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I have only changed settings for a few missions. Visibility of doors is a good gauge for darkness. Gamma: 1.2 Brightness: 0.8

I think the default gamma was raised to 1.2 to reduce banding and color precision artifacts at the low end of the brightness scale. There are probably some confounding factors that make that a questionable decision. 1) At the time of this discussion, I believe TDM's bloom settings were generating extra contrast and thus lowering gamma 2) By the time that soft gamma was implemented, we also were using a new bloom system that does not tie the bloom effect to other post processing effects 3) There was some attempt to make TDM shaders compliant with industry gamma defaults but that attempt to adhere to standards may have caused problems because most games are much brighter than TDM so using calibration established for use in brighter games may cause unintended results. These days, I normally set gamma to 1 ambient gamma to 1.1 and set my postprocess color curve to 0.2 or 0.3 which darkens gamma back to something similar to 1. Maybe someday I'll purchase a monitor calibration machine and try to sort out the ideal default state.

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

Losing the option for stencil shadows would be extremely sad. TDM has the best stencil shadows implementation I've ever seen, and they look far better than shadow maps. They also perform wonderfully. Stencil shadows not supporting shadows on translucent surfaces is a bummer, but that's a fine tradeoff. Personally, I'd rather not see alpha-tested shadow occluders, because they look awful and are distracting. Shadow maps in general look bad and pixelated -- quite immersion breaking. Another issue with shadow maps is that they substantially increase the usage of the GPU. For those using laptops or integrated GPUs, it could cause performance or heat issues. For those with decent dedicated GPUs, increased wattage (and therefore heat) can and does turn on its GPU fans. The wattage on my AMD RX 6700 XT can become tripled when using shadow maps. That's undesirable. The advice I give players is: There really isn't a "best" shadows implementation these days. Some devs and players prefer one over the other. Regardless of which is chosen, stencil shadows and maps are used where needed. So, I'd try out both and pick the one you prefer. Here's Fen complaining about shadow maps. Complaint #1 (7:28): Complaint #2 (23:46): In his next video (Written in Stone - 4 - Chocolate Coated Brendel Bar), he turned on stencil shadows, and as far as I know, he never complained again. The following area in Written in Stone shows a good example of alpha-tested shadow occluders. Yes, technically the moving leaves cast shadows, but it looks awful in game, in my opinion. I know others like it. The same scene using stencil shadows looks amazing in game. (The screenshots don't do a good job demonstrating how it looks in game.) The current hybrid system is fantastic. It gives people choice. Those who prefer stencil shadows can use them; those who prefer shadow maps can use them. People become attached to the "art" and "style" of a mission, and changing the shadow implementation changes the art and style. If one must be dropped, I'd say shadow maps should be dropped from the menu settings. Use shadow maps for volumetric lights and stencil shadows everywhere else. And, I agree with nbohr1more that defaulting to rules consistent with stencil shadows is a good idea.

With VL, uses shadow maps in Stencil Shadow mode. Why is it not possible to enable all features that are specific to shadow maps by forcing shadow maps in those situations? Settings menu could have an extra option to force Shadow maps features when using Stencil Shadows. Stencil shadows look much better and give much better performance, but shadow maps have more features. I would use both to get best of both. What are Alpha-tested shadow occluders?

A couple more: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21739-resolved-allow-mantling-while-carrying-a-body/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22211-feature-proposal-new-lean-for-tdm-212/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22198-feature-proposal-frob-to-use-world-item/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22249-212-auto-search-bodies/

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/

I spend 90% of my time on Linux Mint. I occasionally pop over to Windows 10 to check a few things or run some updates but Linux Mint is my home. TDM runs better under Mint than Windows for me but your mileage may vary. When running TDM in Linux, you must set FPS to "Uncapped Mode" in the Advanced settings, the old capped mode has terrible stuttering and performance under Linux ( even native Doom 3 has this issue ). You can set Max FPS to 60 if you are worried about any inconsistencies with game timing ( the only known issues are rare problems with audio behavior at really high FPS). Just don't use the native 60FPS capped mode, use Uncapped mode with a Max FPS value.

The gamepad implementation allows for a great degree of flexibility to personalize settings, aside from a few minor issues that I mentioned here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22337-gamepad-bindings/ I would say that playing TDM with a gamepad works very well, especially considering that it was implemented as experimental and hasn't been changed since then. If I could, I'd go back to 2021-you and congratulate you on buying that gamepad. I notice that your DarkmodPadbinds.cfg looks very different from mine...

A great addition... ...while those all seem to fit great for utilitarian/industrial/fortress settings - what about quaint manor homes and/or stone-castles, as well as rustic scenes? (examples included)

I've been experimenting with my control settings, specifically Inventory settings and after trying different keys I would like to reset back to the original settings and start again. It's just that I can't remember what some were originally. Did I miss a Reset to Default option somewhere? Is there a master list of all key bindings or better yet does anyone have the best and most popular bindings list posted? Many thanks, and playing TDM has really been a joy.

TDM Modpack v4.0 This new version of the Modpack is intended to be a long-term release. The Modpack is mature and stable enough to stay for some time how it is today, right where I want it to be: the foundation on which you build your favorite set of Mods for The Dark Mod. Good care was put to make sure the mods included in the Modpack stay true to TDM and neither the missions nor the gameplay are altered in any relevant way. Yes, we have more tools and skills at our disposal but it is up to you, the player, to make use of them or not. Play The Dark Mod your way. Compatible with 2.12 ONLY If you have previous versions of the Modpack I suggest you start fresh: disable and delete old mods. Use the mods included in version 4.0 from now on. TDM 2.12 introduces a great new feature and we can now have different mods from different sources running in parallel. Thanks @MirceaKitsune for pushing! Thanks @Dragofer for opening this door! What's more for 2.12 internal resources for mods have doubled and we can now load more mods than ever before and we are grateful for this! Thank you, @stgatilov! What's new in version 4.0? Starting with this release I am getting rid of the individual versioning and all mods are now at the same version (4.0 in this case). "TDM Modpack" is now the name of the project and the previous main "pack" has been split into two standalone mods: "Core Essentials" and the "Skill Upgrade". (The Skills are further split into their own packages and if you don't want a particular skill just look for the relevant pk4 and remove it). SHOULDERING BOOST - Decommissioned In TDM 2.12 we can now mantle while carrying bodies and the "Shouldering Boost" mod is no longer relevant and it has been decommissioned. In this new release of TDM we can also mantle while carrying objects therefore double thanks to @Daft Mugi for these quality of life improvements. Truly appreciated, thanks! SIMPLE SUBTITLES - New! Work on the subtitles is in progress and for the next version of TDM it is expected that players will be able to customize how subs are displayed on screen but until then, this new standalone mod offers an alternative for players looking for a rather simplistic presentation. Enable "Simple Subtitles", go to the audio settings and set the scope you prefer: Story [default]: Story only On: Story and general speech (Give it a try!) Off: Disable subtitles You can find more details of the mod in the opening post or in the readme included in the download. We must thank @Geep, @datiswous and @stgatilov (among other contributors) for the good work on the subtitles so far! Well done, guys! SMART OBJECTS - Present and Future Sometimes it is difficult to tell if an object is being held or not and the "Smart Objects" mod (now part of "Core Essentials") gets a little update and whenever you manipulate an object three dots [...] are displayed on screen: These three dots are a placeholder for real names, something I plan on addressing as a separate mod in the coming weeks... Here is the relevant topic: Nameless objects... a missed opportunity Stay tuned. INVENTORY MENU - Reworked The TDM user interface suffers from gigantism in some areas and the inventory menu has been re-worked and it is now delivered in a more compact format: The menu is 15% smaller and while the text has the same size as before item names are sometimes cut and I added a tip at the bottom to make sure the full name is always available. The updated menu is part of the "Core Essentials" mod. MINOR TWEAKS In each release of the Modpack I always tweak something and in for 4.0 I changed many things internally. You shouldn't notice any of the changes but it is worth giving the improved Whistle Skill a try... Here is the full changelog: • v4.0 New release - Major reorganization and global revision: Compatible with TDM 2.12. - All mods now share the same version (4.0 in this case). - Previous "Modpack" split into "Core Essentials" and the "Skill Upgrade". - Skill mods presented in their own, standalone pk4. - CORE ESSENTIALS: New, re-worked inventory menu. - CORE ESSENTIALS: New high mantle sound for our protagonist. - CORE ESSENTIALS - LOOT ANIMATIONS: Added scroll animation for paintings. - CORE ESSENTIALS - SMART OBJECTS: Display onscreen a subtle signal (...) when holding an item. - CORE ESSENTIALS - SHOULDERING BOOST: Mod decommissioned (alternative included in TDM 2.12) - SKILL UPGRADE - MANIPULATION: Improved script, smaller footprint. - SKILL UPGRADE - DISTRACTION: New approach (again). - HUNTER BOW: Increased radius of gas arrow effect. - BASIC SUBTITLES: Initial release. That's pretty much it for now. Thanks site admins, developers, mappers, modders and members of the community but more importantly, thank you taffer, for playing and supporting The Dark Mod. The download can be found in the opening post. Cheers!

"...to a robber whose soul is in his profession, there is a lure about a very old and feeble man who pays for his few necessities with Spanish gold." Good day, TDM community! I'm Ansome, a long-time forums lurker, and I'm here to recruit beta testers for my first FM: "The Terrible Old Man", based on H.P. Lovecraft's short story of the same name. This is a short (30-45 minute), story-driven FM with plenty of readables and a gloomy atmosphere. Do keep in mind that this is a more linear FM than you may be used to as it was deemed necessary for the purposes of the story's pacing. Regardless, the player does still have a degree of freedom in tackling challenges in the latter half of the FM. If this sounds interesting to you, please head over to the beta testing thread I will be posting shortly. Thank you!

We are proud to announce the release of: The Dark Mod 2.12 ! The 2.12 development cycle introduced many large code overhaul projects. Most of these were to lay the groundwork for future fixes and optimizations. The final release is yet another leap in performance over the already impressive 2.10 and 2.11 releases. A full changelog can be viewed here, but some highlights include: The Dark Mod 2.12 is a major step forward for mission designers! The culling system has been extensively overhauled to ensure that your CPU and GPU are not wasting resources rendering unseen geometry, lights, and shadows. Some of our best map optimization experts have achieved similar performance gains to what this new culling system does but it is a rare skill and we have even managed to improve performance on missions that were generally regarded as “well optimized”. Mission authors both new and old can follow standard mapping practices with no need to dive deep into sophisticated optimization techniques even for some pretty challenging scenarios such as wide open areas and long views. Players will immediately notice many missions that have made their system struggle with FPS now may be running much more smoothly! Smoother controls for players! Also during the 2.12 development cycle, work has been done to make controls more seamless and accessible. Frob can now use hold or click actions to use items. Once you get used to the mechanic, it will be hard to go back to using a separate “use key”. Mantling is now smoother, faster, and less prone to cause the player to clip through geometry. Leaning is now more subtle and less prone to cause motion sickness. To reduce the tedium of shuffling knocked out AI around to search for loot, you can now configure TDM to automatically loot any frobbed AI. A special thanks must go out to community member Geep! Over the course of 2.12 development, Geep has created subtitles for nearly all AI barks along with developing testing tools and procedures for this gargantuan task! You can see these changes in action by changing the Subtitles setting to “On” ( rather than “Story” ) on the Audio settings page. Geep also provided substantial feedback for our GUI and subtitle design process and edited font data to improve text quality overall. Datiswous has complimented the massive work by Geep to create AI bark subtitles by creating mission story subtitles for a large number of missions. Thank you! Turrets are now natively supported in The Dark Mod and can be paired with Security Cameras! Finally, the nasty 2.11 bug that caused AI to allow arrows to pass through them at certain angles was fixed by Joebarnin! Your assassin style play-throughs should be far less frustrating. See also, our 2.12 Feature discussions: To UPDATE, simply run the tdm_installer.exe file in your darkmod folder. Note that tdm_update.exe is no longer supported, but you can download the new installer from the Downloads page if you don’t have it yet. Please be aware that old saved games will not be compatible with 2.12, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first! Also, some missions created prior to 2.12 may need to be updated so they will be playable in 2.12. Use the in-game mission downloader to check for updates.

NHAT v4.3 is available in the mission database! Changes include: Story subtitles courtesy of Datiswous Volumetric Lighting effects Improved water shaders Some new performance optimizations and LOD detail settings Lots of bug fixes for both new and old visual glitches such as z-fighting and model\prefab missing surfaces More work done to prevent players from climbing out of the map into the void

The real St. Alban was a pagan who became a celebrated religious personality, this All Saints Day 2010 The Dark Mod places its own spin on this mythical figure. Screenshots: Intro: "'Business' has been slow lately, even more so after most of my gear got snatched during a Watch raid... I've since been forced to hit the streets and pick pockets for a living. But my luck was about to change, last night I was approached by a red hooded figure with a proposition... As we sat down in a dark corner of a nearby inn, he told to me that the Builders of St. Alban's Cathedral in the Old Quarter had recently unearthed a discovery that might lead to the final resting place of some saint." " But before I do anything, I need to get my tools and stash from the evidence room at the local watch station." "with the hawks, doves will congregate they will drop honey from the cliffs wine will surge over the earth the sheep will wander harmlessly with the wolf then the wicked will rise, but to retribution" - 'scripture of St Alban' There is a new version out now, see the following thread St Albans Cathedral version 1.6 Build Time: about 2-3 months. Thanks:- Huge respect to the Dark Mod team for such a great mod and for all the hard work they put into it and continue to put into it. Special thanks to Fidcal, Serpentine and others for their help on the forums and to Testing:Ugoliant, Baddcog, Grayman, Lost soul, Bjorn and Baal (for doing all the Vp work in the town. Readables: Ungoliant and Mortemdesino for all awesome work on the readables. Resource: Fids, Grayman, Ungoliant - guis, models & images. Misc: Loren Schmidt - the author of the map I based the cathedral on. Info: # Like Thief2, some things are climable, pipes, wall vines etc.. You can also drop some of the keys, some door that are frobbabe mean there is another way inside - explore u taffer! # Due to TDM being a lot more of a resource hog than T2 I have been forced to limit the number of Ai in the mission, but they have better placement than my last mission. # On all difficulty levels the player starts with vertualy no tools/weapons, there are weapons to be found - read, read, read! # For the love of all that is holy, read the briefing otherwise you will problems completing the mission. Known issues:- # This mission will have less than optimal fps at a few points on the map, mid range DX9 card(X1900/GF7800) or higher required. # On low end PCs I recommend, V-sync is off, AA is off, Aniso is 4x or lower and that any and all background apps are closed.

All right y'all. We need some good ole data instead of 28 pages of -- well, you know. The "mantle roll" is the amount the view rolls or tilts during a mantle. So, if you could be so kind as to: Launch TDM 2.12 Beta Go to Settings -> Gameplay Set "View: Mantle Roll" to: 1.0 and test in game (100% of original mantle roll) 0.5 and test in game (50% of original mantle roll) 0.1 and test in game (10% of original mantle roll) Finally, vote for your preferred setting. The increased mantle speed changed the feel a bit and perhaps the mantle roll would feel better tweaked some to match it. (Edit: To clarify, this is about a potentially different default mantle roll value. The "View: Mantle Roll" slider in the settings will remain, regardless.) This thread is for your click-ity click vote on the poll at the top of this page. All constructive comments about the increased mantle speed in 2.12 are welcome on its own, wonderful thread:

Announcing the release of the third William Steele mission! Summary Cleighmoor takes Steele inside Cleighmoor Gaol, where Warden Fielder likes nothing better than a glass of wine and some cheese, while watching a miscreant hang from his gallows. Steele is tracking down the evidence of his parents’ murder. The mission starts in the sewers, and progresses to Cleighmoor’s compound. The William Steele Missions Cleighmoor is the third of several Steele missions. Altogether they'll tell a story of corruption, greed, and revenge. At some point, I'll start packaging them as a campaign, in addition to the single missions. If you haven’t played WS1: In the North, or WS2: Home Again, I suggest you complete those before playing WS3: Cleighmoor. Download Cleighmoor is available in the in-game downloader. Problem with Suicidal AI Occasionally, someone reports that a distant AI commits suicide. Since one of the mission objectives is to kill only in self-defense, this fails the mission when it occurs. To avoid that, I've created a replacement *.map file that you can obtain here. After you've downloaded and installed the mission, create a new folder named "maps" so that you have: darkmod/fms/ws3_cleighmoor/maps/ Unzip the replacement *.map file and place the new *.map file into the maps folder. So now you have: darkmod/fms/ws3_cleighmoor/maps/ws3_cleighmoor.map This should solve the suicide problem. A new version of the mission will be released after TDM 2.05. Build Time Nearly 4 years. (This was my first attempt at a mission, and it sat on the back burners until being folded into Steele’s story.) I18n Cleighmoor is ready for translation. Thanks Thanks to the TDM team for creating a terrific platform for storytelling and stealth gaming. Thanks to my beta testers: AluminumHaste, Bikerdude, Goldwell, Xarg, Lux, Moonbo, Deadlove, and plotzzz. Thanks to Goldwell for his voice work on the conversations. And thanks to YOU, for playing! Known Issues This is a large mission. To ease the burden on older systems, consider shutting doors behind you as you go. If you experience low frame rates, please consult the Performance Tweaks page on the Wiki. Performance Tweaks For very low end PCs I recommend the following settings: V-sync is off AA is off Aniso is 4x or lower Advanced settings are simple/default Post processing is disabled Anyone having performance issues with TDM missions can put the following cvars into their Darkmod.cfg file. This will improve the framerate and stutter/chop when in-game, but may increase loading times a little. image_usePrecompressedTextures "1" image_useNormalCompression "2" image_useAllFormats "1" image_useCompression "1" image_preload "1" Important This mission requires TDM 2.01 or later. The William Steele story is heavy with readables. Please try to read every readable you find. Most importantly, Enjoy! Screenshots WS4: The Warrens Steele ventures into The Warrens, a dangerous area near Bridgeport's docks. You can find it here.

I experience significant lower FPS in both TDM 2.12/64 #10644 (beta212-06) and TDM 2.12/64 #10651 (beta212-07) that I don't see when I run 2.11, and that I didn't notice in earlier 2.12 betas. In Training Mission, when starting the mission and looking straight forward, the FPS is now 23 (was 32 FPS in 2.11), and when going down the short stairs and looking up to the skylight, the FPS is now 9 (was 18 PFS in 2.11). The settings between the versions seem to be the same.

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.

the sad thing was that the 6950x was 2000$ when it was new so only something for the wealthy back then, and ryzen was starting to nip it in the butt with lower priced and allmost as fast cpu's. could actually be fun to try out the 2080 ti on a recent ryzen build to see the result, but im quite happy with my setup now i even got an asus x99-AII with a 6900k and a 1080 ti which plays pretty much everything (as long as you dont use raytracing and lower settings a bit for the newest titles). Well not completely true you can actually use raytracing with it using FSR2 but it does lower the framerate quite a bit 20 > 30 fps on some titles, as long as you dont go 4k its more than playable though -> callisto protocol at high settings with raytracing and FSR2 runs at 75 fps at 1080 resolutions.

Welcome to the forums Ansome! And congrats on making it to beta phase!