The Dark Mod 2.0 first impressions

[Thedarkbunny]

I saw that there were other threads like this, so here are my very first impressions of the training map.

1) Alt-tab doesn't work

2) performance issues: I was surprised that the game slowed down a lot on a geforce GTX660+Haswell on the outside levels. This can run Crysis 1 and 2 on max settings. Also, whenever I opened a door to a big area, I experienced some stuttering, as if the level was loading in ram.

3) Quick save/load. My quicksaves cannot be loaded. Throws some error (couldn't load training mission script). I was surprised that hitting F5 did a quick load. It's binded to F9 in the settings.

4) In the archery section, you should state that the user may not already have the spyglass. I didn't understand why it didn't work.

5) I didn't understand how to use the water arrows and vine arrows that can be found in the archery section. Maybe you should try and explain that too.

6) Jumping tutorial. I didn't understand where I was supposed to jump. Do I need to jump towards the open window on the right or towards the thing above the window in front of me. I wasn't able to complete any of the jumps before dying. It would be nice if dying revived you nearby.

7) How do you pinch out a candle? It says to use the "use" button, but I wasn't able to find any such button when looking through the menu. Maybe I missed it? I had the same problem with the flashbombs. Where is the use button?

8) How do you push a box? I was unable to figure this out.

9) In the object manipulation section, my character just grabbed the book in my inventory instead of being able to read it.

10) The gamma and brightness calibration isn't very good. Usually, games show a 2D image and ask you to adjust your settings until you don't see X, but see Y. Usually, the settings are displayed alongside the image.

11) There's no clear difference between loot objects and non-loot objects. Maybe they should glow when you hover over them. Also, why do I keep seeing my loot total in the bottom right? I think that it should fade away after a few seconds.

12) The light gem doesn't look like a gem. Confusing.

13) In the stealth section, it says "behind the partially", instead of "behind the partially opened door".

14) In the stealth section, it seems that you need to use the blackjack at a very specific angle. Also, the startled guard's reaction was weird. He sort of froze like a log and I was able to get him down eventually. He just made a weird grunt whenever I hit him. It seems that he can't fight or run away properly without a weapon.

15) If a mission is already installed, it should say "mission already installed" instead of restarting the game.

16) I suggest that the tutorials in the training mission have a suggested order, perhaps with large numerals above them. You would normally prefer to adjust gamma first.

17) In the stealth section, dragging the unconscious guard up the stairs was hard as he kept getting stuck.

18) moss arrows look like you had just sprung a fountain of dirt.

19) The text messaging system is far from ideal. It would probably be a lot of work, but it would be better to have a system where the messages are logged and can be displayed again to have more time to read them.

20) What does frob mean? I'm assuming it's the abbreviation of frobnicate, from what I found on the Internet. Not a word I was familiar with.

 

Graphics: I know these would be a lot of work to implement, and the graphics already looks really good, but I can't resist suggesting these things. it would be awesome if the moon cast light in the St-Lucia mission. I know that not even Thief 4 seems to do that properly (example: http://www.playnatio...ne/pic-5639.jpg). Cobblestones would look awesome with some displacement mapping.

 

Saint-Lucia:

1) minor, but you can climb using the first tree and reach what should be unreachable areas.

2) I couldn't find a sneaky way around the first guard.

3) You take a bit of fall damage after going through the grate, which you shouldn't since this is the right way to go.

4) one of the doors in the statue room will clip through the ladder

5) didn't realize you had to flip the guards over to get their keys once they're on the ground and it can be a bit hard to do.

6) the key system could be simplified so you don't have to try out each key

7) Hammer pushing was a bit hard to find and execute. Head of statue stays hanging in mid hair after the deed.

8) Guards can bug out a little bit

9) Broadhead arrows seems overpowered. Are there any rewards for a non-violent playthrough?

 

Played through Awaiting the Storm: Really fun. Not having broadhead arrows makes the game a lot more challenging.

 

I'll post more impressions as I keep playing.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Thedarkbunny

[nbohr1more]

Your install directory needs to be named "darkmod" or saves and scripts won't work

[Serpentine]

Alt tab works, it just expects the console to be open, or you to not be playing fullscreen, there will be changes made to this in an upcoming release. A lot of people use tab for other uses in TDM and alt is generally a tricky meta key to avoid. I will add pause/main screen to the list of exceptions if its neat.

 

Performance, TDM eats hardware. It's mostly the engine, an ongoing effort. Unlikely to change radically anytime soon. That said, nVidias latest cards seem to actually struggle more with it.

 

Gamma Adjustment, the adjustment screen has a scale on it, as you suggest.

 

The use key defaults to 'Enter'.

 

The rest - just explore the game, it's not a AAA hugfest, sometimes you'll have to think/look around/try stuff. Don't be in too much of a rush

[Thedarkbunny]

Your install directory needs to be named "darkmod" or saves and scripts won't work

Thanks. I suggest that this be made the default name when unzipping.

[161803398874989]

11 and 14 on your listed are behaving as intended. Blackjacking is supposed to be kinda hard, just like finding loot. You'll learn what is loot and what isn't soon enough, don't worry!

[Thedarkbunny]

Alt tab works, it just expects the console to be open, or you to not be playing fullscreen, there will be changes made to this in an upcoming release. A lot of people use tab for other uses in TDM and alt is generally a tricky meta key to avoid. I will add pause/main screen to the list of exceptions if its neat.

 

Performance, TDM eats hardware. It's mostly the engine, an ongoing effort. Unlikely to change radically anytime soon. That said, nVidias latest cards seem to actually struggle more with it.

 

Gamma Adjustment, the adjustment screen has a scale on it, as you suggest.

 

The use key defaults to 'Enter'.

 

The rest - just explore the game, it's not a

 

AAA hugfest, sometimes you'll have to think/look around/try stuff. Don't be in too much of a rush

Ah, I see, it's USE INV. ITEM. Still, it's confusing for newbies. Maybe the tutorial should say: the default is enter, or use the technical name USE. INV. ITEM. The gamma adjustement has a scale, but there's no clear calibration target. Usually, it will say: Look at this picture of a thief. Adjust your gamma until you clearly see the feather on his cap, but not the dark circle in the shadows. And I know this isn't an AAA game but it's good enough that I think it's worth improving! I was quite pleasantly surprised by the quality so far.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Thedarkbunny

[Thedarkbunny]

11 and 14 on your listed are behaving as intended. Blackjacking is supposed to be kinda hard, just like finding loot. You'll learn what is loot and what isn't soon enough, don't worry!

 

I see. I do think that it would be a nice touch if loot items glowed differently when you highlight them with your invisible cursor. I think this was the case in Thief games, to which this mod is vaguely similar. For the blackjack, I'd suggest having an "easy" guard with a wider blackjacking area for the tutorial.

[skacky]

I see. I do think that it would be a nice touch if loot items glowed differently when you highlight them with your invisible cursor. I think this was the case in Thief games, to which this mod is vaguely similar.

 

That wasn't the case. Loot glint appeared with Thief 3 and almost everyone thinks it was a bad idea.

[New Horizon]

I see. I do think that it would be a nice touch if loot items glowed differently when you highlight them with your invisible cursor. I think this was the case in Thief games, to which this mod is vaguely similar. For the blackjack, I'd suggest having an "easy" guard with a wider blackjacking area for the tutorial.

 

Nope, the original games didn't glow differently.

[Springheel]

I see. I do think that it would be a nice touch if loot items glowed differently when you highlight them with your invisible cursor

 

We did look into that possibility at one point, but I forget what happened to the idea.

[Thedarkbunny]

Alright, it's a design choice and it works well so far.

[New Horizon]

We did look into that possibility at one point, but I forget what happened to the idea.

 

I think we ended up agreeing that it felt too gamey.

[Springheel]

17) In the stealth section, dragging the unconscious guard up the stairs was hard as he kept getting stuck.

 

You're not supposed to drag him...don't the instructions tell you to shoulder the body?

 

3) You take a bit of fall damage after going through the grate, which you shouldn't since this is the right way to go.

 

There's no "right" way to go...there are 3 different ways to enter the church.

 

didn't realize you had to flip the guards over to get their keys once they're on the ground and it can be a bit hard to do.

 

Are you shouldering them? Shouldn't be hard if so. Just pick them up, drop them down, pick them up again, and they'll drop down facing the other way.

 

Head of statue stays hanging in mid hair after the deed.

 

Never seen that before, though it's possible if it landed on the edge of some unexpected collision surface. Definitely a rare event.

[Serpentine]

You're not supposed to drag him...don't the instructions tell you to shoulder the body?

Something happened between me handing the map over to BD and the release version, I wasnt around to test or anything, but the text pop-ups are awfully broken at the moment.

Would like to make sure those are fixed for 2.01.

[Springheel]

The Training Mission wasn't modified for 2.0, as far as I know.

[Thedarkbunny]

You're not supposed to drag him...don't the instructions tell you to shoulder the body?

 

I missed that. How do you shoulder bodies?

[Springheel]

When you "frob" the body (in order to drag it) hit the "use" key. Hitting "use" again will drop it (and it will drop different ways each time, making it easy to get things off of belts).

[MurcDusen]

Press the "use" key (default enter) while dragging them. Same button to throw them down again.

 

Edit: Well, too slow.

Edited October 25, 2013 by MurcDusen

[stumpy]

if there's no room for the body on the ground when you want to drop it from the shoulder position then the player should grunt, you just have to find a bigger area.

 

Don't expect your hand to be held while playing like most console games do, loot doesn't glint atomic blue in the real world so it wont in the game either.

 

enter/return key is the use key, depends on keyboard, to read books you pick up, press enter key, then mouse 1 to close it, or press '[' or ']' to turn pages. same with scrolls you pick up. If a scrolls rolled up paper is bigger at the bottom than at the top then you can turn the page.

 

don't think you can cast light with the moon as its a projected image from a skybox in a closed off area away from the main map. and there isn't a physical representative object in the main map for the moon as far as I know.

[ungoliant]

Am I the only one that thinks certain 'review' threads like this are just a provocative method that some new players use to get special handholding privileges most of us would ignore otherwise?

[161803398874989]

Am I the only one that thinks certain 'review' threads like this are just a provocative method that some new players use to get special handholding privileges most of us would ignore otherwise?

I can't answer that because I don't know what the others think about it.

 

However, I think this is not the right way to think about it. You want new players, you're going to have to help them out if they have problems. Not everybody is teh h4rdc0r3.

[stumpy]

there are bugs in the training mission though, a book you shouldn't be able to pick up can be picked up, the guis text overlay in the top left hand corner isn't there long enough for it to be read all the way through. some of the game element tests assume that you know what you are doing without giving you the instructions on how to do it first.

[SneakyLookingSort]

Performance, TDM eats hardware. It's mostly the engine, an ongoing effort. Unlikely to change radically anytime soon. That said, nVidias latest cards seem to actually struggle more with it.

 

I'd like to hear more about that since my I'm having huge performance drops in certain areas with lots of lights with my GTX 650ti (which I admit is not a beast but handles most of the games quite nicely). Is it a driver problem?

[Serpentine]

I'd like to hear more about that since my I'm having huge performance drops in certain areas with lots of lights with my GTX 650ti (which I admit is not a beast but handles most of the games quite nicely). Is it a driver problem?

Absolutely no clue, I've just noticed the 6xx's struggle in TDM, heard other people mention they are fairly weak at other OpenGL heavy games, but evidently fine in benchmarks.

 

I don't have a Kepler test card, as nVidia cards are about double the price for the same performing AMD cards(and the mid range is always just re-badged last gen). So I just dont bother anymore with them.

[Thedarkbunny]

Am I the only one that thinks certain 'review' threads like this are just a provocative method that some new players use to get special handholding privileges most of us would ignore otherwise?

 

That wasn't my intent. In fact, my intent was to help the project by showing the hurdles that a typical newcomer might encounter and to document them in detail so they can be fixed. I think that ideally new players should not need any hand holding. The game should do the hand holding. Some might say that I'm contaminated by a "console" mentality. Anyway, the most serious problem IMO, is quicksave being broken out of the box. It's frustrating and I bet that many will declare the game broken and delete it at this point.