directly use or interact with the item where it is in the game world? How can so much key pressing and mouse clicking be eliminated when the player wants to directly use an item? How can candles be extinguished and lanterns toggled off/on without first picking them up? How can bodies be shouldered without first dragging them? Solution Design Goals Make TDM easier for new players while also improving it for longtime players. Reduce tedious steps for common frob interactions. Make it intuitive so that menu settings are unnecessary. Do not introduce bugs or break the game. Terms frob -- the frob button action happens instantly. hold frob -- the frob button is held for 200ms before the action happens. (This can be changed via cvar: 200ms by default.) Proposed Solution Note: Some issues have been struckthrough to show changes since the patch has been updated. Change how frobbing works for bodies, candles, and lanterns. For bodies: Frob to shoulder (pick up) a body. Second frob to drop shouldered body, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Hold frob (key down) to start drag, continue to hold frob (key down) to drag body, and then release frob (key up) to stop dragging body. Also, a body can be dragged immediately by holding frob and moving the mouse. For candles/lanterns: Frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. Hold frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. For food: Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to eat food. For other items: No change. New cvar "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"200" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or extinguish. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Benefits Bodies: New players will have less to learn to get started moving knocked out guards. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players have played several missions before realizing that they could shoulder a body instead of dragging it long distances. Frob to shoulder body matches Thief, so longtime Thief players will find it familiar. Second frob drops a shouldered body. Players still have the ability to both shoulder and drag bodies. Compatible with the new auto-search bodies feature. Dragging feels more natural -- just grab, hold, and drop with a single button press. There is no longer the need to press the button twice. Also, it's no longer possible to walk away from a body while unintentionally dragging it. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Candles: New players will have less to learn to get started extinguishing candles. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players didn't know they could extinguish candles by picking them up and using them. Instead, they resorted to throwing them to extinguish them or hiding them. Hold frob to extinguish a candle feels like "pinching" it out. Once a candle is picked up, players still have the ability to manipulate and use them the same way they are used to in TDM v2.11 and earlier. For players who ghost and have the goal of putting objects back to their original positions, they'll have an easier time and not have to deal with candles popping off their holders when trying to place them back carefully. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Issues Bodies: Frob does not drop a shouldered body, so that might be unexpected for new players. This is also different than Thief where a second frob will drop a body. "Use Inv. Item" or "Drop Inv. Item" drops the body. This is the same as TDM v2.11 and earlier. This is the price to pay for being able to frob (open/close) doors while shouldering a body. Patch was updated to drop body on second frob, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Candles: Picking up a candle or lantern requires a slight delay, because the player must hold the frob button. The player might unintentionally extinguish a candle while moving it if they hold down frob. The player will need to learn that holding frob will extinguish the candle. The player can change the delay period via the "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar. Also, when the cvar is set to a delay of 0, the behavior matches TDM v2.11 and earlier, meaning the player would have to first "Frob/Interact" to pick up the candle and then press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish it. Some players might unintentionally extinguish a candle when they are trying to move it or pick it up. They need to make sure to hold frob to initiate moving the candle. When a candle is unlit, it will highlight but do nothing on frob. That might confuse players. However, the player will likely learn after extinguishing several candles that an unlit candle still highlights. It makes sense that an already-extinguished candle cannot be extinguished on frob. The official "Training Mission" might need to have its instructions updated to correctly guide the player through candle manipulation training. Updating the training mission to include the hold frob to extinguish would probably be helpful. Similar Solutions In Fallout 4, frob uses an item and long-press frob picks it up. Goldwell's mission, "Accountant 2: New In Town", has candles that extinguish on frob without the need of picking them up first. Snatcher's TDM Modpack includes a "Blow / Ignite" item that allows the player to blow out candles Wesp5's Unofficial Patch provides a way to directly extinguish movable candles by frobbing. Demonstration Videos Note: The last two videos don't quite demonstrate the latest patch anymore. But the gist is the same. This feature proposal is best experienced in game, but some demonstration videos are better than nothing. The following videos show either a clear improvement or that the player is not slowed down with the change in controls. For example, "long-press" sounds long, but it really isn't. Video: Body Shouldering and Dragging The purpose of this video is to show that frob to shoulder a body is fast and long-press frob to drag a body is fast enough and accurate. Video: Long-Press Frob to Pick Up Candle The purpose of this video is to show how the long-press frob to pick up a candle isn't really much slower than regular frob. Video: Frob to Extinguish The purpose of this video -- if a bit contrived -- is to show the efficiency and precision of this proposed feature. The task in the video was for the player to as quickly and accurately as possible extinguish candles and put them back in their original positions. On the left, TDM v2.11 is shown. The player has to highlight each candle, press "Frob/Interact" to pick up, press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish, make sure the candle is back in place, and finally press "Frob/Interact" to drop the candle. The result shows mistakes and candles getting misplaced. On the right, the proposed feature is shown. The player frobs to extinguish the candles. The result shows no mistakes and candles are kept in their original positions. Special Thanks @Wellingtoncrab was instrumental in improving this feature during its early stages. We had many discussions covering varying scenarios, pros, and cons, and how it would affect the gameplay and player experience. Originally, I had a completely different solution that added a special "use modifier" keybinding. He suggested the frob to use and long-press frob to pick up mechanics. I coded it up, gave it a try, and found it to be too good. Without his feedback and patience, this feature wouldn't be as good as it is. Thank you, @Wellingtoncrab! And, of note, @Wellingtoncrab hasn't been able to try it in game yet, because I'm using Linux and can't compile a Windows build for him. So, if this feature isn't good, that's my fault. Code Patch I'll post the code patch in another post below this one so that folks who compile TDM themselves can give this proposal a try in game. And, if you do, I look forward to your feedback! Player Complaints TTLG (2023-01-10) Player 1: TDM Forums (2021-03-13) Player 2: Player 3: TDM Forums (2023-06-17) Player 4: TDM Discord (2021-05-18) Player 5: TDM Discord (2023-02-14) Player 6: Player 7: Player 8:

The *DOOM3* shaders are ARB2 ('cause of old GeForce support) carmack plan + arb2 - OpenGL / OpenGL: Advanced Coding - Khronos Forums

Seems to confirm: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=5718 does it happen in the latest dev build: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20824-public-access-to-development-versions/

I just read@motorsep Discovered that you are able to create a brush, then select it and right click "create light". Now you have a light that ha the radius of the former brush. Just read it on discord and thought it may be of use for some people in the forums here too.

I just found this thread on ttlg listing Immersive Sims: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151176

Recently revisiting the forums after a longer period of time I wanted to check the unread content. I don't know if I am doing this wrong since.. ever... but on mobile (visiting the unread content page on my smartphone) you have to click on that tiny speech bubble to go to the most recent post in a thread. If you don't click correctly you'll hit the headline and end up at post 1 in the beginning of the thread. It's terrible on mobile, since not only the speech bubble is really small and was to miss. But also the thread headline is just millimeters away from it so you go right to the first post that was ever made instead of the most recent ones. Am I doing it wrong? I just want to go through u read content a d the to the newest post from that topic.

A@datiswous Ah yeah, well sorry, I was quiet busy and only visiting discord. First time here on the forums since months now I think.. Thank you for the subtitles. I encourage everyone who is interested in using them to download it from here as I'm not sure when I'll be able to implement them myself into the mission. Again, thank you for your work.

Of course, it is one of the reasons for the decline of online forums, since the advent of mobile phones. Forums on a mobile are a pain in the ass, but on the other hand, for certain things there are no real alternatives to forums, social networks cannot be with their sequential threads, where it is almost impossible to retrieve answers to a question that is asked. has done days ago. For devs for internal communication, the only thing offered is a collaborative app, such as System D (not to be confused with systemd). FOSS, free and anonymous registration, access further members only by invitation, full encrypted and private. https://www.system-d.org

Ignoring is somewhat inadequate as you still see other members engaging in a discussion with the problematic user, and as Wellingtoncrab says such discussions displace all other content within that channel. Moderation is also imperfect as being unpleasant to engage with is not in itself banworthy, so there is nothing more to do if such people return to their old behaviour after a moderator had a talk with them, except live with it or move away. I'd be more willing to deal with it if it felt like there were more on-topic discussion, i.e. thoughts about recently played fan missions or mappers showcasing their progress, rather than a stream of consciousness about a meta topic that may or not have to do with TDM. I guess the forums already serve the desired purpose, or they just compartmentalise discussions better.

Yeah, being able to differentiate between footsteps can be justified. Actually, now that I think about, I'm pretty sure some of Thief's alert lines even lampshaded this; pretty sure it had lines like "Is that you, Sir?" I don't think it would be a more obscure mechanic than eyepatch/hooded guards having reduced vision. Or that drunk people are less observant. Imo loud background noise muffling noises would be a very natural and perspicuous, unless you are already heavily geared towards arbitrary/abstract game rules. But you did gave me an ideas there, kudos. After thinking about it a bit more, you wouldn't have to do actually have to do any more super serious calculations, just need to be able to apply a sound loss multiplier to player generated noises within a certain area. Since ambient sounds are set up by the map's designer in static locations, so there wouldn't be any need to calculate the loudness dynamically. Locations already have 'sound_loss_mult' attribute, so you could actually use that simulate muffling, right? The issue, if I understand it correctly, is that if the zone is bigger than the s_maxdistance of your noise generator, then the player's noise will get unjustly muffled even when far away from source of the noise. Or if it's smaller, than crossing a portal will remove the cloaking. Also not sure if 'sound_loss_mult' can be adjusted on the fly. If not, then it can't be used for dynamic distractions (like turning on/off a generator), only static noises. Could be optimal for heavy rain on the streets, maybe? Hmm yeah, this could be another approach. If you can change an AI's sensory stats on the fly then you could probably script dynamic muffling. Add some location based culling to it, so the distance is only calculated while the NPC is in relevant zones, lowering the impact of the calculations?! I do kinda want to do some cooking now and see if I can come up with something fun. Hmm, actually, just had another thought. I remember seeing a recent thread about how Noisemaker arrows are kind of redundant, since broadhead arrows or throwable items can also be used to lure guards over to specific spots. So maybe this could be a smallish buff to Noisemakers: temporarily lowering the aural alertness of guards in its vicinity a tinsy bit?

Huh, that's interesting that min and maxDistance are dynamically updated in-game but s_volume isn't. Your method will have the issue that the sizzling will become inaudible at a shorter distance from the stove- if two steaks are audible ten meters away, realistically one steak should also be audible ten meters away but half as loud- but nobody will notice that if all the actual changes in volume will happen when you're standing right by the stove. And it does mean fewer speakers and less scripting. Looking forward to seeing your mission and eating some of that beef!

If this is referring to loud noises covering the AI's hearing, I agree that should be a thing. Imagine a guard standing in a room where a loud generator that blows the player's headphones off is running: It makes no sense that in such noise the guard will hear the player's footsteps and be alerted to them, they can't hear anything in that noise! It sounds like a good idea to at least give speaker entities a coverage spawnarg, though this one should be done universally if you ask me: The volume of every sound heard by an AI should decrease its ability to hear other sounds and become alert to them, at maximum loudness the AI can't be alerted by other noises any more.

TDM Modpack v3.3 (Maintenance Update) While trying to improve the Loot / Stealth combo I made a mistake and introduced a bug in the last release: Loot count does not update in real time when the loot inventory item is selected. Since this is an annoying bug it has been fixed in Maintenance Update v3.3. Apologies for the inconvenience. ---------------------------------- I take the opportunity to include some minor, experimental additions. If these additions are well received they will stay, otherwise they will be removed in the next major version of the Modpack. 1) A revamped and extended "Mission Complete" theme. I decreased the pitch of the original audio not to sound too loud and triumphant and then I extended the length to include an accompanying drum beat during the aftermath. I want players to get the feel that "the adventure continues" rather than a peaceful "game over" so I opted for an uneasy beat. You can listen to it by going inside the pk4 to sound/meta/game/mission_complete.ogg 2) Semi-transparent backgrounds for the in-game Inventory grid and Objectives screen. I am not sure what the best solution is but I always wanted these screen to have some depth. I applied a 30% transparency to: dds/guis/assets/mainmenu/invgrid_parchment_backdrop.dds dds/guis/assets/objectives/parchment_ingame.dds The download can be found in the opening post. Let us know your thoughts. Cheers!

It's not very likely that this sort of thing would even be perceptible to most players outside a few niche situations. If you want to set up a puzzle to, say, have the thief time his runs across a noisy floor while a loud machine is running so that the sound will obscure his footsteps you'd be better off just scripting it up for that one puzzle.

I don't recall a system for noise masking. It sounds like it'd be a good idea, but when you get into the details you realize it'd be complicated to implement. It's not only noise that that goes into it, I think. E.g., a high register can cut through even a loud but low register rumble. And it's not like the .wav file even has data on the register of what it's playing. So either you have to add meta-data (which is insane), or you have to have a system to literally check pitch on the .wav data and paramaterize it in time to know when it's going to cut through what other parameters from other sounds. For that matter, it doesn't even have the data on the loudness either, so you'd have to get that off the file too and time the peaks with the "simultaneous" moment at arbitrary places in every other sound file correctly. And then position is going to matter independently for each AI. So it's not like you can have one computation that works the same for all AI. You'd have to compute the masking level for each one, and then you get into the expense you're mentioning. I know there was a long discussion about it in the internal forums, and probably on the public subforums too, but it's been so long ago now I can't even remember the gist of them. Anyway the main issue is I don't know if you'll find a champion that wants to work on it. But if you're really curious to see how it might work, you could always try your hand at coding & implementing it. Nothing beats a good demo to test an idea in action. And there's no better way to learn how to code than a little project like that. I always encourage people to try to implement an idea they have, whether or not it may be a good idea, just because it shows the power of an open source game. We fans can try anything we want and see if it works!

Something I've been wondering for a while, and the wiki couldn't quite answer my question to a satisfying degree; does ambient noise affect sound propagation in anyway? In other words, is there any system in place that simulates background noise masking player generated racket? I'm mainly thinking of things like roaring machinery, a common set piece in induralist settings. Or heavy rain, loud music, waterfalls, any kind of noise generating entity that physically exist in the mission's world, thus audible for AI entities, and could reasonably overshadow/drown out footsteps. Based on personal experience I'm fairly certain background noise is not taken into account, but it doesn't hurt asking. An old, personal pet peeve of mine is when enemies, that the player can't hear moving around due to blaringly loud ambient noises, somehow isn't affected by the same auditory disturbance and immediately goes searching mode over a single, casual footstep. Or when enemies somehow can distinguish between two sets of identical sounding footsteps, although I can accept that a bit more than the first one. The superhuman hearing can be quite ridiculous. Follow-up question; assuming it doesn't already exist, would such a system be a worthwhile addition? Could be a powerful tool for map makers and players, setting up areas where the player perform rushed actions by utilizing the environment. Like turning on a gramophone to be able to run through a fully illuminated wooden corridor, and stuff. One possible argument I can think of is that such an addition could mess with old missions, however I'd contend that any mission, that would get ruined by an extra tool/route, wasn't a particularly well designed mission in the first place. Another issue is that it might be pretty expensive to calculate or properly define the propagation.

One has to appreciate the attention to detail in these games. Not only is there (obviously) a difference in sounds played when a guard is knocked out vs killed, but there is also a different type of sound when a guard is killed unexpectedly, vs. being killed in battle. The question is whether the louder, more drawn out sound when they are defeated in battle also travels further than the sound when being unexpectedly killed. Also I love how they react differently to small noises, vs a really loud unexpected noise, like smashing your sword against a door. Like I said, attention to detail. A lot of players might not even notice these small things.

I'm using the version from kcghost. I just tested and I can't see any difference inside the inventory. On the stats itself it doesn't show the different loot types (still seen in the inventory), but instead gives more info on stealth score. Edit: I see Dragofer made an updated version of his script. I have to check that out. Edit2: That version works: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=21272&key=02755164a3bed10498683771fe9a0453

I looked but didn't see this video posted in these forums. It's pretty cool.

It wasn't a "sacrifice", it was a deliberate decision. People wanted the game to be as close as possible to the original, including pixelated graphics. If you ask me, the former version based on the Unity engine looked and felt better. But, hey... I guess I'm not the right person to judge that, as I never played the original, and always found that the art style of System Shock 2 is much better anyway. This also illustrates the issue with community funded games: Too many cooks spoil the broth. In game design, you need freedom, not thousands of people who want you to do this and this and that. Just take a look at the Steam forums and see how all those wimps complain again about everything. Hopeless.

So giving it none of those tags, but making the AI invisible, silent, non-solid, and on a team neutral to everyone would not work? Oh well, it was a horrible inelegant idea anyway.

What I understood is that the idea of TDM was born from that it was unclear if T3 would get a level editor at the time. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20050218173856/http://evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=268

This one is really essential: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607 Should work fine with the GOG version.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152224 There is a new mapping contest over on TTLG for the Thief: Deadly Shadows 20th Anniversary and the organizers were kind enough to include The Dark Mod along with all of the Thief games as an options for making a mission to submit as an entry. The deadline is a year from yesterday and the rules are pretty open. I recommend going to the original thread for the details but I will summarize here: Rules: - The mission(s) can be for Thief 1, Thief 2, Deadly Shadows or The Dark Mod. - Collaborations are allowed. - Contestants can use any custom resource they want, though TDM cannot use the Deadly Shadows resource pack. - Contestants can submit more than one mission. - Contestants can enter anonymously. - The mission(s) can be of any size. Using prefabs is allowed but the idea is this is a new mission and starting from an abandoned map or importing large areas from other maps is not allowed. Naturally this is on the honor system as we have no way of validating. Mission themes and contents: There is no requirement from a theme or story viewpoint, however contestants might consider that many players may expect or prefer missions to be celebratory of Thief: Deadly Shadows in this respect: castles, manors, museums, ruins inhabited by Pagans and the like, with a balance of magic versus technology. This is entirely up to the authors, though, to follow or not - it is just mentioned here as an FYI and, while individual voters may of course choose to vote higher or lower based on this on their own, it will not be a criteria used explicitly in voting or scoring. Deadline: May 25th, 2024 at 23:59 Pacific Time. See the TTLG thread for details on submissions and the voting process. Provided I can make the deadline I hope to participate. It would be nice to see the entire community do something together, and expressing our complicated relationship with this divisive game seems as good a pretext as any.

You can already adjust the hearing of the AI so I don't really understand why we would need changes with the footsteps. Yes, they are loud when running or walking, but most of the time I am crawling in TDM anyway :)!