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In By Any Other Name, I needed to deactivate the sword, bow, and blackjack for a while (during the middle part of the mission). I couldn't figure out how to "turn off" the bow, and then later turn it back on again. So I ended up cloning tdm_weapon_arrow.script, and modding it (adding a special variable that got checked when you tried to raise the bow). Pretty kludgy, and obviously can lead to breakage. (I also had to make similar changes to tdm_weapon_blackjack.script and tdm_weapon_shortsword.script.) Maybe all I need to do is remove all of the arrow ammo. That way the bow won't raise. That still leaves the blackjack and sword. I think there was a way of deactivating weapons, but I couldn't activate them back on again (?)

Please make the mission complete sound the default for TDM! It was short but I liked it.

Well, I actually found that initial folder in the HiRes SVN repo. This is different from the TDM assets repo as it has a bunch of source files for textures, fonts, etc, but they aren't really game-ready assets. This is where I found the tga image files for the fonts I thought you were looking for. I haven't uploaded Tels folder yet, but I was thinking of uploading them in the HiRes SVN repo, just for the sake of backing it up

I like this very much. It goes in line with the idea that players become more creative when they can alter the world around them temporally instead of permanently. Each time is a different challenge. It will never happen globally, though. Good news is that we have Shadow Arrows.

I agree entirely. Unless a mission is aiming to present a completely different gameplay experience (like making a rapid-fire archery-based combat mission instead of a stealth mission), I see no reason why things like bow aiming should vary on a mission-by-mission basis. If the defaults are widely disliked, they should be changed. If they are a matter of taste and there is no agreement on what the value should be, they should be configurable by the player and take effect in all missions. Imagine if every desktop application made its own tweaks to your keyboard layout or mouse acceleration because the author didn't personally approve of the default values. It would be a horrible user experience. Some applications actually do this with fonts, and yes, it's horrible. Potentially useful functionality made inaccessible because the author decided to ignore system font choices and DPI, and impose his hand-picked non-scalable 10pt font which I can barely read.

Are we switching 10 scripts for 10 defs? What if the core def changes sometime in the future and we then have not 10 but 15 or 20 missions from different authors with this def? What if, in the end, nobody is willing to change/enhance/improve the bow because of the trouble? This is the day people might look back to in the future, which reminds me:

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

I don't think it's a problem. Acidentally I read about this a week ago. It was still difficult to find it back. I hope the info in the topic is useful for you.

LOL. Recently I have reassessed the infamous "Gold Filter" of DXHR, thanks to enabling it in DC with this: CookiePLMonster/DXHRDC-GFX: A plugin for Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut, restoring the gold filter, post processing and shading from the original Deus Ex: Human Revolution (github.com) It fixes the lighting system and the bad (really BAD) DC bloom too (you can force the original 2011 one)! And just avoid the SSAO, it's terrible (temporally unstable) in the DC. Without the Gold Filter the game really looks washed out (and see my avatar )

I'm looking for the setting that controls the number of difficulty levels in the options menu. The current "hardcore" setting is not challenging enough for me, and I'd like to make it more difficult, like this one for thief. I can edit the Darkmod.cfg file and would like to know if I can create a separate *.pk4 file with this file, removing everything unnecessary except the parameters I need. Will the game load the default settings from the game root and the additional data from my file? Of course, it would be better if you could tell me how to create an additional difficulty setting. I've searched through all the archives and couldn't find what I need. Thank you for your help.

Complaint From Players The player must pick up candles before extinguishing them, and then the player must remember to drop the candle. The player must drag a body before shouldering it (picking it up), and the player must remember to frob again to stop dragging the body. The player finds this annoying or easy to make mistakes. For players who ghost, some of them have the goal of returning objects back to their original positions. With the current "pick up, use item, and drop" system, the item might not return easily or at all to its original position. For example, a candlestick might bounce off its holder. (See player quotes at the bottom.) Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6316 Problems to Solve How can the "pick up" step be eliminated so that the player can directly use or interact with the item where it is in the game world? How can so much key pressing and mouse clicking be eliminated when the player wants to directly use an item? How can candles be extinguished and lanterns toggled off/on without first picking them up? How can bodies be shouldered without first dragging them? Solution Design Goals Make TDM easier for new players while also improving it for longtime players. Reduce tedious steps for common frob interactions. Make it intuitive so that menu settings are unnecessary. Do not introduce bugs or break the game. Terms frob -- the frob button action happens instantly. hold frob -- the frob button is held for 200ms before the action happens. (This can be changed via cvar: 200ms by default.) Proposed Solution Note: Some issues have been struckthrough to show changes since the patch has been updated. Change how frobbing works for bodies, candles, and lanterns. For bodies: Frob to shoulder (pick up) a body. Second frob to drop shouldered body, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Hold frob (key down) to start drag, continue to hold frob (key down) to drag body, and then release frob (key up) to stop dragging body. Also, a body can be dragged immediately by holding frob and moving the mouse. For candles/lanterns: Frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. Hold frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. For food: Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to eat food. For other items: No change. New cvar "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"200" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or extinguish. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Benefits Bodies: New players will have less to learn to get started moving knocked out guards. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players have played several missions before realizing that they could shoulder a body instead of dragging it long distances. Frob to shoulder body matches Thief, so longtime Thief players will find it familiar. Second frob drops a shouldered body. Players still have the ability to both shoulder and drag bodies. Compatible with the new auto-search bodies feature. Dragging feels more natural -- just grab, hold, and drop with a single button press. There is no longer the need to press the button twice. Also, it's no longer possible to walk away from a body while unintentionally dragging it. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Candles: New players will have less to learn to get started extinguishing candles. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players didn't know they could extinguish candles by picking them up and using them. Instead, they resorted to throwing them to extinguish them or hiding them. Hold frob to extinguish a candle feels like "pinching" it out. Once a candle is picked up, players still have the ability to manipulate and use them the same way they are used to in TDM v2.11 and earlier. For players who ghost and have the goal of putting objects back to their original positions, they'll have an easier time and not have to deal with candles popping off their holders when trying to place them back carefully. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Issues Bodies: Frob does not drop a shouldered body, so that might be unexpected for new players. This is also different than Thief where a second frob will drop a body. "Use Inv. Item" or "Drop Inv. Item" drops the body. This is the same as TDM v2.11 and earlier. This is the price to pay for being able to frob (open/close) doors while shouldering a body. Patch was updated to drop body on second frob, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Candles: Picking up a candle or lantern requires a slight delay, because the player must hold the frob button. The player might unintentionally extinguish a candle while moving it if they hold down frob. The player will need to learn that holding frob will extinguish the candle. The player can change the delay period via the "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar. Also, when the cvar is set to a delay of 0, the behavior matches TDM v2.11 and earlier, meaning the player would have to first "Frob/Interact" to pick up the candle and then press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish it. Some players might unintentionally extinguish a candle when they are trying to move it or pick it up. They need to make sure to hold frob to initiate moving the candle. When a candle is unlit, it will highlight but do nothing on frob. That might confuse players. However, the player will likely learn after extinguishing several candles that an unlit candle still highlights. It makes sense that an already-extinguished candle cannot be extinguished on frob. The official "Training Mission" might need to have its instructions updated to correctly guide the player through candle manipulation training. Updating the training mission to include the hold frob to extinguish would probably be helpful. Similar Solutions In Fallout 4, frob uses an item and long-press frob picks it up. Goldwell's mission, "Accountant 2: New In Town", has candles that extinguish on frob without the need of picking them up first. Snatcher's TDM Modpack includes a "Blow / Ignite" item that allows the player to blow out candles Wesp5's Unofficial Patch provides a way to directly extinguish movable candles by frobbing. Demonstration Videos Note: The last two videos don't quite demonstrate the latest patch anymore. But the gist is the same. This feature proposal is best experienced in game, but some demonstration videos are better than nothing. The following videos show either a clear improvement or that the player is not slowed down with the change in controls. For example, "long-press" sounds long, but it really isn't. Video: Body Shouldering and Dragging The purpose of this video is to show that frob to shoulder a body is fast and long-press frob to drag a body is fast enough and accurate. Video: Long-Press Frob to Pick Up Candle The purpose of this video is to show how the long-press frob to pick up a candle isn't really much slower than regular frob. Video: Frob to Extinguish The purpose of this video -- if a bit contrived -- is to show the efficiency and precision of this proposed feature. The task in the video was for the player to as quickly and accurately as possible extinguish candles and put them back in their original positions. On the left, TDM v2.11 is shown. The player has to highlight each candle, press "Frob/Interact" to pick up, press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish, make sure the candle is back in place, and finally press "Frob/Interact" to drop the candle. The result shows mistakes and candles getting misplaced. On the right, the proposed feature is shown. The player frobs to extinguish the candles. The result shows no mistakes and candles are kept in their original positions. Special Thanks @Wellingtoncrab was instrumental in improving this feature during its early stages. We had many discussions covering varying scenarios, pros, and cons, and how it would affect the gameplay and player experience. Originally, I had a completely different solution that added a special "use modifier" keybinding. He suggested the frob to use and long-press frob to pick up mechanics. I coded it up, gave it a try, and found it to be too good. Without his feedback and patience, this feature wouldn't be as good as it is. Thank you, @Wellingtoncrab! And, of note, @Wellingtoncrab hasn't been able to try it in game yet, because I'm using Linux and can't compile a Windows build for him. So, if this feature isn't good, that's my fault. Code Patch I'll post the code patch in another post below this one so that folks who compile TDM themselves can give this proposal a try in game. And, if you do, I look forward to your feedback! Player Complaints TTLG (2023-01-10) Player 1: TDM Forums (2021-03-13) Player 2: Player 3: TDM Forums (2023-06-17) Player 4: TDM Discord (2021-05-18) Player 5: TDM Discord (2023-02-14) Player 6: Player 7: Player 8:

I'm now considering the .xcf files as being in effect the source texture for the game fonts, at least those that have been bitmap edited in GIMP. So that's an argument for putting them in the TDM assets repo. But, in any event, they do need to be backed up somewhere official.

Alright, so, I'm a Texture Artist myself for more than 20 years, which means I know what I'm talking about, but my word isn't law at all, remember that. I've worked (mostly as mods, I am a professional but I much prefer being a freelance) with old DX8 games up to DX12. When it comes to Detail Textures, for my workflow, I never ever use it except rarely when it's actually good (which, I emphasize on "rarely"). This is one reason I thought mentioning that I worked with DX8 was logical. One of the few times it's good is when you make a game that can't have textures higher than what would be average today, such as, World Textures at 1024x1024. Making detail textures for ANY (World, Model) textures that are lower than 128x128 is generally appealable. Another is when the game has no other, much better options for texturing, such as Normal Maps and Parallax Mapping. Personally, I think having Detail Textures for The Dark Mod is arguably pointless. I know TDM never had a model and texture update since 2010 or so, but most textures do seem to at least be 1024x1024, if there's any world texture that's lower than 256x256, I might understand the need of Detail Textures. Now, if this was a game meant to be made in 2024 with 2020+ standards, I would say that we should not care about the "strain" high resolution textures add, however, I do have a better proposition: Mipmaps. There are many games, mostly old than new ones, that use mipmaps not just for its general purpose but also to act as a "downscaler". With that in mind, you boys can add a "Texture Resolution" option that goes from Low to High, or even Lowest to Highest. As an example, we can add a 2048x2048 (or even 4096x4096) world texture that, if set to Lowest, it would use the smallest Mipmap the texture was made with, which depends on how the artist did it, could be a multiplication of 1x1 or 4x4. One problem with this is that, while it will help in the game with people who have less VRAM than usual these days, it won't help with the size. 4096x4096 is 4096x4096, that's about 32mb compressed with DXT1 (which is not something TDM can use, DXT is for DirectX, sadly I do not know how OpenGL compresses its textures). I would much rather prefer the option to have better, baked Normal Maps as well as Parallax Mapping for the World Textures. I'm still okay with Detail Textures, I doubt this will add anything negative to the game or engine, very sure the code will also be simple enough it will probably only add 0.001ms for the loading times, or even none at all. But I would also like it as an option, just like how Half-Life has it, so I'm glad you mentioned that. But yet again, I much prefer better Normal Maps and Parallax Mapping than any Detail Textures. On another note...Wasn't Doom 3, also, one of the first games that started using Baked Normal Maps?

The "Sad News" title startles me a little bit everytime I check the subforum. But that's great. Don't change it. I did not have time to play this yet, but I am looking forward to it.

Some good news! Tels dug around further in his old computers and found some gold. Namely, a whole fonts directory that includes GIMP .xcf files. Tels says: "The XCF files esp. are what I used to manually draw the new characters (like adding dots to an u to convert it to ü etc.) They contain many layers with different characters, that are layout exactly in the place where they need to be for the patcher script." That is, for english stone 24 pt, one .xcf file contains two independent RGBA bitmap layers, that can be saved separately as two .dds files. A quick glance of that content appears to match the current distributed stone_0_24.dds and stone_1_24.dds. So I won't need to back-convert from DDS to TGA after all. @Amadeus, I think a copy of this should be added to the TDM assets repository. Could you do that? * http://bloodgate.com/mirrors/tdm/pub/scripts/tdm_font_source.7z

Speaking of actions for the missions which only tweak zoom delay. What would you prefer right now? Mission broken on the latest dev build (as it is now), but working as intended in the latest release. Mission working as intended on the latest dev build, but working without customization on the latest release.

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.

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.

Okay... so... I'll be honest. The verticality of the first mission blew my mind, made me really pay attention, explore. But the verticality of this mission made me frustrated. It didn't help that I kept stumbling upon things, without context. Moreover, some areas didn't have anything, but were traversable, while others had a plenty and required not a clear and direct path but some convoluted route that wasn't obvious to me. And the size of the level... It took me 4 and a half hours to search every nook and cranny, find and complete all objectives and discover the loot. But that time was split between two days, because I could only play before work, and I experienced CTD whenever I'd draw a bow inside the manor. So by the end I ran around like a headless chicken, trying to remember where I've left this NPC and where is that NPC and where the safe is... Now... some things really gave me a pause. For example, the direction of our poor LT's life XD Or the fact that we had such a horrible person working for our Target. But I really liked the story here. All the twists, the clues (that little thing in the cabinet damn), I liked using Thief's Highway... but man was I lost there. I would like to know... how was I supposed to find the Barrel? I had no real reason to actually head there aside from "I see a window open". But since I was thorough, I found the Barrel there before the readable mentioning it in the same place. Was there a hint pointing me there to begin with? (Did I miss it, like the combination to the safe the first time?) Also - the Safehouse dude was freaking me out.

God knows since when have I last registered or posted on a traditional internet forum, but had to do so to pay my respects for the developers and map makers of this game. I have no history of the original thief series, and had no expectations for the mod. This is the first FM I played. After running around in a bit of a haste, becoming increasingly desperate of the complexity of the map, I learned to enjoy the feeling of being lost, calmed down and started to pay attention to the surroundings and listening to the ambient sounds and music. It is a truly immersive experience. I do have to admit that I could not find the entrance to the mansion, and had to resolve to a walkthrough to figure out how to enter, and at the end of the day did not manage to finish the mission. This mod is a great achievement, thank you for all the work and passion you have put into it.

dev17042-10732 is public. We decided to restore the ability to create cvars, so the broken missions are "unbroken" as they are. Although I'll still try to hunt down and remove overriding scripts in the future.

Hello taffers, The campaign "Hidden Hands: Blood & Metal" consisting of five missions is now basically ready for beta testing (the briefing videos are missing and there are still some "real" speakers missing, at the moment there are tentative robot voices in these places, hope to replace them in the next two or three weeks). Unfortunately, the project has become somewhat more extensive than originally planned. It took me about two hours to test each mission. So you should allow at least12 hours for all five missions on the first run. Beta testing shall start at the beginning/middle of next week. The difficulty level is somewhere between "The Anomaly" and "The Lost Citadel". Some things are easier, others are not, but proper exploration and usage of the available resources/objects should always pave the way to success. Sign in here, if you are taff enough! Jack Testing thread:

A big thank you and congratulations for this mission I would rate 10/10. I can't find a better one in my memory. It's so big and varied, full of new assets. Just... wow ! Finding a way through the was hard for me, as well as being able to jump and go through a narrow hole in the I also gut stuck in this area just below the horizontal mesh hatch that opens with Oh, and my game use to crash when firing a fire arrow at a Thanks again, you are so good at this.

Actually I think I found what's causing issues with my textures: DR changes the texture's Horizontal and Vertical Shift when a face gets slanted. E.g., my test door is facing -Y and sitting flat on the ground, which is at 0 in Z, so the v-shift is 0. When I move the bottom vertices of the door 8 units forward, and then re-fit the texture, the v-shift turns to 4 (3.97241). If I do the same but backward, the v-shift turns to 90.7035. But these values depends on the distance the face is from the world origin, and sometimes if I move the top vertices instead, the values don't change. I can't make sense of it... The other editors don't do this, so the plugin's import code doesn't account for it. Do you think you could help me understand the logic behind this? If I could understand it, maybe I could get the plugin working with it.

I agree, that is an issue. It would be better if the system handling briefings/readables could be revised as you indicated, to handle individual sentences as #str_, rather than whole pages. Baring that, having a key field like "#str_This is a whole page\nfull of text that goes on and on and on [...] until done" would appear as a very long single line. That is nasty to look at in the Readables Editor, and even worse in the .langs file, where the too-long text would appear twice on a line (once with #str_ prefix of English version, another in translation). So for those, it would be better in the short term to stick to symbolic keys, e.g., existing #str_12345 or revised form #str_myfm_book_of_spells_page_1 I might add, in the longer term, enhancing the Readable Editor to use the .lang files would be an enormous improvement for FM authors and a significant accomplishment. A fair amount of work though, but probably doable in increments over several releases.