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I understand some changes that break backwards compatibility, long as they're kept minimal and hopefully don't render old FM's unplayable unless patched. We should keep in mind some maps may never get updated, especially ones who's authors might no longer be around... at the same time some things can't be easily improved because keeping it backwards compatible is more challenging, I felt a few things were limited for that reason a couple of times.

Yeah, as I said elsewhere, it's not so much that the missions are broken that is frustrating to me and several other affected authors, it's that there was zero communication to the affected authors that this was going to be happening beforehand. There is no reason why a message couldn't have been sent to the affected authors saying "hey, this will be broken in the upcoming dev build for X reasons. I thought you'd like to know before surprising you." Or even an open discussion beforehand about why these authors decided to make these customizations to begin with. Plain and simple, that's just a lack of respect. If you have the time to break these, you have time to communicate and see if there might be a solution to avoid all this (and there is!). And perhaps from YOUR perspective, you might think this reaction seems silly, unnecessary, and that this is totally fine, but from my perspective and that of a few others, it's not. EDIT: In addition, when creating or modifying existing assets, I and others take great care in making sure that these changes don't break existing maps. And if they do, we do whatever we can to own up to that and fix it. I do expect that same level of respect to be shown to existing maps so they aren't just broken with reckless abandon and no clear path forward.

Seriously, if devs are never allowed to make changes that break things, then the mod never moves forward. It's a bandaid, rip it off, get it done. That's the point of dev builds. And if people are downloading DEVELOPMENT BUILDS to play the mod and shits broken, guess what, they should have read the very first post of this thread. For the people eager to play with the latest state of development P.S. Needless to say, all of this comes with no support. Although we would be glad if you catch and report bugs before the next beta phase starts

Funnily enough, I was going to ping you and see if you wanted to draw the map. There is something included which could technically be called a 'map', but it sucks. The issue is the FM doesn't cover a huge area, but there is a LOT of vertical overlap so the options are a single map which provides vague guidance (the option I've gone with), or loads of tiny maps for each area (which would suit an automap probably).

And... running another update and the problem is solved. Sorry for the noise.

On Debian (testing) dev17035-10724 runs very "laggy" for some reason (even the menu). Last time I experienced the same "laggyness" was on a non-accelrated VNC connection to another machine.

No, I mean in OTHER games the lens distortion (like the classic sniping scope distorsion along the border of the scope lens) In Thief there's no lens distorsion, so maybe it's only the heat distorsion. I've just show a list of all the offenders (when abused at full frame scale)

I override it so I can tweak the #define ARROW_ZOOMDELAY 3 //VOLTA MOD There's a whole bunch of reasons why I do this, one of which is because it makes shooting the bow easier for most players. I dont really want to get into a debate about if thats better or not but I would suggest you expose the variables in a way that authors can tweak them. I sent you a DM about this exact thing.

Throwing a few words people used to say long ago to help enrich those texts. Not sure if they all work in English since I'm just translating from Spanish but I think most should work well. - Stratagem: Used by Nobles to describe a plan, course of action as in "Device a Stratagem" use instead of Strategy. - Given Word (People used this one a lot, had weight). You can't betray the given word. - Sophistry or Sophist (as in dirty sophistry). Play of words to deceive. -Countenance (Please execute/exercise Countenance) - Artifice: Plan or plot to deceive. - Modesty (Lacking Modesty) - Sylph: Slender woman. - Cameo (As in compliment: "She's beautiful like a Cameo")

So what is Distortion for in the game? Both Distortion and Filtered Distortion appear as true in the Settings ini

So - if - "The Lieutenant" is in need for some guy - to find trails of misplaced or forgotten stuff & leaks - ways one could leave without permission or ways that should open but don´t - to fullfill his Quest to find (whatever) he is searching for --- I´d like to assist him !

That almost works perfectly. A slight modification completely solves the issue for me: $player1.setImmobilization("missionspecific", IM_ATTACK | IM_WEAPON_SELECT); THANK YOU @stgatilov!!! I'll fix that mission tomorrow.

Complicated, heavily linked to the mission: ahouseoflockedsecrets byanyothername ARROW_ZOOMDELAY (from 6 down to 3): cauldron_v2_2 good hazard moongate northdale1 northdale2 prize seeking snowed_inn written

Why not use the modified weapon scripts from the April Fool's FMs? Those seem to be working just fine on this dev build

Do we have any volunteer to participate in fixing these missions? The first (and perhapsthe most important) step is to download these missions, diff tdm_weapon_arrow.script against stock version, and list all the things that are actually customized.

Is it not possibly to just add a small script to these missions that only does this: #define ARROW_ZOOMDELAY 3 //VOLTA MOD Edit: I haven't installed the newest tdm version yet, so I guess this might be complete nonsense..

There is a problem. You may or may not see it but the problem is there. We can do something about it or we can look the other way. It's in your hands, guys. By looking the other way you can say goodbye to future core improvements on certain features / mechanics.

The training mission’s job is not cover the diversity of FMs across the entire platform. There are lots of stuff in volta universe missions which are not covered: explosive barrels, ammo crystals, loot you dislodge by shooting it with an arrow, completely different undead AI with a completely different damage model, etc Just like in northdale missions: neutral/hostile areas, in game shops, simplified lockpicks, etc Why would you need to be told any of this is happening by anything other than the game itself? That’s how games communicate: you play them.

So what is the training mission for then? Apparently it's not showing standard tdm gameplay necessarily. Edit: Maybe it's not really worth it to keep discussing this. I mean I don't want to derail too much what the topic is actually for.

It's taking too long for Beta 3 for Hidden Hands: Blood and Metal to come out, so I'll test this one out in the meantime.

I totally agree that players usually don't care whether some non-customizable constant like bow shoot time is same as in core or not, as long as the mission plays well. This is a problem only for TDM development. But I don't know a proper way of solving this: mappers usually want to customize something "right now", and waiting for new release is rarely an option. And often customizations are not implemented until someone really wants them (or right away uses them), so that's also the chicken-and-egg problem here.

You are confusing how the core game is packaged with a "standard". The “standard” TDM experience imo would actually be however the mission author intended the mission to be played. There are lots of different types of missions which as experiences deviate from anything packaged in the core game. You are not owed a disclaimer.

Maybe they don't notice, but under the hood it modifies core behavior without telling. Like I said, I think it would be nice to be informed about such things.

I can understand your frustrations, however the main reason why we have had to replace the core files is because we don’t have the ability to make tweaks to the core game without doing this. In particular having the bow speed reduced from 6 seconds to 3 feels a lot better ingame. And it’s something that I personally have in all of my missions since I saw it in Kingsal’s mission the first time. If it’s possible for us to tweak that variable without needing to replace the .script file that would be really handy.

Because the default script doesn’t feel as smooth as Kingsal’s tweaked one. I believe the main advantage is as Amadeus mentioned a 3 second bow draw time vs 6 seconds which feels a lot better. I’m not completely married to the idea of this but if you’re able to integrate the ability for us to customize this without replacing the core files that would be appreciated.