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As a player, one thing I'm also not too fond of is the lack of uniformity. I think mission authors should take into account that especially players new to the mod want to figure out how the weapons work, and, they will have a hard time doing so, if many missions tweak the weapons. Apart from the "WTF" moment, they will also not know what the default behavior of the weapon is. Also not a fan of some other things some missions introduce, like the different sounds for foot steps etc. Most of them don't improve anything over the default sounds, to be honest. They're rather worse, and irritate me every time I play a mission with custom sounds.

I like this very much. It goes in line with the idea that players become more creative when they can alter the world around them temporally instead of permanently. Each time is a different challenge. It will never happen globally, though. Good news is that we have Shadow Arrows.

Good question. Maybe because I don't feel myself too guilty breaking these missions? Maybe because I know that fixing them will be a long story. And I feel confident that we (or more likely I ) will be able to fix all of them by 2.13. You might have noticed that I have also enabled two behavior changes in the latest build (1 2). In these cases it is not even mappers' fault that behavior change is needed. I have a script which can update all missions at once so that they work properly both in 2.12 and dev builds. But somehow I feel I should wait for at least some feedback on the new behavior before doing a massive change to dozens of missions.

Megatextures were a horrible idea for obvious reasons, not sure why ID chose to learn that the hard way. The concept from what I remember is the whole map uses a single gigantic texture... instead of how we independently pick a couple of 1024 px brick materials for a few brushes and surfaces, the whole map acts as one model with one material and a single texture which probably needs to be 1 million x 1 million pixels even for a small level. This is ridiculous from a perspective of system resources with 100's of GB's of storage and huge (v)RAM requirements and hours of loading time, as well as raising the skills required for level editing since you now need mappers to also be texture artists and sculpt / paint their levels instead of just placing stuff. The only thinkable benefit is there's no repetition since every pixel on every part of the world is unique, but who notices any similarity with independent texturing if it's done right anyway? Detail textures have yet another advantage there: Since you scale the pattern independently on top of the original texture, you can make every surface appear as if it has unique pixels like megatextures. Hence why I'd advice having the details be very high-res, 4k or 8k even 16k if we can take it: Yes that's enormous, but remember we'd only have a few patterns probably no more than 15 in total, and can store them as grayscale then use a single image to modify both albedo / specular / normal (heightmap to normalmap): Map the detail in world space rather than the brush or model UV map, and the resulting pattern on every surface in the world will always be unique since the original and detail textures will be out of sync.

While I really like new things in TDM, I fear that as long as these ideas are not part of the core mod, only very mission authors will use them...

The original sin of the RTX 3070 is the VRAM amount, not the bandwidth. 7600 XT 16 GB has half the bus width and 64% the bandwidth (288 vs 448 GB/s), and even it can be made to benefit from the doubled VRAM. You're going to see some RTX 5000 cards with 256-bit bus and 16 GB, 192-bit and 12 GB. Though it will be faster GDDR7.

Well, the 7600 XT is considered sus for putting 16 GB on 128-bit, but it clearly works in some scenarios. Also IIRC GDDR7 will have about +30% bandwidth over GDDR6X right out of the gate, rising to about +100% as the generation progresses. Big caches (Infinity Cache L3 for AMD, lots of L2 for Nvidia) have made smaller bus widths more viable, and I think they have improved compression techniques and other factors over time to help alleviate bandwidth demands. There's already a little bit of analysis of what we can expect to see in RDNA3+ and RDNA4, very technical though: https://chipsandcheese.com/2024/02/04/amd-rdna-3-5s-llvm-changes/ I am eager to see if AMD is bold enough to do (or allow AIBs to put) 32 GB on the top RDNA4 card, which has long been rumored to be slower than the 7900 XTX in raster, but will hopefully beat it in raytracing and other areas such as AI/ML perf. And I think that card will have a 256-bit bus and 16 GB memory normally.

@The Black Arrow That's a good analysis. I don't disagree but we're referring to different time periods with different quality aims: In the early days of 3D and low-res CRT screens when we had 256x256 textures, detail textures were used to make surfaces appear as if they have 1024x1024 textures... today in the age of 1080p monitors such texture can appear blurry from up close, we want to make 1024x1024 textures appear of 4096x4096 quality. Back then the goal was to get at least a little bit of perceived sharpness, today the goal is to see those microscopic details on every surface as if everything is real... while the concept of detail textures is old it scales to cover both aims. As you correctly pointed out, the ideal solution would be upgrading the actual textures themselves. Sadly there are two big problems with this that will likely never be possible to overcome: Someone must create or find identical textures to replace existing ones, which have to retroactively fit every old FM. That would be a huge effort for so many images, and will not look exactly the same way so people would complain how "this wall used to be made of small red bricks which are now larger and yellower which isn't what I intended and no longer line up". An advanced upscaling filter may be able to bump the resolution with good results, this would be a lot less effort and retain the exact appearance of textures. The even greater issue is storage and memory use would go through the roof. Imagine all our textures (from surfaces to entity skins) being 4096x4096 which would be the aim for decent quality today: TDM could take over 100 GB of drive space, you'd need at least 16 GB of RAM to run it, and the loading time of a FM will be 5 minutes. Detail textures are a magic solution for both problems: They're overlayed in realtime on top of the standard textures without changing their base appearance. This means you see pixels several times the scale of the image without requiring any image to actually be at that resolution, no vRAM or loading time increase. And if detail layers are disabled with distance you also don't lose FPS in per-pixels calculations when distant lights update.

that´s why i will give you a patchnotes for version 0.0.7.5 (and in a vid you showed so) Okay - if German was maybe only for settings ?! - then it doesn't matter otherwise? Why eliminated? and a 2GB game with no chance to save - looks ambitious to me Of course - the biggest part will be the engine! - but the game itself ? I'm going to take up the challenge and definitely : I'm going to have a lot of fun ( sure : it's not just "girls that want to have fun" ) CU ! Edit (24.04) Ohhh : I see (no save needed)

The translation pack has the german string in the base pack rather than in the fm subfolder. I will fix it in the mission database. Edit: Fixed in the mission db Edit 2: Nope. Not exactly fixed. It seems that lang files in the mission string folder need to be "complete" because they fully override the core strings. If I am correct, this was broken in 2.11 when we permitted in-file overrides of core files in missions. Edit 3: Still broken in 2.10, rolling back to 2.07 Edit 4: Still broken in 2.07. Something has gotta be wrong with the translation specific to this mission. Edit 5: The core mission XD files don't use the strings so nothing happens if the lang files are in the strings/fm subfolder. Probably means that the translation packs "never worked" for many missions unless impacted players sought out special editions of the missions on Tels' server. What a mess. Fuzzy recollection time: I think Tels was trying to push the team to mass convert all missions to move XD data into strings/fm/english.lang but nobody wanted to broach it and even mission authors weren't happy about this way of handling things. If the translation pack takes precedence, the best way forward is to include the converted XD file into it. Testing... Edit 6: Couldn't get the XD update to work, so I decided to checkout Darkfate's version. It works flawlessly. I copied their pack into the standard translation pack and the added string files for the other languages worked as well. Darkfate's packs include map files so I'll need to study whether we can avoid that. Otherwise we are basically doubling our mission db or "damaging" our hosted versions to make them translatable. Since this mission is so small and probably will never be edited again we can probably use darkfate's version as-is.

Part of my point was that breakable electric lights could have an interesting contrast: They'd attract attention while also making it harder for you to get caught. When broken they should create a loud popping noise that makes nearby AI walk to them and investigate the disturbance, if they see the broken lamp even draw their swords and do an alert search... however once they've calmed down and moved on, you're rewarded with the ability to sneak there without being seen. The player will have one of two typical strategies: Either wait until there's no guards nearby in order to shoot a lamp, or shoot such lights if it's better to have guards searching but not able to see you compared to the guards being calm but able to spot you in bright light. Mappers would themselves place those lamps in areas where they want to create this particular challenge.

Well if you go to the mission downloader again, it will show a new update for the mission, which is the translation pack. If I select Germain language and activate The Outpost, TDM will not start anymore (2.13 dev)

As of 09e5ec1cae16b8350097fc97839de64cf96c4e88 I have changed the logic to write spawnargs if EITHER the speaker radii are different from the shader default, OR if there were min/max spawnargs to begin with. Spawnargs will no longer be created (or deleted) as a result of a speaker move, but will appear and change if the speaker is resized, which I assume is closer to the expected behaviour.

For free ambience tracks it's as Freky said: you look around on the internet for tracks with the appropriate license to be included in your FM. Fortunately, you likely don't even need to bother doing this as a beginner as there's an entire "Music & SFX" section of the forums full of good ambient tracks for you to use if the stock tracks do not meet your fancy. You might also be interested in Orbweaver's "Dark Ambients", which come with a sndshd file already written for you.

In pursuit of a long-sought secret, the key to life everlasting lies deep within the recesses of an ancient athenaeum. Dragofer, Bikerdude, and I proudly present our FM for the Christmas Connections Contest titled "Written in Stone." Notes - TDM 2.10 Beta 5 or later is REQUIRED to play this mission. However, it is recommended to play using 2.10 Beta 6. You can get the latest version here. - This FM is a sequel to The Elixir. While it is not vital to play that before playing Written in Stone, there are some story connections. - This FM may be more hardware intensive than normal. LOD settings can be set below "Normal" to improve performance on low-end machines by disabling certain features. - Various areas will look better with shadow maps enabled at the possible expense of performance. - This FM implements the func_peek mechanic, allowing players to peek through any door that has a keyhole on it by leaning forward. PLEASE NOTE: This function has been known to cause crashes for a small number of players in the past, likely due to using the 32-bit version of TDM. At no point in this mission is it required to use the func_peek mechanic; it is purely optional, so feel free not to use it. As an entry in the 2.10 Christmas Connections Contest, the new features and assets used by this FM are: Download Version 1.1 This FM is available for download here: Google Drive OneDrive Simply place the written.pk4 into your darkmod/fms folder and you're ready to go! Promotional Screenshots Credits A big thanks goes out to Wellingtoncrab for making a beautiful city map, Narrator for their wonderful voice work, nbohr1more for creating the original story premise as well as a few readables, Goldwell for animating the introduction to our briefing video and Duzenko for making certain glasses work as well as they do! A huge thank you also goes out to our beta testers: Goldwell, Wellingtoncrab, Kingsal, noodles, Krilmar, Garrett(Monolyth-42) ate0ate, and Mike_A. Thank you all very much for your keen eye to detail and great insights! Asset Credits Kingsal's Killer Assets Wellingtoncrab's Wonderful Furniture and Book Skins ***PLAYERS BEWARE*** SPOILERS lurk in the depths below. We strongly recommend playing this FM first so you don't spoil the fun for yourself!

This topic is going in different directions and it is difficult to tell if we all are in the same page. Facts: Stgatilov wants to change (improve, I guess) something and while implementing the change he realizes he will break some mission in the process. Mappers have been including (now obsolete) core files in their missions and the developer wants to know why these files were included in the first place, as in: the purpose. Changes in two mission are unavoidable, unless the authors go back and revisit the entire logic of their missions. Changes in eight missions are avoidable, in the sense that missions remain essentially the same with or without these changes. Regardless, if the improvements are to be implemented ten missions need to be reviewed and updated. Now my opinion: Considering how the topic is going the next time Stgatilov wants to improve something similar he might think it twice (we all lose because of ten missions). If these same improvements were to be implemented in the future chances are not ten but fifteen missions would have to be reviewed and updated which begs the question, does the inclusion of core files in missions put the present and future development of some areas at risk? No, as long as things remain under control: preserve what must be preserved, encourage and support innovations, identify and address trends. This requires an effort by all parties involved.

Complaint From Players The player must pick up candles before extinguishing them, and then the player must remember to drop the candle. The player must drag a body before shouldering it (picking it up), and the player must remember to frob again to stop dragging the body. The player finds this annoying or easy to make mistakes. For players who ghost, some of them have the goal of returning objects back to their original positions. With the current "pick up, use item, and drop" system, the item might not return easily or at all to its original position. For example, a candlestick might bounce off its holder. (See player quotes at the bottom.) Bug Tracker https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6316 Problems to Solve How can the "pick up" step be eliminated so that the player can directly use or interact with the item where it is in the game world? How can so much key pressing and mouse clicking be eliminated when the player wants to directly use an item? How can candles be extinguished and lanterns toggled off/on without first picking them up? How can bodies be shouldered without first dragging them? Solution Design Goals Make TDM easier for new players while also improving it for longtime players. Reduce tedious steps for common frob interactions. Make it intuitive so that menu settings are unnecessary. Do not introduce bugs or break the game. Terms frob -- the frob button action happens instantly. hold frob -- the frob button is held for 200ms before the action happens. (This can be changed via cvar: 200ms by default.) Proposed Solution Note: Some issues have been struckthrough to show changes since the patch has been updated. Change how frobbing works for bodies, candles, and lanterns. For bodies: Frob to shoulder (pick up) a body. Second frob to drop shouldered body, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Hold frob (key down) to start drag, continue to hold frob (key down) to drag body, and then release frob (key up) to stop dragging body. Also, a body can be dragged immediately by holding frob and moving the mouse. For candles/lanterns: Frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. Hold frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to extinguish candles and toggle off/on lanterns. For food: Frob to pick it up, and then frob again to drop. Hold frob to eat food. For other items: No change. New cvar "tdm_frobhold_delay", default:"200" The frob hold delay (in ms) before drag or extinguish. Set to 0 for TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Benefits Bodies: New players will have less to learn to get started moving knocked out guards. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players have played several missions before realizing that they could shoulder a body instead of dragging it long distances. Frob to shoulder body matches Thief, so longtime Thief players will find it familiar. Second frob drops a shouldered body. Players still have the ability to both shoulder and drag bodies. Compatible with the new auto-search bodies feature. Dragging feels more natural -- just grab, hold, and drop with a single button press. There is no longer the need to press the button twice. Also, it's no longer possible to walk away from a body while unintentionally dragging it. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Candles: New players will have less to learn to get started extinguishing candles. With TDM v2.11 and earlier, some players didn't know they could extinguish candles by picking them up and using them. Instead, they resorted to throwing them to extinguish them or hiding them. Hold frob to extinguish a candle feels like "pinching" it out. Once a candle is picked up, players still have the ability to manipulate and use them the same way they are used to in TDM v2.11 and earlier. For players who ghost and have the goal of putting objects back to their original positions, they'll have an easier time and not have to deal with candles popping off their holders when trying to place them back carefully. Set "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar to delay of 0 to restore TDM v2.11 (and prior) behavior. Solution Issues Bodies: Frob does not drop a shouldered body, so that might be unexpected for new players. This is also different than Thief where a second frob will drop a body. "Use Inv. Item" or "Drop Inv. Item" drops the body. This is the same as TDM v2.11 and earlier. This is the price to pay for being able to frob (open/close) doors while shouldering a body. Patch was updated to drop body on second frob, while allowing frob on doors, switches, etc. Candles: Picking up a candle or lantern requires a slight delay, because the player must hold the frob button. The player might unintentionally extinguish a candle while moving it if they hold down frob. The player will need to learn that holding frob will extinguish the candle. The player can change the delay period via the "tdm_frobhold_delay" cvar. Also, when the cvar is set to a delay of 0, the behavior matches TDM v2.11 and earlier, meaning the player would have to first "Frob/Interact" to pick up the candle and then press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish it. Some players might unintentionally extinguish a candle when they are trying to move it or pick it up. They need to make sure to hold frob to initiate moving the candle. When a candle is unlit, it will highlight but do nothing on frob. That might confuse players. However, the player will likely learn after extinguishing several candles that an unlit candle still highlights. It makes sense that an already-extinguished candle cannot be extinguished on frob. The official "Training Mission" might need to have its instructions updated to correctly guide the player through candle manipulation training. Updating the training mission to include the hold frob to extinguish would probably be helpful. Similar Solutions In Fallout 4, frob uses an item and long-press frob picks it up. Goldwell's mission, "Accountant 2: New In Town", has candles that extinguish on frob without the need of picking them up first. Snatcher's TDM Modpack includes a "Blow / Ignite" item that allows the player to blow out candles Wesp5's Unofficial Patch provides a way to directly extinguish movable candles by frobbing. Demonstration Videos Note: The last two videos don't quite demonstrate the latest patch anymore. But the gist is the same. This feature proposal is best experienced in game, but some demonstration videos are better than nothing. The following videos show either a clear improvement or that the player is not slowed down with the change in controls. For example, "long-press" sounds long, but it really isn't. Video: Body Shouldering and Dragging The purpose of this video is to show that frob to shoulder a body is fast and long-press frob to drag a body is fast enough and accurate. Video: Long-Press Frob to Pick Up Candle The purpose of this video is to show how the long-press frob to pick up a candle isn't really much slower than regular frob. Video: Frob to Extinguish The purpose of this video -- if a bit contrived -- is to show the efficiency and precision of this proposed feature. The task in the video was for the player to as quickly and accurately as possible extinguish candles and put them back in their original positions. On the left, TDM v2.11 is shown. The player has to highlight each candle, press "Frob/Interact" to pick up, press "Use Inv. Item" to extinguish, make sure the candle is back in place, and finally press "Frob/Interact" to drop the candle. The result shows mistakes and candles getting misplaced. On the right, the proposed feature is shown. The player frobs to extinguish the candles. The result shows no mistakes and candles are kept in their original positions. Special Thanks @Wellingtoncrab was instrumental in improving this feature during its early stages. We had many discussions covering varying scenarios, pros, and cons, and how it would affect the gameplay and player experience. Originally, I had a completely different solution that added a special "use modifier" keybinding. He suggested the frob to use and long-press frob to pick up mechanics. I coded it up, gave it a try, and found it to be too good. Without his feedback and patience, this feature wouldn't be as good as it is. Thank you, @Wellingtoncrab! And, of note, @Wellingtoncrab hasn't been able to try it in game yet, because I'm using Linux and can't compile a Windows build for him. So, if this feature isn't good, that's my fault. Code Patch I'll post the code patch in another post below this one so that folks who compile TDM themselves can give this proposal a try in game. And, if you do, I look forward to your feedback! Player Complaints TTLG (2023-01-10) Player 1: TDM Forums (2021-03-13) Player 2: Player 3: TDM Forums (2023-06-17) Player 4: TDM Discord (2021-05-18) Player 5: TDM Discord (2023-02-14) Player 6: Player 7: Player 8:

Announcing the next installment of 'The Lieutenant' series: High Expectations! Never heard of this series before? That's because I just made it up. Actually, it continues on from my previous FM, In Plain Sight. You don't need to have played In Plain Sight before, but there are some references to it in the readables that might not make sense if you haven't (some of which will be spoiler-ish). "Follow the Lieutenant on his next mission to the City of Highborough" Mission Type: City Missions Beta Testers (thank you all!!! @wesp5 @Acolytesix @Shadow @Cambridge Spy @AluminumHaste @jaxa @thebigh @joebarnin @Mezla @snatcher @datiswous Extra credit goes to @Mezla for providing the idea behind one of the objectives! Notes: TDM 2.11 required You can explore most of the map from the start of the mission, but if you find yourself getting a bit lost or unfocused, just concentrate on the main objective Your objectives will become visible after you read your briefing in your inventory The map does not contain any secrets The only difference in the difficulties is the (optional) loot goal This mission has some replay potential built-in. Explanation below, but I suggest you read this only after your first playthrough: Spoiler warning!: Download links (v1.4): Proton Drive: https://drive.proton.me/urls/ZDTKN6DDM4#8Re0CpARxcbc Github: https://github.com/FrostSalamander/fsx/releases/download/1.4/highex.pk4 Screenshots: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjAB8qt Known Issues it appears that to some players keys bound to AI are unfrobable. I don't have a solution as I've never been able to reproduce it. As a mitigation, for these doors you can either lockpick them or an alternate key will be available. Other hints Atkinson/Burns objective This objective is more about rewarding the 'explorer' types. It's optional and requires you to find a lot of stuff to piece together the whole story of what happened. Most of these are not really 'hidden', but rather require a visit to most of the accessible areas of the map. If you have given up searching, then: Hotel Safe Combination hint: spoiler: What's going on with Brother Gregory? If this isn't clear, then read on: There's a wooden door in the prison that I can't open... hint: spoiler:

That's a very valid question. Personally, I'd say the key is to watch what the otherwise-disengaged fringes of the community are saying. If first time posters or long time lurkers start coming out of the woodwork about well made new missions, praising them for their geometry and story but saying that innovative parts of the gameplay felt frustrating or off, that's probably the first sign that the innovations are starting to get out of hand. For a more concrete example, re-read the comments on Hazard Pay. As much as I and many others love that mission, it's clearly a case where the author strayed further than many people were comfortable with. It also points to the likely endgame if authors do take their customization too far. After getting the negative feedback, kingsal made adjustments, and now the mission is much more friendly towards player preferences that don't match the author's original vision. You don't need to restrict the mapmakers' tools to stop them from straying too far from the traditional formula. When people start speaking up, the authors will rein themselves in on their own.

I can only speak for myself, but I think option 2 would be fine. This will at least allow the missions to be playable on the dev builds for now, and we can see if any other issues pop up

Yes. Sure, I will change it, but I do mind. In addition to changing the forum title, I have also had the name of the pk4 changed in the mission downloader and the thiefguild.com site’s named changed. It's not just some "joke". The forum post and thread are intended to be a natural extension of the mission’s story, a concept that is already SUPER derivative of almost any haunted media story or most vaguely creepy things written on the internet in the past 10 or 15 years. Given your familiarity with myhouse.wad, you also can clearly engage with something like that on some conceptual level. Just not here on our forums? We can host several unhinged racist tirades in the off-topic section but can’t handle creepypasta without including an advisory the monsters aren’t actually under the bed? (Are they though?) I am also trying to keep an open mind, but I am not really feeling your implication that using a missing person as a framing of a work of fiction is somehow disrespectful to people who are actually gone. I have no idea as even a mediocre creative person what to say to that or why I need to be responsible for making sure nobody potentially believes some creative work I am involved in, or how that is even achievable in the first place. Anyway, apologies for the bummer. That part wasn’t intentional. I am still here. I will also clarify that while I love the game, I never got the biggest house in animal crossing either. In the end Tom Nook took even my last shiny coin.

Are you going to build two separate missions knowing that player will only see one of them? I think this is "cool in theory", but in reality using such a feature requires tremendous amount of work from mapper, so nobody will use it.

looks like nvidias upcomming blackwell 5xxx cards will use hbm ouch i suspect prices will rise hugely if they go through with that, but they might seing as they go heavily into AI support.

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