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Hey I just wanted to create a Thread where everybody can post his improvement wishes. I Personally love this mod. There are so many features in it, and because it is a mod created by a community, why not write what could be improved. My wishes are: Some special weapons. I loved T2X and the variety of weapons. Some really hard to find special weapons, like the confusion arrow or a special bomb would be cool. But they have to be very special, for example as a result of a side quest - or maybe a usable torch for easier killing the undead More enemies, I think there will be an improvement, we just got spiders and zombies, but a higher variety is always good. More (custom) conversation. Thats one of the main parts I'm missing - so much flair and atmosphere is getting lost without them. Also some comments from he main charakter would be nice. For example when a guard gets knocked out "hah, now who's the taffer" ... better AI when the hear a voice. They start looking for you, but most of the time I just sneak into another room or a higher area and just have to wait, they should at least get someone with a torch or call other guards for help These are only small parts of the game which could be improved and are only my points of view, maybe it's either not possible to create or it fits not in the design of TDM.

After playing various Dark Mod FM’s, I become hooked to the game, like I was with Thief (and its FM’s). So, like I do to all games I love, I tried to find ways to improve it. Since my first contact with DM and after playing T1 and T2 with the fantastic “HD Mod”, it became apparent that graphically, TDM struck me strange. Of course, it is clearly a BIG improvement over T3 and it’s not worse then Thief 2014 -- if you remove all those post processing effects, the textures are actually very bad for today standards – but it could be a little bit better. So I started to change a texture here, a texture there, whenever I found a texture that could be improved. Initially, I made this for my own amusement, while i was playing, but as the changes increased, I started to think I it would only be fair to share it with the community. As a note, I really appreciate the amount of work done by the contributors to TDM. It’s amazing how an open source project of a game whose genre is unfortunately condemned to target a niche player base could attract so many talented people to work together and create what essentially is the Thief 4 we never had. So this is in no way a mean to disrespect the contributors and their work. What changed and how Currently, around 530 files were changed. The changes end up in one of the following categories: NOTE: “texture quality” noted below is subjective and represents only my point of view. Again, It is in no way a mean of disrespect for the original author and its work. The texture is good but is in a low resolution – upscale it using AI image enhancement methods. The texture is poor and low res, with poor AI upscale results – try to replace it using various free PBR or raw Image sources (1) or create my own. If necessary, adjust the image using (colors, saturation, contrast, …) The texture has a good resolution and its not quite good but can be improved – improve using gimp (ex: on textures with bur, use sharpen, noise reduction or/and other features) (2) The texture depicts an horrible stew – change it to a decent and delicious stew, because my Portuguese roots forced me to do it. Additionally, specular and normal maps were added to some textures. (1) Free textures and PBR sites already discussed on this forum (texturehaven.com, 3dtextures.me, cc0textures.com and so on). (2) Finding the right texture is not always easy. I always tried to follow the same “feel” and appearance of the original image, but i confess that this is not always the case. Again, very subjective. New version 2021.01.08 * Around 170Mb of textures processed Some tree barks enhanced Stucco change more enhancements on doors, paint paper, fire places, ground textures, curtains .. and much more Screenshots and Comparisons It’s obviously undoable to show the comparison for all changed textures, so keep in mind that the following screenshots are just a very small example of the whole project. Also, very important, keep in mind that there is so much you can do with screenshots and in game the differences are much more clear than what is shown below. Sir Talbot's Collateral https://imgsli.com/MTI2NDE https://imgsli.com/MTI2MzY https://imgsli.com/MTI2Mzc https://imgsli.com/MTI2Mzg https://imgsli.com/MTI2Mzk https://imgsli.com/MTI2NDA WS3: Cleighmoor https://imgsli.com/MTI1OTE WS1: In the North https://imgsli.com/MTI2MTY https://imgsli.com/MTI2MTc WS2: Home Again https://imgsli.com/MTI2MjM https://imgsli.com/MTI2MjQ https://imgsli.com/MTI2Mjc https://imgsli.com/MTI2Mjg https://imgsli.com/MTI2Mjk https://imgsli.com/MTI2MzE https://imgsli.com/MTI2MzM New (version 2021.01.08) Briarwood Manor https://imgsli.com/MzUwNDY https://imgsli.com/MzUwNDg https://imgsli.com/MzUwNTE https://imgsli.com/MzUwNjc The Builder's Influence https://imgsli.com/MzUxNjM https://imgsli.com/MzUxNjQ No honor among thieves: forest https://imgsli.com/MzU0ODE https://imgsli.com/MzU1NTQ https://imgsli.com/MzU1NTk How to install 1) download the pk4 file from here 2) drop it on your TDM game folder (where all the other pk4 files are) 3) Play! Uninstall Just remove z_TDM_HD.pk4 file from your TDM install folder. Disclaimer If you are a purist, please don’t use this texture mod. Don’t bash it for not being “exactly the same as the original ones but hires”. If you find some texture that is copyrighted, please let me know and i will replace it. Fell free to suggest changes, but please don't make requests. Understand that i am doing this while playing and if i start feeling that i'm working instead, i will probably start to loose my interest. PS: I really don't know if this is the right thread to make this post. Let me know if i need to change it to another thread.

Sorry for the Necro but I can't find he hex for shroud. I just got the the game free off Epic.

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.

I'll add one thing, which I didn't state earlier because I assumed it was obvious. But I'd like to make it clear. What is the purpose of dragging a body and body manipulation in this stealth game? In my opinion, it is a "tool" or "game mechanic" that gives the player the ability to do two things: The last 10%. After shouldering a body and dropping it in a desired location, the player can drag and hide it more precisely in the shadows. Is just a foot or hand sticking out into the light? No problem. Grab and drag it into the shadows. No need to shoulder and drop the entire body again. That's a good thing. Dragging gives fine-tuned control for that scenario. Nearby shadows. After KO-ing a guard near a dark area, the player can quickly drag the guard into the dark area. The distance here would be one or two body lengths away. Given that the distance is short, dragging is quicker than shouldering and dropping. That's a good thing. Dragging gives a quick way to hide a body in that scenario. In my opinion, the 2.12 controls enhance the experience for those two scenarios, because the controls give a quick way to grab a body, drag it into position, and release it quickly and precisely. However, most of the time that fine-tuned control is not necessary for this stealth game. Shouldering and dropping a body can work well enough, hence why it became the primary action. That said, being able to precisely drag a body is a great enhancement to just shouldering, and it's something players can learn and appreciate given time.

Do we have one of these? I know we kind of have one for upcoming TDM projects, but not a general game thread. I'll start. Elden Ring:

sadly the upcomming 8xxx series from amd will only be for midrange atleast according to leaks (grain of salt maybe ?). well it would be something quite different thats for sure not sure if 32 gb vram would actually help (what is the max texture size today ?), it might help if they really go nuts with the detail level in upcomming titles but i suspect this might take longer as the game companies dont want to alienate players with less vram. ofc it will come at some point but i dont see it in the near future. the 2 and 3 gb vram chips might actually make a dent in the bus width war. what the hell happened with hbm memory ???, the old fury cards could actually do 4k no problem with only 4 gb vram because the hbm memory was so blazing fast.

I made a small update today removing two modpack skills that were indeed not regular features of the original game, namely Whistle and Peek Door. The real reason though was that I never really use any of them! If I want to alert a guard, I can always hit something with my blackjack and I almost forgot about the peering through a keyhole feature before I noticed that it works with handles without a keyhole e.g. in the current mission I beta test. I kept the numbers scroll, because this basically gives you access to something the game already has only any time, and the Blow skill, as a last resort if mission creator use uncommon flames, again like in the current beta. Also this way there is a bigger distinction between Snatcher's modpack with all the cool new stuff and my patch!

Is that the name of your book? I looked up the word and it could easilly mean a 100 different things. Young Writers Association? --- Maybe you could make some kind of modules that other game designers could use in their game.

TDM is marketed as: It's a tremendous achievement - a detailed tribute to the Thief series. (link) Since The Dark Mod is designed to simulate the stealth gameplay of Thief, many things will be familiar to veteran Thief players. (link) It should be of no surprised when folks suggest making a change to TDM that fits more closely with Thief when it makes sense. The majority of active TDM players and mission authors I see today are also Thief players. And, besides the folks here on this forum, there aren't many places where the dev team can get player feedback on TDM, especially players who gave up on playing TDM all together. The Thief (including TTLG) community is one of the only places where we can get feedback in general and from veterans of this stealth game type. Feedback I received from a player: This is great news for our community. For our community, more players increase the likelihood of more devs, mission authors, and content creators. For the content creators, more players experience the content they make. That said, I think most agree that TDM is not meant be a 1:1 copy of Thief, and that's a good thing. Changes to TDM should be carefully considered and playtested before release. EDIT: To clarify, addressing player complaints does not mean copy Thief game mechanics. It means that when player complaints are addressed, a solution that is appropriate for TDM is implemented.

Hey its been some time, I just wanted to make you guys aware, that i have been secretly at work, on the side, on a total remake of the systems from delightfyl. I post a few videos below, the new systems are really really powerful and stable! No idea what i will do with this yet... The effort to make a full game is really expensive and i am distracted and creatively bankrupt. Without outside help i will never make a game like this evermore.

When talking about a possible libre version of TDM (https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22346-libre-version-of-tdm/) it seems we believe all media/gamedata included in TDM is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. I am not familiar with how the process of adding new media/gamedata works today; I have seen files uploaded to the bugtracker which developers then commit to SVN, but I don't know if there are other ways. It may be a good idea to implement a process that when new components (media/gamedata included in TDM) are added, the contributor is asked to be explicit about the license (a choice which may defaults to their previous preference, for usability). It won't fix the past, but it may help in the future. This will make it easy for contributors to add future data under a more permissive license if they choose. Libre media can be added and its license can be tracked, rather than assumed to be CC-BY-NC-SA. I suggest looking at how Wikimedia Commons has implemented this: the contributor state the source and license at the time the data is uploaded. This can be done either by providing urls or by saying "It's my work and I choose this licsense". The first step could be to add a way to keep track of each filepath in SVN, author, license, sources. Start by setting the value for each file's license to "(default/legacy CC-BY-NC-SA)". Possible implementations for a user interface for new additions are: * Use our own wiki, which runs Mediawiki (same as Wikimedia Commons). I see several benefits of this, but we also need a way to accept uploads of batches, not just single files. * Look at how other open source projects have solved this. There may be more appropriate solutions available. ... but I'll leave the implementation open. Suggestions are very welcome! If the author of each file already in SVN can be tracked, then it may be possible that the author is willing to give a blanket permission for all their past files in one statement, and all their files in SVN can be updated in one commit. A productive contributor willing to release some of their work under a more permissive license could make a big change. If Dark Radiant would support letting mappers search media/gamedata by license (does it already?), it would make it easier for mappers to create a completely libre mission, which would help facilitate a TDM-libre release. If I understand things correctly. This post does not address all details and it may contain misunderstandings or assumptions, but it's a start. Also relevant: * Is there a compiled and maintained list of recommended or deprecated resources for mappers to use? * https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20311-external-art-assets-licensing/

I played it for about 2 hours and you can certainly feel the inspiration by the old Thief games, which is also the reason they went for the pixelated look I assume. First few minutes you're immediately taught how the stealth works and certainly in the early game playing stealth is a must. Enemies hit hard and if they swarm you after being detected you're pretty much dead if you don't make a run for it. Hit and run when there a multiple enemies seems to be the best strategy in the beginning or try to sneak past them (you can use skill points to improve stealth and other skills). Exploring is rewarding as you can find hidden passages with some good loot (guns, ammunition, potions). Storywise the game is bit weak IMO and it's lacking the atmosphere (it feels barebones) that the old Thief games were able to give you despite the outdated graphics, although this last point might be due to the starting location (canyon). There's no quick save and you can only exit the game by saving, so if you screw up you have to accept the consequences. You receive a curse after dying 3 times (but there are items that can prevent or cure this). All in all I would give the game a 7/10 based on my early gameplay.

After having trouble dragging the body where he wanted, the player said, "No. Noooo." (29:09) Player said, "I'm sorry. I'm not trying to look up there. It's just very awkward to drag bodies." (30:08) What I see is a player having trouble being stealthy while playing a stealth game, so this video just adds evidence in support of making shouldering the primary action over dragging. I never saw that he figured out how to shoulder a body. I think we are wanting to optimize for two different scenarios: One is to optimize for a stealth experience, and the other is to optimize for a "comical" experience. If I'm understanding you correctly, you have a strong fascination with body manipulation. Earlier in this thread, you stated: What you find as "comical", I see as the player suffering with the gameplay and struggling with the controls. Players have written their frustration with the pre-2.12 controls and stopped playing TDM all together. I've already seen players write about their interest in trying 2.12 based on the recent changes, which is huge. They're willing to give it another go, and that's great for our community. I am interested in watching playthrough videos and reading player experiences with the 2.12 version once released. Then, we'll be able to get more feedback about the 2.12 controls. Body manipulation is still available, and I find that it's even easier to do with the 2.12 controls. @STiFU commented something similar: @snatcher, given that body manipulation is so important to you, then I suggest creating a group and creating content about body manipulation. This could be similar to the groups that ghost or ironman the game. For example, Rule #1: Bodies must be dragged. Shouldering bodies is not allowed.

Seems quite interesting, maybe a bit rough around the edges. Available on Steam.

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.

Greatly enjoyed the moment of starting the mission and hearing the Beethoven's symphony. Well fit for the atmosphere of the game and provided the mood for the FM as well. I found acting against my own will by shutting off the music.

In the latest dev17026-10712, GUI debriefing is supported. It works exactly the same way as GUI briefing. It would be great if someone tries it For the nearest future, I'd like to support passing information from game script to GUI debriefing. So that you could show different things in debriefing depending on what player did in the mission.

biggest gripe with my 2080 ti is that it only has hdmi 2.0b so it cant do 4k above 60hz luckily the displayport can and since i bought a monitor with displayport it happily chugs along in 4k 145 hz its an asus ultrawide 32" so matches my board which is also from asus and gfx card also from asus as a bonus, just stay the f... away from asus software the hardware is quite good though. the ultrawide screen has its own problems with some games though (letterboxing) but most of those can be worked around. in hzd the cutscenes are allways letterboxed which is annoying since it has a load of those but the game itself runs fine in ultra widescreen. my 3070 runs on an older phillips tv i had "1080p" eww. but i tried it on my 4k screen just for comparison. sometime in the near future ill ditch the old phillips for a 4k TV since i use my second PC as a streaming device mainly (i dont have cable TV) .

I've been involved in the TDM community now since before we had a game, since way back when we were arguing over lock picking methods lol Finally, I'm finished with Briarwood Manor - my first Fan Mission for The Dark Mod. I've been hatching this for a year so I'm wrapped it's finally done. Briarwood Manor Crowind - made the Briefing for the mission: This is the HD version. Briarwood Manor is a old manor house built and added on to over the years which gives it it's design. The family part is the original home, and two other parts were added on later. Inspiration came from an image in the TDM Editors Inspiration thread. Available through in-game downloader. - available also in the link below. Update Version 1.93 - Fixed a few issues that surfaced, and added a sign to the Armory because people were missing it and thinking the mission was very thin on resources. Remaining Issue: - DO NOT BE SEEN BY THE STEWARD AT ALL! Update Version 1.91 - Removed an erroneous LARGE file that had accidently been in the mission blow the mission size up dramatically other assorted bugs fixed that were pointed out by the Community. Thank you Also replaced the missing script file that controlled the Drop Key which I accidently deleted. LOL Update Version 1.9 - Fixed a bug caused by roof projecting into the sleeping maids room upstairs. Update Version 1.81 - Fixed a bug caused by a faulty newspaper readable that I couldn't fix, so I converted it to a static model that is no longer frobbable. Update Version 1.8 - Fixed a problem with a patch that somehow got misaligned in the previous version of the level creating a ceiling shadow. Update Version 1.7 - Fixed some brush splitting, and a problem with the stairs. Also fixed a readable problem, and a few other minor problems. Added little more detail around the woodshed. Update Version 1.6 - Fixed problem with Crowleys Diary, and a screwed up shadow in the old well. Update: Version 1.5 - Resolved the problems with the Steward and the Dropkey. They should never be a problem again. Unless you decide to hit him, then you are going to break him from his route lol. Fix an sound issue, and fixed a problem where the player could get into places he shouldn't until the right time. lol Improved the performance for the garden area. It should be playable for low end PC's now. If you get stutter issues, drop your video settings, especially the LOD setting. With LOD set to Very Low, Fog will be gone, and detail will be dropped a lot at a distance. The higher you raise your LOD the more you get. ie at LOW LOD Fog comes back. Experiment so you get a setting your PC is happy with. You can use the console command com_showfps 1 to see what FPS you are getting. 30 and above are acceptable. Enjoy. Update: Version 1.4 - Resolved (partially the drop key issue - save before you go into Stewards room, fixed many other minor problems picked up by Abusimplea. Added a new room, made the map a bit more open, solved some of the difficulty issues people had. The map should now be ghostable. I hope. Should be added to the in game downloader within a day or so depending. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I_-ZJDGUtK7P4-b5zsGsEcYAH0vYdgnw/view?usp=sharing If you download from this link, top right arrow pointing down, is how you download it. Click it. A few things to note: 1+ Hour of gameplay - Easy Difficulty is intended for new players. Hard/Expert for most of the TDM Community. This is a challenging map for new players. Use your tools Features a custom intro (above) and a few custom sounds, and some voice acting. Warning: This mission is not for low end PC's. The house is fine, but the garden will make lower end PC's grind. The map has been made sensitive to LOD settings. So if it's grinding you're PC drop you're LOD settings for it, then you can return them to normal once you've finished. On my Medium PC gtx 760 with Normal LOD I get 30 to 60 fps in the garden. I upgraded to GTX 1070 and get pretty good 60 fps in the garden. Briefing Video made by Crowind and I can't thank him enough. He did an amazing job of this. I was so lucky to have him do this. Cast: Voice Actors (Intro) : 1St Merchant: Crowind, 2nd Merchant: Mykel19XX Corbin: Goldwell Voice Actors (Mission): Corbin played by Goldwell, Morgan Crowley played by V-Man, Giles MacCadie (Steward) played by myself Thank you to my Beta Testers: Cambridge Spy, OldJim, V-Man, Jaxa, duzenko and Bikerdude. Cambridge Spy and OldJim did most of the hard grind in finding problems, so thank you both so much. If you are stuck or need help, fastest way to reach me is message me on my youtube channel (link bottom of this post). Use the resources you were given and you should have no problems. Otherwise post spoiler free in this thread. TIP: Don't be seen by the Steward, or he might glitch out. Credits: Crowind put my briefing text into a more thiefy style for Goldwell to voice. He also helped with refining the trailer for the mission. Bikerdude (did the coal door for me and let me use his moonbeam method) and sorted the performance side of things out and thereby taught me how to do performance., grayman for providing a script to handle the drop key (Abuseinplea for fixing it from bouncing) and grayman for solving some conversation problems. EHR+ or showing me how to do the double secret door and Fidcal for his Fidcal's A-Z tutorial for Dark Radiant. Without this starting point I would not have started. Changes 1.2 to 1.93 - Added a second way to get into the building - Dining Room and Parlour doors now pickable, to make it bit less linear - Electric Light in Lobby dropped it's luminosity from 240 to 220 Little bit darker. - Door on the landing (catwalk) is now unlocked - Spider no longer walks down to the ladder, or clips into the floor. - Opened up the level more so you can choose more how you want to tackle it; except for family rooms (top of stairs) - Fixed a graphical bug with the back stairs caused by TDM upgrading to 2.06 - Added some plants around bottom of garden wall alongside cart. I don't like seeing planes meeting. lol - Made some changes to the fog in the garden. - Fixed a problem with the newspaper that was allowing the no frobbing bug to occur. Enjoy Neon PS: Why does TAB key no longer tab? It drops to the bottom of the page. I have to say I hate this editor.

Each time I check the objectives in game (pressing O), this warning appears in the console: I checked a few missions (MoongateRuckus, Eye On The Prize, By the Cookbook, Spider and the Finch) and they all do this. Doesn't happen with TDM 2.11. I reinstalled 2.12, but still get this behaviour. Is anyone else seeing this?

Knowing this series, they're going to be really large maps which take at least three hours for a hardcore stealth gamer dedicated to minimizing AI casualties like me to finish which makes dedicating time to making videos for them difficult.

I'm returning to continue my work, and this silly problem eludes me. Thanks for your help!

It was a relatively strong mid-range card that obviously has less VRAM than it should. And it's still funny that the RTX 3060 packs 12 GB while the RTX 3080 copes with 10 GB. Game devs would like PC users to have 12-16 GB VRAM, but they'll support 8 GB and do little tricks like downgrading the textures automatically.

Skins don't require a model path, that's just a convenience feature to allow the skins to be associated with the model(s) in the editor. However I have no idea if an unassociated skin can be used on a func_static. I suppose there's no reason why it couldn't work, but it's not something I've ever tested and I wouldn't be surprised if it fails to do anything (either in the editor or the game).