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I have returned to TheDarkMod after a few years (I played it a lot around 2015-16, even tried making a map, it did not go anywhere so I donated those few assets). The missions are great. In this one in particular, the navigation is awesome. The city is very good. I have noticed a trend though: the puzzles are more complicated; a lever may open something *somewhere*. Do you think that large TDM missions are suffering from "puzzle creep", that the veteran and in-community players do not notice? [/spoiler] So you have to go *all the way back* to use the crystal key on the teleporter thingy? And I don't know how to deal with the burning crystals either. I ended up killing nearly all enemies in the mages' place, with sword and holy water, because, yeah, I need to figure things out and I can't be bothered to stealth from one place to another anymore, lol. I will try checking the readables and environment with a bit more patience and see. [spoiler] The old format for spoiler tags does not work, not does changing the '/'. Wow, what a way to advertise "I am dumb" XD IMO the best way is to place gradual spoilers in the forum thread. I know it's a bit of a burden on the authors but answering 20 questions disjointly from different users is one as well.

Personally I think Moonbo's Requiem FM is about as good as one could wish for in terms of a spiritual successor to the Thief trilogy. The story hits all the important notes, and the level design is uniformly top notch across all the expected axes of stealth gameplay. And there is even a sequel that trailblazes entirely new territory from its predecessor in gameplay, story, and tone. That's just icing on the cake. Indeed there several FMs for TDM that I believe equal or even surpass the quality of the original games' levels. The trouble is how do you discover them in that giant downloader list? Are there other great missions in there that I have yet to find? That is undoubtedly the greatest current weakness of this project. The ability to sort FMs in the game client (i.e. both the downloader and the mission launcher) by date, size, and author would be a great help. Search by keywords or tags and support for grouping missions into collections would also be very useful.

OK, I'll try to rearrange to that directory layout. I'll have to lookup how to do that without screwing up Tortoise. I'm not on that machine at the moment, so I can't check your BTW. I don't remember about "branches", but I do remember a local "tags" directory... don't know if it was populated.

Ideally, you should have checked out "trunk" directory only, so that its contents get into "tdm11dev/darkmod_src" instead of "tdm11dev/darkmod_src/trunk". Do you BTW have all the "branches" and "tags" directories near "trunk" ? Maybe not, because they are still closed for public for some weird reason...

DarkRadiant 3.7.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Skin Editor Improvement: Script Window usability improvements Fixed: Hitting escape while autosaving crashes to desktop Fixed: Def parsing problem in tdm_playertools_lockpicks.def Fixed: DR hangs if selecting a lot of entities with entity list open Fixed: Float Property Editor's entry box is sticking around after selecting a float key Fixed: Spline entities without model spawnarg are unselectable Fixed: Entity window resets interior sizing forcing resize each time it is opened Fixed: Spline curves should not be created with a model spawnarg Fixed: Newly appended curve control vertices aren't shown at first Fixed: Light entities are zoomed out in preview window Fixed: Entity inspector spawnarg fields not always updated by UI windows such as Model Chooser Feature: Skin Editor (see video) Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.7.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep using DarkRadiant to create Fan Missions - they are the main reason for me to keep going. Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Keep on mapping!

Yes, it does. Which makes it interesting that you yourself explicitly said that it's interesting nobody had complained here on the official forums: I did, which is why it stood out to me so much that even though you yourself had personally been involved you would reply claiming nobody had complained here on the official forums. I'm not colorblind at all. Does that make people pointing out that almost no modern games have proper colorblindness support hyperbole? Just because it doesn't affect you, or you choose not to pay attention to the discussion of something, doesn't make it hyperbole. Pick pretty much any modern FPS and you will find plenty of discussion about the near universal disregard for FOV and camera movement as accessibility issues. Denigrating those as hyperbole because you personally don't feel the affects is as bad of a look as demeaning people who bring up the importance of valid allergen warnings like gluten or colorblindness and deafness support.

Not nitpicking at all. Correctly adjusting volume levels is important but often neglected, even in commercial games (in Dungeons and Dragons Online there are certain quests with background music which is deafening and renders the game sounds inaudible, making me wonder if the developers ever actually test their own game). It's very easy to introduce a cool new sound or piece of music but make it too loud, because subjectively "loud sounds better" to most listeners. Waveform normalisation doesn't solve this problem, because many sounds need to play at different volumes, and peak amplitude doesn't entirely determine subjective loudness in any case. If background music plays at the same RMS power as guard shouts, then the music will sound too loud and the player will struggle to hear the guard shouts at all. I don't think new cvars are needed, just some sensible tweaks to the volume offsets in the sound data files. If particular sounds are too loud, this can be tweaked by adding small volume reductions (e.g. steps of -2 dB) in the sound shader until the subjective volume levels seem more similar. One thing I learned in music production is how much you can progressively lower the volume of a sound while it still remains completely audible (because human hearing is non-linear), but it fits so much better in the mix once it's reduced to a similar level as surrounding sounds.

I'm wondering if anyone ever checks new posts in the Fan Missions Forums? I've posted 4 questions asking for help for 4 different missions that I can't finish because I"m stuck, and I don't get any help. I posted a question this morning so I don't expect an answer right away for that one. Its frustrating because I would like to finish them. I've read through the posts for each mission and I'm not getting anything from them. If there's someone who could help me I'd really appreciate it. Thanks I guess I'm spoiled from the TTLG forums.

Hi all, me again Now that I've learned how to take screenies on DM (thanks to Aluminumhaste) I wanted to post one that I took but I got an error saying that the image ext that I used was not allowed in these forums, It was .jpg so I changed it to .png and I got the same error again. They're on Photobucket.

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.

Hey there, I was just trying to implement some EFX presets into my mission update to make it ready for the current feature set. I love the system of EFX / OpenAI. However I tried many of the available presets (room types and room sizes) but almost always the echo is too strong. It seems that big rooms just have a loud echo and a longer delay and small room presets have a loud echo and a shorter delay. However my problem is the echo loudness. Did somebody find out if there presets with a decent echo? I also read in a thread from Peter Spy that you're able to edit the current presets in a text file. However I'm not sure where to do that. If there's no subtle echo presets, I would be happy if someone could point me into the right direction. Thank you in advance for any help

Heyo! So the render is coming out pretty snazzy so far. My only big criticisms would come down to just maybe adding some extra edge bevels (even if they end up being baked into the normal map), just to make the case/door edges a little more interesting. Now honestly this could be achieved via some crafty texture work, or just hard modeling the details. I did a safe set some time earlier for TDM and I think I went the material route to highlight the edges. Albeit, a bit more edge distressing than I might do now, this is essentially how I handled it for those... So while I've tried to refine my detail masks a bit since these two were made, I'd still suggest a tad more on the grunge side. Main reason is that the assets that already exist for TDM are far from clean. While this does come down to the case usage (posh manor vs dock foreman office) is trying to match the current look of the game. I initially had a harder time making assets too clean and just had to develop my own style based on trial and error... or too many complaints Also, golden inlay can really pop if you highlight it more on the specular channel vs the color itself. Or at least so I found. Lastly, just make sure you mind the hinge alignment. I export the individual pieces from the same scene for this reason. As you've gotta remember, the mapper must reassemble the parts in Dark Radiant. So they'll have to line up on the grid somehow, else you might have gaps or little inconsistencies. Same goes for knobs and levers. My suggestion is to try and orient those pieces on your own gridsnap (in whatever app you model with) so that they just turn out this way by design. Nothing feels worse than importing a switch, just to see it clips oddly into the adjacent bezel. So basically, plotting the position of those things ahead of time saves the trouble. All in all I think your safe looks pretty awesome. I tend to make my stuff pretty loud but part of that is my own personal style too. Some of the things I like to go off on, are bits about how this mechanism would look with primitive casting & machining techniques. CNC machining is a pretty modern thing, so in the Dark Mod you can imagine a lot of metal details should appear to be cast iron or rolled steel plating. Otherwise man, I'd say you're pretty close already. Maybe just some extra detail to tie the door details together a bit more and just some general (natural) wear patterns.

If 100% is truly the default I'm afraid a lot of missions have raging out of control ambients, mine included. That's not great, though I've never had anyone complain that the ambient is too loud on any of my missions as far as I can remember. In this case I will instead tone down the ambients that are too loud instead of boosting the low ones, and see what my future beta testers think of the levels I guess.

Like @Bienie, I found that paragraph (in Setting Up Speakers/Sound Shaders And Spawnargs/volume/ ) a bit of a head-scratcher when I first encountered it. @OrbWeaver, @demagogue, @Dragofer, how would this be as replacement text? "Ideally, you would not have to set a "s_volume" spawnarg on an individual speaker or info_location. In the case of your FM-custom sound files, it is recommended to adjust "volume" in your custom shader instead. The case of core-asset ambient music files is more complicated. These files (which were generally recorded to be rather loud if played back at "volume 0") have already been paired with individualized default shader volume levels (at lower volumes) to provide a consistent experience across ambients. If you find a particular ambient that seems far too loud or too soft compared to other ambients, consider reporting it as bug, so that the default shader volume might be adjusted in the future. More immediately, in your map, you can overide the default volume in two ways. The simple way is to create and adjust the "s_volume" of the individual speaker or info_location. This will affect any sounds played through that object. The alternative is to - - locate the pertinent core sound-shader .def file - make your own copy of it and place it in your map's folder to override the core file - change the volume to your liking in the copy's sound shader declaration."

The Transaction is a small/medium sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter delivers the cryptic book, 'De Vermis Mysteriis' to a bookstore owner named Victor de Grenefeld. It is the fourth mission in the Thomas Porter series, continuing from where The Glenham Tower ended. The mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank BrokenArts, Melan and Ocn for playtesting and Bikerdude, BrokenArts and Ocn for voiceacting. An enormous thanks goes also to the fine people who created TDM and are still working hard, bringing it ever closer to perfection. Thanks also to the community for helping with my mapping efforts. Extra thanks to freesound.org -contributors who make excellent quality sound effects available for free. Trailer (thanks to ocn!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBdEsKoqWl4 Briefing: Ah, the town of Glenham. I never really thought I would be happy to see its shabby wooden miner dwellings, but after the nightmares of the Glenham Tower I'm happy to see any kind of civilization. During my return trip from the tower the ghostly mist veil transformed into an intense thunderstorm and heavy rain. My clothes are soaked and I'm dreadfully tired of the harsh tribulations of the past few days. My task for tonight is simple. All I have to do is to get the strange and incomprehensible book I obtained from the tower, 'De Vermis Mysteriis,' to the bookstore owner Victor de Grenefeld. And more importantly collect the hefty sum the bookstore owner promised to pay me. With that kind of sum I can sit back and relax for a while. I'd better stay in good terms with my customer and not steal from him. I have the hunch that de Grenefeld is a well connected man so staying on his good side might be beneficial for me in the future: maybe they'll need a skilled adventurer like me and I could turn legitimate. I could earn my keep and I wouldn't need to constantly hide from the city watch. At any rate, I've got it all planned out for the remainder of the night. I'll visit the bookstore, drop the book to de Grenefeld and collect my fee. After that I'd better hide in the basement of an abandoned building I've spotted near the town north gate and get some well deserved rest. I don't think the city watch would think a cloaked and armed person like me would be on honorable business in a stormy weather like this so it would be wise to avoid all confrontation with the guards. I do not need any misunderstadings with the city watch right now. The undead horrors in the Tower forced me to expend most of my tools and I desperately need more equipment if I intend to continue my budding adventuring career. I should get some extra gold for new gear and maybe a few holy water potions just in case. There is a Builder church nearby where I might be able to find some. I suspect those fanatics might have gold hidden there as well.. It is time to move in the town and get the things done quickly. Somehow I have a bad feeling about all this. It's probably nothing, probably I am just jumpy because of the horrors in the Tower and sleep deprivation. Tomorrow I'll sleep long, relax and eat well. UPDATED LINK: Use the ingame downloader to get it. Bikerdude was added in the author, I forgot him. No other chages. Could The Powers That Be make sure that this version ends up in the ingame downloader? Thanks! Known bugs: One betatester experienced an error ("ERROR: Failed to spawn player as 'atdm:player_thief'"), which drops the player back to main menu upon map load. If you experience this scenario, please turn EAX off in the options menu. That cleared the problem for the tester. Warning! There is ALWAYS someone who fails to use spoiler tags appropriately. I recommend you read this thread further only after playing the mission! Avoid spoilers.

DarkRadiant 3.6.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Selection Focus (Ctrl-F) Feature: Add Radiant.findEntityByName script method Feature: Media Browser shows a thumbnail preview when selecting folders Feature: Map is remembering layer visibilities between loads Fixed: ModelDefs are shown in T-pose Fixed: Patch vertices are the wrong colour Fixed: Shader Clipboard source gets cleared on 'copy shader' operation Fixed: Nodes of hidden layers are still visible after loading the map Fixed: Can't close properties window Fixed: Merge Action rendering is broken Fixed: After using ToggleMainControl_Camera, the center panel is grey after restart Fixed: When using ToggleMainControl_Camera, arrow keys cannot be used to move the viewer Fixed: Property Panel not remembering undocked/closed tabs Fixed: Texture Tool not updating during manipulation Fixed: Orthoview ignores filters for surfaces in models Fixed: Blue dot when selecting one face removed Tweak: Conversation Editor: double-click opens selected conversation Tweak: Preference option to disable drag select in camera view Tweak: ESC key should clear the resource tree view filter text Tweak: New layers function: tooltip popup getting in the way Feature: Selection Focus (see video) Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.6.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep using DarkRadiant to create Fan Missions - they are the main reason for me to keep going. Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Have fun mapping!

DarkRadiant 3.4.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Allow Layers to be arranged into a Tree Fixed: Readable Editor displays "shader not found" in view Fixed: Undoing snap to grid with prefabs causes crash Fixed: Include doc in building instructions Fixed: Decal textures causes DR to crash - (textures/darkmod/decals/dirt/long_drip_pattern01) Fixed: Skin chooser: double click on materials list closes window Fixed: Selecting and deselecting a filtered child brush through layers leaves the brush selected Fixed: Material editor re-sorts stages on pasting image map resulting in wrong material stages list and wrong selected stage Fixed: Crash on start if engine path is choosen (Doom 3) Feature: Layers can now be arranged to form a hierarchy Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.4.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep using DarkRadiant to create Fan Missions - they are the main reason for me to keep going. Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Have fun mapping!

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

DarkRadiant 3.5.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: More customisable layout, all windows and panes can be dragged and arranged Layouts like Embedded, Regular and Splitpane are superseded and have been removed Tweak: The LayerControlPanel's tooltip popup is now less annoying Tweak: Clarify distinction between Shadow render mode and other render modes Fixed: Show/hide Light Volumes for combined entities inconsistent Fixed: Currently applied particleDef not selected in Particle Selector Fixed: Layer visibility checkbox not reacting to double-clicks Fixed: Cannot toggle visibility of layers in Linux Fixed: Drag-and-dropping layers is not working in Linux Feature: Customisable Layout (click to see the videos) Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.5.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep using DarkRadiant to create Fan Missions - they are the main reason for me to keep going. Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Have fun mapping!

@stgatilov, you said, RE string comparisons: I'm unclear if you are referring just to changes you made in 2.11. I think equality testing of two strings (one of which is "text") was working and is a good and expected capability, and should be supported. Including against an empty string. I noticed in your bug activities that you did remove some comparisons with ... == "". I see you also removed string concatenation with "\". No problem, but does that mean multiline macros are no longer a thing? (If so, I'll need to change some examples) BTW, the series so far hasn't really tried to cover the 2.11 changes, since I figured it's a work in progress. But since you did a great deal of GUI work in July, perhaps it's stable enough to try to consider it. I see the logs listed in bugtracker, but don't have access to the private forum threads mentioned there: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20526-gui-refactoring/&do=findComment&comment=477179 https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21535-order-of-evaluation-in-expressions-materials-and-gui/ (Nor do I have SVN currently set up on my newer machine, for changelogs from there.) Any place else I should look?

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

Announcing the Release of 'Requiem' for The Dark Mod! Download Download the latest version of the Dark Mod here: http://www.thedarkmo...wnload-the-mod/ Download the mission here: Mediafire: http://www.mediafire...u89/requiem.pk4 Southquarter: http://www.southquar...ons/requiem.pk4 Fidcal.com: http://www.fidcal.co...ons/requiem.pk4 Create a folder in your Dark Mod install with the path "darkmod/fms/requiem" and place the downloaded .pk4 file inside. When you load up The Dark Mod, the mission will appear on the "New Mission" page. Requiem can also be found directly using the in-game loader. Gameplay Notes While this mission is playable in TDM 1.8, for an optimal experience please download and play in TDM 2.0 (or higher). Most inventory items in the game can be dropped, so no need to carry them around after they are no longer of any use. Note that If you use noclip or other console commands while playing, there is a good chance that you will break the intended flow of gameplay. Credits Mapping and Readables: Gelo R. Fleisher Voice Acting: Goldwell Additional scripting: Obsttorte Additional textures and assets: Flanders, Sotha, Grayman, Springheel, Bikerdude, Obsttorte Additional map optimizations: Bikerdude Testers: Bikerdude, Obsttorte, Gnartsch, AluminumHaste, Baal, nbohr1more, PPoe Custom Soundtrack: Leonardo Badinella - http://leonardobadinella.com/ Additional Music: Lee Rosevere - http://freemusicarch...c/Lee_Rosevere/ Marianne Lihannah - http://www.funeralsinger.net/ Vox Vulgaris - http://www.last.fm/music/Vox+Vulgaris/ A note from the author Hi all. While I've been involved in indie game development for a while now, I'm first and foremost a writer. My most recent project has been a novella that tries to capture the visual feel and tone of the Thief series (you can find the link below). As I was writing, I found myself playing a lot of Thief and Dark Mod fan missions, and got to thinking that maybe I wanted to make one myself, as a companion piece to the book. When I finished up writing, I had a bit of down time and decided to take the plunge. Having never done any serious mapping before, my plan was to make a small mission that I could bang out in a month or two and call it a day. Well, as sometimes happens, the project got a little bit bigger than I had planned. Ten months, and lots of elbow grease later, Requiem is finally ready for you to play. I'd like to thank everyone who helped pitch in to help make Requiem come alive, from those who took the time to answer my many questions on the forums to those who actively contributed to the FM. I especially want to thank Bikerdude who served as my mapping mentor, and Obsttorte whose clever scripts really turned what was in my head into the game that you are playing. Above all, I want to thank you for downloading and playing Requiem; I hope you enjoy it. Links of Interest Author's Blog: http://gfleisher.blogspot.com/ Companion Novella (Amazon): http://www.amazon.co...k/dp/B00BYEW02M Companion Novella (Smashwords): http://www.smashword...oks/view/298956

I disagree a little, as I think you are right as far as the likely dynamic in vanilla Thief/TDM, but since the discussion is about stealth games in general I am not sure this is entirely true. It probably does cause players to try and avoid detection and other risk in games, but the idea is when it occurs the player must then engage with the detection/combat mechanics or at least weigh this against significant progress loss. This understandably sounds like a bad compromise to those players who are not interested and typically always just quickload when this sort of thing kicks off. This is kind of the loop in the modern wolfenstein games - when the player is discovered you go loud so to speak and it works (Especially in New World Order) because that side of the game holds up really well (it also lets you quick save and the encounters are short with generous autosaves so restarting does not come at risk of significant loss of progress). In vanilla thief/TDM this experience is likely to be miserable in the most common scenarios in the game, so forcing players to engage with it seems like a mistake. If you want players to engage with the detection/combat loop making it fun is my mind a more successful approach than restricting a players ability to save (I think Hazard Pay also does this relatively well in the enemy design, which is another reason why I think it works and why we should not be closed off to this avenue for designers). But I do think it is a way to get more players to engage with a different side of a game, or at least those that would typically just quickload to reassert their typical play style instead of using the quickload as a means to experiment with the game as you describe.