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Here's the latest beta. I feel like this is about ready for a public release at this point. If no one has any bug reports or anything, and if I don't find any issues in the next few days, I'll start preparing the first public release. Beta 14 Matching game behavior on a bunch of subtler points. None of the below scenarios are likely to occur, but it's best to be able to handle them. TDM auto-converts FM file names to a valid form (lowercase, replacing disallowed chars with underscores, etc.). AngelLoader is now able to match non-converted FM names to their converted counterparts, so it knows for example "BaKerY;job.pk4" is the FM "bakery_job". TDM doesn't care what the pk4 inside an fm's folder is called. So "C:\darkmod\fms\bakery_job\bakery_job.pk4" will load just as well as "C:\darkmod\fms\bakery_job\totally_different_name.pk4". AngelLoader is now aware of this during scans and will not require the in-fm-folder pk4's name to match the FM's. TDM supports compressed FMs with the .zip extension as well as .pk4 when the FM is in the base FMs dir (hasn't been moved yet). AngelLoader is now aware of this, and of the priority order of the two extensions, and will choose the correct file when scanning/loading. In Settings -> Paths, the Backup Path area has been polished a bit. In Settings -> Appearance -> Show or hide interface elements, the checkboxes are now "Show" instead of "Hide", to be more straightforward. When scanning, the progress box will now show a message that it's getting TDM FM data from the server if it's doing so, rather than the more generic "preparing scan" message.

Yeah, there's the last played date, but there's no (reliable) way to know if you actually completed the game on that date. What I mean by "no reliable way" is that the following would have to occur for the last completed date to be accurate: AngelLoader is running. You're playing an FM (say, Iris) on a difficulty you have not completed yet (say, Expert). You complete the FM, the game marks it as "completed on Expert" and writes that out to missions.tdminfo. AngelLoader detects the change to missions.tdminfo, reads it, and compares to its internal list. It sees that Iris' finished states differ between the internal database and missions.tdminfo: the latter has Expert marked, whereas the internal database only has Normal marked (or nothing, or whatever). It adds the Expert finished state to the internal database for Iris, and updates the UI. Because it catches every modification of this file and updates its internal database every time, it knows the difference in finished states occured on the most recent write. Thus, it could timestamp this and there's your last completed date. Unreliabilities: If AngelLoader were not running when the game writes the value out, then you have no guarantee of time anymore. Not only were you not there to catch the change event, but the file's last-write-time doesn't save you either: the file could have been modified any number of times (updating any number of FMs' entries) since the time of the updating of the actual FM you completed, and individual entries are not marked with the time of their finished state change. So if multiple FMs were finished between AngelLoader runs? Even if you went with the file timestamp, that's still only one. If you finished two FMs between AL runs, any information whatsoever about the time of completion of the first one is completely lost. Same if the game simply wrote over the file with unchanged data, that would lose your correct file timestamp too. If you finished an FM on a difficulty you have finished before, then the game will simply write out the same value resulting in no change to the FM entry in missions.tdminfo. AngelLoader will still detect the file modification and will still read and compare the file, but now no differences will be found, so it's impossible for it to know whether any FM's finished state has been changed, and thus it can't know whether you finished it that run or not, and can't datestamp it. The last finished dates of any FMs you completed before you set up AngelLoader are unknowable, period. It might be the last played date but it just as well might not be. We'd end up with a mishmash of correct data and guesses that may just as well be wrong as right. If you can't trust the data then I'm not convinced it's that useful.

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.

Beta 7 TDM FM Scanner now uses a hybrid of local and server data for more accuracy. Titles, authors, and release dates improve. AngelLoader will auto-refresh its FMs list when new pk4 FMs are added manually. Localization packs (*_l10n.pk4) in the fms directory are now ignored: the game moves these to their appropriate folders on next start. I reckon this is now pretty usable. I'm working on an in-app downloader, but until that's done, you can use the game to download FMs and AngelLoader to launch them and manage their metadata.

New script for mappers: my flavour of a fog density fading script. To add this to your FM, add the line "thread FogIntensityLoop();" to your map's void main() function (see the example in fogfade.script) and set "fog_fade" "1" on each foglight to enable script control of it. Set "fog_intensity_multiplier" on each info_location entity to change how thick the fog is in that location (practically speaking it's a multiplier for visibility distance). Lastly, "fog_fade_speed" on each foglight determines how quickly it will change its density. The speed scales with the current value of shaderParm3, using shaderParm3 = 1000 as a baseline. So i.e. if shaderParm is currently at 1/10th of 1000, then fade speed will be 1/10th as fast. Differences to Obsttorte's script: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/14394-apples-and-peaches-obsttortes-mapping-and-scripting-thread/&do=findComment&comment=310436 my script uses fog lights you created, rather than creating one for you. Obsttorte's script will delete the foglight if entering a fogfree zone and recreate it later more than one fog light can be controlled (however, no per-fog-light level of control) adding this to the map requires adding a line to your void main() script, rather than adding an info_locations_settings entity with a custom scriptobject spawnarg in my script, mappers set a multiplier of fog visibility distance (shaderParm3), while in Obsttorte's script a "fog_density" spawnarg is used as an alternative to shaderParm3 smaller and less compactly written script fogfade.scriptfogfade.map

I think the game treats everything inside "fms" as "mission assets", and everything in game root directory as "core assets". You can check it at the start of game console, where all the paths are listed.

The Alchemist is a full-size city and mansion Dark Mod FM, the fourth in the Thief's Den series in which you play Farrell. It follows on from Heart of Lone Salvation so you should play that first. The main build of this FM was by Sotha who was unable to continue work on it. I (Fidcal) could see the potential so completed it, somewhat roughly and quickly, so it could be enjoyed rather than abandoned. Even so, it exceeded my original estimate! Read the notes below while you ... DOWNLOAD HERE. (27MB) Sam's death hit me hard and I've not been feeling so good. I'm worried I didn't get rid of the Heart of Lone Salvation quickly enough. I don't want to end my days like Martha Edridge. A health potion is too weak; I need something stronger. Only a holy healing potion will lift a curse so I need to find a good alchemist. But the city watch have been tipped off and the district is alive with guards searching for any intruder they find on the streets. I have no choice: I must get that potion... This FM needs Dark Mod Update 1.02 or later. TIP: You cannot drink the holy healing potion if you are perfectly fit! As said in the briefing, the city watch are already ALERT right from the start and much more likely to notice you in the dark. You'd better be ready to move! ALLOW 2 TO 4 HOURS PLAY FIRST TIME AROUND Players with low end machines will find this slow in some places especially when there is an alert. Hide. Let things calm down. Closing doors behind you may help. In Dark Mod some glass is breakable using any weapon. It may require several hits. But there is also toughened glass which cannot be broken. Only one way to find out which is which! Do not use Esc during the briefing or the cursor becomes invisible. (You can still select blind though looking for highlights.) You can skip the briefing with the left mouse button. If you miss anything you can use the back button to show it again. Above all, Enjoy! [EDIT] updated with debugged combination lock script 5 June 2010. If you had a previous version installed make sure it is totally removed first, ie, doom3/alchemist and darkmod/fms/alchemist. [EDIT] If you get strange crashes there is a known bug caused by the spiky balls. This is fixed in Dark Mod but I think not released until 1.03. Try my patch from http://www.fidcal.com/TEMP/alchemist_patch2.zip It makes the spiky balls passive - they don't do damage - but apart from that no difference. Close Dark Mod Unzip the patch into your game folder doom3\alchemist Start the FM afresh, don't use earlier gamesaves.

In-app downloading is turning out to be a lot more troublesome than I thought, and some of the auto-detection of stuff the game does is more troublesome than I thought too. So I'm thinking I could just make the first public release sans downloader and then take my time to develop something nice. Anyway, new beta. Beta 10 Auto-update finished difficulty when an FM is finished in-game. If AngelLoader doesn't have a last-played date already, it will pull it from TDM's database. But if it has its own, it will use that, because it's more granular (TDM's only goes down to the day). Sorting for the Archive column for TDM FMs now works correctly. "Play Without FM" for TDM now deselects any selected FM before running it. Don't know, just seemed cleaner. Think of a like a roundabout "download missions" button where you can go in-game with no FM and download some, I dunno. Added support for detecting in-place updated FMs, but only scan on next startup due to race condition with the pk4 Removed support for auto-refreshing on pk4 add, because the game adds pk4s individually to the fms dir before moving them to their own dirs, and we were trying to scan with each one (and failing due to locks and such)

Personally I can see some ancillary benefits from trying to move TDM from non-commercial-libre to true-libre, beyond getting off the FOSS community's naughty list. There are a fair few indie devs who have tried to make modernized Thief-likes. None of them have done half as good a job as this community. I think that is generally down to the engine. All the detection and movement systems take a lot of time to implement, which you guys have already paid down. Imagine if those indie devs had the option to use TDM as the base for their games. More of these games would be published, and more would be successful. And this in turn would grow the public knowledge base about working in Dark Radiant and TDM. Some of those devs might make their own public FMs. Some might contribute to the wiki and documentation. Some might contribute to project maintenance or even donate new features that they develop. Personally I would call this one of the bigger things that you could do to keep the project alive. It would definitely be a big project to bring the project assets into compliance or to fork off a compliant TDM-lite. A year ago I would have said it is impossible, but AI is changing things. It can make art and it can write code, and especially when it has a working example of the thing it is recreating to learn from. It still would not be easy, but at least possible. Let this be a lesson for creators to select your licensing carefully. It is not always easy to change after the fact.

With TDM 2.12, after the credits finished, the "Mission Complete" screen did not display. I found that the screen was black and I could hear my footsteps when I tried to move around. I think the reason for the mission not completing successfully was that the "Do not kill or harm allies" objective was never marked as "1 = STATE_COMPLETE" instead it was left as "0 = STATE_INCOMPLETE". Note, I didn't use noclip throughout the mission. Same as: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/18054-fan-mission-the-accountant-2-new-in-town-by-goldwell-20160509/&do=findComment&comment=458491

How about using TDM automation framework (and maybe pcem/qemu)? More info see: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19828-automation-features-and-discussion/

Yes, but the Debian objection to the 2.3 GB size in their repository still remains. Perhaps TDM could provide a repository for hosting that data, and "TDM-libre" asks the user to add the URI of that repository to their system, and download the gamedata before they can download any OMs or FMs?

The devs didn't title this thread, and @datiswous said they're attempting to mislead people by using Russell's name and a retro style to make it resemble Thief, which is cynical. I grew up on forums like I'm sure anyone who likes a game from '98 did. I actually left the Discord immediately after joining it because it was more off-topic doom-posting than anything relevant to the mod. I thought the forums might be better, but it's mostly just grown men yelling at clouds and telling strangers how mature they are, and a few brave souls actually developing anything. Depressing place, I'll just stick to enjoying new missions every 6 months without an account.

True, but, 1. this thread is called "Western stealth FPS with Stephen Russell", and, 2. nothing you said changes anything for me. The gameplay still doesn't look like something I'd enjoy. And, if you really think this forum is cynical, then you don't visit forums much. Actually, the majority of the users are are pretty mature, unlike in other forums.

This is the same scheme the most radical voices in this debate have been asking for from the start. (Myself among them.) I thought it was settled that having extinguish on short click created a back-compatibility risk for a small subset of old FMs. I think the concern was putting out candles that are needed as a light source to progress, and then not having flint to relight them. That's why the current (mechanically and cognitively sub-optimal) compromise was selected. Am I remembering right? If so, let's just all reread the thread history rather than rehash this argument over again.

Announcing the release of “A House of Locked Secrets” for The Dark Mod! Download Download the latest version of the Dark Mod here: http://www.thedarkmod.com/download-the-mod/ Download the mission here: Mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/download/4awe6e756m12p71/ahouseoflockedsecrets.pk4 Southquarter: http://www.southquarter.com/tdm/fms/ahouseoflockedsecrets.pk4Taaki: http://darkmod.taaaki.za.net/fms/ahouseoflockedsecrets.pk4Fidcal.com: http://www.fidcal.com/darkuser/missions/ahouseoflockedsecrets.pk4 The mission should also shortly be up on the in-game downloader. General Notes -A House of Locked Secrets is a campaign, with two levels. -The mission is also a sequel to the Dark Mod FM “Requiem”. While you don’t need to have played Requiem to enjoy this mission, it is recommended, as it will help you better understand the lore of this corner of the TDM universe. -There is a companion novella to this series, Shadowcursed, available at Amazon.com or Smashwords.com. If you beat this FM, you can get a coupon code for 50% off the price! -The map you get of the manor is an automap which tells you which room you are currently in. Use it, along with the compass to help find your way. -Most inventory items in the game can be dropped, so no need to carry them around after they are no longer of any use. -If you use noclip or other console commands while playing, there is a good chance that you will break the intended flow of gameplay. Credits Mapping and Readables: Gelo R. Fleisher Voice Acting: Amber Collins, Bikerdude, Commander, Goldwell, Mortem Desino Additional scripting: Obsttorte, SteveL Additional textures and assets: Bikerdude, Crowind, Fidcal, Flanders, Goldwell, Grayman, Kyyrma, Melan, Nielsen, Sotha, Springheel Additional map optimization: Bikerdude Custom Soundtrack: Sarah Eide - www.saraheide.com Additional Music: cmusounddesign, Gigagooga, Lee Rosevere, Leonardo Badinella, Marianne Lihannah, NewEonOrchestra, Sarah Eide, Tabias Scot, Zoro. Additional Sounds: club20sound, ERH, geoneo0, Grayman, kevinkace, nothayama, qubodup, SoundsExciting, speedygonzo, swiftoid, viznoman. Testers: Airship Ballet, AluminumHaste, Baal, Bikerdude, Deadlove, demagogue, Diego, Dunedain19, gnartsch, Goldwell, Lowenz, Lux, nbohr1more, Oldjim, PranQster, SteveL, Xarg A note from the author After a lot of work ‘A House of Locked Secrets’ is finally ready for everyone to play. More than anything else, this FM was a team project. If the official TDM campaign never gets released, you might consider this to be the unofficial one, as almost everybody on the core TDM team lent a hand toward its completion. Of the many contributors, I especially want to thank SteveL whose custom code turned what was just an idea in my head into the FM you now get to play. I also want to thank Bikerdude, who performed a lot of optimization work on the map, and Goldwell whose voice brought to life many of the mission’s characters. If you like the music in the FM, check out the work of Sarah Eide (www.saraheide.com) who composed most of the custom soundtrack. Also, Marianne Lihannah makes a return from Requiem with a few songs, so check out her work too (www.funeralsinger.net). They'd both love to hear from you, so if you liked their music, let them know! On a personal note, I hope that this FM will give you a few hours of enjoyment, and if it does, feel free to drop me a line either in this forum thread, my work blog, or via email. In the future, other writing and game projects seem set to take up a lot of my time, so I give permission for anyone (preferably the TDM team) to update both Requiem and A House of Locked Secrets to fix any bugs or compatibility issues. I just ask that fixes be limited to correcting for glitches or for issues that come up due to future TDM releases. I do give permission for people to make visual & gameplay changes too but ask that you release these changes in a separate version than my release, and I ask that you make no changes to the story, readables, and plot. With that all out of the way, I want to thank you again for downloading and playing ‘A House of Locked Secrets’; I hope you enjoy it. God bless, Gelo “Moonbo” Fleisher

You can create shortcuts to DR, passing an fs_game=your_fm parameters to DarkRadiant.exe, e.g. DarkRadiant.exe fs_game=fms/yourmission It will override the setting saved to the user.xml file in your settings folder. Works with fs_game_base as well.

We didn't make the holidays (such a busy time of year) so here's a New Year's gift, an unusual little mission. Window of Opportunity Recover an item for a regretful trader out in a wilderness setting, and discover more! Available within the in-game mission downloader or: Download: http://www.thedarkmo...ndetails/?id=79 Alternative: https://drive.google...WTMzQXZtMVFBSG8 Some unorthodox gameplay on regular/ghost difficulties. (Arachnophobes might prefer short mode...) Please expect to need your lantern in regular and ghost modes! Short ("easy") mode is a smaller map, so if you are looking for areas others reference below, or 100% of the loot, you'll need to play on another mode. I wanted to create my first mission before I became influenced by too many others' ideas, and limited myself to what has been done before. As such, this mission is not set in a city/town, and has some features that are likely to be provocative. There's a section some really like, which others don't, either way I kept it short to not last too long. That being said, I hope you do find it fun! :-) Special thanks to those who provided valuable testing and feedback: Goldwell, Kyyrma, plotzzz, 161803398874989, PPoe & Bikerdude (who also contributed a sound). (Please remember spoiler tags to not expose things meant to be discovered by playing.) Like so: [spoiler]secrets[/spoiler] If you are having trouble finding the main objective, here's what to pay attention to in the mission for hints: There is a spot it's possible to get stuck on the ground in the corner by the cliff/rockfall where there's a rope laying on the ground, please take care if you poke around there!

I just recently became aware of this feature: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Particle_collisions_and_cutoff Unfortunately I completely missed it, as when I went to create weather effects in my FMs I just followed this (which doesn't mention it): https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_-_Z_Beginner_Full_Guide_Page_3#Rain_and_Snow The point of this thread is to a) make people aware of it and b) gather feedback from any mappers that have used it so we can get some mapper-focused documentation in the Wiki. The page above is great for background information about how it works, but as a mapper I really just want to know: What are the limitations of this (i.e. when should it be used and when shouldn't it be used)? Why isn't it the default behaviour? Why all this work to get it into the map? What built-in support for it exists (particle definitions, materials, etc). Do I need to create all this stuff myself? Texture layout vs. Linear layout: what's the difference in the end, pros/cons, why would I use one over the other... Why does it need a separate command (runParticle)? Can this just not be bundled in with dmap? A clear, step-by-step instruction on how to implement it in a map from beginning to end using a simple use case. Tagging some users who have relevant experience with this: @stgatilov @Goldwell @Amadeus

To cater to both audiences. I mentioned LibreGameWiki as one example. nbohr1more mentioned other uses. Explicitly allowing reuse and spread will help TDM reach a wider audience and would hopefully attract more volunteers. More volunteers which can help improve both TDM versions. There are several benefits for a project of being in the Debian repo. One is that TDM Debian-users can report defects on any package directly to Debian (no need to register on separate forums). Debian may then fix the issue themselves (in their "TDM-libre" package) and will offer the patch upstream to TDM, who can then choose to accept or reject the patch. I envision "TDM-libre" to have the same capability of downloading any mission as regular TDM. The only difference is that "TDM-libre" would come packaged with the regular engine (which is GPL+BSD) and an included mission that has libre media/gamedata. When I play TDM by myself, I want the unlimited-play and can accept commercial restrictions. But if I were to promote it somewhere, or charge for a stream when playing online, or make a video, I would want a version without commercial restrictions (and can temporarily accept limited-play) to make sure I don't violate anyone's copyright. Perhaps. That's what I'm trying to find out.

I suggest you use the term "I", to make clear that it is something YOU want, and that you speak for yourself. But, as wesp5 mentioned, I don't really know what this is about, at all. And, I'm also wondering about all the newly registered people lately, who just arrived at this forum, and already want to revolutionize this mod. This is a thing I noticed 2 or 3 years ago, and which hasn't been present in the 15 years I play this mod and frequent these forums now. Really seems like a common thing these days, to not knock on the door, but kick it in, and stomp right in.

Beta 11 Fix finished-on state auto-update was unreliable Slighty improve scanner title/author detect Tags are now named some whatever regular-version-looking thing to force GitHub to put the newest at the top

TDM has tons of textures from "free" texture resources that do not allow redistribution and cannot be incorporated into a commercial project. Someone would need to create a huge replacement pack of textures that do not break the look of existing missions and do not infringe on the copyrighted textures. Also, many artists who contributed to this project do not want 3rd party entities to use their work in commercial projects. They intended the models, textures, sounds, animations to be exclusively used for Darkmod content. You would either have to replace ALL assets or contact every contributor and ask them to re-license their assets. Many contributors are no longer active with the project and haven't visited the forums in years so it would be no easy feat. I cannot speak to Debian policy but I think that they treat installers that add non-free content the same as non-free content itself. One could argue that Steam is such an installer but I guess Debian would counter that there are a few fully Libre games on Steam. I think Debian, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint need to consider a repo that allows for games (etc) that include non-libre content but intentionally offer this content for free to the community with no stipulations other than "don't try to sell it as a product".

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...