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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)

Thanks for tracking down the issue. I've created a new version of the FM with the player start about 8 units further into the centre of the cabin, and datiswous' subtitles. Should work now? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tb0wm-8P57y_yZZ5aHbBX2mOyzeOYOw4/view?usp=sharing

We didn't make the holidays (such a busy time of year) so here's a New Year's gift, an unusual little mission. Window of Opportunity Recover an item for a regretful trader out in a wilderness setting, and discover more! Available within the in-game mission downloader or: Download: http://www.thedarkmo...ndetails/?id=79 Alternative: https://drive.google...WTMzQXZtMVFBSG8 Some unorthodox gameplay on regular/ghost difficulties. (Arachnophobes might prefer short mode...) Please expect to need your lantern in regular and ghost modes! Short ("easy") mode is a smaller map, so if you are looking for areas others reference below, or 100% of the loot, you'll need to play on another mode. I wanted to create my first mission before I became influenced by too many others' ideas, and limited myself to what has been done before. As such, this mission is not set in a city/town, and has some features that are likely to be provocative. There's a section some really like, which others don't, either way I kept it short to not last too long. That being said, I hope you do find it fun! :-) Special thanks to those who provided valuable testing and feedback: Goldwell, Kyyrma, plotzzz, 161803398874989, PPoe & Bikerdude (who also contributed a sound). (Please remember spoiler tags to not expose things meant to be discovered by playing.) Like so: [spoiler]secrets[/spoiler] If you are having trouble finding the main objective, here's what to pay attention to in the mission for hints: There is a spot it's possible to get stuck on the ground in the corner by the cliff/rockfall where there's a rope laying on the ground, please take care if you poke around there!

I know you didn't asked for non TDM mappers opinion but man this decision makes me really sad, imo after so many years, with both shadow systems and still deciding to hard limit shadow maps, to only stencil can do, is like cutting the wings of a bird. Has a player, I can't wait for the day you guys finally decide to remove stencil shadows from this engine. EDIT: Ups I didn't saw the poll at first so my comment was a tad precipitated sorry about that.

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

OK. Thanks! In my case the issue is moot because I don't know how to do it. Hence my plea for help... If an FM author built their mission using assets that are licensed CC-BY-NC-SA (which I believe all do), if I understand correctly then that means they must license that mission under CC-BY-NC-SA too. Which in turn means anyone can build further on their work as long as they follow the conditions stipulated in the license. It seems odd to release a work under a certain license and then say "but I don't want you to do what the license explicitly grants you to do". "Applying a Creative Commons license to your material is a serious decision. When you apply a CC license, you give permission to anyone to use your material for the full duration of applicable copyright and similar rights." (https://creativecommons.org/faq/) If an author once benefited from the license when they created their mission, why would they not want others to benefit similarly from the same licenses? The license requires their name be mentioned in every remix that follows. At the same time I can understand that some creators more than anything want to create. The desire and drive to create may be so great that they accept conditions during the time of creation, to give them artistic freedom and to use the best available assets; contitions that they regret later when their work is finished and published, and they want to keep control over it. For the OMs I think the project as a whole would benefit from a relaxed and welcoming stance towards changes.

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.

Cheers! I've been wondering for some time now if it would be possible to compile the source code of TDM to the Raspberry Pi, especially the models 3 and 4. I've seen some videos online of people running Doom3 on it, so how hard would it be to compile the source of TDM for the raspberry pi? Would it need a major rewrite of some parts of the code? I've been "tinkering" with the source for some days, and as I was expecting, all the configuration files are made for x86 architectures (Linux and Windows). I've been searching online for some info about the toolchains needed to even start compiling the source for these arm machines, but the information has been quite lackluster and outdated. I've managed to track down a toolchain to compile c++ code for the raspberry pi, made by the pi foundation but I'm not quite sure how to use it and I guess the support for it has been dropped for quite some time now. Anyway, I figured that instead of wasting more of my time, it would be best to ask here what you guys think. Is it possible to even think about this, or does TDM use some kind of libraries or other external code which makes it impossible to compile for the pi? Is there anything related to the game that makes almost impossible or too much of a hassle to try to port the game for the raspberry pi? Performance isn't an issue for me. I just want to know if it can be run in that machine. If it is possible to do this without a major code rewrite of the game, where should I start? I have no experience on compiling anything for arm, only some experience in x86, so this might be a fool's errand, but I would like to give it a try nonetheless. If it is possible to do this and if some of you could help me in any way, that would be appreciated. On the other hand, if you think this is a really hard thing to even try to do, please feel free to tell me so I don't waste more of my time. Thanks in advance

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.

That was exactly the intention of "A New Job". When you play, you will notice that there are pop-ups every now and then, explaining some mechanics. But honestly, there are so many mechanics in TDM that it is hard to introduce everything in an entertaining way.

Are you tired of looking at the same old painting skins? Do you want exciting, new banners to revitalize your WIP? If so, look no further than this all-in-one CC0/Public Domain asset pack filled with Paintings, Tapestries, and Prints! For the low, low price of $0.00, you can get over 80 brand-new images that will launch your Dark Mod map into the stratosphere! It doesn't get more FREE than this, people, so get the .pk4 while supplies last! This asset pack has been brought to you by @Wellingtoncrab and myself! Love it? Let us know! Hate it? Tell us your woes! Find a bug? We'll fix it. And did I mention that all these images are CC0/Public Domain? So go nuts! You can download the .pk4 from Google Drive here. Enjoy, Taffers!

We are proud to announce the release of: The Dark Mod 2.12 ! The 2.12 development cycle introduced many large code overhaul projects. Most of these were to lay the groundwork for future fixes and optimizations. The final release is yet another leap in performance over the already impressive 2.10 and 2.11 releases. A full changelog can be viewed here, but some highlights include: The Dark Mod 2.12 is a major step forward for mission designers! The culling system has been extensively overhauled to ensure that your CPU and GPU are not wasting resources rendering unseen geometry, lights, and shadows. Some of our best map optimization experts have achieved similar performance gains to what this new culling system does but it is a rare skill and we have even managed to improve performance on missions that were generally regarded as “well optimized”. Mission authors both new and old can follow standard mapping practices with no need to dive deep into sophisticated optimization techniques even for some pretty challenging scenarios such as wide open areas and long views. Players will immediately notice many missions that have made their system struggle with FPS now may be running much more smoothly! Smoother controls for players! Also during the 2.12 development cycle, work has been done to make controls more seamless and accessible. Frob can now use hold or click actions to use items. Once you get used to the mechanic, it will be hard to go back to using a separate “use key”. Mantling is now smoother, faster, and less prone to cause the player to clip through geometry. Leaning is now more subtle and less prone to cause motion sickness. To reduce the tedium of shuffling knocked out AI around to search for loot, you can now configure TDM to automatically loot any frobbed AI. A special thanks must go out to community member Geep! Over the course of 2.12 development, Geep has created subtitles for nearly all AI barks along with developing testing tools and procedures for this gargantuan task! You can see these changes in action by changing the Subtitles setting to “On” ( rather than “Story” ) on the Audio settings page. Geep also provided substantial feedback for our GUI and subtitle design process and edited font data to improve text quality overall. Datiswous has complimented the massive work by Geep to create AI bark subtitles by creating mission story subtitles for a large number of missions. Thank you! Turrets are now natively supported in The Dark Mod and can be paired with Security Cameras! Finally, the nasty 2.11 bug that caused AI to allow arrows to pass through them at certain angles was fixed by Joebarnin! Your assassin style play-throughs should be far less frustrating. See also, our 2.12 Feature discussions: To UPDATE, simply run the tdm_installer.exe file in your darkmod folder. Note that tdm_update.exe is no longer supported, but you can download the new installer from the Downloads page if you don’t have it yet. Please be aware that old saved games will not be compatible with 2.12, so finish any missions you might be in the middle of first! Also, some missions created prior to 2.12 may need to be updated so they will be playable in 2.12. Use the in-game mission downloader to check for updates.

As for distros -> Solus due to it being one of the few that works well with my hardware (does not offer the same ammount of packages most other distros do as they test each of them extensively for stability issues before they go into the package manager). Linux Mint seems to be pretty liked as well. OpenSuse probably the best for cross development. Manjaro should also be pretty good for gaming. Arch Linux for its massive package database (can be a bit hard to setup) Msys2 is based around the arch package manager so should be good for cross development to. Zorin OS if you want something close to windows (had a few rather annoying bugs with Lutris on it the last time i tried it though).

I ran into an error when compiling The Dark Mod on Linux with glibc 2.34. Building CXX object CMakeFiles/TheDarkMod.dir/tests/TestRun.cpp.o In file included from /home/dm/darkmod_src/tests/testing.h:22, from /home/dm/darkmod_src/tests/TestRun.cpp:18: /home/dm/darkmod_src/ThirdParty/artefacts/doctest/include/doctest/doctest.h:3998:47: error: size of array ‘altStackMem’ is not an integral constant-expression 3998 | static char altStackMem[4 * SIGSTKSZ]; | ^ make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/TheDarkMod.dir/build.make:3071: CMakeFiles/TheDarkMod.dir/tests/TestRun.cpp.o] Error 1 make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:95: CMakeFiles/TheDarkMod.dir/all] Error 2 make: *** [Makefile:103: all] Error 2 Updating "ThirdParty/artefacts/doctest/include/doctest/doctest.h" to 2.4.8 fixed it for me. https://github.com/doctest/doctest/blob/v2.4.8/doctest/doctest.h See "Can't compile with glibc master (future 2.34): SIGSTKSZ is no longer a constant" (https://github.com/doctest/doctest/issues/473)

The time has finally come for me to release my 5th mission for The Dark Mod. This project started sometime around 2015-2016 (couldn't find any old files to confirm) with me starting poking on a city mission and for some time I built quite randomly without a plan. I expected I could plot a story later; You can never go wrong with a city section, eh? I had a hiatus and did other projects in my life with model painting and skydiving and mapping became more and more scarce. Now and then I felt an itch to map and some kind of responsibility towards the mod team to produce something, to provide and give something back, if you will. At the start of the pandemic I started building more focused on this misson, but still no exact goal on what I wanted to achieve. Finally I decided I wanted a mission where you follow a person and the mission continued to grow in a linear fashion. I am not the quickest mapper and have severe problems on how to imagine a scene without building it first. This means that I often have to redo scenes and lots of stuff gets unnecessarily built just to be removed later, hence the almost absurd build time (about 1900 hours all in all). Betatesting came about and I got very good tips and feedback and decided to redo a lot of the mission. This need for a rework could have killed my motivation but fortunately, as the map was designed, it only required a modest amount of work and the mission became so much better for it! Sometimes I believe I'm somewhat of the uncrowned king of missions with a bit more unusual and experimental playstyles and this mission also have some elements that isn't used that much. In contrast to some of my other missions though, this one isn't depending on any quirky meter or sun shining down on the player (Reap as you sow *cough*). As mentioned, it is a sprawling city mission with lots of exploring that I hope will satisfy you! So DeTeEff gives to you: Who Watches The Watcher? ver 1.0 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YYoJJnxr2UbGxemTR-WoWmH64fbazusH/view?usp=sharing The night is creeping over Bridgeport. You squint in the street lights as you trot down the small alley to where you're about to meet your contact. As a man who straddles the line between lawful and outlaw, it's not often you have peaceful interactions with the City watch but as you're about to learn, this time they have more problems on their hands than to deal with petty thieves like yourself. You see the trademark silhouette of a City watch helmet approaching and you make a last take of your immediate surroundings, should you have to flee if things get awry. The guard presents himself as Albert and you listen carefully to his story and you quickly realise that you don't have much to fear from this man; The Citywatch has wrestled with some internal problems lately with missing reports and evidence that disappear. Albert strongly believes they have a mole on the inside that works for the Greynard RoughBoys; a band of ruthless thugs that doesn't hesitate to maim anyone who oppose them. You learn that he thinks the mole is no other than a Sergeant named Clerwick. Your mission will be to find this man, and collect intelligence on his doings for the night. And as it is payday, you should of course also help the inhabitants to carry some of their heavy purses. Mission type: Creepy elements? Undead? Spiders? Thanks to: My wonderful girlfriend who endures my constant talking about mapping and for helping me with readables and story design and some voice lines. Dragofer - Scripting help Springheel - All those modules Sotha - Hangman model Henrik Swenson for providing some ambients Digiffects Sound Library for some custom sound bites Betatesters: Acolytesix Datiswous Duzenko Jaxa Mezla Nort Prjames Shadow Thebigh Wellingtoncrab Wesp5 And a big thank you to the community for keeping the mod alive! I hope I haven't forgotten anyone... Known bugs: -The AI in TDM is inaccurate in some ways. They will sometimes behave strangely when returning to their original routes after being alerted, like sitting on chairs in weird ways or turning in places, especially if they meet another AI in narrow places. I have done my best to adjust these weird behaviours but with the complexity of everything that's going on and the player making different desicions/noise, it's probably impossible to adjust for everything. I believe I have ironed out the last wrinkles I can, with respect to my knowledge/skills. -Frobbing out of boxes/chests/drawers has always been a pain but I think this is largely an error within the code and how frobing works as the frob highlight wants to lock onto the box itself and not its contents. -There seems to be some kind of bug with the skybox, especially in places where there is water reflections present; The Sky/water volume switch between an opaque variant to a more translucent one. Neither is straight up ugly, but it's jarring to see the sky switch (as it seems randomly). I don't know what is causing this, and I have decided to let this one pass (if any players knows what is causing this, please let me know so can I squash this annoying bug. PLEASE POST ANY QUESTIONS/SPOILERS IN SPOILER BRACKETS

Thanks. Unfortunately, the failure logic route didn't work either. It says objective complete when she dies, but I don't get a mission failure.

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/

Don't really know what's going on. Maybe youd like to upload the save somewhere like Google Drive, Dropbox or Onedrive - in that case, what TDM version are you on? What objectives remain uncompleted? As a last resort you can force the script to happen via the console, but due to a bug you wont be able to make saves for the rest of the mission. Youre 80% done, though. Will need to look up the exact command.

*Fixed!* Worked the past -12- hours on a little something and get "Failure parsing entity 19: Pared invalid value '}' for key'. Aaand of course I don't have a backup, but the map is still running in TDM in test mode. Is there a way to fix this or dump the map file from the game? Edit: I opened the .map file with Wordpad (Not Noteblock, as it can't save in the right format), searched and removed the responsible lines corrupting the file and were able to load the map into DR again.

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

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!

I am pleased to announce the release of our new fan mission, The Hare in the Snare: Part 1 Mission type: City Missions + Inn/Tavern Description: People are being abducted off the streets and a Watch Captain requires the services of a thief to help him find out why. Download link (v1.0.2-release): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYvM_u56wDB16uIlb7qgS_q3P24V69MO/view?usp=sharing Credits: Mapping and original characters: @Frost_Salamander Story, readables, custom models, voices and cinematics: @Kerry000 Menu title track produced and mixed by @JackFarmer with selected gigagooga sound samples Beta testers: @Cambridge Spy @Zerg Rush @Amadeus @Acolytesix @Lzocast @wesp5 @nbohr1more @Kerry000 @ate0ate @Wellingtoncrab @prjames Additional thanks: @Dragofer, @nbohr1moreand @peter_spyfor technical help @Springheel for the modules and tutorials @kingsalfor allowing @Kerry000to abuse his manbeast everyone else on Discord and the TDM forums who offered assistance Requirements and notes: This mission requires TDM 2.09. Earlier versions will probably work but you might see one or two missing models. You may experience some FPS drops in some areas with lower-end hardware. Mid-range and above should be fine. If you have issues, I highly recommend you use shadow maps instead of stencil (settings -> advanced -> shadows implementation). It makes a big difference. For 'Hard' and 'Expert' the light gem sensitivity has been increased by '1' (meaning easier for AI to detect you). Screenshots:

actualy i hoped for that, like all kind off ingriedients luring out off the garden and the cellars a good pancake needs beer !! btw i had 2 "stuck" places, but i dont know what version i just played. and gosthing is rather hard, had 2 searches

I think the writing is on the wall. Advanced upscaling will be adopted as widely as possible as the free performance band-aid for the gaming industry. The majority of players will probably run it automatically without even noticing. Recently we've seen rumors of Microsoft working on a Windows upscaler (which may be similar to AMD's RSR in that the game developers don't need to touch it) and Sony may include an NPU in a PlayStation 5 Pro for their own bespoke console-level upscaling solution (not an FSR 3/4, although those can be supported). The irony would be if Nvidia ended up killing the demand for gaming GPUs faster by marketing DLSS so hard, that there's less "need" for new and top-end GPUs. But they won't care because they prefer to chase more lucrative markets like AI, datacenter, automotive. I say "faster" because there is some point in the future when additional hardware can't push the boundaries of graphics, or faster hardware can't be created. We'll see an evolution of Unreal Engine 5's photorealism approach, adoption of 8K resolution, possibly 16K for VR, and a push to the 240-1000 FPS range. Generated frames could be used for a free doubling if not quadrupling of FPS to hit those high numbers, and upscaling tends to work better when your input/target resolution are already very high. For VR specifically, foveated rendering can slash hardware requirements, possibly by 80% or more if the implementation is good enough. On the hardware side, there's still free lunch to be had with a few additional node shrinks. Stacked L2/L3 cache could be extremely beneficial, think the 3D V-Cache version of Infinity Cache (Nvidia has gone with big L2 with Lovelace). We don't see adoption of High Bandwidth Memory in consumer GPUs because it is in such high demand for AI/enterprise products, but there's no technical reason it can't be used. We will see the blossoming of mega APUs this decade.