Search the Community

Finally, someone who says it. Especially in stealth games, the A.I. has to be predictable to a certain degree, otherwise you really can scratch your planning and approach. Plus, it's more realistic for guards to have fixed paths anyway. No point in letting them guard places where 3 or 4 of them stack up, and leave the other areas unguarded. That said, the A.I. in most missions works predictably (fortunately).

Of course, it is one of the reasons for the decline of online forums, since the advent of mobile phones. Forums on a mobile are a pain in the ass, but on the other hand, for certain things there are no real alternatives to forums, social networks cannot be with their sequential threads, where it is almost impossible to retrieve answers to a question that is asked. has done days ago. For devs for internal communication, the only thing offered is a collaborative app, such as System D (not to be confused with systemd). FOSS, free and anonymous registration, access further members only by invitation, full encrypted and private. https://www.system-d.org

Ignoring is somewhat inadequate as you still see other members engaging in a discussion with the problematic user, and as Wellingtoncrab says such discussions displace all other content within that channel. Moderation is also imperfect as being unpleasant to engage with is not in itself banworthy, so there is nothing more to do if such people return to their old behaviour after a moderator had a talk with them, except live with it or move away. I'd be more willing to deal with it if it felt like there were more on-topic discussion, i.e. thoughts about recently played fan missions or mappers showcasing their progress, rather than a stream of consciousness about a meta topic that may or not have to do with TDM. I guess the forums already serve the desired purpose, or they just compartmentalise discussions better.

Arguably, the objection to the flashlight in Doom3 was that it prevented playing the game in a run n' gun style that old Doom players craved. Doom 3 survival horror purists have rebuked both the flashlight mod and BFG exactly because removing the toggle decreases the tension and makes the game more confrontational rather than stealthy. TDM also prefers stealth but we usually rely on other mechanics to enforce it. Still, this is a neat option to increase the scare factor.

TDM Modpack v3.3 (Maintenance Update) While trying to improve the Loot / Stealth combo I made a mistake and introduced a bug in the last release: Loot count does not update in real time when the loot inventory item is selected. Since this is an annoying bug it has been fixed in Maintenance Update v3.3. Apologies for the inconvenience. ---------------------------------- I take the opportunity to include some minor, experimental additions. If these additions are well received they will stay, otherwise they will be removed in the next major version of the Modpack. 1) A revamped and extended "Mission Complete" theme. I decreased the pitch of the original audio not to sound too loud and triumphant and then I extended the length to include an accompanying drum beat during the aftermath. I want players to get the feel that "the adventure continues" rather than a peaceful "game over" so I opted for an uneasy beat. You can listen to it by going inside the pk4 to sound/meta/game/mission_complete.ogg 2) Semi-transparent backgrounds for the in-game Inventory grid and Objectives screen. I am not sure what the best solution is but I always wanted these screen to have some depth. I applied a 30% transparency to: dds/guis/assets/mainmenu/invgrid_parchment_backdrop.dds dds/guis/assets/objectives/parchment_ingame.dds The download can be found in the opening post. Let us know your thoughts. Cheers!

I don't recall a system for noise masking. It sounds like it'd be a good idea, but when you get into the details you realize it'd be complicated to implement. It's not only noise that that goes into it, I think. E.g., a high register can cut through even a loud but low register rumble. And it's not like the .wav file even has data on the register of what it's playing. So either you have to add meta-data (which is insane), or you have to have a system to literally check pitch on the .wav data and paramaterize it in time to know when it's going to cut through what other parameters from other sounds. For that matter, it doesn't even have the data on the loudness either, so you'd have to get that off the file too and time the peaks with the "simultaneous" moment at arbitrary places in every other sound file correctly. And then position is going to matter independently for each AI. So it's not like you can have one computation that works the same for all AI. You'd have to compute the masking level for each one, and then you get into the expense you're mentioning. I know there was a long discussion about it in the internal forums, and probably on the public subforums too, but it's been so long ago now I can't even remember the gist of them. Anyway the main issue is I don't know if you'll find a champion that wants to work on it. But if you're really curious to see how it might work, you could always try your hand at coding & implementing it. Nothing beats a good demo to test an idea in action. And there's no better way to learn how to code than a little project like that. I always encourage people to try to implement an idea they have, whether or not it may be a good idea, just because it shows the power of an open source game. We fans can try anything we want and see if it works!

I've been enjoying TDM for a few years now, precisely because there isn't a certain style of playing it depending on the missions, which are very different from each other with different objectives. It is not a certain style with more or less strategy, as is usual in normal FPS, which in broad strokes are limited to getting from point A to point B and killing everything that moves in between. It is this variety with great replayability, without getting boring that makes TDM special. Covering practically all genres of video games, from Tetris to survival horror there is everything, stealth is only one of these and not even necessary in some missions

On a separate note, does the stealth score behave as expected now? 2.11 had some fixes regarding detections by guards in dark places and civilians.

TDM Modpack v3.2 released in the opening post Completing a mission without being seen is something that can be done with some practice and patience, and I find this self-imposed challenge quite rewarding. The STEALTH ALERT MOD will play an alerting chime whenever you are seen so that you don't have to monitor the Stealth stats all the time. This mod has been in my back-burner for some time. Despite the small scope getting it right not to annoy anyone was key and it was challenging to find a middle ground for players that may be interested in the feature and players that just don't care about stealth. The mod has been extensively tested and the end result blends in quite well, imho, and I hope it will either be useful or go unnoticed... You can find the download in the opening post. Full changelog: ============================== v3.2 - New release ------------------------------ • STEALTH ALERT MOD v1.0: Inital release • QUIET DOORS MOD v1.1: Improved code Cheers!

Yesterday and today I played Amnesia for a while. It gave me a lot of TDM vibes for the atmosphere and plot in a total Steampunk world. A lot of stealth in the second half of the game because of some pretty nasty AI. Good puzzles. I can even imagine it as an inspiration for some future mission. Recommended game

The stealth stats could be added to the inventory screen, right under the loot overview, although it makes no sense that it would be listed there. Overall this does give inspiration for a better inventory screen. One that lists stats, objectives, a map and inventory.

If you are looking for something that is always present, such as the FPS counter, I am afraid such thing doesn't exist. The TDM Modpack includes yet another take on the stealth stats / score, but I don't think it will fulfill your demand.

I'm using the version from kcghost. I just tested and I can't see any difference inside the inventory. On the stats itself it doesn't show the different loot types (still seen in the inventory), but instead gives more info on stealth score. Edit: I see Dragofer made an updated version of his script. I have to check that out. Edit2: That version works: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=21272&key=02755164a3bed10498683771fe9a0453

From a econimic point of view, that rather seems like suicide though. The "classics" are remade, because they have a good name, not a bad one. Anyway, even a remake of Thief is completely unrealistic. There's the issue of a company holding the IP, there's the issue of stealth games not being exactly popular these days, there's the issue of having to cater to a completely different target audience etc. etc. I can't see it happen, not even in the next 20 years. I still love to play the originals. Nothing wrong with them. I actually think they have the edge over TDM, gameplay wise. There's also the matter of consistency. TDM missions are pretty diverse, depending on the mission author. Not just style wise, but, also gameplay wise. The original Thief's are obviously much more consistent. Whenever I start the original Thief's after a while of only playing TDM, it's sort of coming home.

Instead of remakes of excellent old games, why not remake bad games? Surely there must be stealth games that had an interesting premise or a cool setting but, for whatever reason, fell flat. They might be worth taking a second shot at.

I looked but didn't see this video posted in these forums. It's pretty cool.

It wasn't a "sacrifice", it was a deliberate decision. People wanted the game to be as close as possible to the original, including pixelated graphics. If you ask me, the former version based on the Unity engine looked and felt better. But, hey... I guess I'm not the right person to judge that, as I never played the original, and always found that the art style of System Shock 2 is much better anyway. This also illustrates the issue with community funded games: Too many cooks spoil the broth. In game design, you need freedom, not thousands of people who want you to do this and this and that. Just take a look at the Steam forums and see how all those wimps complain again about everything. Hopeless.

So giving it none of those tags, but making the AI invisible, silent, non-solid, and on a team neutral to everyone would not work? Oh well, it was a horrible inelegant idea anyway.

What I understood is that the idea of TDM was born from that it was unclear if T3 would get a level editor at the time. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20050218173856/http://evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=268

This one is really essential: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138607 Should work fine with the GOG version.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152224 There is a new mapping contest over on TTLG for the Thief: Deadly Shadows 20th Anniversary and the organizers were kind enough to include The Dark Mod along with all of the Thief games as an options for making a mission to submit as an entry. The deadline is a year from yesterday and the rules are pretty open. I recommend going to the original thread for the details but I will summarize here: Rules: - The mission(s) can be for Thief 1, Thief 2, Deadly Shadows or The Dark Mod. - Collaborations are allowed. - Contestants can use any custom resource they want, though TDM cannot use the Deadly Shadows resource pack. - Contestants can submit more than one mission. - Contestants can enter anonymously. - The mission(s) can be of any size. Using prefabs is allowed but the idea is this is a new mission and starting from an abandoned map or importing large areas from other maps is not allowed. Naturally this is on the honor system as we have no way of validating. Mission themes and contents: There is no requirement from a theme or story viewpoint, however contestants might consider that many players may expect or prefer missions to be celebratory of Thief: Deadly Shadows in this respect: castles, manors, museums, ruins inhabited by Pagans and the like, with a balance of magic versus technology. This is entirely up to the authors, though, to follow or not - it is just mentioned here as an FYI and, while individual voters may of course choose to vote higher or lower based on this on their own, it will not be a criteria used explicitly in voting or scoring. Deadline: May 25th, 2024 at 23:59 Pacific Time. See the TTLG thread for details on submissions and the voting process. Provided I can make the deadline I hope to participate. It would be nice to see the entire community do something together, and expressing our complicated relationship with this divisive game seems as good a pretext as any.

I usually skip the Mission Statistics window, but after adding datiswous' fix I took a look and found it rather confusing. I arranged some of the lines into groups and also explained that the Stealth Score is reversed for an update of my patch.

I agree with displaying as a negative but still prefer calling it "Stealth Score" since ghosting includes not using knockouts or kills and the score doesn't account for those. (And the term ghosting is a community meme which new players may not initially understand, but that's less of an issue.)

Yeah, we agree. I am not criticizing that alert X is Y points. Y must be something and it is what it is. Getting "seen" could perfectly have a bigger impact, to encourage players not to be seen - in example - and drastically decrease the score, but this is a different topic altogether. What matters is that the Stealth score remains consistent across missions and among all difficulty levels, which is the case. A different story though is whether the difficulty settings (AI Vision, AI hearing) should play any role or not. I think it all comes down to how the first page is presented, which feels kind of unfocused and therefore dull, and the second page doesn't improve things much. By having the "Mission Score" I propose players will normally always get a positive outcome based on facts. The outcome. The Stealth Score implementation and perception is arbitrary and subjective and perhaps it doesn't deserve much focus not to confuse players. I haven't thought about the Stealth Score and all the variables much and I don't have any suggestion other than a negative "Ghosting Score".