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Thanks STiFU. Yes it's easy to aggro all the guards. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely keep that in mind for the next one.

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.

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.

Was playing the first FM that makes use of X-ray glasses... seeing them in action inspired me to write about an addition to their idea. This is likely a feature suggestion, I've played most FM's and never saw it done nor found any script / material features that would allow this result, but presume it's possible with a tweak in materials or the renderer. I'm thinking of ultraviolet lamps that can uncover hidden decals or items: The object is invisible if not lit by a specific lamp, only when the light of an UV source touches them they start to show up. A blue-light can be offered to the player as an inventory item or replacement to the standard lantern, a lantern you can pick up and move only in the world, even come in the form of a candle since why not? The player or the environment must move specific objects and / or light sources to the correct positions to uncover secrets such as codes. Some examples: Next to an UV lantern you find a note hinting there's a secret code in a particular room... you must pick up the lantern carry it to that room then place it on a support, illuminating the number-wheel combination or hint on the secret entrance you must go to. We can even reverse the process and have a static UV lamp on a wall, the player picks up an inventory item and must drop it under the lamp to see what's written on it... we can even have a hidden symbol on an AI which will shine when they walk under that one streetlight. They could also reveal frobable objects which can't be touched unless illuminated... maybe a hidden lock to open a door which becomes available when lit, or a readable note which normally appears blank but can be read or contains additional text if there's an UV lantern next to it. So many fun ideas we could do with this given our usual theme and ideas for secrets! At a technical level, the logical way seems like separating the lightmap of light sources marked with the UV spawnarg, then multiplying with its intensity the alpha channels of all material components marked with the UV material flag. This might mean UV lights have to be rendered to a separate pass which could break some performance optimizations? Would be great if an index was possible instead of one flag, that way different secrets can be revealed by different lamps... even an universal UV lamp / material set would do though.

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.

Hi everyone, I know I am pretty late to the party, but I have been doing some playtesting of this feature and I am honestly loving the way bodies are handled now: hold mouse to move it around, release mouse to drop it again (hold-type-grabber). It just feels very natural and somewhat authentic this way. I love it so much that I would like to see it optionally extended to all grabber-interactions. I also think that the new control scheme is a bit inconsistent because, depending on entity type, different kinds of inputs are required to achieve the same game functionality (the grabber). Here is a table showing how different entity types are currently controlled: Entity type Short Press Hold Button… ...Release Button Junk Grabber Nothing Nothing Food Grabber Eat Nothing Loot Pick-up Nothing Nothing Bodies Shoulder Grabber Release from Grabber Lights Grabber Exstinguish Nothing Tools Inventory Nothing Nothing And here is a suggestion of how I would change it to make it consistent and to have more objects use the fun hold-type-grabber from bodies (of course the release from grabber by button release could be made optional such that a second click would release from grabber) . Entity type Short Press Hold Button… ...Release Button (or optionally press again) Junk Nothing Grabber Release from Grabber Food Eat Grabber Release from Grabber Loot Pick-up Grabber? Release from Grabber? Bodies Shoulder Grabber Release from Grabber Lights Exstinguish Grabber Release from Grabber Tools Inventory Grabber? Release from Grabber? All use-type interactions would be on short-press, whereas all grabber-interactions would be hold-type or on long press / press again. In addition to being more consistent, this control scheme also has the advantage that the grabber is always intentional, i.e., you never accidentally pick up a junk object. The only downside I can see right now is that, with the hold-type interaction, object rotation is a bit more finicky with the hold-type-grabber, because you have to press two buttons at the same time, but it's absolutely doable (I tried).

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/

Similar: My suggestion is getting rid of needing tdm_custom_scripts.script as a requirement. The problem is that unlike every other asset, be it a def or a skin or model or texture, scripts need to be referenced from a core script file for execution: FM's each need to contain a file with that exact name including their custom scripts. The problem with this is that no mods containing scripts can work out-of-the-box as a drag-and-drop pk4, the same way that say a custom character (just AI model or skin) can: Each individual FM needs to integrate it manually, universal mods aren't possible since the last pk4 loaded will override tdm_custom_scripts.script or tdm_user_addons.script breaking all previous mods referencing their own scripts from those files. The ideal solution would be just auto-loading scripts like everything else. But I imagine this may no longer be possible as it could break a lot of existing things like older FM's. One compromise I believe I suggested was allowing a dynamically named script to be auto-loaded by the engine, which would make it so different pk4's don't override the exact same file and conflict with each other: If your mod is named "whatever.pk4" for instance, the engine should auto-execute the script named "scripts/whatever.script" located in that archive... this would provide an elegant and equally sandboxed solution to this long standing issue.

DarkRadiant is presently suffering from huge slowdowns when editing complex maps. They appear to increase the more models and entities are added to a map: With the building modules used in a lot of places, one of my maps is at the point where DR freezes for over one second whenever I merely toggle a filter which is very annoying for every repeated action. The lag occurs both when moving the 2D or 3D camera or viewport around, as well as enabling or disabling filters or using Control + F to go in and out of editing a group. From what I can tell as an end user, this seems to occur because DR drops models that are no longer being rendered from memory, so whenever a change in the camera or viewport is made everything that pops into view or is recalculated floods back in. While this may be nice to save on RAM, my suggestion would be a change or at least an option to disable this behavior and keep everything precached: Like TDM itself, DR should maintain every model and texture used by the map in memory, only removing it once every last instance has been changed or deleted from the map being edited.

I mean this thing I'm not entirely sure what's in the future plans for the inventory grid, but I really like how it makes selecting objects much much easier compared to using keys. My idea is that it can be made even more useful by adding some extra mouse functions, so it can potentially become the main way of managing items over keyboard commands. Currently the only function is: Left mouse click - selects an item and close inventory window I suggest the following: Right mouse click - uses an item and closes inventory window (i.e, a readable or a potion, eliminating the need for the U key afterwards) Left mouse click and drag - closes inventory window and automatically puts item in frob mode, if possible (makes dropping items easy, replaces R key) Note that I think we should still keep R, U and all other inventory associated keys, but this would provide a full GUI-based alternative to them.

Creating a new thread for this as it was being discussed in an old beta-testing thread starting here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21822-beta-testing-high-expectations/&do=findComment&comment=490751 I suppose the main questions are: when should this spawnarg be used, if at all? why was it introduced in the first place? Can we get it documented properly on the Wiki so misuse isn't propagated? @stgatilov @Dragofer

That's already implemented just not enabled on the default helmets: I may set some movement speed immobilization on them in the next version. Great suggestion to use rank to make the disguise drop even faster, will definitely be doing that... experienced members of the team would indeed see through your disguise even faster.

Hello! Tracking down information on software and plug-ins that work with D3 / TDM can be a tough. So I have created a thread here where people can post what software/ plug-ins/ tutorials or other references they've had success or failure with in TDM. 3DS MAX 2013 64bit .ase - Default .ASE model exporter works. However you have to open the .ase file in text edit and manual change the *BITMAP line on each material to read something like: "//base/textures/common/collision" which allows the engine to read the correct material path. md5.mesh / animation - Beserker's md5 exporter/importers for 3dsmax. http://www.katsbits.com/tools, Importing and exporting works. The model must be textured, UV'd, with a skin modifier attached to the bones to export. PM me (Kingsal) for help with this. Imported models using the script will not be weighted appropriately, so this is not recommended if you are simply trying to edit existing tdm content. (Use blender instead) MAYA 2011 32bit md5.mesh - So far I've not had any luck with Maya 2011. I am using Greebo's MayaImportx86 for Maya 2011. I've got the importer working however I get a "Unexpected Internal Failure(kFailure)" and the import fails. This could be due to something finicky in Maya that I am not doing correctly. Will keep trying.. Blender 2.7 about - Blender is commonly used and pretty well supported on the forums/ wiki. Various versions may work as well - https://www.blender.org/download/ md5.mesh / animation Blender MD5 importer/exporter (io_scene_md5.zip): https://sourceforge.net/projects/blenderbitsbobs/files/ Sotha's guide Blender Male/ Female rigs by Arcturus - Here Edit by Dragofer: more links found in this post.

There's a group of players who have meticulously tested and adjusted ghosting rules for The Dark Mod. Please see: Official Ghosting Rules: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148523 Ghost Rules Discussion: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148487 Why alienate an established group of dedicated players?

Ambient atmospheres are in my opinion one of the best parts of the Dark Mod experience, not just for getting a mission to have the right feel but also for inspiration and to have them playing in the background when creating maps. The more the merrier, so here's a thread to collect all the links to ambient music and environmental sounds that could have a spot in TDM's setting. Ambients from the TDM forums Gast's Eerie Lullabies Magnanimous Merry's Miscellanea Orbweaver's Dark Ambients Spadey's Ambients Radioteque's Ambients Kyyrma's Composing Ambient Tracks for Dummies - Kyyrma shows how ambient soundtracks can be made from a set of sounds. Also contains some of his finished ambients. Request for more interior sounds - this thread is a very productive community session where members came up with a large and good selection of new ambients. Uncle Peti's Sound Den Dragofer's Ambients - post #6 in this thread SeriousToni's Ambients - posts #8, 12, 15 and 19 in this thread Ambients from the TTLG forums Custom resources list Gigagooga's Ambients 1 - possibly the largest pack of ambient musics and nature sounds, all of them high quality. Gigagooga's Ambients 2 - this pack puts more weight on shorter swells/hits/pads to be layered on top of a subtle ambient. Gigagooga's Ambients 3 Yandros' ambient loop Sephy's Ambients - a large collection of ambient pieces, including many shorter ones which will be valuable for anyone wanting to try a layered ambience approach like in the Thief OMs and Full Moon Fever. Internet databases www.freesound.org - some of the better composers in my opinion are ERH and BrandonNyte. www.purple-planet.com - a large selection of all kinds of ambient and musical soundtracks to be used freely. www.darkwinter.com - an internet label that publishes a lot of dark ambient music under a Creative Commons license. www.endlessascent.com - sister website of Darkwinter for non-dark ambients. Youtube Asatru Dark - also has very nice reference images for outdoor stone memorials, statue arrangements etc. #4 Void by Raffaele du Marteau & #6 Dreaming of Nowhere by Raffaele du Marteau - possibly the most forlorn pieces I've found on the internet. Alacazam - a prolific Creative Commons ambients composer . Cryo Chamber - for-profit label for dark ambient music with a large selection on offer. Going by their Youtube comments they're fine with people using their soundtracks for games etc., although you'd probably need to buy the soundtracks first. Dark Ambient Mixed Session - as much ambient as something to have in the background while mapping.

Looking at the code, the originals were "pm_mantle_pull 750" and "pm_mantle_pullFast 450". The new "pm_mantle_pull" value is "400". A "pm_mantle_pullFast" value of "450" would be slower than regular pull, not faster. With both being set to "400", they are at least similar. Other than that, it's subjective and the feedback from playtesters was positive. Also, referenced internally here: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22256-movementcontrols-settings-in-main-menu/&do=findComment&comment=489158

I implemented this for bodies. It's working well. Thank you for the suggestion!

That sort of tone doesn't fly in our forums.

DarkRadiant 3.8.0 is ready for download. What's new: Feature: Support new frob-related material keywords Improvement: Mission selection list in Game setup is not alphabetically sorted Improvement: Better distinction between inherited and regular spawnargs Improvement: Silence sound shader button Improvement: Add Reload Definitions button to Model Chooser Fixed: Model Selector widgets are cut off and flicker constantly on Linux Fixed: DarkRadiant will not start without Dark Mod plugins Fixed: GenericEntityNode not calculating the direction correctly with "editor_rotatable" Fixed: RenderableArrow not drawing the tip correctly for arbitrary rotations Fixed: Light Inspector crashes on Linux Fixed: Models glitch out when filtering then showing them Fixed: Skin Editor: models not centered well in preview Fixed: "Copy Resource Path" includes top level folders Fixed: Skin Editor: internal test skins are shown if Material Editor was open previously Fixed: Changing Game/Project doesn't update loaded assets correctly Fixed: Model Chooser: initially hidden materials aren't revealed when enabling them Fixed: Choosing AI entity class 'atdm:townsfolk_commoner_update' causes crash Fixed: Sporadic assertion failure on shutdown due to LocalBitmapArtProvider destruction Fixed: Prefab Selector spams infinite error dialogs on Linux Windows and Mac Downloads are available on Github: https://github.com/codereader/DarkRadiant/releases/tag/3.8.0 and of course linked from the website https://www.darkradiant.net Thanks to all the awesome people who keep using DarkRadiant to create Fan Missions - they are the main reason for me to keep going. Please report any bugs or feature requests here in these forums, following these guidelines: Bugs (including steps for reproduction) can go directly on the tracker. When unsure about a bug/issue, feel free to ask. If you run into a crash, please record a crashdump: Crashdump Instructions Feature requests should be suggested (and possibly discussed) here in these forums before they may be added to the tracker. The list of changes can be found on the our bugtracker changelog. Keep on mapping!

Seems like an inoffensive suggestion to me. It would not provide much of a challenge though since all one need do is let go of the mouse and voila: perfect stillness. For that reason, to work as advertised I feel like it would need to be tuned to be a non-factor 98% of the time, such that even veteran players would forget it exists until suddenly, surprise! here's an edge case where it matters. Like: only movements greater than 90 degrees per second trigger the effect. Basically it would just be an in-game jump scare mechanic. If something makes you as the player character involuntarily jump or flinch then that has a chance of being spotted. In the hands of a devious FM author that could make for some extremely memorable scripted moments. That's all just in principle though. In practice, this is an idea that would cost development energy to implement, and we want to make sure that investment is committed wisely. Remember how the community flipped the f*** out when Hazard Pay had the audacity to restrict saving, going so far as to make a mod specifically to negate the author's intent, and basically ensuring that no FM that's not a deliberate troll will ever use that feature again? Great use of resources that was. /s

I would use this massive list for any fan missions, it includes campaigns too: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148090 There are a lot of Fan Missions for the picking, I myself go for the lesser known ones and the short variety, because sometimes they hide a gem or two. Just like jaxa, I'm a bit outdated after the temporal retirement, but I do remember some amazing campaigns like "The Black Frog". If you intend to play The Black Frog, you should play the first two of the L'Arsene series missions, it's how I did it myself. Also, yes, L'Arsene are a fantastic series. The first mission of L'Arsene is a "rough draft", author was a bit new to Thief level making, but still great either way, after the 3rd you will see how his skill increased by a massive amount.

It is possible to add: Entity spawnarg --- means that this entity should casts shadow even if it's beyond walls according to area/portals. Worldspawn spawnarg --- same meaning as p.1, but applies to all entities in the map. This is OK if the mission is rather up-to-date. The older missions (like before 2.08 maybe) were compiled with older dmap. While I tried to add some compatibility cvar for dmap, it is still likely that fresh dmap will behave differently. You'll have to test the whole map thoroughly, and probably fix dmap-related issues everywhere. On the other hand, adding spawnarg is risk-free, since it does not require fresh dmap. Yes, the major part of the problem is that these caulky walls don't manifest any issues until you carry a light source into specific position. The original game would be buggy only if simple static light is in that position, which is much easier to test. Maybe filter away entities in DarkRadiant and look for visible caulk. I think mappers put caulk on surely-invisible part as an optimization, since otherwise this brush surface would actually be rendered (although only to depth buffer, which is cheap). But some of these surfaces should cast shadow, so it is no clear which can be replaced with caulk and which not. My suggestion is: Create a dedicated thread regarding light/shadow issues. Move the messages from this thread into it too. Analyze cases one by one. It can easily happen that some issues are caused by other things. Decide what to do when we have enough info.

Unfortunately, TDM forum deletes the separator between the numbers. So I have to guess where one number ends and the next starts Also, user can rename screenshot manually, or push it through something that would rename it automatically. Thenwe won't see coordinates on screenshot address on forums.

tdm_show_viewpos cvar and screenshot_viewpos command: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22310-212-viewpos-on-player-hud-and-screenshots/

Relax @Näkki, it's great to hear you enjoyed the game. My personal expectations were just a bit different when I read the Steam page, although the various trailers should have been a warning that stealth maybe wasn't the biggest priority of the devs. From the Steam page: "Weird west legends meet eldritch horror in BLOOD WEST, an immersive stealth FPS." Also "Blood West is a stealth FPS inspired by the genre classics such as the Thief series (whose fans will be happy to hear the voice of Stephen Russell, the actor voicing the master-thief Garrett, returning here as the protagonist), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, or - from the contemporary catalog - Hunt: Showdown. The gameplay rewards the careful approach: scouting the area, stalking your enemies, and striking from the shadows. Can you figure out a way to clear a fort full of ghouls and monsters without raising an alarm?" From my personal experience I think the game is predominantly Hunt: Showdown, a bit of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and a very small portion Thief. Stealth is very unforgiving and makes it almost impossible early game when there are various enemies around, but hey maybe I just suck at it. I don't see Deus Ex in it, unless the skill leveling is the Deus Ex part for you and then I have to disagree with you, as that seems like the trait system in Hunt: Showdown. Edit: What I also understood from the Steam forums is that the original VA was dropped close before the release of the full version and replaced by Russell with no real explanation from the devs why this was done.