Dark Mod AMA on Reddit this Saturday (1/28) at 3 PM CET / 9am EST

[demagogue]

This is a bit late notice (apologies for that), but there's an announcement to be made. I saw it wasn't in this subforum yet, so I'm posting it now so you can all see it.

This Saturday (Jan. 28), tomorrow, The Dark Mod team is going to participating in an "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) session on the PCGaming Reddit page starting from 3pm CET / 9am EST.

Edit: Here is the official AMA thread!

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/10nfcwj/hello_we_are_the_international_development_team/

 

They told us it should be stickied and open for questions all day long, so if you see this much later, you can still take a look and participate.

Many of your favorite TDM team members ought to be there. (I plan on being in around the background at least.)

I think there will be a lot of talk about the inner workings of TDM's development, so if you've ever been curious how TDM got made, why certain decisions were made, what are some interesting stories from the inside, or you're just interested in how games are made generally, I think you'll get something out of it.

I think we can also use this thread as a follow up, if you want to talk more about anything brought up in the AMA, post it here and we can have our own little discussion too. I haven't asked anybody else if that's a good idea, but I think it's a good idea, so I'm running with it.

Hope everyone interested and available can make it! Cheers!

[freyk]

Nice to know.

but please for the next time: dont announce this 1 day ahead of time. (Because you have to mind the schedules of people. And the time in countries of the world)

[Baal]

For someone who is not that familiar with Reddit: How and where do I find this?

[freyk]

I dont know, but i think we need to go to:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDarkMod/

If that doesnt work, we got a discord server: 

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by freyk

[Dragofer]

The AMA is to take place on https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/

[Jetrell]

Which members of The Dark Mod team will attend?

[nbohr1more]

We currently have, "myself", stgatilov, dragofer, greebo, demagogue, STiFU internally coordinating. Thus far I have been fielding all questions but others are free to join. Epifire and New Horizon were also planning on joining. Non-TDM members are also free to join in and answer things that are well known to regular players and the community. Hopefully we won't need to do too much moderation or correction if someone posts something inaccurate about the project.

 

 

[madtaffer]

Question for AMA: What is the vision roadmap beyond 2.12 toward TDM 3?

[demagogue]

44 minutes ago, madtaffer said:

Question for AMA: What is the vision roadmap beyond 2.12 toward TDM 3?

Madtaffer, could you repost this question on the Reddit thread here?

That way it will be seen and answered in the right place.

 

[jaxa]

Seems good so far.

Technically you could keep answering new questions as long as they pop up in there, right? Reddit threads freeze after 6 months. 

[Epifire]

3 minutes ago, jaxa said:

Seems good so far.

Technically you could keep answering new questions as long as they pop up in there, right? Reddit threads freeze after 6 months. 

Mods said it'll stay open for 24 hrs. I'm on a later schedule in US central time, so I only just now am catching up on the AMA. I'll be sitting in and watching the thread for the rest of the day. I guess this is why we share a dev team that spans multiple continents. 

[JackFarmer]

At first I thought you had to be logged in to read (or it did not work when I first clicked on the link?), but that's not the case; but I didn't notice it until two days too late.

As usual, I didn't really understand most of the technical questions, but it was interesting to read how a good stealth game should be made. However, this is actually a question that should be answered by gamers.

Anyway, thanks for the insights. What else would interest me personally, do you still have contact with people like sparhawk from time to time? I've been reading backwards a bit, and from what I read, his posts make a lot of sense, especially when it comes to project management. @greebo@nbohr1more

 

[greebo]

8 hours ago, JackFarmer said:

Anyway, thanks for the insights. What else would interest me personally, do you still have contact with people like sparhawk from time to time?

No, not really, have only seen him on the forums many years ago. He deserves a lot of credit for providing the SVN infrastructure in the beginnings of the project, it's been only later when we transferred this to a hosted server.

Memory is blurry, but I think my time working on TDM and his don't overlap that much - I had been getting more active, and he pulled back a bit. He bootstrapped quite a few important systems, IIRC he's been working on light gem and the first Stim/Response and Inventory implementations. From what I recall, he gave the project an organisational backbone in the technical department which is crucial to keep things together. Folks like Spring and NH who have joined long before me could give more insights, I guess.

(Looking at my join date makes me feel old either way. From TDM's current view point, the year 2006 seems like right at the beginning, but actually the mod had already been existing for two years by that time I joined. With the first release in 2009, 2006 is rather in the middle. Heck, I haven't touched the mod code for at least 10 years - and I can still remember a few things, which is a testament of how much it occupied my thoughts back then).

[demagogue]

I remember reading about Spar talking about the S/R system in the dev forum, which was interesting for me. (This would probably have been years after it all happened because I was a latecomer too, although IIRC he was still around then, but I was really absorbed with reading old threads anyway.) Unlike many of us, he'd never made FMs for Thief. So his knowledge of Thief's S/R system came from the reports of people that had come from Thief mapping, and he did his best to reproduce what they were saying. He was a bit worried about if it would meet mappers' expectations.

But the system he made was pretty cool, and I think even a bit more intuitive than Thief's system. (They ended up not too far apart anyway.) But it made me think sometimes not knowing exactly what a thing is, but having a vision for it can be liberating... because you can follow the vision without being bound to the past.

I guess that's not such a big insight into him. He had a thoughtful leadership style, and I guess no more or less human than any of us. The lesson I got from that story kind of stuck with me though.

[New Horizon]

12 hours ago, greebo said:

Memory is blurry, but I think my time working on TDM and his don't overlap that much - I had been getting more active, and he pulled back a bit. He bootstrapped quite a few important systems, IIRC he's been working on light gem and the first Stim/Response and Inventory implementations. From what I recall, he gave the project an organisational backbone in the technical department which is crucial to keep things together. Folks like Spring and NH who have joined long before me could give more insights, I guess.

My Memory is equally blurry at this point. lol  I'm 47 now with two kids.  I think they have consumed a lot of my brain matter. haha

I have really fond memories of working with Spar in the early days.  I think we used to chat on MSN. I was quite the night owl back then, so with the time differences our schedules lined up quite well and I would sit up at night helping him test out his systems as he figured things out. I'll never forget how he scared the hell out of me with the S/R system when he first got something working.  He had a simple room map, something standing in for loot that I could frob and when I did, it spawned a doom 3 zombie behind me.  Not the best thing to experience at 3am while testing in the dark. haha

Amazing to see how it grew into the TDM it is today.  Amazing really.  Some folks over at TTLG said we would never do it.

[Jedi_Wannabe]

Oh man I don’t know how I missed this, but that was a fun read on Reddit. Thanks for doing this!