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While working on something I analyzed the Frob Helper. The Frob Helper was enabled by default in 2.11. The options were: Show Frob Helper: Yes [Default] No [Tip] Makes interacting with small objects easier by temporarily displaying a white dot. ------------------------------------------------------------------ In 2.12 the Frob Helper remains enabled by default but things changed: Show Frob Helper: Always Hover Fade In [Default] Fade In Fast No [Tip] Makes interacting with small objects easier: Always = Show crosshair dot at all times Hover = Instantly show dot on highlight Fade In = Gradually show dot on highlight Fade In Fast = Same as Fade In but faster ------------------------------------------------------------------ If I was new to TDM I would expect a "Frob Helper" to help me identify frobs: you can interact with this, here is the helper so that you know it and you know where the center of the screen is in case you need it. The Frob Helper however was designed to compensate for the shortcomings of other mechanics of the game, and as such, the Frob Helper is flawed by design: it only shows up if the size of the object is smaller than the arbitrary value of 40. I will say at this point that I am well aware of the tdm_frobhelper_ignore_size cvar but this isn't the point. This game isn't a shooter and "Always on" is not required unless we are talking motion sickness, in which case it belongs in a hidden cvar, for the few that may need it. The starting point of the Frob Helper should have been: On (the helper shows up whenever you can interact with something) Off From this point we can expand with more options, of course: Always on (not recommended based on the nature of the game) On for all items - Hover On for all items - Fade In On for all items - Fade In Fast [Default] On for small items - Hover On for small items - Fade In On for small items - Fade In Fast Always off

I moved the frob helper and the frob outline options onto the gameplay difficulty page in the Unofficial Patch, because the other options page is indeed very crowded.

I always tweak the tdm_frobhelper_ignore_size such that it is enabled for all object sizes as well because I prefer it that way. However, back when I implemented this feature, it was common feedback that it shouldn't be enabled for big objects like doors etc. because it was intended to help frobbing small objects, i.e., it was not supposed to be an interaction indicator, which we already had in the frob-highlight. The reasoning for this feature still stands today, so I don't see how this qualifies as madness. The "Always On" feature has indeed been added as an accessibility feature as it supposedly helps some people with motion sickness, and since there were now already multiple options, I also added the "fade-in fast"-option because I felt the delay of the usual fade-in was so long that the frob helper wasn't really that helpfull in more hectic situations. Accessibility features should by definition never be hidden, so I would not remove the "Always On"-option. In fact, I would actually like to see an extra options page only listing accessibility options. On that page, we could then of course also add a checkmark-option to enable frob helper only for small objects.

It goes without saying that I appreciate your comments and I respect your work, eh. We all want the best for TDM. The frob highlight doesn't work well in some situations: difficult to detect in small objects or in large objects in some conditions, frob fighting in bodies and containers... The frob outline initiative failed to provide an alternative and the Frob Helper was supposed to complement the frob highlight but it did it partially, and we ended up with blinking mods, container-disabling mods, auto search bodies... and a questionable Frob Helper. Perhaps madness is the better word. I know people don't like the idea of corsshairs in TDM but a Frob Helper with tdm_frobhelper_ignore_size = 0 would have settled many things for good from day one. I think we agree.

The map files in NHAT v4 were too large to diff in Notepad++ or Meld ( etc) so I decided to test out the old I18N.pl script and it still works fine for me. Caveats? It doesn't understand campaign packs so you have to split the maps and xdata and create a fake darkmod.txt without the "mission 1 , mission 2, etc" part. Then you have to renumber the "#str_xxxx" entries in the other maps so they don't collide. Luckily find and replace can easily fix that. A lot of work to get this working with the latest NHAT version, phew!

I'm rather your opinion that, like with the frob helper, sometimes too many options will only confuse players.

In considering my possible upcoming TDM projects, such as upgrading some fonts to Latin-1 or "TDM Latin", I reviewed the current status of support for European Latin-based languages. Basically, for FMs, the translation system has fallen into disrepair and disuse (or perhaps kicked into the grave). Neither "converted" (i.e., #str using) FMs nor Language Packs are now being maintained and distributed by thedarkmod.com. As to other sites, for Cyrillic/Russian, DarkFate provides such resources. Are there any such sites in native Western European tongues, say, German, French, Italian, that likewise offer translated TDM FMs? So, turning back to thedarkmod.com, questions - - is Western Language support (outside the main menu system) officially dead? - if so, maybe it's time to stop pretending otherwise. - if not, should the converted #str system be revived, with better infrastructure? - or an alternative translation system be devised... if so, what? I'm just trying to identify work worth doing. (I started to draft a doc with a litany of problems with Western language support, and possible sub-projects to address them, but TL;DR. And really, not pertinent if support is considered dropped.) Thanks for your thoughts.

Isn't that just if you have a moveable or something behind a wall and its frob_distance is greater than the thickness of the wall? Walls don't block frobbing unfortunately, which is why you get those mapping bugs where you can frob paintings through the wall.

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, houses, events, incidents and particpants in this forum thread/fm are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Hello everyone, I am saddened that my first post here is to bring you all the news concerning the disappearance of my dear friend, wellingtoncrab, which was last seen on March 10 of this year by heading to the woods of northern California . Unfortunately, without trace or tracks, we have no choice but to cancel research. In addition to finishing 1.25 FMS, wellingtoncrab was known as an partner of many famous people and models, and to have the largest animal crossing house. We will miss them a lot. Of course, an immediate concern was devoted to determining the status of their unpublished FM(s). I must admit that the passage through their hard drive has not turned much, but I was intrigued to find a file called "IRI2.PK4". Unfortunately, my computer cannot load the card (too old, lol ), but I will download it here for posterity as well as the text included in the README: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SdZswFLUh5VwReIq79uFL_ahXyKxg34F/view?usp=sharing ========================================= WellingtonCrab Presents: IRI2: The Totally Unauthorized Sequel to Moving Day: Moving Day 2: Look Who’s Moving Now *For Richard and Linda* “There once was a hole here. Now it is gone.” With enduring gratitude to: Testers: ImaDace Goldfish Kingsalmon Acknowledgments: @Jedi_Wannabe for graciously unauthorizing this sequel to his great mission "Paying the Bills 0: Moving Day." Mr. Squirrels: you know who you are and what you did. The name "Lampfire Hills" originates with the author Purah and now is part of the extended universe of many subsequent Thief missions. Bikerdude and Goldchocobo then brought the name into the setting of The Dark Mod with the FM "The Gatehouse." It then came to me in a dream. @Dragofer for all of his scripting work and support over the years. Polyhaven.com for its many excellent CC0 assets. I recommend supporting them on Patreon if you can spare the change: https://www.patreon.com/polyhaven/ Textures.com "One or more textures bundled with this project have been created with images from Textures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default. Please visit www.textures.com for more information." Google Image Search.

WOW, what a pleasant surprise! I expected this day would come but not this soon. There they are :) Here is an initial, quick assessment. Currently the Modpack loads last, therefore it takes preference. We can test the other way around at a later stage. tdm_frobactions.script No conflict detected. The Modpack's version takes preference and it apparently works as intended. The Patch changes some chest sounds in a separate script at mission start but then the Modpack overrides these sounds on the fly. Blinking items Threads from both the Modpack and the Patch run in parallel throughout the mission. I don't notice anything unusual except that sometimes the blink is out of sync. The reason is that something fishy is going on between milliseconds 16 and 17 in Uncapped FPS mode. In v4 of the Modpack I set the wait time to 15 milliseconds to avoid the issue and you should do the same in the Patch: tdm_froblock_frobability.script > mod_frob_highlight_blinking() > sys.wait(0.015) Containers Threads from both the Modpack and the Patch run in parallel at mission start. I honestly don't know what the game is doing in this case but the outcome apparently is not negative. No issues detected. Body names Threads from both the Modpack and the Patch run in parallel throughout the mission. I don't notice anything unusual but most probably names are being displayed twice. Shock / Electric mine No conflicts that I can detect at a glance. Whistle No conflicts that I can detect. Players however end up with two different versions of the same feature in different categories. Blow No apparent conflicts. Players however end up with two different versions of a same feature in different categories. This one is interesting because the Patch introduces "extinguish on frob" on small candle sources and players are spoiled by options now.

With the Unofficial Patch you can find it on the gameplay difficulty page.

No, and it should be. I have the following lines in my autocommands.cfg file: // The following implement // r_frobOutlinePreset 4 seta r_frobOutlineBlurPasses "1" seta r_frobOutlineColorA "0.7" seta r_frobOutline "1"

The project to round up viable orphaned translations is mostly complete now. https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4726 Since Darkfate has their own translations it took awhile to merge the older translations with the darkfate formatting since they generated new string numbers from scratch. A few missions are so radically changed that the old translations are practically worthless now ( and some Darkfate translations are also incompatible with the latest mission versions ) but most of the work was salvageable. I added a "Translation Pack" column to the Missions wiki: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Fan_Missions_for_The_Dark_Mod all entries marked with "Yes" are working translations that use Darkfate's translation design ( includes xdata, GUI and Map files if the author didn't perform localization changes in their own mission pack ). Sadly, these changes do not show in the mission downloader list. You will need to delete mission_l10n.pk4 files from the darkmod/fms/mission_name folders to acquire the new translation packs that "actually work". Not all mission packs contain all languages. Mostly you can count on Russian being in there, but a good percentage have German and Italian strings too. French, Polish, and a few other languages are represented but not very broadly. Hopefully now that the packs work other contributors will add more language strings. Mission administration details: Going forward, it would be courteous if the mission admins ( like myself ) would diff the map files when new mission updates are supplied and replace all the objectives, inv_name, pop-up messages, and shouldered names in a copy of the new map file with the previous string codes then copy that file to the map folder in the translation pack folder. Ideally, authors will be encouraged to run their missions through the converter so only new strings need be added to the packs but not everyone likes that workflow and how cumbersome it makes future edits to the mission.

The question is, what do you want the Unofficial Patch to be? Then do just that. Players shall judge. I am fairly sure, yes. What's wrong with some free virtual relighting ? Since you are interested in some skills what we can do to avoid duplicates is to adopt the same basic entities with the same basic properties. That way players using only the Patch will get your version but players using both the Patch and the Modpack will get a single instance (whichever mod that wins). Here is an example for the Whistle. tdm_playertools.def Go from: // Whistling sound to distract enemies, added by wesp from snatcher entityDef atdm:playertools_whistle { "inherit" "atdm:playertool" "editor_usage" "Don't use, gets automatically spawned at the start of the map" "scriptobject" "playertools_whistle" // changed by wesp "inv_category" "#str_02394" // Tools "inv_name" "Whistle" "inv_icon" "guis\assets\hud\inventory_icons\whistle_icon.dds" // changed by wesp "inv_map_start" "1" } To: // Whistling sound to distract enemies, added by wesp from snatcher entityDef mod:playerskills_distraction { "inherit" "atdm:playertool" "editor_usage" "Don't use, gets automatically spawned at the start of the map" "scriptobject" "playertools_whistle" // changed by wesp "inv_category" "Skills" "inv_name" "Whistle" "inv_icon" "guis\assets\hud\inventory_icons\whistle_icon.dds" // changed by wesp "inv_map_start" "1" } tdm_user_addons_wesp.script Go from: void user_addon_init_wesp() //If any of your addon scripts need to be initialised at map start, add their init function here. See the line that has been commented out with // for an example. { entity blow = sys.spawn("atdm:playertools_blow"); // added by wesp entity whistle = sys.spawn("atdm:playertools_whistle"); // added by wesp statistic_message_init(); // added by wesp thread frob_details(); // added by wesp tdm_frob_lock_init(); // added by wesp tdm_chest_sounds(); // added by wesp tdm_unlit_lamps(); // added by wesp sys.waitFrame(); // contingency in case no addons are specified } To: void user_addon_init_wesp() //If any of your addon scripts need to be initialised at map start, add their init function here. See the line that has been commented out with // for an example. { entity blow = sys.spawn("atdm:playertools_blow"); // added by wesp entity whistle = sys.spawn("mod:playerskills_distraction"); // added by wesp statistic_message_init(); // added by wesp thread frob_details(); // added by wesp tdm_frob_lock_init(); // added by wesp tdm_chest_sounds(); // added by wesp tdm_unlit_lamps(); // added by wesp sys.waitFrame(); // contingency in case no addons are specified } See if that does the trick, and if you like it.

The Frob Outline is already in the core game but not accessible without console commands, so I added it as option in the Unofficial Patch.

finally beat forbidden west but jeez that stearing scheme is atrocious... so you happily stroll along at a mountain side then want to steer past a big boulder but instead of strafing it does a dodge move throwing you a gazillion kilometers from the mountain side fallling to your death yeah well... the shield shute sometimes fails to inflate when jumping down so pretty much the same as above ouch... then when you need to dodge an incomming attack the damn bots cheat and hit you anyway groan... nice story though, but they need to do something about the steering on PC we do not use force sensitive mouse and keyboard ffs .

I think it would be smart to go ahead and start a "Newbie thread" that covers all newbie questions in one place, as with the TDS Forum. It doesn't have to be this one, just for future reference. Aaanyway, I was going through the A-Z Tutorial, and right about the time you make the pool of water, I fixed some leaks, thought I got them all. Now it won't Dmap again, but when I hit Pointfile, it says "Could not open pointfile: E:/games/ ... /TutorialMap.lin" I don't know why since it's been working up to now. So if I have a leak I can't find it, but it's troubling just that Pointfile suddenly, inexplicably doesn't open! There isn't any ".lin" file either; not sure what happened to it. Any ideas? Edit: I started a map from scratch and Pointfile didn't show up again. So whatever it is, it isn't something I messed up in that first map, but a general problem I'm having with DR. Edit2: But it does Dmap and Map just fine, so that's ok.

"May his iron mold the current as we were molded. May his instrument expel all obstruction as we are his instruments." - Collected Sermons of Master Plumber Roto Rooter Few would dare cross the Bridgeport Plumber's Guild. Fewer still could glimpse their secrets and live. CC0 POLYHAVEN PLUMBER PACK BETA Includes: Fully modular pipe kit with optimized shadow mesh, two skin variations and near perfect grid snapping at grid level 4 Moveable plunger prop which is fully compatible with the AI weapon system Worry free CC0 license All credit to the great polyhaven.com for the original mid poly meshes - consider supporting them on patreon. I just decimated and then rebaked the assets as well as converted the maps from pbr and made the additional model and material variations.

I can't find the option in the menu.

A Readable? I invite you to read the documentation, experience mods first hand and draw your own conclusions. It's ok. You did the right thing. Fair point but the Blow removes the need for Water Arrows which mission authors might provide for their stories. Justifying our decisions is a tricky business. Ok. No idea but I can tell you item sorting, except for weapons, is messed up: you have 4 keys and pick up another one: the 5th key gets listed first in the inventory but last in the inventory menu. Why? Who knows.

It seems like I missed this mission somehow. I'm down in the crypt with the slow match, but I can't get the torches on each side of the gold statue to light. How do I remove the gold statue?

I couldn't help thinking of another realism related suggestion, don't know if it was discussed before but it seemed like an interesting idea. If this were to be changed on existing lights by default, it would have minor gameplay implications, but the sort that make missions easier in a fair way. So... electric lights: Like the real ones of the era, they're implied to use incandescent light bulbs... the kind that in reality will explore and shatter upon the smallest impact, and which like real lamps are encased in glass or paper. In any realistic scenario, shooting a broadhead arrow at a lamp or even throwing a rock at it would cause it to go through the glass and break the light bulb inside. Is it wrong to imagine TDM emulating this behavior as a gameplay mechanic? Just as you can shoot water arrows at flame based lights to put them out, you'd shoot broadhead arrows at electric lights to disable them... you must however hit the glass precisely, there's no room for error and it must be a perfect shot. As a way to compensate for the benefit, AI can treat this as suspicious and become alert if seeing or hearing a lamp break, or finding a broken lamp at any time if that's deemed to provide better balance. A technical look at implementing this: Just as broadhead arrows can go and stick through small soft objects such as books, they should do the same if you hit the glass material on a lamp, while of course still bouncing off if you hit metal: Lamp glass would need a special material flag that sends a signal to the entity upon collisions but allows arrows to go through, unlike glass in other parts of the world which is meant to act as solid and changing that everywhere would break a lot of things. When pierced by an arrow, the lamp should immediately turn itself off while playing a broken glass sound and spawning a few glass particles. The glass material should be hidden if the model is a transparent surface, or replaced with a broken glass texture in case the glass is painted on a lamp model without an interior... obviously this would be done by defining a broken skin for the entity to switch to. This does imply a few complexities which should be manageable: Existing lamps supporting this behavior will need new skins and in a few cases new textures, the def must include a new skin variable similar to the lit / unlit skins in this case a broken skin. Any electric light may be connected to a light switch, we don't want toggling the switch to bring the light bulb back to life... as such a flag to permanently disable triggering the light from that point on would be required. For special purposes such as scripted events to reset the world, we should allow an event to unbreak lamps, setting their state back to being lit / unlit while re-enabling trigger toggling. What do you think about this idea and who else wants it? Would it be worth the trouble to try and implement? If so should it only be done for new lights or as a separate entity definition of existing ones, or would the change be welcome retroactively for existing missions without players and FM authors alike feeling it makes them too easy?

Who I am is of little importance, what matters is the job I am offering. Though the item in question may be simple, I can assure you that the reward is anything but. The task, to those brave enough to follow through, is this: During the peak of Braeden's Harvest Festival, break into Lord Alister Squashbottom's manor and steal that which is most valuable to him: his prize-winning pumpkin. This is the very pumpkin he intends on submitting to the judges of this year's competition, and you are to ensure he has no choice but to resign in failure. It may be dangerous, to which you will be amply compensated, but I have little doubt you will be able to weather all obstacles and keep your eye on the prize to complete this task. For those brave enough to accept the job, start here. Cordially, E. Siltstone Gameplay Notes TDM version 2.12 is required to play this mission. Mines are pickable; simply approach them with lockpicks equipped to frob-disarm. A moss arrow can be shot at glass to make it break more quietly. I recommend playing all three difficulties, as they are very different. This FM may be more hardware intensive than normal. LOD settings can be set below "Normal" to improve performance on low-end machines. Download Version 1.0 - This FM is available here via Google Drive, and will soon be made available via the in-game mission downloader. Promotional Screenshots ThiefGuild Release Page Credits A huge thanks to my beta testers Goldwell, WellingtonCrab, Kingsal, Baal, and Rezar for all of your fantastic feedback Voice Credits - Goldwell! Asset Credits Kingsal Wellingtoncrab Goldwell Sotha Bikerdude Refle3cks Arcturus +++And thank YOU for playing!+++

As far as I know Blow only works on small flames that mostly can be extinguished by Frob in my patch anyway. Actually the fact that the core developers wouldn't include pinching out oil lamps compared to candles, which is rather illogical to me but was always excused by not breaking existing missions, was the main reason I made the patch in the first place!