Things that could be improved

[wesp5]

While I don't think a voting system would be easy (where are the votes collected?), sorting should be possible from inside the mod and I would appreciate this too!

[demagogue]

We had the idea once to have a rating system inside the game ,and it could have number of times downloaded/played. The votes would be collected on this server, and I suppose it could have mirrors, just like the other downloads. But it's not such a big thing since you can usually get an idea about it just by searching the forum.

[Jedi_Wannabe]

2 hours ago, demagogue said:

But it's not such a big thing since you can usually get an idea about it just by searching the forum.

Quite right. Might take more work than it’s worth, but how bout the other sorting categories, would those be easier? Just wishful thinking, minor quality of life type of thing.

[Bluehawk]

I don't know if it's been suggested already, but I thought it could be helpful to have the player's weapons and ammo (arrow types) appear on the inventory screen, maybe along the bottom opposite the loot at the top, or on the left-hand side opposite the scroll buttons (when the inventory is full of enough stuff). It would spare the player hitting all the number keys to check what they have and what the don't if it were just summarized visually on the inventory screen,. Maybe clicking on the ammo types with the cursor could also switch to that weapon/ammo-type like hitting the corresponding number key.

Here's a a crude mock-up of what I mean.

Spoiler

The exact layout of the text and icons isn't important, so long as it consolidates the information on one screen.

[demagogue]

Legitimate good idea. There have been a lot of times I'll want to know if I have rope arrows and not be 100% sure which number it is, so I just start pushing all of them. I'll second that motion.

[STiFU]

With the upcoming gamepad support, I suggested to add a weapon-wheel and an item quick-select wheel. The weapon wheel could also display the amunition.

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, demagogue said:

Legitimate good idea. There have been a lot of times I'll want to know if I have rope arrows and not be 100% sure which number it is, so I just start pushing all of them. I'll second that motion.

Me too!

[peter_spy]

That is a good idea. You could have just a set of small icons, like arrow head types with a number next to them. This way it would fit in the upper left or right corner of the inventory screen. Some games have such info displayed in vertical order, on the left or right side of the screen.

Edited November 23, 2020 by peter_spy

[wesp5]

I think it would fit on top or below the loot section using a similar style.

[madtaffer]

Camera vaulting over obstacles and climbing is a bit slow when you use it often. Is it possible to increase it?

[madtaffer]

A suggestion for text fonts. Could you make in TDM settings option to render all written text in one readable default font? I'm dyslexic. I have to read text twice or more times to understand it for myself. Stylish fonts in TDM are beautiful to look at but they are painful to read.

[Destined]

You can try to do that yourself, although it may take some work: In the TDM folder, there is a pk4-file titled "tdm_fonts01.pk4". This contains all fonts nativelly used in TDM.  You could extract the files and choose a font that is easy to read for you. Then you copy all files in that folder, paste it into each other folder and rename the copied files to the names of the font that you want to replace. The file contains 25 folders with three files each, so you would have to rename 75 files, but this way you should not have any problems with missing definitions etc. You could still encounter some aesthetic problems, because map authors will have optimised their readables etc for the fonts they chose and you would not change any custom fonts that map authors introduced (you could do that manually again in the mission's pk4-file, though), but it should help for most cases. I would also recommend to not repack the files, because this way your changes are not affected by any updates, which would replace the changed pk4-file.

[Zerg Rush]

Just a little suggestion for the loot. Wouldn't it be possible to add when stealing something, not only the amount stolen until then, but also the total amount available in the mission?
This is how you know, if it is worthwhile to continue searching, before finishing the mission. It is a bit frustrating to finish a mission and only then know that only half of the available loot has been achieved.

[AluminumHaste]

That's a carry over from the Thief series, you didn't know the total amount until you finished the level or died and saw your stats.

Thief 3 changed it up with a percent left (Not sure on all difficulties).

But for your first suggestion, you do see that amount you've stolen so far, when you pick up more loot.

[Dragofer]

@Zerg RushOfficially it's probably going to stay as it is (at least by default), but for yourself you can always download this .pk4 and place it in your base install. It'll turn the loot counter into a current/total counter as well as your current stealth score. Got to be logged in to get it.

https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20245-view-stealth-score-during-gameplay/&do=findComment&comment=443437

[peter_spy]

That would probably require a lot of effort to integrate, but if GUIs are such nightmare to work with, maybe they could be replaced with a different, more friendly system: https://github.com/mikke89/RmlUi

This would be similar to web development then.

[AluminumHaste]

My god the thought of extracting the current system and getting that one to fit....I'm shaking at the thought.

[peter_spy]

I sure don't expect that kind of commitment from anyone Just found that link on another Discord server, thought would be worth to share.

[nbohr1more]

The "OpenTechEngine" team added "Crazy Eddie's GUI" ( CEGUI ) to replace the Flash based GUI of Doom 3 BFG:

https://github.com/OpenTechEngine/OpenTechBFG/tree/master/neo/cegui

http://cegui.org.uk/

If we were to embark on something like this, we would need to have it available in parallel to the existing GUI system until GUI files can be ported or the syntax of the Doom 3 GUI can be reconciled to that of the CEGUI system (alias tokens, etc).

@stgatilov has already dabbled in improving the GUI code but I doubt he would be enthusiastic about this option.

 

[peter_spy]

Hey, that GUI editor looks really nice and clean.

http://cegui.org.uk/features

Edited February 20, 2021 by peter_spy

[HMart]

12 hours ago, peter_spy said:

That would probably require a lot of effort to integrate, but if GUIs are such nightmare to work with, maybe they could be replaced with a different, more friendly system: https://github.com/mikke89/RmlUi

This would be similar to web development then.

I certainly don't like the idead of HTML based guis, just the idea of using HTML/CSS and perhaps even java script to do guis, specially when I hated that stuff, when I did my old website work... makes me shiver, also I bet Doom 3 gui system would be way way faster than anything using HTML and CSS, but that's my opinion.

IMO if a new gui system is seriously being considered than a immediate mode gui could be a good choice, based on what I read about it they are way easy to maintain and work with (but do need more backend work). 

I looked at dear imgui some time ago because of it, seems to be a very nice immediate gui system but, also seems to be more directed to do guis for tools than for games.

Cegui does look to be a reasonable choice,  don't know if is a immediate mode gui or retained mode one but it has apparently good tools and that is a plus in my book. 

There's also noesis seems to be very powerful and has full support for vector images (instead of only pixel based like in TDM), but even thou it has a free version not sure if it can be used on TDM (no source code acess). 

But imo the best would be to improve the already existing gui system, no need to relearn a new gui system/language and old guis would be totally compatible, just improve new ones with any new functionally that is introduced. And perhaps if someone is brave enough, work/improve the quake 4 gui editor that came with idtech 4.

Edited February 20, 2021 by HMart

[cabalistic]

Personally, I'd be all in favour to replace the current GUI system with something else. It is just terrible. So terrible, in fact, even id Software replaced it for Doom 3 BFG . And while I'm not a fan of HTML/CSS, either, I wouldn't dismiss it. It has the huge advantage of established powerful tooling, and it also offers good ways to alter the look without changing functionality, something which would be very beneficial to TDM. And a lot of people probably have at least some level of knowledge of HTML, whereas CEGUI or others like mygui, imgui, ... would be yet another custom scheme to learn.

However, as always the problem is backwards-compatibility. I'm almost certain that wrapping existing GUI scripts to use any new GUI system behind the scenes is as close to an impossible task as we can get. So we'd have to establish it as a second GUI system to coexist alongside the old one for a while. But if we wanted to use the new GUI system for the main menu (which would frankly be the primary appeal), we would immediately break any customized menu in released missions, and there isn't really any way to avoid that. I don't believe such a move would find much love in the community

So unfortunately, we're probably stuck with the existing system.

[wesp5]

6 minutes ago, cabalistic said:

So unfortunately, we're probably stuck with the existing system.

I personally never use the inventory screen and only discovered it years after playing TDM. In my opinion just using keys instead of drag and drop keeps the immersion higher! Still I agree that some issues in the current GUI should be fixed that have been open since many versions, like that after downloading missions they are still listed as "available" over the "no missions available" text. That looks messy, but it seems nobody really likes to work on the GUI anyway ;).

Edited February 21, 2021 by wesp5

[New Horizon]

On 2/11/2021 at 2:01 PM, Zerg Rush said:

Just a little suggestion for the loot. Wouldn't it be possible to add when stealing something, not only the amount stolen until then, but also the total amount available in the mission?
This is how you know, if it is worthwhile to continue searching, before finishing the mission. It is a bit frustrating to finish a mission and only then know that only half of the available loot has been achieved.

That has come up before.  The reason TDM doesn't tell you what remains in the level is because there is no way the player would realistically know this.  I dunno, I feel it adds to the replayability not knowing.  There have been so many times in Thief that I've gone back to a mission years later and found a piece of loot that I had no idea I had missed.

[AluminumHaste]

Yes.