Things that could be improved

[OrbWeaver]

There is no safe way to knock someone out in real life. Not with a bump on the head, not with choking. Even using a poison dart dipped in some anaesthetic would not be safe, because anaesthetics need to be carefully matched to the patient's body weight.

We all know this. It doesn't matter. The Dark Mod is not a reality simulation. The blackjack exists because the aim of this game is to deliver an improved version of the Thief gameplay experience, in which blackjacking was an important mechanic. That's all there is to it.

[ChronA]

Since last year I've been playing Thief games with a house rule that any time I knock someone out with the blackjack I must flip a coin. If it comes up tails then the victim was killed by the impact and I finish them off with the sword, accepting whatever consequence comes with that. It makes it so gas arrows are the only totally safe way of taking out guards non-lethally, but the blackjack still exists as an option in emergencies. My other house rule is that anytime I reload from save I must use a health potion, thus preventing me from save scumming through such difficulties without a penalty.

If you don't like the anti-realism of the blackjack or you just want to spice up your play style without going full ghost, I highly recommend this system.

[STiFU]

 

20 hours ago, ChronA said:

My other house rule is that anytime I reload from save I must use a health potion, thus preventing me from save scumming through such difficulties without a penalty.

I only every reload if I die and try not to save too frequently. That's another nice rule to create some tension.

[Apiai]

Eavesdropping don't work with lean forward.

But I guess it's intentionnal because with lean left/right, the thief is supposed to have his ear against the door, right ?

[New Horizon]

3 minutes ago, Apiai said:

Eavesdropping don't work with lean forward.

But I guess it's intentionnal because with lean left/right, the thief is supposed to have his ear against the door, right ?

 

Yes indeed.

[madtaffer]

Could you reduce the size of dark mod in half?

[AluminumHaste]

Lol

[Amadeus]

1 hour ago, madtaffer said:

Could you reduce the size of dark mod in half?

They don't call him the madtaffer for nothing, I guess

[madtaffer]

3 hours ago, Amadeus said:

They don't call him the madtaffer for nothing, I guess

If I remember, it used to be smaller around 1.2GB. It's more efficient.

[Destined]

Not sure, if you are just trolling, but I will answer anyway. Yes, The Dark Mod used to be smaller, but there is a continuous flow of new assets (models, AIs, etc.), so there is more variety in missions and they do not all look the same. This requires space, of course. The only way, you could keep the mod itself smaller, would be to keep all additional assets in the fan missions, but this would have two major disadvantages: you cannot use them (without unpacking tons of fan missions) for the creation of your own new missions and it would drastically increase the size of the missions themselves, which in turn would be even less efficient (dowloading assets for each mission each time, instead of downloading all just once). Additionally, this would mean that all missions would have to be checked for any assets that are to be taken out of the core mod and repacked; and nobody wants to do that.

In short: no, it is not possible to reduce the size to half.

[OrbWeaver]

In theory you could reduce the size of the mod to almost any arbitrary size if you were willing to sacrifice quality. For example you could re-encode all the sounds at Vorbis quality 0, reduce all textures to 32x32 pixels with maximum DXT compression, remove any embedded videos (if there are any). Probably not much you can do about models, but I don't suppose they take up all that much space particularly after Zip compression.

Of course somebody would need to do all the work of producing this cut-down version, and the result would be like playing a game from 1996, but maybe some people would appreciate this if they're stuck on 56k dial-up internet.

[Filizitas]

That in times of 250Gb call of duty people still complain about GB size is bizarre  But first world person speaking here XD Where 250mbits internet is normal :c

[Obsttorte]

I am a first world person either, but I can guarantee you that here in germany high speed internet is nothing you can always expect everywhere, even in major cities. However, compared to other modern games The Dark Mod is comparable small, and if madtaffer can still remember the time when TDM weighs only 1.2 GB his memory is definetely better then mine, cuz I cannot

[AluminumHaste]

lol be thankful you're not developing for TDM

 

[nbohr1more]

In the latest Dev Build:

Normal Map RGTC compression is working in all shaders.

This means that a substantial amount of Normal Maps could be pre-compressed to RGTC and

the download size would shrink. Probably not in half though...

 

[OrbWeaver]

6 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

This means that a substantial amount of Normal Maps could be pre-compressed to RGTC

That seems like a good idea, and not just for download size — compressing at load time is horribly slow on certain (mainly AMD?) GPUs, including mine, unless you manually disable image_useNormalCompression which currently defaults to 1.

If we're going to default to using normal compression I think we should also supply pre-compressed images to hopefully avoid this delay.

[ShadowSpectre]

1) Is there a way to reverse the audio channels? My right is left, and my left is right for some reason.
2) Adding a toggle to do this in the audio settings would be fabulous.

[AluminumHaste]

You should probably start with WHY it's reversed. Is it just in Darkmod or in every program?

[demagogue]

AFAIK there isn't just a global setting for it (but that'd be an obscure setting if it existed, so you'd have as good of a chance of digging through Doom3 tutorials or the code to find it as anyone else), and different things are localizing sounds in different parts of the stereo field for different reasons, so it sounds like it'd be hard to rig it source by source as well. I'd also think you might be better off doing it through your operating system or just, you know, turning your headphones around.

[AluminumHaste]

You can try s_reverse 1 in the console.

[blaa]

I wish the AI would react to someone opening a door right next to them. As it is a guard can stand directly next to a door, you open it, see the guard, think "nope" and close it again. One of the recurring situations that make suspension of disbelief quite hard at times.

Also, with the guard view set to "challenging", they can come very close to you without seeing you even when you are not in full shadows. When the guard could stretch out his arm and touch me and I´m not in full shadows they should see me, however I will try "hardcore" and see if that makes it better.

[Springheel]

Guards will notice doors that open in their FOV if the door is marked "suspicious" by the mapper.

[AluminumHaste]

18 hours ago, blaa said:

I wish the AI would react to someone opening a door right next to them. As it is a guard can stand directly next to a door, you open it, see the guard, think "nope" and close it again. One of the recurring situations that make suspension of disbelief quite hard at times.

Also, with the guard view set to "challenging", they can come very close to you without seeing you even when you are not in full shadows. When the guard could stretch out his arm and touch me and I´m not in full shadows they should see me, however I will try "hardcore" and see if that makes it better.

As Springheel said, they will notice some doors being open.

 

Also, if a guard is on no alert level, there's no reason for them to be suspicious and notice you, but on Challenging, they should notice you, sounds like something is up. Do you have a video example that I can test on my system?

[blaa]

Yeah this clip I posted as Accountant2 feedback shows it:

https://streamable.com/u62fix

Gamma is set a tad bit high here, but it still does a decent job showcasing it

Edited September 20, 2020 by blaa

[AluminumHaste]

No that's fine your gem was mostly completely dark, and you were out of the AI's FOV when it did light up a bit. That was normal.

EDIT 2: Watching it again, your lightgem was completely dark when the guard comes around the corner, there's no reason that he would see you. He didn't touch you either.

 

EDIT: Nice moves btw.