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Finished this up yesterday and for the most part, found it enjoyable. The puzzles weren't too hard as your clues were good for them. Thank you for all your hard work and I look forward to more missions from you.

I don't know if it's related, but, I noticed since a few TDM versions that some text in readables in some missions is cut off. IIRC, also in the Training Mission. Also, the two books in JackFarmer's screenshots aren't the same height. The lower one is way shorter than the upper one.

Overall, your pack seems almost perfect to me!) Maybe it would be possible to add a frob outline like in the unofficial patch. I only play with the Steam Deck, and using the console on it is very difficult. After all, each button on it needs to be configured separately. Maybe if someone suggests what I can directly configure in the config, it will completely solve my problem. I haven't played many missions yet, and the ones I remember are the two standard ones and "No Honor Among Thieves." There are a lot of items in these missions. Adding new skills has become frustrating for me because it takes a long time to find the right item in my inventory, and this happens every time. I also wanted to say that I haven't found a proper use for the OBSERVATION, COMBINATION, DISTRACTION, and ALTERATION skills. I play on the highest difficulty and don't feel like it's too hard for me, and all these skills, in my understanding, are designed to simplify the gameplay. In theory, MANIPULATION should also be on this list, but I found a use for it.) But no matter where or how I use OBSERVATION, I always see blackness. Maybe it depends on the map? The main problem is still the inventory. I would like it to have fewer unused items.) I even throw away picked up books and scrolls after reading them to keep them from cluttering up my inventory. I also installed the original Thief games, and it feels like they have a lot fewer items. That's how it is.

@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.

I haven't played the mission yet, so, I can't comment on it. Regarding the criticism: I think it should also be allowed to note some things you saw as points of criticism. Actually, IMO, negative criticism is better than positive, because it points out what you maybe didn't think through thoroughly, or you simply didn't see when you created the mission on your own. I'm aware that there is a lot of work involved, and people do it in their spare time for their own or other people's pleasure. But, that really shouldn't be a reason to praise everything to the skies. Actually, I've seen my fair share of average missions which have been totally overrated. Again, that shouldn't knock anynone's work, and, I have no idea how this mission is. Just wanted to point out that noting negative things shouldn't be taken as discouraging, but rather the opposite. I've seen some mission authors for Dark Mod going from average to absolutely fantastic missions, because they learned what it takes to make good missions. It's an art, and obviously takes time to perfect.

if you´d like to have an other tester ?! i´m no modder - so no technical issues only for design - places to reach or impossible to do so - or if one can get stuck without escape ! is 2.12 needed ? haven´t done this jet (still2.10played and two 2.11 for played and vergin missions)

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

I love missions with big surprises. Congratulations I really enjoyed it.

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

For proposal #1, I imagine making a mission fitting seamlessly between the two stock missions in TDM would be a tricky endeavor, truth be told. The first mission is a small tavern robbery and the second is a modestly sized church break-in with a very reasonable jump in difficulty—fitting a mission snugly in between these two in terms of difficulty and scale is a high bar to reach. A contest to make a sequel to "Tears of St. Lucia" sounds more reasonable and would probably flow better for someone playing all three for the first time. I'd probably avoid doing something TDS related when a similar contest that allows Dark Mod entries is already ongoing, but proposal #3 sounds fun if we're given enough freedom to wildly reinterpret a Thief 1 mission. I'm somewhat mixed on the slot system as it really comes down to whether or not you want a full campaign with no repeats out of this contest. I personally wouldn't mind playing 2-3 different interpretations of something like the Bonehoard, it's bound to be interesting seeing what elements of a mission FM authors focus on.

I love the idea of a 15th Anniversay contest, but I think there should be fewer restrictions on what type of mission can be made so that more mappers would be encouraged to join. Fewer restrictions on what kind of mission can be made for the contest would hopefully open up more room for creativity, and maybe we'll even get some weird, unconventional missions that break the status quo. I, for one, don't really have a desire to do the "connections" theme again. It was fun doing it last time, but if I were to participate in a new contest I'd like to do something different. And holding a contest for the third "Official" campaign mission is an interesting idea, but if a contest like that is to be done, I think that should be its own dedicated contest not tied to an anniversary contest.

@chakkman Thanks for the detailed feedback, I appreciate it. Your points are well taken. Yeah, I do have a problem with rectilinear design - I just don't think in curves and angles! As for good deeds, my missions usually some form of them. Always optional - don't want to force you to be nice!

I was quite surprised by: Many have compared this to: Regardless, I think this stands on it's own merits as a very high quality mission and easily rivals great missions by veteran authors.

This is currently the largest campaign pack ( 3 missions ), highly recommended.

If by this you mean a series of missions in one pack, like the recent Thief Gold Black Parade campaign I'm a billion percent for this!! No offence to DM FM creators, I know one mission takes a lot of hard work, but I'm fed up of the 'one mission and out' type of missions to be honest. I crave a proper story for once with a series of missions and stuff, not just random associate says steal thing because reasons, oh and you have to steal all this loot but you can't spend it.

Gigantic missions like The Painter's Wife would really benefit from automap. I really liked it in the original Thief games. Very helpful.

Shouldn't we wait till after Deadline: May 25th, 2024 at 23:59 Pacific Time ? Edit: Well ok, I guess a little bit of discussion can't hurt. I like proposal 1 and 4. I don't understand this. What's in oktober? Proposal 5: Mission hub Somebody has to create a map that connects missions together. Then others could create those missions. For example: Corban's many adventures in the big city. So like an extension of proposal 1. I think for this a new feature has to be integrated into tdm: The ability to play a campaign in any order.

The Numbers don't lie. It has been 15 years since the release of TDM 1.0 in 2009. I think we should consider a contest to celebrate this. Further, the contest goal should be with the intention of motivating the completion of a campaign that can be deemed official. Here are some possible ways forward: Proposal 1: Middle mission(s) Authors are asked to create a mission that expands the story between "A New Job" and "Tears of St Lucia". This can involve escaping the heavily guarded city perimeter, stowing away on a ship or caravan, attempting to recruit a partner for St Lucia and failing, getting caught by Builders before arriving and having to escape their compound, getting lost in haunted woods on the way there, etc. Any interesting way that the connection between the two official missions can be expanded. Points are awarded for making explicit references to Corbin, St Lucia, and any story elements in the two official missions. If the resultant mission is of high enough quality, it can possibly be made into an official mission. If we get a number of excellent submissions and they do not cause logical inconsistencies, we might even be able to add two or more to the official list. Proposal 2: Intellectual Property distinct approximation of TDS missions Over the years, many have asked that we recreate Thief 1 \ 2 in this engine. Obviously we cannot do this due to copyright law but we could create similar missions and stories that approximate the Thief 1 or 2 designs. That said, I think that most of our audience has played these missions to death so it may be underwhelming to see them arrive in approximate form anyway. What might be better would be to develop a similar story to TDS and make missions that resemble what T1 \ T2 players were dreaming would arrive when TDS was announced and the first screen-shots were shown in gaming magazines. So take any TDS mission you like, examine the story arc and wildly re-interpret something similar but on a much grander scale. Since it's possible that two or more contestants will choose the same mission to re-interpret, we have a slot system were authors need to claim their preferred mission and if it is taken then they must select another one or lose some story points. The slots represent a sketch of what the mission author might try to do rather than a blueprint. If authors can come up with a mission that has almost no resemblance to any TDS mission but would make for a compelling story development in a similar story arc then that can be claimed as an alternative to a slot. Proposal 3: Same as proposal 2 but we stick with Thief 1 rather than TDS. Wildly re-interpret T1 based on what you may have dreamed of when reading the gaming magazines or playing the demo. Slots system to prevent duplicate submissions. Maybe with either proposals 3 and 4, we still require the use of Corbin as the protagonist and a connective enough story that they could also be adapted as middle missions for the official campaign if the team agrees on it. Proposal 4: Another "Connections" Contest. We just allow authors to connect any two missions with each other or expand the story of an existing series or single mission. So those are my thoughts. I'll leave it to players and mission authors to suggest other proposals and if we have some sort of consensus about the most popular proposals then we will make a poll. Realistically between now and October we may not be able to hold a contest with any strict guidelines ( and tricky issues with maintaining a distance to Thief IP ) so proposal 4 may still be the easiest option.

"...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 proud to release my first FM: "The Terrible Old Man", an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's short story of the same name. This is a short, 30-45 minute mission in which you are the getaway driver in a team of three small-time thieves. You and your associates were fortunate enough to overhear rumors of a famously wealthy and frail old man, but things change when your cohorts do not return from what is supposed to be their easiest and most lucrative job. Now it's up to you to brave the old man's house and find your associates. Download: The in-game mission downloader TDM Website's Mission Page Dropbox Special Thanks: The kind beta testers: Cambridge Spy, stgatilov, xlm, wesp5, nbohr1more, and Dragofer. peter_spy and Dragofer for answering my endless barrage of editor questions while learning DR. The TDM Discord for their warm welcome. Ending stinger courtesy of Zapsplat. Content Warnings: Enjoy!

I'm no graphics nerd, but I can barely tell the difference between the two. What I can tell from messing around a bit: soft shadows of low quality look like garbage with both maps and stencils (EDIT: wrong, I didn't realize I was looking at shadow maps for a volumetric light shadow. Stencil definitely looks better). increasing soft shadow quality decreases performance in both implementations. I think the CPU/GPU of the end user would influence which is gives better performance both maps and stencils can produce a pixelated shadow if you look close enough. (EDIT: wrong. Again, was looking at a volumetric light shadow). I tend to use maps, because for whatever reason I seem to get a few more FPS out of them. As a mapper, I am certainly NOT interested in endlessly tweaking a scene to make the shadows look perfect. I just don't care enough. If they look shockingly bad I will put some effort into it though (which will probably mean just disabling them for the offending entity). It's rare that I feel this is necessary though. So I guess I don't really get the argument that stencils are amazing and maps are crap. I just don't see it or am too dense to notice. (EDIT: indeed I was being dense. I was comparing shadow maps with shadow maps because I was looking at a volumetric light shadow). Also, in my last couple of missions I had graphical bugs that only showed up with stencil shadows enabled. It would be nice to not have to deal with that all the time.

I have resolved 99.9% of the glow-bleed issues with this mod at a small sacrifice to the amount of glare. It should now look great in all missions. https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/addons/flame-glare-mod

Yep. I'd gladly include an automap in my missions.... if someone else were to draw them all for me.

You don't need different specs than with playing normal missions, although this is a newer mission, which usually means requirements might be a tad higher.

Are you saying using (only) shadow maps in missions with a lot of VL gives better performance than using (both) stencil shadows in combination with shadow maps in those scenes?

Okay, so I managed to beat all four of the previously-released Hidden Hands missions in preparation for this upcoming campaign, so now I'm ready to tackle this bitch once the thread's up.