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Greetings everyone! I recently got into TDM and am already having a lot of fun playing through and ghosting missions. However, coming from Thief, I am mostly relying on the rules and my experience with that game, while there are clearly differences in how TDM works. Right now, there is talk in the ghosting discussion thread on TTLG to amend the ruleset and include clarifications pertaining to TDM. So I wanted to drop by and ask: is there an active TDM ghosting community already and have any rules for this playstyle been developed? I would also like to ask someone to take a look at the draft of this addendum to see whether everything looks correct: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487&page=16&p=2473352&viewfull=1#post2473352 Thanks!

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

A Problem Arises I've paused subtitling of the Lady02 vocal set, because of a problem with the voice clips described here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21741-subtitles-possibilities-beyond-211/&do=findComment&comment=490151 While a way forward is being determined, I'll work on a different vocal set. Maybe manbeast, for which Kingsal just provided me the voice script.

Those assets don't look good against stock TDM assets, they're like from another world. You'd need a complete package or a whole mission made out of these exclusively, to get a coherent style. That's years of work, unfortunately. Second reason is something I saw mentioned a few times in Discord discussions – TDM assets got stolen and repurposed on more than several occasions. I know that there's no way to stop asset flippers from getting those, even from modern games, if they're desperate enough. But since pk4 is basically an open door for such people, it made me reluctant to go on with this initiative. I put way too much work over the years to get to this level of craft (which is still not super pro, but quite decent, I think). From time to time, I still do single models, as requested from FM authors; but over the last few years, all my TDM-related modelling work has been sporadic, and mostly for my own amusement. I lost access to my dropbox folders. I reuploaded those in one zip package and updated the first post.

Black Parade is released ! https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152429

Right, I forgot that's also a reason why TDM has every single texture from cgtextures listed in license.txt. But, according to current EULA, that might not be enough:

OK but that sounds a bit like a special case where that requirement was explicitly made known up front? There is nothing in that textures.com FAQ that specifies a requirement like that. There is no way I would have assumed that myself. I think unless someone pipes up and says it's a hard no for whatever reason, I will assume it's OK. I suppose the other thing is a license for the FM itself. Is it an option to include a different one than that used for TDM?

Body awareness please. https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20013-are-you-gonna-add-this/

I loved it. Awesome game. I faceplanted at the people who asked for quest markers in the Steam forums there... Herr, lass Hirn regnen. The game is so great, and so true to the original, because it doesn't hold your hand. When is the new breed of gamers gonna learn.

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

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.

Here is some feedback: This is a great addition. Thank you. I would like someday to be able to mod it and remove the restrictions via scripting. This is a great addition. Thank you! I haven't tested this yet but it sounds good. The problem I had with this is the damage you take at the end if you are not careful, spoiling any fun that may be reside in the mechanic. I don't understand this change. What's the case that triggered it? Chases many times end during or right after an "overhead mantling": there's that moment where you never know if you will get the hit or not. I always found this exciting and I never wondered whether "overhead mantling" was right or wrong, fast or slow. "Overhead mantling" has always felt right to me in any situation. My observations: Chances of being hit is reduced to almost zero now Mantling sounds have been limited to one, it sounds boring and repetitive Players can clip through ceilings in some situations It feels a little robotic, for some reason.

Included in the beta for 2.12 is a new companion to security cameras familiar to Thief players: the automatic turret. It will become active as soon as an enemy is detected by a targeted security camera, firing projectiles to fend off the intruder. Similarly to the security camera and the camgoyle sentry, turrets are highly customisable in their behaviour and appearance. There are two main variants of turrets at the moment: the cannon and the flamethrower. Thanks to Goldwell for digging up custom sound effects and Bikerdude for creating the models. Both were originally written as scripts, and meanwhile the cannon has been converted to C++ and integrated into the core assets for 2.12-beta1. One of the aims of the 2.12 beta is to test the readiness of the turret for release, given that it's a brand new and complex entity. The question of whether it's released with 2.12 or pushed back 2.13 is decided based on feedback by testers, so plentiful testing is of the essence and can be posted here. At the time of the 2.12 beta, the flamethrower is available as a script-based downloadable addon [here]. Its mode of action is to fire a lance of fire at its target, a novelty in TDM. While the scripting engine is powerful, there are some significant potential benefits in a C++ version. The main one is access to array variables to store and process data about all emitted flames, which would allow the flamethrower to spray fire in an arc instead of firing a single stream at x position. For this reason the flamethrower isn't offered as a core asset yet. Another feature of 2.12 is the refurbishment of Doom-era code for guided projectiles, tricky for even the nimblest players to dodge. Switching to guided projectiles only requires changing a projectile's spawnclass from idProjectile to idGuidedProjectile, and more spawnargs can be found in the new entity base class for guided projectiles. A guided version of the cannon turret's projectile is available in 2.12-beta1. Work was also done on introducing Thief-style bouncing projectiles but, as a hybrid between projectiles and moveables, these aren't part of 2.12 because changes to existing code at a deeper level are needed.

Yes a gui editor would be cool but IMO is very easy to just have the game running the gui in real time, edit the code, press a key bound to reloadGuis and see the gui update ingame, in almost real time, that is the main reason idSoftware never did a gui editor. And the one the Quake 4 dev's (Raven software) made is unfinished (the above may explain why...), very bare bones and I don't recommend using it, specially in TDM.

Horror themed fan mission - exploration of seemingly deserted keep in the middle of swamps. Spiders, undead, darkness. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the story about the fate of my family. My uncle, Ralph Mac Roberts, is the baron of a keep nestled deep within the Rahenaen marshes. It was once an important outpost tasked with guarding one of the few Builder roads that cross the marsh, but after the Inventor`s Guild built a system of nearby dams that flooded the whole land, the road closed and there was no longer anything to watch over anymore. The keep itself needed reinforcement against the raising water level and the trade routes become almost impassable, not only for the carriages but for lone couriers as well. There hadn`t been any messages coming from the keep for over a year and my father was about to assemble a caravan so he could go on an expedition to the keep himself. However, in the middle of the night before he was set to leave, a carrier pigeon landed on his windowsill. My father received the letter and read the apologies from my uncle and his family, excusing their long absence. As a way to make reparations for their extended silence, my uncle invited me to the keep to stay there for a fortnight or so. My uncle had instructed me to leave my horse three leagues away from the keep by the nearest charcoal burning hut and hike the remainder of the road on foot, as the trek through the marsh is treacherous for horses. The weather will be awful this time of year, but my father insists that I should go anyways to ensure that our relatives are okay. These plains become dreadfully deserted - to the point where you more expect to meet the dead than the living. And by the way - I think I`m lost. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Download link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aj1DVS465udZgVkXteBbr6cUxdPH Thanks: to the TDM team for great tools, and all the contributors for their assets, to betatesters: Amadeus, Bienie, Boiler's_hiss, Dragofer, Filizitas, Judith, nbohr1more, s.urfer, again to Amadeus for proofreading and text tweaks, and to all the players for their time! Few screenshots: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/10003-so-what-are-you-working-on-right-now/?p=434716 http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/10003-so-what-are-you-working-on-right-now/?p=429558 http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19886-fm-marsh-of-rahena-beta-testing/?p=434507 Enjoy! Walk-through !major spoilers! Finding a way across the marsh area: Getting inside: Bed objective: Light sources: Maps: Enemies: Room objective: Hut objective: Sealed objective: Gold: Key: Bodies:

I admit that I was skeptical myself at first, but once I tried it in game, I changed my mind. So, I recommend applying the patch to a local build and give it a go in game. It's definitely better experienced than thought about. Regarding the candle puzzle in "Seeking Lady Leicester" (SLL), I agree that this proposed change will make that a bit more difficult, but I disagree on the reason why. The released version of SLL has a flint in the inventory to ignite them, so accidentally extinguishing candles shouldn't be much of a problem. Instead, I think the reason for player frustration would be that the unlit candles highlight, showing they can be frobbed, but when the player does frob, nothing would happen. They might not realize the candles can be picked up with a long-press frob. @Wellingtoncrab and I had a discussion about that exact puzzle during the design of this feature. So, what convinced me that it wasn't really a problem? I tried it in game. Players will learn how unlit candles look and behave when frobbed. Like @ChronA said above: "When most players click a candle 99.8% of the time they don't want to move it, they want to put it out." I decided it was better to optimize for what players expect most often and do most often rather than optimize for rare cases. Players already rage in frustration that they have trouble extinguishing candles or don't realize that they can. Another quote from a player on Discord: "I'd even say the "some players didn't know you could extinguish candles by using them" thing is "almost any new player and a lot of old ones too", since I once had an extended conversation about exactly how immersion breaking and weird it was to have to extinguish candles by dropping them, and literally not a single person brought up the fact that [extinguish candles by using them] was possible." During beta testing, the struggle that some beta testers had with the candle puzzle was not knowing about object manipulation. They didn't know about the "Parry/Manipulate" keybinding, or they forgot about object manipulation because they did the training mission roughly 5 years ago and had not needed to do it in a mission afterwards. So, "long-press frob to pick up" is in the same class of player interaction as object manipulation. In other words, the same problem already exists in TDM v2.11. I couldn't find the original screenshot from one of the SLL beta testers, but here's one similar, showing that the player didn't know about object manipulation: If this is truly in a released mission, I'd like to know about it. We can problem solve for that case if it does in fact exist. I don't think we should concern ourselves with something hypothetical, though. And, I disagree that we should make or keep controls cumbersome for the player in order to add challenge. I agree with @ChronA here. I don't think players are playing TDM for that type of challenge. The patch includes the following cvar: "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"300" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or pick up. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. When "tdm_frobhold_delay" is set to 0, candles and bodies have the same behavior as TDM v2.11. As of a few moments ago, bodies didn't quite have the same behavior. But based on your feedback, I updated the patch (linked above) to make bodies behave that way. Thank you for your feedback.

I don't really see a reason this would be an issue in SLL. It be nice to see the feature in a dev build so more players (like me) can test it. Sort of like how we did testing with the frob highlight. I also don't see a reason why there would be a compatibility issue either. Leveraging this sort of short press/long press for different commands on the same input already exists for gamepads in the TDM controller config. As daft says in his post if the delay CVAR is set to 0, then there is no delay for the additional command and the original behavior for all the interactions is restored. But again it’d be nice to try it.

I played it for about 2 hours and you can certainly feel the inspiration by the old Thief games, which is also the reason they went for the pixelated look I assume. First few minutes you're immediately taught how the stealth works and certainly in the early game playing stealth is a must. Enemies hit hard and if they swarm you after being detected you're pretty much dead if you don't make a run for it. Hit and run when there a multiple enemies seems to be the best strategy in the beginning or try to sneak past them (you can use skill points to improve stealth and other skills). Exploring is rewarding as you can find hidden passages with some good loot (guns, ammunition, potions). Storywise the game is bit weak IMO and it's lacking the atmosphere (it feels barebones) that the old Thief games were able to give you despite the outdated graphics, although this last point might be due to the starting location (canyon). There's no quick save and you can only exit the game by saving, so if you screw up you have to accept the consequences. You receive a curse after dying 3 times (but there are items that can prevent or cure this). All in all I would give the game a 7/10 based on my early gameplay.

Sorry for the "math speak". By modulo 5 (aka just mod 5), I mean integer values of 5, 10, 15, etc., and referring to the duration in units of seconds. Since the duration is a float, we're really talking 5.000, 10.000, 15.000, etc. No good reason, IMHO. Not at this time. I only got about through about 50 voice clips in the spreadsheet, before it became obvious that there was this problem. My workflow doesn't generate the .subs file of a test mission (initially with all inline, with srt candidates flagged by comments) until the spreadsheet is done. It's because the vocal set is chopped into individual voice clips, that the game individually invokes. So (unlike subtitling a movie or TDM video briefing), each unique voice clip must be represented by either a separate inline entry or srt file. The inline entry is an easier prep. It generally handles > 95% of a vocal set's clips. And would for Lady02 if the .ogg files had been properly trimmed.

What is modulo seconds? Maybe there is a reason why they're longer? Do you have the test mission pk4 for this? I would like to test creating the srt files if you have it. Just a personal thought: I sometimes wonder what is the benefit to using inline at all. If I only use srt, I don't have to divide the subtitles in sets of inline and srt.

Is there any reason you can't fill the fountain with a brush and turn that into a proper water entity?

Great first mission! which made the mission way easier, since you bypass most NPCs. Also, I am not sure if this is because I am playing on Wayland instead of X, but the mission ran super slow, especially outside the mansion, even on the lowest settings. I am also on an alpha version of TDM, which could be another reason for the bad performance. Anyhow, thanks for the mission

TDM was never meant to be fully realistic, it would become impossibly difficult were that the case. None the less I still find myself wishing more could be done to make AI feel less like AI, especially when handling hostile encounters (usually the player). While like most aspects this could never be truly perfect, one area feels like it could be noticeably improved: Giving AI some form of long term memory, rather than just one alert level which goes back to zero after a short time. Here is the reason why I'm saying this: Walk inside your average heavily guarded mansion and step into the bright lights, making all the guards clearly see you and chase after you to attack. Once you've had enough fun repeating the process, hide somewhere and give everyone enough time to cool down. At the end of it all, hide somewhere in the shadows where you can barely be seen and let a guard walk past you: The guard will just say "is there something over there", at best waiting a few seconds and saying "probably just the shadows" before walking away... the same man that may have chased after you for 30 minutes and should by any logic know an intruder is still in the house, I mean come on Now I'm aware we have a basic persistence system: If I remember correctly an AI that's encountered the player and was alerted enough to draw their sword will have its acuity permanently increased by a slight amount. This however makes no noticeable difference as the AI behaves mostly the same. They'll keep telling fellow AI an intruder is in the area, this definitely helps but it's only a dialogue change not accompanied by noticeable modifications in behavior as you'd expect. Obviously massive modifications might be hard to do now without upsetting existing players since it would make everything harder. As such any such attempt would likely be an experiment and, if successful, a new menu option for the difficulty settings. Still I felt like suggesting my imagined solution just in case there's a point in considering tackling this. My idea: Replace the one-time bump in acuity with a paranoia level independent from the alert level... think of the existing alert system as short-term alert and the new one as long-term alert. The standard alert level of guards is slowly added to their paranoia level, thus the more time a guard spends being alert and the higher that alert is the more fear increases. Paranoia level may be allowed to decrease over time but at a far slower rate than the alert level: If an alert guard will typically take 3 minutes to fully calm down after losing track of the player, the paranoia level should take at least 30 if not 60 (real life) minutes to fully go down to minimum... even then it shouldn't drop below a certain degree after that point was reached, for instance just 50% of the maximum paranoia. This long-term fear level would have several effects on an AI as they patrol on their normal route... the ones I've thought about are: Increased acuity as they'll be more alert. This system would replace the existing simple bump we have in that regard, with a more fluid effect and also stronger effect. Increased playing of voices and idle animations: Due to being afraid the guard may talk to themselves or others a lot more frequently and babble excessively. Walking could be replaced by running for a while, even on path nodes that don't have the run flag. The AI would still patrol that same route just at a faster pace. As a map feature set by FM's: Some path nodes can be filtered by fear level, may already be possible with the simple system but I never tried it. An AI paranoid the player is still around but having resumed their normal patrol route may choose to patrol a more sensitive area it normally wasn't going to, which would be a fair way of punishing the player for being seen by having that AI start guarding a sensitive location from then on. If the paranoia level is allowed to slowly decrease, the guard may decide to go back on this decision... the player could then do something else for 15 minutes around the map till the guard abandons the paranoid patrol route. Here's an idea I like: AI randomly getting scared for no reason, thinking they see the player in every shadow even when there's nothing there. A scared guard normally walking on their patrol route would randomly become alert for no reason, typically when walking through a dark area, causing them to draw their sword or randomly run around for a second. The problem here is this effect would be random: Imagine you're hiding accordingly but a guard randomly freaks out and bumps into you, most players would find this unfair.

Isn't that even shown in the trailer? That feature is probably the reason why no "toys" can be found anywhere on the station. ;D

Not so long ago I found what could make a pretty good profile picture and decided to try it out on these new forums. But I couldn't find a button anywhere that would let me change it. I asked on Discord and it seems Spooks also couldn't find anything anywhere. So I logged into an old alternative account and, lo and behold, that account has a button. This is on the first screen I get when I: 1) click on my account name in the top-right of the browser -> 2) click on 'profile'. Compared to my actual account: Are you also missing this button on your account? It'd be very much appreciated if that functionality could be restored to any of the affected accounts.