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I've seen fun workarounds like that in other game modding as well. Years ago, maybe even a decade, some fella who was making a mod for Mount & Blade over at the Taleworlds forums revealed that he put invisible human NPCs on the backs of regular horse NPCs, then put the horse NPCs inside a horse corral he built for one of his mod's locations/scenes and then did some minor scripting, so the horses with invisible riders would wander around the corral. The end result was that it looked they're doing this of their own will, rather than an NPC rider being scripted to ride around the corral slowly. Necessity is the mother of invention. I don't know about the newest Mount & Blade game, but the first generation ones (2008-2022) apparently had some sort of hardcoded issue back in the earlier years, where if you left a horse NPC without a rider in its saddle, the horses would just stand around and wait and you couldn't get them to move around. Placing an invisible rider in their saddles suddenly made it viable again, at least for background scenes, of riderless horses wandering around, for added atmosphere. First generation M&B presumed you'd mostly be seeing horses in movement with riders, and the only horses-wandering-loosely animations and scripting were done for situations when the rider was knocked off their horse or dismounted in the middle of a battle. Hence the really odd workarounds. So, an invisible NPC trick might not be out of the question in TDM, even though you could probably still bump into it, despite its invisibility.

Here's my first FM. A small and easy mission, inspired by Thief's Den and The Bakery Job, where you must find and steal a cook's recipe book in order to save a friend from going out of business. Download: Mediafire (sk_cooks.pk4) TDM Website's Mission Page The in-game mission downloader Thanks to: The people who helped me get this far, both in the forums and on Discord. The beta testers: MirceaKitsune, Mat99, Baal, wesp5, Cambridge Spy, jaxa, grodenglaive, Acolytesix ( Per the author in the beta testing thread. ) Skaruts has given permission to the TDM Team to add Subtitles or Localization Strings to this mission. (No EFX Reverb.) If anyone from the Community or TDM team wishes to create these we will gladly test them and update the mission database.

Okay... so... I'll be honest. The verticality of the first mission blew my mind, made me really pay attention, explore. But the verticality of this mission made me frustrated. It didn't help that I kept stumbling upon things, without context. Moreover, some areas didn't have anything, but were traversable, while others had a plenty and required not a clear and direct path but some convoluted route that wasn't obvious to me. And the size of the level... It took me 4 and a half hours to search every nook and cranny, find and complete all objectives and discover the loot. But that time was split between two days, because I could only play before work, and I experienced CTD whenever I'd draw a bow inside the manor. So by the end I ran around like a headless chicken, trying to remember where I've left this NPC and where is that NPC and where the safe is... Now... some things really gave me a pause. For example, the direction of our poor LT's life XD Or the fact that we had such a horrible person working for our Target. But I really liked the story here. All the twists, the clues (that little thing in the cabinet damn), I liked using Thief's Highway... but man was I lost there. I would like to know... how was I supposed to find the Barrel? I had no real reason to actually head there aside from "I see a window open". But since I was thorough, I found the Barrel there before the readable mentioning it in the same place. Was there a hint pointing me there to begin with? (Did I miss it, like the combination to the safe the first time?) Also - the Safehouse dude was freaking me out.

After some amount of work I'm happy to be able to share my Christmas gift for TDM! Or at least half of it, considering the other half is still only in design phase. I created an addon that implements detailed player functionality, inspired by the first DeusEx game (The Conspiracy). It's NOT a mission script but an addon, meaning you place the pk4 in your TDM directory to enable the system and it will automatically work in each and every FM. Note that due to using tdm_user_addons.script / user_addon_init() it may disable or get disabled by other addons you have installed... this is a design limitation which can hopefully be lifted at some point in the future. This plugin will be included in my cyberpunk total conversion The Dark Module and automatically active with it, but first I shall design it and make it available as a small independent addon for vanilla TDM. In the current initial release it implements just per-limb damage; The upcoming plan is to add a skill / augmentation system, allowing the player to use loot as skill points to enhance various body parts and gain new or improved abilities. Due to the scripting system being very limited in what it lets me modify, I'm still gathering documentation on how to implement those skills and which I can have. So until then detailed body damage with penalties remains the only part that's theoretically finished so far (further improvements are required here too)... including a HUD component above the lightgem showing the status of each body part: Green = full health, yellow = half health, red = (close to) no health, black = no health left. The individual limbs available: Head, Torso, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, Right Leg... arms and legs work in unity however. They each take damage with the player as well as healing together with them. The more damaged a group is, the more a respective penalty is applied to the player. Groups and penalties include: Head: When the head is damaged, the player begins to get dizzy and has their vision impaired. Currently the only effect replicates the flashbomb, causing white dots to appear around the player and disrupt their view until the head is healed. As the player can't live without a head, reaching 0 will cause instant death. More effects are possible and pending. Torso: Damage to the torso translates to damage to the cloak, increasing the player's lightgem and rendering them more visible even in dark spots. As the player can't live without a torso, reaching 0 will cause instant death. Given script limitations I'm unable to simulate lung damage and decrease / limit the amount of air the player has. Arms: Arm damage makes it difficult for the player to hold items: In-world objects being held will probabilistically get dropped, more often the worse your arms are hurt. When both arms reach 0 health, the player can no longer pick up anything in the world without instantly dropping it... you also become unable to use any weapons. Due to limitations in the scripting system, I'm unable to decrease the speed or accuracy of the blackjack / sword / bow as was desired. Legs: As expected leg damage will make the player walk more slowly. It was desired that when one leg is lost the player can no longer jump, whereas when both legs are gone you remain stuck in crouch mode until healed... due to limitations in the scripting system this part is also not possible at the moment. A crude limitation is the fact that limb damage is primarily based on the direction the player is walking toward... for example, increased likelihood of suffering damage to your right arm and leg if strafing right the moment you take the damage. The script system doesn't let you extract the vector direction of the last damage event, thus I can't use the real direction the hit came from when calculating which body part should absorb the most health loss. This means that even if an arrow comes from above and hits the player's head area, the player will only take damage to the legs if they're falling downward the moment they got hit... for the time being this provides a bare minimum amount of realism but is a very bitter implementation. For this reason it would be greatly appreciated if any of the code developers could join this discussion and verify if they can help with adding the necessary hooks to external scripts: With 2.09 getting periodic beta releases at this point in time, it would be a great opportunity to make changes to the builtin player script that allow an external function to modify more player variables. This includes the efficiency of weapons, if the player is allowed to jump or forced to always crouch, and I'd also really appreciate a hook to manipulate the breath so air can be lowered as if the player is underwater. I understand other priorities exist or if the work may be considered too much, however this would help in being able to finish this mod with the proper functionality and planned skill set. In the meantime let me know what you think of this idea and how I went about it! So far no new assets are included except the GUI graphics: Everything is done with less than 250 lines of script which I'd say is a good achievement I've attached the pk4 and since it's so lightweight I'll also add the main script straight in this post. player_damage_1.0.pk4 #define DAMAGE_WAIT 0.0166667 #define EXPOSURE_ARM_LEFT 2 #define EXPOSURE_ARM_RIGHT 2 #define EXPOSURE_LEG_LEFT 2 #define EXPOSURE_LEG_RIGHT 2 #define EXPOSURE_HEAD 3 #define EXPOSURE_TORSO 1 #define PENALTY_TORSO_LIGHTGEM 4 player self; float damage_gui; boolean dizzy; entity dizzy_particles; float bound(float val, float min, float max) { if(val < min) return min; if(val > max) return max; return val; } // Range based probability: Calculates a probability per frame independent of wait time (0 - 1 range at 1 chance per second) boolean prob(float x) { return sys.random(1) > x && sys.random(1) < DAMAGE_WAIT; } // Directional exposure calculator float dex(vector dir, float ex_front, float ex_back, float ex_right, float ex_left, float ex_up, float ex_down) { float maxvel = 100; float dir_front = bound(dir_x / maxvel, 0, 1) * ex_front; float dir_back = bound(-dir_x / maxvel, 0, 1) * ex_back; float dir_right = bound(dir_y / maxvel, 0, 1) * ex_right; float dir_left = bound(-dir_y / maxvel, 0, 1) * ex_left; float dir_up = bound(dir_z / maxvel, 0, 1) * ex_up; float dir_down = bound(-dir_z / maxvel, 0, 1) * ex_down; return dir_front + dir_back + dir_right + dir_left + dir_up + dir_down; } void player_damage_update_arm(float dmg_l, float dmg_r) { float hl_l = self.getFloatKey("health_arm_left"); float hl_r = self.getFloatKey("health_arm_right"); float hl = (hl_l + hl_r) / 2; if(dmg_l != 0 || dmg_r != 0) { hl_l = bound(hl_l - dmg_l, 0, 1); hl_r = bound(hl_r - dmg_r, 0, 1); hl = (hl_l + hl_r) / 2; self.setKey("health_arm_left", hl_l); self.setKey("health_arm_right", hl_r); self.setGuiFloat(damage_gui, "PlayerDamage_ItemArmLeft", hl_l); self.setGuiFloat(damage_gui, "PlayerDamage_ItemArmRight", hl_r); // Penalty #1: Disable the weapon once the arm are damaged to minimum health if(hl == 0) { self.selectWeapon(WEAPON_UNARMED); self.disableWeapon(); } else { self.enableWeapon(); } } // Penalty #2: Probabilistically drop held items based on arm damage if(hl == 0 || prob(hl)) if(self.heldEntity() != $null_entity) self.holdEntity($null_entity); } void player_damage_update_leg(float dmg_l, float dmg_r) { float hl_l = self.getFloatKey("health_leg_left"); float hl_r = self.getFloatKey("health_leg_right"); float hl = (hl_l + hl_r) / 2; if(dmg_l != 0 || dmg_r != 0) { hl_l = bound(hl_l - dmg_l, 0, 1); hl_r = bound(hl_r - dmg_r, 0, 1); hl = (hl_l + hl_r) / 2; self.setKey("health_leg_left", hl_l); self.setKey("health_leg_right", hl_r); self.setGuiFloat(damage_gui, "PlayerDamage_ItemLegLeft", hl_l); self.setGuiFloat(damage_gui, "PlayerDamage_ItemLegRight", hl_r); // #Penalty #1: Make movement slower self.setHinderance("health", 0.25 + hl * 0.75, 1); } } void player_damage_update_head(float dmg) { float hl = self.getFloatKey("health_head"); float time_current = sys.getTime(); if(dmg != 0) { hl = bound(hl - dmg, 0, 1); self.setKey("health_head", hl); self.setGuiFloat(damage_gui, "PlayerDamage_ItemHead", hl); // Penalty #1: Without a head the player dies if(hl == 0) self.damage(self, self, self.getOrigin(), "damage_suicide", 1); // Penalty #2: Simulate dizzyness starting at half health if(hl <= 0.5) { if(!dizzy) { dizzy_particles = sys.spawn("func_emitter"); dizzy_particles.setModel("flashbomb.prt"); dizzy_particles.setOrigin(self.getEyePos()); dizzy_particles.bind(self); dizzy = true; } } else { if(dizzy) { dizzy_particles.remove(); dizzy = false; } } } } void player_damage_update_torso(float dmg) { float hl = self.getFloatKey("health_torso"); if(dmg != 0) { hl = bound(hl - dmg, 0, 1); self.setKey("health_torso", hl); self.setGuiFloat(damage_gui, "PlayerDamage_ItemTorso", hl); // Penalty #1: Without a torso the player dies if(hl == 0) self.damage(self, self, self.getOrigin(), "damage_suicide", 1); // Penalty #2: Torso damage negatively affects the lightgem self.setLightgemModifier("damage", (1 - hl) * PENALTY_TORSO_LIGHTGEM); } } void player_damage() { sys.waitFrame(); self = $player1; damage_gui = self.createOverlay("guis/player_damage.gui", 1); float health_old = 100; // Init by sending a heal event filling the limbs to full health player_damage_update_arm(-1, -1); player_damage_update_leg(-1, -1); player_damage_update_head(-1); player_damage_update_torso(-1); while(1) { // sys.waitFrame(); sys.wait(DAMAGE_WAIT); float health_current = self.getHealth(); float dmg = (health_old - health_current) / 100; float dmg_arm_left = dmg * EXPOSURE_ARM_LEFT; float dmg_arm_right = dmg * EXPOSURE_ARM_RIGHT; float dmg_leg_left = dmg * EXPOSURE_LEG_LEFT; float dmg_leg_right = dmg * EXPOSURE_LEG_RIGHT; float dmg_head = dmg * EXPOSURE_HEAD; float dmg_torso = dmg * EXPOSURE_TORSO; // If this is damage and not healing, apply directional damage to each limb if(dmg > 0) { // Currently we estimate damage direction based on the player's velocity, we should fetch the real direction of a damage event when this becomes possible vector dir = self.getMove(); vector ang = self.getViewAngles(); // Protections based on the player's position and relation to the environment // protection_look: 1 when looking up, 0 when looking down // protection_low: Higher as the lower part of the body is exposed float protection_look = 1 - (90 + ang_x) / 180; float protection_low = 1; if(self.AI_CROUCH) protection_low = 0; else if(self.AI_ONGROUND) protection_low = 0.75; // Use the dex function to calculate directional exposure patterns, direction order: Front, back, right, left, up, down // Arms: Somewhat likely to be hit, no added protection // Legs: Somewhat likely to be hit, added protection when the player is crouching // Head: Unlikely to be hit, added protection when the player is looking down // Torso: Likely to be hit, no added protection float exposure_arm_left = bound(sys.random(0.375) + dex(dir, 0.5, 0.25, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.25), 0, 1); float exposure_arm_right = bound(sys.random(0.375) + dex(dir, 0.5, 0.25, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.25), 0, 1); float exposure_leg_left = bound(sys.random(0.375) + dex(dir, 0.75, 0.5, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 1.0) * protection_low, 0, 1); float exposure_leg_right = bound(sys.random(0.375) + dex(dir, 0.75, 0.5, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0) * protection_low, 0, 1); float exposure_head = bound(sys.random(0.25) + dex(dir, 0.25, 0.75, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.0) * protection_look, 0, 1); float exposure_torso = bound(sys.random(0.5) + dex(dir, 0.75, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0), 0, 1); // Apply the exposure to damage, multiplied to simulate the sensitivity / resistance of each limb dmg_arm_left = exposure_arm_left * dmg * EXPOSURE_ARM_LEFT; dmg_arm_right = exposure_arm_right * dmg * EXPOSURE_ARM_RIGHT; dmg_leg_left = exposure_leg_left * dmg * EXPOSURE_LEG_LEFT; dmg_leg_right = exposure_leg_right * dmg * EXPOSURE_LEG_RIGHT; dmg_head = exposure_head * dmg * EXPOSURE_HEAD; dmg_torso = exposure_torso * dmg * EXPOSURE_TORSO; } player_damage_update_arm(dmg_arm_left, dmg_arm_right); player_damage_update_leg(dmg_leg_left, dmg_leg_right); player_damage_update_head(dmg_head); player_damage_update_torso(dmg_torso); health_old = health_current; } }

Disgraceful. It seems like people will do anything for a coin these days. That’s a big reason why I made this mission just about a house with zero coins in it.

That's a great reason to play the mission again! Now the difficulty names make sense, I wondered why they were named like that

I plan to gradually try out all or most of the different path node types and adjust them depending on the interaction. Though I don't plan to use it in this particular mission, I have a keen interest in the follow type, as I'll want an NPC to follow the player character in another, future FM I'd like to create. Never too soon to try out various functions while I'm already learning new FM-building skins after a long hiatus. Thank you for the suggestion. I completely forgot about the location system ambients as an option ! A few years back, when I was testing various stuff in DR, I did actually use that approach instead, once or twice. I haven't used DR much in recent years, so I eventually forgot about setting it up that way. Acknowledged, and I'll look into it. It'll save a lot of time concerning the audio side of the mission. My first few missions won't have much a natural environment, they'll largelly be small and focused on buildings or urban spaces, so I won't need to bother with detailed audio for rivers yet. I have an outdoor FM planned for later (it's in the pre-production phase), and I'll have a good reason to study it in greater detail. It's actually okay, I don't reallt need rectangular speakers. Given that I've been reminded I can set a main ambience for each room - something I did know before, but forgot, after not working properly with DR these past few years - I'll do just that, and use the speakers for more secondary ambience concerns. Handy indeed. A rectangular shape would be easier to remember. I'll just use the filters in the editor to put away the speakers if I ever the get the impression they're blocking my view. Also, I don't actually mind the shape all that much. As you and the others say, the size/radius of the speaker is the actual key aspect. I'm a bit disappointed it's seemingly not possible to resize speakers the same way you can resize brushes or certain models, though you can still tweak the radius numerically, manually. As long as I can work with that, the actual shape of a speaker isn't really important. My main concern is expanding the minimum and maximum radius areas to an extent where they'll be audible for most for all of the respective areas the player will visit, rather than fading away quickly once the player leaves the hub of the speaker behind. As was already said above, I'll use the different utility to set the main ambient for the individual rooms, rather than a manually placed speaker, and I'll reserve the speakers for additional sound effects or more local ambience. I've already added some extra parameters to the speakers I'm testing out in my FM, so I'll take a look at those soon, though I'll deal with the main room ambience settings first. I'd like to thank everyone for their replies. While I'm not surprised by the answers, I'm now more confident in working with the path node and speaker entities. On an unrelated sidenote to all of this, the same in-development FM where I'm testing the speaker placement and range was tested yesterday for whether an NPC AI can walk from the ground floor all the way to the topmost floor, without issues. Thankfully, there have been no issues at all, and the test subject - a female mage, whom I won't use in the completed FM, sadly - did a successful first ascent of the tower-like building that'll serve as the main setting. (That's all your getting from me for now, concerning the FM contents.)

I made a small update today removing two modpack skills that were indeed not regular features of the original game, namely Whistle and Peek Door. The real reason though was that I never really use any of them! If I want to alert a guard, I can always hit something with my blackjack and I almost forgot about the peering through a keyhole feature before I noticed that it works with handles without a keyhole e.g. in the current mission I beta test. I kept the numbers scroll, because this basically gives you access to something the game already has only any time, and the Blow skill, as a last resort if mission creator use uncommon flames, again like in the current beta. Also this way there is a bigger distinction between Snatcher's modpack with all the cool new stuff and my patch!

It detected my CPU core count correctly, 12 physical 24 virtual. Btw just curious but what's the reason, for the cpu core data to not be printed at the top? Next to the cpu name and features like AVX and SSE stuff. Not complaining, critiquing or anything, if is like that, it most be because of a good reason. I just found it odd that's all, because I add to travel down a bit on the console before I saw the cpu core count and thought "why? when there's CPU info already at the top?".

Inn Business It's business, at an inn, over three nights. Development screenshots: Download: https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing Update 1.48 uploaded March 8th, 2014, one change: patches key rarely not being frobable in one of its possible spots Big thanks to my beta testers: Airship Ballet, Kyyrma and AluminumHaste! Development supporters of note: Sotha, Springheel and Obsttorte. Also thanks Sotha, for urinating in my mission. ;-) And thanks Kyyrma for the title screen! My appreciation to all forum/wiki contributors, without whom, this wouldn't exist. Thanks to positive commenters on my previous mission too, extra motivation helps! :-) Note this uses campaign features, what you use the first night, impacts subsequent nights. And to quote a tester, "...the level is maybe best experienced in more than one sitting". If you do pause between nights, please be sure to save, you can't begin partway through effectively. (If you accidentally start a night you already completed, just fail the kill objective to switch to another night.) If your frame rates are too low facing the cemetery, please reduce your "Object Details LOD" setting. It was designed with "AI Vision" set to "Forgiving", to be able to sneak through with minimal reactions, if you want more/less, adjust your settings accordingly. There are several random, conditional aspects, and ways of going about things, so others might have slightly different experiences. Post here if you discover hidden objectives for extra points! My condolences to loot completionists, I made a bit on the third night hard, you've got your challenge cut out for you! Speaking of which, there's a TDM bug that mission complete totals too high, here are the real amounts per night: 2026/970/202. Oh, there is something that in the U.S. would be rated PG, in case you play with kids in earshot. I hope you enjoy playing it, feel free to let me know you did, and I'm glad to respond to inquiries (like how stuff was done, nothing was scripted). (Note which night you are referring to if it's something specific.) (Please remember spoiler tags to not expose things meant to be discovered by playing.) Like so: [spoiler]secrets[/spoiler] Developed for TDM 2.01. PS: Thiefette, good news, no spiders! Springheel, if you find an optional objective you can skip...you might find it immersion breaking. Others, no undead! There are a couple other interactive critters though. :-) Edit note: Some posts below were from users of an unreleased version of TDM 2.02 which broke several things, they do not reflect regular game-play.

Ah, pity I wasn't reading the forums back in February. I'm fond of that game, along with Bugbear's other early title, Rally Trophy. I was never too good at FlatOut, but it was always a hoot to play.

When talking about a possible libre version of TDM (https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22346-libre-version-of-tdm/) it seems we believe all media/gamedata included in TDM is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. I am not familiar with how the process of adding new media/gamedata works today; I have seen files uploaded to the bugtracker which developers then commit to SVN, but I don't know if there are other ways. It may be a good idea to implement a process that when new components (media/gamedata included in TDM) are added, the contributor is asked to be explicit about the license (a choice which may defaults to their previous preference, for usability). It won't fix the past, but it may help in the future. This will make it easy for contributors to add future data under a more permissive license if they choose. Libre media can be added and its license can be tracked, rather than assumed to be CC-BY-NC-SA. I suggest looking at how Wikimedia Commons has implemented this: the contributor state the source and license at the time the data is uploaded. This can be done either by providing urls or by saying "It's my work and I choose this licsense". The first step could be to add a way to keep track of each filepath in SVN, author, license, sources. Start by setting the value for each file's license to "(default/legacy CC-BY-NC-SA)". Possible implementations for a user interface for new additions are: * Use our own wiki, which runs Mediawiki (same as Wikimedia Commons). I see several benefits of this, but we also need a way to accept uploads of batches, not just single files. * Look at how other open source projects have solved this. There may be more appropriate solutions available. ... but I'll leave the implementation open. Suggestions are very welcome! If the author of each file already in SVN can be tracked, then it may be possible that the author is willing to give a blanket permission for all their past files in one statement, and all their files in SVN can be updated in one commit. A productive contributor willing to release some of their work under a more permissive license could make a big change. If Dark Radiant would support letting mappers search media/gamedata by license (does it already?), it would make it easier for mappers to create a completely libre mission, which would help facilitate a TDM-libre release. If I understand things correctly. This post does not address all details and it may contain misunderstandings or assumptions, but it's a start. Also relevant: * Is there a compiled and maintained list of recommended or deprecated resources for mappers to use? * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20311-external-art-assets-licensing/

Doesn't help. The moment I move to check out an entity and then move back to the Entity list, The mouse click and scroll is locked. I can move it around, but clicking is not possible (I can scroll in firefox for example with the keyboard just fine, so DR clearly takes over the mouse for no reason at all), until the entity list is remade.

Mouse look is essential so no. We should use whatever behind-the-scenes solution of messing with the pointer will work... once Wayland or WxWidgets or GTK3 will offer one, it's kind of on them that they haven't up to this point. Until then Jonri's PR works by forcing the X11 backend, which isn't a real solution but in practice solves everything for now. Here's a modified snippet of what I did in PyGame which works. Obviously this code has no effect, just an example to show what works in my project, just in case it's a similar situation here: Maybe Wayland expects us to hide the mouse pointer at a core level before it allows locking, and the reason it doesn't work is DR only hides it visually at top level? pygame.mouse.set_visible(False) x, y = pygame.mouse.get_pos() pygame.mouse.set_pos((x, y)) pygame.mouse.set_visible(True)

There might be another way, or at least it's what I thought of as a non-developer: Use a different way to transform mouse movement into camera rotation or viewport offset. Is there no alternative to calculating the distance from the pointer to the window center before resetting the pointer to the middle? There must be other mouse look implementations that could work. Most obvious alternative: We can detect how much the pointer moved on the screen compared not to the center, but to its previous position wherever that may be. While of course still trying to lock it in the middle, but if that fails at least it doesn't cause the view to go crazy: The only issue then will be the cursor reaching the screen edge and having to be re-engaged so you can keep scrolling in that direction, which is also a big annoyance but comparatively less bad and not as noticeable unless you do long-range movements in one go. Any reason why we couldn't give this option a try?

@snatcher I understand that when you feel your work doesn't live up to your goals that you don't want it out in the wild advertising your own perceived shortcomings but that leads to a troubling dilemma of authors who are never satisfied with their work offering fleeting access to their in-progress designs then rescinding them or allowing them to be lost. When I was a member of Doom3world forums, I would often see members do interesting experiments and sometimes that work would languish until someone new would examine it and pickup the torch. This seemed like a perfectly viable system until Doom3world was killed by spambots and countless projects and conceptual works were lost. I guess what I am trying to say is that mods don't need to be perfect to be valuable. If they contain some grain of a useable feature they might be adapted by mission authors in custom scenarios. They might offer instructive details that others trying to achieve the same results can examine. It would be great if known compelling works were kept somewhere safe other than via forum attachments and temporary file sharing sites. I suppose we used to collect such things in our internal SVN for safe keeping but even that isn't always viable. If folks would rather not post beta or incomplete mods to TDM's Moddb page, perhaps they would consider creating their own Moddb page or allow them to be added to my page for safe keeping. Please don't look at this as some sort of pressure campaign or anything. I fully understand anyone not willing to put their name next to something they aren't fully happy with. As a general proviso, ( if possible \ permitted ) I just want to prevent the loss of some valuable investigations and formative works. The end of Doom3world was a digital apocalypse similar to the death of photobucket. It is one of my greatest fears that TDM will become a digital memory with only the skeletons of old forum threads at the wayback archive site.

Congrats on the release! Remember to check ThiefGuild as well as the DarkFate forums (via Google Translate) for additional feedback.

Just curious, based on this discussion: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19239-soft-r-gamma/?p=427350

Yeah it would be cool to see some more detailed statistics and it’s a shame they aren’t really captured. Since we are talking about fan mission platforms, where players also make the content for the game, I feel like the best thing we’ve got is you can look at the number of content releases for the games. Keep in mind the graph counts campaigns as single missions - so for example NHAT and TBP both count as 1 mission. A good year for TDM has has approaching maybe 50% - mostly we’re 25-30%. https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152494 You could also look at the number of ratings thief missions get on https://www.thiefguild.com/ vs TDM ones, but that is pretty iffy in that you could chalk that up to more awareness of the site in the thief community than TDM Out of curiosity is there a reason a thief player can’t be a new player? I kind of think a player is a player and new players would be ones who are playing the dark mod who weren't? Is there disagreement the base of players most likely to pick up the game are fans of the thief games? They are certainly the most fruitful place to find feedback on the game beyond the sphere of this forum that I have seen. When we were trying to finish up SLL there was a lot of discussion on the forums about how long it had been since there was a release for the game. I am thankful that the stats show at least some stability over the years in terms of releases for TDM, but the trend for all of the games is decline. Not doing anything is a valid response if that’s what the devs want to do - it is not possible to provide evidence that any effort will slow that inertia. As a player and content maker I would just prefer trying to find feedback where it is offered from players who were willing to try the game but ultimately could not engage with it and see if there is anything that can be done within reason to ease them into the game. The game has a lot to offer imo. All those players are potential contributors - contributions in turn attract players - it’d be nice to see the cycle go on as long as it can.

Is there a reason why you post with white background and black letters? Because it is really hard on the eyes with a dark setting!

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:

I felt like an absolute dunce, when I started the mission for the first time... Because, the note confused me. I thought that I was supposed to complete the task on the note and then return to this door, it will be open I'll talk to an NPC or something and will progress further. So I spent several minutes looking for a door outside, and finding none. I thought - maybe I need to use the window, it's partially open, I bet I can squeeze through it. So I did, and fell out of the map, whereupon I saw the rest of the map and realized that the note was slipped under MY front door. Had to restart =D I enjoyed the mission, but I also missed the painting. I should've tried "the Number" right away. The sneaky boi was great, I wish we had encounters like that on some occasion. It's such a novelty IMO. I wasn't attempting the Ghost so eventually I was fed up with this guard and used my gas arrow, then... this happened. I enjoyed the final stretch, but my immersion was broken a little, because the area where we get a new mission had a missing wall and a floating tree, for some reason. Great map, and mission. PS: I realize that they probably just drop them, but taking first mission into the account, I can't help but think that people eat fingers with rings on them.

Yep... just what I was thinking of, except it's even worse than I remember now that I see it. Biggest limitation with stencil is you can't have alpha texture shadowing, so stuff like plants had to have their shadows turned off. I'd say this is the most important reason why enabling map-only effects was a good decision, followed by other improvements and potential future features like transparent / colorized (stained glass) shadows.

Ever since I worked on "Chalice of Kings" with Bikerdude, I have wanted to get flame particles with new particle glares into the core mod. My reasoning was that the candles have glares and the un-glared torches look mismatched. This proposal was met with mixed reactions, so (knowing the history of TDM feature proposals...) I have created a technical demo. You may download it here: zzz_flameglare.pk4.txt (fixed) Just rename without the .txt extension at the end and place it in your Darkmod directory. Here are some screens. Using particles for this is probably the wrong way to go now that Duzenko has an emissive light feature in his branch: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/19659-feature-request-emissive-materialsvolumetric-lights/