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I don't like variable-sized subtitles in general, especially if people can set width at will. If we know speech subtitles are not going to be large, then we can make them always less wide. Although I'm not certain we can know it in advance. Maybe we'd better implement some automatic size adjustment for subtitles in the future? If the subtitle fits one line, then show it on one line. After that, check 3 tiers of width and show the minimum one that is OK. Of course, top-middle point of the subtitle box is always at the same location, even if the box is smaller.

Just too small a gap currently between blocks, to not overlap with something. I think it's better to overlap with the subtitle it's associated with, rather than the one above. The gap could be enlarged, but then 3rd topmost block would be close to screen center vertically, blocking more of the general view. Oval could be further shrunk, but becomes less informative. I guess, with tricky programming, you could suppress the ovals when there are more than 1 blocks shown. Probably no perfect answer.

This ties into another thing I would very much like, namely, the ability to extend the duration of a subtitle beyond the end of the clip. This is not possible now, so would require some build-out of threading capabilities for subtitles. There are a lot of barks that are too short, below the minimum recommended 1 second for a subtitle. In theory, one could add dead-air to the .ogg files, but really, way too much tedious work. Assume that the underlying tech issues to allow duration extension could be addressed. Then extension could be deployed through 2 complementary features - - Have the subtitle system automatically enforce the 1 second requirement for inline only. - Have the "inline" and "srt" commands take an optional additional parameter, for overall duration (i.e., greater than the clip duration). This would allow the subtitler to ask for a small time extension to accommodate CPS/WPM concerns. When specifying the final "srt" phrase, it could use that extended timeline. Typically, for longer clips, a small extension like 1/4 second more would suffice. A long extension is undesirable for voice-subtitle sync reasons. Finally, going back to the previous post, if the subtitles were threaded and more independent of the sound playing, then another capability would be, if a high-priority clip wants to play but there are no subtitle slots, see if any of the lower-priority clips will conclude shortly (ideally, within 1/4 second), and queue the subtitle to appear then (importantly, without shortening). Instead of immediately bumping the lower-priority clip.

The real St. Alban was a pagan who became a celebrated religious personality, this All Saints Day 2010 The Dark Mod places its own spin on this mythical figure. Screenshots: Intro: "'Business' has been slow lately, even more so after most of my gear got snatched during a Watch raid... I've since been forced to hit the streets and pick pockets for a living. But my luck was about to change, last night I was approached by a red hooded figure with a proposition... As we sat down in a dark corner of a nearby inn, he told to me that the Builders of St. Alban's Cathedral in the Old Quarter had recently unearthed a discovery that might lead to the final resting place of some saint." " But before I do anything, I need to get my tools and stash from the evidence room at the local watch station." "with the hawks, doves will congregate they will drop honey from the cliffs wine will surge over the earth the sheep will wander harmlessly with the wolf then the wicked will rise, but to retribution" - 'scripture of St Alban' There is a new version out now, see the following thread St Albans Cathedral version 1.6 Build Time: about 2-3 months. Thanks:- Huge respect to the Dark Mod team for such a great mod and for all the hard work they put into it and continue to put into it. Special thanks to Fidcal, Serpentine and others for their help on the forums and to Testing:Ugoliant, Baddcog, Grayman, Lost soul, Bjorn and Baal (for doing all the Vp work in the town. Readables: Ungoliant and Mortemdesino for all awesome work on the readables. Resource: Fids, Grayman, Ungoliant - guis, models & images. Misc: Loren Schmidt - the author of the map I based the cathedral on. Info: # Like Thief2, some things are climable, pipes, wall vines etc.. You can also drop some of the keys, some door that are frobbabe mean there is another way inside - explore u taffer! # Due to TDM being a lot more of a resource hog than T2 I have been forced to limit the number of Ai in the mission, but they have better placement than my last mission. # On all difficulty levels the player starts with vertualy no tools/weapons, there are weapons to be found - read, read, read! # For the love of all that is holy, read the briefing otherwise you will problems completing the mission. Known issues:- # This mission will have less than optimal fps at a few points on the map, mid range DX9 card(X1900/GF7800) or higher required. # On low end PCs I recommend, V-sync is off, AA is off, Aniso is 4x or lower and that any and all background apps are closed.

Well it should be placed above the subtitle block if possible, I think.

Btw. there's a subtitles folder, but the only subtitle is linked to a non existing sound file. Maybe that's ok, just mentioning.

A couple more: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21739-resolved-allow-mantling-while-carrying-a-body/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22211-feature-proposal-new-lean-for-tdm-212/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22198-feature-proposal-frob-to-use-world-item/ https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22249-212-auto-search-bodies/

Author Note: This is a brand new mission and a new entry into the accountant series. There are some different than usual puzzles in this FM, so if you find yourself stuck try to think about your pathway forward in a logical manner. And if you're still having troubles then pop by this thread and ask (preferably with spoiler tags). This FM is brand new and serves as the first installment in The Accountant series, a few years back there was a small prologue style mission released however I felt that it did not represent The Accountant series so I decided to go back to the drawing board and do a whole new mission that's larger, has a better level design and has a story that lines up closer to what I plan to do with the accountant series. The mission is medium sized and you can expect between 30-90 minutes to complete it depending on your playstyle. Beta Testers Captain Cleveland Crowind Kingsal PukeyBee Skacky SquadaFroinx Voice Actors AndrosTheOxen Epifire Goldwell Stevenpfortune Yandros Custom assets Airship Ballet Bentraxx Bob Necro Dragofer DrKubiac Epifire Kingsal MalachiAD Sotha Springheel SquadaFroinx Available via in-game downloader File Size: 233 MB - Updated to v 1.1 (01.06.2018)

I'd like to follow up on an earlier post, that keeps with the simple approach of retaining a fixed subtitle fieldwidth. Regarding about how one might test that a subtitle fieldwidth is "just right" for a given subtitle-line character limit (e.g., 42/line), font, and font scale, here's what I would suggest. Using dummy sound files, create a set of about 100 "worst likely case" subtitles that are exactly the length of the character limit. These are directly derived from the corpus of existing "story" and "speech" subtitles. Turn this set into 100 sound shaders for another version of my testSubtitles... program (with the desired fieldwidth, font, and font scale under test), and step through them. What you are looking to achieve is NO auto-wrap from the first to second line. If you get auto-wrap, then adjust the font scale and/or fieldwidth and iterate until good. This gives assurance about "worst likely cases", not "worst possible case", e.g, 42 W's in a row. Details: Suppose you have a function that takes a subtitle string and a font, and returns the "draw length" of that string in internal scale-independent font units, that is, pre-scaling/rendering. It's just a summation of lookups into the appropriate static character-width table (assuming kerning is not an issue). Because we will be using the calculated value just to rank the strings for "worse-ness", the "font unit" is arbitrary. [ @stgatilov, maybe you could provide me with such a function in C++? Then I could do what follows. ] OK, so that is embedded into a program that is turned loose on the existing subtitles, to: look for 2-line subtitles (in inline or srt form) where the lines together exceed the character limit convert those to a single string by replacing the linebreak with a space truncate them to the character limit calculate the "draw length" of each export the strings and their draw lengths into a csv (along with a field indicating the source) Do that for each available subtitle source (FM or stock barks), and import all the .csv files as sets of rows in a spreadsheet. Then sort the rows by draw length and deduplicate (ignoring source). Take the 100 "worst likely case" rows, export them, and turn them (using techniques already developed) into sound shaders for the testSubtitles... program. So, a bit of work, but you get assurance that you've optimized things to minimize future problems.

The update to subtitles for The Lord vocal set ("Lord2") is now available, that makes use of the new -dx (durationExtend) feature of 2.12dev: testSubtitlesLord2.pk4 Corresponding Excel file - TheLord2Subtitles.xlsx As usual, the testing FM is used as the vehicle to distribute this update. Out of 390 subtitles (all of which are inline, no srt needed), the changes are as follows. Durations Extended 67 times, -dx was used to pad duration between 0.25 and 0.50 second (instead of default 0.20), calculated based on a presentation rate of 17 cps. The value of 0.50 was set as a cap by policy. When reached, it leads to a presentation rate higher than 17 cps. The cap is ignored if the presentation rate reaches the quite fast 20 cps. For Lord2, this occurred once (-dx 0.61, a value calculated for 20 cps presentation rate). This particular subtitle now is verbatim, unlike the original Lord subtitle release, where the text was shortened. Also for presentation rate reasons, leading optional "(...)" descriptors were dropped or shortened (1 case of each). In the spreadsheet, additional columns were added to help in the foregoing calculations. This will be documented when The Wench is released. Style Issues Capitalize leading 'Tis or 'Twas 14 times. Replace [...] with (...) for descriptors. Improvements for testSubtitles... FMs This applies to Lord2, forthcoming Thug2 and Wench releases, and later. In-game, the "Prev", "Again", and "Next" buttons are now twinned with a group of 3 more buttons labeled "Same but Quiet". As requested by @datiswous, these affect the cursub numeric counter without either playing an audio sound or showing its subtitle. The cursub counter (as an HUD overlay) shows itself more consistently, thanks to an implementation hack. Each subtitle appears in a field that is now Geep-standardized to a half-screen wide, compatible with a 42-char/line limit. This is done with an override of tdm_subtitles_common.gui, based upon a customization of TDM 2.11 code. (So it does not include visual indicators of AI location or speech volume found in recent 2.12dev's tdm_subtitles_common.gui).

Welcome to the forums Ansome! And congrats on making it to beta phase!

I thought I would try out the new subtitles feature in the 2.10 beta by developing the subtitle files for "A New Job". I already had the text of the conversations from my own abortive local attempt to add subtitles to TDM a couple of years ago so it wasn't too onerous. The subtitles system seems fairly solid with just a couple of wrinkles (detailed below). If anyone wants to try this out then you will need to add the three attached files as follows. Firstly, create two folders, "subtitles" and "guis", both directly under the "newjob" directory (under the "fms" folder). Copy the mainmenu_briefing.gui file into the "guis" directory and the other two files (briefing.srt and fm_root.subs) into the "subtitles" folder. The mainmenu_briefing.gui file is identical with the one that is included with the FM but includes two extra lines that #include the subtitles gui - without these lines you won't see subtitles in the initial briefing. Adding these lines to an overridden briefing gui probably needs adding to the wiki page. Other wrinkles/comments In the initial conversation between the two guards, the second guard's first (and only) utterance is too long to fit into the space allocated. One could use a .srt file for the relevant sound but this would seem to be overkill if an FM only had one or two sounds that were too long. A way to split up the 'inline' sounds would be a good improvement. If you do a save when a subtitle is being displayed, when you load that save, the subtitle is still displayed but it never goes away. Further subtitles just get written on the top in a mishmash of letters. What's the plan for localisation of subtitles? I tried using the same system as for other texts but it doesn't work, I suspect because the code isn't calling common->Translate when reading in the lines of the files. mainmenu_briefing.gui briefing.srt fm_root.subs

@datiswous, I suspect this is possible if rather tedious for signs or 1-page broadsheets. You could arrange that the frob calls a script, and the script causes the player/narrator to say a custom .ogg file. That file would be just silence, of the same length as the desired subtitle duration for the translated text (or at least within 5 seconds of it, then using the duration extension methods). Alternatively, the narrator could actually "read aloud" the text. The complexity of the .gui for books is rather daunting, but maybe you could tie into page-turning events. I don't think you'd want to recommend this approach for general book translation throughout an FM. If for no other reason, making the .ogg files would be a pain. Also, it doesn't seem to me to extend to more than one subtitle language. I could imagine that, with engine changes, books could be made into first-class speakers (i.e., as if AIs), so you could optionally hear as well as read a book, and in any event see the subtitle in any language of the player's choice for which a translation is available.

So, just thinking about priority further, we have the 3 obvious levels: 1) story 2) speech 3) effect Suppose, if all 3 slots are filled, a higher-priority subtitle could "bump" (take over the slot) of a lower-priority one. I'm thinking this would not be too difficult technically. From a reader's viewpoint, the main difficulty is that the bumped subtitle would appear on-screen for a shortened amount of time. How do you minimize the grief? You have to choose which subtitle to bump. If they're different priorities (1 is speech, 1 is effect), this is easy. Otherwise, you might choose the subtitle of the sound clip that is closest to completion anyway. This implies knowing the total duration and the starttime of playing clips. Maybe you need to put in a 1/10 second no-subtitle moment when the bump occurs, a visual cue.

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.

List of major console variables and commands: PLAYER tdm_holdfrob_* --- set of variables that affect the reworked frob controls. tdm_autosearch_bodies --- automatically take items attached to unconscious bodies on frob. pm_headbob_mod, pm_lean_* --- allows to reduce some player movements. HELPER tdm_show_viewpos, screenshot_viewpos --- embedding viewpos into screenshot for better bug reports. tdm_open_doors, tdm_close_doors --- cheats to make mission testing faster. TROUBLESHOOTING r_useLightPortalFlow, r_useLightPortalFlowCulling --- improved light-entity interaction culling. Most major effect on shadows. This cvar is responsible for causing light leaks with stencil shadows, please report all of them! (thread) r_useNewRenderPasses --- selects from several renderer backend code paths. This is similar to the old r_useNewBackend cvar which has been deleted. r_shadowMapSinglePass --- faster code path for filling shadow maps. r_useEntityScissors, r_animationBounds --- improved bounds estimates for rendered entities. r_postprocess_dither --- new dithering in tonemap postprocessing for less color banding. r_shadowMapAlphaTested --- experimental mode for alpha-tested surfaces with shadow maps, where transparent areas of texture don't cast shadows. s_realTimeDecoding --- selects code path for decoding sound samples. tdm_subtitles_* --- many cvars for subtitle improvements (location cue, duration extension, debug text).

GAMEPLAY * Frob controls have been reworked completely. Previously players were annoyed by having to do three presses to extinguish a light. Also, some player didn't even know that bodies could be shouldered and were limited with dragging bodies. Now simply clicking the frob button performs the action player needs most of the time, and pressing-and-holding the same button performs alternative actions like dragging bodies and extinguishing candles (thread). * Several aspects of mantling has been improved: overhead mantling has become faster, mantling over low obstacles is allowed while carrying an item or a body. Also it is possible to switch weapon while being on rope/ladder or mantling. Pressing crouch button on rope/ladder now starts slide-down immediately. * Some aspects of gameplay can be further simplified. Auto-search bodies is for players who don't want to waste time searching for keys and purses on guard bodies. Lockpicking "Auto" difficulty now indeed trivializes lockpicking (thread). * Leaning animation has been improved with lower head tilt (thread). * Player footstep sounds have been rebalanced. Metal and water sounds were especially painful previously. * Further improvements of subtitles: revised location and font to avoid overlapping with other GUI elements, added directional cue, better slot allocation. Each subtitle is now displayed for at least one second even if the sound is very short. * More settings to reduce camera bobbing/rolling/shaking, which is good for players who feel motion sickness from default camera animations. * Now several script addons can coexist and work independently (thread). ENGINE * Optimized generation of light-entity interactions in rendering frontend. Also greatly optimized shadow processing, especially for moving lights. Unfortunately, many existing missions are not compatible with these changes, so you might see light leaking through walls (mainly with stencil shadows). Please report all such cases, we'll apply workaround on case by case basis (thread). * The "old" and "new" rendering backends are finally merged into one. It is as nice to program as the new backend, and as old-fashioned and reliable as the old backend. Single-pass shadow maps enabled by default and now respect noselfshadow. * Materials with polygonoffset now interact with lights. So static decals can have bumpmap and specular lighting. Note however: dynamic decals still don't interact with lights. * Revised parallelSky lights and marked shadowing parallel lights as deprecated (thread). * PNG image format now behaves equally to other supported formats. In particular, it is not required to explicitly specify its extension, and it can be referenced directly in GUI code. * Added functions min/max to material expressions, which can be useful for clamping. * Fixed minor culling bugs on animated entities and enabled entity scissors by default. * Reduced color banding for fog with some dithering at tonemapping stage. * Finally our C++ code can compress and decompress all texture formats we use, meaning that we no longer depend on occasionally buggy/slow vendor implementations. BUGS * Now both OGG and WAV sounds work the same way and stop playing while in main menu. * Fixed "gui::startSelect" as a feature that allows to choose player starting location in GUI briefing. * Fixed warnings in newspaper_bridgeport0X core readable GUI. ASSETS * Added automatic turrets, to be combined with security cameras (Thread). * Added more covered furniture models (6289). * Added wall models from Seeking Lady Leicester (6293). * New and fixed versions of atdm:lamp_electric_square_3_lit_unattached (6315). * Fixed UV map on Stove models (6312). * Fixed some issues with moor AI (6345).

Considering only barks, not conversations... For most barks where the audio is more than 1 second, subtitle display extension is neither needed nor desirable. When it's reasonable to limit the subtitle duration to just the audio duration, that's what the captioning community seems to recommend. However, if a comparison of clip length to reading time (estimated by character and/or word count) shows that there's not enough time to read the caption (given a maximum reading rate chosen as policy), then the solutions are - shorten the subtitles (i.e., make it non-verbatim) slightly extend the subtitle display time So, in order to minimize the need for (1), the ability to do (2) is desirable. The amount of extension should be done on a per-subtitle basis, not by a global parameter. Hence the optional parameter.

@stgatilov, sounds so promising! I see, in the bugtracker, you've added cvars: You also said the conversation sounds go into s SND_CHANNEL_VOICE channel. So all parties to a conversation share the same channel, and thus what should be expected is that a single subtitle slot will show all parties, alternating. (This may or may not be better than having a separate slot for each party, but I understand that this is how it is.) I guess from what we're saying here, the conversation system doesn't support duets. It would be interesting to see if having a brief disappearance of the subtitle field between speakers would aid comprehension. This could be tested with, say, tdm_subtitles_inlineDurationExtension = 0.1 @datiswous, you're opinion? For conversations with a voice clip that needed a longer subtitle extensions than 0.2 (or triggers the 1 second duration minimum), "wait until finished" by itself would still (and correctly) cause the next subtitle to truncate the current one. It would have to be "wait until finished" followed by an additional conversation "wait" of fixed duration. BTW, for my testSubtitles program, I used the narrator voice (or maybe the player, I forget which), and, in spite of being from a common source, these sound clips can overlap/superimpose without a problem, presumably in different sound channels. And the subtitles appear in different slots. So the concept of a "sound emitter" is a subtle one.

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

checkDurationsinSRT is now available: checkDurationsInSRT.exe checkDurationsInSRT.cpp This Win/console program scans a directory for .srt files, reporting on each in turn. It warns about those subtitle phrases(aka messages) that are potentially too short or too long in time, or that seem to require too high a reading rate, expressed in characters per second (cps). It also looks for within-file subtitle messages that overlap in time. Invocation: checkDurationsInSRT -l lowerBound [default is 1.0 sec] -u upperBound [default is 6.0 sec] -c maxCPS [default is 17] -d dirWithSrtFiles [default is current dir] -o output file [default is stdout] For more, run with -h or ? options, or see comments in the C++ source code file. EDIT: The above links now access a May 6, 2023 update, that corrects a significant error in character counting for the cps calculation. In addition, if a given subtitle's cps is too high, the warning now includes a suggestion: "try x.xxx seconds". That says what longer duration would be needed to achieve the target cps. How or whether than longer duration could be achieved is left up to you.

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.

@stgatilov, I started to apply the inline "-x" option for extra time to a vocal set, but then realized that I needed to know better how it worked, in order to choose appropriate values. So some questions: 1) Does the inline -x work... a) the same for "story" and "speech" verbosities b) differently If (b), the next questions will need to be answered twice. I'm going to state these in mathematical terms, summarizing the behavior of the algorithm and reflecting the order in which values are combined. All variables are in seconds. c = length of a given sound clip x = inline -x value for extra time. Should be positive. Zero if not given. d = calculated length of subtitle duration L = global giving a lower bound on subtitle duration. Default is 1.0 X = global giving an extension to subtitle duration. Default is 0.2 U = global giving an upper bound on X. Default is 5.0 2) When there is no value of x, which equation describes the algorithm's behavior? a) d = max(c,L) + min(X,U) b) d = max(c+min(X,U),L) 3) When there is a valid value of x, the equation becomes... a.1) d = max(c,L) + min(X,U) + x a.2) d = max(c+x,L) + min(X,U) a.3) d = max(c,L) + min(X+x,U) b.1) d = max(c+min(X,U),L) + x b.2) d = max(c+x+min(X,U),L) b.3) d = max(c+min(X+x,U),L) Thanks for help with this.