Things that could be improved

[Arcturus]

6 hours ago, Taffingtaffer said:

I don't mean to sound bitter, but it wasn't long that we were debating whether the new, upcoming tone mapping looked good or bad. Where's the discussion about this!?

You would need do adjust assets (lights, particles, lit textures), otherwise there's no point. Besides, people don't even grasp the concept. It should be left to advanced mappers as an option.

[wesp5]

10 hours ago, Taffingtaffer said:

I have a quick&dirty "mod" with pumped up AI and player footstep volume, a left-over from when Daft Mugi, others and me tried to clean this up, but everyone has lost steam.

Could you upload this somewhere so maybe Snatcher could include it in his modpack and I into my patch?

[Zerush]

I personally think that a Masterthief, which footsteps sound like wearing nailed combat boots, isn't very realistic and also not sousefull for scaling. Soundlevel is almost the same of this from the guards.

I made most missions in difficult level with zero score, but nearly impossible to do it with zero suspects because of this.

[Taffingtaffer]

6 hours ago, Arcturus said:

You would need do adjust assets (lights, particles, lit textures), otherwise there's no point. Besides, people don't even grasp the concept. It should be left to advanced mappers as an option.

That's are relief. I also thought it was a strange feature to ask opinions about here, since I barely understood the implications; I just tried different existing FMs and saw it as a downgrade.

2 hours ago, wesp5 said:

Could you upload this somewhere so maybe Snatcher could include it in his modpack and I into my patch?

I feel a little less moody today, so I'm gonna compare the original values properly with a diff, comment out those in the mod for reference and then revise the edits. The hidden and useless jumping modifiers bother me to no end, but I'll try not to obsess too much about those values...
If someone were to fix this, we can either go the Thief way, making jumping always sound very loud, or acknowledge the silent crouch-fall mechanic and make the modifiers actually matter code-wise, and expose them as cvars to fine-tune the overall sound gain increase.
It might be also worth to check out unique, libre footstep sounds (the comments in the .sndshd files are pretty self-aware about this) and testing them in this map: 

 

Edited August 17, 2025 by Taffingtaffer

[snatcher]

20 hours ago, Taffingtaffer said:

I'd like to mention the blackjack bashing again. The noise does in fact propagate towards AIs, but the real volume value is so low for them that functionally it is useless, despite sounding pretty loud for the player.

I don't personally find bashing walls with weapons to draw AI's attention appealing as a mechanic in a stealth game. It sounds unprofessional, desperate, uncontrolled to me. I'd rather jump a dozen times 

Besides, do we apply a similar treatment to the sword?

[Taffingtaffer]

2 hours ago, snatcher said:

I don't personally find bashing walls with weapons to draw AI's attention appealing as a mechanic in a stealth game. It sounds unprofessional, desperate, uncontrolled to me. I'd rather jump a dozen times 

Besides, do we apply a similar treatment to the sword?

It's true that we have no shortage of ways to draw attention. I guess it's the mismatch of loud noise that AIs shrug off what bothers me the most about the blackjack. I swear, bashing windows plays something that sounds like a gunshot.

[BoilerDunce]

The vines cast by vine arrows behave badly. They keep trying to interfere with mantling. I made the training mission impossible to beat because the vines were blocking me from mantling into the window, forcing me to hold on to them right after any jump. This is terrible.

While we're on the subject of the bow and arrow, why don't I mention that the bow's range is weak? Does it feel right for any RL archers that the final target in the training mission requires you to rain an arrow down on it?








 

[Bergante]

On 8/10/2025 at 4:22 AM, Klatremus said:

2) Can you guys make one key input for hold crouch and another for toggle crouch please? I use both during gameplay, and it is very annoying to have to go to the main menu to change the toggle setting each time. Or is there a way to keybind toggle/hold crouch in the DarkmodKeybinds.cfg?

P.s. @Klatremus : hold crouch --- toggle crouch ???  (i only see "X" to use - ? )
Maybe my problem is related to this ??

Getting the crouch position while climbing

it seems to me that since 2.11 climbing works different !
i can´t switch anymore from stand position to crouch position while climbing !?
i replay HazardPay at the moment and in 2.10 it´s been possible to change position on a rope or net
now i can still stay in crouch pose when entering the rope/net in this Position -
(but you jump onto mostly. so you will be in stand pose)
but not get to it anymore when i stand up  - than one slides down and fall when the end is reached
normally that´s no problem - but if you want to grab something laying on the ground - 
it was mostly possible to grab it in crouch pose 
now one has to go so deep - one gets standing on the ground - so you can not grab it from hanging on the rope !
was there a reason to change this ( or is it just something in "settings" ? )

Edited September 26, 2025 by Bergante

[Arcturus]

They make two steps, pause, turn around, two steps, pause... Shouldn't they be playing "looking around" animations like they do in Thief? And I feel like they are focused on the same couple of square meters a bit too much.

Thief 2 has two variations of the "stop and look around" animation. They also alternate between alerted walk and normal walk.

I'm gonna start a new thread.

 

[Loginnerer]

Tiny typo in Training Mission

 

[Arcturus]

Using safe lock interferes with player animations. For example, clicking in the lock will restart sword drawing animation:

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6699

Sometimes NPC will make a 180 turn without playing a 'turn' animation:

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6700

[datiswous]

I don't understand why I have to quit the mission, before I can quit the game. Why is there no "Quit tdm" button at the bottom of the in-game menu? If I open the console and type "exit" it will immediately quit tdm, so it's not a technical limitation.

[AluminumHaste]

This has bothered me for years also.

[wesp5]

I have added Quit to the ingame menu in my Unofficial Patch now, replacing the Objectives which have nothing to do there anyway. As with my other UI improvements, this is free to use by the core TDM development team if they want!

Edited April 1 by wesp5

[Arcturus]

NPCs walking with torch play idle animation that's not suitable.

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6735

[Wallace]

The in-game objectives menu could do with being darker, it's very bright and causes eyestrain after awhile. It is akin to shining a torch in one's eyes in a dark room. This is the one thing that I'd change if I had the technical knowhow. 

Also, the space between the objectives can be needlessly big. For example, let's say you have 10 objectives, each of which occupy a single line of text. There will still be ~3-4 lines-worth of empty space between each objective. I get that the objectives UI needs to allow for longer objectives, but it would be nice if the objectives text organised itself to be more compact rather than leaving lots of empty space, which again, only contributes to more "whiteness" and thus, more eyestrain.

The parchment texture for "Commander Michaels letter" in FM "The Gatehouse" is much easier on the eyes.

An option to disable the mission complete jingle would be most welcome. For a game all about subtlety and quiet, hearing the loud horn jingle on mission complete just makes me lower my laptop volume.

Also, headshots should mean headshots. An arrow to the face should be an immediate kill regardless of alert status.

I've played TDM for over a decade at this point, and these tend to be the recurring bugbears of an otherwise excellent game.

Edited Tuesday at 04:04 PM by Wallace

[datiswous]

I wonder if you could make a toggle shortcut (key) that when pressed first lowers gamma then opens Objectives screen, when pressed again restores gamma and hides Objectives screen.

[datiswous]

40 minutes ago, Wallace said:

Also, the space between the objectives can be needlessly big. For example, let's say you have 10 objectives, each of which occupy a single line of text. There will still be ~3-4 lines-worth of empty space between each objective. I get that the objectives UI needs to allow for longer objectives, but it would be nice if the objectives text organised itself to be more compact rather than leaving lots of empty space, which again, only contributes to more "whiteness" and thus, more eyestrain.

I think you can fix this somewhat by modifying the hud in settings.

[Wallace]

15 hours ago, datiswous said:

I think you can fix this somewhat by modifying the hud in settings.

You can change the size of the text but not its relative distance to itself. Big text vs small text the redundant space remains the same.

[wesp5]

On 8/11/2026 at 5:51 PM, Wallace said:

Also, the space between the objectives can be needlessly big...

An option to disable the mission complete jingle would be most welcome...

Also, headshots should mean headshots. An arrow to the face should be an immediate kill regardless of alert status.

I improved some of these issues in my Unofficial Patch like the headshots doing more damage unless the arrow hits a helmet. I never noticed the gaps in the log, maybe this can be fixed. Also I see no problem with the GUI brightness and I love the complete jingle :)!

P.S.: I just looked at the objective space and the text is cut off without wrapping if the objectives are very close together. There is an intermediate option, but it will probably not work with objectives longer than two lines. So do these exist?

P.P.S.: I checked all missions starting with "A" and already found two which need three lines. I will continue, but it seems as if the current solution is easier than modifying multiple mission objectives. 

Edited Thursday at 01:22 PM by wesp5