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Mostly yes. For those subtitle sets I've released so far, the remaining steps for someone (not me) are - - optionally do a second QA pass. (I've tried to be careful and thorough, of course.) - fold them into the 2.12dev distribution. This mainly involves deciding where the subtitles for each voice should live when distributed and copying the .subs and .srt files there. It may also involve editing the .subs file to change paths accordingly. That edit is just a find/replace-all, so easy. There are additional gui presentation issues, which are (I hope) unlikely to affect the foregoing. About those issues: experimentation and discussion are on-going, and ideally may be resolved before the final 2.12 release. Also, regarding barks emitted by the player and by non-human AI... unclear to me how they should be categorized ("verbosity speech" vs "verbosity effects" vs ignore). In any event, I don't expect to get to them in a 2.12 timeframe. BTW, I'll be traveling this coming week as well as later in the month, so will be periodically unresponsive.

TDM has tons of textures from "free" texture resources that do not allow redistribution and cannot be incorporated into a commercial project. Someone would need to create a huge replacement pack of textures that do not break the look of existing missions and do not infringe on the copyrighted textures. Also, many artists who contributed to this project do not want 3rd party entities to use their work in commercial projects. They intended the models, textures, sounds, animations to be exclusively used for Darkmod content. You would either have to replace ALL assets or contact every contributor and ask them to re-license their assets. Many contributors are no longer active with the project and haven't visited the forums in years so it would be no easy feat. I cannot speak to Debian policy but I think that they treat installers that add non-free content the same as non-free content itself. One could argue that Steam is such an installer but I guess Debian would counter that there are a few fully Libre games on Steam. I think Debian, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint need to consider a repo that allows for games (etc) that include non-libre content but intentionally offer this content for free to the community with no stipulations other than "don't try to sell it as a product".

The gamepad implementation allows for a great degree of flexibility to personalize settings, aside from a few minor issues that I mentioned here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22337-gamepad-bindings/ I would say that playing TDM with a gamepad works very well, especially considering that it was implemented as experimental and hasn't been changed since then. If I could, I'd go back to 2021-you and congratulate you on buying that gamepad. I notice that your DarkmodPadbinds.cfg looks very different from mine...

It seems like more and more "thief" and "thief players" is becoming a short hand to dismiss community members earnest desire to improve the game - which happens to be a barely legally distinct "thief style" game which was made by thief fans for thief fans and is "designed to simulate the stealth gameplay of Thief". Who is the predominant player base of the game supposed to be beyond fans of the thief games? Is there some better avenue to find feedback for the game beyond this forum? FOSS and linux forums? I have seen maybe half a dozen posts from that segment. I am a thief fan, I play thief fms, my association with those games is what drives me to play and make things for this game. Are we supposed to pretend the original games are not a huge reason why most of us are here at all? TL;DR version:

Here's a screen shot of an FM I've been building to help test/review subtitles for an AI, in reproducible order with 100% coverage. It uses the TDM-distributed .ogg files, but has custom soundshaders. Each such soundshader wraps exactly one .ogg file, and has a uniform naming that includes an index number. The collection of soundshaders is housed in a single file. The hope is that that (prior to embedment in the FM) this file can be easily generated from a directory listing of the .ogg files for a particular AI, and subsequent manipulation. There are 3 buttons to step through the file. After each button press, you hear the vocal and see the subtitle. Also, briefly the index number within the list appears (a floating "7" near the statue's shoulder in this screenshot.) You can also - using a custom CVar in the console - jump to a particular index number. Unsurprisingly, you can't edit the subtitle within the FM. Just note what needs changing and do it with a text editor. Also, this FM is not intended to evaluate TDM's stock soundshaders, nor AI lip syncing (so just a statue speaking here.) If you hit the buttons fast enough, multiple sound files play at once, and multiple subtitle fields appear (up to the max of 3 the .gui offers)

Thanks! 1) Doing LONG_PRESS PAD_A (what I, for lack of knowledge, call "jump-mantle" or "_jumpmantle") differs from doing PRESS PAD_A ("_jump"). "_jumpmantle" differs from "_mantle", so they must be mapped to different button-calls. "_jumpmantle" differs from "_jump", so they must also be mapped to different button-calls. This appears to be the case, but it is not evident (or changeable) in DarkmodPadbinds.cfg. "_jumpmantle" seems to be hard coded to always connect to the same button as "_jump" but with a long press. It is as if bindPadButton PRESS PAD_A "_jump" is not actually just binding PRESS PAD_A to "_jump", but rather interpreted as "link PAD_A (regardless of button press time) to behave exactly like keyboard SPACE for short and long presses". I would have expected the default DarkmodPadbinds.cfg to explicitly read: bindPadButton PRESS PAD_A "_jump" bindPadButton LONG_PRESS PAD_A "_jumpmantle" bindPadButton PRESS PAD_B "_crouch" bindPadButton LONG_PRESS PAD_B "_mantle" ... but neither LONG_PRESS PAD_A or "_jumpmantle" is listed in the file. If there are actions "_jump" and "_mantle", I suppose there must also be an action "_jumpmantle" since it is possible for the player to do all those movements: * "_mantle" does the movements "crouch on the high surface, then stand up" * "_jumpmantle" idoes the movements "jump slightly forward, then land standing on the high surface" * "_jump" idoes the movements "jump up, then land exactly where you started" If the actions "_jump" and "_moveup" are not synonymous, then perhaps the action "_moveup" is what i call "_jumpmantle"? 2) Thanks for the link! It was useful in more than one way. I'll link to that page from https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Bindings_and_User_Settings#Gamepad_Default_Bindings if I can get an account on the wiki, which proved more difficult than i thought (https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22327-how-can-i-create-an-account-on-the-tdm-wiki/). However, it does not answer my question how to find out the name ("<button>") used for a button on my gamepad. Basically, I would need to press the button on my gamepad and some program could tell me "That button is called 'PAD_A'". In my case, I have a gamepad "Logitech F310" (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logitech_F310_Gamepad.jpg) which has a "Logitech button" (see image) that I want to use. I was hoping to find out the "button name" for that button and then edit DarkmodPadbinds.cfg to map it to a function. 3) ... but if that button has an "unusual name" that TDM does not recognize, then it may perhaps not work. E.g. if that button is called "PAD_LOGITECH" and TDM cannot recognize that name, then I cannot map anything to it via DarkmodPadbinds.cfg. Using QJoyPad I can map any keyboard key to it instead, as a workaround, but I cannot map MODIFIER to it (since MODIFIER cannot be set to a keyboard key). If current implementation is still called "experimental", then I must say it works very well; @cabalistic: kudos for that! I may not have continued playing TDM had it not worked with a gamepad.

COPIED FROM "English Language Subtitles for AI Barks". MORE RELEVANT HERE... @datiswous, I imagine the TDM fonts don't support bold, italics, underline, etc. Maybe just different sizes. I don't think color by itself would be helpful for speaker identification, unless there was a color halo or name tag above each vocalizing AI. Might be useful for word emphasis, though. @stgatilov, if there is location data available to the subtitle code, that could be used in various ways, using a different GUI: 1) Let the 3 slots be either left justified, centered, or right justified, depending on relative speaker location (including off screen). This could be implemented by 9 actual windowDefs (all of same size; 3 each for each current slot, overlaid, with each of the 3 justifications.) Alternatively, with a 3x3 grid, all windowDefs the same size, but 1/3 the current width.) 2) Or instead, at the top edge of each slot, show a short horizontal bar, whose left/right position is moved to be under the relevant AI. If off screen, add an arrow head (<-- or -->). Naming is harder, if the subtitle code can't get at that info. Though at the point the sound engine is passed the sound to render, presumably it knows the speaker, and could independently and in parallel visualize the name information (particularly if the sound engine passed back which GUI slot it was going to use for subtitle.) It is true that associating a name (say, using a small tab-like field) with a slot is less useful when the player doesn't know the AI names (i.e., with no floating names above the characters). If the technical issues of naming could be overcome, then there's still the question of when you'd want to give a name (Rupert) versus type (thug #3) versus generic (speaker #2). Also have to handle special cases of (narrator) and (player). Dreaming... Instead of text names, more fun would be to show a thumbnail face of each AI next to their slot. With a question-mark face when they are off-screen?

@datiswous, I imagine the TDM fonts don't support bold, italics, underline, etc. Maybe just different sizes. I don't think color by itself would be helpful for speaker identification, unless there was a color halo or name tag above each vocalizing AI. Might be useful for word emphasis, though. @stgatilov, if there is location data available to the subtitle code, that could be used in various ways, using a different GUI: 1) Let the 3 slots be either left justified, centered, or right justified, depending on relative speaker location (including off screen). This could be implemented by 9 actual windowDefs (all of same size; 3 each for each current slot, overlaid, with each of the 3 justifications.) Alternatively, with a 3x3 grid, all windowDefs the same size, but 1/3 the current width.) 2) Or instead, at the top edge of each slot, show a short horizontal bar, whose left/right position is moved to be under the relevant AI. If off screen, add an arrow head (<-- or -->). Naming is harder, if the subtitle code can't get at that info. Though at the point the sound engine is passed the sound to render, presumably it knows the speaker, and could independently and in parallel visualize the name information (particularly if the sound engine passed back which GUI slot it was going to use for subtitle.) It is true that associating a name (say, using a small tab-like field) with a slot is less useful when the player doesn't know the AI names (i.e., with no floating names above the characters). If the technical issues of naming could be overcome, then there's still the question of when you'd want to give a name (Rupert) versus type (thug #3) versus generic (speaker #2). Also have to handle special cases of (narrator) and (player). Dreaming... Instead of text names, more fun would be to show a thumbnail face of each AI next to their slot. With a question-mark face when they are off-screen?

It is possible that this is a setting that needs to be activated to work: https://mantisbt.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23221

@stgatilov, attached is a screen shot of what I'm calling the "sound source cue" or "sound source oval" directional indicator. Unlike the previous Photoshopped mockup, this is implemented as a prototype in gui script. It shows a cropped screenshot of the 3 stacked subtitle slots, with a red dot indicating the direction, respectively (from the bottom slot) left of player, straight in front of player, and straight behind player. Those locations are simply hard-coded by local float variables dot0_x, dot0_y, dot1_x, dot1_y, dot2_x, dot2_y. I need the engine to supply those as gui globals instead. (You can change the names as you wish). Once I have a 2.12dev update with those variables (and please, the verbosity enumeration too, that we talked about), then I'll do another pass to optimize the art and tweak the dot positioning and size. That's better done when dynamic dot movement is available. For the next go around, it might be sufficient if the engine just provided the direction as a unit vector, in which case the engine-side assert is: square_root(dot_x^^2 + dot_y^^2) = 1.0 Later, we could play around and see about encoding distance too. In which case the "=" in that assertion would be replaced by "<=". Do you think that "sound source cue" should be something the user can turn on or off as an option? If so, that's another gui global to pass, probably a cvar.

I agree that the current system would allow any of the TDM-supported languages (English or otherwise) in the subtitle strings. But this would still be a relatively fixed choice of subtitle language (e.g., German instead of English). As you say, a design is needed of how to support making the choice of translation language reflect the settings language. Otherwise, we might end up with "language subtitle packs" for each FM that have to be manually installed/manipulated. I'll revisit that wording tomorrow.

I am going to sort-of reveal that this is loosely like the nature of my upcoming mission. I noted it here when JackFarmer asked about things that are coming along in this post: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/profile/37993-jackfarmer/&status=3943&type=status It too is a builder church. The player is requested by a hopefully famous character in another mission to handle some business that is affecting the congregation. I am looking to invoke some info and history laid down in other missions as a hook story.

I dom't use it, i found it here with the filter set to OpenSource. the TOS and PP isn't excluding for an OpenSource app, if they use ads mean that they also need to pay an server for this online service. OpenSource is not synonymous with free either, perhaps after the beta phase it is no longer free, so perhaps you can take advantage of the fact that it is still free to create a series of textures that can be used or search another one in Futuretools. AI generated textures and assets, by definition, don't have any copyright, so you can use them as you want. https://www.futuretools.io/?pricing-model=free|open-source&tags-n5zn=gaming

I created the page: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Lightgem In the source I placed the following text: <!-- Page text made by forum user Fiver: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22327-how-can-i-create-an-account-on-the-tdm-wiki/&do=findComment&comment=491145 --> Personally I think the page isn't really necessary because the info is already present under HUD.

@datiswous, as to where to place linebreaks, I found the "Line Division" section of this webpage to be useful guidance: https://dcmp.org/learn/597-captioning-key---text (For my Style Guide Part 2 - planned for year-end release - I have a very similar section, just with the subtitle examples changed to use typical TDM barks and centered justification.)

hm.. I wonder if that's what I did.. Would be kind of a stupid mistake. But I often make small mistakes while creating subtitle files, which then take a while to figure out.

In the kdenlive subtitle editor, use the "End" counter to adjust the subtitle phrase end point. Then export to an .srt file, and look within that file. Does the phrase have the same specified endtime, or has it been changed? The latest Cadet release version, 2.0.044 of April 14, incorporates the beta. The main feature added was that, if you go into Tool/Preferences, there's a new line "Show cc reading rate with alarm threshold of [...] in units of [CPS or WPM]". There's also a bit more flexibility in how to advance from one phrase to the next. BTW, I found the Cadet project feature adds no value. I just (re)use an anonymous project, and export the .srt. If later I need to adjust something, I can use "Import" of the .srt to do so. If I strongly needed a tool that had speech-to-text capabilities, I would not use Cadet. Since I've got preexisting text for the vocal sets I'm currently processing, I'm not needing speech-to-text right now.

As for implementation: Let's say the engine generated a sound source location (relative to the listener's axis, and only in the horizontal plane) as a unit vector in Cartesian coordinates. That is, the origin is at 0,0 and straight ahead is 0,1 straight behind is 0,-1 due left is -1,0 due right is 1,0 This would be passed to the gui as floats, e.g., soundDirN_x, soundDirN_y, where N is the subtitle slot number. The gui would take care of translating the origin and scaling the vector. For the oval, the scale factor would be different in the x and y directions. (This is an approximation of actual location on the perspective projection of a tilted circle, but should be good enough. And avoids any trig functions on the gui side)

Mandrasola is a small sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter steals some herbal products from a smuggler. The mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank Bikerdude, BrokenArts and Ocn for playtesting and voice acting. Thanks goes naturally to everyone contributing and making TDM possible. This mission occurs chronologically before the Knighton's Manor, making it the first mission in the Thomas Porter series. Events in chronological order are: Mandrasola, The Knighton's Manor, The Beleaguered Fence, The Glenham Tower and The Transaction. The winter came early and suddenly this year. Weeks of strong blizzards and extremely harsh cold weather hit Bridgeport hard. With the seas completely frozen, a rare occurence indeed, most of the City harbor commerce has stopped completely. Vessels are stuck in the ice and no ship can leave or enter the City, resulting in the availability imported goods declining and their prices skyrocketing. One of these imported items is Mandrasola, a rare herbal product, which is imported overseas from the far southern continents. Mandrasola has its uses in alchemical cures and poisons, but mostly this substance is used for its narcotic qualities by commoners and even the nobility. The problem with Mandrasola is that excessive use is extremely addicting and the withdrawal effects are most grievious. Many are utterly incapable of stopping using Mandrasola and are transformed into quivering human ruins if they do no get their daily dose. And now this expensive and rare substance is running out from the whole City. Me and my fence, Lark Butternose, would love to grab this monopoly to ourselves: selling the last few doses in the City would probably be worth a fortune. According to Lark's sources, there remains only one smuggling lord who still has Mandrasola in stock. The problem is that this individual maintains an exclusive clandestine operation and only supplies a few nobles. Despite our best information gathering efforts we couldn't learn who the smuggler is and where he or she operates. Luckily we have an alternate plan. While searching for Mandrasola related information, we learned that a noblewoman called Lady Ludmilla is addicted to the substance and has paid high prices for small amounts of it. We also know that she has visited frequently someone in the Tanner's Ward waterfront, and since she goes to the area personally we believe she is visiting the smuggler. The plan is simple: I must monitor Ludmilla's most likely entryway to the Waterfront and then follow her to the smugglers hideout. I'd better be very careful around Ludmilla. She must not realise I'm following her or she probably won't lead me to her dealer. Hurting her is also out of the question. After she leads me to the smuggler's hideout, I can take my time to break in carefully and steal all the Mandrasola I can find. While I'm there it wouldn't be a bad idea to grab some loose valuables as well. I've now waited in the blistering cold for a few hours already. Looks like there are a few city watch patrols in the area to complicate matters... I think I heard a womans voice beyond the north gate. That must be lady Ludmilla, I haven't seen many ladies in these parts. I'd better get ready.. Links: Use the ingame downloader to get it. WARNING! Someone always fails to use spoiler tags. I do not recommend reading any further until you've played the mission.

@stgatilov, I was originally thinking I could take your 5 values and, in the gui, do the inverse math to get back what you called in the engine code the "spatializedDirection" (normalized x,y vector from the listener to the source, relative to the listener's axis). But I realize that's impractical... math would need C++ Instead, let me show the end goal I was thinking about, through a mockup. The idea is to have a non-moving oval (representing a disc laid flat on the floor, in perspective), with a small colored square constrained to move smoothly along it, representing the direction of the sound source. In the mockup (attached cropped image), the oval is blue, the square is red, and the direction being indicated is front right. (Or maybe the ring should be dark red and the square light blue... or disk could be solid, etc.) The translucent field is 240 (out of 640) pixels wide, so the oval shown is roughly 30 pixels wide. The perspective could also be made more prominent, if instead of a uniform stroke width on the ring, the lower ("nearer") edge was thicker than the upper ("farther") edge. If implemented, the gui spacing between the 3 subtitle slots (not shown here) might have to be tweaked a bit to avoid overlaps.

In the first post of the other topic Geep proposed: Then Stgatilov's answer: But I think applying subtitles in different languages shouldn't be too hard I would think, but I don't know how the current translation system works. The engine should apply the correct subtitles based on the applied language setting, this doesn't need a whole new language system I think. Not sure who's going to write those subtitles though. I can only do Dutch and English and nobody needs Dutch I think. I suggest further discussion of this to take place in topic https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21741-subtitles-possibilities-beyond-211/

FONT NOTE: Starting with this test FM, to improve readability, the Carleton subtitle is compressed in width to 75% of its size in previous test FMs. The backing field is similarly reduced in width. These are implemented in the FM's custom-override guis/tdm_subtitles_common.gui. If desired, you may copy that file to previous test FMs to propagate the change. The subtitles for The Lady (aka Noblewoman) vocal set are now available: testSubtitlesLady.pk4 The wiki's "Vocal script: Lady" suggests these traits: As usual, the testing FM serves as the vehicle to provide these subtitles for eventual incorporation into TDM. Statistics In file fm_root.subs there are 243 "inline" subtitles, including: 37 with an explicit linebreak, intending 2 lines 206 without 17 of the inlines have explicit duration extensions, as follows: 11 from 0.25 to 0.49, for 17 cps presentation rate 6 capped at 0.50 seconds, for 17-20 cps none with more than 0.50 seconds There are 2 SRTs, each with 2 messages that respectively indicate start and end of singing/humming. No duration extension was needed, and none of the 4 messages contained a linebreak. In all, in this vocal set captioning, there are 245 voice clips with subtitles, showing 247 messages. Corresponding Excel File LadySubtitles.xlsx This is based on Version 5 of the Excel Template for TDM bark subtitles, which was also featured in the preceding work for Average Jack, The Pro, The Maiden, The Grumbler, and The Mature Builder.

The subtitle cvars are not for user configuration, they are internal. They would change only if if TDM developer decides that... if player changes that, it would be his problem. Just like very many cvars which are totally not for the user to change. I just committed it in svn rev 10358, so expect it to arrive... I guess I'll publish dev build this weekend. I decided that options always start with minus, while commands always start with letter. That's how parsing can work in well-defined way, regardless of linebreaks. The final syntax is: -durationExtend 0.5 -dx 0.4 Also, for now it only work on inline comments (warning and subtitle removal when applied to SRT).

@stgatilov, both the compressed Carleton and Stone fonts look better than the original uncompressed IMHO. We could give the user a choice of either, while keeping the gui scale factor fixed at 0.25 (e.g., 12 pt). If Stone's artifacting you mentioned was not too problematic. I did a statistical analysis of those two fonts, and Stone strings seemed to be slightly less wide than Carleton by about 7% (however, Stone 24pt requires scaling down to get to 12pt, and the analysis may not be treating the resulting "half-pixel" widths right.) But if true, background field widths based on Carleton should still be excellent for Stone. Another topic. I'd like to play around a bit with the 5 sound-source-location variables you were using to position the white bars. In file tdm_subtitles_message.gui, these were of form: "gui::subtitle0_oriBackLeft" // where 0 if subtitle was shown in vertical "slot 0"; could be 1 or 2 and name suffixes were _oriFront, _oriFrontLeft, _oriFrontRight, _oriBackLeft, and _oriBackRight Could you briefly explain what values these could take on, how they would work or differ, how often they get updated? Thanks