Things that could be improved

[Springheel]

How is that having an advantage? You can act quicker, but, only to make up for your lack of toughness, you can get in more hits, but only to make up for you lack of power,

 

TDS took this route. You could make very quick strikes with the dagger, but they didn't do much damage. However, in practice it meant that you could easily circle-strafe guards slicing them to death while they struggled to land a blow.

 

In TDM, guards play a pain animation when they're hit with arrows. If you could quickdraw faster than a guard, you would easily be able to kill them by simply standing in one place and firing repeatedly. Instead, you have to be careful and either time your shots, dodge, or take cover. The latter seems far more thieflike to me, but your tastes may be different.

[CodeMonkey]

TDS took this route. You could make very quick strikes with the dagger, but they didn't do much damage. However, in practice it meant that you could easily circle-strafe guards slicing them to death while they struggled to land a blow.

 

You can do that in TDM too, just back peddle, wait for the guard to swing, run in, strike, rinse, repeat.

 

In my version of the story, the guard would be laughing at my attacks, hit me once or twice, and thats all she wrote. (It would be more balanced than it is now, because I would be doing less damage, yet, get to feel like I'm doing something amazing, all flash, and no dazzle, or some such..)

 

In TDM, guards play a pain animation when they're hit with arrows. If you could quickdraw faster than a guard, you would easily be able to kill them by simply standing in one place and firing repeatedly. Instead, you have to be careful and either time your shots, dodge, or take cover. The latter seems far more thieflike to me, but your tastes may be different.

 

If you really want to see unbalanced, rush em' with a blackjack and beat em' over the head repeatedly. (Seriously, it works, on archers at least.)

 

But seriously, they have the accuracy advantage being AI and all, my ability to quickly load an arrow, and fire it doesn't mean it's going to hit my target, plus, they have armor which deflects most shots, give em' higher chances of headshotting\one shot killing you, and it's still challenging.

 

I'm too tired to debate properly, but, it was just a suggestion, and I was only asking for equal speed, the rest was just my opinion on what a thief should be. (Since the discussion got steered that way.)

[RPGista]

Localised hits with realistic damage levels is an awesome feature of TDM. It gives the melee fights a strategic side (and a fast pace), if you are fast and accurate you can take out even armored enemies. At the same time, every fight is a challenge, specially in numbers (pretty much impossible) and even on one on one a good guard can best you - just put melee difficulty on maximun and use manual blocking, you'll need more blows to kill enemies (double I think) and they will be more challenging themselves; manual blocking will keep your attention there.

 

Considering you can take out someone with a single headshot (again, not if your in maximun difficulty), I think it is a good balance to make the player unable to rapidfire, not only against archers (where you can use surprise to fire the first shot and cover, while they cant), but also in melee - not being able to set up an arrow in time while someone is hitting you makes it a lot more urgent to fire it before they get close.

Edited October 5, 2012 by RPGista

[Mixthoor]

Sience release v2.0 I play only FMs for Dark Mod. I love it, once again thank you very much!

So I have one little idea, which can improve your great mod - autosearch the bodies. It will be nice, when I can automaticly grab the keys, arrows or pockets. This is a big issue, which stop or stopped me in some missions. Could you implement this new option in the next release or in some kind of patch?

[Springheel]

We're generally not big fans of "auto" anything. What do you find difficult about searching bodies? Are you aware that when you pick them up and drop them they flip from one side to the other? That's your easy way of seeing if there's anything on their belt.

[Zaratul]

I agree with Mixthoor.Items are hardly visible on NPCs belts and (optional)auto loot bodies should be really useful.

[Mixthoor]

1) The biggest difficulties I've got with the arrows, which are imposible to take from KO body. I try to move the body, but it dosen't help very much. The other problem are the keys. Zaratul has right - they are often hardly visible > when I search the body I don't see these.

 

PS.

2) When I fight and jump on the bad, the guars throw the rocks at me, because the can not reach my with their blades. The hounted guards are just staying and observe. I can troll them and kill without any problems. Could you implenet the jumping options for the guards, that they can reach the small beds too?

 

3) I troll the guards with the chairs too. It is very easy, if I put the chair near the door. The guards comes, try to open the door, the chair blocks it, and guars is tring to do it forever.

[RJFerret]

It's almost auto looting if you pick pockets before knocking out guards. You don't need to see the item, just be close.

 

AIs can jump on things if the map designer makes it that way. (You'll be surprised in my missions if you don't expect guards to follow you some places.)

 

So it's already part of the mod, just some choose to implement it that way and others don't. Similarly the visibility of stuff can be more apparent or less, I wish the stuff on belts wasn't so obvious/looking the same as you quickly learn to spot pockets to pick. (You can also use the scope, if the map gave it to you, to check out guard's belts. Remember also belts aren't the only place things can be carried, my WIP mission will require not just picking the obvious "pockets".)

[simplen00b]

1) The biggest difficulties I've got with the arrows, which are imposible to take from KO body.

Pretty sure you can take only one arrow from a KO'd archer. If you get him lying on his front and crouch over the quiver, one of the arrows should highlight and you can frob it.

2) When I fight and jump on the bad, the guars throw the rocks at me, because the can not reach my with their blades. The hounted guards are just staying and observe. I can troll them and kill without any problems. Could you implenet the jumping options for the guards, that they can reach the small beds too?

This is mainly up to the FM author. Beds and tables are often 'monsterclipped', so that hostile AI (human or otherwise) can't climb onto them. I'm not sure if this is because it's 'the way it is', or whether there are other issues, e.g. AI getting stuck.

 

However, it's not always the case - in Flakebridge Monastery I attracted the attention of a revenant, and then jumped onto a table to 'troll and kill' him. (I love trolling and killing undead.) Unfortunately the table had a board leaning against it - the revenant trotted up the board onto the table and started whupping me real good.

[Pheonix]

What I would really like to see is a way to "block" fan missions in the download list. If there is a FM that I don't like, whatever the reason, I would like to mark it as "hidden" or something denoting that I don't like it. Then I can remove it from my system (I don't like it, so I'm unlikely to actually play it,) and now it also won't appear in my downloadable list (in case I forgot that I didn't like it.) Maybe set it so that if there is an upgrad, it will again appear (but marked as blocked or hidden prior to update.) This way I could read the changes (if they are available,) and decide to re-hide it or go ahead and give it another try. If I can place a note as to why I blocked or hid it in the first place, that would also be nice.

 

Now this information should really be place on the client (my,) machine of course. It should also be somewhere that could easily be backed up. This way, if I have to re-install in the future, I can save the hidden/blocked list and place it back into the DarkMOD directorey (or wherever,) so that when my reinstall requires me to re-download the missions, the ones I don't want are already hidden/blocked from view.

 

Finally, a way to show hidden/blocked mission, so I have the option of re-evaluating in the future in case my tastes change.

[Sotha]

*Scratches head*

That is a bizarre proposal. You could easily write your personal FM hate-list and upload it to the cloud.

[Goldwell]

Instead of a hidden thing it would be great if we could manually mark which FM's we have completed. Sometimes I either can't finish an FM or have pretty much finished it but don't feel like walking back to the start.. and to mark the FM as complete would come in handy then.

[ezze]

Pheonix's idea is quite nice! Probably also easy to implement.

[grayman]

Instead of a hidden thing it would be great if we could manually mark which FM's we have completed. Sometimes I either can't finish an FM or have pretty much finished it but don't feel like walking back to the start.. and to mark the FM as complete would come in handy then.

 

If you go to the Download Missions screen and select a mission, the description on the lower left of the screen will tell you if you completed the mission yet, and at which difficulty level.

[RJFerret]

If you go to the Download Missions screen and select a mission, the description on the lower left of the screen will tell you if you completed the mission yet, and at which difficulty level.

 

Yes, but that's automatic, not manual, it doesn't take place for any of the reasons Goldwell mentioned. Plus, being personally "done" with a mission such that you don't want to go back to it, not properly recording your completion (Tears for me is forever unchecked despite my screen going black with the "Mission Complete" message), not just those you can't complete, but also those you won't complete for whatever reason, and crashes preventing accurate recording. The "Training Mission" is another that can never check itself off since there is no completion.

[Springheel]

It would be great to see more functionality like this in the mission downloader. It's also the perfect project for someone who isn't already involved in working on the mod.

[Flanders]

@RJFerret

You can edit this outside of the dark mod. Look in the darkmod/fms folder, open missions.tdminfo in a text editor. In there you can add "mission_completed_0" "1" to a mission you feel like you completed on easy, or "mission_completed_1" "1" for medium etc.

[RJFerret]

Sweet, thank you, and now even Blocks is checked off, as well as the duplicate missions the installer provided, as well as my own. :-) The checks now have useful meaning!

[dbailey]

My big gripe with TDM is the head bob, which doesn't just move up and down (like Thief) but tilts side to side.

 

This may happen to a certain extent IRL when you're walking, but your inner ear knows what's up and corrects for it. In a game, it's nausea-inducing.

 

Could there be a in-game toggle for this?

[rich_is_bored]

There's are some console variables you can play with (in-game) to adjust it. I don't recall the names off hand but I know they start with pm_.

 

Start up a mission. Press Ctrl+Alt+~ to bring down the console. Type pm_ and then press tab for autocompletion. Press page up and page down to scroll through the list of matching CVars. Try changing the values by enterting the full name of the CVar followed by the value you'd like to assign to it. Then try walking around to test your changes.

[lowenz]

A little interface improvement: remove "install mission" button+text for the actual FM installed.

Edited January 10, 2014 by lowenz

[Goldwell]

Also why does TDM restart after installing a mission?

[New Horizon]

Also why does TDM restart after installing a mission?

 

It has to restart to install the mission files for that particular FM.

[Matoro]

What is up everyone! I just want to say TDM standalone mod is awesome! Its been 2+ years since I last played it (when it was in beta I think). I came back to this game again, because of all the "good and bad" hype of Thief 4, and PC Gamer mentioned mod of the year.

 

It is just so cool seeing things finalized for a mod that has been in development so long!

 

Recently, I've been trying to find some Thief 2 inspired levels. You know, where it had factories , submarines, and other steampunk environments? Including security cameras, robots, turrets that made Thief 2 more modern and challenging. Does anyone know of any good missions out there?

Edited January 11, 2014 by Matoro

[161803398874989]

Siege Shop sounds really like your cup of tea, Matoro.