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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:

Author Note: Thank you for downloading and playing the sequel to The Accountant 1: Thieves and Heirs this FM picks up right from where we left off in accountant 1. This is the second part in my three part series following Corbin on his journey to discover who and what the accountant is. This mission is a little different to what you may expect from a Thief mission but still has plenty of classic Thief moments as well. This is the largest mission I have ever built with an average play through lasting between 2 - 3 hours. A few aspects in game are different to what you may expect as well and those are: - Candles are pinchable (frob to put out instead of pickup) - Food has been hot fixed so now it heals you for 10 health points when eaten - Doors that are missing handles means you cannot enter that room/building - All secrets can be found before you enter the sewers As a little piece of fun trivia there is a small cameo in my mission from a very special guest. He is a longtime voice actor in the industry and you may know him from roles such as Deckard Cain in Diablo, Captain Price in Call of Duty, Elder Lyons in Fallout 3, or just about any Nordic character in Skyrim. In addition to all of the fantastic people who have helped me along the way I have personally spent a lot of time, effort and energy devoted to bringing this out to you all so I hope you can enjoy the fruits of my labor and have fun! File size: 358 mb

There's a lighting issue in "William Steele 1: In the North" at -1153.92 3523.22 -955.75 29.8 -145.6 0.0 There's a candle on the other side of the wall. In 2.12 dev, that candle's light leaks through the wall at the base of the door as seen in the video, comparing 2.11 and 2.12-r10451.

This pinned thread's purpose is to collect links to all the discussion threads for new features to be added in 2.12: [2.12] Multi-addons support [2.12] Auto-search bodies [2.12] Turrets Allow mantling while carrying a body New lean for 2.12 Frob to use world items [2.12] Viewpos on player HUD and screenshots English Subtitles for AI Barks Subtitle Enhancements [2.12] Improved Interaction Culling and a related bug report thread HERE As well as older feature collection threads: [2.10] Feature discussion threads [2.11] Feature discussion threads

I just recently became aware of this feature: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Particle_collisions_and_cutoff Unfortunately I completely missed it, as when I went to create weather effects in my FMs I just followed this (which doesn't mention it): https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_-_Z_Beginner_Full_Guide_Page_3#Rain_and_Snow The point of this thread is to a) make people aware of it and b) gather feedback from any mappers that have used it so we can get some mapper-focused documentation in the Wiki. The page above is great for background information about how it works, but as a mapper I really just want to know: What are the limitations of this (i.e. when should it be used and when shouldn't it be used)? Why isn't it the default behaviour? Why all this work to get it into the map? What built-in support for it exists (particle definitions, materials, etc). Do I need to create all this stuff myself? Texture layout vs. Linear layout: what's the difference in the end, pros/cons, why would I use one over the other... Why does it need a separate command (runParticle)? Can this just not be bundled in with dmap? A clear, step-by-step instruction on how to implement it in a map from beginning to end using a simple use case. Tagging some users who have relevant experience with this: @stgatilov @Goldwell @Amadeus

Demonstration Video I wondered if I could implement an improved lean for The Dark Mod. How was the result? Please see for yourself by checking out the video. The video shows: Leans from multiple games that show less view angle and more slide. Comparison between Thief and this lean proposal. Comparison between TDM 2.11 and this lean proposal. Aiming and shooting arrows while standing and crouching. Tap lean ability. Motivation There is something about the original Thief game's lean that feels really good. It feels close to actually peeking around a corner while not jarring the view. In an interview with former Looking Glass Studios developers, the interviewer asks them how they got leaning to feel so good while other FPS games have not. In a tweet by NamelessVoice, the author of the widely used Thief FM script library called NVScript, he said: New Lean Proposal Provide a lean that is more similar to Thief-style lean. Less view angle, more slide. Feels more natural, less awkward. Easier to aim and shoot arrows. Unlean more quickly. Feels like snapping your head back after suddenly seeing a guard. Improved lean during crouch. Compared to TDM 2.11, this lean can be used to see more around corners while crouched. Tap lean ability. Compared to TDM 2.11, this lean allows pressing the lean keybinding in rapid succession. Other: Fixed "lean getting stuck sometimes" bug in TDM 2.11. Fixed "lean getting stuck after saved game load" bug in TDM 2.11. Technical Details Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6320 Cvars At the moment, the new lean is toggled on via the tdm_lean2_mode cvar. Other cvars include: pm_lean2_time_to_lean (default "400") pm_lean2_time_to_unlean (default "300") pm_lean2_slide (default "200") pm_lean2_angle (default "8") pm_lean2_angle_mod (default "0.5") However, I didn't know how to proceed with this section. Does the new lean replace the old lean? Does the new lean become the default while keeping the old lean available? Code TDM 2.11 uses a sine easing function. Instead, this new lean uses a cubic bézier easing function. For a 2.11-Like Lean For a lean that is similar to 2.11, its cvars can be set to the following: pm_lean2_slide "100" pm_lean2_angle "18" pm_lean2_angle_mod "0.8" The following video shows a comparison between 2.11 and this new lean proposal with those cvar settings.

The new version of DR is crashing on startup, and an older version (2.8), the one I'm trying to update, still opens fine. Do you know of any reason why the new version of DR would crash over older versions and a fix that I might try? Also, I set the initial configuration "mission" slot to a possibly bunk folder, and I wonder if that's contributing to the crash. So I wanted to know how to either reset the initial config window, or anyway where the config file is so I can either delete it or edit it directly. Edit: Okay, I found the config file in ...\AppData\Roaming\DarkRadiant. I deleted it, I redid the initial config & left off the mission info, and it did reset. But that didn't stop the crash on start up. So it must be for some other reason. This laptop uses an Intel graphics card (not a specialized one), so that might be related to the crash too. Anyway if you know how I can stop the crash, let me know, otherwise I'll use the older version. This is a convenient little laptop to build on, even without a graphics card.

This is a Skyrim-style door which opens just a bit into a black_matt "void" before teleporting the player to a different area of the map, which may represent the other side of the door. This is used for connecting physically separated map areas with each other, such as when there's an exterior/interior split of a building or ship to allow for more mapping freedom. It's based off the func_mover, so it's only distantly related to normal doors and works slightly differently. Usage is to specify rotate/translate/move_time/accelTime/decelTime/snd_open/snd_close, target an info_player_teleport entity and optionally the corresponding door on the other side. It'll trigger all other targets and automatically detect up to 2 door handles. Currently no support for locking or AI pathing. At the end of the video you see something to be careful of: don't put bright lights on the other side of the door where the player can get seen. Also noticed the audio is a little bit delayed in this video. teledoor.pk4 The download comes with a prefab and entity def with tooltips for new spawnargs. Drop or extract the .pk4 in your FM folder and you will find a new entity atdm:teledoor in the folder movers/doors. Remember to update your tdm_custom_scripts.script if you've already modified yours. This is the scriptobject: And entity def:

This is something I wanted to try implementing myself more than an year ago, but ultimately figured it's overly advanced engine stuff for me: If no one else wants to I may still attempt it someday, in the meantime I wanted to write and ask about it at least. I don't know if this was previously discussed and I hope I'm not repeating something old: I've been seeing all the amazing changes done recently like volumetric lights... watching how far TDM has come makes me excited to see it get even further and become even more amazing. One of the last remaining renderer features I feel we're missing is the Depth Of Field effect. I do believe having this would make every environment in each FM even more incredible and realistic, while bringing TDM even closer to having top notch visuals on par with most modern engines (if we exclude PBR materials). Existing shaders and tutorials for the GLSL implementation are out there possibly even an existing idTech4 port; Initially I hoped it might be as easy as grabbing a freely licensed shader and integrating it in the engine, but usually things are always harder in reality. For starters I'm curious if others are with me in wanting this, if there are any plans for adding the feature, and if there remain any major roadblocks in the engine preventing it... engine wise I know the shader just needs access to the Z-buffer and can typically work its magic from the depth map. The best implementation I'm hoping we can get is the dynamic one, which smoothly adjusts focus based on where the player is looking (distance of the center pixel in the middle of the screen). By default the effect definitely shouldn't be excessive, only blurring distant or near things very slightly unless you're looking at a surface right in front of you. I don't believe it needs to be enabled by default as long as it's in the menu, like the sharpness filter it shouldn't bother anyone who doesn't want it and make things look beautiful for those that do.

https://www.gamesradar.com/witcher-3-mod-uses-ai-to-create-new-voice-lines-without-geralts-original-voice-actor/ https://www.ibtimes.com/witcher-3-story-mod-stirs-controversy-over-ai-generated-voice-acting-3237250 https://www.inputmag.com/gaming/video-game-voice-ai-human-actors-witcher-3-mod-controversy My position: get over it, voice actors. The writing has been on the wall since Vocaloid was released. I think we've seen games shipping with 10 to 30 gigabytes of voice data at this point. You could imagine some game using procedurally generated text (like GPT-3 used to fuel NPC chatbots), team written scripts, or crowdsourced scripts to get to the equivalent of 1 terabyte or more of lines. Powerful 8-core CPUs are becoming the minimum standard for gaming, and between the CPU and GPU there will be more than enough computational resources available to synthesize voice lines and other sounds, like object collisions, in real time. Assuming 500,000 pages per gigabyte, 1.5 minutes to voice a page, you can get 1.4 years of text-to-speech from 1 gigabyte of scripts. The legal issues are legitimate. I have no doubt that a court would side with voice actors who are having their voices "stolen", citing personality rights. At the same time, companies could figure out how to mix the voice samples of hundreds of real people together in training data, and adjust parameters to come up with an infinite number of indistinct voices that can be used without paying anyone. Meanwhile, fan efforts can rip off real voices from Hollywood and voice actors, or specific voice performances like Stephen Russell as Garrett. It's not worth it to sue them, and they can come together pseudo-anonymously and distribute code using torrent sites if needed. In some cases, an amateur will do the voice acting and then a different voice style will be pasted over the original recording. We could also see pure text-to-speech with a markup language to add emphasis, vocal cadence, etc. In either case, an algorithm can definitely transfer or fake the "breathing" and pauses. It's also likely to be considered art. Ignoring the fact that an "invisible sculpture" can be considered art, there will likely be a lot of creativity or at least fine tuning when writing a script, working with an AI that generates scripts, and perfecting the voices.

I'm looking for some beta testers for my new mission, A Night in Altham: This is a large mission - not gigantic like Iris or The Painter's Wife, but bigger than anything I've done before. Content warning: In the next day or so I'll put up a thread in the beta testing forum, with a link to the pk4. Thanks!

In this hypothetical scenario Embraces Group puts you in charge of the creative team in charge of creating a new Thief game. You don't have to do any coding or any of the complicated boring bits and what you say goes. What would the games plot be? Would it be a sequel? prequel? reboot or maybe something else? What new features would be in the game that we haven't seen before in Thief or The Dark Mod? Can't think of any more question right now but I'm sure you'll have your own interesting ideas beyond anything I've asked.

Currently mappers can't edit the objective screen gui. 1. But let's say you create a mission where you don't want any difference in difficulty, or set it in a different way, then I think you should be able to remove the 3 difficulty selections from the objective/dificulty screen. (Edit: Not possible yet, but objectives could be set in mission briefing and then difficulty selection screen can be skipped, See below.) 2. Also, maybe you don't want to list the objectives on an objective screen before mission start. Maybe you want to have a mission briefing, start the mission and after that give the objectives somewhere during the mission. Or maybe you want players to select difficulty inside the mission in some way. In this case there's no need for the objectives screen and you might as well skip this screen. (Edit: Already possible with #define ENABLE_MAINMENU_DIFF_SELECT 0 in mainmenu_custom_defs.gui )

Witch craft. @chakkman: You'll give it a try?

I think it's time to replace the frob material stages with a shader (probably add a param to the existing ambient shader) There is more than one angle to this issue but I am mainly concerned about too many stages in materials that are somewhat taxing in terms of performance. Imagine rendering of 3K surfaces interacting with 3 lights in average and using materials with 7 stages in average. The renderer loops through every stage for every surface making it ~ 20K checks per loop. It has to happen during the depth stage, then each light and then the ambient pass resulting in 100K checks. It makes sense to try to reduce this load, especially considering that the frob stage is relatively rarely invoked and the checks happen on the backend making it hard to parallelize the computation. I am thinking adding a top-level material keyword that would apply as frob color and get passed to the ambient shader when the surface is a part of a frobable entity. I would like to hear your thoughts from the mapper/designer POV.

Would it be possible to add a setting to adjust the gamma/brightness when a UI page (especially a readable) is on the screen? Some readables can be quite bright or blinding. Thief (NewDark) has a setting for this: ;; From Thief's cam_ext.cfg ; enabling this option allows the UI (menus, map/objectives, readables) screens to have its own gamma setting ; useful if you get blinded everytime you open the map or read a book gamma_ui 1.0 The main issue I see with implementing this is that readables within a mission can vary greatly in brightness. One mission that comes to mind is Iris. The newspapers are nearly white, so they can be very bright, but other readables in that mission can be fine. I've attached two screenshots to show the difference given the same gamma/brightness settings. Given that variation within a mission, I'm not sure if this feature could actually be implemented. Maybe there is a way to have a threshold for brightness. For example, if the threshold is set to 0.7 and a readable is at 0.5, don't reduce its brightness. However, if the readable is at 0.9, reduce its brightness to 0.7. I'm no graphics programmer, so I'm not sure if something like that can be done. I thought I'd request this feature anyway with the hope that someone with the right knowledge may provide more insight or a solution.

(Original Post) Hey ho. I am currently working on an alternative approach to blackjacking that doesn't rely on animation based hit collision, as it is now. Part of this approach is that the player gets a feedback on whether he can knockout the enemy in front of him via a suitable animation. As I am not familiar with neither modeling nor animating I would humbly ask for someone to help me out here. What I need is an animation that starts in the blackjack's idle state. The blackjack should then be slightly raised. Thanks in advance. ========================================= To test this out you can run the tdm_installer, select custom version and then select the dev16599-10071 dev build that can be found under dev/2.11. In addition you have to use this custom manifest url: http://ftp.thedarkmod.com/custom_builds/blackjack/manifest.iniz EDIT: There is a newer dev build available containing all the changes. The manifest is no longer needed. The ko indication can be toggled via the cvar tdm_blackjack_indicate. =========================================