Things that could be improved

[wesp5]

10 hours ago, New Horizon said:

The reason TDM doesn't tell you what remains in the level is because there is no way the player would realistically know this.

While this is certainly right, Dragofer made a cool scroll item that shows you the stealth score anytime during the game (which of course you can't know all the same) and I added the maximum loot to this and included it into my TDM Unofficial Patch ! Now it's up to the player whether they want to take a look at this or not...

Edited February 23, 2021 by wesp5

[vozka]

I just tried the new installer and I'm having a bad time trying to choose the install directory.

Firstly it's weird to have an installer that's still trying to install the game into the current directory because for many people that will be a temp directory where the installer executable installer was automatically extracted after they launched it from inside the archive. Could it perhaps detect whether there are already Dark Mod files present in the directory and if not, default to something like Program Files in Windows?

Secondly is there no way to change the drive letter in Windows in the wysiwyg directory picker? I couldn't find it. The whole dialog is ugly and not very intuitive imo, but being unable to use it to locate a directory on a different disk is the biggest problem I'd say. The fact that the installer has to restart any time the directory is changed is really weird too, but I assume there's a good reason.

All in all as an end user without any knowledge of background changes I find the new installer to be a sidegrade at best. I do like that it now shows the size of the download and time estimate - that is excellent.

Edited April 11, 2021 by vozka

[AluminumHaste]

I used it to install to my k: drive without issues. Maybe we didn't make it idiot-proof enough.

[Gadavre]

I think we need to improve the AI. I've noticed once: if 2 or more guards see a player, they run to him to kill him. It's good. But if the guards in this  alert state touch each other, then, as a rule, they begin to kill each other. This makes the play easy and strange.

Have you ever seen the police shoot their employees in reality? I wouldn't want the guards to be any dumber than the modern police in this regard....

Maybe I can change some ai variable?

Edited April 12, 2021 by Gadavre

[wesp5]

2 hours ago, Gadavre said:

I think we need to improve the AI. I've noticed once: if 2 or more guards see a player, they run to him to kill him. It's good. But if the guards in this  alert state touch each other, then, as a rule, they begin to kill each other.

I played every mission there is and I have never seen this. How did you manage that and in which mission?

[demagogue]

They would do that if their teams were set (or able to be set) to be mutually hostile.

Long story short--if that's the issue--that's not really a problem the code base, but a problem with the mapper botching something in the map design. It's also technically possible that they did it intentionally and you just don't agree that it made sense, which I think can happen and wouldn't really be technically a "mistake", just a strong dissenting opinion. It's hard to know for certain without knowing which example you're referring to though.

Edit: I think one of the team settings was neutral unless attacked, and it could happen that a guard accidentally hits another one, switching them to a hostile setting. If it's that, then it means the author probably didn't foresee that happening and/or didn't know that would happen if it did. It's good for mappers to understand team relations and how things like that might happen so they can plan against it at least, and the team could make that potential issue more well known. That's not a matter of changing the code (since it's still "properly working as intended") so much as better communicating how it works to avoid unintentional & unexpected problems like this.

I can't even remember all the details off hand thinking about it now to know if this is a real possibility though, or if I'm just making it up and something else was happening.

[Gadavre]

2 hours ago, wesp5 said:

I played every mission there is and I have never seen this. How did you manage that and in which mission?

mission: The Tears of St. Lucia

The original file was processed by the script I18N.pl. This was necessary for the translation into Russian. Could this script have created a bug in the AI?

The entrance to the church is guarded by two guards. I showed myself to both of them and ran away from them. I climbed up on the elevation so they wouldn't kill me. They tried to hit me with a weapon and apparently one of them struck another with a sword. The two guards began to fight among themselves. I walked to the main entrance of the church without any problems.... It was easy.... And it was very strange...

But how then to get good statistics. if you want to complete the mission without killing???

 

I must write. that I can't cause this behavior on purpose.  Sometimes they attack me together, but they don't consider themselves enemies

The developers could make it so that a random hit from one guard to another would not cause damage and would not make them enemies... I don't think the mission creators are to blame...

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Gadavre

[vozka]

11 hours ago, AluminumHaste said:

I used it to install to my k: drive without issues. Maybe we didn't make it idiot-proof enough.

So did I, but I had to write the path by hand. Not exactly intuitive.

[AluminumHaste]

1 hour ago, vozka said:

So did I, but I had to write the path by hand. Not exactly intuitive.

Ohhh, I see what you mean now.

Please post screenshots of what you are reffering to in the future, your posts aren't exactly intuitive.
Yes, I had to type my drive letter manually, the new installer doesn't have the ability to view your drives.

[Springheel]

3 hours ago, Gadavre said:

The entrance to the church is guarded by two guards. I showed myself to both of them and ran away from them. I climbed up on the elevation so they wouldn't kill me. They tried to hit me with a weapon and apparently one of them struck another with a sword. The two guards began to fight among themselves. I walked to the main entrance of the church without any problems.... It was easy.... And it was very strange...

 

None of the guards in that mission have swords, so it's hard to figure out who you're referring to.   If I had to guess, it sounds like you were out of melee range, so one AI tried to throw a projectile, and hit another guard with it.  When AI are hit by projectiles, they consider the person who hit them to be an enemy. 

 

Quote

But how then to get good statistics. if you want to complete the mission without killing???

If you want good statistics, you need to avoid getting chased in the first place. 

 

[Gadavre]

1 hour ago, Springheel said:

When AI are hit by projectiles, they consider the person who hit them to be an enemy. 

Most likely you're right. thanks.

I did an experiment: I wrote in the command line "god" and began to fight with two guards in close combat. They fought only with me. This pleases me....

For good statistics I will try to avoid detection and hopefully then the guards will not kill each other

[Gadavre]

Why do you think the game does not implement the smashing of glass objects? In some old games with realistic physics, this is already there, for example in the game : Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Sometimes i  just want to break a bottle against the wall )

Edited April 12, 2021 by Gadavre

[Anderson]

28 minutes ago, Gadavre said:

Why do you think the game does not implement the smashing of glass objects? In some old games with realistic physics, this is already there, for example in the game : Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Sometimes i  just want to break a bottle against the wall )

 

[New Horizon]

4 hours ago, Springheel said:

 When AI are hit by projectiles, they consider the person who hit them to be an enemy. 

 

 

 

Is that still true if they're tagged to be on the same team though?  

[Springheel]

7 minutes ago, New Horizon said:

Is that still true if they're tagged to be on the same team though?  

 

It used to be.  If we changed it, I've forgotten, which is certainly possible.

 

[Gadavre]

2 hours ago, Anderson said:

 

but we can't break the bottles and glass vessels right now. Isn't that right?

[Springheel]

5 minutes ago, Gadavre said:

but we can't break the bottles and glass vessels right now. Isn't that right?

You can break most movable bottles.  When it comes to windows, it depends on how the mapper set it up.

 

[Gadavre]

Just now, Springheel said:

You can break most movable bottles.  When it comes to windows, it depends on how the mapper set it up.

In your initial missions ( a new job etc ), this is not possible. I threw bottles at the wall. Beginners may think that they can not break glass objects in this game

Edited April 12, 2021 by Gadavre

[Springheel]

I don't know if they break from throwing at a wall, but movable ones break if you hit them with a sword or arrow.

 

 

[Gadavre]

Hallo

I tested  a mission  and I saw the cheating ability of the Guard to see the player.  Who should I better  contact?

 

 

Here is my topic. Thing that could be improved.

 

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by Gadavre

[datiswous]

Stability improvements to the in-game mission installer (mine crashes a lot)

In the file mainmenu_newgame.gui (part of tdm_gui01.pk4) I would like that the transparency of the install_splash.tga is modified slightly from 0.2 to 0.3 . This means an overall improvement on the look of these images (you can then actually see what they are most of the time), there is no real downside. 0.3 should be the default.
See:

Edit: a darkmod.cfg config setting would be better so that the transparency level could be set on a personal basis.

Edited May 2, 2021 by datiswous

[Korabrom]

Being agressive, AI just using pathfinding.

I discovered that in training mission when i can escape from the guard through the hole in the wall, so guard start chasing me. When he ran out of the room i crawled in, but then he returned. This makes escape from an aggressive enemy impossible if a hiding place is available for AI. 

I expected him to use last known position or to call someone to intercept, but not just run to my current position with maximum efficiency.

[AluminumHaste]

Don't want to make it too easy on ya.

Also, flashbombs if you have em.

[Xolvix]

This could certainly be a me-only issue, but I can't seem to settle on a gamma setting I like. I keep fiddling with r_postprocess_gamma with almost every FM. Despite the default now being 1.2, a lot of maps seem a bit washed out, particularly older ones when the default gamma was 1.0. That said, if I set it to 1.0 it looks like this is the intended gamma for such maps (particularly when checking screenshots on their respective forum posts), but actually playing them at such gamma levels is painful because the environment hides too many important elements in the dark. Lots of newer maps expect a default of 1.2 and base their own ambient light levels upon this, so they look like crap with a gamma of 1.0.

Since the ambient gamma of a map seems to be something that is defined by the mapper, I wonder if there's a way to have the game auto-adjust the r_postprocess_gamma value so that it's normalized across all maps. Back in the day I didn't even adjust the gamma at all, but I think I've just become more aware of the importance of correct gamma levels so the moody atmosphere is retained without your eyes hurting or missing important details.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Xolvix

[AluminumHaste]

Some maps are worse than others. Some have a really high ambient so I end up turning gamma down OR, I open the .map file in the pk4, find ambient_world and change it's values to something a little darker.

 

For example, in Volta 2, I open the .map file in the .pk4, and find

 

// entity 49
{
"classname" "light"
"name" "ambient_world"
"_color" "0.024 0.035 0.035"

 

I see that the ambient light isn't white, which is fine, so just reduce the value by the same amount for each.

So

"_color" "0.020 0.031 0.031"

Should keep the colour the same, but make the ambient darker.

Now that's not a great example. That ambient is fine.
Some missions have it as high as 0.08 or 0.12 for the 3 colours, and that's too bright unless you have a really crappy monitor.