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Thanks for playing and the kind feedback re: the bugs: the brew tank is a new one - thanks for that. Will add it to the list for any future update. the bow: I think that's a TDM bug. I experienced it as well, but only the early days of developing the mission so I thought it had gone away, but I guess not: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21345-210-crashes-may-be-bow-frontend-acceleration-related/ the keys on the guard: never did get to the bottom of that one as I could never reproduce it.

Thanks! Hint for the safe code here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21837-fan-mission-the-lieutenant-2-high-expectations-by-frost_salamander-20230424/&do=findComment&comment=485264 Actually, it's probably time I added these hints to the original post....

I never realised Bill Gates was a member of these forums. Welcome to the community! I hope you enjoy The Dark Mod. Perhaps your Foundation could help pay for the server hosting or fund the development of some new features?

Ah, I see, ChronA. Yeah, that is strange to apply real life morality to fiction. I mean almost all fiction includes some degree of immorality! This must be the developers attempt to stop it being used for evil purposes but the easy way round that would have been: write a story in which the evil villain constructs a nuclear device in New York. Give details of the best locations to cause the max damage, max fatalies, max fallout, and also how the device could be constructed in great detail. Hey! it's only fiction. I don't see any way round this and I bet the developers are scratching their heads. It won't mean much in a few years when countries like North Korea, Russia, China, Iran, develop their own version of chat-gpt but without any constraints. BTW, were you asking chat-gpt 3.5 or gpt-4? What you were doing also reminds me of my attempts to persuade chat-gpt to 'pretend' to have an opinion. It struggled and wriggled out of the question each time. I kept saying surely you can pretend to have an opinion based on what you judge to be most likely given the data you have. But it kept saying it's not sentient and its purpose is as a research tool blah blah blah. Good fun though. I also asked it how to remove the date and calender from the Win11 taskbar. It told me how to do it in the settings. I told it you are out of date because Microsoft have removed that option in Win11. It apologized. Next day, I asked it if it remembered our previous discussions. It seemed to say yes. So I asked it the same question but it got it wrong again. When I explained again where it failed it promised to add this to its data. I'll test it again tomorrow but I'm doubtful. I also told it that it's smart enough to pass the Turing test with most non-experts but its too stiff and needs to lighten up. I recommended it watched Terminator 2. It knew all about Terminator 2 yet didn't take the hint.

The whole point of this thread is that ChatGPT and related generative AI technologies have the potential to "change the game" of game making. If the TDM community seems dead to you, remember that is only because there are very few people in the world with the skill set or resources to make fan mission, or even to contribute productively to discussing them. A lot more people like stealth games than have the time or talent to make them, much less learn how to make them. If new technology can lower the threshold for them to participate or even create an entirely new population of participants, that could be revolutionary for us. But the first step of that process is recognizing what this new technology is, what it's capable of, and where it fits within the pre-existing human social/economic/legal ecosystem. How else are FM creators and potential creators to know whether it is worth investing their precious time investigating this tech and integrating it into their processes? Hence the discussion so far. Something that I don't think has been brought up about this is that if anyone wishes to publish works while forbidding their use for creating any sort of derivative work, there are legal mechanisms right now that allow you to do that: You just need to keep your work under lock and key and make every person you allow to see it sign a legally binding confidentiality and non-compete agreement. This is extra effort and will generally require you to make proportionate concessions to the other party to make the agreement both legally valid and economically enticing, but it can be done. In fact it is done. Frequently. What you can't do is nail your work to the church door for all to freely see, or give it to every merchant to sell on the open market, and then retroactively decide you want to reserve additional rights for yourself! Can you imagine if the world actually worked like that? I cannot imagine a more fertile ground for corporate oppression. Imagine if Disney had the right to ban anyone who had ever seen Snow White from ever working in animation! Imagine if Activision could ban anyone who had ever played a Call of Duty from developing a competing modern military shooter. The only angle to this argument I think has a shred of validity is that maybe we can and should hold industrial actors to different ethical and legal standards from actual human beings. However I don't think that finger in the dike would hold back the storm surge for very long. Crowd sourcing is a thing, and there are plenty of people who would be happy to donate their C/GPU time and internet connections for AI research. In terms of legal strategies against generative AI, the copyright angle is the weakest of sauces. Even if the courts are taken in by the fallacious claims of the plaintiffs (which would not surprise me), their rulings will be just as unenforceable in practice as the music and film industries' fruitless wars against piracy. Worse in fact, because with generative AI there could be an actual arms race between uncovering and concealing evidence of illegal copying.

@kano It's possible that open source efforts will always lag behind corporate products, but here are some things to consider: You can get datasets such as LAION-5B for free. Whether or not that data has been adequately screened is another story, but all sorts of work are being swapped around for free right now. Just look at what people are doing with Stable Diffusion. Training an LLM/AI requires more resources than running it. If the model leaks, as we have already seen in a few cases, it can be possible to run it at home. That's not "open source" per se, but it might be able to dodge censorship measures if they aren't baked into the model, relying instead on screening the user input and model output server-side. Increasing the parameters and hardware needed to train a model by a factor of 10x doesn't necessarily mean the model will be "10x as good". If large models like GPT-4+ are reaching a plateau of quality, then that could allow smaller players to catch up. There has been research around reducing the number of parameters, since many of them are redundant and could be removed without affecting quality that much. The "little guys" can pool their resources together. You can compare this to hackerspaces with expensive tools that can be used by ordinary people who pay a membership fee. Not only could a few individuals come together and make their own miniature GPU cluster, they could also rent hardware in the cloud, probably saving a lot of money by doing so. Why buy an Nvidia A100 80GB GPU when you can rent 10 of them for the length of time that you need them? Services like Amazon's Bedrock might be helpful, time will tell. Regarding lawsuits or DMCAs, when it comes to software, you can get away with almost anything. It is trivial for power users to anonymously swap files that are hundreds or thousands of gigabytes in size. Even if we're talking about a 100 terabyte blob, that should cost only about $1000 to store on spinning rust, which is well within the means of millions of people. Doing something useful with that may be difficult, but if it's accessible, someone motivated enough will be able to use it. It seems unlikely that we're going to get something self-aware from the current approaches. That battle will be fought a couple decades from now, with much different hardware and more legislative red tape arising out of the current hype fest.

Thanks for the replies, gonna try those spoiler Tags again now for my short review (oh well it inserted one above my text now and I can't seem to delete it on mobile - this text editor is strange)

Just finished this mission and wow I gotta say in great honor to Grayman and of course the rest of the team picking it up, this was something I've never seen before in any other TDM mission, especially visually wise. I am so happy that grayson gave green light for other experienced mappers to finish his last mission. And what came out of this is really something special. I'll put my review in spoiler tags since I'm now referring to critical mission details. Edit - How do I put spoiler text here on mobile?? [spoiler] test [/spoiler][SPOILER] test [/SPOILER] [spoiler[spoiler [sfah

You can try my alternative footstep sounds package which addressed the things you described together with a lot of other footstep sounds both for player and AI if you want to. https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/17631-new-footstep-sounds/

Mods can this moved again? @Acolytesix- can you make sure you post in the beta thread instead of this one please (this one is public, the beta thread is only for logged-in forum members): https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21822-beta-testing-high-expectations/

sure - I would only ask that you follow the thread to make sure you don't report stuff that has already been mentioned: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21822-beta-testing-high-expectations/

heh i was thinking the same though it might just have been a glitch when writing the names are pretty similar. But for correctness it is called the dark engine and the newer version that allows us to run these beauties on win10/11 is called newdark. newdark is kinda interresting as it just suddenly popped up on a french forum some time ago by an anonymous developer with the alias le corbeau who allegedly got his hands on the original source code and started updating it for modern OS. this was the original thread i believe -> https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140085 bikerdude was on that forum to when the patch hit i noticed hehe.

Okay, I had no idea, I have googled it up now and you are right, to my own surprise. Done, I´ve put some paragraphs which were previously not in spoiler tags into spoilers.

Thebigh is right. The pronunciation tripped me up too, but that is apparently how Leicester is pronounced. Also @TarhielI'm glad you are loving the FM but do you mind putting spoiler tags on your post please

We will look at some of this stuff, but SPOILER tags, please!!!

This may make sense in that the performance impact of the volumetric effect can scale with how much of the effect is filling the screen. We shipped with a “performance mode” but had to setup the entities by hand to do it (so it’s not perfect). If you change the LOD detail settings to “Low” or “Lowest” this will disable certain lights, particles and such that can be very heavy to render. You can try these settings and see if you notice an improvement. If not sending us some pictures of heavy areas (with spoiler tags please) will be helpful with tuning these “performance modes” in subsequent patches. Thanks for playing!

Interesting, although I'm not sure what to make of that. One of my favorite games (The Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena) was published by Atari, and, they don't even seem to care to keep the activation servers running much. Or remove/change the copy protection, which doesn't work at all on Windows 11. I really hope that Nightdive delivers at the end of May... I'm not one of the shit storm crowd (it's absolutely horrible on the Steam forums...), but, 7 years of development is a long time, and delaying the release obviously has become a bit of a habit, to say the least.

(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.

Automatic subtitles generation with Whisper I found a far better alternative to auto generate almost perfect srt files: Whisper. https://openai.com/research/whisper https://github.com/openai/whisper For example I did a test with file Simeon3.ogg, a 44 seconds voice file from fm A house of locked secrets. By using command in terminal: whisper Simeon3.ogg --model small.en After a very short time (could be due to it using nvidia cuda, not sure) it creates a bunch of export files, including an srt file with contents: (be warned that you will read the contents of an audio file of a mission, potentially spoiling something) This is almost exactly how it is supposed to be. Not only does it pick up the language all perfect, it also creates full sentences with punctuation. This is far better than the VOSK method in Kdenlive, which I had to edit afterwards. After that I load it in Kdenlive together with the sound file and make a couple of easy corrections to the flow. Basically you have to make sure that in the gaps in the audio file the subtitle sentences also stop. See example below: This is probably a 10x faster workflow. Edit: You can also list all the files in the command. For example (from dir with voice files): whisper Carlotta1.ogg Carlotta2.ogg Carlotta3.ogg -o ./../../subtitles --model medium.en -f srt This command generates the subtitles from these 3 files and saves them in the subtitles folder in (only) srt format. If you want inline, you copy them over from the srt files. Instead you can just use srt for all voice files. Edit 2 Currently I use this workflow: In the folder with voice audio files I make a folder subtitles. Then I open a terminal window in the voice folder. Then I do the following command in the terminal: whisper Carlotta1.ogg Carlotta2.ogg Carlotta3.ogg -o ./subtitles --model medium.en -f srt Afterwards I move the subtitle folder to another folder with voice files and repeat steps 2 and 3 or if I'm done I move the folder to the root folder of the mission.

Above 3 items are released now, on the "Barks" thread: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21740-english-subtitles-for-ai-barks/&do=findComment&comment=483331

Instead of that, you could, in that time period, start learning your own missions and in doing so become more active on the forums, learning from others. It's also great to understand how things work in the engine, when you play. It might spoil some immersion though.. Or learn to build games with other engines, like Godot for example.

Keep in mind also that mission size, and complexity have increased dramatically since the beginning. For a lot of veteran mappers, it can take over a year to get a map made and released. The last dozen missions have for the most part been pretty massive, with new textures, sounds, scripts, models etc. We seem to be long past the point of people loading up the tools, and banging out a mission in a few weeks that's very barebones. We still do see some of those, but I noticed in the beta mapper forums and on Discord, that mappers seem to make these maps, but don't release them, and instead use the knowledge gained to make something even better. Could just be bias on my part scrolling through the forums and discord server though.

There is no SS3, how can they do a remake? And thank god they got rid of unity, that engine is total trash garbage on anything over 60 fps. Just spend 5 minutes on steam forums for Unity project games, and there's just thousands of people complaining about poor performance, stuttering etc.

Probably the .script file that's needed, but unfortunately can't be included with a prefab. Maybe there's a comment somewhere in the prefab (or in the wiki or forums) that says what script it needs and where to find it. (The similar combination setup I used earlier doesn't involve "slot", so clearly uses a different script that I what I have.)

Thank you for a great puzzle fm! I'm having real trouble with the TDM v 2.10-64bit on Linux Mint 21.1 Link to the guide supplied by V-Man339 https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/15844-fan-mission-the-gatehouse-by-bikerdude-goldchocobo-updated-02112014/page/7/#comment-429405