Unofficial Patch

[wesp5]

The TDM Unofficial Patch is a personal project of mine to modify some small details that annoyed me in the core game. It wouldn't be possible without many others, so thanks to the whole TDM community for discussions and help, but especially to friendly modders who directly contributed code for it, like Obsttorte, Dragofer, Kingsal, Goldwell, Destined, and snatcher! You can find it under the link below and while over the years there was little progress, in recent times many things have been improved that I never even thought of when I started and some might be worth to be included in the core game.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/addons/the-dark-mod-unofficial-patch

Version Changelog:
------------------

v1.7                                                      20.08.2022
----
Made loot icon change right back to last tool icon, thanks snatcher.
Added new whistle player skill to distract NPCs, thanks to snatcher.
Made more lights extinguishable and added info for 4 beta missions.
Corrected container bottom fix messing up drawers, thanks Dragofer.
Improved unlit behaviour of moveable light sources, thanks snatcher.
Corrected lit lamps set to extinguished in maps, thanks to Dragofer.
Changed western empire maps so the location of Bridgeport is vague.
Added several major city names to the small map, thanks to Kukutoo.
Fixed frobing animation not working with bound and carried entities.

v1.6                                                      23.07.2022
----
Improved extinguishing oil lamps, thanks to Dragofer and Obsttorte.
Added frobing animation, thanks to Obsttorte, Goldwell and snatcher.
Fixed container bottoms and training mission chest, thanks Dragofer.
Made doors open faster when running, thanks Obsttorte and snatcher.
Added more player tools to training mission and improved text there.
Fixed Holy Water doing no damage and Hazard Pay not starting at all.
Made all five oil lamps in Sotha's "The Bakery Job" extinguishable.
Added blow player skill to snuff out small flames, thanks snatcher.
Changed Unarmed icon to make clear that the player always has a bow.

v1.5                                                      02.07.2022
----
Created Invisibility Potion out of cut Speed Potion, thanks Kingsal.
Increased arrow head shot damage to both living and undead enemies.
Replaced slow matches with easier to handle flints, thanks Kingsal.

v1.4                                                      10.03.2022
----
Replaced Frob Helper with dark Frob Outline and updated to TDM 2.10.
Made electric mine stun elite guards too and improved mission names.
Renamed mission installation/selection UI mishmash to "activation".

v1.3                                                      21.02.2021
----
Changed flashmine to stunning electric mine and updated to TDM 2.09.
Edited more mission names and made threefold candles extinguishable.

v1.2                                                      26.08.2020
----
Updated to TDM 2.08 and fixed custom holywater script compatibility.
Added Numbers Scroll showing stealth and loot info, thanks Dragofer.
Edited more mission names to avoid truncated descriptions in menus.
Added default keys info to training mission and repaired cut lines.

v1.1                                                      03.02.2019
----
Moveable candles can be extinguished directly by frobing the candle.
More blackjack immune enemies and inextinguishable candles modified.
The key frob distance has been decreased to be that of lockpicking.
Holy Water bottles must be thrown directly, but they do more damage.
The controls settings menu additions have been updated for TDM 2.07.
New mission names have been fixed to fix format and spacing issues.
Added looking up and looking down controls for people without mouse.
Pointed bad prefabs container open/close sounds to existing effects.
Added version info to starting screen and edited some new missions.

v1.0                                                      06.05.2018
----
Many enemies will not become immune to blackjacking when alerted.
Oil lamps can be snuffed by frobing, thanks Destined and Obsttorte.
The controls settings menu lists that "use" can work on held items.
Mission names were syncronized between download and online lists.
The controls settings menu lists that "frob" can get or drop items.
Astericks were added to official missions to move them to list top.
Minor text and format bugs have been fixed in some mission infos.

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by wesp5

[snatcher]

Congratulation on your new home and welcome to the neighborhood

[wesp5]

Before you appeared I thought the patch was not important enough for a thread here, but you stirred up the scene :)!

Edited August 17, 2022 by wesp5

[snatcher]

Me? just passing by... the features offered by the game are pretty much complete to great success.

I don't know what happened in the past but it seems nowadays all modding effort goes into missions and I miss a more general modding scene. A "pick what you like, enjoy it your way" thing.

The game is well supported, the people behind have clear and reasonable goals, new releases with bug-fixes and improvements come often and mods can help in keeping games relevant for longer, at least, as far as re-playability goes. This is the reason I stumbled across the Unofficial Patch rather quickly: there was nothing else to choose from. Once again, thanks for your pioneering work.

[wesp5]

1 hour ago, snatcher said:

Me? just passing by... the features offered by the game are pretty much complete to great success.

You are too modest ;). While most core developers concentrate on performance and visual improvements, you were the only one besides me who directly looked into adding new global gameplay features! I still have to test your card deck and I'm curious what else you are cooking up right now. I believe that TDM can indeed cope with some more of the kind :)!

Edited August 17, 2022 by wesp5

[wesp5]

I just uploaded a small update, because Dragofer provided a script to globally fixed uncorrectly used lit entities as unlit ones. Many thanks!

[snatcher]

I would like to report that jewellery boxes cannot be closed back. I am the kind of guy that, depending on the mood and situation, likes to set dials back to 000 in safe-boxes, go figure... If this cannot be solved, it should be documented.

[wesp5]

@Dragofer, are you reading this? Can this be fixed in your froblock script?

[Dragofer]

1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

@Dragofer, are you reading this? Can this be fixed in your froblock script?

I'd at the very least need to know which jewelry box (screenshot) and the FM where the bug was found, preferrably with coordinates (getviewpos console command).

[snatcher]

Briarwood Manor
-407.41 -1124.51 168.25 32.8 -16.1 0.0

[wesp5]

Another one is in "The Bakery Job". It's a simple one building map, the box is on the groundfloor on the table.

Edited August 22, 2022 by wesp5

[wesp5]

I updated the Unofficial Patch to work with the just released 2.11 version of TDM.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/addons/the-dark-mod-unofficial-patch

Version Changelog:
------------------

v1.8                                                      13.02.2023
----
Added peek through door keyhole skill, thanks snatcher and Dragofer.
Restored original Holy Water arrows for backup, thanks to snatcher.
Improved handling of lit lights that start unlit, thanks nbohr1more.
Made mantling while carrying somebody possible, thanks to snatcher.
Updated patch for TDM 2.11 and fixed bad map icon, thanks Daft Mugi.

[lowenz]

Maybe the best name for this side project would be "The Dark ADDON"

[wesp5]

I have updated the patch for 2.12, here is the changelog:

v2.0                                                      04.03.2023
----
Added names being shown on frobing bodies or items, thanks Snatcher.
Resorted mission list including "A" and "The" in alphabetical order.
Updated to version 2.12 and removed several fixes that are included.
Moved helper options from the gameplay page to the difficulty page.

 

[datiswous]

Since TDM now supports multiple mods to be active, you could split your mod in multiple mods doing different things. Just an idea.

[wesp5]

How does TDM support this? I thought this was only possible using third party software or Snatcher's mod.

[nbohr1more]

1 hour ago, wesp5 said:

How does TDM support this? I thought this was only possible using third party software or Snatcher's mod.

I believe datiswous is referring to this new 2.12 feature:

 

[wesp5]

I figured this was only done to avoid missions breaking if they add their own stuff. Checking out the link above it doesn't seem to work with init scripts where most of the changes of the patch are. If I rename the tdm_user_addons file I get an redeclaring user_addon_init error and if I rename that, all the patch scripts are gone. So what am I doing wrong here?

Edited March 5 by wesp5

[nbohr1more]

You followed the conventions here:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_to_Z_Scripting:_Script_addons_for_players

and created your own tdm_user_addons_wesp5.script ?

[wesp5]

2 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

You followed the conventions here:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_to_Z_Scripting:_Script_addons_for_players

and created your own tdm_user_addons_wesp5.script ?

Yes, but I used the user_addon_init script inside and this seems to also be in the core files so I got an redeclare error. I renamed that script and weird enough, on my home system it's working fine now :)! Maybe I made a typo earlier...

Edited March 5 by wesp5

[snatcher]

@wesp5

You have a couple of def on the loose in the script folder in version 20(.8)

10 hours ago, datiswous said:

Since TDM now supports multiple mods to be active, you could split your mod in multiple mods doing different things. Just an idea.

Thinking of players, and players alone, it is time to re-think the Unofficial Patch, yes.

[nbohr1more]

I think the ask from datiswous and perhaps dragofer is that you split your patch into different parts so users can install the ones they like from both you and other mod authors. The new 2.12 feature is designed to allow this.

[wesp5]

I really don't see a need for this. The two core features of the patch are removing the K.O. immunity and extinguishing of oil lamps. If you don't want the former you don't need the patch at all and if you don't want the latter, just don't do it. The rest are smaller changes and some new skills from Snatcher's mod, so if you only want those you better install his mod :)!

[Dragofer]

My impression was that the unofficial patch has become a large collection of various tweaks and features by various authors, or at least that's what it was being marketed as. Making it modular has significant advantages for those who might want certain parts, rather than the exact same combination as the one you endorsed. It also makes your patch collection more futureproof in case you add stuff that not everyone wants to have.

In any case, it's advisable to at least adapt the file structure to the new addon conventions so that players are able to install other addons alongside yours.

[snatcher]

Open questions for all.

As a mere player, have you ever modified other games? Have you installed unofficial fixes, patches, updates, upgrades, expansions, mods? Were you happy it all was well documented? Were you happy that you could control what was being installed? Were you happy that it worked? Were you happy that you could install other stuff alongside without problems? Were you happy that you could uninstall it? Did you care about the authors or flame wars going on in obscure places of the internet?

Players download stuff, sometimes read the instructions, install it and judge it.

----------------------------------

My friend Wesp5,

Listen to the feedback. As a start, I would like to see the patch, or parts of it, in pk4 format. If you were to split your patch into standalone mods, which mods would you produce?